A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday by veteran journalist Matt Weiser. Send any comments to Foundation News & Publications Director Doug Beeman.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays. Or subscribe via RSS feed.
Please Note: 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.
Summer energy demands driven higher as the COVID-19 pandemic
keeps more people at home could lead to more water flowing from
Glen Canyon Dam into the Colorado River. That could mean
rapidly changing conditions for rafters, anglers, hikers or
others on the river in Glen Canyon or the Grand Canyon,
officials said.
Both the Tubbs and Camp fires destroyed fire hydrants, water
pipes and meter boxes. Water leaks and ruptured hydrants were
common. … After the fires passed, testing ultimately revealed
widespread hazardous drinking water contamination. Evidence
suggests that the toxic chemicals originated from a combination
of burning vegetation, structures and plastic materials.
After hearings this week for one of two remaining major permits
needed for the project, several members of the Regional Water
Quality Control Board indicated they were dissatisfied with the
proposed mitigation for the larvae and other small marine life
that would die as a result of the plant’s ocean intake pipes.
Droughts are common in California. The drought of 2012-2016 had
no less precipitation and was no longer than previous
historical droughts, but came with record high temperatures and
low snowpack, which worsened many drought impacts.
When species are endangered, the Endangered Species Act
requires the government to set aside habitat deemed critical
for its recovery. But environmental groups say the new
definition being proposed by the Fish and Wildlife Service will
allow the agency to block setting aside any land that isn’t
currently habitat but might be needed in the future,
particularly as the climate changes.
John Leroy Woolf Jr., a pioneering farmer who helped re-imagine
the dry and dusty west side of California’s San Joaquin Valley
into an agricultural oasis, died Tuesday. He was 102.
Lake Tahoe’s fluctuating clarity got worse last year during an
especially cold and wet winter as sedimentation, algae growth
and a tiny invasive shrimp continued to pose restoration
challenges for the famed clear water of the mountain lake
straddling the California-Nevada line.
Four years after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers upgraded the
flood risk for the Whittier Narrows Dam from high urgency to
very high urgency, the U,S. House of Representatives on Friday
approved a budget package that included nearly $385 million to
fix the dam.
Some Bakersfield residents’ water bills will be fundamentally
restructured, with big cost implications, if the California
Public Utilities Commission votes Thursday to end an experiment
that 12 years ago erased a financial incentive to sell people
more water.
Groundwater recharge projects already play an important role in
California. That role is about to expand rapidly, as local
groundwater managers begin to take more concrete actions to
meet their responsibilities under California’s landmark
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
With a new water supply delayed by state regulatory agencies
and political infighting, the Monterey Peninsula Water
Management District board has asked the state water board not
to impose Carmel River water reductions due to an inevitable
violation of an approaching river cutback order milestone…
In the midst of a hot July after late rains this season, the
outlook for reforesting on the ridge will depend on the efforts
of private landowners, local forest scientists say. With this
help, residents of the ridge could see a new type of forest
replace what was lost in the Camp Fire.
The district’s spring groundwater monitoring program, using 55
public and private wells, found that the levels rose 3-to-18
feet in each storage area of the basin since last year. That’s
progress, but still far below historic wet weather levels,
groundwater specialist Nick Kunstek said.
The effort is part of an overall plan to develop a Lower Cache
Creek flood study through the US Army Corps of Engineers, the
Central Valley Flood Protection Board and the California
Department of Water Resources. And despite any objections to
the project, it may be more than five years before the first
spadeful of earth is turned to build the barrier.
The California coast has been largely spared from sea level
rise for decades, but the trend is now set to reverse, and the
coastline has already started disappearing due to land
subsidence.
A Marin County Superior Court judge rejected a petition filed
by a group of San Geronimo residents and golfers to halt creek
restoration work in the former San Geronimo Golf Course. The
ten residents and golfers, known as the San Geronimo Heritage
Alliance, filed the lawsuit in July alleging the creek
restoration work is illegal.
Much needed work at Schafer Dam at Success Lake is finally set
to begin. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District
will begin construction to realign Avenue 146 and widen the
existing Tule River Spillway at Success Lake in Porterville on
Sunday.
For us, dam removal is absolutely necessary to restore our
struggling fisheries, maintain cultural practices, and provide
tribal members who struggle to make ends meet access to
traditional subsistence foods.
It’s hard to know whether Arizona Republican Sen. Martha
McSally’s “Water-Energy Technology Demonstration and Deployment
Act” is a serious bill. Congress doesn’t do much of anything
these days, so probably not. But, serious or not, it is a very
bad idea masquerading as a good-sounding one.
The water level at Folsom Lake is dropping by nearly half a
foot each day, and soon boaters who rent a slip at Folsom Lake
Marina will have pull their boats out. Marina managers told the
tenants they should plan on removing their boats from the water
by around Aug. 16…
