A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation News & Publications Director Chris Bowman.
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Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California,
reached capacity on Monday for a second straight year after
another relatively wet winter. The rising waters come as state
reservoir managers have been reducing outflows from the lake in
recent weeks — as winter inflows tailed off and the threat
of downstream flooding waned — allowing the reservoir to
slowly fill to its current 899-foot elevation, or 3.52-million
acre-feet of water. … Lake Oroville contains 28% more water
than it historically has on this date. “This is great news
for ensuring adequate water supply for millions of Californians
& environmental needs,” the state Department of Water Resources
posted Monday afternoon on X, formerly Twitter.
In another move to build water resilient systems in the West
and particularly in the Colorado River Basin, the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation announced Monday $147 million in federal grants
to help underserved communities dogged by water scarcity
issues. The funding will support 42 projects in 10 states. In
eastern Utah, nearly $6.6 million was granted to the Ute Indian
Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation which operates the
Ute Tribe Water Systems, providing water service to tribal
members.
A federal judge ruled Monday afternoon that a California dam
harms endangered salmon when it conducts flood control
operations. Coyote Valley Dam, operated by the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, protects the city of Ukiah from flooding from
nearby Lake Mendocino. In 2022, fisheries biologist Sean White
sued the Corps claiming the dam’s flood control operations kick
up sediment in the water, increasing turbidity and harming
endangered Central California coast steelhead, coho and Chinook
salmon. White’s previous requests for injunctive relief were
denied in 2023, yet he was granted summary judgment on his
claims on Monday after providing more data. U.S. District Judge
Jacqueline Scott Corley, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote in her
18-page opinion that it was beyond dispute that the dam’s
operations harm the fish.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is warning
people to keep their pets away from Silverwood Lake in San
Bernardino after water officials identified toxic algae in the
water. Last week, the DWR announced that water officials have
issued a “caution algal bloom advisory” for Silverwood Lake
after blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, was found
at the lake. Not all algae is toxic, but it’s impossible to
tell just by looking at it. Exposure to toxic
cyanobacteria can cause unpleasant symptoms, such as eye, nose,
mouth or throat irritation, headache, allergic skin rash, mouth
ulcers, vomiting, diarrhea, and cold- and flu-like symptoms,
according to a DWR website. Pets and children are especially
susceptible, prompting the DWR to urge people to be aware of
the conditions.
A rare late season storm dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on some
regions of Northern California over the weekend, breaking at
least one daily snowfall record. The storm, which swept in from
the Gulf of Alaska, dropped about 31 inches of snow on Lower
Lassen Peak, 26 inches at Palisades Summit and 22 inches at
Soda Springs Ski Resort and 16 inches at Kingvale, according to
the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office. The UC
Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory at Donner Summit
recorded 26.4 inches of snow in a 24-hour period on May 5,
making it the “snowiest day of the season at the lab,”
according to a social media post. The last record was 23.8
inches on March 3.
… Along the eastern edge of Imperial County, the landscape is
slowly changing. Acres of invasive saltcedar plants and other
weeds are vanishing, replaced by expanses of thorny green trees
dusted with bright yellow flowers. The shift is a result of the
Quechan Tribe’s ongoing efforts to restore the banks of the
parched Colorado River … where it winds through the Quechan
Reservation between California and Arizona.
An extraordinary water year brought much-needed relief to a
drought-stricken Golden State, but experts say California needs
several more exceptionally wet years to repair lingering damage
to precious underground water supplies. The newest Semi-Annual
Groundwater Conditions report — using the first annual data
collected from groundwater sustainability agencies across 99
basins holding more than 90% of the state’s groundwater —
indicates the state has gained 4.1 million acre-feet of water
through underground recharge, nearly the total storage capacity
of Shasta Lake. Meanwhile, underground storage improved by 8.7
million acre-feet. Thanks to the surprise string of
record-breaking storms, 2023 marked the first year since 2019
that agencies saw a jump in groundwater storage.
The judge in the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper case has ordered a
further six-month stay in the litigation so that structured
mediation can continue. … Eleven major parties involved
in the mediation process, including newcomers to the
negotiations the State Water Resources Control Board and the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife, had jointly asked
the court to continue the stay to Jan. 31, “to allow the
structured mediation a realistic period of time to reach its
conclusion.” … The case dates back to 2014, when Santa
Barbara Channelkeeper sued the city of Ventura and the State
Water Resources Control Board for taking too much water from
the Ventura River, in turn harming endangered Southern
California steelhead trout.
[Residents of the Friendly Acres mobile home park in Red Bluff]
learned in March that their well water had high levels of PFAS.
Those are chemicals used to make everything from nonstick
cookware to water-resistant clothing to cleaning products.
Officials from the California State Water Resources Control
Board held a meeting for tenants that month, warning them about
the contamination and providing bottled water. Kimberlee says
that meeting was the first time she had ever heard about PFAS.
That’s despite Friendly Acres having high levels for at least
four years, according to public data.
Primeval Energy Ltd is entering into a strategic partnership
with Global Water Farms (GWF) through which Primeval staff
members will provide geothermal assistance to GWF in their
Southern California desalination project. GWF has an ambitious
yet realistic business plan to provide vast volumes of clean
water to augment the flow of water in the Colorado River
through desalination, Primeval said in a press release. GWF
will use the salt by-product for the manufacture of salt-based
construction blocks, creating a second environmentally focused
business that lowers the demand for traditional cinder blocks.
