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
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.
In January, draining the reservoirs behind the Klamath Dams
began. Iron Gate Reservoir, Copco Lake, and the Boyle Reservoir
are now largely empty as blasts opened holes in culverts
beneath Copco #1 and the John C. Boyle dams and the outlet
tunnel below Iron Gate was opened. “The Klamath River flows
free,” ran some headlines. Well not exactly. Keno and Link
River dams in Oregon upstream near Klamath Falls will not be
removed. Iron Gate, Copco #1, and J.C. Boyle still stand,
although the reservoirs behind them are largely empty. Until
the dams are completely removed (slated for this
spring/summer), the flow is still impacted by the dam
structures, causing erosion and ponding. Constriction and
acceleration as the water flows through narrowed passageways
can lead to cavitation. Cavitation occurs when irregularities
in the bed lift the water. The resulting negative pressure
causes bubbles of water vapor to form. -Written by Lori Dengler, an emeritus professor of
geology at Cal Poly Humboldt.
In what one Ukiah Valley water leader calls “the next big era
of major water decisions,” the City of Ukiah has joined up with
Redwood Valley and the Millview water district to form a new
water authority. The aim is to qualify for state infrastructure
grants to create a more reliable water supply for small
communities. The new authority has around 8500 to 9000 water
users, with about half of them in the city of Ukiah. That’s
pretty small by state standards, but First District Supervisor
Glenn McGourty, who is retiring this year, thinks the water
authority will help smaller districts comply with
ever-increasing state requirements.
Almost three months after a January storm and flash floods
killed several people and displaced hundreds of San Diego-area
residents, the state is offering one-time
Disaster CalFresh benefits to help families
recover. To be eligible for disaster food benefits, people
must have lived or worked in storm-impacted areas on Jan. 21,
the day record rainfall swelled creeks and rivers, deluging
neighborhoods. About 600 people sought emergency shelter.
California’s Department of Social Services said it will provide
30 days of food benefits to families who qualify.
California today took another step in implementing the nation’s
most comprehensive measure to tackle the rise in plastic waste
polluting our communities and ecosystems. Plastic waste is a
major contributor to climate and trash pollution,
with less than 9% of plastic recycled in California
and the rest of the U.S. Governor Gavin Newsom signed
the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer
Responsibility Act (SB 54) in 2022, which requires
producers to cut single-use plastic waste and ensure the
packaging on products they sell is recyclable or compostable.
The state today released draft regulations for the
measure, kicking off the formal rulemaking process.
On March 6, a coalition of environmental and fishing groups
reiterated their request that a federal court modify federal
agencies’ proposed interim plan for operating the federal
Central Valley Project (CVP), in coordination with the State
Water Project (SWP), to protect fish species listed under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA) and California Endangered Species
Act (CESA). That coalition includes the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Golden State Salmon
Association, The Bay Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, and
Natural Resources Defense Council. Coinciding with that filing
has been a recent dramatic increase of protected steelhead
dying at the projects’ water pumps. The CVP and SWP are
still largely operating under rules written in 2019 under the
leadership of, among others, Interior Secretary David
Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the powerful Westlands Water
District.
… Los Angeles desperately needs to become more like a
sponge. That will help to capture more stormwater locally when
rain does come and lessen devastating flooding, said Edith de
Guzman, a UCLA water equity and climate adaptation researcher.
… The Rory M. Shaw Wetlands Park Project will
turn a 46-acre landfill formerly used for materials such as
concrete and gravel into an engineered wetland that can boost
local water supply and alleviate local flooding. It’ll also
become a 15-acre park with a lake and walking paths.
… But now, the biggest barrier to completing the project
is funding, said Mark Pestrella, the director of L.A. County
Department of Public Works, which is spearheading the project
(after it’s constructed, the city of L.A. will take over
maintenance). The new goal is to complete it by 2028 or 2029.
Arizona officials said a Saudi-owned company they targeted over
its use of groundwater to grow forage crops is moving its
farming operation out of a valley in the Southwestern state’s
rural west. Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona State Land
Department announced late Thursday that Fondomonte Arizona is
officially no longer pumping water in the Butler Valley
groundwater basin. Some residents of La Paz County had
complained that the company’s pumping was threatening their
wells. A statement by Hobbs says an on-site inspection had
confirmed that Fondomonte was moving to vacate the property.
Fondomonte has several other farms elsewhere in Arizona that
are not affected by the decision.
In 2012, one of the driest years in Colorado in recent memory,
the Crystal River practically dried up. Ken Neubecker, a
now-retired Colorado projects director at environmental group
American Rivers and former member of the Pitkin County Healthy
Rivers board, recalls the stream conditions. … These
extremely low-water conditions returned in the drought years of
2018, 2020 and 2021, with river flows near the fish hatchery
just south of Carbondale hovering around 8 to 10 cfs — not
enough to support aquatic life and nowhere near the 100 cfs
that the state of Colorado says is the minimum needed to
maintain a healthy stream.
A report released by the Navy confirmed concerns that for years
have been hanging over the radiological cleanup of San
Francisco’s Hunters Point Shipyard: that rising seawater
levels, and other environmental factors resulting from climate
change, could cause toxic materials that have long been buried
at the site to surface. The study, called Climate
Resilience Assessment, was included in an ongoing review
process that the Navy must undertake every five years to
evaluate its remediation plan for the former shipyard, which
has long been a designated Superfund site. The shipyard is
also slated for redevelopment into a new neighborhood, with
cleaning efforts by the Navy and its contractors underway for
more than a decade to prepare it for reuse. The report is
the first time that the Navy has studied the impacts of climate
change in relation to the shipyard, which spans hundreds of
acres and contains radioactive waste and other contaminants.
Anew time-lapse video shared on social media shows Tulare Lake,
California’s ghost lake, disappear after re-forming last year.
A series of atmospheric rivers hit California last year during
an abnormally wet winter season and caused the lake to reemerge
in the San Joaquin Valley. The original lake was once much
larger than Lake Tahoe and was known to be the largest
freshwater lake in the West, but it began to dry up in the late
1800s and fully disappeared 80 years ago when water was
diverted and the land was repurposed for agricultural
uses. Atmospheric rivers are a “long, narrow region in the
atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the
water vapor outside of the tropics,” according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NID released a notice informing the public of cuts to the Bear
River water flows yesterday afternoon. The district cited
“unexpected maintenance work in the headwaters” in their
release. We can now confirm a shutdown of PG&E’s Spaulding
#1 powerhouse is the cause of what could be a prolonged outage
in water flows. According to a PG&E
spokesperson: During a routine inspection at PG&E’s
Spaulding 1 powerhouse on March 6, a leak was discovered
adjacent to a pressure relief valve. On March 7 a more detailed
inspection was made of the PRV [pressure relief valve] and
PG&E determined that repairs would need to be made before
the powerhouse could be returned to service. The estimated
return to service date is April 30.
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.
A private equity farming giant with more than 1,500 acres of
land in Fresno and Tulare counties and 8,600 acres statewide
declared bankruptcy Monday. Even with “extremely favorable
water rights and competitive water costs,” Redwood City-based
Trinitas Partners could not keep up with high borrowing costs
and consistently low almond prices, according to bankruptcy
filings. The firm owes $190 million in secured and unsecured
debt. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the
Northern District of California. … Trinitas Partners
began buying land in the Central Valley in 2015. It focused on
land with superior water rights and young almonds, making the
orchards more valuable for long-term growth, according to court
filings.
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.