As Californians continue pumping groundwater in response to the historic drought, the Department of Water Resources today released a new NASA report showing land in the San Joaquin Valley is sinking faster than ever before, nearly two inches per month in some locations. “Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows—up to 100
A state court has struck down rules governing runoff from farms along the Central Coast, a decision that could have broader implications for the state's $43-billion agriculture industry. The Sacramento County Superior Court sided with environmentalists who opposed a blanket waiver for growers in the Salinas Valley and other areas of the Central Coast, saying
"We are predicting this El Niño could be among the strongest El Niños in the historical record dating back to 1950," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. "It's very unlikely that things will develop exactly as we're hoping for," said Jay Lund,
The new price tag for restoring the Salton Sea: $3.15 billion. That’s how much money local officials now say they want from California, as detailed in a plan approved Tuesday by the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors. It’s less expensive than a $9 billion plan that died in the state Legislature, and local officials
The Turlock Irrigation District gave final approval this week to selling Tuolumne River water to a proposed treatment plant. The 5-0 vote by the district board came two weeks after it approved the idea of providing the supply for Turlock, Ceres and south Modesto. City representatives approved the agreement, but with a slight change that
California's demand for lower agricultural water use during the drought will likely survive a legal challenge, a judge indicated Thursday. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang said during a hearing that she believes the state's revised approach to warning farmers of insufficient supplies is legal. She previously ruled that other notices were improper. At issue are
New computer models suggest that the current El Niño formation brewing in the Pacific could become the strongest in recorded history. The latest data from the National Weather Service's North American Multi-Model Ensemble indicates a greater-than 95 percent chance of a strong El Niño and a greater-than 60 percent chance of the strongest El Niño on record.
Nearly two-thirds of Californians say global warming is contributing to the state’s drought, but there’s a distinct partisan divide, according to a survey released Wednesday. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats said global warming has contributed to the four-year drought, while 62 percent of Republicans said it has not, according to the poll by the nonpartisan Public
Santa Barbara City Council members this week unanimously approved spending $55 million to reactivate a mothballed desalination plant that could provide the city with nearly a third of its drinking water. The Charles E. Meyer Desalination Facility was built during a drought in the 1990s but closed in 1992 when desperation for water subsided. The
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD The lowly Delta smelt is all but gone, numbering so few in a June survey of the Delta that California Department of Fish and Wildlife scientists had no choice but to place the species’ population at zero. Salmon that depend on a healthy Delta ecosystem are in danger of becoming extinct.