The speeches at the Colorado River summit in Las Vegas last week ranged all the way from pessimistic to panicked. Ted Cooke, the outgoing director of the Central Arizona Project, summed it up: “(T)here’s a real possibility of an effective dead pool“ at Lake Mead, making it impossible to release water through Hoover Dam for downstream delivery to Arizona and California.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to review both short-term and long-term options for restoring the Salton Sea, which could ultimately net billions for major public works to restore the crashing ecosystem of California’s largest water body. First up, the federal agency will, by March 1 of next year, complete streamlined federal environmental reviews of projects that are part of the state Salton Sea Management Program’s 10-year plan that is supposed to be completed by 2028, including some that are underway.
The most important piece of California’s water puzzle is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 1,100-square-mile estuary where the state’s two most important rivers meet. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain a watershed of mountains and hills that stretches about 400 miles from Mount Shasta, near the Oregon border, to the Sierra southeast of Fresno.
An insidious category of carcinogenic pollutants known as “forever chemicals” may not be so permanent after all. University of California, Riverside, chemical engineering and environmental scientists recently published new methods to chemically break up these harmful substances found in drinking water into smaller compounds that are essentially harmless.
Just because the rainy season has arrived doesn’t mean California’s water cops are off the job. With a fourth year of drought looming, some of the Bay Area’s biggest utilities continue to crack down on excessive outdoor watering. Most are responding to heavy sprinkler use or power-washing with a courtesy note, advising customers to stop what they’re doing with the threat of a fine.
Seems like most people are falling all over themselves celebrating the “historic” deal between the Imperial Irrigation District, Coachella Valley Water District, the U.S. Department of Interior (Bureau of Reclamation), and the California Natural Resources Agency that will supposedly bring up to a quarter-billion dollars to the Salton Sea for restoration projects. I certainly understand the need to conserve water and help bolster the elevation at Lake Mead to try to restore some kind of balance to the Colorado River, but at what cost to the people of the Imperial Valley?
A line of storms that ushered in a chilly, soggy start to December should continue to move across Northern California early this week, offering more chances for rain in the Bay Area and a fresh coat of powder over the Sierra Nevada. One-third to a half-inch of rain could still fall over lower-lying portions of the Bay Area from Sunday through Tuesday morning — further boosting already healthy rainfall totals over the past several days.
As water in the Western U.S. becomes an increasingly rare commodity, the driest states are grasping at solutions for an even drier future — investing heavily in technologies to maximize the conservation, and creation, of the region’s most precious resource. With more than a thousand miles of Pacific Ocean coastline, California appears to have access to a wellspring that other arid states lack.
Boosting what has been a mediocre start so far to the winter season, a storm from the Pacific Northwest is expected to bring widespread rain to the Bay Area early Thursday and blanket the Sierra Nevada with up to 3 feet of new snow. “This is a pretty good event. It’s going to be beneficial across the board,” said Brayden Murdock, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey. “We are excited for this one.”
Drought, human-caused climate change, invasive species and a “legacy” of environmental issues are permanently altering California’s landscape and placing some communities and ecosystems at increasing risk, a panel of experts told water officials recently. Invasive species and decades of disruptions from massive land and water developments are partly responsible for a continuous decline in native California species, experts told the California Water Commission on Nov. 16.
