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 nation’s biggest water district may hire the former U.S.
Speaker of the House on as an adviser, sources say. Westlands
Water District confirmed that preliminary discussions have
taken place with Kevin McCarthy, a former Republican
congressman from Bakersfield. The agency, which has its
headquarters in Fresno, does not have a contract with McCarthy,
but the role would be an advisory one. … A move to the
world of water would not be major pivot for the lifelong
Bakersfield resident. As a congressman, McCarthy helped secure
funding to fix and raise Isabella and Schaefer dams in Kern
County, SJV Water reported.
President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy
emergency will destroy wetlands across the U.S. as the Army
Corps of Engineers is expediting as many as 700 pending permits
for pipelines, transmission lines, and other energy-related
projects without proper environmental review, the Center for
Biological Diversity said. The center sent a letter to Trump on
Thursday stating its intent to sue him and the Army Corps for
violating the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act
because neither federal statute can be curtailed by his
declaration of a national emergency, let alone a “fabricated”
one.
More than a million homes in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San
Francisco that currently have low flood risk will face a
greater threat from flooding than from wildfires by 2050,
according to a report published on Tuesday by CoreLogic, which
provides financial, property, and consumer information,
analytics, and business intelligence. The report noted that
currently, 762,000 homes are impacted by flood risk in Los
Angeles. The same was true of 231,000 homes in San Diego, and
in San Francisco, 65,000 homes, it said. … Los Angeles’ flood
risk score was expected to spike significantly (by 2050),
jumping to 58—classed in the report as “high” risk of property
damage and losses. The same year, wildfire risks were expected
to be slightly lower than this, with a score of 51.
A wastewater treatment plant being built six miles south of the
border continues to be plagued by delays in construction and
now, per a Border Report investigation, design flaws.
Originally, the facility was supposed to open last September,
but five months later, its future remains in limbo. A source
familiar with the plant’s design says initial test-runs have
failed due to the type of pumps set in place during
construction. He tells Border Report water pumps were installed
instead of pumps required for mud, thick fluids and
sediment. … Most of (Imperial Beach’s) beaches have been
closed for more than two years due to sewage pollution that
flows in from Mexico.
Salmon are swimming again in the North Yuba River for the first
time in close to a century. The fish are part of an innovative
pilot project to study the feasibility of returning spring-run
Chinook salmon to their historical spawning and rearing habitat
in the mountains of Sierra County. … Using a proven technique
used by other agencies but never before attempted by CDFW,
fisheries scientists created dozens of man-made salmon redds,
or nests, using a hydraulic injection system to clear the
intended nests of silt. Scientists then carefully deposited the
eggs up to a foot and a half deep within the gravel to mimic
the actions of spawning adult salmon. … The first young fish
were seen in the trap on Feb. 11. The young fish are being
trucked downstream of Englebright Lake and released into the
lower Yuba River to continue their migration to the Pacific
Ocean.
Trump has said in the past that water from B.C. could be used
to solve California’s drought problems. … Is Trump’s
scenario plausible? Or just a pipe dream? And what impact could
his rhetoric have on B.C., which is currently working with the
federal government to renegotiate the crucial Columbia River
Treaty? Here are five things to know.
The National Association of Clean Water Agencies says it’s
worried about how big cities and utility companies will fund
lead pipe replacement and other big projects in the future.
Right now, the association says, the federal government
provides low-interest loans for those types of projects, but,
with a lot of cost cutting happening, those programs could be
in danger. If they go away, cities and utility companies will
have to borrow money at a higher interest rate, which will lead
to higher rates for customers.
The juniper pollen has cranked up early this year, and the
irrigators with groundwater pumps (legal or not, it’s hard to
know) are firing them up, but the most telling sign of spring
was the kettling sandhill cranes this morning. … This winter
has been dry in the headwaters, and the latest forecast calls
for just half of normal flows on the Rio Grande entering New
Mexico’s “Middle Valley,” where the cranes and I live. … We’ll
be fine. We’re used to this. Irrigators will troop down to the
irrigation district board meeting the second Monday of each
month to complain about not getting water to grow stuff, but
there’s a sad resignation to the ritual. We live in a desert.
Water is a blessing when it comes, but the reality of desert
living requires a stoicism of stubborn acceptance.
In this episode of the Ag Tribes Report, host Vance Crowe dives
into the pressing issues facing the agricultural sector today.
Joined by John Boelts, President of the Arizona Farm Bureau,
they explore the complexities of water management in Arizona, a
state where agriculture consumes a significant portion of the
water supply. The discussion highlights the challenges of
maintaining agricultural water rights amidst new policies and
the ongoing water crisis.
Our planet is awash in plastic pollution. Tiny bits of it,
called microplastics, taint the air and our food. Plastic
specks have been found everywhere from our bodies to a
dolphin’s breath. That’s why scientists keep looking for ways
to break down this sturdy material. Now, they’ve discovered a
promising new strategy. Bacteria common in wastewater can break
down a common type of plastic called PET. That finding could
inform new ways to clean up PET pollution, which may make up
around half of all the microplastic in wastewater.
