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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/05/20150518Sciencewomeninscience.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30322\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Mukhopadhyay-Biofuels-FULLQUALITY.mov.01_01_17_03.Still002-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30322 size-large\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Mukhopadhyay-Biofuels-FULLQUALITY.mov.01_01_17_03.Still002-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Aindrila Mukhopadhyay (right) is a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leads a biofuels and systems biology team that is 70 percent female, an unusual occurrence in her field. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Staff scientist Aindrila Mukhopadhyay (right) leads a biofuels research and systems biology team, which includes many female postdoctoral researchers from diverse backgrounds. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thousands of college students across California are graduating this month with science degrees. Some dream of careers as researchers and professors, like the people who taught them. But women working toward doctoral degrees in science face gender barriers that can derail their progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2013/digest/theme1.cfm\">Data from\u003c/a> the National Science Foundation show the number of women earning Ph.D.s in all branches of science has trended up over the last two decades. By 2013, women made up half the doctorates awarded in life sciences. That’s the good news. The bad news is having a doctorate in any branch of science doesn’t eliminate gender bias, and the percentages of women with Ph.D.s in the physical sciences and engineering remain stubbornly low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even early in college, those fields attract relatively few women. For instance, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15311/tables/pdf/tab2-8.pdf\">an NSF table shows \u003c/a>in 2012, 3.9 percent of female freshmen declared an intention to major in engineering, compared to 18.3 percent of males. That pattern holds at the high end of the academic food-chain as well: \u003ca href=\"http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15311/tables/pdf/tab9-5.pdf\">data show\u003c/a> 20,000 women with doctorates are employed in the physical sciences, compared to 85,000 men with doctorates.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘What’s going on here is that the ideal worker is being defined as someone with a stay-at-home wife.’\u003ccite>\u003cbr>\n— Joan Williams,\u003cbr>\nUC Hastings law professor\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This complex, multifarious problem for women making their way into science professions has a beguilingly simple name: “the leaky pipeline.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Not An Issue Of Personal Choice\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>University of Michigan earth sciences professor Ingrid Hendy says there’s a common argument that women in their 30s, wanting to be both moms and professors, are making choices to drop out for a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m rolling my eyes at this point,” Hendy says. “It’s a lot more complex than that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, says Joan Williams, law professor at UC Hastings and director of the \u003ca href=\"http://worklifelaw.org/\">Center for WorkLife Law\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I also think it’s misleading to talk about this in terms of women making hard choices about their families,” Williams says. “That’s not what’s going on here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says scientists want to hire someone who can be hunched over their laptop working at 2 a.m. – not, say, caring for a sick kid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s going on here is that the ideal worker is being defined as someone with a stay-at-home wife,” says Williams. “I call that sex discrimination, not women’s choices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while it’s true that in certain branches of science, relatively few women ever start the path to a Ph.D., Williams says the problem of gender bias is pervasive across the field. Lots of female scientists report gender bias, and studies have demonstrated it — like one from researchers at Yale University in 2012 called “\u003ca href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf\">Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers sent more than a hundred faculty members identical resumes – half with a male applicant’s name, half with a female name – and asked, “Would you hire this person to run your lab?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/All-PHDs-by-sex.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-30295\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/All-PHDs-by-sex-1024x480.jpg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"1024\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though it was the exact same resume, both male and female faculty members viewed the male applicant as more competent. Not only that, they offered the female applicant fewer mentorship opportunities and lower starting pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams says there are ways to make a dent in this problem. For instance, just \u003ca href=\"https://hbr.org/2014/10/hacking-techs-diversity-problem\">put the words “salary negotiable”\u003c/a> on a job posting. While women are less likely to negotiate their salaries than men, a study showed those two words can disrupt this pattern, and markedly narrow the pay gap between men and women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a good example of a bias interrupter,” Williams says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Engineering Change\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s also just one small point along the pipeline from school to research and faculty positions. The pipeline is long, and its attendant leaks start long before graduate school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a huge drop-off after high school education,” says Lina Nilsson, at Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/\">Blum Center for Developing Economies\u003c/a>. Nilsson recently wrote an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/how-to-attract-female-engineers.html\">op-ed in the New York Times\u003c/a> titled “How to Attract Female Engineers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineering tends to rank on the very low end for female participation, with barely one in four doctorates awarded to women in 2013. Nilsson’s program, though, is drawing women in droves. The class has roughly equal numbers of women and men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Without even at any point explicitly planning to target women,” Nilsson says, “we’re seeing these massive increases.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The key, she says, seems to be connecting engineering to social impact – issues like poverty and inequality. Nilsson’s specialty is development engineering: helping countries get clean water, diagnose disease and so on. She says women are filling up similar classes across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30280\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/marie-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-30280\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/marie-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Marie Champagne loads samples into a centrifuge at UC Berkeley. Champagne studies paleo-climate, but says until just a few years ago, being a scientist wasn't at all on her radar. (Daniel Potter / KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marie Champagne loads samples into a centrifuge at UC Berkeley. Champagne says she didn’t know she loved science until nearly the end of community college. (Daniel Potter / KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘I Would’ve Had No Idea’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a lab one building over at Berkeley, Marie Champagne uses a powerful acid to prepare lake-bottom samples, which she spins in a centrifuge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These samples are a window to what the climate was like thousands of years ago, Champagne says, based on clues like bits of pollen visible under a microscope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Growing up, I would’ve had no idea what paleo-climate was, let alone that I wanted to go into it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Champagne grew up near a small town in Mendocino County. She says there weren’t a lot of scientists in her life. She gravitated toward English as she entered community college. There, she had a teacher who was pivotal in identifying and developing her interests in earth science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to be a little bit more frightened of taking like a physics class,” Champagne says. “I didn’t take physics until I was a senior — and I loved it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Champagne starts her Ph.D. this fall at UC Santa Cruz.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Not An Issue Of Personal Choice\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>University of Michigan earth sciences professor Ingrid Hendy says there’s a common argument that women in their 30s, wanting to be both moms and professors, are making choices to drop out for a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m rolling my eyes at this point,” Hendy says. “It’s a lot more complex than that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, says Joan Williams, law professor at UC Hastings and director of the \u003ca href=\"http://worklifelaw.org/\">Center for WorkLife Law\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I also think it’s misleading to talk about this in terms of women making hard choices about their families,” Williams says. “That’s not what’s going on here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says scientists want to hire someone who can be hunched over their laptop working at 2 a.m. – not, say, caring for a sick kid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s going on here is that the ideal worker is being defined as someone with a stay-at-home wife,” says Williams. “I call that sex discrimination, not women’s choices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while it’s true that in certain branches of science, relatively few women ever start the path to a Ph.D., Williams says the problem of gender bias is pervasive across the field. Lots of female scientists report gender bias, and studies have demonstrated it — like one from researchers at Yale University in 2012 called “\u003ca href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf\">Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers sent more than a hundred faculty members identical resumes – half with a male applicant’s name, half with a female name – and asked, “Would you hire this person to run your lab?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/All-PHDs-by-sex.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-30295\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/All-PHDs-by-sex-1024x480.jpg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"1024\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though it was the exact same resume, both male and female faculty members viewed the male applicant as more competent. Not only that, they offered the female applicant fewer mentorship opportunities and lower starting pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams says there are ways to make a dent in this problem. For instance, just \u003ca href=\"https://hbr.org/2014/10/hacking-techs-diversity-problem\">put the words “salary negotiable”\u003c/a> on a job posting. While women are less likely to negotiate their salaries than men, a study showed those two words can disrupt this pattern, and markedly narrow the pay gap between men and women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a good example of a bias interrupter,” Williams says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Engineering Change\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s also just one small point along the pipeline from school to research and faculty positions. The pipeline is long, and its attendant leaks start long before graduate school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a huge drop-off after high school education,” says Lina Nilsson, at Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/\">Blum Center for Developing Economies\u003c/a>. Nilsson recently wrote an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/how-to-attract-female-engineers.html\">op-ed in the New York Times\u003c/a> titled “How to Attract Female Engineers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineering tends to rank on the very low end for female participation, with barely one in four doctorates awarded to women in 2013. Nilsson’s program, though, is drawing women in droves. The class has roughly equal numbers of women and men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Without even at any point explicitly planning to target women,” Nilsson says, “we’re seeing these massive increases.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The key, she says, seems to be connecting engineering to social impact – issues like poverty and inequality. Nilsson’s specialty is development engineering: helping countries get clean water, diagnose disease and so on. She says women are filling up similar classes across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30280\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/marie-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-30280\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/marie-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Marie Champagne loads samples into a centrifuge at UC Berkeley. Champagne studies paleo-climate, but says until just a few years ago, being a scientist wasn't at all on her radar. (Daniel Potter / KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marie Champagne loads samples into a centrifuge at UC Berkeley. Champagne says she didn’t know she loved science until nearly the end of community college. (Daniel Potter / KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘I Would’ve Had No Idea’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a lab one building over at Berkeley, Marie Champagne uses a powerful acid to prepare lake-bottom samples, which she spins in a centrifuge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These samples are a window to what the climate was like thousands of years ago, Champagne says, based on clues like bits of pollen visible under a microscope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Growing up, I would’ve had no idea what paleo-climate was, let alone that I wanted to go into it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Champagne grew up near a small town in Mendocino County. She says there weren’t a lot of scientists in her life. She gravitated toward English as she entered community college. There, she had a teacher who was pivotal in identifying and developing her interests in earth science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to be a little bit more frightened of taking like a physics class,” Champagne says. “I didn’t take physics until I was a senior — and I loved it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Champagne starts her Ph.D. this fall at UC Santa Cruz.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Biggest Waves in the World Yield Their Secrets",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30234\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/luzon-waves.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/luzon-waves.jpg\" alt=\"Internal waves in the South China Sea\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30234\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Powerful waves below the ocean’s surface, made visible as curving silver traces by their effects on surface roughness, spread westward into the South China Sea through Luzon Strait, the 200-mile-wide waterway between the southern tip of Taiwan (top right) and the northern tip of the Philippines (bottom right). At left is Dongsha Atoll, a Taiwan national park. (NASA/Global Ocean Associates)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Slow, enormous waves that move beneath the ocean surface have intrigued researchers for a century. These “internal waves” affect the world’s deep seas in many ways, but they’re hard to observe. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Internal waves play a major role in mixing the ocean’s water. Global climate models need to account for this mixing because it warms the deep sea and cools the ocean surface. Internal waves also move seafloor sediment and nutrients, affecting fisheries and coral reefs. And underwater operations, from oil drilling to submarine missions, need data on the deep-sea “weather” of turbulence and disturbances that internal waves produce. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new paper giving the first “cradle-to-grave” explanation of the world’s strongest internal waves was \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7550/full/nature14399.html\">published this week\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html\">Nature\u003c/a>. It’s a major step forward in ocean science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Physics explains how ordinary waves, known as gravity waves, behave in water. The same physics permits gravity waves to form \u003ci>inside\u003c/i> the sea wherever two layers of different water density meet. To see an everyday example, take a bottle of salad dressing, with oil on top and vinegar underneath. Instead of shaking the bottle, tilt it gently and watch the internal waves between the oil and vinegar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ocean has many places where internal waves happen. All that’s needed is two layers of water with different density. For instance, where rivers pour fresh water on top of denser seawater, internal waves can form on the hidden surface of the seawater. In the Arctic Ocean, melting ice can spread a calm layer of fresh water as the salty sea continues to roil beneath it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The world’s strongest internal waves are found in the South China Sea. There, the daily motion of the tides through Luzon Strait creates internal waves hundreds of meters high within the dense layer of cold deep water under the warmer surface water. As the tides wash over a pair of large underwater ridges in Luzon Strait and slosh between them, the activity sends huge, slow-motion internal waves westward into the South China Sea. They’re so slow that they barely disturb the sea surface, but satellites can observe their effects. The video below (from MIT) shows the basic mechanism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYmRnSRsS7Y\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058064/abstract\">One study last year\u003c/a> created a miniature model of Luzon Strait in a large tank at a lab in Switzerland. Ocean currents and internal waves were reproduced in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.legi.grenoble-inp.fr/web/spip.php?rubrique10&lang=en\">Coriolis Platform\u003c/a>, a round pool four feet deep and 40 feet across, mounted on the world’s largest turntable. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new paper in Nature added to that information with hard-won data collected in the South China Sea in 2010 and 2011. The IWISE project (Internal Waves in Straits Experiment) used research ships, subsea instrument stations and underwater gliders to collect data under challenging conditions of strong currents and treacherous seas. Instruments recorded levels of turbulence in Luzon Strait more than 10,000 times stronger than the oceanic average. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This data yielded a detailed picture of how the internal waves are generated, why they only move west from Luzon Strait instead of both ways, and how they break upon the undersea slopes of the South China Sea. The researchers also learned how the internal waves interact with the powerful \u003ca href=\"http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/np/pages/subregions/kroy.html\">Kuroshio ocean current\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists can make good use of this new analysis. Internal waves form all over the ocean — particularly in island chains like Hawaii — just as strong winds create internal waves in the atmosphere near mountain ranges like the Sierra Nevada. And these subsurface waves break along shorelines that have wide, shallow offshore shelves, like the U.S. east coast. NASA Visible Earth collection has \u003ca href=\"http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/search.php?hq=&q=internal+waves&sa=search\">many examples of atmospheric and oceanic internal waves\u003c/a> seen from space. \u003ca href=\"http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-2_st_laurent.pdf\">A brief tutorial\u003c/a> in the journal Oceanography gives more detail for those who’ve studied introductory physics. And a site called \u003ca href=\"http://www.internalwaveatlas.com/\">Internal Wave Atlas\u003c/a> presents 86 case studies from around the world.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30234\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/luzon-waves.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/luzon-waves.jpg\" alt=\"Internal waves in the South China Sea\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30234\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Powerful waves below the ocean’s surface, made visible as curving silver traces by their effects on surface roughness, spread westward into the South China Sea through Luzon Strait, the 200-mile-wide waterway between the southern tip of Taiwan (top right) and the northern tip of the Philippines (bottom right). At left is Dongsha Atoll, a Taiwan national park. (NASA/Global Ocean Associates)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Slow, enormous waves that move beneath the ocean surface have intrigued researchers for a century. These “internal waves” affect the world’s deep seas in many ways, but they’re hard to observe. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Internal waves play a major role in mixing the ocean’s water. Global climate models need to account for this mixing because it warms the deep sea and cools the ocean surface. Internal waves also move seafloor sediment and nutrients, affecting fisheries and coral reefs. And underwater operations, from oil drilling to submarine missions, need data on the deep-sea “weather” of turbulence and disturbances that internal waves produce. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new paper giving the first “cradle-to-grave” explanation of the world’s strongest internal waves was \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7550/full/nature14399.html\">published this week\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html\">Nature\u003c/a>. It’s a major step forward in ocean science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Physics explains how ordinary waves, known as gravity waves, behave in water. The same physics permits gravity waves to form \u003ci>inside\u003c/i> the sea wherever two layers of different water density meet. To see an everyday example, take a bottle of salad dressing, with oil on top and vinegar underneath. Instead of shaking the bottle, tilt it gently and watch the internal waves between the oil and vinegar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ocean has many places where internal waves happen. All that’s needed is two layers of water with different density. For instance, where rivers pour fresh water on top of denser seawater, internal waves can form on the hidden surface of the seawater. In the Arctic Ocean, melting ice can spread a calm layer of fresh water as the salty sea continues to roil beneath it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The world’s strongest internal waves are found in the South China Sea. There, the daily motion of the tides through Luzon Strait creates internal waves hundreds of meters high within the dense layer of cold deep water under the warmer surface water. As the tides wash over a pair of large underwater ridges in Luzon Strait and slosh between them, the activity sends huge, slow-motion internal waves westward into the South China Sea. They’re so slow that they barely disturb the sea surface, but satellites can observe their effects. The video below (from MIT) shows the basic mechanism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYmRnSRsS7Y\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058064/abstract\">One study last year\u003c/a> created a miniature model of Luzon Strait in a large tank at a lab in Switzerland. Ocean currents and internal waves were reproduced in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.legi.grenoble-inp.fr/web/spip.php?rubrique10&lang=en\">Coriolis Platform\u003c/a>, a round pool four feet deep and 40 feet across, mounted on the world’s largest turntable. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new paper in Nature added to that information with hard-won data collected in the South China Sea in 2010 and 2011. The IWISE project (Internal Waves in Straits Experiment) used research ships, subsea instrument stations and underwater gliders to collect data under challenging conditions of strong currents and treacherous seas. Instruments recorded levels of turbulence in Luzon Strait more than 10,000 times stronger than the oceanic average. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This data yielded a detailed picture of how the internal waves are generated, why they only move west from Luzon Strait instead of both ways, and how they break upon the undersea slopes of the South China Sea. The researchers also learned how the internal waves interact with the powerful \u003ca href=\"http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/np/pages/subregions/kroy.html\">Kuroshio ocean current\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists can make good use of this new analysis. Internal waves form all over the ocean — particularly in island chains like Hawaii — just as strong winds create internal waves in the atmosphere near mountain ranges like the Sierra Nevada. And these subsurface waves break along shorelines that have wide, shallow offshore shelves, like the U.S. east coast. NASA Visible Earth collection has \u003ca href=\"http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/search.php?hq=&q=internal+waves&sa=search\">many examples of atmospheric and oceanic internal waves\u003c/a> seen from space. \u003ca href=\"http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-2_st_laurent.pdf\">A brief tutorial\u003c/a> in the journal Oceanography gives more detail for those who’ve studied introductory physics. And a site called \u003ca href=\"http://www.internalwaveatlas.com/\">Internal Wave Atlas\u003c/a> presents 86 case studies from around the world.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Will California Drought Force Changes In Historic Water Rights?",
"headTitle": "Will California Drought Force Changes In Historic Water Rights? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/05/20150511science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update, May 11, 2015:\u003c/strong> Once again this year, state officials have ordered thousands of junior water-rights holders to stop pumping water due to the drought. They’ve also warned that senior water-rights holders could be limited sometime later this year, if the limits on junior rights holders aren’t enough. In April, Governor Brown said if the dry conditions continue, the state’s entire water rights system could be up for examination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original post (Dec. 8, 2014):\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After three years of historically dry and hot weather, the images of California’s drought have become familiar: empty fields, brown lawns, dry stream beds. But for every one of those scenes, there are other parts of the state where water has been flowing freely and the effects of drought are hard to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all tied to California’s system of water rights — the complex hierarchy that governs who gets water during a drought and who doesn’t. After unprecedented cutbacks this year that left many farmers scrambling for water, some critics say the hierarchy is a historical relic that makes it harder for the state to deal with drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The system is largely invisible, buried in legal contracts, court decisions and stacks of century-old papers. To get a sense of what it all means, there is a place you can go to actually see water rights in action: east of Interstate 5, near Los Banos, in the Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Haves and the Have Nots\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is probably the most catastrophic water year we’ve ever had,” says Lon Martin, assistant manager at the San Luis Water District. He gave me a tour of the district at the height of the summer growing season this year, but there wasn’t much to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Very brown, desolate agriculture,” he says, eyeing the unplanted fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘It doesn’t necessarily amount to a fair system or an efficient system.’\u003ccite>— Buzz Thompson,\u003cbr>\nStanford University\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Farmers in the area rely on water from the federal Central Valley Project, but with the extreme drought, they didn’t get a single drop of their usual supply. Some laid off workers and ripped out almond orchards while others tried to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/some-california-farmers-fallow-fields-others-sell-water-for-big-profits/\">buy more expensive water\u003c/a> on the open market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, as we sped down the road, the fields suddenly were green. There were rows of tomatoes and alfalfa, almost as if we’d crossed an invisible line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out, we had – into a different water district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s an obvious dividing line,” Martin says. “They have much more senior rights.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers in the Central California Irrigation District were getting the majority of the water they normally do. The difference is water rights — the pecking order of who gets water first in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Senior vs. Junior\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has one of the most complicated water rights systems in the United States, if not the world,” says Buzz Thompson, professor of law at Stanford University. Thompson is one of the few people in California who can actually explain the intricacies of this pecking order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first in line for water in California are people who own land next to a river or stream. They have “riparian” water rights, as they’re known.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the vast majority of Californians don’t live on a waterway. So for most everyone, including cities and the majority of agricultural areas, it all depends on when they claimed water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whoever gets to a river first gets the senior right to take water out of that river or stream,” Thompson says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24581\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/almond.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-24581\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/almond.jpg\" alt=\"almond\" width=\"640\" height=\"373\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This ripped-up almond orchard is in the San Luis Water District, which is supplied by junior water rights. (Lindsey Hoshaw/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Early in California’s history, water claims could be made by nailing a piece of paper to a tree, as the \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=SQ0OAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=san+francisco+mayor+water+rights+notice+phelan+oak+tree&source=bl&ots=Cc6Fo6irel&sig=UU1JMay60Vogrzu7M2LyoE8F3ng&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NM98VMT_CMzooATJkoC4DQ&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=san%20francisco%20mayor%20water%20rights%20notice%20phelan%20oak%20tree&f=false\">mayor of San Francisco famously did\u003c/a> to claim Tuolumne River water in 1901.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who got in early have senior rights. Everyone who made claims later has secondary or “junior” rights – and they only get water once the senior rights holders get the water they’ve claimed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s as if, to get a cup of coffee at work, you had to line up with all your coworkers in order of how long you’ve all worked there. Sometimes, the coffee pot runs dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a period of drought, it means some people, the junior people, don’t get any water at all,” Thompson says. “And the more senior appropriators may get all of the water they’re entitled to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While San Francisco has very old water claims, latecomers like the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves Silicon Valley, legally have to wait for their turn to take water, after other cities and farming districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Although that’s our legal system, it doesn’t necessarily amount to a fair system or an efficient system,” Thompson says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This pecking order kicked in this year in a widespread way for only the second time in California’s history. State regulators ordered thousands of junior-rights holders not to use water from streams and rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might make more sense in a drought, Thompson says, for everyone to pitch in and cut back equally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS13428_Water-allocation-copy-hpf.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-24529\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS13428_Water-allocation-copy-hpf.jpg\" alt=\"RS13428_Water allocation copy-hpf\" width=\"426\" height=\"530\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in California — where \u003ca href=\"http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/28/107647/twains-whiskeywater-quote-appears.html\">whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting\u003c/a> — it’s not a popular suggestion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You get a lot of people who rise up in arms,” Thompson says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, agrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re going to fight,” he says. “It’s just not going to be with clubs and pitchforks. It’s going to be with attorneys and engineers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wenger says water rights are the backbone of the state’s multibillion dollar agricultural industry. The value of land is based on water rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is part of your property right,” he says. “When you go buy an acre of ground, it’s going to be reflective of how solid are your water rights, how senior are your water rights.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This all adds up to mean that any idea of changing the system is a political non-starter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I consider that to be thermonuclear in California,” says the state’s Secretary for Natural Resources John Laird. “We’ve had the water rights system for over 100 years. It’s determined. Everybody lives by it. It’s 38 million people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So where does that leave California, with droughts inevitable and climate change only expected to make things worse? There may be two things the state could do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sorting Out the Rights\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s water claims are filed inside an old bank safe, in a back room of the Division of Water Rights in Sacramento. Records custodian Matthew Jay turns the combination lock and cranks open the door. The safe is filled with thousands of pieces of yellowing paper, each with a gold seal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The further you go back in time, the more brittle they get,” Jay says. “It’s all the water rights of the entire state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Actually, only to a point, he says. The oldest one, signed in 1915, isn’t technically the oldest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water claims were made early in the state’s history, even before the Gold Rush, but it wasn’t until 100 years ago that California started keeping track by requiring licenses and permits for water rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People would think you have it all massively nailed down,” says Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, the agency that oversees water rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what’s on paper often doesn’t reflect what’s happening in the real world. According to a \u003ca href=\"http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10999\">study\u003c/a> from UC Davis this year, the state has handed out rights for five times more water than there is in an average year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senior water-rights holders, with rights dating before 1914, \u003ca href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/californias-flawed-water-system-cant-track-usage\">aren’t required to have permits\u003c/a> with the state and only started reporting their water use officially in 2009, after the state legislature passed a bill requiring it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24576\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/waterright.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-24576\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/waterright.jpg\" alt=\"waterright\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The first water right was licensed in California in 1915, but there are thousands of senior water-rights holders that have earlier claims. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A few other Western states have actually gone through and verified all their water rights – a process known as “adjudication.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They haven’t changed the rights,” Marcus says, “but they’ve spelled it out more so there’s less uncertainty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That process took \u003ca href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/justice-scalia-speaks-idaho-water-conference\">30 years in Idaho\u003c/a> and is taking 50 years in Montana. Sorting out the rights in California’s Central Valley alone could cost an estimated $100 million, according to Richard Roos-Collins, an attorney with the Water and Power Law Group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it would make the water rights system more accurate when cutbacks kick in, it wouldn’t change anything about how the system operates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are many years where there’s more than enough water to meet all of the water rights out there,” says Marcus. “Does that mean the water rights system couldn’t be tuned up and operated more efficiently? Of course, we could improve it and we would love the resources to be able to improve it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if California’s drought drags on, some say the state may need to address how water is used, not just who uses it. It turns out, the authority to do that already exists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Unreasonable Water Use\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are looking for is Article 10,” says Buzz Thompson of Stanford Law, flipping through the California Constitution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has a constitutional provision specifically to avoid the problem of people wasting water when other people needed it,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The provision says, “The waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use of water is prohibited.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is powerful language, Thompson says. During a drought, regulators could say that certain water uses are unreasonable and can’t be done, like growing crops that use a lot of water or overwatering our yards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Politically, that would be a bombshell. State officials say they’d continue with water conservation measures, both voluntary and mandatory, first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea of picking a particular crop or particular use and saying it’s not reasonable -– that’s something people should only do after a tremendous amount of thought,” says Felicia Marcus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a future of more extreme drought, grappling with water rights may be unavoidable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we have a really very severe drought that, say, lasted another five years,” Thompson says, “I would be surprised if State Water Resources Control Board and the Governor did not seriously think about adopting a new way of allocating water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[edge_animation id=”12″]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Here’s the thing: Water rights in California are based on who got there first. It’s as if you had to line up with all your coworkers to get a cup of coffee at work, and maybe the pot’s empty when the new guy gets to the front. Some are asking, in a drought like the one we’ve been having, is that really fair?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update, May 11, 2015:\u003c/strong> Once again this year, state officials have ordered thousands of junior water-rights holders to stop pumping water due to the drought. They’ve also warned that senior water-rights holders could be limited sometime later this year, if the limits on junior rights holders aren’t enough. In April, Governor Brown said if the dry conditions continue, the state’s entire water rights system could be up for examination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original post (Dec. 8, 2014):\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After three years of historically dry and hot weather, the images of California’s drought have become familiar: empty fields, brown lawns, dry stream beds. But for every one of those scenes, there are other parts of the state where water has been flowing freely and the effects of drought are hard to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all tied to California’s system of water rights — the complex hierarchy that governs who gets water during a drought and who doesn’t. After unprecedented cutbacks this year that left many farmers scrambling for water, some critics say the hierarchy is a historical relic that makes it harder for the state to deal with drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The system is largely invisible, buried in legal contracts, court decisions and stacks of century-old papers. To get a sense of what it all means, there is a place you can go to actually see water rights in action: east of Interstate 5, near Los Banos, in the Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Haves and the Have Nots\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is probably the most catastrophic water year we’ve ever had,” says Lon Martin, assistant manager at the San Luis Water District. He gave me a tour of the district at the height of the summer growing season this year, but there wasn’t much to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Very brown, desolate agriculture,” he says, eyeing the unplanted fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘It doesn’t necessarily amount to a fair system or an efficient system.’\u003ccite>— Buzz Thompson,\u003cbr>\nStanford University\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Farmers in the area rely on water from the federal Central Valley Project, but with the extreme drought, they didn’t get a single drop of their usual supply. Some laid off workers and ripped out almond orchards while others tried to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/some-california-farmers-fallow-fields-others-sell-water-for-big-profits/\">buy more expensive water\u003c/a> on the open market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, as we sped down the road, the fields suddenly were green. There were rows of tomatoes and alfalfa, almost as if we’d crossed an invisible line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out, we had – into a different water district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s an obvious dividing line,” Martin says. “They have much more senior rights.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers in the Central California Irrigation District were getting the majority of the water they normally do. The difference is water rights — the pecking order of who gets water first in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Senior vs. Junior\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has one of the most complicated water rights systems in the United States, if not the world,” says Buzz Thompson, professor of law at Stanford University. Thompson is one of the few people in California who can actually explain the intricacies of this pecking order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first in line for water in California are people who own land next to a river or stream. They have “riparian” water rights, as they’re known.