THIS JUST IN … Fifth Memo from Board of Consultants on Oroville Spillways Available.
From the Department of Water Resources: The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) today posted the fifth memo prepared by the independent Board of Consultants (BOC) regarding the spillways at Lake Oroville.
Following prior protocol set for the release of all BOC documents, the memo has been released with Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII) redacted.
The BOC is tasked with providing feedback and oversight on DWR’s design and construction plans for recovery of the Lake Oroville spillways.
The BOC uses an iterative process to collect and provide this feedback, and this is the fifth memo prepared for DWR in that process.
The fifth memo from the Board of Consultants is posted here: http://www.water.ca.gov/oroville-spillway/bocreports.cfm Along with the redacted memo, DWR has also posted a summary of the memo.
——————————————– Sign up for daily email service and you’ll always be one of the first to know!
Sign up for daily emails and get all the Notebook’s aggregated and original water news content delivered to your email box by 9AM.
Breaking news alerts like this one, too.
Sign me up!

Keith Fuller: In times of drought, learn from the bonsai.
It may be a good time to assess what areas of your lawn need grass and perhaps converting affected areas to landscaped beds, which require less water.
Planning on ways to conserve water now would be prudent.
If you are familiar with irrigation heads, those used to water grass put out many more gallons of water per hour than ones used in landscape beds.
These are ideal areas for planting drought-tolerant groundcovers.
Corners are areas where it is difficult to irrigate effectively.
If you do not want to modify your landscape but don’t want areas of brown grass, there may be another option to consider.
If you know we are in a drought, stop mowing your lawn.
The larger the top of the plant the greater its root system.
Once you understand this illustration, the light bulb may go off and you will realize that you should mow your lawn less often and let it grow taller during drought.

ONTARIO, California (VN) — With a visceral scream and two thumps to a green-clad chest the winless streak was over. Andrew Talansky won atop Mt. Baldy, took his team’s first WorldTour victory in over two years, doused their drought in California bubbly. Finally. Ask Cannondale-Drapac if the drought was bothersome and they’ll say no. “It wasn’t ever something I thought or focused on,” Talansky said. Ask them to explain it, why it took so darn long to end, and they’ll redirect to their wins outside the WorldTour, and to close calls within it. They point to luck, or a lack thereof, and to decisions made that place a focus on bigger, harder to win races. “I made a conscious effort in our recruiting to get guys who can maybe win big, not guys who are guaranteed to win small,” said team manager Jonathan Vaughters. “The result of that is that sometimes you might be forced to be extremely patient.” Patient they were, for a while. But do the sort of athletes who reach the top of their sport really not care about a two-year losing streak? Do they not care that they became known as the winless team? Talanksy’s bellow as he crossed the line suggests otherwise. Mt. Baldy unfolded largely as expected. LottoNL-Jumbo hit the front early and hard for their twin threats, George Bennett and Robert Gesink, whittling the field down to a dozen and change. Slowly the final domestiques fell off, one by one, in a methodical paring determined by size. Ben King went “as hard as I could for as long as I could,” until about…

NEWS WORTH NOTING: State Water Board adopts emergency regulation to implement SGMA; Weekly water and climate report.
State Water Board adopts emergency regulation to implement SGMA From the State Water Board: On May 16, 2017, The State Water Board adopted a resolution to adopt the Emergency Regulation for Implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
You can download the adopted emergency regulation at http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/gmp/docs/fees/20170516_adopted.pdf.
For more information on the emergency regulation or the State Water Board’s role in SGMA, visit www.waterboards.ca.gov/gmp.
The report focuses on seasonal snowpack, precipitation, temperature, and drought conditions in the U.S. Drought conditions prevail across much of Florida.
Through May 16, year-to-date rainfall in Orlando, Florida, totaled a record-low 3.34 inches (27% of normal).” Click here to open the report.
Sign up for daily emails and get all the Notebook’s aggregated and original water news content delivered to your email box by 9AM.
Breaking news alerts, too.
——————— About News Worth Noting: News Worth Noting is a collection of press releases, media statements, and other materials produced by federal, state, and local government agencies, water agencies, and academic institutions, as well as non-profit and advocacy organizations.
If your agency or organization has an item you would like included here, please email it to Maven.

An End to the Drought — for Now.
Over the last six months, every time it rained or snowed and there were a lot of days of rain and snow, all one could say was that we needed the precipitation.
Today, state and municipal water reservoirs are again full.
However, we urge our residents not to forgot last summer when lawns turned brown in many communities due to a watering ban.
In Boston, Mayor Martin Walsh continues to fund work to fix the old water and sewer lines that are beneath our roads.
This work will save millions of gallons of water.
Aside from making sure that the infrastructure that delivers water to homes is working properly, the greatest savings of water will come from residents in their homes.
Some tips are as follows: Check all faucets, pipes and toilets for leaks.
Install water-saving showerheads and ultra-low-flush toilets.
Wash full loads of clothes.

California Farmers Used Enough Groundwater During Drought To Fill Lake Mead.
Amy Quinton / Capital Public Radio California farmers in the Central Valley pumped enough water out of the ground to fill Lake Mead, which can store the entire average flow of the Colorado River for two years.
It’s enough to drown the state of Pennsylvania in a foot of water.
The study also found the rate of groundwater withdrawal per year in the most recent drought was double that of the drought of 2007 to 2009, even though there was less land to irrigate.
“That sort of doubling of the extraction rate was attributable more or less in equal amounts to the fact that the recent drought was warmer and the evaporative amount was higher and the shift to row crops to tree crops,” says Dennis Lettenmaier with UCLA, the study’s lead author.
“Pumping groundwater during a drought is not an unreasonable strategy when there’s not enough surface water," says Lettenmaier.
"This is the big issue and there’s no real plan for putting that back in.” Laws to manage groundwater are being implemented in California.
Counties, irrigation districts, farmers and other entities must form agencies by the end of June that will be tasked with managing groundwater sustainably.
But limits on groundwater pumping won’t likely happen until after 2020.
Lettenmaier says the study shows that between droughts there was some groundwater replenishment.

