LeakBird

(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 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 [...]

(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 [...]

(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 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 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 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 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 [...]

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)
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 4, 2009, David Zetland, Aguanomics)
RT writes:
I am an economist from Australia who works on among other issues urban water policy.
I read with interest your nicely-written Forbes article.
We seem to have pretty much a similar situation here in Australia and a few of us make similar suggestions.
I’d love to understand more about the your situation [...]

(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 [...]

(Feb. 28, 2009, Kelly Zito, The San Francisco Chronicle)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought emergency Friday, urging cities to cut their use of water 20 percent and paving the way for projects such as desalination plants and water recycling projects to bypass standard environmental reviews.
Despite heavy rainstorms this month, state officials say California’s water [...]

(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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Los Angeles Times)
Even with the recent batch of rainstorms, the ongoing drought has grown so severe that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called for increased citywide water restrictions and the adoption of a tiered water rate that would punish Department of Water and Power customers who fail to conserve.
Sprinkler [...]

(Feb. 8, 2009, The Dallas Morning News)
Scant rainfall. Shrinking reservoirs. Thirsty soil. Across North Texas, another dry spell is settling in.
Some two years after rains ended a prolonged and brutal drought, the Dallas area is back in D-land – and the situation is likely to persist if not worsen in the months ahead, climate scientists [...]

(Jan. 11, 2009, The Hickory Record)
The U.S. Drought Monitor shows a small area in the upper basin in abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions.
The long-term trends for groundwater levels continue to show gradual improvement, even though they remain below normal for this time of year.
The six-month average of area stream flows improves to slightly [...]

(Nov. 16, 2008, The Houston Chronicle)
Despite state regulations designed to ensure that small public and private utilities continue to provide water and sewer service to customers — even in the event of power outages — hundreds failed to do so, a Houston Chronicle analysis found.
Up to 20 percent of the water systems that serve a [...]

(Nov. 14, 2008, Reuters)
California officials ordered on Friday an additional 17 percent cut in the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect a fish in the most populous U.S. state’s fresh water hub.
Combined with a prior U.S. court order to reduce pumping to protect another fish in the delta, the amount [...]