Tag Archive for: Water Supply

Sites Reservoir Officials: $1 Billion Falls Short Of Hopes

/in , /by /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

/in , /by /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

/in , /by /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

/in , /by /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

/in , /by /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

/in , /by /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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OPINION: Recharging Groundwater Reserves, Not Building New Reservoirs, Is Key To California’s Water Future

/in , /by /Los Angeles Times

To the editor: Your editorial, “California is dammed enough already,” raises some important points about improving our water future. The state faces a chronic problem that will only get worse with climate change: depleted groundwater supplies. Groundwater is the lifeline communities and farmers turn to in drought. The good news is there’s an untapped solution under our feet called groundwater recharge, which is much cheaper than building new surface reservoirs, has few environmental hurdles and can be implemented relatively quickly. There’s also three times more water storage capacity underground than in all of California’s surface reservoirs combined.

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OPINION: Invest In Watershed Improvements, Not Taller Dams

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Laurie Wayburn

There is broad consensus that California’s water challenges are only going to get worse as climate change continues. We will have more drought, more major rain events with consequent flooding and more uncertainty. In this era of global warming, we need new approaches to help solve our water problems. The Trump administration proposal to raise the Shasta Dam by 18½ feet, along with the recent vote by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to support the delta tunnels, illustrate our complete and outmoded dependence on built infrastructure to provide water.

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These Sacramento Area Water Storage Projects Just Got A Boost In State Bond Money

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow

Two water-storage projects in the Sacramento region are closer to becoming a reality after getting another bump in state bond funding. The California Water Commission announced Friday that the Sites Reservoir project was eligible for $1 billion in Proposition 1 funds, up from $933 million the commission had said it might receive last month. It’s the most money tentatively awarded to any of the 11 projects that have applied for Prop. 1 funds. If completed, the project near Williams along the Glenn-Colusa county line would store water piped in from the Sacramento River.

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Santa Clara Valley Water District Delays $650 Million Vote On Brown’s Delta Tunnels Project

/in , /by /The Reporter News (Vacaville)by Paul Rogers and Jason Green

After a five-hour packed public hearing, the board of Silicon Valley’s largest water provider postponed a decision on whether to provide up to $650 million toward a $17 billion plan to build two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to move water south. Although it appeared there might be four votes on the seven-member Santa Clara Valley Water District board in favor of Gov. Jerry Brown’s so-called WaterFix project, board members late Wednesday night were divided and continued the issue until 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

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