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 Biden administration has told Colorado River negotiators it
no longer plans to issue its draft set of plans for managing
the waterway in December, leaving the next major move in the
battle over the West’s most important river to the next
president. The federal plans for the waterway are of increasing
importance since the seven states that share it are deadlocked
over new rules to govern the river after 2026. The Interior
Department’s Bureau of Reclamation had said for months that it
intended to issue them as part of a draft environmental impact
statement at the end of the year. But in recent weeks
bureau officials have told states and water users that they
will instead release only a list of reasonable options for
governing the waterway, which would later be analyzed as part
of the environmental impact statement.
The weeks around Halloween in California usually bring cooler
weather, Christmas decorations in stores, leaves to rake and
umbrellas opening for the first time since spring. So far this
year it’s still dry. No major rain is forecast through the end
of October. But that doesn’t mean the state is heading for
water shortages. Because the past two winters have been
wetter-than-normal, California’s major reservoirs are currently
holding more water than usual for this time of year. That’s
giving the state — which has suffered through three severe
droughts over the past 15 years — a welcome water-supply
cushion, experts say, as this winter season approaches.
Water managers in Kings County have heard nothing but crickets
from state Water Resources Control Board staff for more than a
month. While they would like feedback on how to best revise
their groundwater sustainability plans, managers in the Tulare
Lake subbasin instead are operating in separate silos,
tailoring those plans to their own groundwater sustainability
agency (GSA) boundaries. … The subbasin was the first of
six San Joaquin Valley regions to face scrutiny by the state
Water Board, the enforcement arm of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act. … Board members voted in April to put the
region on probation, which requires well metering,
registration, fees and extraction reports. All of that was put
on hold after a Kings County judge issued a preliminary
injunction in a lawsuit brought against the Water Board by
the Kings County Farm Bureau. The Water Board has appealed
the injunction. Since that injunction, Water Board staff ceased
communicating with water managers in the region on advice of
legal counsel.
Registration closes Friday for our 2024 Water
Summit, set for next Wednesday, Oct. 30, in
downtown Sacramento with conversations focused on our
theme, Reflecting on Silver Linings in Western Water. Get
your
ticket to our premier annual event by Friday at 5
p.m. Water Education Foundation members can take advantage of a
$100 discount on registration! This event is a prime
networking opportunity for the water professionals in
attendance and general sponsorship opportunities
are still available, but this Thursday is the deadline to grab
a coveted sponsor spot! View details of the
various sponsorship
levels and benefits here. Now in its 40ᵗʰ year,
the Water Summit will gather leading experts and top
policymakers for conversations on the promising advances
that have developed from myriad challenges faced in managing
the West’s most precious natural resource.
The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California voted to allow more time to complete an
investigation into accusations against General Manager Adel
Hagekhalil, who was placed on leave more than four months ago
in response to harassment allegations by the agency’s chief
financial officer. The board’s decision will extend
Hagekhalil’s leave of absence until an investigator has
finished interviews and submitted a report on the findings.
… The outcome is expected to determine whether
Hagekhalil is fired or reinstated as the top manager of
California’s largest urban water supplier. During more than
three years on the job, he has called for transforming the
agency and has focused on adaptation to climate change, in part
by reducing reliance on water supplies from distant sources and
investing in local water supplies.
There’s a growing perception that there’s a water affordability
crisis in California, but as with most water issues, the
reality is more complex. PPIC Water Policy Center founder and
senior fellow Ellen Hanak sat down for a conversation with PPIC
adjunct fellow and water economist David Mitchell to learn
more. … Is there a water affordability issue in the
state right now—and if so, what’s causing it? Water rates have
been rising faster than inflation for a long time now. In the
late 1980s, observers lamented how crazy cheap water service
was, because a lot of the costs around procuring and delivering
water were not reflected in water bills. That’s changed now,
which is partly why water service costs have risen. Also, there
are now many more drinking water quality requirements and
environmental safeguards associated with producing water, and
these requirements contribute to rising costs.
California has one of the most ambitious and highly engineered
water delivery systems on the planet, and it’s being eyed for a
new extension. The Delta Conveyance Project is Governor Gavin
Newsom’s proposal for a 45-mile underground tube that would tap
fresh water from its source in the north and carry it beneath a
vast wetland to users in the south. The Delta is the exchange
point for half of California’s water supply, and the tunnel is
an extension of the State Water Project, which was built in the
1960s. It’s a 700-mile maze of aqueducts and canals that sends
Delta water from the Bay Area down to farms and cities in
Central and Southern California. This is a local story about a
global issue, the future of water. In a three-part series of
field reports and podcasts, Bay City News reporter Ruth
Dusseault looks at the tunnel’s stakeholders, its engineering
challenges, and explores the preindustrial Delta and its
future restoration.
