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.
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.
It’s the second straight year of above-average rain and snow in
California, amid the state’s driest period in 1,200 years. The
respite from drought is certainly welcome, despite flooding,
mudslides and associated miseries. Now meteorologists and
oceanographers are watching possible La Niña conditions develop
in the Pacific, perhaps signaling a return to drier times. It’s
an appropriate time to take stock — of how we weathered the
last two winters, what we’ve learned and what’s ahead.
… It’s also important to note that California got a
scary dose of climate change reality early in the winter when
all that precipitation failed to turn into Sierra snowpack. It
does us little good to get lots of rain or even snow if the
weather is too warm to permit snow accumulation on the slopes.
The annual snowpack‘s slow spring-and-summer melt has
historically been the primary source of water for California
cities and farm fields.
Plastics are also … used in agriculture. Macroplastics are
used as protective wraps around mulch and fodder; they cover
greenhouses, shield crops from the elements, and are used to
make irrigation tubes, sacks, and bottles. … While there are
significant benefits to using plastics in agriculture, there
are emerging concerns regarding the risks associated with
agricultural plastics. Over time, macroplastics slowly break
down, fragmented by wind and sunlight into ever-smaller pieces
to generate microplastics and nanoplastics. These tiny plastic
particles seep into the soil, changing its physical structure
and limiting its capacity to hold water.
Efficiently managing agricultural irrigation is vital for food
security today and into the future under climate change. Yet,
evaluating agriculture’s hydrological impacts and strategies to
reduce them remains challenging due to a lack of field-scale
data on crop water consumption. Here, we develop a method to
fill this gap using remote sensing and machine learning, and
leverage it to assess water saving strategies in California’s
Central Valley. We find that switching to lower water intensity
crops can reduce consumption by up to 93%, but this requires
adopting uncommon crop types. … These results reveal diverse
approaches for achieving sustainable water use, emphasizing the
potential of sub-field scale crop water consumption maps to
guide water management in California and beyond.
When Kelly Dunham heard that water was gushing out from a test
well earlier this month for a proposed lithium mine in the
middle of this rural city of 900 residents, she went to see it
for herself. Water was surging from the drilling rig and
flooding the test site as berms trapped it and directed the
water toward lagoons once used by an abandoned missile launch
complex nearby. Trucks sucked up the water with pumps and
hauled it away to disposal wells as fast as they could.
The drill had hit pockets of carbon dioxide gas and more water
than expected, according to state regulators and Anson
Resources, the company behind the direct lithium extraction
(DLE) project in which brine is pumped from deep aquifers to
the surface, where lithium and other minerals are extracted
from the water before it is sent back underground.
For a time last year, it was difficult to drive through a large
swath of central California without running into the new
shoreline of a long dormant lake. Resurrected for the
first time in decades by an epic deluge of winter rain and
snow, by spring the lake covered more than 100,000 acres,
stretching over cotton, tomato and pistachio fields and miles
of roads. Tulare Lake, or Pa’ashi as it is known to the Tachi
Yokut Tribe, was back. … Scientists and officials predicted
the lake could remain for years to come, sparking consternation
among the local farmers whose land was now underwater, and
excitement from others who saw the lake as a fertile nature
sanctuary and sacred site. … Despite the predictions, the
lake is nearly gone.
Birds and people need clean and abundant water in rivers,
lakes, streams, wetlands, and marshes in landscapes throughout
the country. Today, the White House is announcing several
new initiatives to celebrate World Water Day and protect
waterways, and access to clean water, across the country.
… The announcements are paired with updates from
previous water-related commitments from the Administration,
including historic levels of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
funding for conservation in places like the Everglades, the
Great Lakes, and the Delaware River basin, safeguarding
wilderness and cultural areas to protect them from pollution
and development, and building resilience to climate change in
places threatened by flooding, drought, and wildfires like the
Colorado River Basin.
