Monterey County Water Digest

San Luis Reservoir, between Gilroy and Los Banos, is the largest off-stream reservoir in the United States.

The precipitation that has all but ended California’s three-year drought has brought devastation to some areas. But in many corners that have avoided calamity, super-wet 2023 has been a boon.

A strange-shaped, 3,300-foot-tall underwater volcano has been discovered just 184 miles off the coast of Cape Mendocino. The sea mountain, or "seamount," appears more like a smooth-sided circular tower, with near-vertical sides.

Monterey County is bursting with blooms as wildflowers put on their best show all throughout the region following relentless storms.

California was once home to the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, but Tulare Lake disappeared as water was diverted to irrigate crops. This year, however, the lake will once again re-emerge.

The salmon industry, worth about half a billion dollars, is devastated. The culprits: Drought and decades of water diversions and development.

Much of the Bay Area will get at least an inch of new precipitation in the next three days, with up to eight inches forecast along the already inundated Central Coast.

In his initial climate budget proposal, the governor has cut about $561 million from local coastal resilience projects. Legislators, cities express concerns.

Nine atmospheric rivers hit California from Dec. 27 to Jan. 16 with an average of 12 inches of rainfall.

A $4.4 billion project on the Sacramento River to add dams and store more water that will be sent south, the Sites Reservoir is still years away from completion. The final environmental report is expected this year.

California has given the federal government its own counterproposal for apportioning reductions of Colorado River water, saying a plan offered by six other states would disproportionately burden farms and cities in Southern California.

"It isn't just a slap of the Band-Aid," said one official. "This is going to take some time."

A number of climate researchers say recent storms appear to be typical of the deluges the state has experienced periodically and not the result of global warming.

The last time rainfall totals in San Francisco were greater, Abraham Lincoln was president.

For the first time in more than two years, most of the state is in moderate drought, not severe drought.

Evacuation orders were doled out by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office as early as 7 a.m. Monday morning for areas around the Carmel River. Subsequent calls to evacuate prompted residents of low-lying areas around the Arroyo Seco, Pajaro and Big Sur rivers to find higher ground.

In the region’s vital kelp forests, volunteer scuba divers are wielding hammers to kill sea urchins feasting on the kelp.

“It’s bad—hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage,” one business owner said.

Levee failures are all but inevitable as California whipsaws between drought and downpours. Storm water has a nasty way of finding errors in infrastructure planning and design.

Last year, we started 2022 with a similar bounty—and then ended the snow season way, way, way below normal.

A U.S.-French satellite that will map most of the world's water has rocketed into orbit. The predawn launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base capped a successful year for NASA. The satellite will conduct the first global survey of its kind.

Stanford scientists have genetically re-programmed plants to grow roots that change how they gather nutrients or water.

The current Pure Water Monterey project delivered to Cal Am 3,500 acre-feet of water and an additional 173 acre-feet into reserves, according to the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District.

The federal government will spend $250 million over four years on environmental cleanup and restoration work around the Salton Sea, which is fed by the depleted Colorado River.

In the fall, rice fields in the Sacramento Valley usually shine golden brown as they await harvesting. This year, however, many fields were left covered with bare dirt.

Drought, human-caused climate change, invasive species and a “legacy” of environmental issues are permanently altering California’s landscape and placing some communities and ecosystems at increasing risk.

Along most of the California coast, whales remain in peril from fishing lines; in the far north, crab meat content is low

A dozen independent fish scientists are calling for urgent changes to sport fishing rules to save California’s largest freshwater fish after an unprecedented red tide this summer left hundreds of them dead.

For eight straight days this summer, farmers in far Northern California drained almost all of the water out of a river in defiance of the state’s drought regulations. The move infuriated environmentalists and salmon-dependent Native American tribes downstream.

Linda and Stewart Resnick have donated $50 million to UC Davis for an agricultural research center—the largest donation in the campus’s history—but the couple’s Wonderful Company is the state’s single biggest water user.

Confetti-like bits of plastic are increasingly becoming a pollution problem in the world’s oceans, reports a new study by Stanford University.

Wildfires, drought, extreme heat and other effects of climate change are compounding in California, according to a report from state scientists.