The Salton Sea facility will require considerable energy in the
form of Combined Heat and Power, the companies said.
The Marin Municipal Water District is embarking on a yearlong
study to examine the impact of frequent, severe storms on the
utility’s seven dams. The district board authorized spending up
to $1.06 million to evaluate the capacity of the dam spillways,
and to use climate change projections to assess potential
hazards. The study is a response to a critical Marin County
Civil Grand Jury report published last summer. The watchdog
panel said dam safety plans for the Marin Municipal Water
District and the North Marin Water District are failing to
account for more regular “atmospheric river” storms brought on
by climate change. The grand jury recommended, among other
actions, that the water districts update their dam hazard
mitigation plans with the latest science on climate change
effects on storms.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will examine the possibility of
drilling tunnels through Glen Canyon Dam to ensure water can
pass through it at low Lake Powell elevations, two
knowledgeable sources told the Arizona Daily Star. Such a
re-engineering project will be among several options the bureau
will look at due to new concerns about the ability to deliver
Colorado River water through the 61-year-old facility under
such circumstances. It could prevent a catastrophic occurrence
if lake elevations ever fall so low that no water could get
through the dam to serve farms and Lower River Basin cities,
including Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San
Diego.
Diminished by decades of over-pumping, California’s groundwater
reserves saw a huge influx of water last year, in some places
the most in modern times, according to state data that offers
the first detailed look at how aquifers fared during
the state’s historically wet 2023. The bump was driven, in
part, by deliberate efforts to recharge aquifers — the
porous underground rock that holds water and accounts for about
40% of the state’s total water supply. The intentional water
banking, or managed recharge, resulted in at least 4.1 million
acre-feet of water pushed underground, nearly equivalent to
what California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, can hold.
About 90% of that recharge occurred in the San Joaquin Valley,
the state’s agricultural heartland, where aquifers have been
heavily taxed by pumping.
UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab says it has a reason to
celebrate after a weekend storm brought the most snow to date,
topping off a late-season surge. After storms in late February
and throughout March, readings at the lab surged from 102% of
normal for March 1 to 110% of normal for April
1. Accordingly, lab observers seemed excited by
the prospect of precipitation that forecasters
said could bring between 9 to 18 inches of new snow
Saturday through Sunday.
Good news on the Colorado River is rare. Its reservoirs, the
two largest in the country, have shrunk to record lows. The
policymakers who will decide its future are stuck at an
impasse. Climate change has driven more than two decades of
megadrought and strained the water supply for 40 million people
across the Southwest. But a new study is delivering a potential
dose of optimism for the next 25 years of the Colorado River.
The findings, published in the Journal of Climate, forecast a
70% chance the next quarter century will be wetter than the
last.
Perhaps no environmental topic is as controversial in
California as the Delta Tunnel. … The tunnel is a key
part of the State Water Project’s new risk-informed strategic
plan. That strategic plan is known as Elevate to ‘28.
It lists five goals that it says will help to make the State
Water Project (SWP) “the most reliable, sustainable, and
resilient water provider for the people and environment of
California, now and for future generations.” To learn more
about the plan, ABC10 Meteorologist Brenden Mincheff invited
Tony Meyers, the Principal Operating Officer for the State
Water Project for a conversation. Here are some key takeaways
from that.
Bureaucratic blunders, mismanagement, partisan politics,
cross-border politics, understaffing, equipment failures. The
list of reasons for the longstanding sewage crisis at the
U.S.-Mexico border is long. At the center is the International
Boundary and Water Commission, the binational agency
responsible for preventing water pollution in the Tijuana River
and southern San Diego County shorelines. It has been severely
handicapped in its task. The result: beach closures due to
contaminated ocean water, economic losses and growing concerns
about the long-term health impacts caused by breathing,
smelling and touching sewage-tainted water. Each country is
represented by a commissioner appointed by their respective
presidents. Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner, appointed by
President Joe Biden in 2021, inherited the broken system. She’s
been trying to steer the federal agency in the right direction
ever since.
Last year, California experienced weather whiplash. After years
of severe drought, 2023 saw heavy rainfall and snowpack that
flooded the state, recharged groundwater and filled our
reservoirs. While desperately needed, we cannot pretend that
the good times are here to stay. Increasingly dry years are in
our future, and it will not be long until we find ourselves
facing drought conditions once again. The time to prepare our
water infrastructure for the future is now. Currently,
lawmakers in Sacramento are working to close a $37.9 billion
deficit. While we have made progress at the state level in
recent years — including allocating $8.6 billion in state
funding for water projects — pulling back on water
infrastructure funding now could jeopardize further federal and
local funding sources for key projects already underway. -Written by Senator Anna M. Caballero and Ric Ortega,
general manager of the Grassland Water
District.
The massive infrastructure project to extend BART through
Downtown San José and into Santa Clara is inching closer to
getting underway. … The restoration project plans
to convert 15,000 acres of former Cargill salt ponds — sold to
federal and state wildlife agencies in 2003 — back into
marshes, which provide a slew of benefits to the
region. … And while Bay restoration projects have
often made good use of dirt from other construction and
infrastructure projects previously, this is the first time the
region has seen the use of what’s known as “tunnel muck”
specifically to raise the bottoms of a former salt pond.
