Keyword: califdrought
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A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a 2009 federal decision that called for reducing the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in order to protect salmon and other species. The 2009 environmental review by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that continuing to pump water from the delta at such a high rate would threaten several endangered salmon species and killer whales. Some of the state’s biggest water agencies, including Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District, had challenged the 2009 federal decision. …
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California is run from a sort of Pacific Versailles, an isolated coastal compound of elite rulers physically cut off from its interior peasantry. To understand how California works — or rather does not work — drive over the I-5 Grapevine and gaze down at the brilliantly engineered artificial Pyramid Lake. Thanks to California water project deliveries, even in a third year of drought its level still fluctuates between 90 to 100% full — ensuring, along with its companion reservoirs, plentiful water for the Los Angeles-area municipalities for the next two years. The far distant watersheds and reservoirs that feed Pyramid...
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"From a climate perspective, we've been here before," Martin Hoerling, a federal research meteorologist, said last week at a drought forum in Sacramento. "We shouldn't be surprised." The state dried out like a prune in 1976-77 and before that in 1924, the most parched periods in the modern record. And ancient tree-ring records show that during the last millennium, conditions have at times been even worse. Take the year 1580, which left the narrowest growth ring — or none at all — in the California trees that University of Arizona scientist David Meko used to reconstruct a 1,000-year history of...
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California’s San Joaquin Valley is the salad bowl of the world, providing the majority of fruits and vegetables for the entire nation. But, with another man-made drought looming, the San Joaquin Valley is in danger of becoming a dust bowl unless immediate action is taken to change policies that put the needs of fish above the livelihood of people. House Republicans have a bipartisan, comprehensive solution to end future man-made droughts, bring job and water supply certainty to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California and decrease reliance on foreign food sources. Get the Facts: California’s water storage and...
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Central Valley farmers took a crippling blow Friday when U.S. officials made the unprecedented announcement that they would get no irrigation water from the federal government this year because of the drought. But growers in a region with the country's most productive soil said the loss of one of their chief water supplies won't be their problem alone: Consumers will be hit hard in the form of higher prices at the produce market. California's unusually dry weather is forcing producers of fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains to make tough decisions about which crops to plant, and which ones not to...
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FIREBAUGH, Calif. (AP) — With California's agricultural heartland entrenched in drought, almond farmers are letting orchards dry up and in some cases making the tough call to have their trees torn out of the ground, leaving behind empty fields.
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FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Without a lot more rain and snow, many California farmers caught in the state's drought can expect to receive no irrigation water this year from a vast system of rivers, canals and reservoirs interlacing the state, federal officials announced Friday. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released its first outlook of the year, saying that the agency will continue to monitor rain and snow fall, but the grim levels so far prove that the state is in the throes of one of its driest periods in recorded history. Farmers who rely on the federally run Central Valley...
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There are many reasons that Barack Obama’s presidency has proven so ineffectual even by its own standards — boosting economic growth, improving health care, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, enhancing America’s world reputation. One reason is that Barack Obama is the most ideologically rigid president in American history. He believes in all the wrong ideas, and holds to them with mulish tenacity. But there’s a second reason that was on vivid display in the past few days — overweening arrogance. This president has no patience with attempting to solve the actual problems that afflict the people he...
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After preaching shared sacrifice to assuage the California water shortage, Obama has played some of the country's thirstiest golf courses.Obama traveled to California Friday to highlight the state’s drought emergency at two events near Fresno, calling for shared sacrifice to help manage the state’s worst water-shortage in decades. He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: desert golf courses. ... played at two of the most exclusive courses in the Palm Springs area. On Saturday, Obama played at the Sunnylands estate, built by the late billionaire Walter Annenberg... The...
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After preaching shared sacrifice to assuage the California water shortage, Obama has played some of the country's thirstiest golf courses. Barack Obama traveled to California Friday to highlight the state’s drought emergency at two events near Fresno, calling for shared sacrifice to help manage the state’s worst water-shortage in decades. He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: desert golf courses. Vacationing with DVDs of his favorite television shows and multiple golf outings with his buddies, the duffer-in-chief played at two of the most exclusive courses in the Palm...
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Taking firm advantage of the term’s cloudy meaning, Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, announced on Face the Nation this weekend that he was vexed by a “very chilling story in the New York Times today about the impact of climate change on droughts in the West – California, which is now seeing some pretty serious developments as a result of climate change.” “So,” McDonough concluded, “we’ll be looking at that.”
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Drought conditions are getting worse by the day in California and experts say the average resident is going to see the changes. In the latest move by officials, the State Water Project announced Friday that it won’t send any more water down from Northern California, something that hasn’t been done in more than five decades. The news comes in the middle of one of California’s driest winters on record and after two dry years that have depleted reservoirs. Officials say the Water Project’s decision to hold back supply is necessary to save water in the state. Gov. Jerry Brown declared...
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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Seventeen rural communities in drought-stricken California are in danger of running out of water within four months, according to a list compiled by state officials. Wells are running dry or reservoirs are nearly empty in some communities. Others have long-running problems that predate the drought.
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Washington -- California's drought will be one of the extreme weather events that the American Meteorological Society will examine later this year to determine whether the cause is natural variability or human-caused climate change, a federal official said Tuesday. Scientists have not yet linked the California drought directly to climate change, Thomas Karl, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, said Tuesday in announcing the latest study. "I'M SURE THERE'S A WAY, but we haven't done it yet," he said.
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