As temperatures rise, particularly in alpine
regions, lakes are feeling the
heat. Research published in the
journal Science, led by researchers at the
Carnegie Institution for Science, indicates that
climate change impacts critical winter
processes including lake ice conditions.
Changes in lake ice conditions impact the
function of ecosystems and the communities that live nearby.
With climate affecting this critical winter process one can
ask, what other critical changes to freshwaters might occur
from changing winters whether at Lake Tahoe, or the
small lakes and streams in the mountains of
California and Nevada? … There are many ways climate
change can and will impact western alpine lakes. Changing
snowpack and winter conditions can extend plant growing seasons
for lakes in the summer, increasing the
opportunities for invasive species to take hold within
a lake or expand their range.
As a young girl growing up on the Southern Ute Indian
Reservation, Lorelei Cloud learned the value of water in life
lessons every week outside her uncle’s home. “I lived with
my grandparents in an old adobe home they had remodeled. We
didn’t have any running water and so we always hauled water to
our house,” says Cloud, Vice Chairman of the Southern Ute
Indian Tribe in southwest Colorado. … Those early memories –
of water scarcity, not abundance – have helped shape Cloud’s
work today as a state leader in water conservation, and as a
champion for Tribal voices in water decision-making in
Colorado. Native American Tribes hold some of the most
senior water rights in the Colorado River Basin and have
thousands of years of knowledge about water management. But
they have been historically excluded from decisions around
allocations and management of the river and water resources.
And on many Reservations, including the Southern Ute, access to
clean, safe drinking water is still far from universal.
The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed
Oct. 2 on the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern
California. Four dams were taken out, allowing adult salmon to
swim all the way up the Klamath River from the Pacific Ocean
and into more than 400 miles of newly reopened habitat. OPB
cinematographer Brandon Swanson collected video footage of the
dam sites before and after the removal operation. The video
above includes before and after shots of all four dams.
… The video also includes before-and-after shots of a
site along Iron Gate reservoir, where an algae bloom had turned
the stagnant lake green in 2022, and a site along Northern
California’s Copco Lake reservoir, where a community of about
100 people lives.
San Diego County leaders are weighing whether to take legal
action aimed at holding the company managing a federal
wastewater plant along the U.S. border accountable for
pollution. The County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously
Tuesday to “explore litigation options” against Veolia, the
French transnational company managing the federal wastewater
plant on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico. The
options on the table are to start their own case against Veolia
for failing to curb Tijuana River pollution, or join one of the
other lawsuits already filed this year against the company on
behalf of Imperial Beach residents. Supervisor Terra
Lawson-Remer also said they may consider taking action against
other responsible parties, including Mexico.
A federal judge denied a request by the owner of Point Buckler
Island in the greater San Francisco Bay for a new trial in an
almost eight-year dispute with the U.S. Justice Department over
his illegal “repair” of the levee surrounding the island. John
Sweeney argued that the 2020 ruling that, after a bench trial,
had found him liable for violating the Clean Water Act was no
longer sustainable in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court
decision last year in Sackett v. Environmental Protection
Agency, which had curtailed the federal government’s authority
to regulate wetlands. In that decision, the nation’s top court
found that the reach of the Clean Water Act extends to only
those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies
that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right, so
that they are ‘indistinguishable’ from those waters.”
Clear Lake is the largest freshwater lake that lies wholly in
California. It’s also the oldest warm water lake in North
America, having formed over half a million years ago, but those
ancient waters and surrounding shores hide a dangerous element
that could suffocate this treasure. Warming temperatures and a
changing climate are giving algae and bacteria the upper hand.
The community isn’t willing to give up, though. Long-time
resident Debbie Clarke sees the potential in the lake sitting
just 100 miles north of Sacramento and San Francisco.
She recalls summer days from her childhood when the lake would
go from 1,000 people to 15,000 people starting Memorial Day
weekend. Even though the population of permanent residents has
grown, Debbie says it still feels like a close-knit community.
One neighbor is even working on revitalizing an old boat slip
with hopes of making it a place to swim and fish, if he can
find a way to keep out a dangerous bacteria growth called
cyanobacteria.
