These maps show why California is bracing for another extreme fire season [San Francisco Chronicle]
Apr. 22 The latest map of California from the U.S. government’s Drought Monitor shows large swaths of red and orange covering almost the entire state indicating severe or extreme drought conditions.
In the Bay Area, a more neutral yellow shade signals “moderate” conditions but a lackluster wet season has left the region with less than 40% of normal precipitation levels, which can signal fire danger as dry conditions result in more landscape to burn.
Fire agencies and experts are already on alert this year as more than 1,200 fires have charred nearly 1,900 acres so far, more than twice the activity level compared to the five-year average.
San Francisco Chronicle – April 22
A federal jury has convicted a supervising tanker crew member of ordering the illegal dumping of oily bilge water into Bay Area waters in 2019. The defendant was first engineer of the Zao Galaxy, a 16,000-ton oil tanker that docked at the Port of Richmond in 2019. Tankers generate bilge water while at sea and are required to remove most of the oil before discharging the remaining fluid into ocean waters. Prosecutors said the defendant ordered crew members to bypass the ship’s oil waste separator and dump oily bilge water from the tanker’s engine room. The ship’s operator, Unix Line PTE of Singapore, pleaded guilty to a related charge in the case last year, and was fined $1.65 million.
Editorial: The drought isn t coming, California. It s already here
FacebookTwitterEmail
1of3
Dry hills sit above homes and businesses seen from Shelvin Drive in El Cerrito, September 25, 2020.Jessica Christian / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
2of3
3of3
A depth gauge stands partially exposed at Briones Reservoir in Orinda, Feb. 28, 2021.Stephen Lam/The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
Longtime Bay Area residents are all too familiar with ground-parching droughts, those years when our hills are late turning green and early turning brown. Now it looks like we’ve entered another dry patch barely four years after emerging from the last one an ominous sign that our meteorological cycles of boom and bust are picking up speed.
Editorial: Sonoma County faces bleak reality sonomanews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sonomanews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The district will discuss more irrigation restrictions in two weeks, officials said.
Last year was the second-driest on record, with only 20 inches of rainfall, and followed a dry year in 2019.
The district declared a drought in mid-February and launched a campaign asking customers to conserve water voluntarily. Persistent warm, dry weather lowered Marin Water s reservoir storage capacity to 52 percent the lowest level in nearly 40 years. Storage levels for this time of year are typically more than 90 percent, the district said. Our goal is to reduce our overall districtwide water use by 40 percent, said Cynthia Koehler, president of the district board. Our community has been through droughts before, and they have always risen to the challenge. Our most affordable reservoir of opportunity to address drought and grow our climate resilience is outdoor water use, which doubles during the summer months. Marin is a community that pulls together and knows how to conserve, and I