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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The future availability of irrigation water for California
growers has never been less certain. To help growers survive a
future of “water uncertainty,” the non-profit Soil Health
Academy today announced an on-farm school at the Burroughs
Family almond orchard April 30-May 2 in Denair, California,
that will offer agricultural producers principles and tools to
grow profits and resiliency with much less water. The
school, sponsored by Simple Mills, will feature instruction,
demonstrations and insights from world-renowned soil health
pioneers Gabe Brown, Allen Williams, Ph.D., along with Chuck
Schembre and other orchard, vineyard and vegetable production
experts.
A series of late-season winter storms has filled reservoirs,
boosted snowpack and left forecasters anticipating a late start
to California’s wildfire season. And while the odds are
also tilting toward a milder than normal fire season overall,
that outlook could change by July, said National Interagency
Fire Center meteorologist Jonathan O’Brien. … For now,
Predictive Services is forecasting below-normal large fire
activity in Southern California in May and June, and normal
activity in Northern California.
A Saudi Arabian farm previously permitted to pump unlimited
amounts of groundwater to grow alfalfa for dairy cows overseas
has stopped irrigating its crops on state land in Arizona’s
Butler Valley, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs announced Thursday.
Hobbs and the Arizona State Land Department announced after a
recent inspection Fondomonte had stopped pumping water in the
Butler Valley groundwater basin and has begun to take steps to
leave the property. Hobbs took full credit for the outcome,
saying it was a result of her move to terminate and decline to
renew Fondomonte’s leases on state land in the area, part of a
broader crackdown from Hobbs and her Democratic attorney
general Kris Mayes.
With climate change compounding the strains on the Colorado
River, seven Western states are starting to consider long-term
plans for reducing water use to prevent the river’s reservoirs
from reaching critically low levels in the years to come. But
negotiations among representatives of the states have so far
failed to resolve disagreements. And now, two groups of states
are proposing competing plans for addressing the river’s
chronic gap between supply and demand. In one camp, the three
states in the river’s lower basin — California, Arizona and
Nevada — say their approach would share the largest-ever water
reductions throughout the Colorado River Basin to ensure
long-term sustainability.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge confirmed that the
Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one connected basin—not
separate subbasins—allowing for the groundwater adjudication to
move forward following a year-and-a-half of delays and
litigation. … The Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one
of California’s 21 critically overdrafted basins that was
required under the 2014 California Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) to create a groundwater sustainability
agency (GSA) and corresponding groundwater sustainability plan.
After the California Department of Water Resources approved the
sustainability plan, which called for a 60 percent water use
reduction in 20 years, agricultural corporations Bolthouse
Farms and Grimmway Farms filed a groundwater adjudication
against every landowner in the Cuyama Valley in August
2021.
With nature providing plenty of water – finally – this year,
and groundwater regulation well underway, water managers,
farmers and others turned their focus to infrastructure at
Thursday’s Water Summit put on by the Water Association of Kern
County. Early in the day’s line up of speakers, Edward Ring,
senior fellow with the California Policy Center, captured the
audience’s attention with an extensive cost-benefit analysis of
the Delta Conveyance project, a tunnel that would take
Sacramento River water beneath the ecologically sensitive
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta 45 miles to be exported south. His
conclusion: the project has a whopping price tag for a
“dribble” of water.
Water conservation is a top issue for cities across the
Southwest. Now, Phoenix continues plans to reduce water use and
prepare for the future. Phoenix City Council approved a water
conservation ordinance for “big water users” this week. “It is
Phoenix making sure that when a large volume user comes along,
there is a sufficient benefit,” said Sarah Porter, director of
the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU. It only impacts new
developments. Under the ordinance, companies that use more than
250,000 gallons of water per day will have to submit water
conservation plans to the city. This could impact some
hospitals, resorts, and manufacturers. Then, companies that use
more than 500,000 gallons of water per day need to submit a
conservation plan and ensure 30% of their water usage comes
from recycled water.
Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known
cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking
and stress: microplastics. In a study released Wednesday in the
New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of
physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who
had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial
plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack,
nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post
surgery than those who did not. … Petroleum-based
plastics do not biodegrade. Over time, they break down into
smaller and smaller pieces — known as microplastics,
microfibers and nanoplastics — and have been found in
household dust, drinking water and human tissue and
blood.
What goes up must come down — perhaps even for things as
massive as Lake Powell. That’s the topic of the Glen Canyon
Institute’s March 15 event, “Glen Canyon Rises.” Featuring
artists, musicians and writers, the event celebrates the
re-emergence of the legendary canyon as the water table keeps
dropping in the massive reservoir shrouding the canyon, Lake
Powell. The Moab Times-Independent spoke with two of the
event’s participants, writer (and former Salt Lake Tribune
reporter) Zak Podmore and photographer Dawn Kish, about their
work to document the return of the southern Utah canyon
sometimes called America’s lost national park.
People born in 1994 will be turning 30 this year — and so will
the drought in Arizona. Groundwater is the primary source of
water for the state, along with allotments from the Colorado
River. But due to a population that has nearly doubled since
the drought began in 1994, groundwater is drying up. In
response, Gov. Katie Hobbs put a moratorium on new housing
developments last year unless developers can prove they have
safe access to non-groundwater sources for 100 years before
they can begin construction. Along with efforts to encourage
home water use reduction, another solution being considered is
a bit greener: direct potable reuse (DPR), known colloquially
as “toilet to tap.” But the issue is far more complex than a
catchy tagline.
