In the mountains north of Santa Cruz, water is managed, as they say, "the old-school" way. Bills are written out every two months and volunteers stuff envelopes at mailing parties. Chlorine levels are checked by hand and well pressure is calculated by a 21-year-old who got the job responding to a newspaper ad. Residents fought
Jay Lund, Director, UC Davis Watershed Sciences Institute California’s ongoing drought will continue to break records and grab headlines, but it is unlikely to be especially rare from a water policy and management perspective. Estimates of the current drought’s rarity range from once in 15 years to once in 1,200 years (Griffin and Anchukaitis 2014),
The Eastside Water District board voted to ask its farmers for $6 million for a groundwater recharge project. The system would eliminate no more than 10 percent of the overdraft in the 61,000-acre district, which straddles Stanislaus and Merced counties southwest of Turlock Lake in the San Joaquin Valley, but backers said it would be a
Southern California’s water wholesaler is considering building a water recycling plant modeled after Orange County’s world-acclaimed facility to replenish groundwater supplies in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Initial plans call for building a recycling plant in Carson that would purify 60,000 acre-feet of treated sewer water from the next-door Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County
Gazing out of a turboprop high above his company’s main asset — 34,000 acres in the Mojave Desert with billions of gallons of fresh water locked deep below the sagebrush-dotted land — Scott Slater paints a lush picture that has enticed a hardy band of investors for a quarter-century. Yes, Mr. Slater admits, his company,
After four parched years, most California voters seem to be taking the drought in stride, saying it has had little to no effect on their daily lives. They oppose sacrificing environmental protections to expand water supplies and generally approve of how Gov. Jerry Brown has handled the crisis, according to a new statewide USC Dornsife/Los
San Joaquin Valley water districts have sued to stop releases of Central Valley Project water down the Trinity River for fish, and farm advocates say a federal agency is sending mixed messages about the drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Aug. 21 announced it would begin releasing as much as 88,000 acre-feet of water
Fresno Bee opinion piece by John Laird is California Secretary for Natural Resources and Asm. Henry T. Perea of Fresno. The drought has hit every part of California hard, but the Central Valley has been particularly devastated. A recent Fresno Bee article detailed the tragic case of East Porterville residents whose wells have run dry
A California lawmaker has proposed a new label for food irrigated with what he calls “fracking water." Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, said such water might include harmful contaminants, including carcinogens. Oil companies sell Central Valley farms millions of gallons of treated wastewater every day for irrigation. Some water extracted from the ground during hydraulic fracturing is also
Forest ecologists finally got their wish: an entire private landscape on which to test methods of tree thinning and controlled burns to reduce risk of mega fires and minimize the effects of drought on California’s frozen reservoirs -- mountain snowpacks. A coalition of environmental groups recently bought a 10,115-acre parcel in the Sierra Nevada range