In Monterey County along the state’s central coast, communities near the still-rising Salinas River were under an evacuation order, as authorities warned that the cresting waterway could cut off homes and businesses from essential services.

As many as 19 people have been killed in the storms, including two deaths announced on Wednesday — one person found dead in a submerged car in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, and another who was pulled from the American River in El Dorado County on Jan. 3.

A five-year-old boy swept away in San Luis Obispo County had still not been found by Wednesday evening.

At least two more storm systems were set to pound California and the Pacific Northwest starting Friday and over the weekend, the National Weather Service said, including another atmospheric river, systems of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific. The state has already been hit with seven such weather systems over the past two weeks.

Precipitation from the storms will fall as rain along the coast and snow in the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges, the National Weather Service said.

Cut off from services

In Monterey County, water from prior storms continued to swell the Salinas River, officials said. Some residents of the Monterey Peninsula and parts of the Salinas area could be cut off from other communities for as many as three days as roads flood.

“My husband went and got some provisions, just things we needed, so if we’re going to be here two to three days or however long we may be stranded, we’re good to go,” said Diane Souza, a retired office manager who decided to ride out the storm in the community of Spreckels near the river.

The couple put sandbags around their garage, which sits lower than the rest of the house, and put together a bag with emergency items in case they need to flee.

Not far away, the muddy Salinas River flowed at a steady pace, widening and encroaching on nearby trees. The tops of fences could be seen just above the rising water.

Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said her officers had gone door-to-door in communities affected by evacuation orders, urging people to leave. She said the river was expected to hit flood stage by 11 p.m. Thursday night and remain high through the weekend.

Dozens of roadways across the state were made impassable by mudslides and snow as the state’s department of transportation urged drivers to stay off impacted roads until crews could clear the way.

In the state capital of Sacramento, crews continued to clear fallen trees and restore power on Thursday, aiming to complete as much of the work as possible before rains begin again on Friday.

The heavy rains have eased California’s historic drought but not ended it, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed Thursday. The state is no longer considered to be in extreme drought or exceptional drought, the two worst categories, but much of the state is still considered to be experiencing moderate or severe drought conditions.

Even with more atmospheric rivers in the immediate forecast, the state’s water system will remained strained in coming years without new infrastructure to capture more storm water, restore flood plains and recycle wastewater.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sharon Bernstein; additional reporting by Nathan Frandino.

Explainer: Why weeks of rain in California will not end historic drought

By Daniel Trotta

Reuters — California has been deluged since Dec. 26 by seven atmospheric rivers that have dumped up to 76 cm of rain over some areas, but the drought that has gripped the western U.S. remains far from over.

Virtually none of the storms has reached the Colorado River basin, which means the river that provides drinking water to 40 million people in seven states will continue to be endangered.

Even with more atmospheric rivers in the immediate forecast, and larger and more frequent ones predicted in the future, California cannot solve its long-term water crisis without major infrastructure investments to capture more storm water, restore flood plains and recycle wastewater.

Meanwhile, California’s US$50 billion agricultural industry continues to consume 80 per cent of the state’s supply.

Weather whiplash

Climate change means climate extremes. As California experiences more severe droughts and heat waves, its occasional wet years are expected to be excessively rainy. But the state’s water infrastructure, mostly built in the 20th century when the population was barely half of today’s 40 million, is ill-equipped for the new situation.

On Dec. 14, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a drought emergency for all 19 million people in the region. A few weeks later, the state was underwater with major flooding.

Despite a deluge that by one estimate has been expected to dump more than 80 trillion litres, the state’s major reservoirs remain well below their historic average. The largest reservoirs, at Shasta and Oroville, are still at 42 and 47 per cent of capacity, according to state data.

The shortfall underscores the severity of the drought. A report published in the journal Nature last year found 2000 to 2021 to be the driest 22-year period for southwestern North America in at least 1,200 years.

Infrastructure deficit

The state’s infrastructure, largely a network of cement canals, lacks the capacity to capture excess stormwater.

Irrigation and flood control projects were largely designed to convey water as quickly as possible in straight lines. That deprives flood plains of water taking a natural meandering path that would better protect adjacent cities from floods while also helping recharge the aquifer below.

With temperatures rising, snowpack in the mountains is melting more rapidly each spring, and the state lacks enough storage capacity to conserve the runoff.

California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to ramp up infrastructure spending, including US$8.6 billion budgeted for drought and flood management next year. Billions more are available under a major U.S. infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.