No more drought, but is there still a water restriction?.
WESTFIELD, Mass.
(The Westfield News) – With drought conditions finally being removed in Massachusetts, water use in the city can return to normal—almost.
This change means relief for Massachusetts residents and the city, but it doesn’t mean restrictions aren’t still in place.
“It’s good news for the whole state in terms of being able to return to more normal operations,” Heather Miller, water systems engineer for Westfield, said.
Miller said that in particular, the Granville Reservoir is still full, often overflowing even with added capacity via splash boards.
However, Miller was clear that in spite of the good news Westfield residents are still under a water restriction.
And until they lift the restriction, it will continue to be in place.
As to the process of getting wells seven and eight back online, Miller said that the department is still awaiting bench scale testing on the water, which would allow them to figure out how strong the initial filtering of the water would have to be.
“We expect to see them any day now, then we can continue moving forward with design and permitting of water treatment.” She added that the city is currently going through the design process for the filtration systems, which is a carbon-based system, and that “certain things can’t be finalized until” the bench scale testing results are in.

Drought increases in Alabama, but more rain is on the way.
A streak of dry, warm, sunny days has caused Alabama’s drought numbers to tick upward again.
More than half of the state, 59.42 percent, was dealing with some sort of drought this week, according to the latest report by the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The Drought Monitor report is compiled each Tuesday and released on Thursday, and it shows slight increases in several categories.
According to the report 28.94 percent of the state was in moderate drought, and 1.19 percent in severe drought.
A sliver of Houston County in southeast Alabama was also in severe drought.
Wider areas in southeast Alabama and in west-central Alabama were also mired in moderate drought.
But some relief is on the way.
Scattered rain and storms will be possible for the next few days across the state, with more widespread rain expected late Saturday into Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
And although Alabama is still in its prime severe weather season, severe storms were not expected to accompany this weekend’s rain — although a few storms will be possible.

Ethiopia: WB Extends U.S.$258 Million to Overcome Drought, Maternal Death.
The deal comes just a month after the bank approved 645 million dollars In the midst of the drought, the World Bank (WB) has approved a quarter of a billion dollars as additional finance for the fourth productive safety net program (PSNP IV) and health care services.
Launched a decade ago, the PSNP provides regular food or cash transfers to food insecure people.
The safety net program is designed to respond to food insecurity that arises from shocks such as drought and chronic needs.
The fund has been approved as the country is struggling to counter a new drought which has left 7.8 million people in urgent need of assistance.
Approved in 2014, PSNP requires a total cost of 3.6 billion dollars from the Bank and 11 development partners.
The estimated total budget of the PSNP from 2015 to 2020 is 3.6 billion dollars, with financing from the government and 11 development partners, including the World Bank.
Over the past two decades, the World Bank committed to more than 70 projects in the country.
Up until the end of last year, the Bank financed 29 active projects with a commitment of about eight billion dollars.
Highway and bank development assistance were the first two projects of the World Bank in Ethiopia.

California and National Drought Summary for May 16, 2017 Summary May 18, 2017 – An active weather pattern continued to result in widespread showers, with some of the heaviest rain falling across the Plains, Midwest, and mid-South. Another area of significant precipitation stretched across the middle and northern Atlantic States, while showers also dotted the Northwest. In contrast, mostly dry weather prevailed from California to the lower Rio Grande Valley, as well as large sections of the lower Southeast. Drought changes from last week were a mix of improvement and deterioration. Specifically, warm, dry weather and short-term rainfall deficits in Texas led to significant increases in the coverage of abnormal dryness (D0) and moderate to severe drought (D1 to D2). Also, hot, mostly dry conditions led to further expansion of moderate to extreme drought (D1 to D3) across southern Georgia and Florida’s peninsula. Elsewhere, patchy improvements in the drought situation were noted in a few areas, including parts of the Southeast. The Northeast Another soaking storm further reduced the coverage of lingering, long-term dryness (D0). Vestiges of dryness, reflected mainly in spotty groundwater shortages, remained in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Pastures, however, have recovered from last year’s drought and on May 14 were rated 100% good to excellent in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, along with at least 80% good to excellent in Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Southeast Spotty showers brought a mix of slight improvement, no change, or deterioration in areas from Alabama to the southern Atlantic Coast. Florida, with an expanded area of extreme drought (D3) across the central part of the peninsula, led the nation on May 14 in topsoil moisture rated very short to short (77%) and pastures rated very poor to poor (51%), according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Southern Georgia also saw an expansion of D3. Through May 16, year-to-date rainfall in Orlando, Florida, totaled a record-low 3.34 inches (27% of normal). In a May 14 report, USDA noted that Florida’s citrus growers “are irrigating daily to keep moisture on the trees” and that “ditches and canals are very dry in all [citrus] areas.” In addition, Florida’s livestock producers “continue to feed hay, and many need to have it shipped in.” Further, wildfires remain a threat across the lower Southeast. The West Mims fire, near the Florida-Georgia line, has been burning for more than a month after being started by lightning on April 6. The fire has consumed more than 150,000 acres of timber, brush, and grass east of Fargo, Georgia, mainly in…