Aquafornia

Overview

Aquafornia
Water news you need to know

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.

Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays. Or subscribe via RSS

For breaking news, follow us on Twitter.

Check out our special news feeds devoted to:

Please Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing. Also, the headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.

Aquafornia news NBC - Los Angeles

Beverly Glen woman hit with $9.5k water bill after landslide

Nearly six weeks after a major winter storm led to flooding and landslide throughout Southern California, some homeowners in Beverly Glen are still trying to return home. On Caribou Lane, a landslide knocked a home off its foundation, and the debris slid into the neighbors’ homes. That debris and mud left Samila Bahsoon’s home with a lot of damage. … She has potentially more than $600,000 in damage, and two insurance companies already denied her claims. … She also said when the neighbor’s home was knocked off the foundation, the debris broke her water main. And it led to a massive water bill. “LADWP sent me a $9,500 water bill, which is 6,500% more than average for the last 35 years that this house has been used,” she said.

Aquafornia news Brownstein

Blog: Key takeaways from the Sustainable Water Investment Summit

Set against the context of unprecedented demand for water supply solutions, Brownstein and WestWater Research brought together water industry and finance leaders for the second annual Sustainable Water Investment Summit. The World Resources Institute’s latest data helps articulate the scale of the demand for water supply reliability, sustainability and innovation: by 2050, an additional billion people will be living in arid areas and regions with high water stress, and by 2050, around 46% of global GDP is expected to come from areas facing high-water risk (up from 10% currently). Given these realities, it’s unsurprising that diverse interests are now converging to meet the challenges of ensuring a resilient and accessible water future. Polls find that 63% of global companies now undertake water-related risk assessments, and 1,100 CEOs have annual performance reviews tied to results around water goals. 

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

Coastal Commission approves Talbert Marsh restoration project

A restoration project at Talbert Marsh got the go-ahead Thursday after the state Coastal Commission approved a coastal permit application submitted by the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy as part of its consent calendar. The roughly 25 acres of Talbert Marsh stretch between Brookhurst Street to the Santa Ana River Trail and make up one of four wetlands the nonprofit owns and maintains. More than 90 bird species have been observed at the marsh in addition to the adjoining wetlands, according to the organization. The project along the southeastern and western shorelines of South Island will address erosion, which Coastal Commission staff said causes the disappearance of coastal salt marsh vegetation and depletes refuge spaces for sensitive bird species that live there.

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

Friday Top of the Scroll: California snow defies warming trend in U.S. Experts say the ‘lost winter’ carries a warning

In January, the Sierra Nevada snowfall outlook was bleak. California’s snowpack sat at levels less than half of normal, and more sand than snow lined the shores of Lake Tahoe. Across the West, experts voiced concern about snow drought. But, in California, prospects turned around the following month as a steady stream of storms added to the snowpack, culminating in an epic blizzard. Things played out quite differently in other parts of the country — large swaths of the U.S., including the Midwest, lack healthy snow levels. … In the future, snowy winters producing well above-normal snowpack like last year may still occur, but “those kinds of winters are going to become less common in a warming world,” said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist at the National Weather Service Alaska Region.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news Colorado Public Radio

Colorado River states remain divided on sharing water, and some tribes say their needs are still being ignored

The states that use the Colorado River have put out their latest proposals on how to manage the river’s shrinking amount of water, and the two plans reveal that there are still big differences in how upstream and downstream states want to divvy up future cuts to their water consumption. While state water negotiators say they’re committed to figuring out how they can compromise in the age of climate change when there is less water available to the 40 million people who rely on it, the Southern Ute tribal government in southwestern Colorado doesn’t believe either proposal addresses their concerns or helps them secure their water future.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news SJV Water

State board to vote on reducing extraction fees for probationary basins

On the eve of its first subbasin probationary hearing, the state Water Resources Control Board announced it will vote on whether to reduce a controversial groundwater extraction fee.  The board will vote at its March 19 meeting on whether to cut the fee from $40 to $20-per-acre-foot for well owners in a subbasin placed on probation.  It will hold its first probationary hearing on the Tulare Lake subbasin, which covers Kings County, on April 16. Then the Tule subbasin, in the southern half of the valley portion of Tulare County, will come up for hearing Sept. 17. The extraction fee would only be charged if the Water Board had to step in and administer a subbasin in cases where it finds local groundwater agencies aren’t up to the job.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

Mystery surrounds sudden increase in steelhead trout deaths

California environmental groups are urging a federal court to intervene amid a “dramatic increase” in the deaths of threatened steelhead trout at pumps operated by state and federal water managers. Since Dec. 1, more than 4,000 wild and hatchery-raised steelhead have been killed at pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, according to public data for the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. The agencies are now at about 90% of their combined seasonal take limit, which refers to the amount of wild steelhead permitted to be killed between January and March under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. A coalition of environmental and fishing groups — including the Golden State Salmon Assn., the Bay Institute and Defenders of Wildlife — are involved in ongoing litigation that seeks to challenge current federal operating plans in the delta, an estuary at the heart of the state’s water supply. 

