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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays. Or subscribe via RSS
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.
When it comes to water, California has been—to put it
mildly—going through it. The PPIC Water Policy Center’s senior
fellow (and former director) Ellen Hanak summed up the
situation nicely at our annual fall conference on November 14:
“If you think our weather’s getting crazier, the data agree
with you.” While the state’s average precipitation hasn’t
changed, she said, volatility has increased
dramatically. The question is how to make that
happen. In the first panel, moderated by senior fellow Jeff
Mount, Central Valley Flood Protection Board president Jane
Dolan praised the Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) flood
management efforts, though she cautioned that flood preparation
isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing.
Lithium. It’s a soft, silvery metal that is the least dense of
any metal on the periodic table and vital for transitioning to
electric vehicles because of its use in batteries that also
include laptops and cellphones. There is a vast source of this
material in Green River, Emery County, where there is a planned
site to mine lithium at a former military base, where surface
ground disruption has already happened. The company’s website
said there is a separate chunk of a project area near Moab.
Bruce Richardson, chairman and chief executive officer of Anson
Resources, recently briefed lawmakers on the project’s
progress, which is still in the permitting process.
More than three years after a wildfire devastated Big Basin
Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the massive
redwood trees in California’s oldest state park continue to
recover with surprising speed. But some wildlife species,
particularly salmon and steelhead trout in the park’s streams,
and some types of birds, are still struggling and could take
many years to bounce back. That was the conclusion of
researchers who spoke at a recent scientific symposium
exploring how Big Basin is faring in the wake of the 2020 CZU
Lightning Complex Fire. The best news: The park’s famed
old-growth redwoods, some of which tower more than 250 feet and
date back more than 1,500 years, are nearly all green again,
showing significant amounts of new growth after the wildfire’s
flames charred their bark black and for a while gave them a
doomed appearance.
Fresh carrots are an expanding $1.4 billion U.S. market, and
Americans are expected to consume 100 million pounds this
Thanksgiving — roughly five ounces for every human being in the
country. At least 60% of those carrots are produced by just two
companies, Bolthouse and Grimmway, both of which were acquired
by buyout firms, in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
… Cartels are less funny for neighbors of the two
producers in Southern California’s Cuyama Valley, who are
calling for a boycott of Big Carrot over the amount of water
their farms are sucking out of the ground. In 2022,
Bolthouse and Grimmway together were responsible for 67%, or
9.6 billion gallons, of the area’s total water use. Local
residents said they expect their wells to dry up if the carrot
farms continue to use as much water as they do …
Imperial Irrigation District Division 2 Director JB Hamby has
announced his candidacy for re-election to the IID Board of
Directors in the March 5 primary, according to a press
release. Elected to the board with 66 percent of the vote
in 2020, Hamby’s division covers parts of El Centro, Heber,
Holtville and Seeley. … In less than three years, Hamby
has delivered on major initiatives at the IID. He worked to
secure a historic $250 million investment for the Salton Sea
from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for projects to protect
public health and habitat in close coordination with
Reclamation and the state of California, according to the
release. Earlier this year, he was elected chairman of the
Colorado River Board of California and serves as the
Colorado River Commissioner for California, where he has
established close working relationships with the seven Colorado
River Basin States and Department of the Interior officials.
The city of Thornton took a second shot Monday at finishing a
key 70-mile water pipeline by renewing its request for Larimer
County to approve the first 10 miles, as more than 10,000
potential homes in Thornton await certainty on finding a water
tap. Thornton has staged a quiet public relations blitz
with Larimer County residents bordering the redrawn pipeline
route after the northern Colorado county’s commissioners
rejected the first map. Larimer County has the right to review
Thornton’s pipeline under state “1041” regulations on land use
for big projects. Thornton, in Adams County, has for
decades reached across county borders to buy up farms and water
rights for Cache la Poudre River flows, and now needs to take
delivery through a pipeline to keep growing beyond its current
population of about 147,000.
Seven atmospheric rivers classified as strong or
greater dumped rain and snow on California during the
2022-2023 rainy season, lifting the majority of the state out
of drought conditions and causing disastrous flooding.
