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 state meeting on California’s most controversial water
project, attended via Zoom on Monday by dozens of officials and
experts, was hijacked by a rogue broadcast of sexual images and
audio of racist comments against Blacks and Jews. It was not
funny. The State Water Resources Control Board, unable to stop
its own webcast, lost control of the meeting. It was canceled.
And key testimony is not scheduled to resume for at least six
weeks. … At issue Monday was nothing less than the
future of California’s statewide water delivery system at its
geographic heart, the so-called Delta Tunnel. –Written by Tom Phillip, Sacramento Bee
columnist
Last year, Indigenous tribes in California and Oregon realized
a longstanding dream: the removal of four hydroelectric dams on
the Klamath River. It was the largest such environmental
restoration project in U.S. history, opening the way for salmon
to return home to the Klamath and for tribes and other
advocates to begin restoring the ecosystem that once flourished
there. And last week, Grist’s Jake Bittle and Anita
Hofschneider published a five-part, 14,000-word feature delving
into the decades-long history of how it all happened. In their
story, they describe the dam removal as “the result of an
improbable campaign that spanned close to half a century, roped
in thousands of people, and came within an inch of collapse
several times. Interviews with dozens of people on all sides of
the dam removal fight, some of whom have never spoken publicly
about their roles, reveal a collaborative achievement with few
clear parallels in contemporary activism.”
For years, scientists have warned of heightened risks of
extreme storms due to climate change, and those storms have
already begun devastating communities. Weather forecasting will
play an increasingly important role in helping prepare
communities for dangerous weather, but how are extreme snow and
rain events forecasted? Research by professors Ania Panorska
and Tom Kozubowski in the Department of Mathematics and
Statistics, along with colleagues from Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, provides a new predictive model for extreme rain
and snow events as well as the return periods (the average
amount of time between events) and return levels (amount of
precipitation) of extreme events. The study was published last
month in Scientific Reports. … The research was
supported by the California Department of Water Resources
Atmospheric River Program.
… Situated within the Mesa Water District‘s facility on Geisler
Avenue, the 2,400-square-foot education center features more
than 20 visual and interactive exhibits providing an
informative – and even entertaining – A-to-Z lesson on where
water comes, how it arrives at the faucet, where it winds up
after going down the drain and every step in between. …
While the board is holding an official ribbon cutting on March
28, the education center has been open since January, mostly
hosting groups related to the water industry and citizens
groups, Mesa Water District spokeswoman Kaitlyn Norris said.
This center was built with a curriculum that meets Next
Generation Science Standards and STEM guidelines and is a
premier destination for fifth-grade field trips and tours,
district officials said.
The California Department of Water Resources announced Tuesday
that the wet and cold storms that moved through California
during March have allowed for another increase for the State
Water Project allocation forecast for 2025. Officials with the
DWR say that the allocation has been increased to 40
percent of the requested water supplies, which is a 5 percent
increase for the 35 percent allocation in February. The latest
allocation forecast is based on increases in precipitation,
snowpack, and reservoir storage in the past month. The DWR says
that the allocation increase comes ahead of the April 1 snow
surveys taking place (this) week, when the snowpack in the
Sierra Nevada typically peaks.
The pressure is on: Colorado’s average snowpack statewide masks
worrisome water conditions in the south, where water providers
are banking on more storms to boost water supplies before
snowmelt begins in April. Much of Colorado’s annual water
supply is stored in its winter snowpack, which builds up until
early April when it melts and flows into soils, streams and
reservoirs. Statewide, Colorado is headed toward that April 8
peak with 92% of its normal snowpack for this time of year. …
The Colorado Headwaters Basin, where the Colorado River begins;
the Yampa-White-Little Snake combined basin, which supplies
Western Slope communities in the northwestern corner of the
state; and the South Platte Basin, which feeds rivers on the
Front Range, are all in good condition.
