Central Valley

Air quality and wildfire

We may need to burn more to get less smoke

One of the impacts of California’s difficult fire season has been air pollution. Fires produce smoke. Large wildfires produce a lot of smoke. And large wildfires in the southern Sierra Nevada produce smoke in the southern Central Valley – the part of the United States that already has some of the worst air quality in …

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California Headed for Record Drought: Will Critically-Needed Reforms Follow?

Confronting a Looming Environmental Disaster

The Sacramento Bee’s fine environmental reporter, Matt Weiser, yesterday reported on a looming, major drought facing California and its regional neighbors. The figures aren’t pretty.  A persistent high-pressure front stretching over the Gulf of Alaska and most of the Northern Pacific has diverted the normal fall and winter storm track away from California and other …

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Overdrafting California’s Groundwater Resources–A Chronic Condition

A recently issued study by a University of Texas-led group of research scientists confirm a discomforting fact: groundwater resources in California’s Central Valley are being depleted at an alarming rate.  As reported in the Sacramento Bee, the study warns that current groundwater extraction rates from the Central Valley aquifer–which is primarily mined to serve agricultural …

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