Related articles:

Aquafornia news E&E News by POLITICO

Conservation groups sue over Calif. lithium project

Environmental groups on Thursday sued officials who signed off on a lithium project in the Salton Sea that a top Biden official has helped advance. Comité Civico del Valle and Earthworks filed the legal complaint in Imperial County Superior Court against county officials who approved conditional permits for Controlled Thermal Resources’ Hell’s Kitchen lithium and geothermal project. The groups argue that the country’s approval of the direct lithium extraction and geothermal brine project near the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea violates county and state laws, such as the California Environmental Quality Act.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news Reno Gazette-Journal

Tahoe restoration efforts set to lose $301 million; state officials urge Congress to act

With less than seven months remaining before the expiration of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, state and tribal officials gathered in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to urge its renewal before Sept. 30. The federal government authorized $415 million in 2016 to help mitigate fire risk in the Tahoe Basin and preserve the lake’s famous clarity, but only $114 million of that has been appropriated so far. H.R. 1274, the Lake Tahoe Restoration Reauthorization Act, would extend the expiration of the program another decade until Sept. 30, 2034. But the bill has languished in Congress since its introduction a little over a year ago.

Related article: 

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

SF allegedly dumps big amounts of sewage into creek during storms

When heavy rain overwhelms wastewater treatment plants in San Francisco, causing stormwater to overflow onto streets and into the bay, sewage is an unfortunate part of the mix.  After heavy rain, the largest recipient of the potent brew of stormwater and sewage in the city is Mission Creek — a channel to the bay that is home to houseboats, walking trails and a kayak launch. At Mission Creek, Islais Creek, another channel at India Basin, and a few locations in between, the city discharges 1.2 billion gallons of “combined sewer discharges” in a typical year, according to the environmental group S.F. Baykeeper, which has notified the city it intends to sue over how such discharges impact the environment. A large portion of the combined sewer overflows — which SFPUC said are composed of 94% treated stormwater and 6% treated wastewater — is making its way without basic treatment into the bay during storms, according to S.F. Baykeeper. 

Aquafornia news Fox 40 - Sacramento

Remains of destructive dam failure to be cleared from the American River after 60 years

After nearly 60 years of being submerged in the clear waters of the American River, chunks of concrete and steel will be removed from the river in the Auburn State Recreation Area, but how did they get there? Before the current State Route 49 bridge straddled the American River, a similarly placed bridge provided the vital connection between Auburn and the communities of northwest El Dorado County. That bridge, named the Georgetown Bridge, was built in 1948 and ended its time of providing safe passage for motorists on Dec. 23, 1964. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO), Hell Hole Dam breached, releasing 30,000 acre-feet of water down the Rubicon River, into the Middle Fork of the American River and down to the confluence with the North Fork of the American River near Auburn.

Aquafornia news AP News

Interior Department will give tribal nations $120 million to fight climate-related threats

The Biden administration will be allocating more than $120 million to tribal governments to fight the impacts of climate change, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. The funding is designed to help tribal nations adapt to climate threats, including relocating infrastructure. Indigenous peoples in the U.S. are among the communities most affected by severe climate-related environmental threats, which have already negatively impacted water resources, ecosystems and traditional food sources in Native communities in every corner of the U.S. “As these communities face the increasing threat of rising seas, coastal erosion, storm surges, raging wildfires and devastation from other extreme weather events, our focus must be on bolstering climate resilience …” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, said in a Wednesday press briefing.

Aquafornia news Bloomberg

Regulation of PFAS chemicals in water supply strains city budgets

Hastings, Minnesota, is staring down a $69 million price tag for three new treatment plants to remove PFAS chemicals from its water supply, ahead of new US federal regulations limiting the amount of so-called forever chemicals in public drinking water — which could come as early as this month. … [T]he project amounts to a “budget buster,” says city administrator Dan Wietecha. Operation and maintenance costs for the new plants could add as much as $1 million to the tab each year … Cities across the US are bracing for costly upgrades to their water systems as the Environmental Protection Agency moves to finalize the first-ever enforceable national drinking water standards for PFAS — or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — a large group of man-made chemicals used for decades in manufacturing and in consumer products.