L.A.’s big plans to recycle almost all of its wastewater for
drinking is likely to take a lot longer than originally
proposed. Back in 2019, former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti
announced a goal to recycle almost all of L.A.’s wastewater by
2035. But the long-awaited plan on how to actually do that
pushes the timeline back more than 20 years — to 2056, though
some wastewater would be recycled for drinking by 2040. “In
today’s environment where literally our sources of water are
drying up before our eyes, we need to move much more quickly,”
said Bruce Reznik, director of the nonprofit L.A. Waterkeeper,
at a special joint meeting Tuesday between the boards
overseeing the L.A. Department of Water and Power and L.A.
Sanitation and Environment, the city agencies leading the
project.
This Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public
Works (EPW) will hold a confirmation hearing for a handful of
EPA appointees, including prospective Assistant Administrator
for Water, Jessica Kramer. Kramer has previous experience
at EPA, having served as policy counsel for the Office of Water
during President Trump’s first term. She has since served as a
deputy secretary in the Florida Department of Environmental
Protection and as water counsel for the current EPW Chair, Sen.
Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Kramer was nominated in
mid-February, following the confirmation of EPA Administrator
Lee Zeldin. She has been an advisor in EPA’s Water Office since
her nomination, but will not take on official duties as
Assistant Administrator for Water until she is confirmed by the
full Senate.
Go beyond the stream of recent national headlines and gain a
deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved across
California during our Water 101 Workshop on April
10. Attendees at the Water 101 workshop have the
option of participating in a daylong ‘watershed’ journey that
will take you from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, along
the American River and into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to
learn about forest health, reservoir operations, habitat
restoration, groundwater recharge, Delta water quality and
more. Don’t miss a once-a-year opportunity from the
only organization in California providing comprehensive,
unbiased information about water resources across the
West. See the agenda, what past attendees
say and learn how to sign up.
The Environmental Defense Fund has filed a second lawsuit
seeking to force more agencies to divulge details about the
Trump administration’s efforts to revoke a cornerstone of U.S.
climate policy. The lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia calls on the
Interior Department, NOAA and the White House Council on
Environmental Quality to release information related to the
administration’s plans to strike down the 2009 endangerment
finding, which gives agencies authority to regulate greenhouse
gas emissions. EDF said the latest lawsuit comes after the
three agencies failed to respond to a Freedom of Information
Act request — a situation the lawsuit said is “completely
lacking in transparency, in contrast with the extensive public
process that EPA undertook to develop and adopt the
endangerment finding.”
As Arizona continues to over pump groundwater across the state,
lawmakers advanced four measures Tuesday that would ease
pumping regulations in active groundwater management
areas. Two of the bills approved by the Senate Natural
Resources Committee Tuesday would allow farmers to irrigate
land not already included in an active management area
irrigation right if the land meets certain criteria. The
Groundwater Management Act of 1980 established five initial
active management areas in Arizona — the cities of Phoenix,
Prescott and Tucson, as well as Santa Cruz and Pinal counties —
in which groundwater pumping is recorded and regulated, as
opposed to pumping being entirely unregulated in other parts of
the state.
One in 8 Californians now live in places at risk for the kinds
of devastating wildfires that tore through Los Angeles this
winter, according to a Washington Post analysis of state fire
maps released Monday. The maps, drawn by Cal Fire, the state’s
forestry and fire protection agency, reveal the threat from
wildfire is greater than previous state estimates showed. They
reflect the effects of soaring temperatures on California,
where hotter, drier weather has primed a landscape filled with
vast acres of forest and shrubland for explosive fires — even
in winter, during what should be the state’s rainy
season. When factoring in areas where state and local
firefighters are responsible for fighting blazes, the maps show
there are now about 5.1 million people living in the two
highest fire severity zones in the state, The Post found.
The future of the Colorado River Basin was the hot topic for
several western Colorado entities on Monday. The Colorado Basin
Roundtable is a group of stakeholders who work together to
protect the Colorado River Basin. According to the group, the
basin is among the largest watersheds in the state, covering
close to ten thousand square miles. JJ Fletcher, Mesa County
commissioner, says the river basin is slightly above its normal
capacity. “We’re set in pretty good shape but we see other
areas to the west and also further west, we see that it’s in a
little more drought conditions versus where we’re at at the
central mountains. The Grand Mesa is a little below normal as
well,” says Fletcher.
