LeakBird

(June 2, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)

Faced with another year of drought, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is offering customers a cash incentive to replace their grass lawns with drought-tolerant plants.
The Residential Drought Resistant Landscape Incentive Program will credit single-family residential customers $1 for each square foot of turf removed and [...]

(May 21, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
The Department of Water Resources announced Wednesday that it would give State Water Project contractors 40% of what they requested. Although that figure remains low, it is far more than earlier allocation numbers, which started at 15% and then rose to 20% and 30%.
“Early May snow and rain improved [...]

(May 13, 2009, The New York Times)
For the third year in a row, Mark Watte plans to rely on the aquifer beneath his family farm for three-quarters of the water he needs to keep his cotton, corn and alfalfa growing, his young pistachio trees healthy and his 900 dairy cows cool.
That is 50 percent more [...]

(May 12, 2009, Jim Downing, The Sacramento Bee)
As another summer of drought approaches, hundreds of thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland are expected to be fallowed, and much of urban California faces 20 percent water cutbacks.
But in the Sacramento Valley, rice farmers have been busy for weeks spreading water 6 inches deep over [...]

(May 1, 2009, ClimateWatch, NPR)
NPR’s Morning Edition launched an “occasional series” on California’s water woes this morning. Veteran correspondent John McChesney begins with the impact on agriculture in the Central Valley’s Westlands Water District, the nation’s “biggest irrigated region.”
KQED’s Central Valley Bureau Chief and Climate Watch contributor Sasha Khokha will have three stories in the [...]

(May 7, 2009, The San Diego Tribune)
The city of Escondido is considering stepping up its water-conservation efforts from the current Level 1, voluntary water conservation, to Level 2, mandatory restrictions, starting July 1.
That could mean watering lawns only three days a week, Escondido’s utilities director Lori Vereker said.
The City Council is expected to decide [...]

(May 5, 2009, Durham MyNC)
Starting June 1, Durham residents will have to follow rules when they’re watering their lawns. Monday night the Durham City Council approved new year-round water restrictions for all customers here.
The new schedule applies to all spray irrigation systems:
Those customers with odd-numbered addresses can water once on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday before [...]

(May 4, 2009, KPBS)

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants the city council to approve his call for mandatory water restrictions. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Sanders says voluntary water conservation has saved about 5%, but he says that isn’t enough to meet the water restrictions coming this summer.
He wants to impose Level 2 mandatory [...]

(April 26, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Any doubt that California is hip-deep in an epic struggle for water was put to rest earlier this month when an estimated 10,000 farmers and farmworkers marched 50 miles across the gasping San Joaquin Valley.
The goal was to heighten awareness about their water shortage, brought about by a third [...]

(April 28, 2009, The Mercury News)

Water restrictions will begin Friday for about 90,000 residents from the North Coast to Capitola, after Santa Cruz leaders on Tuesday unanimously approved an emergency order to save water.
As a result, customers with Santa Cruz Water Department will be restricted to watering outdoors on two assigned days each week. Restaurants [...]

(April 27, 2009, The San Antonio Business Journal)
The Edwards Aquifer Authority has officially declared a drought for the San Antonio region, requiring groundwater permit holders to reduce consumption by 20 percent for at least the next 30 days.
The mandatory Stage I drought restriction applies to all Edwards Aquifer water users served by the San Antonio [...]

As you probably heard, California, in partnership with the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and the California Department of Water Resources launched the “Save Our Water” campaign last week, and it’s actually based off of the very successful “Flex Your Power” campaign which helped save energy during the crisis of 2001.
The website for “Save [...]

(April 16, 2009, On the Water Front)
Yesterday was a big day for California. After eight years of minimal federal engagement in California’s critical resource issues, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar toured the Bay-Delta focusing on California’s water crisis and the need for federal engagement on solving the Bay-Delta’s problems (read more here and here). We couldn’t [...]

(April 24, 2009, The Mercury News)

A $10 billion plan to build a canal around the Delta would not deliver significantly more water to cities and farms if it were in place this year, new data shows.
Water agencies and politicians from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on down have repeatedly stressed that water shortages this year from the [...]

(April 24, 2009, The San Diego Union-Tribune)
After months of warnings and voluntary conservation programs, the San Diego County Water Authority yesterday moved to Level 2 drought alert.
The decision will spark mandatory water rationing of about 8 percent for residents throughout the county, from San Ysidro to Fallbrook. The planned restrictions include bans on certain [...]

(April 22, 2009, Fox News)
The study examined stream flow in 925 of Earth’s largest rivers , and found significant change in about one third of them over the past 50 years.

