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 Vik Jolly.
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A new economic analysis by UC professors shows the high cost of
inaction on California’s perpetual water supply challenges. It
estimates that the state could lose enough water each year to
supply up to 9 million households — with economic losses
totaling between $3.4 and $14.5 billion per year, depending on
the severity of the scenario. The study, “Inaction’s Economic
Cost for California’s Water Supply Challenges,” builds on prior
research showing that California’s total water supply is on
track to shrink by 12–25% by 2050, a loss of up to 9 million
acre-feet per year, equivalent to one or two Lake
Shastas. The new report emphasizes that without
coordinated state action, these reductions could result in 3
million acres of fallowed farmland, 67,000 lost jobs, and
lasting damage to California’s agricultural and rural
communities.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will make a water policy
announcement Thursday with members of Arizona’s congressional
delegation, the agency said Wednesday. The event will feature
Arizona Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and Rep. Paul Gosar and
take place at EPA headquarters. It will include a “signing
ceremony,” the agency said. … EPA previously held a
water policy announcement and signing ceremony with officials
from West Virginia. At that event, EPA granted the
state’s request for authority over carbon dioxide injection
wells, which are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Arizona has also applied for that same authority from EPA.
The Salton Sea is a haven for wildlife, a repository of
critical minerals and the site of some of the worst
environmental and economic conditions in California. The
contrast between its natural riches and its impoverished
population has sharpened as companies seek to mine vast
deposits of lithium, a mineral used to make batteries for
electric cars, computers and cellphones. “Today, the Salton Sea
region stands at a critical juncture with a chance to become a
major domestic supplier of lithium,” state Sen. Steve Padilla,
who represents parts of Riverside, Imperial and San Diego
counties, recently told the Senate Committee on Business,
Professions and Economic Development. The Chula Vista Democrat
wants to give the region a bigger say in how it grows amid the
projected lithium boom. His bill, SB 534, would create a “green
empowerment zone” around the sea that would govern how to use
public money, invest in local communities and support the
transition to a renewable energy economy.
The Vacaville City Council decided not to raise water rates for
the time being, as councilmembers railed against a state
mandate to lower levels of toxic hexavalent chromium (Chromium
6) in the city’s water supply. On a 6-0 vote Tuesday night, the
council directed staff to pursue alternatives and bring the
decision back to the council at a later date. … The council
accepted 1,110 written protests from the community, but more
than 16,000 would have been needed to override the council’s
ability to vote in accordance with state law. … The vote
went against city staff’s recommendation to increase rates, as
the city cannot continue to pay for its water system at the
current rates. Even without state mandates to reduce the level
of Chromium 6 in the water supply, the city would need to
increase rates, according to Utilities Director Justen Cole and
Chris Fischer of Wildan Financial Services, an outside firm
hired to help the city conduct an assessment of its rates.
Dozens of families in the San Antonio Mobile Home Park in
Thermal are celebrating a life-changing milestone that many
people take for granted: safe, clean running water in their
homes. After nearly three decades of living without reliable
access to clean water, residents can now turn on their taps
without fear. For years, they relied on bottled water,
makeshift plumbing, and daily workarounds because of dangerous
arsenic levels in the groundwater and years of alleged neglect
by former park owners. The long-overdue project was made
possible through grassroots activism and collaboration between
the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition, Pueblo Unido, and the
Coachella Valley Water District. Recently, five new water
meters and essential infrastructure upgrades were installed in
the park as part of a nearly $30 million effort that took
almost 20 years to complete.
… For decades, people incarcerated at Mule Creek have raised
the alarm about the prison’s drinking water. Reporting from
inside Mule Creek State Prison, with interviews and surveys
from nearly 100 people—including currently incarcerated,
formerly incarcerated, loved ones of the incarcerated, and
former prison staff—and a review of thousands of pages of
records, reveals troubling concerns and observations of the
prison’s water quality for the last 20 years. … Despite
this litany of warning signs, including repeated complaints and
lawsuits, the prison has deferred responsibility. California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials say the
local water company is responsible for ensuring the water is
safe; the water company says state regulators are responsible;
regulators say it’s the prison’s responsibility. All the while,
incarcerated people at Mule Creek have no choice but to drink
it.