An initiative led by faculty from seven top research
universities — six of which are in California — aims to
accelerate the deployment of solar arrays over the state’s
extensive canal network. According to a 2021 UC Merced study
published in Nature Sustainability, covering large sections of
the state’s 4,000 miles of canals with solar panels could help
conserve water, reduce air pollution, save land and generate
clean energy using existing land and infrastructure. The
California Solar Canal Initiative (CSCI) research project aims
to accelerate the deployment of solar canals across the state
by equipping government agencies, utilities, community members
and other interested parties with data on optimal locations and
identifying willing host communities.
Alta Irrigation District has purchased 80 acres to develop the
London West Pond recharge basin. The recharge basin will
be located at Ave. 384 and Rd. 56 next to the existing London
Pond recharge site. … Both groundwater recharge basins
will help Alta divert more surface water and boost its
groundwater sustainability efforts to comply with the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Alta said the
basins will increase the available water supply during dry
years for growers and also support nearby residents who are
reliant on groundwater for drinking water.
Wetlands and ephemeral streams provide a wide variety of
benefits to people and wildlife, from flood protection for
local communities, to preventing pollutants from entering the
water supply, to breeding grounds for endangered bird species.
Wetlands can also act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere. … But all that changed with a
May 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court called Sackett v. The
Environmental Protection Agency, which rewrote the legal
definition of wetlands and suddenly left many of these bodies
of water unprotected, according to a new study from the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
A clearer path forward could be emerging in the tiny Tulare
County community of East Orosi, which has long struggled with
contaminated drinking water, a decrepit sewer system and
dysfunction among elected leaders. The state Water Resources
Control Board will be in town Thursday, April 17 to explain why
it proposes that the community’s sewer system be run by a new
administrator, the Tulare County Resource Management Agency
(RMA). … The proposed sewer administration change is a result
of Assembly Bill 805, authored by Dr. Joaquin Arambula
(D-Fresno) and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in
September in the backyard of an East Orosi resident. The
bill authorizes the state Water Board to intervene when a sewer
service provider does not meet regulatory standards or fails to
maintain the technical, managerial and financial capacity
needed to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. The Water Board can
then contract with a new administrator.
A new lawsuit alleges Valley Water CEO Rick
Callender pushed to have his agency sponsor the NAACP
California-Hawaii State Conference — a private group he
personally oversees — with public dollars. The conflict of
interest claim comes from a civil complaint filed March 20 by
Salena Pryor, an NAACP colleague who worked under Callender in
his capacity as the statewide NAACP chapter president. She
accuses Callender of demeaning and undermining her on numerous
occasions while she helped coordinate NAACP events, from
distressing late-night video calls to public embarrassment. It
comes as Callender is on administrative leave from Valley Water
— which cares for Santa Clara County’s streams, flood
protection and wholesale water supply — while the agency
investigates an employee’s misconduct complaint against him.
At Tuesday morning’s Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
meeting, the supervisors spent 27 minutes taking public comment
and discussing a request from 5th District Supervisor Ted
Williams to provide a letter of support for state
Assemblymember Chris Rogers’ Assembly Bill 263. AB 263,
sponsored by the Karuk Tribe and supported by California
Coastkeeper Alliance, would extend emergency water flow
regulations to the Scott and Shasta river watersheds. Both
rivers are tributaries of the Klamath River and flow through
Siskiyou County. … (Board Chair John Haschak)
suggested the Board monitor the bill’s progress and potentially
revisit the issue in the future. AB 263 will be heard at
the California State Assembly on April 8 by the Committee on
Water, Parks and Wildlife.
The largest remaining wetland prairie in the San Joaquin Valley
will open to the public on Saturday, March 29, an event that
only comes around once or twice a year. The James K. Herbert
Wetland Prairie Preserve, which houses and protects rare and
unique species in Tulare County, will be open from 9 a.m. to 1
p.m. Attendees can explore the preserve and catch a self-guided
tour with staff. The event is made possible by the
Alta Peak California Native Plant Society, Sequoia Riverlands
Trust and the Tulare Kings Audubon Society.
