LeakBird

(March 10, 2009, Reuters)
It’s hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona’s green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high.
So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American [...]

David Curran wrote a stimulating op-ed on the California drought in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.  Mr. Curran expressed his perplexity at the incongruity of intermittent first quarter flooding in the Bay Area and the Governor’s dire “worst drought ever” declaration.
California has gone from being the bread basket of the US to a water crisis basket [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, The Guardian)

The world’s pre-eminent climate scientists produced a blunt assessment of the impact of global warming on the US yesterday, warning of droughts that could reduce the American south-west to a wasteland and heatwaves that could make life impossible even in northern cities.
In an update on the latest science on climate change, [...]

(March 9, 2009, The Californian)
The slogan, “food grows where water flows,” is part of a water education campaign by the California Farm Water Coalition (www.CFWC.com). You’ve probably seen it on signs and banners in the San Joaquin Valley. It’s just as true in the Salinas Valley.
There are some important differences here.
Water for farms doesn’t flow [...]

(March 8, 2009, David Curran, The San Francisco Chronicle)
I experienced the Bay Area droughts of the 1970s. I vaguely recall taking navy showers and reciting, “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.” And I remember the dry times of the late 1980s when I was always in short sleeves and [...]

As the growing demand for all things water escalates across the United State (hydrologists, water conservation systems, water lawyers, new sources of water, et cet.), the drought environment, such as regions in Georgia, Florida, Nevada and California, has the highest market demand water conservation technologies for three reasons:

 
Timeliness
Fast Payback
Higher Water Rates

 
Timeliness
This is perhaps the most [...]

(March 7, 2009, The Mercury News)

Foster City residents who take their time in the shower or run the washing machine with just a few shirts inside will soon pay for their wasteful ways.
At a meeting Monday night, the Foster City City Council will consider approving a water rate structure that escalates the cost of water [...]

(March 7, 2009, The Merced Sun Star)

Kenneth Shackel is feeling more like an emergency-room doctor than an agricultural researcher these days as he helps west Valley farmers cope with little to no irrigation water this season.
“It’s like triage,” said Shackel, a University of California at Davis pomologist and plant science professor. “For some, this isn’t [...]

(March 7, 2009, MSNBC)
Using the back yard of a Tierrasanta resident as a backdrop, Mayor Jerry Sanders called on San Diegans to get serious about water conservation.
Sanders revealed what he has done personally to conserve and showed clear disappointment in the overall efforts of San Diegans.
“Despite some successes, we still continue to fall shrt of [...]

(March 6, 2009, The Mercury News)

Residents of a Santa Cruz Mountains hamlet have successfully argued that a 30 percent water rate hike in financially-tough times is too much.
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District got more than 1,500 written objections out of its 7,300 customers, as well as a vocal crowd at the board’s Thursday night [...]

(March 6, 2009, David Zetland, Aguanomics)
(via DW) The Mayor’s office sent out this press release [pdf] yesterday:
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders is calling on all San Diegans to step up water conservation efforts in the wake of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s state of emergency declaration for California’s water supplies.
“The Governor’s message is right on target,” said [...]

(March 5, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Sacramento leaders on Tuesday said the city’s enormous thirst for water does not mesh with its Earth-friendly aspirations, and vowed to change.
In a workshop on water conservation, a majority of the Sacramento City Council said aggressive new policies are needed to save water. This may include stronger enforcement of water [...]

(March 5, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
The ongoing struggles of managing California’s limited water supply to support our cities, farms and natural environment are well known. As we face what some are calling one of the worst droughts in California history, we must all learn to conserve water wherever possible. Just as the Bay Area [...]

(March 5, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s declaration of a statewide drought emergency last week had classic comic timing: It’s been pouring ever since. What’s not funny are the governor’s proposals: Expedited water transfers now, which may adversely affect fish and wildlife, and possible mandatory rationing later. Is the drought really that bad?
Some [...]

(March 3, 2009, Dan Bacher, IndyBay)
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Department of Water Resources and corporate agribusiness have continually tried to frame the battle over restoring the California Delta and Central Valley rivers as one of “fish versus people.”
This false dichotomy was exemplified by an article published in the Sacramento Bee, “Delta cutbacks put Valley [...]

(March 4, 2009, The Mercury News)

It has been nearly a week since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped the bomb, laying out a doomsday drought scenario so starkly apocalyptic he sounded like Dr. Strangelove. And yet, Justina Pillado endured weather Tuesday in the teeth of the governor’s state of emergency that made her toes curl.
“This rain sucks,” [...]

(March 3, 2009, The Mercury News)
A coalition of water districts in California’s Central Valley are suing to stop the federal government from enforcing a new set of rules governing the endangered delta smelt.A lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Fresno by the Westlands Water District, the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority says [...]