But until that money is converted to projects, excess stormwater will continue to drain into the Pacific Ocean.

Colorado River under stress

Arid southern California relies on two external sources to slake its thirst: aqueous northern California, through massive state and federal conveyance systems; and the Colorado River, under a century-old compact that assigns its water to seven states, with California receiving the largest allotment.

But the compact was written after an unusually wet period, assigning the states more water than the river can now provide. Even as the Colorado River basin faces its own drought, and the atmospheric rivers provide no relief, the Colorado River suffers more from overuse than from a lack of precipitation.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has warned the seven states in the compact — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — that they must negotiate a new agreement to reduce consumption 15-30 per cent by Jan. 31 or else face mandatory cuts imposed by the federal government.

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The latest “atmospheric river” — an airborne current of dense moisture flowing from the ocean — was expected to drench much of California ahead of a Pacific storm front bringing additional showers to low-lying areas and more snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains through Thursday.

Authorities warned that heavy downpours would likely unleash flash flooding and mudslides, especially in areas where the ground remains saturated from rains that soaked northern California days earlier. Fire-ravaged hill slopes are also particularly vulnerable to slides.

The U.S. National Weather Service also posted high-wind warnings across the San Francisco Bay area and central California coast, with gale-force gusts expected to knock down tree limbs and power lines, disrupting electricity service in many areas.

Showers fell across southern California early in the day on Wednesday, slickening freeways during the morning Los Angeles-area commute, but rains were expected to reach peak intensity on Thursday morning.

Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday to support the state’s winter weather hazards response, and activated California’s flood operations centre.

The governor’s Office of Emergency Services said it had pre-positioned crews in three counties likely to be hardest hit by flooding — Marin, Butte and Sacramento — and in five counties facing heightened mudslide threats where previous wildfires have stripped hillsides of vegetation. But “burn scars” in other parts of the state were also at risk.

State natural resources secretary Wade Crowfoot urged residents in high-risk areas to stay indoors unless they are ordered to evacuate, and to prepare for power outages by charging electrical devices and having flashlights and candles handy.

Sacramento County crews were still out on Wednesday repairing levee breaches along the Cosumnes River, near Sacramento, where flooding last weekend closed Highway 99, Crowfoot said at a news briefing in the state capital.

The latest round of extreme weather was the second in a series of potentially damaging storms expected to hit the state over the next seven to 10 days, Nancy Ward, director of emergency services, told reporters. The state operations centre had been placed at its highest level, she said.

“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years,” she said.

While forecasts call for heavy rain and snow to taper off by late Thursday in California, coastal showers were likely to linger over the Pacific Northwest into Friday morning, according to the NWS.

Snow from the West Coast was expected to spread on Wednesday into the Great Basin, and extend into parts of the Southwest and central Rockies by Friday, the weather service said. A separate storm system hovering on Wednesday over parts of the Midwest was forecast to drift off the East Coast by Friday.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento; writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

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Under a bill signed Monday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, the state will cut emissions of methane from dairy cows and other animals by 40 per cent and black carbon from diesel trucks and other sources by 50 per cent. The bill also mandates the state to reduce emissions of fluorinated gases, or hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigeration.

The measure comes on the heels of several climate-change bills signed in recent weeks by Brown, including one that by 2030 will mandate an overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 40 per cent below the level released in 1990.

“We’re protecting people’s lungs, their health by cutting out a poisonous chemical that comes out of diesel trucks,” Brown said at a signing ceremony in the Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach, where trucks at the nation’s largest port complex spew particulate matter, including black carbon, along clogged freeways, contributing to high rates of asthma and other conditions in some of the region’s poorest areas.

“It goes from some machine, into the air and into your lungs,” Brown said.

The pollutants targeted in the bill signed Monday differ from carbon dioxide and other pollutants associated with global warming in that they remain in the atmosphere a relatively short time. However, these emissions have heat-trapping effects, so reducing their presence can help fight climate change, Brown said.

In addition to black carbon, which comes from trucks as well as the burning of organic material and other sources, the bill also requires reductions in hydrofluorocarbons, used in refrigeration and to power aerosol products.

It would also require the state’s dairy industry, which produces 20 per cent of the country’s milk, to find a way to reduce methane produced by cow flatulence and manure.

One technology for doing that is known as a methane digester, which turns the gas into usable fuel. Such equipment is expensive, however, which worries the state’s dairy farmers.

