Oil companies will probably have to stop injecting their wastewater into 10 Central Valley aquifers that the state has let them use for years, in the latest fallout from a simmering dispute over whether California has adequately protected its groundwater from contamination. The aquifers lie at the heart of a decades-old bureaucratic snafu whose discovery
The tension between California farm interests and the state’s urban water users ratcheted up Tuesday, as a consortium of mostly urban water districts filed a complaint alleging Delta farmers are stealing water. The group of 27 agencies, including the massive Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta put water
Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration took a significant step toward building a pair of water tunnels through the Delta on Thursday, unveiling the fine print on a redesign that state officials say would reduce impacts on the landscape, improve conditions for endangered fish and enhance water supplies for millions of Southern Californians. The state Department of
The chances that California will begin clawing its way out of the drought with a wet winter got a bump Thursday with a federal report showing an El Niño weather pattern continuing to strengthen in the Pacific. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center< reported that telltale signs of El Niño — which include warming sea surface temperatures
Climate change has narrowed the range where bumblebees are found in North America and Europe in recent decades, according to a study published Thursday. The paper, published in the journal Science, suggests that warming temperatures have caused bumblebee populations to retreat from the southern limits of their travels by as much as 190 miles since the 1970s. Logic
Through flushing toilets and running faucets, the city of Modesto produces millions of gallons of wastewater a day, just a stone’s throw from some of the driest agricultural areas in the state. In a few years, that wastewater — treated and disinfected — could flow to farms in the Del Puerto Water District, in what
The lawsuits hit the courts within days of the state mailing notices to some Central Valley irrigation districts: They were to stop diverting from rivers and streams because there wasn't enough water to go around. Unsurprising as the move may be in this fourth year of drought, to the districts, the notices amounted to an
The tension between California farm interests and the state’s urban water users ratcheted up Tuesday, as a consortium of mostly urban water districts filed a complaint alleging Delta farmers are stealing water. The group of 27 agencies, including the massive Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta put water
Sacramento Bee Editorial By the billions, California’s cap-and-trade experiment is putting the green into greenhouse gas. Gov. Jerry Brown proposes spending $2.23 billion of the windfall. The Assembly adds to that, hoping to spend $2.4 billion. The Senate would spend $2.7 billion in the fiscal year staring July 1. But sooner rather than later, lawmakers
California’s water crisis could be on the verge of getting a good deal worse. In a potentially significant setback for a system already stressed by epic drought, California regulators have ordered a temporary curb in the flows being released from Lake Shasta in order to protect an endangered species of salmon. Farmers and others said