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Last Tickets for Klamath Tour Up for Grabs; Theme Announced for Annual Water Summit; Read the Latest About FIRO and Atmospheric Rivers

Tickets for Klamath River Tour Now Up for Grabs

The remaining handful of tickets for our first-ever Klamath River Tour are now up for grabs! This special water tour, Sept. 8 through Sept. 12, will not be offered every year so check out the tour details here.

You don’t want to miss this opportunity to examine water issues along the 263-mile Klamath River, from its spring-fed headwaters in south-central Oregon to its redwood-lined estuary on the Pacific Ocean in California.

Among the planned stops is the former site of Iron Gate Dam & Reservoir for a firsthand look at restoration efforts. The dam was one of four obsolete structures taken down in the nation’s largest dam removal project aimed at restoring fish passage. Grab your ticket here while they last!

California’s Quest to Turn a Winter Menace Into a Water Supply Bonus is Gaining Favor Across the West
WESTERN WATER IN-DEPTH: For years, atmospheric rivers were a mystery. Now, an innovative dam management approach is putting them to work

Image shows Lake Mendocino, the proving ground for Forecast-Informed Reservoir OperationsIn December 2012, dam operators at Northern California’s Lake Mendocino watched as a series of intense winter storms bore down on them. The dam there is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ San Francisco District, whose primary responsibility in the Russian River watershed is flood control. To make room in the reservoir for the expected deluge, the Army Corps released some 25,000 acre-feet of water downstream — enough to supply nearly 90,000 families for a year.

Water News You Need to Know

Aquafornia news The Washington Post

Wednesday Top of the Scroll: Trump’s NOAA pick appears in confirmation hearing days after Texas floods

U.S. senators are set to interview President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday in a confirmation hearing that may be charged with concern over whether massive cuts to the agency’s workforce may have contributed to the deaths of more than 100 people when torrential rain flooded Central Texas early Friday. In the five months since Trump chose Neil Jacobs to serve as NOAA administrator, hundreds of NOAA scientists and meteorologists have left the agency through firings, buyouts and retirements. … Jacobs has emphasized a need for the United States to improve the accuracy of its weather forecasting models, which routinely perform worse than models operated in Europe and, at times, Canada. He has most recently served as chief science adviser for the Unified Forecast System, an initiative he has spearheaded to improve U.S. weather and climate forecasting accuracy using government, academic and private-sector data.

Other NOAA news:

Aquafornia news SJV Water

State wants to better understand salt build up in the Central Valley, starting with Kings County

A state water quality agency hopes to tackle a problem as old as civilization itself – salt build up from irrigation. The Central Valley Salinity Alternatives for Long-Term Sustainability (CV-SALTS) is working with local water managers and using state-of-the-art engineering software to understand how groundwater moves through the western Kings and Delta-Mendota subbasins as part of a long-term salt study. The salt study, which began in 2022, aims to develop a Central Valley-wide plan to manage salinity, focusing first on the Kings and Delta-Mendota subbasins. … The salt study is still laying the groundwork to understand the complex San Joaquin Valley watershed and aquifer system. CV-SALTS will begin developing water and salt management plans by 2026 and develop a prioritization plan by 2028.

Other groundwater news:

Aquafornia news E&E News by Politico

EPA’s next PFAS headache: Sewage sludge

Six months after EPA warned about “forever chemicals” tainting sewage sludge, states are resorting to a patchwork of policies as the agency’s path forward on the widely used farmland fertilizer remains unclear. In the final days of the Biden administration, EPA inched toward regulating the toxic chemicals in sewage sludge, releasing a draft report outlining risks to people living near farms that use the foul-smelling, nutrient-rich material to grow crops. Now, as the Trump administration weighs options for addressing contamination concerns, states and localities are struggling with how to respond to growing evidence that sludge fertilizer can spread forever chemicals. … Also known as biosolids, sewage sludge is the partially dry byproduct of treated sewage from municipal and industrial sources. EPA has long touted selling the material to farmers, a practice that frees up landfill space and reduces reliance on chemical fertilizer.

Other forever chemicals and microplastics news:

Aquafornia news KQED (San Francisco)

California could flood like Texas. But thunderstorms likely won’t be to blame

A major thunderstorm like the one that produced devastating flash flooding in Texas over the holiday weekend is not likely in the Bay Area or most of California, but climate scientists say that if the perfect weather at the right time of year and geography align, serious flooding can still wreak havoc here. … A big flash-flood-producing thunderstorm in California isn’t entirely out of the picture and can occur during the summertime in the Sierra Nevada or the deserts across the southeastern part of the state. “The kind of thing that happened in Texas could also happen in California,” said Nicholas Pinter, associate director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “Anyone out hiking in confined, rugged topography needs to be aware that we have this risk of flash flooding in California, kind of similar to Texas.”

Other flood risk news:

Online Water Encyclopedia

Wetlands

Sacramento National Wildlife RefugeWetlands are among the world’s most important and hardest-working ecosystems, rivaling rainforests and coral reefs in productivity. 

They produce high oxygen levels, filter water pollutants, sequester carbon, reduce flooding and erosion and recharge groundwater.

Bay-Delta Tour participants viewing the Bay Model

Bay Model

Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bay Model is a giant hydraulic replica of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It is housed in a converted World II-era warehouse in Sausalito near San Francisco.

Hundreds of gallons of water are pumped through the three-dimensional, 1.5-acre model to simulate a tidal ebb and flow lasting 14 minutes.

Aquapedia background Colorado River Basin Map

Salton Sea

As part of the historic Colorado River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below sea level.

The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years, creating California’s largest inland body of water. The Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130 miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe

Lake Oroville shows the effects of drought in 2014.

Drought

Drought—an extended period of limited or no precipitation—is a fact of life in California and the West, with water resources following boom-and-bust patterns. During California’s 2012–2016 drought, much of the state experienced severe drought conditions: significantly less precipitation and snowpack, reduced streamflow and higher temperatures. Those same conditions reappeared early in 2021 prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom in May to declare drought emergencies in watersheds across 41 counties in California.