I know, I know, beware the romanticism of desert agriculture, but these trees are such a nostalgic throwback to my childhood. I grew up on the fringe of the Los Angeles suburbs. Trips to the desert were part of my childhood. And date palms along the highway were an iconic image of those jaunts. The …
Almonds get all the attention, but hay, that most pedestrian of crops, still covers more acres of California farmland. But less than it used to. In the drought of 2015, California farmers are planning to plant and maintain past plantings of 1.23 million acres of hay, according to new USDA data published last week. That’s …
This cemetery, on the “banks” of the All-American Canal overlooking Bard on the California-Arizona desert, has no grass: Immediately behind me as I stood to take this picture last week was the All-American Canal, an artificial river built in the 1930s to carry Colorado River water to the Imperial Valley. A lot of water. The …
update, June 24, 2015: Since this post was written in April 2015, a wet spring has reduced the chance of a “shortage” in 2016. It now appears 2017 is the earliest this could happen. The situation described in rest of the post, detailing what happens when a “shortage” is declared, remains the same. previously tl;dr …
Continue reading ‘1,075: What a Lake Mead “shortage” would mean in practice’ »
Some interesting stats from Charles Fishman (whose book The Big Thirst is a timely read): Looking at California water stats for Bloomberg TV appearance. A stunner: Calif farms use less water today (23.1 bgd) than in 1970 (33 bgd) — Charles Fishman (@cfishman) April 13, 2015 2/ In 45 years, California farmers have cut water …
The San Diego County Water Authority is displeased with the state of California’s decision to set the starting point for its water conservation mandate at 2013, arguing that it rewards communities that ignored the need to conserve until recently, and penalizes those that have been at the conservation game for a while: For example, water …
Continue reading ‘San Diego displeased with state water mandate’ »
Despite the drier conditions and the apocalyptic headlines, California is unlikely to become a parched, uninhabitable hellscape, experts say. Tia Ghose in LiveScience
“Collaboration is a much better way of working than litigation.” – Estevan López, Commissioner, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, during today’s festivities marking the tenth anniversary of the Multi-Species Conservation Program on the Lower Colorado River. Jerry Zimmerman, former executive director of the Colorado River Board of California, told a story this morning about how the …
Continue reading ‘Habitat conservation on the Lower Colorado’ »
I stumbled this evening across this 2009 piece by the Public Policy Institute of California which seems quite timely: The Myth The popular press often propagates the myth that California is running out of water. As a recent example: “Have you seen Lake Oroville lately? If so, you know California is running out of water” …
Continue reading ‘The problem with the “running out of water” rhetoric’ »
Yesterday’s executive order from California Gov. Jerry Brown (pdf here) illustrates a crucial issue about water governance, the issue of the scale at which we manage our water. The headline news from Brown’s announcement – “First Ever Statewide Mandatory Water Reductions.” But what does “mandatory” mean here? Here’s the explanation from Craig Miller, who’s covering California …
Continue reading ‘California drought: Jerry Brown doesn’t have a knob to turn’ »