Fresno’s largest body of water — and likely its most diverse
wildlife habitat — shimmers in silence on a sunny spring
afternoon. … Where we’re at is Milburn Pond, a reclaimed
gravel mining pit that belongs to the San Joaquin River
Ecological Reserve and is managed by the Department of Fish and
Wildlife. … Listed at 287 acres, Milburn Pond is large
enough to be considered a lake. Except for the fact that it’s
not surrounded by land on all sides. … Now, though,
there’s a state-approved proposal to isolate the pond that has
been kicking around since the historic 2006 settlement to
restore river flows and self-sustaining salmon runs. It’s a
plan Moosios and others believe would irreparably harm this
little-known or observed wildlife sanctuary — even though less
destructive and expensive options have been proposed that would
accomplish virtually the same stated purpose. -Written by columnist Marek Warszawski.
… While the winter season may be drawing to a close, it looks
like California and the broader West will see at least one more
7-10+ day period of winter-like conditions beginning this
weekend. A series of 3-5 weak to moderate storms will affect
California in the next 10-14 days, bringing widespread
precipitation (especially NorCal) and cooler temperatures.
These appear to be fairly decent snow-accumulating storms for
the Sierra–no epic blizzards, but the highest elevations could
accumulate several additional feet over 10+ days and there will
likely be at least some accumulation to much lower elevations
at times. Widespread light to moderate rainfall is likely
throughout northern CA at lower elevations, and locally into
SoCal as well.
Years after a massive spill at a Los Angeles water treatment
facility dumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the
Pacific, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency have ordered several improvements at the plant to help
prevent another such disaster, even when facing more intense
storms from a changing climate. The administrative order of
consent, issued this month, requires the Hyperion Water
Reclamation Plant in Playa del Rey to make significant fixes to
its operations and infrastructure, including improving
monitoring systems and overflow channels, after the federal
agency’s review of the 2021 spill. The agreement, between the
EPA and the Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment division,
mandates the updates be implemented by the end of 2025, though
some are required to be completed as soon as within 30 days,
according to the order.
In what has been a years-long fight to fend off efforts to mine
sites and areas the Quechan Indian Tribe say are culturally
significant, the tribe was victorious in preserving those sites
this week with an unexpected win against Canada’s SMP Gold
Corp. … The federally protected land, under the
U.S. Bureau of Land Management, is culturally significant and
important to the Quechan Indian Tribe and its members have been
vehemently fighting the Oro Cruz mining project for years, with
the support of other tribes, and numerous environmental and
social justice groups and concerned residents behind them.
… After the hearing, White elaborated further and told
the Calexico Chronicle that the tribe is trying to dedicate the
Cargo Muchacho Mountains area as the “Kw’tsán National
Monument”
… Riparian forest is a rare sight in the Central Valley.
About one million acres of trees, shrubs, and grasses once
flourished, drowned, and flourished again along the valley’s
rivers, creeks, and floodplains; now, perhaps 130,000 acres
remain. In recent years, though, that number has begun to inch
up again. Caswell has about 260 acres. Seven miles south of
there is Dos Rios Ranch—2,100 acres, much of it former dairy
farm and almond orchard, at the extremely floodable confluence
of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers—which is steadily being
restored to riparian forest. Later this year it will open as
California’s first new state park in 15 years.
At the Indian Wells Valley Water District board meeting on
March 11, the Water District board moved forward in learning
about the process of consolidating the Dune 3 water mutual
company into their service area. Some negotiation and planning
still needs to happen before any decision is finalized, but for
the moment the board is willing to cautiously move forward in
the process. The IWV Water District serves water to IWV
residents by pumping water out of the IWV groundwater basin.
However, they are not the only ones doing so. Dotted all across
IWV are domestic well owners and even a few other public or
private organizations resembling a water district. If one of
those organizations fails, an obligation still exists to serve
water to the people in that region.
For two weeks, Tsholofelo Moloi has been among thousands of
South Africans lining up for water as the country’s largest
city, Johannesburg, confronts an unprecedented collapse of its
water system affecting millions of people. Residents rich and
poor have never seen a shortage of this severity. While hot
weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after
decades of neglect is also largely to blame. The public’s
frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National
Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of
apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an
election this year.
Imagine putting billions of dollars into creating something
that tastes like nothing. When it comes to municipal water
systems the world over, that’s what water companies strive to
provide — no bad or off flavors, no assertive minerals, just
bland safety. It’s a miracle, and one we shouldn’t take for
granted. In The Taste of Water, author Christy Spackman looks
beyond the glass to ask how our water should and shouldn’t
taste. Spackman, a professor at Arizona State University, is
also the director of the Sensory Labor(atory), an experimental
research collective dedicated to disrupting longstanding
sensory hierarchies. Through her work, she became interested in
why people eat what they do and how the management of taste and
smell done by food scientists and engineers, shapes the
experiences we often take for granted.
