LeakBird

(May 20, 2009, The New York Times)
In seven years of overseeing every root and blade of grass on the grounds at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., Matt Shaffer has built a reputation on innovation and conservation. An early advocate of course playability over aesthetics, he long lived by the maxim “the drier, the [...]

(May 1, 2009, The Chicago Tribune)
The recent drop in Huron water levels that led the Georgian Bay Association to commission its own study resulted largely from drought and warmer temperatures, which boost evaporation rates, the report says.
“Climate is the main driver of the lake level relationships between lakes over time,” it says. “There has [...]

(April 23, 2009, The Pasadena Star-News)

Some San Gabriel Valley residents could see their water rates go up by as much as 56 percent next year under a proposal by California American Water Co.
California American Water, which provides water to 28,000 households and businesses – or about 100,000 people – in the San Gabriel Valley, [...]

(April 22, 2009, The Sacramento Bee)
Hoping Californians can save water like they did energy, the state on Tuesday launched a conservation campaign to nudge all residents to take simple steps to help each other through the drought.
Dubbed “Save Our Water,” the program is modeled after the highly successful “Flex Your Power” campaign that helped California [...]

(April 23, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
DWP has a water conservation team whose members drive through neighborhoods in Los Angeles checking for water waste. If your sprinkler is running on a Wednesday, they can cite you for violating the conservation measures. For a first citation, you will receive a warning. Subsequent citations are subject to [...]

(April 21, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
A severe drought gripping Texas is causing unusually salty conditions along the Gulf Coast, upsetting the region’s ecological balance and threatening coastal wildlife including oysters, crabs and whooping cranes, the most endangered crane species.
The drought is one of the driest on record for Texas and is currently the worst [...]

(April 16, 2009, Aguanomics)
SFPUC’s announcement of rate hikes to begin in July 2009 are so modest as to make me think that no amoung of profligate use will go punished. Please consider the following, submitted as Comment to the Chronicle’s March 5 article, “On Coping With the Drought”:
“For every conscientous consumer, operating on personal principles [...]

(April 14, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Our state’s broken water delivery system – originally built more than 30 years ago to accommodate a state of 18 million people – now must supply this precious resource to more than 36 million people. By 2020, California’s population is expected to reach up to 48 million. The hub [...]

(April 13, 2009, The Winston-Salem Journal)
North Carolina considers itself the most progressive of the Southern states, so it is shocking to learn that we’re so far behind everyone else in the region when it comes to managing water. Clodfelter’s bill is modeled on Georgia’s law. The rest of the southeastern states have management systems, too.
(Original [...]

(April 10, 2009, The San Diego Tribune)
Water and sewer rates may soon be going up in Del Mar.
The Del Mar City Council voted unanimously Monday to approve higher rates for the next five years and set an appeal hearing for May 26 for anyone who opposes the increase. The time of the hearing has not [...]

(April 8, 2009, Reuters)
Despite dire warnings of water shortages due to prolonged drought, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday rejected a plan to ration water in the nation’s second-largest city for the first time in 18 years.
The unanimous 15-0 vote against the plan marked a surprise setback for Los Angeles water managers, who like [...]

(April 5, 2009, The Atlanta Journal Constitution)

Two years ago, while metro Atlanta’s drought burned through the record book, Karin Guzy of east Cobb turned off her in-ground sprinkler system.
It hasn’t been on since.
Instead, she waters her garden from two 250-gallon water cisterns. The large buckets easily fill from light rain collected off her roof.
Guzy doesn’t [...]

(March 25, 2009, The Mercury News)
Silicon Valley’s largest water supplier is asking its customers to cut back on water usage by 15 percent this summer.With water levels low at its main reservoir, the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District voted Tuesday for water cutbacks.
The district provides the water used by 1.8 million homes [...]

(March 23, 2009, The Mercury News)

Citing three dry years in a row, Silicon Valley’s biggest water supplier will vote this morning on whether to call for a 15 percent mandatory summer cutback, the first water rationing in Santa Clara County in 18 years. Yet, just over the county line, Fremont residents will face no restrictions.
On [...]