“This mandated 40 per cent reduction in methane and 50 per cent reduction in anthropogenic black carbon gas represents a direct assault on California’s dairy industry and will hurt manufacturing,” a small-business group, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said in a news release.

But Brown said the mandates will lead the state to develop better technology and boost the economy.

— Sharon Bernstein is a Reuters correspondent covering California politics and policy from Sacramento.

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Facing pushback from aggravated consumers under the ongoing rules, water utilities say they will have little credibility asking for conservation when the next drought hits if they must continue to order residents to cut back water use by up to 36 per cent.

“By any measure, there isn’t any emergency left,” said Robert Roscoe, general manager of the Sacramento Suburban Water District.

The State Water Resources Control Board, which took testimony at a workshop on Wednesday, will decide next month whether to modify the rules, which have led to dry lawns and empty swimming pools as residents aimed to conserve.

Ordered by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown last April, the state’s first-ever mandatory conservation rules led Californians to save 1.2 million acre-feet of water from June to February, enough to supply nearly six million people for a year.

The rules for residents and businesses came amid drought that forced farmers to fallow land and prompted the state to truck young salmon downstream after rivers ran dry.

But wet weather propelled by the El Nino ocean warming phenomenon filled many reservoirs, packed the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range with snow and began to replenish parched aquifirs.

So much rain fell in the northern part of the state that reservoir managers began releasing water downstream to avoid flooding. And consumers began to complain that it was unfair to continue demanding dramatic cutbacks in water use or imposing drought surcharges on their water bills.

At least one water district, serving part of suburban Sacramento, has unilaterally dropped the regulations, even though legally they remain in effect statewide.

“Our board decided to take action and provide some relief to our customers,” Keith Durkin, assistant general manager of the San Juan Water District, said in an interview. “It’s very hard to maintain your credibility when you see the lake spilling for flood control purposes.”

On Wednesday, a coalition of water districts throughout the state proposed easing the regulations in favor of a plan that recognizes that some communities may have plentiful supplies even during periods of little rainfall.

Water districts in the drier southern part of the state also asked for relief, saying investments in underground storage and desalination plants had increased their supplies.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento.

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The state’s first ever mandatory cutbacks in water use were imposed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as the state entered its fourth year of devastating drought last spring, leading to a savings of 1.19 million acre-feet of water — about the amount used annually by the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego combined.

“Californians rose to the occasion, reducing irrigation, fixing leaks, taking shorter showers, and saving our precious water resources in all sorts of ways,” said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, which developed the regulations and is responsible for enforcing them.

Under the rules, California residents and businesses were required to cut back their usage by up to 36 per cent over 2013, in a range determined by a combination of geography and past conservation efforts. All told, they conserved by 24 percent, close to the 25 per cent goal set by Brown in an emergency order issued by Brown last April.

Regulators are weighing whether to lift or adjust the cutbacks following a wet winter that has left the northern part of the state with a plentiful water supply.

The State Water Resources Control Board is set to reconsider the orders at a series of meetings later this month, as consumers and water utilities chafe under the continued burden.

“We need to adjust to reflect the reality we’re in, while still being mindful of the fact that we don’t know what next year is going to bring,” Marcus said Monday.

One water district, responding to consumers who are irate that they must continue to conserve even as their local reservoir is reaching flood-control levels, has on its own told residents that they will no longer require cutbacks.

“It’s very hard to maintain your credibility when residents can see the lake spilling for flood control purposes,” yet stringent cutbacks are still being enforced, said Keith Durkin, assistant general manager of the San Juan Water District, which serves the community of Granite Bay and other suburbs east of Sacramento with water from Folsom Lake.

— Sharon Bernstein is a California political correspondent for Reuters in Sacramento.

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Snow surveyors headed to the mountains in Phillips near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday for the first manual check of the state’s snowpack this winter, dipping a long measuring pole into a snow-covered meadow at seven different points to see how deep the white stuff was.

“There’s hope that we will have much more than we had last year,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program.

His measurements confirmed data gathered earlier in the month by electronic snow sensors showing that the snowpack, which provides a third of the state’s water when it melts in the spring, was above normal for the first time in three years.

At the Phillips Station monitoring site, snow was 54.7 inches deep on Wednesday, or about 136 per cent of average. At nearby Lyons Creek, snow was 58 inches deep, or 120 per cent of average.

Statewide, electronic monitors showed that the water content of snow in the mountains was at 105 per cent of normal, above average for the first time since 2012.