Aquafornia news Capitol Weekly

Opinion: Newsom’s stealthy divide and conquer Delta tunnel campaign

Gavin Newsom’s stealthy divide and conquer tactics are pushing marginalized communities against each other in a war over water. Newsom, his administration and State Water Contractors are appropriating environmental justice language to sway public opinion in Southern California about the Delta Conveyance Project – also referred to as the Delta tunnel. They argue that the Delta tunnel is essential for Southern California’s disadvantaged communities, yet misrepresent the harm the project continues to have on the tribal communities along California’s major rivers and on communities in the Delta watershed. Pitting disadvantaged communities from different regions of the state against each other is a cynical strategy, and is all the more egregious when considering it’s done in the interest of serving only one sector of California’s economy that these players have deemed all-important – special interests in Southern California and portions of Silicon Valley.
-Written by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta.  

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

Opinion: Ours is the most wasteful civilization in history. Here’s how to stop that

What if the looming calamities of climate change, plastic pollution, the energy crisis and our whole environmental doom-scroll are symptoms of just one malady and it’s something we actually can fix? That’s right, the planet is fighting a single archvillain: Waste. Americans live in the most wasteful civilization in history. … Waste is so deeply embedded in our economy, products and daily lives that it’s hard to see clearly, or to see at all. … How is it “normal” that 40% of what our industrial farm and food system produces ends up as garbage? … The average American throws out three times more trash today than in 1960. Pin much of that garbage growth on plastic waste, so pervasive now that tiny bits of it are in food, water, beer and even human hearts, lungs and newborn babies’ poop.
-Written by Edward Humes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His latest book, “Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World,” will be published in April.

Aquafornia news Monterey County Weekly

Farmers file lawsuits against County of Monterey, Caltrans and others over 2023 Pajaro flood-related damages.

Following a lawsuit filed by hundreds of Pajaro Valley residents and business owners, farmers and agricultural landowners and tenants have filed two lawsuits against local, regional and state agencies they claim are liable for damages connected to the 2023 Pajaro levee breach and subsequent flooding. One suit is filed by about a dozen business entities (and roughly 50 people who are trustees); another by Willoughby Farms. Each case, filed on March 4 in Monterey County Superior Court, names a long list of defendants: the counties of Monterey and Santa Cruz; the Monterey County Water Resources Agency; Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District; Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency; State of California; and Caltrans. (The Willoughby Farms suit also names the City of Watsonville and others.) 

Aquafornia news USA Today

Concern after dog-killing flatworm found in California for first time – in Colorado River

A dog-killing parasite that was believed to only exist in Texas and other Gulf Coast states has been discovered as far west as California for the first time, scientists have warned. Experts at the University of California Riverside found the Heterobilharzia americana parasite, a flatworm commonly known as a liver fluke, in spots along the Colorado River where it runs through Southern California. According to the university, the flatworm has never before been seen outside of Texas and surrounding areas, and other studies have found most infections occur in Texas and Louisiana, though some have occurred in North Carolina, Texas, and Kansas.

Related article: 

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

Thursday Top of the Scroll: New study – California’s farm belt sees thirstier crops, pressure on water supply

Climate change is driving up the thirst of crops significantly in California’s San Joaquin Valley, new research shows, adding to the critical water challenges faced by one of the world’s leading agricultural regions. The total water demand of orchards, vineyards and row crops in the area is up 4.4% over the past decade compared with the prior 30 years because of hotter, drier conditions, and it’s likely to continue growing, according to a federally funded study published this week. In 2021, the water demand of crops was up an astonishing 12.3%, the study shows. While the warming atmosphere has long been known to dry out plants and soil, the new research identifies the impact specific to the San Joaquin Valley.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news The Vacaville Reporter

State recommends huge cut to Solano water allocation

A new recommendation from the California State Water Quality Control Board in its Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan) for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary could see Solano County forced to adapt to a fraction of the water it is currently allocated from Lake Berryessa. The implications for Solano County cities could be enormous, leaving Solano County with about 25 percent of its current allocation. Spanning hundreds of miles from north of Lake Shasta to Fresno, the tributaries of the Sacramento and Sac Joaquin rivers that feed into the San Francisco Bay reach well into the Sierra Nevadas and Central Valley. The State Water Quality Control Board has noted that diminished river flows in these areas are harming fish habitats and are detrimental to the water system as a whole ecologically.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news KUNC - Greeley, Colo

Gila River Indian Community says it doesn’t support latest Colorado River sharing proposals

The Gila River Indian Community says it does not support a three-state proposal for managing the Colorado River’s shrinking supply in the future. The community, which is located in Arizona, is instead working with the federal government to develop its own proposal for water sharing. The tribe is among the most prominent of the 30 federally-recognized tribes that use the Colorado River. In recent years, it has signed high-profile deals with the federal government to receive big payments in exchange for water conservation. Those deals were celebrated by Arizona’s top water officials. But now, it is diverging from states in the river’s Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada. Stephen Roe Lewis, The Gila River Indian Community’s Governor, announced his tribe’s disapproval of the Lower Basin proposal at a water conference in Tucson, Ariz., while speaking to a room of policy experts and water scientists.

Related articles: