This week’s California Water Plan eNews includes:
SAVE THE DATE: November 3, 2016
PUBLIC WORKSHOP
California Abandoned Mine Prioritization Tool
Draft Attributes, Evaluation, and Risk Screening Levels
You are invited to attend a public workshop to review draft work products for the California Abandoned Mine Prioritization Tool (CAMPT). CAMPT is focusing on ways legacy abandoned mine sites in California can be prioritized for various types of action based on chemical and physical hazards they pose to the public and the environment. The draft work products created to date include attributes, data sources, and evaluation ranges that comprise the decision criteria for ranking the mine sites.
In addition, three screening tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3) and the mine site investigation activities associated with each tier will be presented, along with example scenarios of how the attributes contribute to analyses and ranking of hazards in each tier.
Finally, participants will be able to learn about the analytical approach underpinning CAMPT using examples from similar decision-support tools.
Your input is sought regarding the comprehensiveness, application, and evaluation of available screening data, existing risk assessment guidelines and criteria, and approved chemical contamination thresholds proposed for incorporation into the tool. These thresholds are intended to support government agency analyses and ranking of hazards from abandoned mines, and the risks posed to human health and the environment from those hazards in California.
Date and time: November 3, 2016, 11:00 – 2:00 p.m. (1:00 p.m. Central)
You can attend in person or online. Please RSVP with your preference.
Join the WebEx Meeting:
Meeting number: 743 374 302
Meeting Password: pFq9WAU@
If you are not using a computer, then you may join by phone:
Call-in toll-free number (Verizon): 1-877-996-5588 (US)
Attendee access code: 207 612 3
This week’s California Water Plan eNews includes:
• Public invited to participate in orientation webinar for Update 2018 committee
• Energy commission looking for innovative water conservation technologies
• Workshop series will look at affordable water for low-income Californians
• October newsletter available from Office of Sustainable Water Solutions
• Conservation conference will try to unite urban and rural communities
• Water and politics on the agenda for annual agribusiness conference
• Some lessons for applying collaborative science to large ecosystems
This week’s California Water Plan eNews includes:
This week’s California Water Plan eNews includes:
AB 2480 recognizes source watersheds as infrastructure and a critical component of the state’s water system. The legislation also calls for a prioritized and comprehensive investment plan to restore and conserve key watersheds. AB 2480 is the first step in putting together a comprehensive system to reduce these risks and promote water security and adaptation under climate change.
The bill, AB 2480 (authored by Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica), officially recognizes five critical Sierra Nevada and Cascade watersheds as important pieces of the state’s water infrastructure. It enshrines in state policy the importance of restoring forests, meadows and streams in these watersheds, and make such projects eligible for state water-project grant funding.
Travel the Sierra Valley Art & Ag Trail, for views of Sierra Valley Bar Quilts and opportunities to visit market farms, working ranches, a pumpkin patch, and to sample the wares of artists of every color – weaver, welder, potter, painter, photographer, carver, jeweler, pyrographer, wood-worker, boatbuilder, furniture maker, blacksmith, stained glass artist, basketmaker and more!
On September 28-29, the Groundwater Resources Association of California will host its 2016 Conference and 25th Annual Meeting, which will provide policy makers, practitioners, researchers and educators the opportunity to learn about the current policies, regulations and technical challenges affecting the protection, use and management of groundwater in California. This year’s conference contains expanded sessions addressing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. In addition, there will be several sessions on ongoing and emerging water quality issues.
To view the conference agenda, please visit:
https://www.grac.org/media/files/files/9393d294/2016_AnnualGRAConference.pdf
This week’s California Water Plan eNews includes:
Benjamin Spillman, bspillman@rgj.com 6:04 a.m. PDT August 22, 2016
Changing snowmelt cycles could be more damaging to mountain streams and reservoirs in the Western U.S. than previously thought, according to recently published research.
That’s according to research that shows slow-melting snowpack reduces the amount of water that makes it into streams and reservoirs.
The results have ramifications for everyone from water managers to anglers to kayakers, essentially anyone who values mountain streams.
“This likely means net changes in the amount of water available to reservoirs draining snowmelt area,” said Adrian Harpold, a University of Nevada eco-hydrologist who worked on the research. “That is the big implication.”
What’s interesting about the research is that it shows a slower snowmelt results in less water making it into streams and reservoirs. That’s counterintuitive for many who assume, under a climate change scenario, faster snowmelt would be a bigger problem.
“One misperception is snowmelt runs off the surface,” said Harpold, whose team used computer modeling to simulate snowmelt throughout the Western U.S.
Really, he said, snowmelt seeps into the soil which fills like a sponge before feeding into streams and reservoirs.
When it melts quickly the sponge fills up and the water seeps out. But when there’s a slower melt the water stays in the soil where it gets taken up by vegetation and then goes into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration.
“That slower snowmelt is a less efficient generator of streamflow and sort of an unrecognized negative consequence for water supply,” Harpold said.
But with climate change resulting in warmer nighttime lows, fewer freezing days and a higher snowline in the future shouldn’t the snowpack melt faster, not slower?
Not necessarily, Harpold said.
That’s because temperature isn’t the only driver of rate of snowpack depletion. Solar radiation, or sunlight, is an even bigger factor.
Under a warmer winter or drought scenario, snowpack is more likely to be smaller and to start melting sooner.
And that means there will be less snow to melt and some of it will be melting earlier in the year when there is less sunlight, which means it will melt more slowly than a large snowpack that’s melting in mass quantities in April and May when sunlight is abundant.
That’s bad news as the climate warms and even worse news during droughts, Harpold said.
“Drought is going to be kind of a double whammy for us in the future,” he said. “Not only are we getting less precipitation … but that precipitation may be less efficiently generating streamflow.”
Although the research suggests the process for snowpack boosting mountain streams will be less efficient in the future, it’s difficult to say by how much. Harpold said more research is needed.
“How well do we understand our snowpack,” he said. “We don’t really know how sensitive our snowpack is or how sensitive our water supply is to snowpack changes.”
The findings, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters with six researchers as co-authors, showed snowpack and streams in the southern Rocky Mountains were most at risk. But it suggested risk for the Sierra Nevada and across the west, as well. Harpold worked on the project at University of Colorado, before moving to Nevada.
Co-author Noah Molotch, the director of the Center for Water, Earth, Science and Technology at Colorado University in Boulder, Colo., said the findings showed a similar pattern across the west, which means broad ramifications.
“Given that 60 million people in the Western U.S. depend on snowmelt for their water supply, the future decline in snowmelt-derived streamflow may place additional stress on over-allocated water supplies,” Molotch said.