California is a land of extremes – where preparing for extremes must be constant and eternal. The last six years demonstrated California’s precipitation extremes. From 2012-2015, California endured one of its driest years of record. 2016 was an additional near-average year, classified into drought because water storage levels were so low. 2017 will likely be the […]
Local State Park officials are looking for further guidance from the governor on how to proceed with “rinse-off” showers at state beaches, which have been turned off since 2015. The showers were first turned off two summers ago when the State of California was in a period of severe drought. The showers were shut off to conserve water. […]
Just over 4½ inches of rain fell over the weekend in Grass Valley. That’s about three times the normal amount of rain for the entire month of April, the National Weather Service said. The weekend rains are the latest example of precipitation that’s pushed through Nevada County this year, helping fill reservoirs and eliminating a […]
Aiming to greatly expand its use of recycled water, the University of California, Irvine is partnering with the Irvine Ranch Water District to convert the school’s central cooling plant to an environmentally friendly system that will conserve more than 50 million gallons of drinkable water per year. The central cooling plant is the hub of […]
While the deep snowpack in California’s mountains is easing drought concerns, there are still people in the state’s rural Central Valley who don’t have water running from their taps. California Governor Jerry Brown has declared an end to his state’s five-year-long drought. Emergency water restrictions have been lifted for most Californians, but not all. In some […]
The March 14 board meeting of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California included the approval of three infrastructure rehabilitation projects at Lake Mathews. One project will rehabilitate the electrical distribution system at Lake Mathews, a second project will repair the Lake Mathews forebay and the third project will repair portions of the hydroelectric plant’s concrete […]
Wildlife agencies are still writing the permits that would be required to build Gov. Jerry Brown’s Delta tunnels, but bits and pieces of the draft documents have been posted online, along with a report from a independent peer-review panel of scientists. While the scientists’ job wasn’t to directly weigh the merits of the tunnels, they […]
The Mission of the State Water Resources Control Board is to balance water allocation and water quality protection for California. With its latest flows proposal for the San Joaquin River tributaries, the SWRCB does neither and is clearly promoting the governor’s Twin Tunnels project. Even though the SWRCB cites the need for increased river flows to “improve aquatic […]
Rice farmer Michael Bosworth can easily recognize the distinctive “kla-ha, kla-ha” call made by white-fronted geese on his property. They always sound like they’re having a good laugh. The birds’ high-pitched yelps reveal their presence before we approach a flock of them among some wintering grounds on a December morning. “These guys will hang out ’til […]
The San Diego Unified School District began testing its schools’ water Tuesday after lab reports confirmed “higher than allowable” lead levels were found at one campus. Five water samples were taken from Horton Elementary School on Guymon Street in the morning, hours before staff or students arrived to campus. Samples were collected from water in the […]