CBS 8 is Working for You to get to the bottom of water billing
problems in the City of San Diego. It’s been four months since
Mission Hills homeowner Ken Perilli received a notice in the
mail that his water bills were being withheld, pending an
investigation by the city of San Diego into “abnormal water
use.” “The first reaction is to panic that you have a leak
under a slab, and that you’re going to be facing an expensive
plumbing repair bill,” said Perilli. He called a plumber and
checked for water leaks, but nothing seemed abnormal. “I
investigated the abnormal reading. And you can see that there
is dirt in front of the meter. So, the abnormal reading is that
there was no reading taken, I believe,” said Perilli. On
the social media site Next Door, Perilli said he found dozens
of similar complaints by neighbors.
Colorado’s “housing crisis” is essentially unsolvable by simply
building more market-rate housing, at least if we care about
our quality of life here in Colorado. … Colorado does,
however, have a real “water crisis.” The arguments between the
seven states working on sharing the Colorado River revolve
around Article III(d) of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which
requires the Upper Basin states to deliver 7.5 million
acre-feet per year on average to the Lower Basin states,
plus multi-million acre-feet/year obligations to Mexico,
Native American tribes, and pre-Compact water rights
holders. There just isn’t enough water for all that, plus
serving many millions more people in the Front Range cities
that depend on trans-mountain diversions of the Colorado
River. -Written by Steve Pomerance, who served 10 years on the
Boulder city council and 6 years on the DRCOG
board.
“Water is Life,” was the Lakota rallying cry at Standing Rock
as thousands weathered severe freezing conditions to stop an
oil pipeline threat to their water. In Arizona water is life
too but here we’re way beyond having our water resources
threatened. They’re right now being needlessly and excessively
plundered for corporate profit as the Arizona Corporation
Commission rolls out the red carpet for fossil fuel energy,
depletes our precious water resources and ends up maximizing
utility shareholders’ dividends. Now most of us can wrap
our heads around this — burning fossil fuels to make
electricity causes and worsens climate change, but it’s harder
to wrap your head around just how much water is consumed in the
process. Here’s how much water is used by different energy
sources to produce 1 megawatt hour of electricity. -Written by Rick Rappaport, a member of Tucson Climate
Coalition, Tucson Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby and
Arizonans for Community Choice Energy
Outrage over the Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court rolling back
federal reproductive rights has in some ways overshadowed the
now 6-3 conservative majority’s relentless assault on
environmental regulations that for decades protected Colorado’s
clean air and water. … Now Colorado lawmakers are trying
to step into that regulatory void with Wednesday’s filing of
the Regulate Dredge and Fill Activities in State Waters bill
(HB24-1379). If passed, it would require a rulemaking process
by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s Water
Quality and Control Division to permit dredge and fill
activities on both public and private land. -Written by contributor David O. Williams.
All weather patterns must come to an end, and the setup that
allowed warm and dry conditions over much of the Northwest and
limited rainfall in California in recent days will wind down
later this week as a new train of storms lines up over the
northern Pacific, AccuWeather meteorologists
say. The storm train is not as intense as some episodes
over the winter, but with a breakdown of high
pressure over the Northwest and a southward shift in
the jet stream from the Pacific into North America,
there will be more opportunities for rain and mountain snow as
well as locally heavy precipitation that can slow travel on
highways and airports. … While a blockbuster snowfall is
not anticipated in the Sierra Nevada, the change to snow will
be more deliberate and add to the snowpack.
At least 70 million Americans get their water from a system
where toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” were found at levels that
require reporting to the Environmental Protection Agency.
That’s according to new data the EPA released in its ongoing
5-year review of water systems across the nation. The number
will almost certainly grow as new reports are released every
three months. … Found in drinking water, food,
firefighting foam, and nonstick and water-repellent items, PFAS
resist degradation, building up in both the environment and our
bodies. Salt Lake City; Sacramento,
California; Madison, Wisconsin; and Louisville,
Kentucky, were among the major systems reporting PFAS
contamination to the EPA in the latest data release.