This duality of promise and peril typifies atmospheric
rivers, which are ribbons of water vapor in the sky that can
deliver massive amounts of precipitation, and makes accurate
forecasting essential to both water managers and public safety
officials. To better understand and forecast atmospheric
rivers, “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft from the U.S. Air Force
Reserve 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron have begun
flights over the Pacific Ocean starting this November as part
of Atmospheric River Reconnaissance program (AR Recon), led by
the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) at UC
San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Last winter, residents experienced the second largest flood in
East Palo Alto history. Now Bay Area nonprofits are installing
gardens designed to soak up stormwater and mitigate future
flooding. On Nov. 11, Climate Resilient Communities (CRC),
Fresh Approach, and Grassroots Ecology broke ground on the
first of 25 rain garden systems to be installed for homeowners
at no cost. CRC received nearly $1 million in funding for the
project from Coastal Communities, an organization working to
reduce water pollution. … Efforts to curtail the effects of
flooding are more important than ever as California heads into
an ‘El Nino’ year, a period of cooler and wetter weather. Many
older East Palo Alto residents still remember flooding in 1998
that resulted in $40 million dollars in damages.
Next year will mark 40 years of the Pajaro Valley Water
Management Agency. In anticipation of the agency’s ruby
anniversary, it has launched its Strategic Plan 2024+, which
highlights the plans, goals and vision of the organization
moving forward. The 18-page document outlines the history of
the agency, its mission, vision and values and provides
in-depth goals. The first goal is to operate and maintain a
reliable water supply through facilities and infrastructure by
developing and implementing a Health and Safety Plan for all of
Pajaro Valley Water’s projects, collaborating with partners to
improve operational efficiencies, strengthening the partnership
between the agency and city of Watsonville and developing and
implementing a Condition Assessment, Vulnerability Assessment
and Asset Management Plan.
“If I had a chance to tell Gov. (Gavin) Newsom something about
the pollution in the Tijuana River Valley, I would tell him to
get it fixed as soon as possible because the odor is horrible,
and I don’t know what else it’s doing to our health. Like my
partner says, if this was happening to rich people in La Jolla,
this would have been taken care of a long time ago.” That’s
what Analisa Corrales, a nine-year resident of the Nestor
neighborhood in San Diego, told me when I asked how she felt
about the pollution from the Tijuana River Valley and how
aerosolized contaminants might be affecting the health of her
and her three children. They are 12 years old, 7 years old
and 6 months old, and they live less than 2 miles from the
sewage-choked river. -Written by Pedro Rios, director of the American
Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border program and a
longtime human rights advocate.
On Friday, PG&E released a potential draft plan for
removing Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam on the Eel River. The
framework is part of the process of surrendering the utility
company’s federal license to operate the Potter Valley
hydroelectric project, established more than 100 years ago. The
project hasn’t generated power since 2021, but dams still block
fish passage. In statements, environmental and fish advocacy
groups celebrated that the plan, which includes full dam
removal, would restore historic flows to the headwaters of the
Eel River and pressed the need for speed to save declining fish
populations.
More than 30 years ago, a piece of federal legislation dropped
like a bomb on California’s Central Valley farmers.
Reverberations from that legislation continue through today.
Just last month, a San Joaquin Valley congressman added
language to an appropriations bill that would unwind a key
portion of the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act
(CVPIA). … One of its cornerstones was that 800,000 acre
feet of water per year would be carved out of supplies that had
been sent to towns and farms and redirect it to the environment
instead. Specifically, the legislation hoped to save salmon
populations, which had been crashing. Thirty-one years later,
salmon are still on the brink. Now, Republican lawmakers
are trying to get rid of the environmental protections in the
CVPIA for good.
A stubborn storm well off the California coast
brought rain showers to the state throughout the week
before finally moving across Northern California on Saturday.
It was the first region-wide moderate rainfall of the season
for the Bay Area, while the Sierra Nevada saw some light
snowfall. The North Bay and Central Coast saw
the highest precipitation totals in the past seven
days, with 1.5 to 4 inches of rain in Big Sur and the Marin
Headlands. While accumulations were impressive along the
coastal mountains, seven-day precipitation totals were lower
than originally forecast in the lower elevations due to the
unfavorable position of the storm. San Francisco received 1.27
inches of rain, with 0.88 inches in Oakland and 0.43 inches in
San Jose.