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the vast majority of Californians don’t live on a waterway. So for most everyone, including cities and the majority of agricultural areas, it all depends on when they claimed water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whoever gets to a river first gets the senior right to take water out of that river or stream,” Thompson says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24581\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/almond.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-24581\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/almond.jpg\" alt=\"almond\" width=\"640\" height=\"373\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This ripped-up almond orchard is in the San Luis Water District, which is supplied by junior water rights. (Lindsey Hoshaw/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Early in California’s history, water claims could be made by nailing a piece of paper to a tree, as the \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=SQ0OAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=san+francisco+mayor+water+rights+notice+phelan+oak+tree&source=bl&ots=Cc6Fo6irel&sig=UU1JMay60Vogrzu7M2LyoE8F3ng&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NM98VMT_CMzooATJkoC4DQ&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=san%20francisco%20mayor%20water%20rights%20notice%20phelan%20oak%20tree&f=false\">mayor of San Francisco famously did\u003c/a> to claim Tuolumne River water in 1901.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who got in early have senior rights. Everyone who made claims later has secondary or “junior” rights – and they only get water once the senior rights holders get the water they’ve claimed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s as if, to get a cup of coffee at work, you had to line up with all your coworkers in order of how long you’ve all worked there. Sometimes, the coffee pot runs dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a period of drought, it means some people, the junior people, don’t get any water at all,” Thompson says. “And the more senior appropriators may get all of the water they’re entitled to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While San Francisco has very old water claims, latecomers like the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves Silicon Valley, legally have to wait for their turn to take water, after other cities and farming districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Although that’s our legal system, it doesn’t necessarily amount to a fair system or an efficient system,” Thompson says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This pecking order kicked in this year in a widespread way for only the second time in California’s history. State regulators ordered thousands of junior-rights holders not to use water from streams and rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might make more sense in a drought, Thompson says, for everyone to pitch in and cut back equally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS13428_Water-allocation-copy-hpf.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-24529\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS13428_Water-allocation-copy-hpf.jpg\" alt=\"RS13428_Water allocation copy-hpf\" width=\"426\" height=\"530\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in California — where \u003ca href=\"http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/28/107647/twains-whiskeywater-quote-appears.html\">whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting\u003c/a> — it’s not a popular suggestion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You get a lot of people who rise up in arms,” Thompson says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, agrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re going to fight,” he says. “It’s just not going to be with clubs and pitchforks. It’s going to be with attorneys and engineers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wenger says water rights are the backbone of the state’s multibillion dollar agricultural industry. The value of land is based on water rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is part of your property right,” he says. “When you go buy an acre of ground, it’s going to be reflective of how solid are your water rights, how senior are your water rights.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This all adds up to mean that any idea of changing the system is a political non-starter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I consider that to be thermonuclear in California,” says the state’s Secretary for Natural Resources John Laird. “We’ve had the water rights system for over 100 years. It’s determined. Everybody lives by it. It’s 38 million people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So where does that leave California, with droughts inevitable and climate change only expected to make things worse? There may be two things the state could do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sorting Out the Rights\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s water claims are filed inside an old bank safe, in a back room of the Division of Water Rights in Sacramento. Records custodian Matthew Jay turns the combination lock and cranks open the door. The safe is filled with thousands of pieces of yellowing paper, each with a gold seal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The further you go back in time, the more brittle they get,” Jay says. “It’s all the water rights of the entire state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Actually, only to a point, he says. The oldest one, signed in 1915, isn’t technically the oldest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water claims were made early in the state’s history, even before the Gold Rush, but it wasn’t until 100 years ago that California started keeping track by requiring licenses and permits for water rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People would think you have it all massively nailed down,” says Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, the agency that oversees water rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what’s on paper often doesn’t reflect what’s happening in the real world. According to a \u003ca href=\"http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10999\">study\u003c/a> from UC Davis this year, the state has handed out rights for five times more water than there is in an average year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senior water-rights holders, with rights dating before 1914, \u003ca href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/californias-flawed-water-system-cant-track-usage\">aren’t required to have permits\u003c/a> with the state and only started reporting their water use officially in 2009, after the state legislature passed a bill requiring it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_24576\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/waterright.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-24576\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/waterright.jpg\" alt=\"waterright\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The first water right was licensed in California in 1915, but there are thousands of senior water-rights holders that have earlier claims. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A few other Western states have actually gone through and verified all their water rights – a process known as “adjudication.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They haven’t changed the rights,” Marcus says, “but they’ve spelled it out more so there’s less uncertainty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That process took \u003ca href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/justice-scalia-speaks-idaho-water-conference\">30 years in Idaho\u003c/a> and is taking 50 years in Montana. Sorting out the rights in California’s Central Valley alone could cost an estimated $100 million, according to Richard Roos-Collins, an attorney with the Water and Power Law Group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it would make the water rights system more accurate when cutbacks kick in, it wouldn’t change anything about how the system operates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are many years where there’s more than enough water to meet all of the water rights out there,” says Marcus. “Does that mean the water rights system couldn’t be tuned up and operated more efficiently? Of course, we could improve it and we would love the resources to be able to improve it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if California’s drought drags on, some say the state may need to address how water is used, not just who uses it. It turns out, the authority to do that already exists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Unreasonable Water Use\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we are looking for is Article 10,” says Buzz Thompson of Stanford Law, flipping through the California Constitution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has a constitutional provision specifically to avoid the problem of people wasting water when other people needed it,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The provision says, “The waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use of water is prohibited.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is powerful language, Thompson says. During a drought, regulators could say that certain water uses are unreasonable and can’t be done, like growing crops that use a lot of water or overwatering our yards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Politically, that would be a bombshell. State officials say they’d continue with water conservation measures, both voluntary and mandatory, first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea of picking a particular crop or particular use and saying it’s not reasonable -– that’s something people should only do after a tremendous amount of thought,” says Felicia Marcus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a future of more extreme drought, grappling with water rights may be unavoidable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we have a really very severe drought that, say, lasted another five years,” Thompson says, “I would be surprised if State Water Resources Control Board and the Governor did not seriously think about adopting a new way of allocating water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30052\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Misc_pollen.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30052\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Misc_pollen.gif\" alt=\"Mixed pollen grains\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pollen grains under the electron microscope reveal intricate shapes. A new study shows that when each of these grains disintegrates into hundreds of smaller pieces, the fragments can capture water droplets and seed clouds. This entire field of view is about half a millimeter across. (Dartmouth College Electron Microscope Facility/Wikipedia)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Allison Steiner, a researcher at the University of Michigan, was sweeping her porch one day and pondering the abundance of dusty pollen. What does this fine-grained material do during the time it’s in the air, she wondered, as any atmospheric scientist would. That train of thought led her to discover that pollen has an unexpected role in seeding clouds and possibly affecting the climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clouds are centers of energetic activity, all kinds of it—lightning, precipitation and winds—powered by the exchange of heat between air and water. Melting ice and evaporating water absorb heat energy while condensation and freezing of water release it. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clouds also reflect sunlight back into space to keep the ground cool, while at the same time blanketing the ground to keep it warm. In all their energetic, contradictory complexity, clouds are central actors in the world’s climate. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But computer models of global climate stumble when they handle clouds. One problem is calculating how water droplets form in humid air. Water will condense out of air that is saturated in water vapor, but outside the laboratory, real droplets grow on seed particles of some sort. The droplets are extremely tiny, about 20 microns across, or 50 to a millimeter. Seed particles, called cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs), are a hundred times smaller, or 200 nanometers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollen grains, being larger than that, always seemed like poor CCN candidates. But they’re very common in the environment, as anyone with hay fever can tell you. Seed-bearing plant species, from the tiniest grasses to the tallest trees, release pollen from male plants to fertilize female plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollen grains are about the same size as cloud droplets. They do attract water and act as CCNs, but atmospheric scientists never thought pollen was important for clouds because it settles out of the air in a matter of minutes to hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking deeper into the subject, Steiner learned that in water, or even humid air, pollen grains shatter into hundreds, or even thousands, of pieces. To see whether these “subpollen particles” are significant CCNs, she and five Texas A&M researchers soaked fresh pollen in water for an hour. They used pollen from several common tree species (including birch trees from Palo Alto), plus ragweed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team found that this treatment makes subpollen particles of the right size to be effective CCNs. Moreover, the protein, starch and carbohydrates of the subpollen particles are a rough match for the organic materials found in cloud droplets. (Rainwater is not especially pure, being \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplankton\">full of living organisms from viruses to insects\u003c/a>, not just pollen.) The \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064060/abstract\">results were published\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-8007/\">Geophysical Research Letters\u003c/a> this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steiner is not yet sure exactly how important pollen pieces are for the world’s clouds, but her paper notes that in forested regions like much of the United States, pollen could account for millions of CCNs in each cubic meter of air. Whatever the exact number is, Steiner says pollen is part of “a new pathway for a coupled vegetation-climate feedback” — one climate models will have to incorporate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper used pollen data from midwestern and eastern U.S. locations with abundant forests and grasslands. In the Bay area, our air comes fresh off the ocean, and the haze and fog of the familiar marine layer is affected by aerosols like sea-salt nanoparticles. As the sea breeze rises up our forested hills, tree pollen might be the trigger causing clouds to form on the ridge tops. And as the pollen breaks down in that moist setting, it may affect cloud formation farther downwind all the way to the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Maybe that old song ought to say that April flowers bring May showers. A new study shows that pollen grains break up into huge numbers of tiny pieces that are active in triggering cloud formation.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30052\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Misc_pollen.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30052\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Misc_pollen.gif\" alt=\"Mixed pollen grains\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pollen grains under the electron microscope reveal intricate shapes. A new study shows that when each of these grains disintegrates into hundreds of smaller pieces, the fragments can capture water droplets and seed clouds. This entire field of view is about half a millimeter across. (Dartmouth College Electron Microscope Facility/Wikipedia)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Allison Steiner, a researcher at the University of Michigan, was sweeping her porch one day and pondering the abundance of dusty pollen. What does this fine-grained material do during the time it’s in the air, she wondered, as any atmospheric scientist would. That train of thought led her to discover that pollen has an unexpected role in seeding clouds and possibly affecting the climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clouds are centers of energetic activity, all kinds of it—lightning, precipitation and winds—powered by the exchange of heat between air and water. Melting ice and evaporating water absorb heat energy while condensation and freezing of water release it. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clouds also reflect sunlight back into space to keep the ground cool, while at the same time blanketing the ground to keep it warm. In all their energetic, contradictory complexity, clouds are central actors in the world’s climate. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But computer models of global climate stumble when they handle clouds. One problem is calculating how water droplets form in humid air. Water will condense out of air that is saturated in water vapor, but outside the laboratory, real droplets grow on seed particles of some sort. The droplets are extremely tiny, about 20 microns across, or 50 to a millimeter. Seed particles, called cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs), are a hundred times smaller, or 200 nanometers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollen grains, being larger than that, always seemed like poor CCN candidates. But they’re very common in the environment, as anyone with hay fever can tell you. Seed-bearing plant species, from the tiniest grasses to the tallest trees, release pollen from male plants to fertilize female plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollen grains are about the same size as cloud droplets. They do attract water and act as CCNs, but atmospheric scientists never thought pollen was important for clouds because it settles out of the air in a matter of minutes to hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking deeper into the subject, Steiner learned that in water, or even humid air, pollen grains shatter into hundreds, or even thousands, of pieces. To see whether these “subpollen particles” are significant CCNs, she and five Texas A&M researchers soaked fresh pollen in water for an hour. They used pollen from several common tree species (including birch trees from Palo Alto), plus ragweed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team found that this treatment makes subpollen particles of the right size to be effective CCNs. Moreover, the protein, starch and carbohydrates of the subpollen particles are a rough match for the organic materials found in cloud droplets. (Rainwater is not especially pure, being \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplankton\">full of living organisms from viruses to insects\u003c/a>, not just pollen.) The \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064060/abstract\">results were published\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-8007/\">Geophysical Research Letters\u003c/a> this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steiner is not yet sure exactly how important pollen pieces are for the world’s clouds, but her paper notes that in forested regions like much of the United States, pollen could account for millions of CCNs in each cubic meter of air. Whatever the exact number is, Steiner says pollen is part of “a new pathway for a coupled vegetation-climate feedback” — one climate models will have to incorporate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper used pollen data from midwestern and eastern U.S. locations with abundant forests and grasslands. In the Bay area, our air comes fresh off the ocean, and the haze and fog of the familiar marine layer is affected by aerosols like sea-salt nanoparticles. As the sea breeze rises up our forested hills, tree pollen might be the trigger causing clouds to form on the ridge tops. And as the pollen breaks down in that moist setting, it may affect cloud formation farther downwind all the way to the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Aggressive' New Drought Rules for California: Now Comes the Hard Part",
"headTitle": "‘Aggressive’ New Drought Rules for California: Now Comes the Hard Part | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30065\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 3264px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/IMG_2956.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30065\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/IMG_2956.jpg\" alt='\"Brown is the new green\" is the rallying cry for fighting the current drought. But will Californians take up the cause? (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"3264\" height=\"2448\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“Brown is the new green” is the rallying cry for fighting the current drought. But will Californians take up the cause? (Craig Miller/KQED) \u003ccite>(Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The clock is ticking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After state regulators approved California’s \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/state-passes-historic-water-conservation-rules/\">first-ever statewide water restrictions\u003c/a> on Tuesday, it’s now up to nearly 3,000 local water agencies, big and small, to make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water agencies throughout California bear the burden of \u003ca title=\"Lowdown - water\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2015/04/03/how-much-water-do-californians-use-and-what-would-a-25-percent-reduction-look-like/\">achieving the 25 percent reduction\u003c/a> in water use ordered by Governor Jerry Brown on April 1. The state will start keeping score officially on June 1, when cities and water districts need to start carving between eight and 36 percent off their 2013 water use, and keep it up on a month-to-month basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re on the front lines, you know that,” Brown told a gathering of water managers at the Association of California Water Agencies in Sacramento. “And we’re here to back you up.” Brown, however, as much as admitted that it was easy for him to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just kind of launch the missile, and then you particularize and talk to your neighbors, and get ’em to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or not. When it comes to the hard choices such as tearing out lawns, replacing water-gulping toilets and appliances, it remains to be seen how Californians will respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What worries me most is that I think a lot of Californians are not yet quite ready to do that,” says Dave Bolland, who manages special projects for ACWA, “to embrace that \u003ca title=\"ACWA - Save Our Water\" href=\"http://saveourwater.com/\">new water use ethic\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30063\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 855px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/WaterConservation_1503.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30063\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/WaterConservation_1503.jpeg\" alt=\"State figures indicate that another 25 percent water savings could be a tall order for California consumers. (State Water Resources Control Board)\" width=\"855\" height=\"629\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">State figures indicate that another 25 percent water savings could be a tall order for California consumers. (State Water Resources Control Board)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Recent conservation trends would seem to bear him out. According to figures gathered by the state water board, water savings averaged only 3.6 percent in March, compared to 2013 levels of water consumption. That’s far below the 20 percent voluntary cutbacks that Brown asked for a year ago, and even more dismal compared to \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">new targets\u003c/a> that individual communities will now be required to attain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are some very aggressive targets in this mandate,” notes Bolland. More than 80 local agencies have been assigned the highest, 36 percent, savings quota.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many cities have gotten a head start and some, like San Francisco and Santa Barbara, are already ahead of the quotas assigned to them by the state. But others are still worried about the impact on their local communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Going down to one day a week watering, we’ll be seeing brown lawns, we’ll be seeing a lot of vegetation dying,” Jennifer Hanson told the state water board in a last-ditch appeal on Tuesday. Hanson heads public services for the city of Lincoln, northeast of Sacramento, which has been assigned to the highest “tier” of required conservation. She says even cutting outdoor watering to one day per week might not be enough to meet her local mandate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Trying to go down to zero days a week watering to try to meet our 36 percent on average throughout the year, may even require more stringent measures for outdoor water use.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cutting 36 percent of deliveries will also strike a major blow to revenues, even as water agencies are expected to promote and enforce conservation, which will mean selling less water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are a lot of agencies that, you know, that’s a third of their resources in terms of their water revenues, so there are substantial fiscal impacts,” says Bolland. “So there are some significant challenges that these water agencies face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But business-as-usual isn’t an option, says Brown. “We’ve got to change,” he told the ACWA gathering. “And how we use water is not exempt from that.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30065\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 3264px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/IMG_2956.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30065\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/IMG_2956.jpg\" alt='\"Brown is the new green\" is the rallying cry for fighting the current drought. But will Californians take up the cause? (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"3264\" height=\"2448\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“Brown is the new green” is the rallying cry for fighting the current drought. But will Californians take up the cause? (Craig Miller/KQED) \u003ccite>(Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The clock is ticking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After state regulators approved California’s \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/state-passes-historic-water-conservation-rules/\">first-ever statewide water restrictions\u003c/a> on Tuesday, it’s now up to nearly 3,000 local water agencies, big and small, to make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water agencies throughout California bear the burden of \u003ca title=\"Lowdown - water\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2015/04/03/how-much-water-do-californians-use-and-what-would-a-25-percent-reduction-look-like/\">achieving the 25 percent reduction\u003c/a> in water use ordered by Governor Jerry Brown on April 1. The state will start keeping score officially on June 1, when cities and water districts need to start carving between eight and 36 percent off their 2013 water use, and keep it up on a month-to-month basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re on the front lines, you know that,” Brown told a gathering of water managers at the Association of California Water Agencies in Sacramento. “And we’re here to back you up.” Brown, however, as much as admitted that it was easy for him to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just kind of launch the missile, and then you particularize and talk to your neighbors, and get ’em to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or not. When it comes to the hard choices such as tearing out lawns, replacing water-gulping toilets and appliances, it remains to be seen how Californians will respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What worries me most is that I think a lot of Californians are not yet quite ready to do that,” says Dave Bolland, who manages special projects for ACWA, “to embrace that \u003ca title=\"ACWA - Save Our Water\" href=\"http://saveourwater.com/\">new water use ethic\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30063\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 855px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/WaterConservation_1503.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30063\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/WaterConservation_1503.jpeg\" alt=\"State figures indicate that another 25 percent water savings could be a tall order for California consumers. (State Water Resources Control Board)\" width=\"855\" height=\"629\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">State figures indicate that another 25 percent water savings could be a tall order for California consumers. (State Water Resources Control Board)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Recent conservation trends would seem to bear him out. According to figures gathered by the state water board, water savings averaged only 3.6 percent in March, compared to 2013 levels of water consumption. That’s far below the 20 percent voluntary cutbacks that Brown asked for a year ago, and even more dismal compared to \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">new targets\u003c/a> that individual communities will now be required to attain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are some very aggressive targets in this mandate,” notes Bolland. More than 80 local agencies have been assigned the highest, 36 percent, savings quota.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many cities have gotten a head start and some, like San Francisco and Santa Barbara, are already ahead of the quotas assigned to them by the state. But others are still worried about the impact on their local communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Going down to one day a week watering, we’ll be seeing brown lawns, we’ll be seeing a lot of vegetation dying,” Jennifer Hanson told the state water board in a last-ditch appeal on Tuesday. Hanson heads public services for the city of Lincoln, northeast of Sacramento, which has been assigned to the highest “tier” of required conservation. She says even cutting outdoor watering to one day per week might not be enough to meet her local mandate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Trying to go down to zero days a week watering to try to meet our 36 percent on average throughout the year, may even require more stringent measures for outdoor water use.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cutting 36 percent of deliveries will also strike a major blow to revenues, even as water agencies are expected to promote and enforce conservation, which will mean selling less water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are a lot of agencies that, you know, that’s a third of their resources in terms of their water revenues, so there are substantial fiscal impacts,” says Bolland. “So there are some significant challenges that these water agencies face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But business-as-usual isn’t an option, says Brown. “We’ve got to change,” he told the ACWA gathering. “And how we use water is not exempt from that.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Two-hundred Years of Cuban Coral Arrives in Santa Cruz",
"headTitle": "Two-hundred Years of Cuban Coral Arrives in Santa Cruz | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>A rare and valuable shipment arrived from Cuba today. But it’s not hand-rolled cigars or fine rum. It’s a coral core: A 48 inch column of pure coral, about as long and wide as a baseball bat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27719\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/27718-thumb.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27719\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/27718-thumb.jpg\" alt=\"Thumbnail for 27718\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shoal of tropical fish over a coral reef in the Caribbean Sea. (photo courtesy of iStockphoto)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The core was collected off the coast of southern Cuba and it’s the first intact, long core ever drilled from a Cuban reef. It contains historical information that could help solve a mystery: Why are Cuban coral reefs so healthy and will they be able to stay that way as the climate changes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cuba remains remarkably unspoiled compared to other Caribbean tropical coastal areas,” says Daria Siciliano, a coral reef ecologist at UC Santa Cruz and a lead scientist on the project. “Our hypothesis is that the unique socio-political history of Cuba, together with the country’s progressive stance in marine conservation, are responsible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coral growth is affected by seawater conditions like temperature, acidity levels and available nutrients. This makes coral cores ideal “archives” of local environmental change, says Siciliano, because scientists can read past water conditions by analyzing the chemical marks they left on the coral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30017\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Cuba-coral-1024x512.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30017\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Cuba-coral-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"The coral cores were collected in February of this year off the southern coast of Cuba.\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The corals were collected in February of this year off the southern coast of Cuba.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This particular core is about four feet in length, which is impressive, but size only matters to Siciliano in terms of time—four feet in length means the core could have coral that’s over two hundred years old. With this data, she and her team will be able to reconstruct the reef environment from the early 1800s to today, and see how the coral’s growth responded to environmental change over that time period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siciliano, her Cuban counterpart, Patricia Gonzales of the Center for Marine Research at the University of Havana, and Konrad Hughen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, hope to use this data to determine what historical factors have made the Cuban reefs more robust than other reefs in the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29774\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Daria_Konrad_core-216x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29774\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Daria_Konrad_core-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"Daria Siciliano (UCSC) and Konrad Hughen, (WHOI) in Cuba with the core (Fernando Bretos/Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Foundation)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Daria Siciliano (UCSC) and Konrad Hughen, (WHOI) in Cuba with the core (Fernando Bretos/Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Foundation)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They’re especially interested in how the corals responded to changes in runoff from agriculture. When the U.S.S.R collapsed, Cuban farmers were cut off from synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and the Cuban government decided to transition the nation to organic farming methods, which still dominate today. This meant a reduction in the amount of synthetic nitrogen chemicals washing from farms to the reef.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corals are animals so they need nitrogen, an essential nutrient, to survive. But too much can disturb the reef’s natural balance, speeding up growth of algae that compete with coral for space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Does organic farming mean healthier reefs?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siciliano and Gonzalez believe Cuban organic farming practices generate less harmful runoff, and this has translated into healthy reefs. Chemical analysis of the coral core will reveal the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These new insights will help scientists and farmers understand the effects of land management, in particular the transition from industrial fertilizers to organic agriculture, on Cuban coral reef waters, Siciliano says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They will also use the two hundred years of environmental data to reconstruct how local and regional climate change has affected coral growth. That information will help them understand not just how Cuban corals fared in the past, but how they might survive in a warmer, more acidic, ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects reefs and other marine communities in two ways: it traps heat in the air, which heats up the water, and it reacts with seawater to create an acid, lowering the water’s pH.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmer waters are stressful for corals, and if the temperature stays too high for too long, corals will “bleach”: expel the tiny, photosynthetic algae that normally live in corals and are responsible for their brilliant colors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bleached reefs appear white and barren, and in the case of hard or “stony” corals what’s left behind is their calcium carbonate structure. Calcium carbonate is the same hard mineral that clam shells and chalk are made of and it’s vulnerable to the second effect of carbon dioxide: ocean acidification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hard corals, like the \u003cem>Siderastrea\u003c/em> the Cuban core was drilled from, need calcium and carbonate ions in the waters around them to build their structures. When the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, the gas reacts in seawater to make carbonate ions less available. It’s harder for corals to grow and it creates acidic conditions that can dissolve calcium carbonate corals have already built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coral reef scientists like Siciliano know this double-whammy of warmer and more acidic waters could be disastrous for the world’s coral. But individual reefs, like those in Cuba, have weathered local changes in temperature and acidity before.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘The pace of climate change today is unprecedented. Corals in other parts of the world that aren’t as healthy just can’t keep up.’\u003ccite>– Daria Siciliano, Coral Reef Ecologist, UC Santa Cruz \u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The core will tell them how Cuban corals responded to this past climate change, and how “sturdy” they could be in the face of today’s rapidly changing climate, Siciliano says. “The pace of climate change today is unprecedented,” she says. “Corals in other parts of the world that aren’t as healthy, they just can’t keep up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Siciliano thinks Cuban corals might be strong enough to have a good shot at surviving these rapid environmental changes and looking to what happened in the past will test this hypothesis. What happened to the corals when waters got warmer and more acidic before? Did their growth rate change? Was the strength of their calcium carbonate structure compromised?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answers to these questions, and the story of this coral’s past, will provide clues to the future of reefs not just in Cuba, but around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Taking Siderastrea siderea core at Jardines de la Reina, Cuba\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/BqrSzDGG0d0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A rare and valuable shipment arrived from Cuba today. But it’s not hand-rolled cigars or fine rum. It’s a coral core: A 48 inch column of pure coral, about as long and wide as a baseball bat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27719\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/27718-thumb.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27719\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/27718-thumb.jpg\" alt=\"Thumbnail for 27718\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shoal of tropical fish over a coral reef in the Caribbean Sea. (photo courtesy of iStockphoto)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The core was collected off the coast of southern Cuba and it’s the first intact, long core ever drilled from a Cuban reef. It contains historical information that could help solve a mystery: Why are Cuban coral reefs so healthy and will they be able to stay that way as the climate changes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cuba remains remarkably unspoiled compared to other Caribbean tropical coastal areas,” says Daria Siciliano, a coral reef ecologist at UC Santa Cruz and a lead scientist on the project. “Our hypothesis is that the unique socio-political history of Cuba, together with the country’s progressive stance in marine conservation, are responsible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coral growth is affected by seawater conditions like temperature, acidity levels and available nutrients. This makes coral cores ideal “archives” of local environmental change, says Siciliano, because scientists can read past water conditions by analyzing the chemical marks they left on the coral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30017\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Cuba-coral-1024x512.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30017\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/Cuba-coral-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"The coral cores were collected in February of this year off the southern coast of Cuba.\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The corals were collected in February of this year off the southern coast of Cuba.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This particular core is about four feet in length, which is impressive, but size only matters to Siciliano in terms of time—four feet in length means the core could have coral that’s over two hundred years old. With this data, she and her team will be able to reconstruct the reef environment from the early 1800s to today, and see how the coral’s growth responded to environmental change over that time period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siciliano, her Cuban counterpart, Patricia Gonzales of the Center for Marine Research at the University of Havana, and Konrad Hughen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, hope to use this data to determine what historical factors have made the Cuban reefs more robust than other reefs in the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29774\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Daria_Konrad_core-216x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29774\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Daria_Konrad_core-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"Daria Siciliano (UCSC) and Konrad Hughen, (WHOI) in Cuba with the core (Fernando Bretos/Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Foundation)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Daria Siciliano (UCSC) and Konrad Hughen, (WHOI) in Cuba with the core (Fernando Bretos/Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Foundation)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They’re especially interested in how the corals responded to changes in runoff from agriculture. When the U.S.S.R collapsed, Cuban farmers were cut off from synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and the Cuban government decided to transition the nation to organic farming methods, which still dominate today. This meant a reduction in the amount of synthetic nitrogen chemicals washing from farms to the reef.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corals are animals so they need nitrogen, an essential nutrient, to survive. But too much can disturb the reef’s natural balance, speeding up growth of algae that compete with coral for space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Does organic farming mean healthier reefs?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siciliano and Gonzalez believe Cuban organic farming practices generate less harmful runoff, and this has translated into healthy reefs. Chemical analysis of the coral core will reveal the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These new insights will help scientists and farmers understand the effects of land management, in particular the transition from industrial fertilizers to organic agriculture, on Cuban coral reef waters, Siciliano says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They will also use the two hundred years of environmental data to reconstruct how local and regional climate change has affected coral growth. That information will help them understand not just how Cuban corals fared in the past, but how they might survive in a warmer, more acidic, ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects reefs and other marine communities in two ways: it traps heat in the air, which heats up the water, and it reacts with seawater to create an acid, lowering the water’s pH.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmer waters are stressful for corals, and if the temperature stays too high for too long, corals will “bleach”: expel the tiny, photosynthetic algae that normally live in corals and are responsible for their brilliant colors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bleached reefs appear white and barren, and in the case of hard or “stony” corals what’s left behind is their calcium carbonate structure. Calcium carbonate is the same hard mineral that clam shells and chalk are made of and it’s vulnerable to the second effect of carbon dioxide: ocean acidification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hard corals, like the \u003cem>Siderastrea\u003c/em> the Cuban core was drilled from, need calcium and carbonate ions in the waters around them to build their structures. When the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, the gas reacts in seawater to make carbonate ions less available. It’s harder for corals to grow and it creates acidic conditions that can dissolve calcium carbonate corals have already built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coral reef scientists like Siciliano know this double-whammy of warmer and more acidic waters could be disastrous for the world’s coral. But individual reefs, like those in Cuba, have weathered local changes in temperature and acidity before.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘The pace of climate change today is unprecedented. Corals in other parts of the world that aren’t as healthy just can’t keep up.’\u003ccite>– Daria Siciliano, Coral Reef Ecologist, UC Santa Cruz \u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The core will tell them how Cuban corals responded to this past climate change, and how “sturdy” they could be in the face of today’s rapidly changing climate, Siciliano says. “The pace of climate change today is unprecedented,” she says. “Corals in other parts of the world that aren’t as healthy, they just can’t keep up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Siciliano thinks Cuban corals might be strong enough to have a good shot at surviving these rapid environmental changes and looking to what happened in the past will test this hypothesis. What happened to the corals when waters got warmer and more acidic before? Did their growth rate change? Was the strength of their calcium carbonate structure compromised?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answers to these questions, and the story of this coral’s past, will provide clues to the future of reefs not just in Cuba, but around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Taking Siderastrea siderea core at Jardines de la Reina, Cuba\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/BqrSzDGG0d0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "State Passes Historic Water Conservation Rules",
"headTitle": "State Passes Historic Water Conservation Rules | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/05/20150504science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29943\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 3264px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/IMG_2962.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29943\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/IMG_2962.jpg\" alt=\"A lush lawn may be part of the American Dream--and the new California nightmare. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"3264\" height=\"2448\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A lush lawn may be part of the American Dream–and the new California nightmare. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>UPDATE: After an extended session on Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board approved final rules to bring about the 25 percent reduction in water use ordered by Governor Jerry Brown in early April. The \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/04/28/state-mostly-standing-its-ground-on-tough-new-water-rules/\">statewide water restrictions\u003c/a> go into effect on June 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know we’re not asking people to do things that are easy,” said board chair Felicia Marcus right before the unanimous vote.\u003cbr>\n“But this is the moment to rise to the occasion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local water agencies are racing to get programs in place to cut urban water use anywhere from eight to 36 percent, depending on how much water their residents have been using on a per-capita basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the actual savings that cities will have to achieve vary much more widely than that range of \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">state-assigned “tiers”\u003c/a> would suggest. Just as important are the savings achieved over roughly the past year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, for example, has been assigned a savings “tier” of 16 percent; that’s the reduction that local water officials will have to attain on on month-by-month basis, starting in June. But since Mountain View has already managed to cut water use by 15 percent, residents there will, in effect, only have to squeeze out another one percent savings to comply with the governor’s mandate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few locales — like Santa Rosa, Livermore, and Santa Cruz, have already exceeded their assigned levels and could theoretically use more water this summer and still comply with the drought mandate — not that anybody’s openly encouraging that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other cities have their work cut out for them. Water consumption in Lodi, for example, actually rose by one percent, so the city will have to cut back by slightly more than its assigned 36 percent target, which is the highest tier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/California-Water-Restrictions-map-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-29971\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/California-Water-Restrictions-map-1-850x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Water Cuts\" width=\"350\" height=\"422\">\u003c/a>Last week, Governor Brown \u003ca title=\"Gov. Jerry Brown - release\" href=\"http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18936\">rolled out legislation\u003c/a> that could help cities attain their assigned goals, ratcheting up maximum fines that local officials are allowed to assess for unrepentant water wasters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be at least mid-July before there are indications of whether the new conservation measures are taking hold — just as the peak outdoor watering season is hitting its stride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And that’s when we really need to see significant reductions in outdoor water use,” warns Max Gomberg, a senior scientist at the State Water Resources Control Board. “If we don’t get those reductions during the summer, we’re simply not gonna make the overall reduction target.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The governor’s April 1 list of mandates is designed to cut statewide water use by 25 percent, on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You might think of this as just another installment on a long enterprise to live with the changing climate and with a drought of uncertain duration,” Brown told reporters after a meeting with California mayors last week. That last point is crucial; no one can say at this point whether we’re in the last year of a four-year drought, or year four of a ten-year “Big Dry,” \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/drought-lessons-from-down-under/\">such as Australians endured\u003c/a> at the start of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People face different environmental challenges,” Brown said, “and out of this very complex state we’re gonna do everything we can to save water and to get it done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting it done will now be largely in the hands of local water officials and consumers. The state has weighed in; now it’s on us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>See the \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">complete list\u003c/a> of cities and their assigned water conservation targets.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The state-mandated water conservation \"tiers\" assigned to local water agencies don't tell the whole story. Some cities are already there, some have a lot more work to do.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29943\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 3264px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/IMG_2962.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29943\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/IMG_2962.jpg\" alt=\"A lush lawn may be part of the American Dream--and the new California nightmare. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"3264\" height=\"2448\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A lush lawn may be part of the American Dream–and the new California nightmare. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>UPDATE: After an extended session on Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board approved final rules to bring about the 25 percent reduction in water use ordered by Governor Jerry Brown in early April. The \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/04/28/state-mostly-standing-its-ground-on-tough-new-water-rules/\">statewide water restrictions\u003c/a> go into effect on June 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know we’re not asking people to do things that are easy,” said board chair Felicia Marcus right before the unanimous vote.\u003cbr>\n“But this is the moment to rise to the occasion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local water agencies are racing to get programs in place to cut urban water use anywhere from eight to 36 percent, depending on how much water their residents have been using on a per-capita basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the actual savings that cities will have to achieve vary much more widely than that range of \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">state-assigned “tiers”\u003c/a> would suggest. Just as important are the savings achieved over roughly the past year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, for example, has been assigned a savings “tier” of 16 percent; that’s the reduction that local water officials will have to attain on on month-by-month basis, starting in June. But since Mountain View has already managed to cut water use by 15 percent, residents there will, in effect, only have to squeeze out another one percent savings to comply with the governor’s mandate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few locales — like Santa Rosa, Livermore, and Santa Cruz, have already exceeded their assigned levels and could theoretically use more water this summer and still comply with the drought mandate — not that anybody’s openly encouraging that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other cities have their work cut out for them. Water consumption in Lodi, for example, actually rose by one percent, so the city will have to cut back by slightly more than its assigned 36 percent target, which is the highest tier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/California-Water-Restrictions-map-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-29971\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/California-Water-Restrictions-map-1-850x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Water Cuts\" width=\"350\" height=\"422\">\u003c/a>Last week, Governor Brown \u003ca title=\"Gov. Jerry Brown - release\" href=\"http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18936\">rolled out legislation\u003c/a> that could help cities attain their assigned goals, ratcheting up maximum fines that local officials are allowed to assess for unrepentant water wasters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be at least mid-July before there are indications of whether the new conservation measures are taking hold — just as the peak outdoor watering season is hitting its stride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And that’s when we really need to see significant reductions in outdoor water use,” warns Max Gomberg, a senior scientist at the State Water Resources Control Board. “If we don’t get those reductions during the summer, we’re simply not gonna make the overall reduction target.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The governor’s April 1 list of mandates is designed to cut statewide water use by 25 percent, on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You might think of this as just another installment on a long enterprise to live with the changing climate and with a drought of uncertain duration,” Brown told reporters after a meeting with California mayors last week. That last point is crucial; no one can say at this point whether we’re in the last year of a four-year drought, or year four of a ten-year “Big Dry,” \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/drought-lessons-from-down-under/\">such as Australians endured\u003c/a> at the start of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People face different environmental challenges,” Brown said, “and out of this very complex state we’re gonna do everything we can to save water and to get it done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting it done will now be largely in the hands of local water officials and consumers. The state has weighed in; now it’s on us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>See the \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">complete list\u003c/a> of cities and their assigned water conservation targets.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Governor Brown's New Climate Offensive in Five Jerryesque Quotes",
"headTitle": "Governor Brown’s New Climate Offensive in Five Jerryesque Quotes | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29879\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Brown_MilkenInst.edit_-1024x723.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-29879\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Brown_MilkenInst.edit_-1024x723.jpg\" alt=\"Governor Brown discussing his new greenhouse gas targets in Los Angeles. (Credit: Milken Inst.)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"723\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Governor Brown discussing his new greenhouse gas targets in Los Angeles. (Credit: Milken Inst.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Governor Jerry Brown is pursuing a new set of targets for reducing the amount of greenhouse gas released in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the Associated Press \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/04/29/brown-orders-ambitious-new-cuts-in-greenhouse-gases\">write-up\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-jerry-brown-orders-emission-targets-for-climate-change-20150429-story.html\">this\u003c/a> from the Los Angeles Times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a nutshell:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s plan is an extension of the state’s original “\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/?s=AB32\">AB 32\u003c/a>” goals – passed into law when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor – that called for the state to return to its 1990 levels of carbon pollution by 2020. A follow-up Schwarzenegger plan tightened the screws even further, calling for an eighty-percent reduction by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“When Hitler was marching on Germany, we didn’t have any airplane factories…we transformed the whole economy.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://documents.latimes.com/gov-jerry-browns-executive-order-greenhouse-gas-emissions/\">Yesterday’s executive order\u003c/a> sets a concrete “intermediate target” between those two goals. By 2030, Brown wants California – “the state of imagination” as he put it — to be putting out 40 percent less greenhouse gas than we did in 1990.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/conferences/global-conference/global-conference-2015/panel-detail/5462\">Speaking \u003c/a>at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles, Brown compared the fight against climate change to World War II, railed against climate change deniers in Washington, and suggested Californians might need to open their minds to the idea of drinking recycled toilet water, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some highlights:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Expressing contempt for lawmakers in Washington who still debate whether climate change is real or driven by human activity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“In California, there is something called global warming. We’re four degrees warmer than we were historically. Our forest fire season is months longer. It’s almost year-round. This is real stuff.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The new plan is ambitious, sure, he said. But we’ve done it before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“When Hitler was marching on Germany [sic], we didn’t have any airplane factories going and tank factories. But with Roosevelt leading, we transformed the whole economy. Dealing with the threat of climate change is going to require an analogous mobilization.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Meeting the new goals and responding to California’s epic drought will require cleaner cars, greater energy efficiency, and coming to terms with new \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/toilet-to-tap/\">sources of drinking water\u003c/a> that may make some Californians squeamish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“They don’t like to think of toilet to tap. You know, like drinking your toilet water. But you can make it as clean as the water on that table! You have to confidence in this filtration system!”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Comparing the slow crisis of climate change to headline news like the recent events in Baltimore:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003cem>You’ve got the problems in the Middle East, Iranian nuclear deal and all that…we’ve got violence in Baltimore. Those are hot and they’re immediate. But we’ve got a slow, rolling crisis that if we don’t deal with it, before we know it we will have passed a tipping point, an irreversible tendency that will be melting the Antarctic ice cap in Greenland, raising sea level, causing temperature rises. I don’t want to go through all the parade of horribles. But it’s serious, it’s catastrophic and it’s longer term.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>And finally, whether he, a self-described “old fogey,” can appreciate the kind of radical innovation it will take for Californians to find solutions for its drought woes and other environmental crises:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“I’m very optimistic on California because we’re not bound by the obvious. We’re not hampered by so many old-fogey ideas. And even though I’m kind of an old fogey, I’m still a radical thinker when it comes to California and what we can do.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown has not specified how to achieve his new emissions target. His 2030 target adds to an \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/01/05/governor-unveils-ambitious-new-climate-goals/\">ambitious list of climate goals\u003c/a> that he outlined in his State of the State address in January.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "In promoting his new greenhouse gas reduction targets, the governor invokes World War II, climate-change deniers in Washington, and the recycled toilet water in our future.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29879\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Brown_MilkenInst.edit_-1024x723.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-29879\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Brown_MilkenInst.edit_-1024x723.jpg\" alt=\"Governor Brown discussing his new greenhouse gas targets in Los Angeles. (Credit: Milken Inst.)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"723\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Governor Brown discussing his new greenhouse gas targets in Los Angeles. (Credit: Milken Inst.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Governor Jerry Brown is pursuing a new set of targets for reducing the amount of greenhouse gas released in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the Associated Press \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/04/29/brown-orders-ambitious-new-cuts-in-greenhouse-gases\">write-up\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-jerry-brown-orders-emission-targets-for-climate-change-20150429-story.html\">this\u003c/a> from the Los Angeles Times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a nutshell:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s plan is an extension of the state’s original “\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/?s=AB32\">AB 32\u003c/a>” goals – passed into law when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor – that called for the state to return to its 1990 levels of carbon pollution by 2020. A follow-up Schwarzenegger plan tightened the screws even further, calling for an eighty-percent reduction by 2050.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“When Hitler was marching on Germany, we didn’t have any airplane factories…we transformed the whole economy.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://documents.latimes.com/gov-jerry-browns-executive-order-greenhouse-gas-emissions/\">Yesterday’s executive order\u003c/a> sets a concrete “intermediate target” between those two goals. By 2030, Brown wants California – “the state of imagination” as he put it — to be putting out 40 percent less greenhouse gas than we did in 1990.