Water Supply Archives

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

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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Interior Revives The Push For A Higher Shasta Dam

California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, sits where the dry Central Valley meets the rainier, mountainous northern part of the state. At its western edge is Shasta Dam, 602 feet high, built by the Bureau of Reclamation between 1938 and 1945 to help irrigate California. For decades, agricultural and municipal water districts have sought to heighten the dam to capture more water as it runs out of the Cascade Range through the McCloud, Pit and Sacramento rivers. Environmentalists have long rallied against the proposal, and state officials contend such a project would violate California law.

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OPINION: Keep State’s Struggling Water Systems Afloat

May 21, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /The Sacramento Beeby Danielle Blacet and David Guy

We all can agree every Californian should have access to safe drinking water. But too many – nearly 800,000 people – do not. The unfortunate reality is their local drinking water system serves contaminated water or can’t provide reliable service, and also can’t afford to invest in improvements to make the system safe. There are about 300 of these chronically noncompliant systems, most small and in rural, isolated communities. We can take an important step toward fixing this important health and safety problem by empowering newly created local agencies to supply clean and safe drinking water.

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Adaptation To Global Water Shortages: Fresno

May 21, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /KCET (Burbank)

California’s Central Valley is home to 19 percent of food production in the world yet about 100,000 of its residents have lived without clean drinking water for decades. New technologies attempt to overcome political and cost challenges in filtering toxins out of tap water in this rural region. New technologies attempt to overcome political and cost challenges in filtering toxins out of tap water in this rural region.

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Sites Reservoir Officials: $1 Billion Falls Short Of Hopes

May 19, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Appeal Democrat (Marysville)by Jake Abbott

The California Water Commission – the entity responsible for awarding $2.7 billion in Proposition 1 funds to water storage projects in a few months – didn’t quite see eye-to-eye with officials pushing for Sites Reservoir, primarily on the benefits to salmon the project would provide. When final public benefit ratio scores came out earlier this month, the commission said Sites, situation on the Colusa and Glenn counties border, was eligible for $1 billion – about $600 million short of what Sites officials requested.

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California Congressman Jim Costa Crosses Party Lines To Bring More Water To The Central Valley

May 17, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Sierra Sun TImes (Mariposa)

On Wednesday, Congressman Jim Costa (CA-16) again crossed party lines in the House Natural Resources Committee to support two bills that could dramatically improve the reliability and quantity of Valley water supplies. The first bill – introduced by Representatives Ken Calvert (CA-42) and Costa (CA-16) – aims to bring all Endangered Species Act regulation of species that have a portion of their lifecycle in the ocean, like salmon, under a single regulating government agency.

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Twin Satellites Circling The Globe Find California’s Losing Groundwater At A Steady Pace

May 16, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /KPCC (Pasadena)by Sharon McNary

The earth’s wet regions are getting wetter, and dry ones, like California, are getting drier, according to a first-of-its-kind study that used NASA satellites to track 14 years of change in how water is moving around the globe. Southern California loses the groundwater equivalent of the volume of Lake Mead every 15 years due to drought and farming. That’s 32 gigatons of water, said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A gigaton is one cubic kilometer of water. That loss matters because groundwater makes up about one-third of our water supply.

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This Zombie Dam Project Underscores California’s Dilemma Over Water

May 16, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /Los Angeles Timesby Michael Hiltzik

Despite what you may have gleaned from television and the movies, zombies aren’t always constituted of flesh and blood. Sometimes they come in concrete and rock. Exhibit A is a $3-billion dam proposal on the San Joaquin River known as Temperance Flat. The project’s beneficiaries, chiefly growers in the San Joaquin Valley, have struggled for years to justify its construction. Its critics say they’ve done so by exaggerating the probable water yield from the dam and reservoir while understating its negative impact on the region’s ecology and cultural and recreational environmental impacts, and overstating its recreational resources.

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NASA Finds ‘Human Fingerprint’ In Many Areas Of Water-Supply Change Worldwide

May 16, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /13WMAZ (Macon, Ga.)by Ian James

Humans are dramatically altering water supply in many places worldwide, say NASA scientists who have been tracking regional changes via satellite. The researchers analyzed 14 years of data from NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites, which the space agency has dubbed GRACE. They studied areas with large increases or decreases in freshwater — including water stored in aquifers, ice, lakes, rivers, snow and soil — to determine the most likely causes of these changes.

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One Stretch Of River Could Decide Shasta Dam’s Future

May 6, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler

The final stretch of the McCloud River before it empties into the state’s largest reservoir is a place of raw beauty. On a recent morning, the river’s icy water, flanked by flowering dogwood trees and jagged rock formations, flowed fast and clean. This part of the McCloud is off limits to almost everyone except a few Native Americans and some well-heeled fly fishermen. Its gatekeeper is an unlikely one, an organization that also happens to be a hugely controversial player in California water politics.

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