(March 3, 2009, Aguanomics)
I talked to Ray Walker, a retired water rights analyst, about the “new source” of water he’s been mentioning in comments to this blog. Since both of us are interested to find out if any water managers are interested in this new supply, I am posting his request for expressions of interest. [...]

(March 2, 2009, The Mercury News)

Even with the recent heavy rains that deluged the state, California’s snowpack is 80 percent of normal and the state’s largest reservoirs are still far below where they should be at this time of year.
“Obviously, it’s much better than last month. The problem is, on the heels of two critically [...]

(March 2, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Californians have grown accustomed to digesting odd ideas that routinely flow out of Sacramento, many of them not so palatable.
But are they ready for this one?
Last week, amid a third year of a statewide drought, the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District adopted a strategy to sell treated sewage as drinking [...]

(Feb. 28, 2009, The San Bernardino Sun)
Water is one of California’s most vexing challenges.
Most of the state’s rainfall comes in Northern California and its snowpack is in the Sierra Nevada range. But most of the users are in Southern California and the Central Valley, where agriculture is the main consumer.
There are obstacles at every step [...]

(Feb. 28, 2009, MSNBC)
Butte County water officials have concerns that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proclamation Friday on the drought isn’t clear about protecting local control over groundwater.
Paul Gosselin, director of the county Department of Water and Resource Conservation, said there are concerns about what exactly the governor means by “expedited water transfers.”
Butte County has an ordinance [...]

(Feb. 27, 2009, Kelly Zito, The San Francisco Chronicle)
The company has a gallery in New York’s tony SoHo district; one of it’s recent releases is named “Gwyneth”; it has near-cult status among the eco-affluent (and Google).
We’re talking about a toilet here.
Specifically, the Toto toilet – a water-efficient commode made by Japanese company founded in 1917.
The [...]

(Feb. 27, 2009, The OCRegister)
Even as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide water emergency Friday, Orange County agencies were pushing ahead with tough new restrictions on water use amid growing worries about drought-driven cuts in water supply.
Despite recent rains, the state is in its third year of drought, a statement from the Governor’s Office said. [...]

(Feb. 27, 2009, Reuters)
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday declared a state emergency due to drought and said he would consider mandatory water rationing in the face of nearly $3 billion in economic losses from below-normal rainfall this year.
As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be devastated and some growers in [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, The Mercury News)

In March, after a series of cold winter storms, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada was above normal. That seemed to be good news for California’s water supply, which relies heavily on Sierra Nevada snow.
But after a record heat wave in the early spring, it was as if the winter’s [...]

(Feb. 27, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
With California’s budget crisis resolved for the moment, state lawmakers Thursday turned their attention to another emergency: a three-year drought that has left key reservoirs at 35% of capacity.
Legislators stepped forward with plans to ask voters to borrow as much as $15 billion for projects to expand and improve [...]

(Feb. 24, 2009, Aguanomics)
San Diego is looking north for water this year, working out a number of smaller option agreements with Sacramento Valley Districts. I looked into one 10,000 AF transfer with South Feather Water and Power to get a handle on numbers for this year.
San Diego is paying $10 per acre-foot for the option [...]

(Feb. 25, 2009, CleanTech)
Leaders at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco today said the days of cheap water are over.
The developing world is still struggling to provide usable water to its residents, while water shortages in the developed world have put a new focus on expensive technologies.
“Water has never been priced properly, but [...]

(Feb. 24, 2009, The San Diego Union Tribune)
The punishing drought that threatens to disrupt California’s economy could also exact a heavy toll on the environment, from the Anza-Borrego Desert to the mountains casting shadows on Lake Tahoe.
Water managers are bracing to get by with just a trickle of the normal deliveries from state and [...]

(Feb. 24, 2009, Aguanomics)
The battle is getting started:
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office recommends that the Legislature turn groundwater over to the state, which would remove local control
[snip]
[farmers] say they fear that the state would require water meters, find out how much water everyone’s using and charge for it.
Valente, vineyard and orchard manager for John Kautz [...]

(Feb. 22, 2009, RedOrbit)
California’s primary source of irrigation water is projected to go dry in 2009 due to drought, idling more than 60,000 workers and up to 1 million acres of farmland, federal officials said Friday.
California water officials declared a zero allocation policy for farmers who purchase water from the federally managed Central Valley Project [...]

(Feb. 21, 2009, Jesse McKinley, The New York Times)
The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California’s sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms [...]

(Feb. 20, 2009, Contra Costa Times)

The Contra Costa Water District’s 500,000 customers likely will face mandatory water rationing in the coming months and some of the biggest farms in the state may get no water at all, water managers said Friday.
The cuts to water supplies across the state are in response to what is shaping [...]