The ocean and river salmon seasons in California are likely to
be closed or severely restricted this year based on low
abundance forecasts for Sacramento and Klamath River fall-run
Chinook salmon that were released by state and federal fishery
scientists at the CDFW’s annual salmon information meeting via
webinar on March 1. California representatives are now working
together to develop a range of recommended ocean fishing season
alternatives taking place now at the March 6-11 Pacific Fishery
Management Council (PFMC) meeting in Fresno. Final season
recommendations will be adopted at the PFMC’s April 6-11
meeting in Seattle, Wash. Due to the collapse of fall-run
Chinook salmon on the Klamath/Trinity and Sacramento River
systems in 2022, all commercial and recreational salmon fishing
on the ocean was closed in California and most of Oregon last
year.
Nearly $20 million in federal community project funds for 14
San Gabriel Valley projects, and $1.67 billion for Southern
California water infrastructure were a step closer to reality
after a House of Representatives vote this week, according to
the Rep. Grace Napolitano’s office. The $19.6 million was money
Napolitano secured in this year’s congressional spending bills,
she said. The 14 projects include: $5,500,000 for the San
Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority’s San Gabriel Basin
Restoration Fund…
The State Water Resources Control Board is exploring regulating
nutrients emitted from Southern California wastewater treatment
plants into the ocean. The controversial move is prompted by
concerns that these discharges may accelerate acidification and
oxygen loss in the region’s coastal waters, harming nearshore
marine life. The wastewater treatment industry says this
nutrient regulation is premature. Environmentalists say it’s
overdue. … Wastewater effluent from 23 million
people is piped offshore in Southern California. The resulting
acidity boost could be enough to start dissolving the shells of
crabs and small snails called pteropods, which swim near the
ocean surface and are a favorite food of many fish and whales.
And the resulting oxygen depletion could deprive anchovies,
which many commercial fish eat, of their habitat.
Cadiz, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDZI / CDZIP, the “Company”) announced
today that it has completed a financing transaction that
significantly strengthens its financial position and provides
the Company with liquidity to accelerate development of its
water supply projects in Southern California. The financing
includes a new $20 million loan to fund operations and capital
expenses associated with development of the Company’s water
supply projects and extends all debt maturities to 2027.
Water management might look different in Marin County as
agencies partner to understand extreme weather better. The
North Marin Water District, the Marin Municipal Water District
and Marin County joined the Center for Western Weather and
Water Extremes Water Affiliates Group in January. The group
researches “atmospheric rivers” and other severe weather to
improve water management, mitigate flood risk and increase
water supply reliability. … The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration says atmospheric rivers are storms
that move most of the water vapor out of the tropics. According
to the Water Affiliates Group, heavy rainfall from these flows
of condensed water is responsible for almost 85% of floods on
the West Coast.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has mapped
out the state over the last few years to gain a better
understanding of its groundwater basins. The department has
been using new technology combined with helicopters to create a
database about what lies below. Out of sight, out of mind, many
people might not think about the water that could lie below our
feet, but the DWR knows groundwater is critical to California.
The state has 515 basins that can hold up to five times more
groundwater than all surface water combined. However, state
officials need to learn more about these basins. With phase one
of their airborne electromagnetic survey project done, they’re
one step closer.
The seven U.S. states that draw water from the Colorado
River basin are suggesting new ways to determine how the
increasingly scarce resource is divvied up when the river can’t
provide what it historically promised. The Upper Basin and
the Lower Basin states, as neighbors, don’t agree on the
approach. Under a proposal released Wednesday by Arizona,
California and Nevada, the water level at Lake Mead — one of
the two largest of the Colorado River reservoirs — no longer
would determine the extent of water cuts like it currently
does. The three Lower Basin states also want what they say is a
more equitable way of distributing cuts that would be a 50-50
split between the basins once a threshold is hit.
A recent large die-off of young salmon released into the
Klamath River shocked and dismayed state biologists,
reinforcing that human efforts to restore nature and undo
damage can be unpredictable and difficult to
control. The tiny Chinook salmon turned up dead downriver
just two days after they were released from the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife’s brand new Fall Creek Fish
Hatchery, built to supply the Klamath River as it undergoes the
largest dam removal in history. … No wild salmon were
harmed. And the consequences aren’t expected to be catastrophic
for the Klamath hatchery project.
Facing rising costs and rates, the leaders of San Diego’s water
lifelines are looking to sell some of its most expensive
supply: de-salted ocean water from a massive plant in Carlsbad.
But, at the same time, they’re also trying to make more of
it. Dan Denham, the San Diego County Water Authority’s new
general manager, says he wants to expand seawater desalination
not because he thinks San Diego needs more water, but because
he thinks they can sell it and recoup at least a little of the
massive investment local rate payers have made on the plant.
… “We’re looking to expand the plant as an opportunity for
users, whether that’s in southern California or the lower
Colorado River basin,” Denham said.
With National Groundwater
Awareness Week approaching and 2024 marking
the 10ᵗʰ anniversary of the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act in California, upcoming Water Education Foundation
tours and events will help you gain a deeper understanding of
groundwater fundamentals. Join us April 5 for our
annual Water
101 Workshop, which includes a session that
will provide an overview of the state’s groundwater
resources, its importance in the state’s water supply, its
history of use and overuse and the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA). Learn what other topics will be covered
and register
here. Workshop participants can also join
the Groundwater
Tour the day before the workshop. And in
April, our three-day Central Valley
Tour will have a strong focus on groundwater as it
moves through the San Joaquin Valley.