(Original Article Here)

(April 22, 2009, The New York Times)
Farmers in the state’s drought-stricken agricultural basin will finally get a meager supply of federal water to help irrigate crops this summer. Federal officials said storms in March allowed them to increase the amount of water sent to customers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Water districts that supply [...]

(April 21, 2009, The Arizona Republic)
The Colorado River provides one-third of the state’s water…
The seven states – Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico – that use river water have agreed to reduced deliveries if the lake drops to an elevation of 1,075 feet. Arizona would absorb most of the initial shortages because [...]

(April 19, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
During a prolonged drought in the early 1990s, L.A.’s Department of Water and Power and Department of Public Works conducted an ambitious experiment. In eight homes, including those of several elected officials, they installed “gray water” equipment that diverted the outflows from washing machines, showers, bathtubs and bathroom sinks [...]

(April 16, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Cash-strapped California will receive $260 million in federal economic stimulus funds to fix dams, restore fisheries and habitat and help the state cope with drought conditions, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday.
(Original Article Here)

(April 17, 2009, The Christian Science Monitor)
California’s third year of drought is stirring up long-standing – and usually low-simmering – tensions between farmers in northern and central California and urban consumers in the state’s dry Southland.
(Original Article Here)

Want to use more water?  Pay for it.
David Zetland, Aguanomics.com
The Water Myth is the myth that we have an endless water supply, renewing itself ad infinitum. How can we not believe in this myth when even our cats can drink from the potable water in our toilet bowls, for which we pay less than [...]

(April 16, 2009, The Mercury News)

John Gioia’s homeowner association warned him last fall — during the drought — to water his front lawn more to meet the community standards for lush and green.
The association also has a 20-year-old rule that won’t let him replace his front lawn with rosemary, meadow grass and other drought-resistant plants.
“It [...]

(April 16, 2009, The New York Times)
Hundreds of farmers, farm workers and local elected officials walked along dusty roads in the Central Valley on Thursday, part of a four-day march to protest federal cutbacks in water supplies.
“No Water, No Jobs, No Food,” read one sign held above the crowd, expressing the frustration of many in [...]

(April 10, 2009, The Environmental Defense Fund)
California’s drought, now in its third year, is getting plenty of attention – both in-state and beyond its borders. This attention is deserved because in 2009, reduced water supplies are affecting our cities, farms and natural environment.
(Original Post Here)

(April 15, 2009, Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed)
Major water price increases and supply cuts are underway in southern California, both of which are long overdue. This part of the state is a desert, and yet too many people live there, and too many of them live their water consumption lives like they are somewhere with higher [...]

(April 15, 2009, The New York Times)
As part of the federal stimulus plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar offered California $260 million on Wednesday to patch the Central Valley’s decrepit water-delivery system and protect its threatened fish.
(Original Article Here)

(April 12, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
The San Francisco Chronicle invites you to decide by playing our online water game. As you play, you’ll hear from a water manager about how cities can use less water, from a Central Valley farmer close to losing his crops and from a conservationist on why we need adequate [...]

(April 9, 2009, AFP)
Some two million residents of Mexico City on Thursday began 36 hours without water under an emergency plan over Easter vacation to respond to a record drop in water supply and to work on repairs…
(Original Article Here)

(April 9, 2009, The Miami Herald)
Everglades marshes and Big Cypress swamps are drying up. Estuaries at the mouths of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers are turning too salty. Lake Okeechobee, brimming from Tropical Storm Fay less than a year ago, is slipping into the low zone again.
If smoke wafting from Palmetto Bay brush fires [...]

(April 3, 2009, Kelly Zito, The San Francisco Chronicle)

Get ready for singed lawns, dusty cars and pricier produce.
California water officials reported Thursday that the end-of-winter snowpack remained at low levels for the third year in a row, and water agencies in the Bay Area and around the state are asking residents to conserve at levels [...]

(April 2, 2009, The Mercury News)

There’s appears to be plenty of snow in the Sierra Nevada, but California water officials said Thursday it falls short of the amount needed to replenish the state’s reservoirs.
Across the 400-mile-long mountain range, the snowpack is holding about 81 percent of its usual statewide water content, according to the fourth [...]

(April 2, 2009, The New York Times)
For about a mile, a steady stream of water flows down Bear Canyon before finally petering out in the sand near a golf course. The arroyo is not supposed to be wet this time of year; the spring snowmelt does not usually occur until later in the season. But [...]

(March 31, 2009, The Mercury News)
Displaying a bowl of minnows and pictures of unemployed farm workers and their families, California congressmen pleaded with their colleagues Tuesday to make an emergency exception to the federal Endangered Species Act.The lawmakers said efforts to protect a 3-inch-long fish, the delta smelt, have led to court-ordered reductions in the [...]

