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 Doug Beeman.
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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.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Jan. 10 unveiled his proposed budget for
the next fiscal year … [T]he governor has proposed
timely new funding for flood risk reduction and protection, as
well as several other important water management issues.
Specifically, the governor’s proposed budget calls for funding
in the following categories. Urban Flood Risk Reduction —
$135.5 million over two years to support local agencies working
to reduce urban flood risk. Delta Levee — $40.6 million
for ongoing Delta projects that reduce risk of levee failure
and flooding, provide habitat benefits, and reduce the risk of
saltwater intrusion contaminating water supplies. Central
Valley Flood Protection — $25 million to support projects that
will reduce the risk of flooding for Central Valley communities
while contributing to ecosystem restoration and agricultural
sustainability.
Water from the Colorado River covers more than a third of
Arizona’s total water usage, but the state is increasingly
losing access to that supply. The state is no longer in what
Terry Goddard, the president of the Central Arizona Water
Conservation District Board of Directors, called “a fool’s
paradise.” Arizona had maintained a surplus of water since the
mid-1980s, but that’s not the case today. Now, it’s losing
water, and it’s losing it fast. That loss, and potential future
loss, was the focal point of Arizona’s state legislature
Tuesday, starting with a presentation from the Central Arizona
Project on the status of the state’s water supply in which
legislators heard about the tensions between Arizona and other
Colorado River Basin states over access to groundwater.
A climatologist with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration is predicting that the ongoing storms in
California will likely be the first billion-dollar storm
of 2023 in the United States. … Smith is an applied
climatologist at NOAA’s National Center for Environmental
Information. He’s the lead researcher for the annual
“Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster’s”
report. “It takes into account many different impacts such
as damage to homes, businesses, government assets like schools,
all the contents of those structures,” Smith said.
Despite several weeks of torrential rain and flooding,
California is still facing a severe multi-year drought. That
has many people thinking about how to better capture winter
floodwaters to last through the dry season. An innovative
approach at two California reservoirs could help boost the
state’s water supply, potentially marking a larger shift from
decades-old water management approaches to a system that can
quickly adapt to precipitation in a changing climate. At issue
are rules that, at face value, seem perplexing to many
Californians. Even in a chronically dry state, reservoirs are
not allowed to fill up in the winter. … Two sites,
Folsom Reservoir and Lake Mendocino, are rethinking this by
using weather forecasts to guide their operations. Instead of
sticking to set rules, they only empty out if a major storm is
forecasted for the days ahead.
As Lake Mead continues to decline toward dead pool, federal
officials are requesting the Colorado River states to
offer major cuts in water usage. Nevada has responded with a
detailed and innovative plan set forth in a December 20,
2022 letter to the Bureau of Reclamation, calling for
basic reform of water management throughout the entire Colorado
River system. … Arizona and California have not responded in
public. They remain on the sidelines, unable to
summon the political will to either agree or to propose an
alternative. The reason Arizona and California are
internally deadlocked can be summed up in one word:
agriculture. Irrigated agriculture uses more than 70 percent
of the water allocated to the two states from Lake
Mead. -Written by Bruce Babbitt, an attorney and politician
from the state of Arizona, and President Bill Clinton’s
secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which
requires local agencies to form Groundwater Sustainability
Agencies (GSAs) to adopt Groundwater Sustainability Plans
(GSPs) to ensure sustainable groundwater management in all
high- and medium-priority groundwater basins, is well into its
implementation phase. The deadlines for GSAs to submit GSPs for
all high- and medium-priority basins have passed, and the
Department of Water Resources continues to issue determinations
on submitted GSPs. As GSPs are approved, GSAs have begun to
pursue projects to implement their GSPs, primarily comprising
groundwater recharge projects. These projects are generally
subject to the requirements of the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA), which mandates environmental review of
discretionary public agency actions.