Arizona is doing its part and taking its hits to conserve the
Colorado River, Gov. Katie Hobbs said, and it’s time for
upstream states to do the same. The governor assembled a
roundtable of water users and officials on May 13 to present
what she called a unified front among the state’s interests in
defending Arizona’s share of the Colorado River as time runs
short for reaching a deal with other states that use the
water. … Gathered at Central Arizona Project
headquarters with representatives of cities, tribes, farms and
hydropower interests — all reliant on the river water that
flowing into the CAP’s canal — Hobbs said the state seeks a
compromise. Otherwise, supplies could become subject to
litigation, an outcome she said she’s preparing for in part by
seeking a legal fund from legislators.
Governor Newsom today announced, as part of his May Revise, a
significant proposal to streamline one of California’s most
important water management and climate adaptation projects, the
Delta Conveyance Project,
advancing much-needed and long-overdue improvements to the
State Water Project. … No piece of infrastructure is
more fundamental to California’s water supply and economic
success than the State Water Project. It captures, moves, and
stores water used by 27 million people and 750,000 acres of
farmland. If the service area of the State Water Project were
its own country, its economy would rank eighth largest in the
world, generating $2.3 trillion in goods and services
annually.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it
plans to rescind and reconsider limits on four different
“forever chemicals” under a landmark drinking water standard
implemented last year by President Joe Biden. The drinking
water rules were adopted as part of the Biden administration’s
efforts to limit public exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl
substances (PFAS), hazardous chemicals linked to a range of
serious illnesses. The original rule covered six common PFAS
contaminants, including PFOA, a known human carcinogen, and
PFOS, a likely carcinogen. The EPA estimates that more
than 158 million Americans are exposed to PFAS through their
drinking water. The agency plans to maintain current rules for
PFOA and PFOS, though it will extend the deadline for
compliance from 2029 to 2031.
A reduction in state funding for a Visalia-based nonprofit is
creating a lot of angst among groundwater agencies and
prompting hushed conversations about who should get the bill
when domestic wells go dry. The issue is highly sensitive as
the state Water Resources Control Board holds both the purse
strings to fund emergency water responses and the hammer over
agencies trying to get groundwater plans approved under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
Most south San Joaquin Valley groundwater sustainability
agencies (GSAs) have created programs funded by growers to
address domestic well issues caused by overpumping. And they’ve
contracted with Self-Help Enterprises, the
south valley’s go-to nonprofit for contaminated or dry wells,
to run those programs.
Groups trying to bring water back to the dry Kern River bed
through Bakersfield have petitioned the California Supreme
Court to review an appeals court decision that knocked down an
order that had kept flows going for a few months last year.
… The main lawsuit, filed in 2022, is still ongoing with
a trial date set in December. That suit seeks to force
Bakersfield to study its river operations under the Public
Trust Doctrine, which requires water be put to the highest
public benefit, including environmental protection and public
access. The action seeking Supreme Court review involves a
preliminary injunction issued in late 2023 that mandated
Bakersfield keep enough water in the river to keep fish in good
condition per California Fish and Game Code Section 5937.
Agricultural water districts with river rights appealed that
injunction. The 5th District Court of
Appeal overturned it in April stating.
Spiraling dangers from a dried-up Great Salt Lake would
gradually spread well beyond its shores, a study warns,
eventually threatening Utahns’ health and economic well-being.
Not only does the prospect of a dried lake bed menace one of
the West’s cornerstone ecosystems, but the effects of its
collapse for the Wasatch Front also could pose rising risks to
public health, quality of life and the very economic viability
of the state’s most populous area, a new legal analysis
finds. Scholars with the Wallace Stegner Center at the
University of Utah‘s S.J. Quinney College of Law posit what
they call “the unthinkable” — a desiccated Great Salt
Lake-turned-Great Salt Dust Bowl, disruptive of weather
patterns and capable of spewing heavy-metal-laden dust over the
region.