[John Brooks] Hamby 27, … California’s
boyish-looking representative on issues concerning the river,
sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the other states’ powerful water
managers, many of whom have decades of experience, an almost
uncomfortable sight given their latest brawl over the
beleaguered Colorado River. … Combined, these roles
position Hamby as arguably the most powerful person involved in
talks on the future of the Colorado River, a waterway that
is relied upon by an estimated 35 million people and
supports about $1.4 trillion worth of commerce. They
also place him at the center of the river’s most consequential
moment since midcentury, when Arizona and California went
to the Supreme Court to fight over the amount of water
they were allocated.
Merced and Monterey counties got $20 million each from the
state in October to help the residents of Planada and Pajaro
recover from January floods. But local officials want to
spend at least some of the money on infrastructure, while
residents want all of the money to help relieve debt they’ve
incurred from the natural disaster. That is, after all, what
state lawmakers ostensibly sent the money for. Days of
rain led to a flood of local canals and creeks in the area on
Jan. 9, forcing the complete evacuation of the majority-Latino
community of Planada, population almost 4,000.
Percy Deal, a member of the Navajo Nation, is looking up at a
pale stripe of sandstone that stands out against the rim of
Black Mesa in northeastern Arizona. Juniper trees speckle the
steep cliffsides facing the site of a proposed hydropower
project. … The hydropower company Nature and People First
applied for preliminary permits from the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) last year to investigate the
possibility of building three pumped water storage projects on
and below Black Mesa to generate electricity for nearby cities
like Phoenix and Tucson. Deal and other Black Mesa residents
are worried that the project could do damage to land and water
that has ecological and cultural significance to both the
Navajo and Hopi tribes. … They’re concerned about
potential overuse of groundwater underneath the Black Mesa
region, which is still reeling from the environmental
consequences of decades of extractive coal strip mining.
An important milestone was reached Friday for the construction
of another reservoir in California. The Final Environmental
Impact Report (EIR) for Sites Reservoir was certified and the
Sites Reservoir Project was approved by the Sites Project
Authority, the lead agency under the California Environmental
Quality Act. Next up for the Sites Project Authority is to
move the project through the final planning stages. After
getting through the final stages, crews will begin building the
reservoir. … The Sites Project says the final EIR
evaluates the environmental impact and proposed mitigation
measures that come with construction and operations. It
was updated to address public comments and updates to the
project following a draft that was released in 2021.
Six months after three southwestern states struck a deal to
keep more Colorado River water behind drought-shrunken Hoover
Dam, those states face the first test of whether it’s enough to
keep the region out of crisis. The arrival of the winter snow
season, which sustains the river and last year bailed out water
users facing critically low reservoirs, brings new questions
for water managers: Will El Niño conditions in the Pacific
Ocean produce a wet winter in the Southwest and parts of the
Rockies? And could a second straight wet winter wallop the
region with above-average snowfall and again forestall more
drastic conservation measures?
It’s a curious thing, teaching a classroom of future fish
conservationists about revitalizing degraded ecosystems. Putah
Creek was an unconventional place to teach ecology. After the
creek turned bad, it stayed that way for decades – deteriorated
habitat, nonexistent flow, garbage, rusted cars, even gravel
mining. And while conditions have improved, many students, and
even some scientists, still remain skeptical that this
ecosystem could ever be anything but a spoilt ecosystem. Is it
really possible to genuinely rehabilitate an ecosystem like
that through improved management and community building? Those
lessons work in other cases, for other ecosystems, but surely
not this one.
Malissa Tayaba, vice chair of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok
Indians’ Tribal Council, steps through an attentive crowd
that’s transfixed by a group of dancers in feather-trimmed
regalia, following the stringent beat of clapper sticks.
Today’s event is the annual Big Time celebration, and it is
being held on the tribal rancheria that is also home to the Red
Hawk Casino and Resort near Placerville. Tayaba grew up on this
slope of government-allotted tribal land. She maneuvers
through the savory vapors of “Indian tacos” (frybread with
various toppings) before heading into a maze of blankets,
beads, shell jewelry, and fox and coyote pelts for sale. The
scene is vibrant, but Tayaba knows that this corner of the oak
woodlands looked very different when she was young. Back then,
as she describes it, the reservation was just a smattering of
trailers with no running water.
