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 Interim Director Doug Beeman.
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The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) [Jan.
21] announced the selection of 15 projects that will
receive funding for the restoration, enhancement and protection
of salmon and steelhead (anadromous salmonid) habitat in
California watersheds. The total funding for these projects
amounts to more than $15 million in grant awards. Among these
15 projects, the Salmon River Restoration Council was awarded
$1,888,060 for the Windler Floodplain Habitat Enhancement
Project. The project will enhance salmonid rearing habitat at
the Windler River bar, on a reach of the North Fork Salmon
River, by lowering the floodplain and increasing connectivity.
The project also includes riparian revegetation, which will
increase shade and diversity along channels and across the
river bar.
… People care about and use public lands for many reasons.
From hunters and anglers to miners and ranchers, hikers and
mountain bikers—there is something for almost everyone on
public lands. But what if you live in a city and never
set foot on public lands? Why care about them then? Not
everyone hunts, fishes, mines, ranches, hikes, or bikes; but
everyone, truly everyone, depends on clean water. The big
secret about public lands is that they are arguably the
country’s single biggest clean water provider. According to the
US Forest Service, National Forests are the largest source of
municipal water supply in the nation, serving over 60 million
people in 3,400 communities across 33 states. Many of the
country’s largest urban areas, including Los Angeles, Portland,
Denver, and Atlanta receive a significant portion of their
water supply from national forests.
Five days after a huge fire at one of the world’s largest
battery storage plants in Moss Landing, Gov. Gavin Newsom has
called for an investigation into the blaze, which has jolted
California’s renewable energy industry. … By a vote of 5-0,
the Monterey County Board of Supervisors at an emergency
meeting decided to ask Vistra, the company whose 750-megawatt
facility burned, and PG&E, whose adjacent 182-megawatt
facility did not, to cease operations until the causes of the
fire at the renewable energy facility “have been determined and
addressed.” … The vote came after a tense
three-hour-long meeting at which dozens of residents of North
Monterey County raised questions about health impacts to their
families from the dramatic fire, possible lingering
pollution in water and soil, how the facilities were
given county permits to open, and how safety will be improved.
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, recently announced that the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has awarded Round Valley Indian
Tribes and the Sonoma County Water Agency $15 million toward
implementing the Two-Basin Solution for water diversions from
the Eel River to the Russian River. In a press release, Huffman
explains that “the funds through the Inflation Reduction Act
will fund a major Eel River estuary project supported by the
tribes, and put a down payment on construction of a new
wintertime diversion to the Russian River following the removal
of two salmon-blocking dams on the Eel.”
President Donald Trump once expressed concern with how low
showerhead flow affected his “perfect” hair. Now back in the
White House, he’s again taking aim at some high-efficiency
household items — and that may mean higher water and electric
bills in your home. One of Trump’s several dozen first-day
executive orders promises to “unleash American energy,”
including a pledge to ease efficiency standards for household
appliances and fixtures. The standards are intended to make
dishwashers, showerheads, refrigerators, laundry machines,
toilets and the like use less energy and water. The
higher-efficiency appliances can have higher upfront costs, but
they save water and electricity.
The weather pattern that’s dominated the United States for most
of January jumped into overdrive this week. Nearly all of the
48 contiguous states are unusually cold, though it’s a pale
imitation of the colossal, nationwide Arctic intrusions of
decades past. In our warming climate, such 20th-century cold
outbreaks may become increasingly tougher to match. Yet winter
can still pack a dangerous punch, as folks on the Gulf Coast
and in California are finding in two very different ways.
Historic, city-snarling snowfall – in some cases, possibly the
heaviest in more than a century – was spreading on Tuesday into
coastal communities from Texas toward Florida.
… Meanwhile, high winds, bone-dry air, and tinder-dry
vegetation continue to plague coastal Southern California, just
weeks after the area was hit by one of the most catastrophic
fire events in modern U.S. history.
… I’m visiting in early January, after a series of storms in
November and December lit up the Petaluma River watershed from
top to bottom. Yet the line is still clear – just above the
seep, the earth is solid and relatively dry. Then, suddenly,
clean water flows, trickling through a broad marshy area of
rushes and watercress indicating perennial moisture, and then
down, down, down the hill toward Petaluma and possibly all the
way to its river, seven-and-a-half miles
away. … How else is this upper section of Adobe
Creek special? It supports a stable population of steelhead, or
perhaps rainbow trout. They’re the same
species, Oncorhynchus mykiss, but called steelhead if they
swim to the ocean for part of their life before returning to
spawn, or rainbow trout if they never leave home. One species,
two lifestyles.
—Written by Nate Seltenrich, freelance
science journalist who covers plants and animals, human
health, climate change, and more for local and national
publications.
Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump called
the Los Angeles County wildfires “tragic” during his
inaugural address Monday in Washington DC and he vowed to
prevent such disasters from happening again. … Trump has been
deeply critical of the response to the fires. He declared
California Gov. Gavin Newsom “incompetent” and blamed the
mammoth fires on the state’s water policies.
“Governor Gavin Newscum should immediately go to Northern
California and open up the water main, and let the water flow
into his dry, starving, burning state, instead of having it go
out into the Pacific Ocean,” Trump posted on social media as
the fires broke out. Newsom has scoffed at Trump’s salvos,
branding them misinformation, and has offered to explain the
situation to Trump should he visit the state.
In the final days of President Joe Biden’s presidency, the
Colorado River District locked down the $40 million award from
the Bureau of Reclamation it needed to purchase the Shoshone
Water Rights from Xcel Energy. The river district struck a deal
with Xcel in December 2023, agreeing to a $98.5 million price
tag to acquire the water rights tied to the hydroelectric power
plant in Glenwood Canyon. Acquiring the rights — which are
among the Colorado River’s oldest and largest non-consumptive
rights — will ensure that the river’s historic in-stream flows
continue in perpetuity, regardless of the plant’s future.
After raising $56.9 million from the state legislature, its
board and the various Western Slope municipalities and
utilities it serves, in November the Colorado River District
submitted for $40 million in federal dollars from the Inflation
Reduction Act.
Drinking water advisories remained in place as of Monday, Jan.
20, as another red flag wind alert returned and wildfires
continued to burn in Los Angeles County. A spokesperson for the
L.A. Department of Water and Power said water continues to be
tested daily for safe drinking use and that the caution remains
in the Pacific Palisades area. And Pasadena Water and Power
officials on Monday extended the Do-Not-Drink-Water Notice due
to facilities that were affected by the Eaton Fire. … the
department’s website also noted that water pressure to the
Palisades area is “fully restored and the three,
1-million-gallon tanks serving the higher elevations are
refilled and serving the community.”
… The Earth’s spinning, however, has recently begun to speed
up and the length of the day has started getting shorter, for
reasons not fully understood. In fact, research by a
geophysicist in California finds that it’s only a matter of
years before an extra second will need to be subtracted from
universal time, rather than added to it. This possibility is
raising concern because many computers, which have been
programmed to handle an additional second, aren’t designed to
lose a second, threatening to create glitches in systems
governing aviation, financial markets, healthcare and more.
It’s reminiscent of Y2K, when widespread bugs were feared when
the calendar flipped to 2000. The research, published last year
in the science journal Nature, also finds that such a negative
leap second and its potential problems are being delayed,
perhaps surprisingly, by climate change. Ice that is
melting around the Earth’s poles is sending water — and
mass — toward the equator and consequently
slowing the planet’s rotation, counteracting the faster spin.
The Delta Stewardship Council released a draft decision last
Friday dismissing the appeal from several NGOs, Tribes, and
Delta water agencies against DWR’s certification of consistency
with the Delta Plan for the Delta Conveyance Project. The
draft decision will be discussed and possibly adopted at the
Council’s meeting on Thursday. … The Delta Stewardship
Council held a public hearing on December 19 to hear from the
appellants, DWR, and the public. The main issue raised at
the hearing was whether DWR filing a consistency determination
for the geotechnical activities only and not the entirety of
the project is piecemealing under CEQA, and therefore a
violation of the Delta Reform Act.
The San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority has signed a cost
share agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation for the B.F.
Sisk Dam Raise and Reservoir Expansion Project. The project
will create an additional 130,000 acre-feet of storage space in
the San Luis Reservoir. Funding for the project includes
$125 million from the 2021 infrastructure law that was
announced earlier in January. The project had already
received $75 million that was announced last May, $10 million
that was announced in 2023 and $25 million announced in
2022. The Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation
Act also authorized $60 million for the project, bringing the
total to $295 million.