By comparison, the snowpack was just 20 per cent of normal on Dec. 30, 2013, and 50 percent of normal on Dec. 30, 2014.

California is in its fourth year of crushing drought that has killed millions of trees and in 2015 alone cost the state’s agricultural economy US$1.84 billion and 10,100 jobs, according to the University of California, Davis.

The El Nino weather and oceanic phenomenon, characterized by a warming of the Pacific Ocean that often brings precipitation to California, may help ease the drought over the next few months, but experts caution that the state’s woes are far from over.

A warm winter could cause snow in the mountains to melt too soon, leading to a shortage of water in the state’s dry spring and summer.

So far, the snow has stuck, prompting ski resorts to open early and sending thousands to the mountains, braving long lift lines and thronging parking lots even on a Wednesday.

“This year is so much better than last year,” said Duke Walton of Sacramento, who was at the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort with his family on Wednesday. “Last year, half the lifts were closed.”

— Sharon Bernstein reports for Reuters from Sacramento.

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The analysis released by state Treasurer Bill Lockyer said regional water suppliers and the farmers who purchase water from them would be able to handle the increased costs, even though the price of water could more than double once the price of paying for the project is included.

“The cost of the Delta conveyance facility is within the range of urban and agricultural users’ capacity to pay,” said the report commissioned by the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission.

Environmentalists have strongly opposed the project, saying it would endanger fish and wildlife in the already fragile Delta, which supplies water to 25 million people along with farms in the San Joaquin Valley and other parts of the state.

The project, now expected to cost $19 billion, is backed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as well as Republicans who represent the agricultural region, which has suffered from the state’s ongoing drought (all figures US$).

But Democrats have tried to block the project, citing cost and environmental concerns.

Water agencies would sell bonds to pay for the tunnels and likely pass the cost of the debt on to customers. The state would fund an additional $7.8 billion, also through the sale of bonds, for environmental restoration in the Delta.

In Friday’s report, author Blue Sky Consulting Group said farmers and communities could handle the increased costs of servicing the debt, but some farmers would have to switch to more-profitable crops.

For example, the average cost of water in Kern County during the five years through 2012 was $100 per acre-foot. With debt service from the tunnels project, that could go up as high as $278, the report said.

The current crop mix overall in Kern County would allow farmers to pay as much as $277 per acre-foot, the report said, but farmers have planted some land in the area with crops that would only bring in enough profit to pay $13 per acre-foot.

– Sharon Bernstein is a Reuters correspondent covering California state politics and policy from Sacramento.

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The widely anticipated move by the State Water Resources Control Board comes during worsening drought conditions and political gridlock that has stalled progress on efforts to raise money to build new reservoirs and other methods for storing water in the future.

“Immediate action is needed to effectively curtail diversions when water is not available,” the proposed regulations read.

The proposals, the subject of a day-long hearing and a possible vote late on Tuesday, would require water districts, farmers and others whose right to pump water has been restricted to attest within a week they have stopped using water from affected streams, under penalty of perjury.

The rules also give water regulators the right to issue a cease-and-desist order against water rights holders suspected of illegally using water without going through the usual hearing process.

They drew opposition from farmers and winery operators, who worried the stepped-up enforcement would unfairly harm their businesses.

Assemblywoman Kristen Olsen, elected on Tuesday as the Republican leader in the State Assembly, urged the board to preserve access to water by the mainly agricultural interests who hold longtime rights to use it.

“Please remember that any infringement of these rights would be devastating to the agricultural economy of our state — and to the world,” she wrote in a letter to the board on Tuesday.

California is in the third year of a catastrophic drought that has depleted the Sierra Nevada snow pack that normally feeds the state’s rivers and streams with cool water.

Governor Jerry Brown declared the state’s drought to be an emergency last January, committing millions to help stricken communities and temporarily easing protections for endangered fish to allow pumping from the fragile San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta.

As regulators debate new enforcement rules, lawmakers in the state are bogged down in negotiations over a plan to shore up California’s water supply.

The proposal to sell US$10.5 billion in bonds to pay for water projects has been mired in partisan bickering for months as Democrats and Republicans fight over what projects to include. Brown has urged lawmakers to cut the amount of money spent nearly in half, to $6 billion.

— Sharon Bernstein is a Reuters correspondent covering California state politics and policy from Sacramento.

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The most populous U.S. state is in its third year of what officials are calling a catastrophic drought, leaving some small communities at risk of running out of drinking water and leading farmers to leave fallow nearly a half-million acres of land.