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/conferences/global-conference/global-conference-2015/panel-detail/5462\">Speaking \u003c/a>at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles, Brown compared the fight against climate change to World War II, railed against climate change deniers in Washington, and suggested Californians might need to open their minds to the idea of drinking recycled toilet water, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some highlights:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Expressing contempt for lawmakers in Washington who still debate whether climate change is real or driven by human activity:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“In California, there is something called global warming. We’re four degrees warmer than we were historically. Our forest fire season is months longer. It’s almost year-round. This is real stuff.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The new plan is ambitious, sure, he said. But we’ve done it before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“When Hitler was marching on Germany [sic], we didn’t have any airplane factories going and tank factories. But with Roosevelt leading, we transformed the whole economy. Dealing with the threat of climate change is going to require an analogous mobilization.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Meeting the new goals and responding to California’s epic drought will require cleaner cars, greater energy efficiency, and coming to terms with new \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/toilet-to-tap/\">sources of drinking water\u003c/a> that may make some Californians squeamish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“They don’t like to think of toilet to tap. You know, like drinking your toilet water. But you can make it as clean as the water on that table! You have to confidence in this filtration system!”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Comparing the slow crisis of climate change to headline news like the recent events in Baltimore:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003cem>You’ve got the problems in the Middle East, Iranian nuclear deal and all that…we’ve got violence in Baltimore. Those are hot and they’re immediate. But we’ve got a slow, rolling crisis that if we don’t deal with it, before we know it we will have passed a tipping point, an irreversible tendency that will be melting the Antarctic ice cap in Greenland, raising sea level, causing temperature rises. I don’t want to go through all the parade of horribles. But it’s serious, it’s catastrophic and it’s longer term.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>And finally, whether he, a self-described “old fogey,” can appreciate the kind of radical innovation it will take for Californians to find solutions for its drought woes and other environmental crises:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cem>“I’m very optimistic on California because we’re not bound by the obvious. We’re not hampered by so many old-fogey ideas. And even though I’m kind of an old fogey, I’m still a radical thinker when it comes to California and what we can do.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown has not specified how to achieve his new emissions target. His 2030 target adds to an \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/01/05/governor-unveils-ambitious-new-climate-goals/\">ambitious list of climate goals\u003c/a> that he outlined in his State of the State address in January.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "State Mostly Standing Its Ground on Tough New Water Rules",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29783\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1491px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14985_IMG_2941.JPG.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29783\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14985_IMG_2941.JPG.jpg\" alt=\"Gov. Jerry Brown holds a news conference at the state Capitol on Apr. 28, 2015 after meeting with California mayors about new efforts to help local drought relief programs. (John Myers/KQED)\" width=\"1491\" height=\"1030\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gov. Jerry Brown holds a news conference at the state Capitol after meeting with California mayors about new efforts to help local drought relief programs. (John Myers/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>State regulators have come up with a “final” version of their gameplan to implement Governor Jerry Brown’s \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/04/18/regulators-float-new-drought-rules-after-feedback-frenzy/\">sweeping April 1 mandate\u003c/a> to save water. This is the version that the State Water Resources Control Board will likely vote to approve during it’s two-day meeting next week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 31-point plan is aimed at cutting statewide water use by 25 percent on average, versus 2013 levels. It assigns local water agencies mandatory conservation targets based on how much water they’ve been using on a per-capita basis. The current range runs from a low of eight percent to a high of 36 percent monthly savings, starting this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Individual cities and water districts have been lobbying for easier thresholds, touting their ongoing efforts to save water. But the \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">newest revision\u003c/a> of proposed state regulations appears to hold firm for the most part, on quotas that local water suppliers will have to attain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One change allows local agencies to report total water use by commercial and industrial consumers, as opposed to breaking out the data by customer. Officials say they might revisit that once local agencies refine their data collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just hours before the proposed regulation’s third iteration was unveiled, Brown emerged from a meeting with mayors from around the state with \u003ca title=\"Gov. Jerry Brown - release\" href=\"http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18936\">new legislation\u003c/a> in hand that could help cities in their efforts to save water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot to be done,” Brown told reporters, in California’s quest for drought resilience. The governor called this latest step, “another installment on a long enterprise to live with the changing climate and a drought of uncertain duration.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed legislation would add some “teeth” to local enforcement of new water conservation rules, including:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>A new penalty of up to $10,000 per violation, up from the $500 per day maximum established last year\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Broader authority to issue local fines without specific court approval\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Latitude for local agencies to deputize “water cops” to enforce conservation rules\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>The legislation would also allow cities to fast-track environmental reviews for water-saving projects — but it did not appear that Brown was offering any easing of the new conservation quotas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regarding the steep jump in the maximum fine for water hogs, Brown said, “You can be sure that only the worst offender will be getting that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fines are a tool,” added Felicia Marcus, who chairs the water board. “And they’re the last tool you use.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marcus’ board will continue to take comments on the new drought regulations right up until the final vote, during a two-day meeting scheduled for May 5-6.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29783\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1491px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14985_IMG_2941.JPG.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29783\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14985_IMG_2941.JPG.jpg\" alt=\"Gov. Jerry Brown holds a news conference at the state Capitol on Apr. 28, 2015 after meeting with California mayors about new efforts to help local drought relief programs. (John Myers/KQED)\" width=\"1491\" height=\"1030\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gov. Jerry Brown holds a news conference at the state Capitol after meeting with California mayors about new efforts to help local drought relief programs. (John Myers/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>State regulators have come up with a “final” version of their gameplan to implement Governor Jerry Brown’s \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/04/18/regulators-float-new-drought-rules-after-feedback-frenzy/\">sweeping April 1 mandate\u003c/a> to save water. This is the version that the State Water Resources Control Board will likely vote to approve during it’s two-day meeting next week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 31-point plan is aimed at cutting statewide water use by 25 percent on average, versus 2013 levels. It assigns local water agencies mandatory conservation targets based on how much water they’ve been using on a per-capita basis. The current range runs from a low of eight percent to a high of 36 percent monthly savings, starting this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Individual cities and water districts have been lobbying for easier thresholds, touting their ongoing efforts to save water. But the \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - tiers\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/supplier_tiers_20150428.pdf\">newest revision\u003c/a> of proposed state regulations appears to hold firm for the most part, on quotas that local water suppliers will have to attain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One change allows local agencies to report total water use by commercial and industrial consumers, as opposed to breaking out the data by customer. Officials say they might revisit that once local agencies refine their data collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just hours before the proposed regulation’s third iteration was unveiled, Brown emerged from a meeting with mayors from around the state with \u003ca title=\"Gov. Jerry Brown - release\" href=\"http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18936\">new legislation\u003c/a> in hand that could help cities in their efforts to save water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot to be done,” Brown told reporters, in California’s quest for drought resilience. The governor called this latest step, “another installment on a long enterprise to live with the changing climate and a drought of uncertain duration.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed legislation would add some “teeth” to local enforcement of new water conservation rules, including:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>A new penalty of up to $10,000 per violation, up from the $500 per day maximum established last year\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Broader authority to issue local fines without specific court approval\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Latitude for local agencies to deputize “water cops” to enforce conservation rules\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>The legislation would also allow cities to fast-track environmental reviews for water-saving projects — but it did not appear that Brown was offering any easing of the new conservation quotas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regarding the steep jump in the maximum fine for water hogs, Brown said, “You can be sure that only the worst offender will be getting that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fines are a tool,” added Felicia Marcus, who chairs the water board. “And they’re the last tool you use.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marcus’ board will continue to take comments on the new drought regulations right up until the final vote, during a two-day meeting scheduled for May 5-6.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Amid California’s Drought, Should Cemeteries Stay Green?",
"headTitle": "Amid California’s Drought, Should Cemeteries Stay Green? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/04/20150427ScienceCemeteries.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29621\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1457px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/CypressLawn.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29621\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/CypressLawn.jpg\" alt=\"A worker sprays down part of Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma. Officials hope to cut back water-use there, but not so much the grass goes brown. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\" width=\"1457\" height=\"1080\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A worker sprays down part of Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma. Officials hope to cut back water-use there, but not so much the grass goes brown. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Across California, the people who take care of cemeteries are stuck. The state’s new drought mandate is forcing them to cut back on sprinkling, and many expect their grass to go brown this summer. It’s a wrenching call: the concern is that visiting family members who see parched grass on their loved ones’ graves may feel insult on top of loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The \u003ca href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/emergency_mandatory_regulations.shtml\">new restrictions\u003c/a> haven’t come in yet, we’re just anticipating them,” says Tyler Cassity, head caretaker at Fernwood in Marin County. He currently waters the grounds for about ten minutes, twice a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re probably going to tick that schedule down by 25 percent,” Cassity says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s already warning people that by summer, the green grass could be gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People bought land and were buried with an expectation that their graves would be maintained in a style much like their yards are,” Cassity says. “If it’s not maintained, some people see that as an insult or an umbrage to the dead — not taking care of them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29620\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 284px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/TylerCassity.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29620\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/TylerCassity.jpg\" alt=\"Tyler Cassity sees after both Fernwood in Marin County and Hollywood Forever. He says the drought mandate means cemeteries can't postpone water-saving projects. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\" width=\"284\" height=\"291\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tyler Cassity sees after both Fernwood in Marin County and Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles. He says the drought mandate means cemeteries can’t postpone water-saving projects. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While Fernwood includes a traditional cemetery with sprinklers and grass, parts of the cemetery aren’t irrigated at all. Its steep, wooded hills are for people who prefer simple burials; some with a shroud instead of a casket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cassity says Fernwood’s hills are a stark contrast to a Los Angeles cemetery called \u003ca href=\"http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/174/birthdays-anniversaries-and-milestones?act=2#play\">Hollywood Forever\u003c/a>, where he’s also head caretaker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a green, manicured landscape lawn in the middle of basically an arid desert region,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now he’s looking into sea grasses, which could get by on brackish water he hopes can be pumped from a hundred feet below the graveyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, from dialing back sprinkling and adding drought-tolerant flowers to using reclaimed water and new kinds of turf, California’s cemeteries are looking for ways to get by with less water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Worthy Shrines\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s two thousand graveyards include \u003ca href=\"http://www.cem.va.gov/cems/state.asp?State=CA\">nine national cemeteries\u003c/a> for veterans. They’re among California’s most steadfastly kempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have a mandate to maintain our cemeteries as national shrines,” says Brad Phillips, regional director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cem.va.gov/\">National Cemeteries Administration\u003c/a>, which is part of the Veterans Administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He told me he loses sleep over the prospect of the grass dying. His office gets letters and phone calls about it too, from veterans and their families. “They get very unhappy when the turf starts to go brown,” Phillips says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s historic drought began four years ago, and Phillips says national cemeteries in California have already cut back water use, some by more than a third. Two in Southern California — Riverside and Miramar — use recycled water. A relatively new national cemetery in Bakersfield doesn’t bother with grass at all; it was designed to be part of the area’s dry native landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29622\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1420px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/GoldenGate.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29622\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/GoldenGate.jpg\" alt=\"Tens of thousands of veterans, along with their spouses and children, are buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. Veterans Administration officials say they get phone calls and letters if a site doesn't look cared for. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\" width=\"1420\" height=\"1080\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tens of thousands of veterans, along with their spouses and children, are buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. Veterans Administration officials say they get phone calls and letters if a site doesn’t look cared for. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One national cemetery in San Diego has some artificial turf, albeit not atop anyone’s grave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Gaussa, a plant and soil specialist who works with Phillips says he wonders if there shouldn’t be different rules than, say, a suburban yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would drive down a neighborhood first,” Gaussa says, “and question why people are keeping green lawns with no purpose in front of their homes. We have a real purpose and a mission here at the cemeteries to create a place that’s worthy of the people that rest here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>For the Living\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to read the state’s move to crimp cemeteries’ water use is as if to say, “Right now we need the water for the living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I tested this idea on the head of the California Cemeteries and Mortuaries Association, Darin Drabing. “Cemeteries \u003cem>are\u003c/em> for the living,” he replies, saying that people go to cemeteries to jog, to ride bikes to spend quiet time and to pay tribute to loved ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many cemeteries are park-like settings in the middle of urban areas. In many areas, cemeteries are the green spaces that the public has,” Drabing says. “So I would take umbrage to someone who thinks cemeteries are for the dead — they’re actually for the living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One example of this kind of space is Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. The place boasts 150 years of history, the same designer as New York’s Central Park, several fountains, and a panoramic view from the top of a hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a Saturday afternoon there I saw dog-walkers, picnickers, and a guy who said he was looking for a golf ball. From the spigots along the graveyard’s labyrinthine tangle of roads hang faded red tags, warning, “Reclaimed water. Do not drink.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘We have a real purpose and a mission here at the cemeteries to create a place that’s worthy of the people that rest here.’ \u003ccite>— Michael Gaussa,Plant and soil specialist \u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Visitors Mylene Vandenberg and Brian Anderson say they’re glad the cemetery recycles water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they weren’t recycling though,” says Vandenberg, “I would say they have to do it. I don’t think anybody has a choice anymore, I really don’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the seven people I struck up conversations with at Mountain View that afternoon, none seemed shocked at the thought of cemeteries going brown this summer. More than one told me if the drought drags on much longer, it’s not the grass they’ll be worried about, but the trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“We’ll Manage This”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The town of Colma was founded a century ago as a necropolis — a place for San Francisco to bury its dead. It has a thousand dead residents for every living one, and all types of graveyards — even a pet cemetery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day I visited Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, a man with a hose was spraying flowers arranged to spell “Cypress Lawn” on the grassy hillside. While the state water board won’t vote on the final restrictions until the beginning of May, Cypress Lawn president Ken Varner told me he doesn’t think Colma will go brown. Cypress Lawn has its own well, although the drought rules might limit sprinkling to two days a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big picture, in terms of California’s water use, Varner says he figures graveyards are small potatoes next to agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those are the guys I feel for. I mean, we’re going to be able to manage this. The cemeteries here in Colma, the cemeteries in the state, we’ll manage this,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll be able to make it out of this drought. Because one thing I’m sure is it’s going to rain here in San Francisco. It always does.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Amid California’s Drought, Should Cemeteries Stay Green? | KQED",
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"headline": "Amid California’s Drought, Should Cemeteries Stay Green?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29621\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1457px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/CypressLawn.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29621\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/CypressLawn.jpg\" alt=\"A worker sprays down part of Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma. Officials hope to cut back water-use there, but not so much the grass goes brown. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\" width=\"1457\" height=\"1080\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A worker sprays down part of Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma. Officials hope to cut back water-use there, but not so much the grass goes brown. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Across California, the people who take care of cemeteries are stuck. The state’s new drought mandate is forcing them to cut back on sprinkling, and many expect their grass to go brown this summer. It’s a wrenching call: the concern is that visiting family members who see parched grass on their loved ones’ graves may feel insult on top of loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The \u003ca href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/emergency_mandatory_regulations.shtml\">new restrictions\u003c/a> haven’t come in yet, we’re just anticipating them,” says Tyler Cassity, head caretaker at Fernwood in Marin County. He currently waters the grounds for about ten minutes, twice a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re probably going to tick that schedule down by 25 percent,” Cassity says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s already warning people that by summer, the green grass could be gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People bought land and were buried with an expectation that their graves would be maintained in a style much like their yards are,” Cassity says. “If it’s not maintained, some people see that as an insult or an umbrage to the dead — not taking care of them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29620\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 284px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/TylerCassity.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29620\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/TylerCassity.jpg\" alt=\"Tyler Cassity sees after both Fernwood in Marin County and Hollywood Forever. He says the drought mandate means cemeteries can't postpone water-saving projects. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\" width=\"284\" height=\"291\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tyler Cassity sees after both Fernwood in Marin County and Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles. He says the drought mandate means cemeteries can’t postpone water-saving projects. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While Fernwood includes a traditional cemetery with sprinklers and grass, parts of the cemetery aren’t irrigated at all. Its steep, wooded hills are for people who prefer simple burials; some with a shroud instead of a casket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cassity says Fernwood’s hills are a stark contrast to a Los Angeles cemetery called \u003ca href=\"http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/174/birthdays-anniversaries-and-milestones?act=2#play\">Hollywood Forever\u003c/a>, where he’s also head caretaker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a green, manicured landscape lawn in the middle of basically an arid desert region,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now he’s looking into sea grasses, which could get by on brackish water he hopes can be pumped from a hundred feet below the graveyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, from dialing back sprinkling and adding drought-tolerant flowers to using reclaimed water and new kinds of turf, California’s cemeteries are looking for ways to get by with less water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Worthy Shrines\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s two thousand graveyards include \u003ca href=\"http://www.cem.va.gov/cems/state.asp?State=CA\">nine national cemeteries\u003c/a> for veterans. They’re among California’s most steadfastly kempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have a mandate to maintain our cemeteries as national shrines,” says Brad Phillips, regional director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cem.va.gov/\">National Cemeteries Administration\u003c/a>, which is part of the Veterans Administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He told me he loses sleep over the prospect of the grass dying. His office gets letters and phone calls about it too, from veterans and their families. “They get very unhappy when the turf starts to go brown,” Phillips says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s historic drought began four years ago, and Phillips says national cemeteries in California have already cut back water use, some by more than a third. Two in Southern California — Riverside and Miramar — use recycled water. A relatively new national cemetery in Bakersfield doesn’t bother with grass at all; it was designed to be part of the area’s dry native landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29622\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1420px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/GoldenGate.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29622\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/GoldenGate.jpg\" alt=\"Tens of thousands of veterans, along with their spouses and children, are buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. Veterans Administration officials say they get phone calls and letters if a site doesn't look cared for. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\" width=\"1420\" height=\"1080\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tens of thousands of veterans, along with their spouses and children, are buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. Veterans Administration officials say they get phone calls and letters if a site doesn’t look cared for. (Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One national cemetery in San Diego has some artificial turf, albeit not atop anyone’s grave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Gaussa, a plant and soil specialist who works with Phillips says he wonders if there shouldn’t be different rules than, say, a suburban yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I would drive down a neighborhood first,” Gaussa says, “and question why people are keeping green lawns with no purpose in front of their homes. We have a real purpose and a mission here at the cemeteries to create a place that’s worthy of the people that rest here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>For the Living\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to read the state’s move to crimp cemeteries’ water use is as if to say, “Right now we need the water for the living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I tested this idea on the head of the California Cemeteries and Mortuaries Association, Darin Drabing. “Cemeteries \u003cem>are\u003c/em> for the living,” he replies, saying that people go to cemeteries to jog, to ride bikes to spend quiet time and to pay tribute to loved ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many cemeteries are park-like settings in the middle of urban areas. In many areas, cemeteries are the green spaces that the public has,” Drabing says. “So I would take umbrage to someone who thinks cemeteries are for the dead — they’re actually for the living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One example of this kind of space is Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. The place boasts 150 years of history, the same designer as New York’s Central Park, several fountains, and a panoramic view from the top of a hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a Saturday afternoon there I saw dog-walkers, picnickers, and a guy who said he was looking for a golf ball. From the spigots along the graveyard’s labyrinthine tangle of roads hang faded red tags, warning, “Reclaimed water. Do not drink.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘We have a real purpose and a mission here at the cemeteries to create a place that’s worthy of the people that rest here.’ \u003ccite>— Michael Gaussa,Plant and soil specialist \u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Visitors Mylene Vandenberg and Brian Anderson say they’re glad the cemetery recycles water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they weren’t recycling though,” says Vandenberg, “I would say they have to do it. I don’t think anybody has a choice anymore, I really don’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the seven people I struck up conversations with at Mountain View that afternoon, none seemed shocked at the thought of cemeteries going brown this summer. More than one told me if the drought drags on much longer, it’s not the grass they’ll be worried about, but the trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“We’ll Manage This”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The town of Colma was founded a century ago as a necropolis — a place for San Francisco to bury its dead. It has a thousand dead residents for every living one, and all types of graveyards — even a pet cemetery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day I visited Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, a man with a hose was spraying flowers arranged to spell “Cypress Lawn” on the grassy hillside. While the state water board won’t vote on the final restrictions until the beginning of May, Cypress Lawn president Ken Varner told me he doesn’t think Colma will go brown. Cypress Lawn has its own well, although the drought rules might limit sprinkling to two days a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Big picture, in terms of California’s water use, Varner says he figures graveyards are small potatoes next to agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those are the guys I feel for. I mean, we’re going to be able to manage this. The cemeteries here in Colma, the cemeteries in the state, we’ll manage this,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll be able to make it out of this drought. Because one thing I’m sure is it’s going to rain here in San Francisco. It always does.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Bay Area: Ground Zero for Earth Day?",
"headTitle": "The Bay Area: Ground Zero for Earth Day? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29508\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/11100354_906310292767595_495524832380603643_n.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29508 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/11100354_906310292767595_495524832380603643_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saturday’s Earth Day celebration at The David Brower Center in Berkeley (Gael McKeon/The David Brower Center)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gaylord Nelson, the Wisconsin senator who created \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/earth-day-tv-special-where-weve-been-where-were-headed/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth Day\u003c/a>, never envisioned it as an annual event.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1970 he proposed a national teach-in, a day for universities across the country to hold “soul-searching” discussions about environmental issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the day was such a hit—35,000 speakers and 20 million participants attended over 12,000 events across the country—that he thought it should be an annual event. And the nation agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This April 22 is the nation’s 46th Earth Day, the world’s most celebrated secular holiday, according to the Earth Day Network. But the ramifications of the first Earth Day’s success were much larger than the holiday itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There really wasn’t an environmental movement before Earth Day,” says \u003ca href=\"http://www.history.udel.edu/adamrome/fac-bio/adam-rome/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adam Rome\u003c/a>, a professor of environmental history at the University of Delaware, and author of \u003cem>The Genius of Earth Day\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘There really wasn’t an environmental movement before Earth Day.’\u003ccite>– Adam Rome,Environmental historian\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Most of the major environmental regulations and organizations we have today, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Resources Defense Council, grew out of that one day in April 1970.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People were already concerned with specific local problems, like polluted water and air, Rome says, but Earth Day was the first time these concerns coalesced into “environmental issues.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bringing people together to talk about the environment as a whole and how it could be protected had a powerful impact on nearly everyone involved, including U.S. lawmakers. On the original Earth Day, Congress shut down and two-thirds of its members spoke at Earth Day events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nixon formed the Environmental Protection Agency nine months after the event. The Clean Air Act was passed within the year, and the Clean Water Act put into place just two years later. Meanwhile, in the Bay Area, environmentalism was already a few steps ahead of the rest of the nation, but the energy from Earth Day gave the movement momentum that’s still carrying it forward today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Earth Day in the Bay Area: A Green Hub\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29507\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 281px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/BrowerEarthDay.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29507 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/BrowerEarthDay.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"422\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The David Brower Center in Berkeley had its first Earth Day celebration on Saturday. Street art and flowers were part of the fun (Gael McKeon/The David Brower Center)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Part of what’s amazing about Earth Day in the Bay Area is in many ways this is where the environmental movement in the U.S was born,” says Jackie Hasa of the David Brower Center in Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before Nelson had his environmental awakening in Santa Barbara, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/04/16/celebrate-earth-day-at-john-muir-family-home/\">John Muir\u003c/a> in Martinez dreamt up the idea for the National Parks Service. Frederick Law Olmsted in San Francisco proposed Golden Gate Park and Caroline Livermore in Marin successfully campaigned to preserve green space on Angel Island.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This conservationist, activist spirit of the Bay Area may have been part of Nelson’s inspiration. He and the student he selected to coordinate the first Earth Day, Denis Hayes, both spent some of their formative years in the Bay Area—Nelson went to college at San Jose State University and Hayes went to Stanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students at Nelson’s alma mater were so excited about Earth Day, they celebrated a few months ahead of the rest of the nation: they started drumming up support for environmental causes in February 1970 by purchasing a new Ford Maverick and then burying it in the campus lawn to protest, “ecologically insane behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This event, and the area’s long history of conservationism, put the Bay Area on the map as a center of environmental action before the first Earth Day and it has remained that way ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Earth Day 1970 injected new energy and enthusiasm–the Sierra Club, started by John Muir in San Francisco, tripled in size, and, led by David Brower (a Berkeley native) became an overtly environmentalist organization. A group of green-minded San Francisco lawyers, inspired by all of the Earth Day action, formed Earthjustice in 1971.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, 45 years later, Bay Area cities consistently \u003ca href=\"http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-02/americas-50-greenest-cities?image=2%22\">rank among the greenest in the nation\u003c/a>. But cities and individuals can always do more, and Hasa and Rome agree the most important function of Earth Day is to provide a day of reflection, to “think about the issues we are still facing today, like climate change,” Hasa says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rome says this is what Nelson had in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What was so great about the first Earth Day was it forced people to ask themselves, ‘Why does this matter? What’s at stake? What can I do?’,” he says. “Nelson trusted that if people just got together and talked about environmental issues, they would realize they cared more than they thought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hasa hopes that this Earth Day, Bay Area residents will take this opportunity to “both celebrate nature, and think about how we can be even better stewards of nature in the future.” Today, the Bay Area still is “a hub for the movement, both for the nation and the state, ” she says. “So the ripple effects of what happens here have a big impact.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area residents have a host of Earth Day celebrations to choose from, if they are so inclined:\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>San Francisco\u003c/div>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1018934201\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth Day Film Series\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://sfpl.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Crafty Friday: Earth Day\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://www.parksconservancy.org/events/volunteer-events/special-events/mt-tam-earth-day-service.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mt. Tamalpais Earth Day\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://www.pacificabeachcoalition.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pacifica Beach Coalition Earth Day of Action and EcoFest\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://myearthdaymarin.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">My Earth Day Marin\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>Alameda\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://alamedaca.gov/recreation/earth-day-festival\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alameda Earth Day Festival\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>Berkeley\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://serc.berkeley.edu/earthweek/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UC Berkeley Earth Week\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>San Jose\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://www.ercsjsu.org/earth-day.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth Day San Jose\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or find Earth Day events across the country at \u003ca href=\"http://www.earthday.org/greencities/events/#United%20States\">Earth Day Network.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29508\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/11100354_906310292767595_495524832380603643_n.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29508 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/11100354_906310292767595_495524832380603643_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saturday’s Earth Day celebration at The David Brower Center in Berkeley (Gael McKeon/The David Brower Center)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gaylord Nelson, the Wisconsin senator who created \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/earth-day-tv-special-where-weve-been-where-were-headed/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth Day\u003c/a>, never envisioned it as an annual event.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1970 he proposed a national teach-in, a day for universities across the country to hold “soul-searching” discussions about environmental issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the day was such a hit—35,000 speakers and 20 million participants attended over 12,000 events across the country—that he thought it should be an annual event. And the nation agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This April 22 is the nation’s 46th Earth Day, the world’s most celebrated secular holiday, according to the Earth Day Network. But the ramifications of the first Earth Day’s success were much larger than the holiday itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There really wasn’t an environmental movement before Earth Day,” says \u003ca href=\"http://www.history.udel.edu/adamrome/fac-bio/adam-rome/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adam Rome\u003c/a>, a professor of environmental history at the University of Delaware, and author of \u003cem>The Genius of Earth Day\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘There really wasn’t an environmental movement before Earth Day.’\u003ccite>– Adam Rome,Environmental historian\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Most of the major environmental regulations and organizations we have today, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Resources Defense Council, grew out of that one day in April 1970.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People were already concerned with specific local problems, like polluted water and air, Rome says, but Earth Day was the first time these concerns coalesced into “environmental issues.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bringing people together to talk about the environment as a whole and how it could be protected had a powerful impact on nearly everyone involved, including U.S. lawmakers. On the original Earth Day, Congress shut down and two-thirds of its members spoke at Earth Day events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nixon formed the Environmental Protection Agency nine months after the event. The Clean Air Act was passed within the year, and the Clean Water Act put into place just two years later. Meanwhile, in the Bay Area, environmentalism was already a few steps ahead of the rest of the nation, but the energy from Earth Day gave the movement momentum that’s still carrying it forward today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Earth Day in the Bay Area: A Green Hub\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29507\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 281px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/BrowerEarthDay.