A comprehensive overhaul of water policy affecting the San
Joaquin Valley is back on the table, courtesy of Rep. David
Valadao (R–Hanford). Valadao initially introduced the Working
to Advance Tangible and Effective Reforms (WATER) for
California Act last September and is bringing it back, this
time with a Republican-controlled House. The entire California
Republican delegation joined Valadao as co-sponsors on the
bill. … What’s in it: If it passes, the act will
require the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water
Project (SWP) to be operated consistent with the 2019 Trump-era
biological opinions, which have been under fire by the Biden
administration.
Facing heated pushback from growers, Madera County officials
decided to maintain current groundwater pumping allotments for
the next two years rather than reduce allocations over that
time. At its Jan. 10 meeting, Board of Supervisors also
considered increasing penalties for growers who exceed pumping
allocations in the Madera, Chowchilla, and Delta-Mendota
subbasins as part of an effort to raise money for projects
geared toward bringing more water into the critically over
drafted region. Madera County has been the site of an
escalating battle over how to reduce groundwater pumping and
who should pay for new water projects.
The Great Flood of 1862, seemingly lost in time, is the answer
to the question: What was the most destructive flood in
California history? Even as flood waters rise throughout the
state in January 2023 and President Joe Biden declared a state
of emergency on Monday, the event has created only a fraction
of the impact of the 19th century deluge. News reports from the
time describe a surreal scene: Entire towns were destroyed, and
farmland and plains turned into lakes as far as the eye could
see. Almost everyone in the state was impacted by the flood,
from victims who lost their homes to state employees who, in
the chaos and confusion, didn’t get paid for more than a
year. … San Francisco began flooding in December
1861, when steady rains drenched the city. The first week of
January dumped 12 more inches of rain in S.F., and one local
newspaper made Biblical comparisons.
Erik Porse joined the University of California Agriculture and
Natural Resources (UC ANR) on Jan. 11 as director of the
California Institute for Water Resources (CIWR). Porse has
built an outstanding career in water as a research engineer
with the Office of Water Programs at California State
University, Sacramento and an assistant adjunct professor with
UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. His
research focuses on urban and water resources management. He
specializes in bringing together interdisciplinary teams to
investigate complex environmental management questions.
The chairmen of the Ute Mountain Ute and the Southern Ute
tribes spoke in a joint address to the state legislature on
Wednesday. It was the first time, under a new state law, that
the tribal leaders were invited to address state lawmakers.
Over the course of about 30 minutes, the two leaders shared the
history of their communities and asked for lawmakers’ help on
specific issues. Here are a few. Manuel Heart, chairman of
the Ute Mountain Ute, said the tribe needs help to access the
water for which it already holds rights. … Heart said
the state should partner with the tribe to work on a pipeline
from Lake Nighthorse to Montezuma County. The tribes also
deserve a greater role in water planning among the Colorado
River basin states, he said.
As Californians struggled to deal with a grueling drought that
has led to water rationing and other extreme water-conservation
measures, Mother Nature has this week intervened with an
atmospheric river that has led to massive rainfalls and
flooding — especially up in our end of the state. This cycle of
drought and flooding is nothing new. … Unfortunately,
California has left itself dependent on the weather (or
climate, if you prefer) because it hasn’t built significant
water infrastructure since the time that essay was published —
when the state had roughly 18 million fewer residents. Some
environmentalists argue against building water storage when
there’s little rain, but they only are correct if it doesn’t
rain again. History suggests the rains will always come —
at least eventually, and this week’s ongoing series of storms
is a whopper of an example.
Why Guy is getting many questions about why we can’t store all
the rainwater we’re getting. California is still officially in
a drought and we need water for drinking and agriculture and
other basic needs. Even though it’s been dumping rain like
watery gold, we can’t seem to store it all. We have reservoirs
and dams that do much of the water storage, but most of the
rain we’ve been getting is flowing into the Pacific Ocean. It’s
wasted. The rain is also falling so quickly that we can’t
store it and what we want to do with it is get it out of here
to clear our roadways and landscapes as soon as
possible. The best-case scenario is that we get a ton of
snow in the high Sierra that naturally melts as the weather
warms and disperses the water in doses to a thirsty state.
