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 Vik Jolly.
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The Salton Sea, 35 miles long and between nine and 15 miles
wide, is the largest lake by surface area in California. Its
history is complex—and an anomaly in the natural world. Today’s
Salton Sea lies 228 feet below sea level, on the site of the
much-larger ancient Lake Cahuilla. Peaking at 40 feet above sea
level, Lake Cahuilla encompassed much of the Imperial, Mexicali
and Coachella valleys, most recently between 500 and 1,000
years ago. With evaporation and no outlet, over the years, Lake
Cahuilla dried up, leaving a huge 2,000-square-mile desert
sink—from the Gulf of California to the Banning Pass. A
horizontal dark band from the earlier shoreline is easily
spotted along the cliffs near today’s Salton Sea.
… In sheltered estuaries like Elkhorn Slough, a coastal inlet
where freshwater meets seawater just inland from Monterey Bay,
researchers have found that sea otters can help keep underwater
sea grass meadows and nearby marshes intact. Around a hundred
otters now make their home in the slough, one of California’s
last great coastal wetlands. … The connection runs through
the food web: Otters eat crabs. When crab numbers drop, tiny
grazers like sea slugs survive and multiply. … That keeps the
meadows healthy even in estuaries loaded with pollution from
fertilizers and other runoff. … When shore crab numbers
explode, the crabs burrow into marsh banks and chew on plant
roots. … By eating those crabs, otters slow the loss of marsh
edges that protect nearby communities from flooding and storm
surge.
Aquafornia is off Monday, Jan. 19, the federal
holiday honoring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
We will return with a full slate of water news on
Tuesday, Jan. 20. In the meantime, follow us
on X/Twitter for
breaking news and on LinkedIn for
Foundation-related news.
The U.S. Senate passed a limited spending package on Thursday
that will largely fund several science- and land-related
agencies, including the Department of Interior, the U.S. Forest
Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at current
levels. … The biggest blow to the West, climate science
and the nation’s health and safety, however, are
potential cuts to the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, based in Boulder, Colorado. The center,
often called NCAR, creates the modeling and analysis that
underpins the weather forecasting people
around the world depend on for their lives and work.
… A lack of snow — known as a snow drought —
grips much of the West as a result of the unusually high
temperatures, even as winter reaches the midway
point. Snow cover was less extensive than any Jan. 14
on record across the West, according to satellite-based
measurements. … In California, the snowpack is
proportionally worse below 6,500 feet than atop mountain
peaks. While most Sierra ski resorts are at high
elevations, low-elevation snow is critical for the
ecosystemand water resources because
it accounts for a larger area. … Drought conditions,
while much improved in California, plague a third of the West,
according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The most extreme
drought is concentrated in the headwaters of the Colorado
River, which drains into Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Other drought and water supply news around the West:
… As Colorado River rules near expiration, the federal
government published Jan. 9 a long-anticipated menu of options
for how to replace them and manage the overstressed river basin
going forward. … But only one of the possible management
plans shows what the Bureau of Reclamation currently has the
legal authority to do without approval from the seven
basin states, according to the report. And the state
negotiators have been at an impasse for nearly two years. That
option, called the basic coordination alternative,
calls for moderate water cuts in the driest years and
would only work for the short term, according to the
1,600-page draft report, called an environmental impact
statement, or EIS.
Earlier this month, Governor Gavin Newsom released his proposed
budget, and according to the California Farm Bureau, it shows
strong commitment to wildfire response, climate resilience and
water infrastructure, but leaves gaps for agriculture and rural
communities. Farm Bureau President Shannon Douglass says
farmers and ranchers are eager to help lead on wildfire
prevention, but notes that funding for proactive strategies on
working lands remains limited. … While she welcomes
investments in flood protection, groundwater recharge and
drought resilience, she says infrastructure alone will not
deliver results unless projects are paired with regulatory
efficiency so they can move forward.