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29507 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/BrowerEarthDay.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"422\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The David Brower Center in Berkeley had its first Earth Day celebration on Saturday. Street art and flowers were part of the fun (Gael McKeon/The David Brower Center)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Part of what’s amazing about Earth Day in the Bay Area is in many ways this is where the environmental movement in the U.S was born,” says Jackie Hasa of the David Brower Center in Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before Nelson had his environmental awakening in Santa Barbara, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/04/16/celebrate-earth-day-at-john-muir-family-home/\">John Muir\u003c/a> in Martinez dreamt up the idea for the National Parks Service. Frederick Law Olmsted in San Francisco proposed Golden Gate Park and Caroline Livermore in Marin successfully campaigned to preserve green space on Angel Island.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This conservationist, activist spirit of the Bay Area may have been part of Nelson’s inspiration. He and the student he selected to coordinate the first Earth Day, Denis Hayes, both spent some of their formative years in the Bay Area—Nelson went to college at San Jose State University and Hayes went to Stanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students at Nelson’s alma mater were so excited about Earth Day, they celebrated a few months ahead of the rest of the nation: they started drumming up support for environmental causes in February 1970 by purchasing a new Ford Maverick and then burying it in the campus lawn to protest, “ecologically insane behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This event, and the area’s long history of conservationism, put the Bay Area on the map as a center of environmental action before the first Earth Day and it has remained that way ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Earth Day 1970 injected new energy and enthusiasm–the Sierra Club, started by John Muir in San Francisco, tripled in size, and, led by David Brower (a Berkeley native) became an overtly environmentalist organization. A group of green-minded San Francisco lawyers, inspired by all of the Earth Day action, formed Earthjustice in 1971.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, 45 years later, Bay Area cities consistently \u003ca href=\"http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-02/americas-50-greenest-cities?image=2%22\">rank among the greenest in the nation\u003c/a>. But cities and individuals can always do more, and Hasa and Rome agree the most important function of Earth Day is to provide a day of reflection, to “think about the issues we are still facing today, like climate change,” Hasa says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rome says this is what Nelson had in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What was so great about the first Earth Day was it forced people to ask themselves, ‘Why does this matter? What’s at stake? What can I do?’,” he says. “Nelson trusted that if people just got together and talked about environmental issues, they would realize they cared more than they thought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hasa hopes that this Earth Day, Bay Area residents will take this opportunity to “both celebrate nature, and think about how we can be even better stewards of nature in the future.” Today, the Bay Area still is “a hub for the movement, both for the nation and the state, ” she says. “So the ripple effects of what happens here have a big impact.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area residents have a host of Earth Day celebrations to choose from, if they are so inclined:\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>San Francisco\u003c/div>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1018934201\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth Day Film Series\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://sfpl.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Crafty Friday: Earth Day\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://www.parksconservancy.org/events/volunteer-events/special-events/mt-tam-earth-day-service.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mt. Tamalpais Earth Day\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://www.pacificabeachcoalition.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pacifica Beach Coalition Earth Day of Action and EcoFest\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://myearthdaymarin.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">My Earth Day Marin\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>Alameda\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://alamedaca.gov/recreation/earth-day-festival\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alameda Earth Day Festival\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>Berkeley\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://serc.berkeley.edu/earthweek/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UC Berkeley Earth Week\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>San Jose\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://www.ercsjsu.org/earth-day.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth Day San Jose\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or find Earth Day events across the country at \u003ca href=\"http://www.earthday.org/greencities/events/#United%20States\">Earth Day Network.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "When City Codes Clash With State Water Rules, Confusion Reigns",
"headTitle": "When City Codes Clash With State Water Rules, Confusion Reigns | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29487\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14889_photo-5.JPG-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29487\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14889_photo-5.JPG-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Tim Atkinson is tearing up his lawn in Hanford, which will save water but violate local landscape codes. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tim Atkinson is tearing up his lawn in Hanford, which will save water but violate local landscape codes. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In some California cities, brown is not quite the new green. In fact, it’s downright illegal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take the Kings County city of \u003ca href=\"http://www.ci.hanford.ca.us/\">Hanford\u003c/a>, where we found Tim Atkinson taking a pickaxe to his lawn, sweating and huffing as he hacked away at a stubborn root. He was pulling out some grass and putting in a rock planter to help save water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Inside, we’re going to put blue rock,” says Atkinson, a retired paint store owner. “It’ll be decorative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that in Hanford, it’s against the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The current code requires that you plant your front yard in primarily living materials, which include turf, shrubbery and trees,” explains Darlene Mata, Hanford’s community development director. She oversees code enforcement for this city of about 56,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mata and city manager Darrel Pyle drive me through town and stop in front of a house where the homeowners have clearly decided to turn off the sprinklers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way the ordinance is currently written,” says Pyle, “this lawn would be deemed to be unmaintained, but he’s not using any water to irrigate, so right now, we’re looking at what is the lesser of two evils?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Predicament for Cities\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mata points to a neighboring house with a rock garden like the one Tim Atkinson wants to put in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”ghbGXbuN5D5jKbPuvSIB2L2AZnIJWUQ7″]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem we have now, people are requesting to put concrete, rock fronts with minimal shrubbery or put artificial turf. All of those are non-living materials,” he says. “Currently we can’t approve that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who do put in fake grass or rock gardens run the risk of having to pull them out if the city catches them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The current ordinance requires that we tell people no, but we realize some of the things [homeowners] are asking us to do would be beneficial to the community and to the state as a whole,” says Mata.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So when our code is no longer logical, that’s the predicament we’re in,” adds Pyle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city’s stopped sending warning letters to homeowners violating the “living landscape” ordinance and is no longer issuing $500 a day citations either. Instead, local officials are working on changing their ordinance. Hanford’s anticipating a \u003ca href=\"//www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/draft_usage_tiers.pdfor\">state mandate\u003c/a> to cut water use by 32 percent or face penalties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, Atkinson’s hoping city officials look the other way when it comes to his rock garden. From a water conservation perspective, he and his wife Edna are model citizens. They collect water while they’re waiting for the kitchen sink and shower to heat up and use it to hand-water their plants. According to his calculations, they’ve reduced their personal water consumption nearly 40 percent over the last two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Atkinson remembers how lush California seemed when he arrived as a child in the 1940s. He recalls going to an older brother’s house and marveling at his lawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The water was running, and sprinklers and this and that,” he recalls. He also remembers his brother’s response. “He said, ‘No problem, $2 a month, use all you want,'” says Atkinson, who retains his Oklahoma twang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back when water was $2 a month, use all you want, ordinances of grass and no rock probably made sense for beauty. Doesn’t make any sense today, does it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29489\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1889px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14888_photo-4.JPG-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29489\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14888_photo-4.JPG-qut.jpg\" alt='In cities that require \"living landscapes,\" rockscapes like this one in Hanford violate local ordinances. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)' width=\"1889\" height=\"1231\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In cities that require “living landscapes,” rockscapes like this one in Hanford violate local ordinances. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Change in the Wind\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear just how many California cities will have to change their local ordinances under the governor’s new drought mandate. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/ab_1881_bill.pdf\">bill\u003c/a> (mostly aimed at new developments) passed nearly a decade ago requiring cities and counties to adopt water-efficient landscape rules by 2010. But when \u003ca href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/DirectorLetterAdoption.pdf\">asked to send their plans\u003c/a> to the state Department of Water Resources, more than 150 cities \u003ca href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/LandscapOrdinanceReport_to_Leg-4-22-2011.pdf\">didn’t even respond\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just down the road from Hanford, in the town of \u003ca href=\"http://www.cityofcorcoran.com/\">Corcoran\u003c/a>, people come to pay their water bill at city hall. Many of them are farmworkers who pay in cash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the lobby, framed yellowed newspapers on the walls tell the history of this cotton town, built on top of what was once the \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-13/news/mn-28291_1_tulare-lake\">largest freshwater lake\u003c/a> in the West. One headline reads: “Farmers Fear Floods.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re used to having water come in abundance, and sometimes having too much water,” says Kindon Meik, city manager just down the road in Corcoran. “In fact, much of the western portion of the city is set up in the 100-year flood plain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a long time, Corcoran residents have pretty much been able to water whenever they wanted. City parks and schools are still exempt from all watering restrictions, but as of this month, residents are \u003ca href=\"http://www.cityofcorcoran.com/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=128&TargetID=1\">limited to three days a week\u003c/a>. The city can’t cut back watering days any further, under city code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very archaic,” says Meik of the code. “It’s set up on the idea that there’s going to be abundant water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, Corcoran — which is entirely reliant on groundwater — is drilling a new, deeper well to serve its 26,000 residents, half of whom are inmates at the state prison located there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state water board says Corcoran will likely need to cut water use by 36 percent — so Meik and the city council are scrambling to change the code before state-imposed drought rules kick in this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then he’s got to find money to help with local enforcement. Right now, four people staff the water department. They’re mostly focused on water treatment and delivery, not knocking on doors to catch water wasters.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29487\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14889_photo-5.JPG-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29487\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14889_photo-5.JPG-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Tim Atkinson is tearing up his lawn in Hanford, which will save water but violate local landscape codes. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tim Atkinson is tearing up his lawn in Hanford, which will save water but violate local landscape codes. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In some California cities, brown is not quite the new green. In fact, it’s downright illegal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take the Kings County city of \u003ca href=\"http://www.ci.hanford.ca.us/\">Hanford\u003c/a>, where we found Tim Atkinson taking a pickaxe to his lawn, sweating and huffing as he hacked away at a stubborn root. He was pulling out some grass and putting in a rock planter to help save water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Inside, we’re going to put blue rock,” says Atkinson, a retired paint store owner. “It’ll be decorative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that in Hanford, it’s against the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The current code requires that you plant your front yard in primarily living materials, which include turf, shrubbery and trees,” explains Darlene Mata, Hanford’s community development director. She oversees code enforcement for this city of about 56,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mata and city manager Darrel Pyle drive me through town and stop in front of a house where the homeowners have clearly decided to turn off the sprinklers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way the ordinance is currently written,” says Pyle, “this lawn would be deemed to be unmaintained, but he’s not using any water to irrigate, so right now, we’re looking at what is the lesser of two evils?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Predicament for Cities\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mata points to a neighboring house with a rock garden like the one Tim Atkinson wants to put in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem we have now, people are requesting to put concrete, rock fronts with minimal shrubbery or put artificial turf. All of those are non-living materials,” he says. “Currently we can’t approve that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who do put in fake grass or rock gardens run the risk of having to pull them out if the city catches them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The current ordinance requires that we tell people no, but we realize some of the things [homeowners] are asking us to do would be beneficial to the community and to the state as a whole,” says Mata.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So when our code is no longer logical, that’s the predicament we’re in,” adds Pyle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city’s stopped sending warning letters to homeowners violating the “living landscape” ordinance and is no longer issuing $500 a day citations either. Instead, local officials are working on changing their ordinance. Hanford’s anticipating a \u003ca href=\"//www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/emergency_regulations/draft_usage_tiers.pdfor\">state mandate\u003c/a> to cut water use by 32 percent or face penalties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, Atkinson’s hoping city officials look the other way when it comes to his rock garden. From a water conservation perspective, he and his wife Edna are model citizens. They collect water while they’re waiting for the kitchen sink and shower to heat up and use it to hand-water their plants. According to his calculations, they’ve reduced their personal water consumption nearly 40 percent over the last two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Atkinson remembers how lush California seemed when he arrived as a child in the 1940s. He recalls going to an older brother’s house and marveling at his lawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The water was running, and sprinklers and this and that,” he recalls. He also remembers his brother’s response. “He said, ‘No problem, $2 a month, use all you want,'” says Atkinson, who retains his Oklahoma twang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back when water was $2 a month, use all you want, ordinances of grass and no rock probably made sense for beauty. Doesn’t make any sense today, does it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29489\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1889px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14888_photo-4.JPG-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29489\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/RS14888_photo-4.JPG-qut.jpg\" alt='In cities that require \"living landscapes,\" rockscapes like this one in Hanford violate local ordinances. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)' width=\"1889\" height=\"1231\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In cities that require “living landscapes,” rockscapes like this one in Hanford violate local ordinances. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Change in the Wind\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear just how many California cities will have to change their local ordinances under the governor’s new drought mandate. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/ab_1881_bill.pdf\">bill\u003c/a> (mostly aimed at new developments) passed nearly a decade ago requiring cities and counties to adopt water-efficient landscape rules by 2010. But when \u003ca href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/DirectorLetterAdoption.pdf\">asked to send their plans\u003c/a> to the state Department of Water Resources, more than 150 cities \u003ca href=\"http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/docs/LandscapOrdinanceReport_to_Leg-4-22-2011.pdf\">didn’t even respond\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just down the road from Hanford, in the town of \u003ca href=\"http://www.cityofcorcoran.com/\">Corcoran\u003c/a>, people come to pay their water bill at city hall. Many of them are farmworkers who pay in cash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the lobby, framed yellowed newspapers on the walls tell the history of this cotton town, built on top of what was once the \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-13/news/mn-28291_1_tulare-lake\">largest freshwater lake\u003c/a> in the West. One headline reads: “Farmers Fear Floods.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re used to having water come in abundance, and sometimes having too much water,” says Kindon Meik, city manager just down the road in Corcoran. “In fact, much of the western portion of the city is set up in the 100-year flood plain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a long time, Corcoran residents have pretty much been able to water whenever they wanted. City parks and schools are still exempt from all watering restrictions, but as of this month, residents are \u003ca href=\"http://www.cityofcorcoran.com/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=128&TargetID=1\">limited to three days a week\u003c/a>. The city can’t cut back watering days any further, under city code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very archaic,” says Meik of the code. “It’s set up on the idea that there’s going to be abundant water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, Corcoran — which is entirely reliant on groundwater — is drilling a new, deeper well to serve its 26,000 residents, half of whom are inmates at the state prison located there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state water board says Corcoran will likely need to cut water use by 36 percent — so Meik and the city council are scrambling to change the code before state-imposed drought rules kick in this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then he’s got to find money to help with local enforcement. Right now, four people staff the water department. They’re mostly focused on water treatment and delivery, not knocking on doors to catch water wasters.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"soldout": {
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"key": "Restaurant Region",
"filters": [
"Any Region"
]
},
"cuisine": {
"key": "Restaurant Cuisine",
"filters": [
"Any Cuisine"
]
}
},
"restaurantDataById": {},
"restaurantIdsSorted": [],
"error": null
},
"userAgentReducer": {
"userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)",
"isBot": true
},
"requestOutcomesReducer": {
"notFound": []
}
}