“We wanted to provide a foundation for state agricultural and water policymakers to understand the impacts of the drought on farmers and farm communities,” said Richard Howitt, professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis and the report’s lead author.

As many as 14,500 full-time and seasonal jobs could be lost as a result of the drought, as farmers fallow land and there are fewer crops to plant and pick, according to the preliminary study.

Altogether, 410,000 acres may be left unplanted in the San Joaquin Valley alone, the analysis showed, as farmers enter the growing season with about two-thirds of the water that they need.

By comparison, a drought in 2009 led to the fallowing of 270,000 acres of cropland and the loss of 7,500 jobs, the study showed.

“Everyone is trying to get a handle on how bad it’s going to be,” said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Most farmers in California rely on irrigation rather than rain, many purchasing supplies from federal and state projects that pump from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta. But less water than normal is available from those sources this year.

Many are turning to other suppliers or to groundwater wells on their property, Kranz said, but the study showed that pumping from wells will cost farmers an additional $448 million.

California Governor Jerry Brown, who blames the drought in part on climate change, said Monday the state would do everything possible to help farmers weather the drought.

“We’re going to be steadfast in the state of California in doing everything we need to do to make agriculture work, to use our water as carefully as possible,” Brown told attendees at the university’s conference on climate change and agriculture in Sacramento on Monday.

To make more water available to farmers, his administration has eased some environmental protections for endangered fish, and allowed flexibility in some water rights regulations.

— Sharon Bernstein reports for Reuters from Sacramento, California.

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California is in its third year of a drought that may break all records in the most populous U.S. state, where lawmakers on Friday were expected to send a series of relief proposals to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature. President Barack Obama has also pledged millions of dollars in aid.

“Despite these recent storms, it would still have to rain every other day until around May to reach average precipitation totals, and even then we would still be in a drought due to the last two dry years,” said Richard Stapler, spokesman for the California Natural Resources Agency.

Brown declared a drought emergency last month and has called on state officials to prepare for water shortages and develop solutions for potentially long-term dry weather.

Officials have said that California farmers facing drastic cutbacks in irrigation water are expected to idle half a million acres of cropland this year in a record production loss that could cause billions of dollars in economic damage.

The National Weather Service predicted moderate to heavy rain in southern and central California on Friday, slowing by Saturday afternoon. The Service said Oxnard, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles, had the highest precipitation in all of the United States on Friday at five centimetres by 2:45 p.m.

Officials warned residents about possible mudslides in areas where the summer’s wildfires left hillsides bare and unprotected by tree roots and bushes.

While the wet weather was welcome, rain and high winds caused road closures and power outages in southern California and brought enough snow that tire chains were required for driving on mountain roads near the Nevada border.

Rockslides

In Los Angeles, 14,000 customers were without power by mid-morning. People were soaked as high winds turned umbrellas inside out and drove the rain nearly sideways as they waited for buses and light rail trains.

Near Malibu, crews worked to clear debris from the Pacific Coast Highway north of the affluent seaside city after rockslides prompted officials to close a 16-km stretch of the scenic road.

Patrick Chandler, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation, said a large wildfire in the area last year had caused the hillsides to be less stable.

“A lot of times, when you have rain in this area, especially with the drought, you’re going to have a lot of loose rocks coming down,” Chandler said.

Later Friday, the agency closed the Angeles Crest Highway in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles after another rockslide made the road impassable.

By noon, there had been 158 vehicle crashes in the Los Angeles area, 112 more than the previous Friday, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Firefighters lowered themselves on ropes to pull a man out of the Los Angeles River, a treacherous culvert with concrete sides that rushes quickly to the sea when it rains. The man was taken to a nearby hospital, but his condition had not been released by mid-afternoon on Friday.

The Accu Weather service reported that more than an inch of rain had fallen on Southern California since the storm moved in on Thursday night, and that two neighbourhoods in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains had been evacuated as a precaution in case the wet weather prompted mudslides.

Air traffic was also affected at Los Angeles International Airport, where 19 incoming and outgoing flights were canceled on Friday morning, officials said.

In northern California, about 13,000 customers lost power in the San Francisco Bay Area and the wine-making Sonoma County, said Jason King, a spokesman for the Pacific Gas & Electric utility company.

Although many of those households and businesses had their power restored by early afternoon, the company expected additional outages to occur on Friday night as the rainy and windy weather continued, King said.

— Sharon Bernstein is a Reuters correspondent based in Sacramento.

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