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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Karrigan Börk, UC Davis professor of law and Associate Director
at the Center for Watershed Sciences, has been awarded the
prestigious $10,000 Morrison Prize for his paper on water
rights. The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State
University recognizes Börk’s paper as “the most impactful
sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North
America” for 2023. Börk’s winning paper, “Water Exaction
Rights,” published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review,
proposes a solution to address current and future water crises
in the US: an exactions framework.
Last year, Pacific Gas & Electric announced that it would
demolish the [Eel River's] Scott and Cape Horn dams and
decommission the entire Potter Valley power project.
… Removing the dams will help restore natural river
flows, which will improve fish habitat along the Eel River.
That’s been a longtime objective of the Round Valley Indian
Tribes. The tribes have strong historic and cultural ties to
the river and its bounty. When the dams come down, the Eel
River will become the longest free-flowing river in California
according to fish advocates. Salmon, steelhead and trout all
will benefit. Lake Pillsbury will disappear. Demolition is not
restoration, though, and there will be ripple effects on other
nearby natural areas.
To address the concern of historic groundwater overdraft in the
San Joaquin Valley, the California Water Institute at Fresno
State, with assistance from students and faculty, conducted a
feasibility study to explore the potential for groundwater
recharge within disadvantaged communities. … The analysis
identified four potential locations for the design and
construction of recharge basins near or in the cities of
Kerman, Raisin City, Caruthers and Laton.
Two Tahoe towns are saying no to plastic water
bottles. South Lake Tahoe’s ban on single-use
plastic water bottles and paper cartons is slated to go into
full effect next month, soon after neighboring Truckee
passed an ordinance to implement a similar
ban. … The League to Save Lake Tahoe found that
single-use plastic bottles are one of the top five types of
litter in the Tahoe Basin, Truckee’s news release
states.
Fishers are fighting tire companies’ attempt to dismiss an
Endangered Species Act suit over the use of a rubber additive
known as 6PPD, which harms salmon, telling a California federal
judge the companies are trying to delay accountability…
Spring is here, but the rainy season is clearly not
over in California. Two separate storms are poised to impact
the Golden State this week. The first one is predicted to
impact only Northern California on Wednesday, bringing light
rain. The second one is expected to sweep the
entire state over the weekend, likely delivering a shot of
moderate rain to Northern California and a more substantial
heavy soaking to Southern California. The National Weather
Service’s Los Angeles office is starting to sound the alarm
bells and called the system a “late season
significant storm” in its forecast.
The Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency is
looking to impose a pumping fee of nearly $100 per
acre-foot. Mid-Kings River GSA is comprised of the Kings
County Water District, the City of Hanford and Kings
County. The big picture: The GSA is proposing a
pumping fee maximum of $95 per acre-foot. This comes after
the State views that the region has not made enough progress
through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA). The state wants agriculture and industrial water
pumpers to cut back or pay to mitigate the impacts on
other users. The state could move to put the subbasin in
probation if it does not feel confident in local groundwater
management, and could completely take over operations in 2025.
… Lake Powell’s levels have fallen throughout the winter, but
as the weather warms, the snowpack that has accumulated in the
mountains over the winter will begin to melt. That water will
feed rivers and streams across the West — including the
Colorado River, which fills Lake Powell on Arizona and Utah’s
shared border. … The National Weather Service Colorado
Basin River Forecast Center predicts that 5.4 million acre-feet
of unregulated runoff will spill into the reservoir between
April and July. … According to the Colorado Basin River
Forecast Center, spring runoff this year will be 85% of the
average runoff between 1991 and 2020.
California farmers could save massive amounts of water if they
planted less thirsty — but also less lucrative — crops such as
grains and hay instead of almonds and alfalfa, according to new
research by scientists who used remote sensing and artificial
intelligence. Such a seismic shift in the nation’s most
productive agricultural state could cut consumption by roughly
93%, researchers with UC Santa Barbara and the NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory reported Monday. But Anna Boser, the
study’s lead author, acknowledged that replacing all of
California’s water-intensive crops with the least-intensive
ones is an unrealistic economic scenario. … In a
less-extreme scenario, Boser and her colleagues reported that
fallowing 5% of fields with the most water-intensive crops
could cut water consumption by more than 9%, according to
the study, published in the journal Nature Communications.
A vast burn scar unfolds in drone footage of a landscape seared
by massive wildfires north of Lake Tahoe. But amid the expanses
of torched trees and gray soil, an unburnt island of lush green
emerges. The patch of greenery was painstakingly engineered. A
creek had been dammed, creating ponds that slowed the flow of
water so the surrounding earth had more time to sop it up. A
weblike system of canals helped spread that moisture through
the floodplain. Trees that had been encroaching on the wetlands
were felled. But it wasn’t a team of firefighters or
conservationists who performed this work. It was a crew of
semiaquatic rodents whose wetland-building skills have seen
them gain popularity as a natural way to mitigate
wildfires. A movement is afoot to restore beavers to the
state’s waterways, many of which have suffered from their
absence.