America has a flooding problem. When Hurricane Milton hit
Florida, the images of inundation seemed shocking — but also
weirdly normal: For what felt like the umpteenth time this
year, entire communities were underwater. Since the 1990s, the
cost of flood damage has roughly doubled each decade, according
to one estimate. The federal government issued two disaster
declarations for floods in 2000. So far this year, it has
issued 66. The reasons are no mystery. Global warming is
making storms more severe because warmer air holds more water.
At the same time, more Americans are moving to the
coast and other flood-prone areas. Those conflicting
trends are forcing people to adapt. Advances in design, science
and engineering — combined with a willingness to spend vast
amounts of money — have allowed the United States and other
wealthy countries to try new ideas for coping with water.
The state granted $20 million to the Turlock Irrigation
District in 2022 to test the idea of solar panels atop canals.
The project was delayed by design challenges, but installation
finally started in May on a small canal stretch southwest of
Keyes. It could be generating power by year’s end, to be
followed next summer by a second test site east of Hickman.
While increasing the supply for TID’s electricity customers,
the panels also could reduce evaporation. Taking the concept
statewide could be a key step against climate change, the
University of California reported in 2021. UC Merced
researchers will monitor the systems for power output,
evaporation savings and whether the panels interfere with canal
operations. TID will retain them after data collection ends in
June 2026.
With autumn well underway, Californians are eager to know
whether it’ll be a wet or dry winter in the Golden State. After
two winters marked by robust snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada,
could more snow-dumping storms be on the way in coming
months? Meteorologists said they don’t have a crystal ball
that can forecast the weather several months out. A variety of
factors could impact the upcoming winter’s outcome, from
the development of a La Niña weather pattern to an
area of warm water in the Pacific Ocean, and nobody can predict
how much influence each will have if it does develop.
In a major step toward California’s first effort to bury
climate-warming gases underground, Kern County’s Board of
Supervisors today unanimously approved a project on a sprawling
oil and gas field. The project by California Resources Corp.,
the state’s largest producer of oil and gas, will capture
millions of tons of carbon dioxide and inject it into the
ground in the western San Joaquin Valley south of Buttonwillow.
The Carbon Terra Vault project is part of a broader bid by the
oil and gas industry to remain viable in a state that is
attempting to decarbonize. Although the company still faces
additional steps, the county approval is a key development that
advances the project. … The EPA will require the
company to monitor the injection wells for a century to
ensure that no groundwater is polluted.
Initial examinations suggest there are no drinking water
sources threatened by injecting carbon into the reservoir.
But the project would use significant amounts of
groundwater in a basin that already is over-pumped.
Legislative momentum against PFAS has surged this year, as at
least 11 states enacted laws to restrict the use of “forever
chemicals” in everyday consumer products or professional
firefighting foam. … Earlier this year, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency released new standards limiting
PFAS in drinking water. Water systems have five years to comply
with the rules. Even before the EPA action, 11
states had set their own limits on PFAS in drinking water,
starting with New Jersey in 2018.
… California’s latest PFAS measure, which
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month, specifically
bans the use of PFAS in menstrual products. Democratic
Assemblymember Diane Papan, the author of the bill, said it was
particularly strong because it covers both intentional and
unintentional uses of PFAS, so “manufacturers will have to
really be careful about what comes in their supply chain.”
Flood Preparedness Week will have all but come and gone before
Solano County is expected to see any more rainfall. The
National Weather Service in Sacramento is reporting a new storm
system coming in over the weekend, with a chance of rain into
next week. Flood Preparedness Week runs Oct. 19-26. However,
the state Department of Water Resources said now is the time to
get prepared for the possibility of flooding, and that starts
with knowing your risk. … The warning comes after two
straight years with major flood events across the state.
It also comes with what forecasters are saying will be a La
Niña winter, which likely means a drier winter in Southern
California, and a lot of uncertainty in the northern part of
the state – including the Bay Area. Right now, the Climate
Prediction Center reports there is an equal chance that
rainfall will be above normal this winter or below normal this
winter. The historic trend is for slightly above average rain
during La Niña years in Northern California.
… In Pinal County, … water shortages mean that farmers no
longer have access to the Colorado River, formerly the
lifeblood of their cotton and alfalfa empires. The booming
population of the area’s subdivisions face a water reckoning as
well: The state has placed a moratorium on new housing
development in parts of the county, as part of an effort to
protect dwindling groundwater resources. Over
the past four years, Arizona has become a poster child for
water scarcity in the United States. Between decades of
unsustainable groundwater pumping and a once-in-a-millenium
drought, fueled by climate change, water sources in every
region of the state are under threat. As groundwater aquifers
dry up near some of the most populous areas, officials have
blocked thousands of new homes from being built in and around
the booming Phoenix metropolitan area.
