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Jessica Schwartz
Irrigation Restrictions Coming As West Battles Historic Drought
California and much of the western U.S. are entering a period of historic drought that experts say will stretch tight water supplies, increase wildfire risk, and bring new water-use restrictions — particularly for outdoor landscape use — as the summer unfolds. Westlands Water District, which serves farms and rural communities on the west side of Fresno and Kings counties in CA, already announced a ban on outdoor landscape irrigation on May 26. Many other areas may soon follow suit. Drought Conditions Westlands’ move came in reaction to an announcement by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which allocates water supply to the Central Valley Project (CVP), that it would be cutting its supply to municipal and industrial entities from 55% to 25%. Though the initial CVP water supply had been announced in February, conditions have degraded since then, according to the Bureau, with the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Basin currently at its driest since 1977. Between the April 1 and May 1 forecasts, there was a 685,000 acre-feet reduction in the projected natural flow to the Sacramento, Feather, Yuba, and American rivers. According to The Mercury News, Sierra Nevada snowpack was just 59% of normal on April 1 — after the second dry winter in a row — and hot weather in May melted much of the snowpack significantly faster than was projected. “Due to the worsening drought conditions, inflow to our reservoirs was less than we expected,” Mary Lee Knecht, a Bureau spokeswoman told the newspaper. “Conditions are so dry, the ...
CA Lessons: Landscaping To Reduce Wildfire Risk
While wildfires happen every season in California, this year’s toll is particularly devastating. According to a briefing Monday by CA Governor Gavin Newsom, this time last year, CA had 4,292 wildfires burning across 56,000 acres. This year, there are 7,002 fires burning across more than 1.4 million acres. There have been seven deaths and over 12,000 structures destroyed. Two of the “lightning complex” fires burning around the San Francisco area are now recorded as the second and third largest in CA history. Unfortunately, there are no ways to fireproof a property, but the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources offers strategies to design and maintain landscapes for reduced vulnerability. A key component of this protection is the proper placement and maintenance of plants around the home. While many in CA now seek plants with a label assuring some level of fire resistance, it’s important to recognize that any plant will burn under the right conditions. During a wildfire, structures are threatened not only by the flaming front of the fire, but also by embers that are lofted ahead of the fire front and can come into contact with receptive fuels (e.g vegetation or mulch next to the house), igniting new fires. Traditional “defensible space” tactics are designed to mitigate threats from the front of the fire but do little to address vulnerabilities to wafting embers. Without attention to ember-related risks, defensible space efforts only address a portion of the threat—especially during wind-driven fires. A Three Zone Strategy ...
