Governor declares long drought over but urges continuing conservation.
The long drought emergency is officially over in most of California but the Governor and City of Santa Paula want consumers to continue to conserve.
Jerry Brown followed an unprecedented water conservation effort and plentiful winter rain and snow.
Although Brown declared the end of the drought emergency in most of the state, water reporting requirements and prohibitions on wasteful practices, such as watering during or right after rainfall, will be maintained.
“Conservation must remain a way of life.” His executive order lifted the drought emergency in all California counties except Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne, where emergency drinking water projects will continue to help address diminished groundwater supplies.
But, water conservation will continue to be a way of life throughout California.
The state will continue its work to coordinate a statewide response on the unprecedented bark beetle outbreak in drought-stressed forests that has killed millions of trees across California.
The consequences of millions of dead trees and the diminished groundwater basins will continue to challenge areas of the state for years.
It was marked by extraordinary heat: 2014, 2015 and 2016 were California’s first, second and third warmest year in terms of statewide average temperatures.
In 2011-2012 Santa Paula had 9.85 inches of rain, 54.6 percent of the average season total; in 2012-2013 only 5.96 inches of rain fell, just 33 percent of the season average; in 2013-2014 it was only 6.15 inches for 34.1 percent of the average; 2014-2015 there was 11.22 inches, 62.2 percent of normal and during 2015-2016 there was 9.88 inches of rain, 54.7 of average.

The last five years have been the driest on record in California, with record-breaking temperatures in the triple digits and the amount of rainfall and snowpack far below average.
In 2014, three years into the drought, Governor Brown issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency.
The order called for a reduction of California water consumption by at least 20 percent and requested “local urban water suppliers and municipalities” to “implement their local water shortage contingency plans immediately.” The local Davis contingency plan includes restrictions on watering outdoor plants between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., with further restrictions on how many days per week watering is allowed.
Washing off driveways, sidewalks or cars with a hose is outlawed.
During the previous winter, California received its highest amount of rainfall in 122 years, with an average of 22.81 inches of rain; in Gov.
Brown’s most recent executive order overturning the drought emergency, he noted that California snowpack was at “164 percent of the season average”, and that the “great majority” of California reservoirs are holding an amount of water “above normal levels.” Governor Brown officially declared the California drought over, but also stated in his executive order that water conservation in California needed to become “a way of life.” “Improving water use efficiency […] and strengthening local and regional drought planning are crucial to California’s resilience to drought and climate change,” Governor Brown said in the order.
Despite Southern California’s desert-like climate, it received slightly above its average amount of rainfall for the year, and Gov.
Brown’s continued contingency plan is expected to help the 23 percent of California still in a drought.
“The way water is stored in [Southern California] is through underground aquifers,” said Kerjon Lee, the public affairs manager for Los Angeles’ Public Works Department.
Statewide efforts will continue to conserve water and many rules will remain the same — cities throughout California have been instructed to continue to enforce their own contingency plans concerning water conservation as Governor Brown stresses the importance of water conservation becoming “a way of life.” “This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Governor Brown said in a press conference.

It is carrying nine families and what is left of their herds: some sheep, goats, and donkeys.
This is what pastoralists have done for centuries, following the movements of their animals and the changing seasons.
The region was hit by an 18-month drought caused by El Niño and higher temperatures linked to climate change.
There are increasing concerns that the situation will get much worse, as rainfall in March and early April was very low in places.
This left survivors without the means to feed themselves or make a living.
Soon, it is going to ‘sweep away’ people.
If they don’t get food, clean water, and medicines, they will die like their animals.” Right up to six months ago, his family used to have over 1000 animals: 400 sheep, plus goats and camels.
Then, they started moving in search of better pastures and more water for their animals.
“We have moved four times in the last four months.
If the rains don’t come, none of us will survive.” Oxfam is launching a humanitarian response to the drought in Somaliland where, together with our long-standing networks and partners, we can have the most impact as quickly as possible.