(Feb. 20, 2009, MSNBC)
Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) Executive Director Timothy Quinn issued the following statement today on the 2009 water supply allocations announced by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources. The Bureau announced that some agricultural contractors stand to receive no water deliveries this year, while municipal [...]

(Feb. 21, 2009, John Laumer, Treehugger)
Last minute negotiations may have solved California’s budget crisis; but, a far more protracted problem shadows the future of civilization-as-they-know-it: water reservoirs are drying up; and climate change is likely to worsen the problem. Food prices throughout the nation will be affected in the short-term. Long-term prospects point to an [...]

(Feb. 20, 2009, Associated Press)

Federal water managers said Friday that they plan to cut off water, at least temporarily, to thousands of California farms as a result of the deepening drought gripping the state.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing them to completely stop surface water deliveries [...]

(Feb. 19, 2009, Napa Valley Register)

The American Canyon city manager now has the power to order water use restrictions if the drought continues.
Under the new rules approved unanimously by City Council on Tuesday, business and residents who use too much water will pay a premium fee. Customers who already use little water will not have [...]

(Feb. 18, 2009, Steve Gorman, Reuters)
With a recent flurry of winter storms doing little to dampen California’s latest drought, the nation’s biggest public utility voted on Tuesday to impose water rationing in Los Angeles for the first time in nearly two decades.
Under the plan adopted in principle by the governing board of the L.A. Department [...]

(Feb. 17, 2009, The Press Democrat)

Healdsburg wants residents to become more miserly with water use, but stopped short Tuesday of imposing mandatory conservation measures.
The City Council unanimously voted to ask citizens to voluntarily reduce their water use by 20 percent for a variety of mostly outdoor uses, like lawn and garden irrigation that will come [...]

(Feb. 11, 2009, Stephen Chu, Alternet)

Eight years of disinformation and muzzling U.S. climate scientists has left the public largely unaware of the catastrophes ahead.
Finally, we have a top administration official telling it like it is. Energy Secretary and Nobelist Stephen Chu told a Los Angeles Times reporter:

In a worst case, Chu said, up to [...]

(Feb. 15, 2009, USA Today)
Skiers and farmers rejoiced after another storm dropped more than 2 feet of snow in portions of the Sierra Nevada, but the range’s snowpack still is below average so far this winter.
The latest snowfall was just in time for the Presidents Day weekend, traditionally one of the busiest periods of the [...]

(Feb. 11, 2009, Gim Gogek)
When people talk about conserving water in California, it’s always about turning off your yard sprinklers, taking shorter showers or shaving without the water running. We fret about watering golf courses and lawns in the suburbs. In presentations at schools, at Rotary clubs and on public service announcements, we’re continually told [...]

(Feb. 14, 2009, The New York Times)
Officials say that a major source of drinking water for about 25 million Californians is at risk. That water currently comes from the delta where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet, and the levees that protect the region are more than 100 years old and are vulnerable to [...]

(Feb. 15, 2009, Aguanomics)
Last week, Judge Wanger of the US District moderated a debate between farmers and environmentalists over water exports from the Delta last week in Fresno.
Although the debate included the typical give and take, the part that got everyone’s attention was this comment by Lloyd Carter, who represented the environmentalists. When asked about [...]

(Feb. 13, 2009, The Mercury News)
FRESNO, Calif.—Federal water managers plan to slash deliveries to more than 140 farms, Native American tribes and cities this year because there is so little water flowing into Lake Shasta.Those groups have special rights to California’s water, because they were drawing on the scarce resource even before the U.S. Bureau [...]

(Feb. 13, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)

On Monday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed accelerated water restrictions for Los Angeles — and the city got about a third of an inch of rain. In the past, showers were considered bad luck for a conservation push, but these days they are a fitting backdrop. We may get a [...]

(Feb. 10. 2009, The Mercury News)

Santa Clara County residents will face mandatory water rationing this spring, although it is not yet clear exactly when, or how much residents and businesses will have to cut their water usage.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors voted Tuesday to impose rationing measures on the county’s 1.7 [...]

(Feb. 10, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
MENDOTA, Calif. — Dwindling water supplies are compounding economic woes in California’s Central Valley, causing farmers to leave fields fallow and confront the prospect of going under.
The state’s water supply has dropped precipitously of late. California is locked in the third year of one of its worst droughts on [...]

(Feb. 8, 2009, ChicoER)
California is experiencing “the most significant water crisis in history,” according to the state Department of Water Resources.In the Central Valley, farmers are choosing to plant fewer crops this year. Some orchardists are making tough decisions about whether to allow their trees to go without water.
Residents in areas such as the Bay [...]