water

The Plague affects us all. Each day the local papers tell of us that “help is coming!” Yet, no clear direction has been given of what to do. At the same time reports arrive of citizens in other counties having access to inoculations. Hopefully delivery systems in Sonoma County will soon be active and lives will be saved.

Will there be water rationing?

The second problem facing all citizens, not agriculture alone, is the coming drought. This writer doesn’t know how little rain must fall for authorities to officially declare a drought exists. However, at this point in the rain year we may be there. The Santa Rosa PD reviewed the problem in a January Sunday edition (Jan. 17, 2021). Our water supplies from Lakes Mendocino and Sonoma are significantly dry and below normal.

One can view the seriousness of the problem by looking at rainfall figures here in the Springs. This writer has registered rainfall (or lack of it) every day with CoCoRAHS (Community Coordinated Rain and Hail Studies at Colorado State University) since rain year 2004-05. The data is transmitted to the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Continue Reading on Sonoma County Gazette

Santa Rosa may force a large apartment complex to house tenants in a hotel after property managers offered up two vacant units for showers to make up for days without hot water, despite the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Code enforcement staff Monday and Tuesday investigated two separate water-related issues affecting residents of the 390-unit Annadel Apartments complex on Jennings Avenue in north Santa Rosa, according to Jesse Oswald, the city’s chief building official.

“For something like this, we would want them to get it taken care of as immediately as possible,” Oswald said.

Continue Reading on Press Democrat

SANTA ROSA (KPIX 5) — Apart from wildfires, residents in one Santa Rosa neighborhood are dealing with another crisis: it could be weeks before people have access to  safe drinking water.

The flames were coming over a ridge when a group of men, led by a retired Cal Fire firefighter, saved more than 35 homes in the Stonegate neighborhood on Brand Road just off Hwy 12. They held off the flames until a full strike team arrived to take over.

What they could not save was the water well pump and holding tank at the top of the hill which supplied water to the entire subdivision. It was all destroyed and must be now replaced.

Continue Reading on CBS SF Bayarea

As we experience the “new normal” of destructive wildfires paired with recent record-breaking temperatures over the past few years in California, it’s easy to feel hopeless about the effects of climate change. According to Climate Ready Sonoma County: Climate Hazards and Vulnerabilities, a report prepared by North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative for the Sonoma County Regional Climate Protection Authority, climate change will affect Sonoma County by bringing higher average temperatures, more extreme heat events, more frequent and intense droughts, and more variable rain. This water year, Sonoma County only received one-third of our average annual rainfall, making it the third driest year on record for the last 127 years.

One small way to help our community mitigate and adapt to climate change is through gardening. Our residential landscapes are an opportunity to plant beautiful, low water use plants that attract bees and butterflies, and provide food and shelter for local birds. Our gardens are also an opportunity to slow, sink and spread rainwater offsetting water quality impacts to our creeks, and to provide shade for our sidewalks and houses to reduce high temperatures. Residential landscapes can also help reduce a property’s vulnerability to fire. Firescaping, the idea of designing a home landscape in such a way to reduce vulnerability to fire, can benefit the whole community.

Continue Reading on Sonoma County Gazette