California Aqueduct

Scientists suspect that parts of the San Joaquin Valley have started to sink again after years of stability, a troubling development that geologists say can be traced to increased pumping of groundwater. State water managers are worried that falling land surfaces could damage the California Aqueduct, which carries water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the valley and Southern California. To measure the extent of the problem, the U.S. Geological Survey is launching a three-year study that will use sophisticated satellite tracking to map sagging land in the valley's arid floor in western Fresno and Kings counties.

Re “ Blue reign in Sacramento ,” Nov. 8 In recent years, California Republicans have focused on signing pledges and on intransigence instead of engaging constructively to get things done. This has resulted in draconian cuts to schools, state programs and services. On Tuesday, the people of California said, “Fine, we'll do it without you,” and now the Democrats in the Legislature are on the cusp of a super-majority. That's a shame. While we Californians trend to the left, we need a robust two-party system in our state to curb the excesses from both sides of the aisle (and there are excesses on both sides)

"Spring has sprung, the grass has ris, where last year's careless drivers is," said Burma Shave, tickling our collective fancy and reminding us to drive sensibly. Spring has also sprung along the banks of the California Aqueduct Bikeway. Out here on the southernmost edge of the Mojave Desert, cyclists tired of dodging automobiles and inhaling exhaust fumes on weekend rides in the city have left that traffic behind. They've discovered what dedicated wheelmen and Antelope Valley residents know.

Southern California's most important lake is located in a distant part of the state and has a name most of us wouldn't recognize. Clifton Court Forebay, between Oakland and Stockton, forms the manufactured headwaters of the manufactured river known as the California Aqueduct, which over four decades has supplied millions of residents from the Bay Area to the Mexican border with drinking water and thousands of growers from Santa Clara to Santa Maria...

Authorities early Friday recovered the body of a woman who drowned in the California Aqueduct in this small Antelope Valley community west of Lancaster, sheriff's officials said. The woman, whose name was not released, went for a swim about 10 p.m. Thursday in the aqueduct and apparently got caught in an undercurrent, said Sheriff's Lt. Larry Gump. A male companion, who did not enter the aqueduct, called authorities.

Water is pouring again through the California Aqueduct after completion of repairs that closed the canal for 10 weeks, state officials said. The state Water Resources Department had shut down a quarter-mile section of the aqueduct May 1 about 50 miles south of Stockton to fix a chronic leak. The state-operated aqueduct delivers water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California residents.

The answer to Gary Devore's mysterious 1997 disappearance may have been lying in plain sight for more than a year. But what may have been the unhinged hood of Devore's sunken Ford Explorer quickly blended into the hot shimmer of the California Aqueduct's concrete banks days after the accident. Eventually it was forgotten, like countless other items that find their way into Southern California's chief source of drinking water.

The condition of a 9-year-old girl trapped underwater for more than 20 minutes after her mother's car sank to the bottom of the California Aqueduct on July 4 has been upgraded to fair, a hospital spokeswoman said Monday. Shanika Lister of Rialto had been in critical and then serious condition for nearly a month before recently being upgraded, said Loma Linda University Medical Center spokeswoman Pearl Nickel.

State officials suspended operations of an elite dive team and fended off criticism Friday after a mysterious tragedy left two scuba divers dead during a routine underwater maintenance inspection in the California Aqueduct's inky depths. Tim Crawford and Martin Alvarado were supposed to remain in the turbid, debris-strewn water less than half an hour to examine the steel grates that protect the mammoth intakes of a pumping plant near Los Banos.

Think California Aqueduct and images come to mind of pristine mountain water rushing through the desert to thirsty Southern Californians. Well, think again. As one water department spokesman put it, "There is no such thing as pristine water in its natural form." Not to mention that as the aqueduct runs its 440-mile course from the Sacramento delta through farmland, under freeways and past creeping desert sprawl, it picks up a lot more than water.

There are instructive parallels between the circumstances in which Gov.-elect Jerry Brown finds himself and those that confronted his father, Pat Brown, when he first took office in 1958. Both were swept into office in epochal Democratic victories. Despite their party's national reversals, Californians have elected Democrats to fill every statewide office (assuming Kamala Harris holds her lead in the attorney general race) and to an overwhelming legislative majority. In 1958, Pat Brown carried all but four of the state's counties and helped propel Democrats into two-thirds of the Legislature's seats, giving them majorities in both chambers for the first time in 80 years.

Scientists suspect that parts of the San Joaquin Valley have started to sink again after years of stability, a troubling development that geologists say can be traced to increased pumping of groundwater. State water managers are worried that falling land surfaces could damage the California Aqueduct, which carries water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the valley and Southern California. To measure the extent of the problem, the U.S. Geological Survey is launching a three-year study that will use sophisticated satellite tracking to map sagging land in the valley's arid floor in western Fresno and Kings counties.

Even in the world of big-ticket water projects, where delays, cost overruns and controversy are frequent, the inelegantly named Inland Feeder Project was in a class of its own. In its two decades, the project has faced fire, flood, regulatory disputes, difficult geology, grouting problems, earthquake considerations, a switch of contractors and more. At one point it was $100 million over budget. The boss at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California jokes that the project suffered everything but a plague of locusts.

The bodies of two divers who died this month while inspecting a pumping station in the California Aqueduct were found in front of the lone pump that was operating when they submerged, according to a preliminary investigation by the Department of Water Resources. The internal report obtained Wednesday by the Associated Press sheds light for the first time on the events surrounding the Feb. 7 deaths of Tim Crawford, 50, and Martin Alvarado, 44.

State officials suspended operations of an elite dive team and fended off criticism Friday after a mysterious tragedy left two scuba divers dead during a routine underwater maintenance inspection in the California Aqueduct's inky depths. Tim Crawford and Martin Alvarado were supposed to remain in the turbid, debris-strewn water less than half an hour to examine the steel grates that protect the mammoth intakes of a pumping plant near Los Banos.

The state will pay $10 million to relatives of a mother and her three children whose 2003 deaths in a plunge into the California Aqueduct could have been prevented had the state installed a $26,000 guardrail extension, an attorney in the case said Wednesday. The state will pay one-quarter of the settlement in the wrongful death case to the woman's husband, Raul Morales. His wife, Marisol, 32, and their children Raul Jr.

A man in his 20s died Saturday after emergency workers pulled him from a vehicle that had plunged into the California Aqueduct. The Los Angeles County Fire Department received a call at 3:55 p.m. about a vehicle submerged in the aqueduct near Pearblossom Highway, officials said.

The only survivor of an accident at the Los Angeles Aqueduct that killed a Palmdale woman and her three children remained comatose and in critical condition Thursday at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. California Highway Patrol investigators continued analyzing crash data to determine why the driver, 32-year-old Marisol Morales, swerved off the two-lane Pearblossom Highway in Antelope Valley early Wednesday. She and her three children -- Raul Jr., 9, Silvia, 5, and Oscar, 1 -- were killed.