Representative Adam Gray (CA‑13) has introduced a sweeping
federal water package designed to accelerate long‑delayed
infrastructure projects, expand storage capacity and streamline
permitting — a proposal that could reshape water reliability
for Westside communities that have long been at the center of
California’s water crisis. The End the California Water Crisis
Package, unveiled last week, includes three bills: the Central
Valley Water Solution Act, the WATER Act and the Build Now Act.
Together, they aim to modernize California’s water system by
authorizing new storage projects, improving federal
coordination and imposing enforceable timelines on
environmental reviews that often stall construction for
years.
Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, Thursday joined Sen. Alex
Padilla, D-California, in announcing they had secured nearly
$3.5 million to help address pollution and trash in the Tijuana
River Valley. The money was secured through the Community
Project Funding process and is intended for a project to dredge
the Smuggler’s Gulch area and remove waste, debris and
accumulated sediment. … The decades-long process to
clean the area has been exacerbated in recent years due to
multiple consecutive years of beach closures in the South Bay
due to elevated bacteria levels as a result of sewage and
wastewater runoff.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority minted a deal to put up to
$500,000 toward tree planting in the Las Vegas Valley amid
community concern that mandated grass removal is killing off
existing canopy. … The deal comes three days
after four valley residents filed a lawsuit against
the agency over its ban on “useless grass,” or grass that a
committee has deemed must be removed before the end of this
year, when a state law passed in 2021 takes effect. In the
complaint, Las Vegas arborist Norm Schilling wrote that the
required removal of grass directly under trees, contributing to
the disturbance of root systems, has resulted in the demise of
some 100,000 trees and has caused roughly $300 million in
damage across the valley.
California Forever, the company behind a plan to build a new
city in Solano County, announced its latest proposal on
Thursday to make progress on another ambitious initiative:
revitalizing the area’s shipbuilding industry with the goal of
creating thousands of jobs. The real estate development
corporation and Nimitz Group, which owns Vallejo’s Mare Island,
are urging the federal government to designate the California
Delta a “Maritime Prosperity Zone,” a designation created by
President Donald Trump last year. The zone would span the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers through Suisun and
San Pablo bays.
Marin County filed an emergency proclamation this week that
would allow the county to seek state and federal financial
assistance after severe storms that caused more than $4 million
in damage this month, officials said. A severe storm system,
record king tides, a storm surge, high winds and riverine
runoff converged to wreak havoc across Marin County earlier
this month, triggering widespread flooding, levee failures,
landslides and resident displacement, the county said in a
statement.
… At Tuesday’s Ripon City Council meeting, Public Works
Director James Pease addressed this in regards to the drinking
water standards established by the State of California and the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The City of Ripon’s
Well 19, which was constructed in 2022, was recently discovered
to contain hexavalent chromium otherwise knowns as Chromium-6.
The drinking water locally is routinely tested and the results
of those tests are monitored by the City and the State of
California Division of Drinking Water in an effort to ensure
the concentration of any regulated constituent present in the
water does not exceed the allowable regulatory limit.
Thursday marks the kickoff of the third annual International
Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit, hosted at Arizona State
University. Atmospheric water harvesting is an intriguing new
frontier in water science. The idea is relatively simple: in
addition to harvesting from rivers and recycling groundwater,
what if we could tap into the water reserves floating in the
air around us? Research into atmospheric water harvesting is
still in its early stages. The Show spoke with one of the
presenters at this year’s summit: Carl Abadam, a Ph.D. student
at the University of New Mexico. Abadam said the first
challenge is figuring out how to extract water from the air.
… The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Monday proposed
plans to open nearly 2 million acres of land from Santa Barbara
to the Bay Area for oil drilling and fracking. … An
analysis from the Central Coast field office would allow new
drilling in Alameda, Contra Costa, Monterey, San Benito, San
Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Fresno, Merced and San Joaquin
counties. It found “minor” and “minimal” impacts to regional
air quality and water resources, as well as to
five newly listed endangered
species in the area including the foothill
yellow-legged frog, western spadefoot toad and northwestern
pond turtle. … “This proposal puts some of the Central
Coast’s most cherished public lands, beaches and
drinking water sources directly in the
crosshairs of expanded fossil fuel development,” said Jeff
Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
