TOP STORIES
By Department of Water Resource, 12/9/22 - In drought-stricken communities, drinking water wells are going dry because groundwater is being pumped faster than it can be replenished. To further protect clean drinking water, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) in coordination with the Department of Food and Agriculture has developed the LandFlex Program to support groundwater sustainability agencies and local growers to limit unsustainable groundwater pumping effecting drinking water wells.
WATER INFRASTRUCTURE
By The Los Angeles Times, 12/12/22 - As drought and climate change ravage California’s once-reliable supply of drinking water, officials in Los Angeles are setting their sights on a relatively new, almost untapped resource for the city’s 4 million residents: the Superfund site in their own backyard.
By The Orange County Register, 12/9/22 - State officials on Friday cleared the final major regulatory hurdle for the Doheny desalination plant, which aims to use the ocean to help shore up drinking water supplies for drought-ridden Southern California. The California State Lands Commission unanimously granted South Coast Water District a 20-year lease for land off Doheny State Beach, in Dana Point.
By The Los Angeles Times, 12/9/22 - Californians are living in the state’s driest period on record. Officials have urged people to conserve as reservoirs run low and demand exceeds a supply stressed by climate change. A large share of the state’s water is used for agriculture, and growers have seen water deliveries slashed during the drought.
By The Sacramento Bee, 12/9/22 - A decision to demolish four dams and restore the Klamath River, which crosses the California-Oregon border, was celebrated Thursday by officials from both states, Native American tribes and the federal government.
WATER SUPPLY & QUALITY
By Water Education Foundation, 12/9/22 - When the Colorado River Compact was signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
By KQED, 12/9/22 - Late in the afternoon on Nov. 14, a historic email landed in the inboxes of hundreds of California farmers whose land lies within the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural irrigation agency in the country — and one of the most controversial.
Newsweek, 12/9/22 -The year 2022 has seen large portions of the U.S. scorched by blazing temperatures and an oppressive mega-drought.
As of November 29, 2022, 48.1 percent of the total U.S. and 57.51 percent of the mainland 48 states are in some degree of drought conditions, U.S. Drought Monitor data shows. In the summer, this was drastically worse, especially across the west and southwestern states: in July 2022, one third of all land in California, Texas, Oregon, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico was classified as experiencing extreme or exceptional drought.
CLIMATE & WEATHER
By The Los Angeles Times, 12/11/22 - A storm blanketed the Sierra Nevada in heavy snow and soaked much of California with rain, bringing a wet start of winter weather after three years of record drought. The storm brought 3 to 4 feet of fresh snow in parts of the Sierra Nevada over the weekend.
By Daily Bulletin, 12/11/22 - Heavy rain pounded Southern California on Sunday, leading to flooding, mud and debris flows and the swift water rescue of a man in the Santa Ana River. The storm also produced snow in the mountains, creating hazardous driving conditions. The river rescue occurred Sunday morning near Garden Grove Boulevard, the Orange County Fire Authority reported.
CALIFORNIA WATERSHEDS
By KEYT, 12/12/22 - The county of San Luis Obispo Public Health Department reported an overnight sewage spill at California Men's Colony on Sunday, Dec. 11. Sewage from a nearby plant overflowed into Chorro Creek after an equipment malfunction caused by the heavy rain over the weekend from midnight to 9 a.m. weakened the infrastructure.
By FOX40 (KXTL), 12/10/22 - Cities and communities that make up the modern Sacramento Valley, including the city of Sacramento, probably would not exist had it not been for the mighty river that runs down Central California. The Sacramento River has provided the resources necessary for the cities and settlements that are at or near its banks, including the Native American tribes that inhabited the area for thousands of years.
By The Orange County Register, 12/9/22 - Throughout 2022, lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. set lofty goals — and laid out significant funds — in an effort to slow climate change and improve the environment. And Southern California already is benefitting from those efforts, with billions of dollars directed to install new electric vehicle charging stations, shore up water supplies, reduce wildfire risk and more.
CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES
By Public Policy Institute of California, 12/12/22 - This year’s fire season was relatively quiet—a welcome change of pace for fire-weary Californians. But what does it mean in the larger scheme of things? We asked UC Berkeley professor and PPIC Water Policy Center research network member Scott Stephens for insights.
By The Washington Post, 12/9/22 - Laura Nelson was dreading this drive. It’s bad enough seeing the mailboxes for houses that no longer exist, the dusty roads lined with the blackened skeletons of trees. But the day is also bone-dry and scorching, the smoke from a distant fire casting a too-familiar pallor over the landscape. Her car bumps over rough patches of pavement — places where the asphalt was melted by vehicles engulfed in flames.
By Phys.org, 12/8/22 - The smoke from intense California wildfires in September 2020 darkened the skies so much that it slashed the state's solar power production during peak hours by 10–30%, according to a study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). This meant that solar energy forecasts for several days substantially overestimated the amount of power that would be generated by the sun.
AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE
By Department of Water Resources, 12/9/22 - Even with the Northern Sierra snowpack measuring 147 percent of normal as of Dec. 8, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) is reminding the public of ongoing drought conditions throughout California.
As the state enters its fourth year of drought, California Water Watch shows most of the state is still in moderate, severe, or extreme drought conditions, and the state’s groundwater basins and environments are still stressed from years of severely dry conditions.
By The Sacramento News & Review, 12/9/22 - For Mark Massoni, it was hard to put words to what he was seeing and hearing as a crowd gathered in the Delta town of Hood on December 6. Massoni grew up on Clifton Court, a section of the estuary that’s south of Discovery Bay. His father and uncle were known as the Massoni Brothers, an industrious pair who were farming 1,200 acres of wheat, safflower and barely along San Joaquin River’s tributaries.
By The San Diego Union Tribune, 12/9/22 - California has taken the first step in what will be a very deep dive into energy generation from offshore wind farms. The federal government completed an auction Wednesday that reaped $757.1 million from five different companies to lease more than 373,000 acres off the Central and Northern coasts of the Golden State.
EVENTS
This is the fourth of four webinars to inform and solicit input from interested parties on the development of a guidebook to support the preparation of County Drought Resilience Plans which focus on state small water systems and domestic wells as required under SB 552. During this fourth workshop, DWR will review and solicit feedback on the full set of chapters of the draft Guidebook that will be open for public comment through January 10.
When: December 14, 2022 | 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
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