The News Review:

- Water wars leave northern Colorado farmers dry
- Contra Costa Water District customers must conserve or pay more
- utlook is for stress to state’s water supply
- US Sugar-Glades restoration deal gets leaner more flexible
- State forecast to face less water more heat

Water wars leave northern Colorado farmers dry
The Associated Press
The farmers’ plight traces back to the late 1800s when reservoir and ditch companies bought senior rights to the Platte. Some 30 years later farmers drilled their first wells in the South Platte River Valley. Water in Colorado is first come first served. State law requires well users to have a supply of replacement water ready before they start pumping from the river to ensure there’s enough for the senior rights holders. For years the state water engineer worked out ad hoc deals with farmers allowing them to pump their wells without replacing water required by the law. There was enough to go around and senior rights holders were satisfied. But trouble cropped up during drought years earlier this decade.

Contra Costa Water District customers must conserve or pay more
San Jose Mercury News
” The water district had been considering a tougher 25 percent rationing plan but set that aside after February storms eased drought conditions somewhat. The water district serves 550000 people in eastern and central Contra Costa County. Speakers at the public hearing Wednesday mostly had questions about the plan or general water supply issues and few if any were critical of specifics in the plan. “We conserved the last time (during the drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s) and watched it run down the streets of L. ” said Paul Poston Advertisement yld_mgr. place_ad_here(“adPosBox”); a Concord retiree.

utlook is for stress to state’s water supply
San Francisco Chronicle
tmpl –> The state report released Wednesday found that “changing precipitation patterns will result in longer and drier droughts and decreased groundwater levels coupled with a higher frequency and severity of extreme flooding events. Researchers forecast that in some years water levels in the state’s mainstay reservoirs – Shasta roville Folsom and Trinity – could fall below outtake pipe levels effectively shutting off the spigot. Winter snowpack in the Sierra Nevada – a built-in water-storage system and the backbone of the state’s water supply – will take the biggest hit as global temperatures rise. The report points to a minimum 25 percent decline in snowpack by 2050. What’s more snowpack is expected to peak and melt earlier. That means more precipitation will fall as rain – raising the potential for overwhelming the state’s increasingly fragile plumbing system. The ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta sits squarely in the crosshairs not just for rising floodwaters but also for higher sea levels.

US Sugar-Glades restoration deal gets leaner more flexible
MiamiHerald.com
”Even though it’s scaled down it’s still the biggest ever” he said. “It’s about twice the size of rlando. ” It’s also not much more than half the amount environmentalists contend is needed to supply the Everglades with plentiful clean water and divert polluted runoff strangling Lake keechobee and rivers on both coasts. Tom Van Lent chief scientist for the Everglades Foundation acknowledged that the initial purchase would fall short of the now-dead $1. 34 billion bid to buy U. Sugar’s entire 181000 acres but credited Crist for preserving what would still rank as a “significant accomplishment.

State forecast to face less water more heat
San Francisco Chronicle
tmpl –> The studies which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered to help officials carry out the state’s ambitious plans to deal with climate change provide the most detailed look ever at how hot and dry the state could get as global emissions drive up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. In its response the state is restoring wetlands to accommodate rising tides planning to protect water supplies and highways preparing firefighters and medical workers for wildfires and heat waves opening corridors for wildlife migrations and regulating greenhouse gases that drive global warming. California’s temperatures have risen about 1 degree over the last century and they could jump as much as 3 degrees in the next 30 years and under the most extreme scenario as much as 10 degrees by the end of the century say Scripps Institution of ceanography scientists who led the research. The hottest weather is likely to occur for more months of the year – from June to September instead of as it is now a hot period in July and August the studies found. Climate change also is having a noticeable effect on the state’s forests and its animals and insects said the studies commissioned by the state’s Climate Action Team which is composed of representatives of state agencies. Conifer forests have crept up warming mountain slopes in the past 60 years.
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