Most California reservoirs are gurgling with more water than
usual, even after state water officials increased the amount
pouring out of some dams last week. Rain and snow melt from the
mountains and foothills boosted the levels of many California
lakes during the first half of February. Winter storms dumped
close to 1.5 feet of rain on the state’s biggest reservoir,
Lake Shasta, during the first two weeks. Rain and runoff pushed
the lake’s level to 15 feet from its crest on Feb. 7. The lake,
located 10 miles north of Redding, reached 90% of its capacity
with more than a month to go in the North State’s rainy season.
Other water supply and snowpack news across the West:
Nearly six months after the stunning collapse of a $1.5 billion
plan to enlarge Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County
to provide more water to Bay Area residents, state officials
are trying to figure out now what to do with nearly half a
billion dollars in state funding they had committed to the
now-defunct project. On Wednesday, they provided their first
clue. A majority of the seven board members of the California
Water Commission, a state agency that distributes funding to
build reservoirs and other water projects, indicated they are
leaning toward dividing up the $453 million left over from the
Los Vaqueros project and giving it this year to six other major
new reservoir and groundwater storage projects currently on the
drawing board around the state.
Water managers are preparing for another potentially lackluster
runoff this year in the Colorado River Basin. At a meeting
Tuesday, water managers from the Upper Colorado River
Commission agreed to write a letter to the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation asking for a monthly meeting to monitor drought
conditions. Officials from the four Upper Basin states
(Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) are hoping to avoid a
repeat of 2021 when emergency reservoir releases caught them
off guard. … Drawing down Blue Mesa, Colorado’s
largest reservoir, during the height of the summer boating
season forced marinas to close early for the year and was a
blow to the state’s outdoor recreation economy.
Jessica Kramer has been nominated by President Donald Trump to
serve as the next assistant administrator of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Water. Kramer
worked in the Office of Water during the first Trump
administration and has recently been working for the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection as deputy secretary of
regulatory programs. Kramer will now await Senate confirmation
for her new post at EPA, although no date has been set for a
hearing or vote.
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel introduced a bill on Wednesday to
require California to set emergency rules limiting PFAS in
drinking water, following similar standards set by EPA and 11
other states. The proposal, AB 794, would allow the State Water
Resources Control Board to set standards that are more
stringent than the first-ever national standards finalized by
former President Joe Biden’s EPA in April 2024, which are now
under litigation by chemical companies and water
utilities.
The next drought could end up with two domestic wells going dry
in the water basin that most of San Joaquin County and parts of
surrounding counties rely on. Compare that to Kern County in
the southern San Joaquin Valley where many wells go as deep as
1,200 to 1,600 feet. Water experts anticipate 200 wells will go
dry in Kern County when the next drought rolls around. … The
Eastern San Joaquin County Groundwater Basin is likely the only
one among some 515 groundwater basins and subbasins throughout
California that already is — or almost at the point — of being
on task to meet a 2042 state mandate that no more water can be
taken from a groundwater basin than is recharged in any given
year.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s campaign to build the Delta Tunnel
amped up on Feb. 19 when the Governor sent a letter to the
State Water Resources Control Board claiming that the
petition to amend water rights permits to accommodate the
proposed Delta Conveyance Project, AKA Delta Tunnel, would
be in the “compelling public interest.” The Delta Tribal
Environmental Coalition (DTEC) quickly responded to the
Governor’s Letter, disputing Newsom’s claims that the Delta
Tunnel would be in the public interest — and would instead
further destroy a sensitive Bay-Delta ecosystem that has
already been decimated by massive water diversions, driving
Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations closer and
closer to extinction.
Former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in talks to advise
the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water
district in the country, as the California agency prepares to
lobby under a friendlier administration for federal contracts
with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, according to two sources.
… A Westlands spokesperson and one other person familiar with
his plans confirmed McCarthy was discussing taking an advisory
role with the water agency. As the largest publicly run farm
water district in the country, Westlands, based in Fresno,
covers 1,100 miles in the western San Joaquin Valley and
represents powerful Central Valley farmers who have
historically held close ties to California Republicans and
members of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Not long after a series of devastating wildfires began ravaging
parts of Los Angeles in early January, people were demanding
answers: What caused it? Why couldn’t it be stopped? Who, or
what, is responsible for why so many lost so much? Those
questions soon found their way into the mirror world that is
social media and the internet, where a wave of disinformation
and misinformation—some of it propagated directly from
President Donald Trump and his surrogates—compounded the
crisis. Much of it concerned the state’s most precious
resource: water.
Potentially toxic lithium-ion batteries pried from burned-out
electric vehicles in the Eaton fire and transported to a
temporary hazardous waste collection site in Azusa for
processing has raised concerns about toxic metals leaching into
nearby sources of drinking water. The Main San Gabriel Basin
Watermaster, an agency responsible for the safety of
groundwater supplies for nearly 2 million Los Angeles County
residents, sounded an alarm recently over the crushing of these
batteries on a dirt bank of the San Gabriel River at Lario
Park. … The Watermaster has requested the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, in charge of the Lario
hazardous waste staging site, relocate the battery-crushing
activity from the Lario site or simply move the crushing
activity farther from the river bank to a paved parking lot
area.