… The Sierra’s frozen reservoir provides about a third of
California’s water and most of what comes out of the faucets,
shower heads, and sprinklers in the towns and cities of
northwestern Nevada. … In the past, it has been arduous
work to gather such snowpack observations. Now, a new
generation of tools, techniques, and models promises to ease
that process, improve water forecasts, and help California and
other states safely manage one of their largest sources of
water in the face of increasingly severe droughts and
flooding. Observers, however, fear that any such advances
could be undercut by the Trump administration’s cutbacks across
federal agencies, including the one that oversees federal
snowpack monitoring and survey work.
Democratic Senator Adam Schiff on Tuesday urged Commerce
Secretary Howard Lutnick and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s acting secretary to restore a
database that tracked billion-dollar U.S. disasters. He said
its removal prevented lawmakers, insurance companies and
taxpayers from seeing the growing cost of more frequent natural
disasters and from planning for future extreme weather
events. … Schiff, who represents California, also warned
that sweeping job cuts at NOAA have left the agency
understaffed ahead of hurricane season, which begins June 1,
saying that 30 of 122 weather forecast offices at the National
Weather Service lack chief meteorologists.
Scientists have released some of the first independent test
results confirming that drinking water in fire-affected areas
around Altadena and the Pacific Palisades is largely free of
harmful contaminants, as an Altadena utility lifted the last
“do not drink” notice left in the burn zones. Researchers with
the LA Fire HEALTH Study released results on Friday from 53
homes spread across the burn areas and the more than three
miles surrounding them. They found only one with a toxic
substance at dangerous levels: at one home, the water contained
benzene, a known carcinogen, at concentrations slightly above
the state’s allowable level of 1 part per billion. The
findings add to mounting evidence that the affected area’s
drinking water is safe.
The Environmental Protection Agency has terminated a $20
million grant that would have funded the construction of
critical water and energy infrastructure on the Walker River
Paiute Tribe reservation in Northern Nevada. Nevada’s
Clean Energy Fund was notified May 1 the EPA terminated a $20
million Community Change Grant awarded to the nonprofit to
advance major infrastructure projects that would help the
Walker River Paiute Tribe adapt to the impacts of climate
change. The grant is one of more than 780 environmental justice
grants terminated by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, according to
court documents filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the
Trump administration.
With an uncertain future and a concerned public, new changes to
the state’s water control manual made their way before the
Butte County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday with the hope of
garnering favor for public safety. Oroville Mayor David Pittman
was joined by Oroville Dam Advisory Commissioner Robert Bateman
as they presented the proposed changes by the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers to the board as well as their concerns about
potential flooding. As it stands, the spillway is graded to
handle flows up to 350,000 cubic feet per second, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean the levees downstream can sustain that
kind of force. “In 1997, we had a flow of 160,000 cubic feet
per second,” Pittman said. “At the Bedrock Park point, we had
leakage through the levee that were able to successfully flood
fight, but we don’t know how many times we can do that again.”
A Fresno County community is celebrating breaking ground on a
long-awaited project to connect residents to Sanger’s water
system. It would give residents in the rural area of Tombstone
access to safe, reliable drinking water. … It’s all made
possible by California’s Safe and Affordable Drinking Water
Fund, which is a bill signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019.
… The fund provides $130 million year after year through
the year 2030 in an effort to highlight drinking water needs,
more so in areas where access to and clean water are not
available. The State Water Boards reported that since
Governor Newsom has served in his role, the number of
Californians who don’t have access to clean drinking water has
been cut by more than half.
A proposed decision from two California Public Utilities
Commission administrative law judges dropped Friday afternoon,
May 9, that could have major implications as to whether Cal
Am—the investor-owned utility that supplies water the Monterey
Peninsula—will be able to move forward with its proposed
desalination project in Marina, which has been a lightning rod
of controversy for more than a decade. … Ultimately, the
decision that will matter is the one that’s adopted by the
CPUC, and the various parties have just over two weeks to now
file comments and point out parts of the proposed decision they
find fault with, but with an important caveat: The judges will
only consider information that’s already in the administrative
record—nothing new can be introduced.
It wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a
threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down,
or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry
out their habitat. But that’s exactly what the Trump
administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in
the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm. For 50 years,
the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act
as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions
that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. Most
species on the brink of extinction are on the list because
there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats
have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection
is essential for their survival.
