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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A California court has ruled in favor of Ontario in the city’s
legal challenge to the Inland Empire Utilities Agency claiming
the Chino Basin Program violated state environmental law,
officials announced Tuesday. According to the San
Bernardino Superior Court’s Sept. 4 ruling, the IEUA in May
2022 violated the California Environmental Quality Act. The
court found that the agency: — “‘piecemealed’ the evaluation of
the effects of the CBP by failing to evaluate the effects of
the CBP and the Feather River Exchange outside of the Chino
Basin.”
Capitalizing on good weather and even better fishing, the 7,500
Chinook fall harvest guideline was reached during the Sept. 4-7
recreational ocean salmon fishery. The California Department of
Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) estimates that 12,000 Chinook salmon
were taken by 12,400 anglers in the brief fall season between
Pt. Reyes and Pt. Sur. The National Marine Fisheries Service
took in-season action on Sept. 17 to close the remaining 2025
fall dates. … The guidelines serve to ensure that
impacts from the fishery to stocks of particular concern -
Klamath River fall Chinook and Central Valley Spring and
Sacramento River Winter Chinook – are minimized.
Data center developer Beale Infrastructure says it is moving
forward with Project Blue, this time promising a greener
proposal that will use a new low-water air-cooling technology.
… According to the Beale letter, the new design “will
consume no water, potable or otherwise, for industrial
cooling.” … It’s unclear what water sources exist at the
site without Tucson Water. Arizona Department of Water
Resources spokesperson Doug MacEachern told Luminaria the final
user would have a few options, which could include groundwater
at the site, access through a municipal water provider, or the
use of long-term storage credits.
Moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Mario is bringing
a risk of thunderstorms, heavy rain, flooding and strong winds
across the Southwestern United States this week, forecasters
warned. … Thunderstorms are more likely to occur in Southern
California than Northern California. In the south, the storms
are likely to be wet, while there’s a risk for dry lightning in
Central and Northern California. … Rainfall is also expected
across the Sierra Nevada Range with 0.25 inch to 1 inch
possible in the Tahoe Basin and north and higher amounts, up to
2 inches, likely in the southern Sierra.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors approved more than $5.8
million in grants and $2.3 million in loans to fund flood risk
reduction and water supply projects in Yuba County. A
Yuba Water representative reported Tuesday that three flood
risk reduction projects were approved for funds: The city of
Wheatland will receive a $650,000 grant funding a Stormwater
Master Plan. … Reclamation District 817 will receive a
$400,000 grant that will cover administrative costs and
interest accrued while completing the Bear River Setback Levee
project. … The Marysville Levee Commission was approved
for a $300,000 loan, which will increase an existing line of
credit to support the Marysville Ring Levee.
Dozens of residents at Pleasant Grove Mobile Home Park have
been living without running water since Aug. 29, a crisis that
Butte County Supervisor Bill Connelly says has rendered the
park “uninhabitable.” Residents said the two wells supplying
the park’s water were shut down because the property owner
failed to pay the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bill. Connelly
confirmed that account, adding that the issue has persisted for
years without meaningful intervention from the state.
For almost six years, Dr. Scott Bartell has been investigating
the effects that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
have on the health of Orange County residents after high levels
of PFAS were detected in drinking water supplies.
… Bartell says some of the results from the UCI study
contradict previous findings on PFAS health. “We have some
findings on obesity, which is one of the endpoints people have
been wondering about, PFAS might be an obesogen and then cause
more weight gain if people are exposed,” Bartell said. “But
we’re not actually seeing that.”
… Nowhere in the country is turf use growing faster than in
California — on school athletic fields, in city parks and on
residential lawns. Exact numbers are not known, but it’s
estimated that 1,100 acres of the material, or the equivalent
of some 870 football fields, are being installed across the
state each year. … “The fields do not require water,
pesticides or fertilizers” … said Laura Chalkley, director of
communications for San Mateo Union High School District. But a
growing number of health experts, environmentalists and parents
say the fields are harming children’s health and heating up the
environment — and they’re pushing their cities, counties and
school districts to ban them.
A water line was damaged Wednesday in Benicia, leading the city
to call for an immediate reduction in water use. … The city,
meanwhile, will rely on its secondary water source, Lake
Herman. Water from the lake “may occasionally have a natural,
earthy taste or odor due to organic compounds,” but it is safe
to drink and “meets all state and federal water quality
standards,” the city said.
The California Department of Water Resources on Tuesday asked a
state appellate court to lift a preliminary injunction on
geotechnical investigations for the controversial Delta
Conveyance Project. … Last year, Sacramento County
Superior Court Judge Stephen Acquisto agreed with a group of
local counties and water districts, as well as environmental
and tribal organizations, that the preliminary work is a
“covered action,” and the state agency must certify that the
entire project complies with the requirements of the California
Delta Reform Act. The hourlong hearing … Tuesday revolved
around the question of whether the proposed preliminary work
itself, as opposed to the tunnel itself, is in fact a covered
action.