Does the public sector need the private sector’s help to
address the freshwater crisis? That’s the controversial thesis
of Stanford law and environmental social sciences professor
Barton “Buzz” Thompson’s provocatively titled new book: Liquid
Asset: How Business and Government Can Partner to Solve the
Freshwater Crisis. (Buzz is also a member of the PPIC Water
Policy Center’s research network.) We sat down with him to hear
more. … The private sector is already involved in water in
many ways, some more controversial than others. … We
think of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) as a
public program, and it is. The legislature passed the law, and
public agencies are implementing it. But if you look carefully,
you’ll see private handprints all over SGMA’s success.
Water Audit California has voiced concerns about Napa County in
recent months, appealing two Planning Commission decisions and
calling new county plans for storing paper records a “black
hole.” The environmental advocacy group appealed a Dec. 20
county Planning Commission decision approving a Nova Business
Park project. But its bigger claim is that the county fails to
do adequate due diligence, something the county denies.
A Senate panel voted to shut the public out of the key business
of the state agency tasked with finding new water for Arizona.
HB 2014 authorizes the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority
to enter into agreements to facilitate the construction of a
project that would bring water from outside the state into
Arizona. It also empowers the agency to negotiate deals with
others to agree to purchase the water once it becomes
available. But what HB 2014 also would do is exempt all
communications and information gathered related to water
augmentation from all provisions of the state’s Public Records
Law. And the only time anyone could get information would be
“on the consent of the authority.”
A new research paper published recently in Annual Review of
Earth and Planetary Sciences, coordinated by scientists from
The University of New Mexico and collaborating institutions,
addresses the complex nature and societal importance of Grand
Canyon’s springs and groundwater. The paper,
“Hydrotectonics of Grand Canyon Groundwater,” recommends
sustainable groundwater management and uranium
mining threats that require better monitoring and
application of hydrotectonic concepts. The data suggest an
interconnectivity of the groundwater systems such that uranium
mining and other contaminants pose risks to people, aquifers,
and ecosystems. The conclusion based on multiple datasets is
that groundwater systems involve significant mixing.
The Colorado River is relied upon by roughly 40 million people.
That includes members of 30 federally-recognized tribes, as
well as residents across seven states. Four of those are in the
region known as the Upper Basin – that includes Colorado, Utah,
Wyoming, and New Mexico – and the other three are in the Lower
Basin – California, Arizona, and Nevada. In Colorado alone,
half of Denver’s supply – as well as half of Colorado Springs’
supply – rely on the river. Tribal nations in Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have been left out of key
agreements involving the Colorado River for well over a century
now.
Real estate websites are sharing more climate risk information
with home buyers and sellers. Why it matters: Of roughly 4,600
prospective buyers Zillow surveyed nationwide last spring, over
80% said they considered at least one climate risk when
shopping. State of play: Realtor.com, which was the first major
site to show a home’s flood risk, added heat, wind and
air-quality risks to listings this month. The company added
wildfire risk in 2022. Threat level: Nearly 45% of U.S. homes
face severe or extreme damage from environmental threats,
according to a new report from Realtor.com.
The first publication by the newly renamed California Nature
Art Museum in Solvang (formerly the Wildling Museum of Art &
Nature) builds quite nicely on the institution’s vision to “be
recognized as an exceptional and innovative leader in inspiring
our communities and visitors to value wilderness and other
natural areas through the lenses of a diversity of artists.”
Featuring text and stunning photography by George Rose,
California’s Changing Landscape: The Way of Water is an
expansive large-format documentation of California’s vast
terrain, complicated weather, and extensive biodiversity —
particularly as they relate to water and, as naturally follows,
climate change.
Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) exhibit some of the most
diverse life history traits among all Pacific salmonid species
and play major cultural, economic, and recreational roles
throughout the Pacific Coast. Steelhead are unique from their
resident rainbow trout counterparts in that they follow an
anadromous life-history, meaning they migrate to the ocean as
juveniles and return to spawn in freshwater streams and rivers
as adults. Rainbow trout, on the other hand, remain in
freshwater streams for their entire life. Unlike most of their
Pacific salmonid cousins, steelhead are iteroparous, meaning
that they can spawn more than once in their lifetime. This
adaptation allows steelhead to have a more flexible lifecycle
that can be advantageous during warmer or drier seasons,
especially near the southern end of their distribution in
California’s Central Valley.
California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways is
offering grant funding to prevent the further spread of quagga
and zebra mussels into California’s waterways. Funded by the
California Mussel Fee Sticker (also known as the Quagga
Sticker), the Quagga and Zebra Mussel (QZ) Infestation
Prevention Grant Program expects to award a total of up to $2
million across eligible applicants. Applications will be
accepted from Monday, April 1 through Friday, May 10, 2024.All
applications must be received by 5 p.m. on May 10, 2024. The QZ
grants are available to entities that own or manage any aspect
of water in a reservoir that is open for public recreation, is
mussel-free, and do not have an existing two-year QZ Grant
awarded in 2023.