5 things to know about mandatory water restrictions and other measures as metro Atlanta remains in a drought.
Georgia officials are pleading with metro Atlanta residents to conserve water heading into the state’s prime summer months, saying they need to be mindful of their usage as the area faces a continuing stubborn drought and Atlanta’s warmest April on record.
Twelve counties remain in a Level 2 drought: Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Habersham, Hall, Lumpkin, Paulding and White.
Lake Lanier, which all 12 of those counties depend on as part of their water supply, also remains eight feet below its full water level.
Here’s what you need to know: Residents under Level 2 restrictions have to follow outdoor watering schedules that allow landscape watering up to two days a week, determined by odd and even-numbered addresses.
Even-numbered addresses and properties without numbered addresses may water on Wednesday and Saturday before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m. Odd-numbered addresses may water Thursday and Sunday before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m. Other allowable outdoor watering includes for new and replanted plants, seed or turf any time of day for 30 days after planting; personal food gardens any time of day; and drip irrigation, soaker hoses, handheld containers or hand-watering with a hose with automatic cutoff any time of day.
What’s not allowed: Washing hard surfaces such as streets and sidewalks; water for ornamental purposes such as fountains; non-commercial washing of vehicles; non-commercial pressure washing; and fundraising car washes.
While not required, conservation suggestions also include turning off the water while shaving or brushing teeth to save at least 100 gallons a week.
Fix leaky faucets as soon as you notice them.
A leak of 60 drips a minute wastes 192 gallons a month.

Skiatook Lake sees high water levels after years of drought.
Two years ago, the landscape was different on Skiatook Lake.
See those bushes on the water?
Those are the tops of trees.
On the front edge, they were on the ground.
Now they’re sitting in about 25 foot of water," said Hank Spencer, General Manager of Cross Timbers Marina.
"We’ve started to get some excitement around here.
It’s kind of a joke that we’ve got plenty of water for the summer, so everyone is ready for the summer to get underway," said Spencer While rain is an unwelcome sight to many of us by now, business owners and managers all around the lake are thrilled to see it after years of drought.
"We definitely have seen an influx of traffic with people wanting to check out the water, check out The Springs.
Water levels are actually above normal now, a first for the lake in these past few years.

The area of wildfires in Borneo during drought years turns out to be ten times larger than during non-drought years, an international research team reports in Nature Climate Change of this week. The fires recurrently affecting Borneo’s humid tropical ecosystems have negative influence on the biodiversity and lead to large CO2 emissions, affecting atmospheric composition and regional climate processes. Future droughts in wet tropical regions will likely increase in frequency and severity, and consequently the fire risk, the team says. The researchers from Wageningen University & Research, Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia, University of East Anglia and the Center for International Forestry Research analysed the spatially distributed pattern of hydrological drought, that is the drought in groundwater recharge, in Borneo using a simple transient water balance model driven by monthly climate data from the period 1901-2015. Their findings provide evidence that there has been a drying trend in terms of affected area, since the start of the last century. Droughts and wildfires The team also explored the link between hydrological drought and wildfire using the monthly fire area burnt from the spatially distributed Global Fire Emission Dataset from the period 1996-2015. They classified years in this period into drought and non-drought…

When Gov. Jerry Brown pronounced an end to the drought emergency last month — but not to the possibility of another drought — it would have been just like him to quote another eminent Californian, the naturalist John Muir, who said that “we all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.” Not enough trees, though, which is why making “urban forests” come true truly matters. That’s where Igor Lacan can help out. He’s an expert tree advisor with the University of California’s cooperative extension, a kind of Johnny Appleseed of urban forestry, planting the seeds of knowledge about what trees can do for us. And it’s high time for us to ask what we can do for our trees. What is your reaction when people say, ‘Yay, the drought is over’? My reaction is to say, yay, the drought is over. We now need to get back to maintaining our urban trees, which I think we’ve neglected a bit during the drought. We’re witnessing the end of the old paradigm where we’re just trying to remove the water from our urban surfaces, and we are slowly beginning to transition into the new paradigm where we try to use that storm water as a resource. Trees are regarded as a luxury by some who say, ‘Well, trees, after all, don’t grow in the desert.’ No. 1, trees are not a luxury. Urban trees are an absolute necessity. Trees improve lives in cities, from improvement in health to reduction in crime to increases in property values. All of these things are dependent on living healthy urban trees. Now, I’ve lived in Southern California for a few years myself, and Los Angeles is not actually a desert. There is a small but important difference between not a desert and a desert. Not only that, Los Angeles is an artificial ecosystem at this point, so we really should think very hard about what we want an artificial ecosystem to look like. When you talk about the benefits of trees, you cite many things, first of all trees as a benefit to public health. There was a famous study that showed that patients who were coming from surgery and had a view of trees required less painkiller than those who had a view of just a brick wall. And this act influenced hospital design to a certain degree. But, unfortunately, it hasn’t trickled into the broader field of architectural design quite yet. Humans have a preference for a view or nature in general. Having trees as part of your landscape, as something you look out on when you lift your gaze from the computer, makes a pretty substantial difference. I also wonder whether it has to do with the fact that our forebears of many hundreds of thousands of years past lived in trees as a safety measure, and trees give you a sense of security. There are theories in landscape architecture, and one of them is this thing called the prospect refuge theory, that says we prefer these landscapes that have some open space and some trees. It perhaps reminds of us of our very, very, very distant ancestors. It’s not surprising when you look at a lot of classically designed landscape: It’s not just a dense forest but also not plain open spaces — it’s a mix of trees, open space and paths leading somewhere. There’s another study about how having trees around a house influences babies’ birth weights. Babies are less likely to be underweight if the mother lived in a place surrounded by trees. That’s very important when you talk about support funding for urban forestry, because if we think of urban forestry as part of our health infrastructure — even as a very small part of our health infrastructure — it suddenly becomes very cost-effective to have healthy, living urban trees. What kind of numbers are we talking about with low-birth weight babies and women who live surrounded by trees? The actual number in the problematical birth weight was very small, but when you think…