(March 24, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
As Don Bransford prepares for his spring planting season, he is debating which is worth more: the rice he grows on his 700-acre farm north of Sacramento, or the water he uses to cultivate it.
After three years of drought in California, water is now a potential cash crop. Last [...]

(March 29, 2009, Tampa Bay Online)
On Friday, turning on your lawn sprinklers will become a crime in Tampa under the toughest water restrictions in the state.
Everyone else in the Bay area, meanwhile, will be allowed to turn on their sprinklers once a week. Their lawns may struggle and shrivel but likely will survive until the [...]

(March 22, 2009, Reuters)
If water is the new oil, is blue the new green?
Translation: if water is now the kind of precious commodity that oil became in the 20th century, should delivery of clean water be the same sort of powerful political force as the environmental movement in an age of climate change?
And, in another [...]

(March 21, 2009, Treehugger)
Last summer I posted on Tampa Bay Florida’s new desalination plant, an expensive technology that was needed to cope with the growing demand for potable water, amidst falling supplies (due to extended drought). See Tampa Bay Florida Area Drinks Oil-Fired Water for details. Since then, surface water supplies have fallen off further [...]

(March 21, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
A statewide drought emergency has prompted San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders to propose a plan that would reduce the city’s water use by about 20 percent.
The plan announced on Friday would require residents to cut their outdoor water use by 45 percent, and their indoor water use by 5 [...]

(March 20, 2009, The Mercury News)

The pain of a full-blown summer drought came closer to reality Friday when the staff of Silicon Valley’s main water supplier recommended a 15 percent mandatory cutback.
If the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District — which is the wholesale supplier of drinking water for 1.8 million people from [...]

(March 19, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
State officials announced Wednesday they will deliver more water to Southern California this year than previously predicted but cautioned that shipments will remain well below normal.
State water resources director Lester Snow said “a series of very beneficial storms in February and early March” prompted his department to increase allocations [...]

(March 18, 2009, ESPN)
After 39 years in the fish and wildlife management business, I have concluded that only two things really affect fish and wildlife populations: habitat and climate. Most of the contributions made by detailed harvest management practices and manipulations of fisheries by hatcheries have generally had relatively minor impact on the sustainability of [...]

After reading today’s article in the San Diego Tribune in which the Metropolitan Water District has its drinking straws in its final water reserves and options, I’m convinced that water rationing will not be averted in Southern California (or perhaps all of California for that matter).  In other words, we can bank on water rationing, [...]

(March 15, 2009, Treehugger)
Visitors to Disneyland likely don’t know that when they sip from Disney water fountains that the great tasting aqua treat was once streaming through a public sewer. Not to worry though. That sewer water is actually substantially cleaner and more carefully filtered than the water consumed in the average American household. Moreover, [...]

(March 14, 2009, The Oroville Mercury-Register)
The state is shopping for water for the Drought Water Bank, but a variety of factors has supplies drying up.Despite a hefty price for the sale of water, environmental constraints and good prices for commodities have far less Sacramento Valley water users signing up to sell water to other parts [...]

(March 9, 2009, Reuters)
From cotton farms to factories that make high-tech computer chips, companies face huge risks from droughts like those searing California and Australia and that recently parched the U.S. Southeast.
Climate scientists say droughts will become more common as higher temperatures evaporate water supplies and overuse drain aquifers faster than they can be replenished [...]

(March 8, 2009, TBNWeekly)
The latest report from The Southwest Florida Water Management District shows aquifer levels are continuing to fall.
According to the district’s March 6 Aquifer Resource Weekly Update, the central aquifer, which is a water source for the Tampa Bay region, is down to a negative 1.69 feet. Last week, the aquifer was at [...]

(March 11, 2009, Robert in Monterey, Calitics)
As someone who has written before of the water problems our state faces, and who has repeated the “omg worst drought ever” frame, it’s important that I give some necessary attention to Michael Fitzgerald of The Stockton Record, who called bullshit on the whole thing today:
California’s “drought” is overblown. [...]

(March 4, 2009, Robert Glennon, The Huffington Post)
Drought has prompted California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a state emergency. Water agencies are preparing to impose mandatory water rationing. We’re all hoping that melting snow in the Sierra will save the state’s farmers and city dwellers from hardship.
But once rain starts to fall – and it [...]

(March 10, 2009, The Orange County Register)
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on Californians to reduce water use in the face of severe drought conditions, 78 households in The Reserve neighborhood of San Clemente were resting easy.
Those residents had signed on to participate in The Reserve Outdoor Sustainability Project, a study measuring the effects of efficient [...]