Western Slope water officials are asking for more time to
negotiate before the state decides whether influential Colorado
River water rights can be used to help the environment. A
state water agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, is
scheduled to make its final ruling Thursday on the future usage
of a pair of water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant, owned
by an Xcel Energy subsidiary called Public Service of
Colorado. On Tuesday, the Xcel subsidiary and Colorado
River District — the Western Slope water entity leading the
effort to use the rights to help the environment — filed an
11th-hour extension to delay the ruling to November.
Ferocious overpumping that has caused huge swaths of the San
Joaquin Valley to sink, damaging key water arteries including
the Friant-Kern Canal and California Aqueduct must stop,
according to the Department of Water Resources (DWR). It’s one
of the main reasons the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA) was passed in 2014. After 11 years, though, not much has
slowed the sinking, other than a few good, wet years, prompting
the state to issue proposed subsidence guidelines that leave no
doubt how serious DWR is about the issue.
California voters approved Proposition 4 last year. It will
yield $10 billion to pay for environmental projects and
programs. Of that total, $50 million is earmarked to spend on
water quality projects in the polluted Tijuana River. … San
Diego Supervisor Paloma Aguirre flew to Sacramento to ask the
State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday for the full $50
million. … But Calexico Mayor Diana Nuricumbo said that
her city is relying on its share of the $50 million to pay for
upgrades to its wastewater treatment plant, which
processes and cleans wastewater before discharging it into the
New River.
A mechanical failure during last week’s emergency repair work
to a damaged Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District (HBMWD)
transmission pipeline caused chlorinated water to spill into
Janes Creek, resulting in the death of more than 250 fish,
including trout, sculpin and Coho salmon, according to district
staff. … [O]ne of that agency’s [CDFW] environmental
scientists responded to the scene of the spill — near Coombs
Road in northern Arcata — and saw “a couple dozen” dead Coho
salmon, about 200 dead trout (mostly cutthroat) and roughly 40
dead sculpin.
… Climate scientists at UC Santa Barbara analyzed two
approaches that involve reducing the amount of sunlight warming
Earth’s surface: cloud seeding over the
eastern Pacific and introducing aerosols into the stratosphere.
By modeling local effects on the Pacific Ocean, they found that
the first strategy would completely disrupt one of the planet’s
major climate cycles, the El Niño Southern Oscillation. At the
same time, the second would scarcely affect the system at all.
The results, published in the journal Earth’s Future,
underscore the importance of considering the broad range of
consequences that any geoengineering solution may have.
When scores of dead and dying sea animals began washing up on
L.A.-area beaches just weeks after January’s devastating fires,
the timing seemed suspicious. … [T]he especially high number
of animal deaths this year prompted several research teams to
investigate whether runoff from the fires may
have accelerated algae growth to particularly dangerous
proportions. The evidence available so far suggests that this
year’s algae bloom would have been just as deadly if the
catastrophe on land hadn’t happened, multiple scientists said
this week.
The fight over lithium extraction at the Salton Sea has now
entered the appeals stage. Two environmental groups are
pressing ahead with their challenge to Imperial County’s
approval of the Hell’s Kitchen lithium and geothermal project,
a development they say risks worsening water scarcity, air
pollution and cultural loss in one of California’s most fragile
regions … [T]he project comes with a heavy water
footprint — about 6,500 acre-feet annually — in a desert region
where the shrinking Salton Sea already drives some of the
state’s worst air quality.
… [G]rass is problematic in deserts and any place with
limited water, such as the American West, where it won’t do
well without irrigation. As climate change makes the world
hotter and triggers more extreme weather, including drought,
thirsty expanses of groomed emerald are taxing freshwater
supplies that are already under stress. Enter xeriscaping —
landscaping aimed at vastly reducing the need for irrigation,
including by using native or drought-tolerant plants. (A
utility here, Denver Water, says it coined the term in 1981 by
combining “landscape” with the Greek word “xeros,” which means
dry, to encourage reduced water use.)
The Yuba Water Agency has approved more than $8.1 million in
grants and loans to support projects aimed at advancing flood
risk reduction and enhancing water supply reliability in Yuba
County. … One of the major projects receiving funding is
the Marysville Ring Levee, which will provide 200-year levee
protection for the city of Marysville.
A historic East Bay company that generated the foul stench of
sewage odor, polluting a town’s air, has settled a lawsuit with
Contra Costa County prosecutors for approximately $500,000,
authorities said Tuesday. C&H Sugar, whose plant has been a
staple in the unincorporated city of Crockett since 1906,
committed the odor violations in 2022 at a
wastewater treatment plant it jointly owns on
Dowrelio Drive, according to a statement from the Contra Costa
County District Attorney’s Office. They added that the company
agreed to pay $400,000 in civil penalties and $100,000 in
costs.