“I looked at my house and felt sad that Kenya, which I regard as home, has got into such a state,” he said.
An unknown number of the tribesmen who illegally drove tens of thousands of cattle on to privately owned estates have also been killed in clashes with security forces.
There have long been tensions over land and grazing in the region.
One reason for the violence is drought, which the Kenyan government said in October was affecting about 1.3 million people.
But ranchers like Constant said previous droughts had not caused such problems.
“The difference this time is a number of politicians who promised 10,000 pastoralists with 500,000 head of cattle that if they came here and drove us out they would get to keep the land,” he said.
Paula Kahumbu, one of Kenya’s leading conservationists, said that although “white landowners might have an argument, they would not get much sympathy from many Kenyans”.
Constant said the white farmers were victims of “inverse racism” and “old prejudices”.
Gallmann was trying to assess damage caused by herders who had burned down one of her lodges when she was attacked.
As long as people think there has been an injustice, there will be a problem.”

CRS Report: ‘Central Valley Project Operations – Background and Legislation’.
Click on the graphics to enlarge them.
This represents an improvement from one year prior to that date, when 73% of the state was in severe drought conditions, and two years prior, when 92% fell under this designation.
Stress on water supplies due to drought resulted in cutbacks in water deliveries to districts receiving water from federal and state facilities, in particular the federal Central Valley Project (CVP, operated by the Bureau of Reclamation) and the State Water Project (SWP, operated by the State of California).
In 2015, California mandated a 25% reduction in water use for nonagricultural water users, and overall SWP deliveries were limited to 20% of contractor requests.
For the first time in years, initial water allocations for most CVP water contractors were 100%.
Previous cutbacks to CVP deliveries (in particular during periods of increased precipitation) have caused some to criticize Reclamation’s management of the CVP and question the extent to which factors beyond limited water supplies (e.g., restrictions to protect endangered species and water quality) influence water management and the quantity of water delivered to contractors.
They argue that congressionally directed changes in the operation of the CVP that would result in increases to water allocations are needed.
Legislation enacted in the 114th Congress (Subtitle J of S. 612, the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation [WIIN] Act) incorporated provisions from multiple California drought-related bills that had been considered dating to the 112th Congress.
Congress may consider this and similar legislation, as well as oversight of CVP operations and implementation of WIIN Act CVP provisions.

Majority of Oklahoma expected to be out of a drought after recent rainfall.
Which has many wondering, are we in a drought?
“The majority of the state will be out of a drought after this past weekend’s rain also the rains that have occurred over the last month and month and a half,” said Gary McManus, State Climatologist.
Despite all the rain, some places weren’t as lucky.
Heading into the summer season, many Oklahoma lakes are well above average.
Lake Tenkiller is 26 feet above average!
Lake Fort Gibson is 20 feet above average while Lake Keystone is at 18 feet over average.
Closer to home, Lake Hefner and Lake Thunderbird added a foot each.
But weather experts warn residents to not get carried away.
Perryman says to keep an eye on how much water you use when washing the car or watering the lawn because the drought could always return.