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 Vik Jolly.
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In a direct response to the persistent water crisis gripping
the American West, Rep. Raul Ruiz (CA-25) joined a coalition of
California lawmakers this week to introduce the Drought Relief
Obtained Using Government Help Today (DROUGHT) Act. … The
bill, led by Reps. Scott Peters (CA-50) and John Garamendi
(CA-08), would adjust the funding limits for the Water
Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA). Under
current law, the federal government cannot cover more than 80%
of a project’s cost. The DROUGHT Act would raise that cap to
90% for projects in areas facing extreme drought or serving
historically disadvantaged communities.
Two bills in the Arizona Legislature would let groundwater from
western Arizona be sold to cities like Phoenix, drawing
criticism from local leaders who warn it could harm rural
communities House Bills 2757 and 2758 would affect groundwater
in McMullen Valley and Butler Valley in western Arizona.
Investment group Water Asset Management owns thousands of acres
of farmland in both areas and could profit by moving and
selling groundwater from the aquifer under those lands,
according to critics of the bills. … Rep. Gail Griffin,
a sponsor of the legislation, said looming Colorado River cuts
are driving the need for the bills.
… Excess nitrogen from dairies turns into excess nitrate in
the soil, spilling into waterways, seeping into groundwater and
contributing to widespread contamination of drinking water in
the Central Valley. In some counties there, 40 percent of
drinking wells are above the safe limit established by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, posing health risks like
miscarriages and infant mortality. In the next two months, the
State Water Board says it will release a long overdue draft
order that will chart a course to fix that. A first draft
of the board’s thinking came in October 2024, when it proposed
a new framework requiring that Central Valley dairies comply
with a nitrate drinking water standard of 10 milligrams per
liter.
El Niño, the seasonal climate pattern that brings a cascade of
global weather impacts, is emerging in the Pacific Ocean,
according to new data. There is a 62% chance that El Niño
conditions will begin between June and August and last at least
through the end of the year, the National Weather Service’s
Climate Prediction Center reported on Thursday. … In
general terms, El Niño signals a wet winter for California,
especially the southern part. But experts cautioned that may
not always be true. “Even if a Niño is born in summer, there’s
no guarantee that California will get a wet winter,” Alexander
Gershunov, a research meteorologist at Scripps Institution of
Oceanography at UC San Diego, wrote.
For a century, the Colorado River has been managed in pieces.
Legally and politically, it’s divided into two basins, with
each state and community focused on securing its respective
water supply. But that is not how a river functions. The
Colorado River is an interconnected system, sustained by Rocky
Mountain snowpack, rainfall and groundwater. It is fragile, and
under increasing stress. Two and a half decades into this
century, the river that built the modern West has 20% less
water flowing through it than it did on average in the last
century. As heat and drought intensify, so do the stakes.
Authorities charged with cleaning up Tijuana River pollution
should finish upgrades to wastewater plants on both sides of
the border, fund operations as well as construction of those
facilities, and plan for eventual wastewater reuse, a report
issued today recommended. Those are some key suggestions of the
report “Tijuana River Contamination Crisis: A Five-Pillar
Framework for Binational Solutions,” released today by the San
Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Prebys Foundation.
… The report offers an overview of how the cross-border
river became one of the most polluted waterways in the country,
recent efforts to fix that, and what’s still needed to clean it
up.
Wildlife officials are just weeks away from turning the water
on at the Lake Mead Fish Hatchery, a facility that had to
abandon raising trout as water levels dropped at the nation’s
largest reservoir. Now, the hatchery is refitted to bolster
numbers of two endangered fish native in the Colorado River —
the “rarest of the rare” bonytail chub, and the razorback
sucker. … When water levels plummeted in 2022, the pipe
that supplied water to the hatchery went dry, but problems at
the hatchery started long before that. … In early 2007, an
invasive species that spreads quickly and damages natural
habitats was found in Lake Mead and lower areas of the Colorado
River. That meant trout from the hatchery couldn’t be stocked
anywhere outside those areas to eliminate the risk of
introducing quagga mussels.
The International Energy Agency’s executive director has called
hydropower a “forgotten giant,” and has urged governments to do
more to remember it. U.S. President Donald Trump has said
hydropower is “fantastic,” a sharp contrast to his disdain for
wind and solar. But federal energy data shows that U.S.
hydropower output has been nearly flat while other sources are
growing. Last year, electricity generation from hydroelectric
dams was up 1.7 percent from the prior year, according to the
Energy Information Administration. … [Climate change] leads
to alterations in water flow patterns. While some regions, such
as the Colorado River Basin, have seen low water levels and
reduced hydropower, others have been steadier.
Following hours of public testimony and discussion, the Oakley
City Council voted 4-1 on Tuesday to approve a controversial
industrial project that will convert vineyards into a logistics
hub, though the plan no longer includes data centers. The
developer removed that possibility from the project’s
application before the council’s final vote around midnight.
… During Tuesday’s meeting, residents packed the
council’s chambers to express their concerns about the
environmental impact of the project on their community and
nearby ecosystems. The most pressing objections centered on the
enormous water and electricity demands of the
potential data centers.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the
world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an
immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these
reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries
production and management potential, indicates a study from the
University of California, Davis. The study, published
in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S.
reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of
fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems
could play major roles in food security and fisheries
conservation.
California has unveiled an ambitious plan to help combat the
worsening climate crisis with one of its invaluable assets: its
land. Over the next 20 years, the state will work to transform
more than half of its 100 million acres into multi-benefit
landscapes that can absorb more carbon than they release,
officials announced Monday. … The plan also calls for
11.9 million acres of forestland to be managed for biodiversity
protection, carbon storage and water supply protection by 2045,
and 2.7 million acres of shrublands and chaparral to be managed
for carbon storage, resilience and habitat connectivity, among
other efforts.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended
Alternative 3 – Salmon Closure during the final days of the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) meeting mirroring
the opinions of commercial and recreational charter boat
anglers. The department’s position is a significant change from
early March. The PFMC meetings are being held in Seattle from
April 6 to 11, and the final recommendations of the council
will be forwarded to the California Fish and Game Commission in
May.