(March 22, 2009, The Mercury News)

As California’s drought continues, water rationing is becoming a reality in many cities — and Antioch is no exception.
On Tuesday, the City Council will be asked to weigh in on a water shortage contingency plan to cut consumption by an estimated 25 percent — the amount by which Antioch’s water [...]

(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 20, 2009, Ben Block, WorldChanging)
In his inauguration speech in January, U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned four words that lifted the hearts of water advocates worldwide: “Let clean water flow.”
Although Obama has proposed doubling U.S. spending on foreign aid, his new budget, released last month, offers few details on whether the additional funding will support [...]

(March 21, 2009, Robert Glennon, AlterNet)
The following is an excerpt from “Unquenchable: American’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It” by Robert Glennon. Copyright 2009 Robert Glennon. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington DC.
Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the introduction of Glennon’s new book and follows a narrative about the water [...]

(March 20, 2009, The San Diego Tribune)
The top 10 percent of residential water customers in Poway account for roughly 40 percent of all water used by the city, and the top 5 percent use about 25 percent.
They would be most affected by a proposal the City Council is considering to institute tiered water rates that [...]

(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 16, 2009, GreenBiz)
This report examines the opportunities and challenges of strategic water management. Five case studies provide perspectives from projects around the world.
Though it’s a worldwide entity, water is treated as a regional issue, IBM says. There is no global market and very little international exchange.
“Water is about quantity, quality, space and time,” says [...]

(March 16, 2009, The San Diego Tribune)
With its vast reserves running precariously low, the Metropolitan Water District has widened its unending search for water to even more distant sources.
Since 2007, Metropolitan’s stockpiles have shrunk by nearly half, drained by a combination of drought, diversions to safeguard fish, cuts in Colorado River supplies and population growth.
As [...]

(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 13, 2009, MSNBC)
With local lakes and rivers at critically low levels, the region’s water provider has virtually shut down the surface water supply to the Tampa Bay region.
“The reservoir’s level is so low we are unable to provide water, consistently, to the water treatment plant and we are unable to pull water from the [...]

(March 14, 2009, The New York Times)
During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.
What the town [...]

(March 9, 2009, The Crunchy Chicken)
If you live in an area that experiences frequent droughts or you just don’t like paying high water bills, there are a number of ways you can capture or reclaim the water that your household uses for other purposes.
First, I want to state that the suggestions I make in this [...]

(March 5, 2009, The Salt Lake Tribune)

I have a classic Western postcard tacked to the bulletin board above my computer. It shows two men in a field holding shovels over their heads, locked in mock battle. Behind them runs an irrigation ditch. The caption reads: “Discussing Western Water Rights, A Western Pastime.”
I know firsthand how [...]

(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, 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, The Fresno Bee)
It is China’s latest grand attempt to tame nature. Three canals will bring water hundreds of miles to Beijing and other thirsty cities in the north. More than 350,000 people in the way will be forced to move.
For many in Zhangyigang, a village of 942 people in brick and mud [...]

(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 [...]

(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, 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 5, 2009, Crikey Creek)
What John Fleck refers to as “one of climate change’s most important equations”, just happens to be one of hydrology’s most important equations too – probably the most.
In the previous post I showed annual data sets of rainfall and temperature for the whole of Australia. In the last seven years, rainfall [...]

(March 5, 2009, Kansas City InfoZine)
Maintaining water quality and efficiency shouldn’t be purely a local problem, a panel of water experts told the House Science and Technology Committee Wednesday.
Five witnesses said federal agencies should cooperate on water research and policy initiatives to combat scarcity caused by drought and population growth.
“We can’t continue to use the [...]

(March 5, 2009, The Sound News)

Rainy Seattle, nestled between Lake Washington and Puget Sound, enjoys an abundance of the wet stuff. Being surrounded by water and having it come down on us throughout the year is misleading in thinking that general availability and accessibility is the norm. The collective mindset reflects a standard, a high [...]

(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 [...]

With all of the rain California has been receiving over the last few weeks, water levels are back to 80% in Sierra snowpack terms and there is “drought improvement“.  The 167-mile stretch of the Hetch-Hetchy system, which provides 85% of the Bay Area’s water, can continue to flow at four fifths capacity.  But water restrictions [...]

(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 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 [...]