The Bureau of Reclamation is launching the Sustainable Water
for Agriculture Pilots (SWAP) Program that will test innovative
crops and practices to significantly reduce agricultural water
use at low to moderate costs. These projects will keep the
farmland in production while conserving water. Reclamation has
$6.5 million available this year for this new program through
the Inflation Reduction Act. “This innovative program seeks to
preserve farming and agricultural activities in water stressed
areas,” said Policy Advisor James Langhenry. “If the
demonstration projects are successful, the innovative crops or
practices can be used over time to ensure families can continue
to farm while receiving compensation and strengthening water
security in the West.”
Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals
with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from
seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe
drinking water. A study describing the new technology has been
published in Nature Water by engineers at the University of
Michigan and Rice University. Boron is a natural component of
seawater that becomes a toxic contaminant in drinking water
when it sneaks through conventional filters for removing salts.
Seawater’s boron levels are around twice as high as the World
Health Organization’s most lenient limits for safe drinking
water, and five to 12 times higher than the tolerance of
many agricultural plants.
The Pajaro River flood of 2023 brought many devastating impacts
to the community of Pajaro, including residents being displaced
for weeks, the closure of Pajaro Middle School’s campus for 17
months and damage to infrastructure. To help fund repairs over
the next three years, Monterey County received a $4.07 million
grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday, for
upgrades to the aging lift station, installation of a new
generator, a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system,
fixes to the pumps and controls, structural repairs to the wet
well and the replacement of sewer lines and laterals.
… One piece of infrastructure that sustained damage was
the wastewater system, a sewage pipeline that served Pajaro and
surrounding communities like Las Lomas. This underscored issues
with the Pajaro County Sanitation District’s aging wastewater
collection system, something Monterey County officials are
working to fix in anticipation of the next major weather event.
Winter flooded rice fields in the Sacramento Valley are more
than just remnants of America’s sushi rice harvest—they are
fields of life. Each winter, these rice fields transform into a
critical stopover for snow geese, swans, and countless other
birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. With 95% of
California’s historical floodplains now gone, these surrogate
wetlands provide vital ecological benefits. The water districts
serving agricultural lands in the Sacramento Valley, such as
Western Canal Water District, play a critical role in the
conservation work happening on many rice farms during the
off-season. For Western Canal, the ability to offer affordable
water supplies during the fall and winter has made conservation
practices popular in their district.
Lake Cachuma’s surface sparkles in the afternoon sunlight, the
water lapping gently against the concrete walls of Bradbury
Dam. The 193,304-acre-foot reservoir in the Santa Ynez Valley
provides water to much of Santa Barbara County. Today, it is
mostly full at 88% of capacity. That’s a far cry from the
situation about two short years ago, when the reservoir had
dropped down to 31% full. However, the bucolic scene at Lake
Cachuma today belies the fact that, after two wet years, the
county has edged back into drought conditions, raising concerns
about water supplies and fire danger. The southeastern
half of the county is now listed as being in “moderate
drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map. The
northwestern portion has been tagged as “abnormally dry.”
The Klamath Project Drought Resilience Agency is set to receive
$33 million to fund projects that address ongoing water
shortages. A news release from the Klamath Water Users
Association (KWUA) said the funds were agreed upon in a
Memorandum of Understanding signed between the DRA and the
Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of
2022. “We are resolute in our commitment to improve our water
supply situation, and we are optimistic that can occur,” said
Tracey Liskey, KWUA president, in the release. Liskey said the
water users and DRA will continue to do everything in their
power to “provide security for producers” and the community.
It sounds like science fiction, but humans have the power to
change the weather. What they don’t have, though, is enough
data about how well it works. That’s according to a new study
from the Government Accountability Office, which recently
released a report on cloud seeding – a technology that adds
chemical compounds to existing clouds and can cause them to
drop more rain or snow. Cloud seeding can seem like an obvious
solution for the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin, which
gets most of its water from Rocky Mountain snowmelt and has
seen a downward trend in annual supplies. Historically,
policymakers have been slow to embrace the technology, choosing
to focus more money and energy on reducing water demand rather
than increasing water supply. Meanwhile, advocates for the
practice say increased cloud seeding makes sense
now.