Water Deeply Archives

New Tool Will Help Save Water By Measuring Plant Health From Space

Next week, A new instrument designed to measure plant stress will be plugged into the International Space Station. Once operating, the device will deliver unprecedented data about drought conditions and water conservation all over the planet. The device was designed and built by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It’s scheduled for launch on June 29 aboard a SpaceX rocket as part of a resupply mission for the space station.

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Dozens Of Water Systems Consolidate In California’s Farming Heartland

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the most productive farming regions in the nation, an estimated 150,000 people are stuck living with contaminated drinking water. When they open a tap to fill a cooking pot or take a shower, the water that gushes out is contaminated with nitrates, hexavalent chromium, arsenic and other nasties from polluted wells.

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Why Emergency Drought Assistance Will Be Needed In California For Years

June 5, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Water Deeply (New York)by Tess Townsend

Gov. Jerry Brown declared the end of California’s five-year drought in April 2017 after a wet winter replenished shrinking reservoirs. But the lingering impact of the drought, especially on groundwater supplies, means some still rely on emergency water tanks while they wait for long-term solutions. This is particularly true in the San Joaquin Valley, where more than 300 domestic well users whose taps have run dry continue to use tanks provided by the state through a program originally slated to end in June.

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New Device Produces Water From Thin Air – No Electricity Required

May 31, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

Water is all around us. The only problem is that it remains trapped in the atmosphere until the right conditions release it as rain or snow. Now Omar Yaghi, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has helped find a way to grab that water anytime we need it.

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Feds Push To Raise Shasta Dam, But Would It Ease California Water Woes?

May 30, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Water Deeply (New York)by Alastair Bland

Officials with the federal government seem determined to realize a controversial proposal to raise Shasta Dam and increase the storage capacity of the reservoir behind it – despite objections from fish and wildlife agencies and California law that technically forbids such a project. In January, the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam, received a $20 million appropriation from Congress to begin design and preconstruction work – and, with the support of water agencies in the San Joaquin Valley, the bureau has announced plans to begin construction as early as the end of 2019.

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Deeply Talks: Protecting Native Fish In The Delta

May 29, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Water Deeply (New York)by Ian Evans

In this episode of Deeply Talks, Tara Lohan, Water Deeply’s managing editor, speaks with University of California, Davis fisheries experts Peter Moyle and John Durand about the challenges and opportunities for fish restoration in the California Delta. The Delta is a critical artery for California’s water. The estuary is the outlet for two of the state’s most important rivers – the Sacramento and San Joaquin – and it is a main source of the water transported south through the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.

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OPINION: Time For California To Deliver On The Human Right To Water

May 25, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Water Deeply (New York)by Leo Heller

Six years after California recognized the human right to water in state law, more than 1 million Californians still lack access to safe drinking water, and in many ways the scope of the challenge has revealed itself to be even more pervasive and endemic than initially realized. Lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation impacts rural well-users, city residents, schoolchildren, mobile home communities and churches across the state.

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Five Things To Know About Water Bonds On Upcoming California Ballots

May 21, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

California this year will vote on not one but two water bond measures totaling $13 billion. Given that the state still hasn’t spent all of the $7.5billion from the Proposition 1 water bond passed in 2014, it raises a crucial question: Does California really need another $13 billion in water bonds? As of December 2017, the state had allocated only about $1 billion from Proposition 1. About half of the total money available from the bond is dedicated to new water storage under a complicated new process that funds only the “public benefits” of such projects.

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How Much Water Should California Cities Use? New Data Could Help

May 17, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Water Deeply (New York)by Erik Porse

The relatively dry 2017-18 winter in California resurfaced recent memories of drought conservation mandates. From 2013-16, urban water utilities complied with voluntary, then mandatory, water use limits as part of Executive Order B-37-16. Urban water utilities met a statewide 25 percent conservation target, helping the state weather severe drought. Winter rains in 2016-17 led to a reprieve from mandatory conservation. Freed from statewide requirements, urban water agencies ended mandatory cutbacks by meeting “stress tests” that included several years of secured water supplies. A useful outcome of the 2013-17 drought period was long-needed reporting data on monthly urban water use and conservation.

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Hemp Legalization Poised To Transform Agriculture In Arid West

May 16, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

Amid all the excitement around marijuana legalization in America, another newly legal crop has received comparatively little attention: hemp. And yet hemp may prove to be even more transformative, especially in the West’s arid landscapes. Hemp is a variety of the cannabis sativa plant that is not psychoactive. Whereas marijuana plants can produce both the psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and the non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) extracts, hemp produces only the latter.

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