Vendors at the Ocean Beach farmers market are singing rain’s
praises after a series of storms that have passed through San
Diego. … While farmers say the rain makes their
fruits and vegetables pop, they say it also helps them
save money and the environment. … Pasqual said the
farm he works for could save a couple grand from being able to
turn off the irrigation system. … As California
has suffered through a devastating multi-year drought,
giving irrigation systems a vacation after the rain is a
critical part of much-needed conservation, according to the San
Diego County Water Authority.
California is the most populous state in the nation and the
nation’s biggest agricultural producer. That combination can
occasionally lead to misunderstandings between consumers in
cities and suburbs and growers in farming communities. That
extends to public perceptions about decisions farmers make to
grow crops such as alfalfa. The crop is an important part of
our food chain that most of us depend on every day. But very
few people understand that. … We see it all the time when
water supplies are scarce. Critics emerge, confident that they
know how the state should manage water resources and what crops
farmers should and shouldn’t be growing. -Written by Mike Wade, executive director of the
California Farm Water Coalition.
As a series of storms continues to pummel California, officials
say the havoc is a testament to the unexpected ferocity of
extreme weather. By Tuesday evening, at least 17 people have
been killed in circumstances directly related to a train of
atmospheric rivers that has inundated the state since New
Year’s Eve, bringing the death toll from the storms higher than
the last two wildfire seasons combined….The deadly weather is
foiling evacuation plans and straining the state’s aging
infrastructure as strong winds topple power lines and fast
rising waters overtop levees. Officials say the storms
highlight the way in which climate change is increasingly
catching people off guard as the state swings from one extreme
weather event to another, leaving little time to prepare.
As California wrangles with a projected $22 billion budget
deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed cutting most heavily
from programs designed to help the state confront the worsening
effects of climate change. Newsom’s proposed budget, which he
released Tuesday, would cut a net $6 billion from the state’s
climate efforts. Among the cuts: subsidies for electric
vehicles; funding for clean energy programs, such as battery
storage and solar panels; and money for programs to help
low-income people deal with extreme heat waves. Climate
activists and some progressive legislators said they were wary
of the move, particularly as another atmospheric river drenched
much of the state and brought flooding to communities from
Santa Cruz to San Diego….Among the other proposed cuts to
climate programs and projects in Newsom’s budget: … $194
million for drought preparation and response
It’s been a wild couple of weeks of weather in Northern
California. But there is a rather bright silver lining to this
train of storms: our surface water supply is getting a big
boost. Here’s a look at some of the highlights. On
Oct. 1, 2022, the start of the new water year for California,
reservoir levels were woefully low throughout the state. But
after an active December and now a very busy January, water
levels are rising quickly. Folsom was the fastest reservoir to
fill up to the seasonal benchmark. There’s no surprise there,
given that it’s one of the smallest in the region.
… Reservoirs are steadily filling up with runoff from
rainfall and later this season, there will be plenty of
snowmelt to look forward to. As of Tuesday, the statewide
snowpack is at 214% of average for the date.
Adán Ortega, Jr. took the helm today of Metropolitan Water
District’s Board of Directors as the 20th chair and first
Latino to lead the board in the district’s 95-year
history. In addition to his installation, Ortega welcomed
three new directors who took their seats to represent the
Calleguas, Central Basin and Eastern municipal water districts
on the 38-member board. Ortega, who has represented the city of
San Fernando on the board since March 2021, took his oath of
office in a boardroom filled with family, elected officials,
community leaders, mentors and friends.
Registration for the Foundation’s early 2023 programming is now
open, so don’t miss once-a-year opportunities for our
Water
101 Workshop Feb. 23 + Optional Watershed Tour Feb.
24 and our Lower Colorado River
Tour March 8-10that weaves along the
iconic Southwestern river. Take advantage of our
popular Water 101 Workshop to gain a deeper
understanding of the history, hydrology, legal and political
facets behind management of California’s most precious natural
resource.
