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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Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind
assessment of the health of nature in the United States when
President Trump returned to the White House. He canceled the
report. The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their
own. This week, they released a 868-page draft for public
comment and scientific review. Many of the preliminary findings
are grim: Freshwater ecosystems across the
country are in crisis, “overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and
invaded.” Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are degraded, with
reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34 percent of plant species
and 40 percent of animal species are at risk of extinction.
A new report from the climate advocacy nonprofit Food and Water
Watch says artificial intelligence data centers across the
nation consume outsized amounts of energy, undermine progress
toward adopting clean energy portfolios and threaten limited
water supplies. The report, which was published Wednesday and
is titled The Urgent Case Against Data Centers, calls the
proliferation of these developments “one of the greatest
environmental and social challenges of our
generation.” The report finds that one hyperscale data
center can use as much energy as 2 million U.S. households and
warns that by 2028, data centers across the nation
could collectively use as much water as 18.5 million
households.
It has been more than two weeks since a major environmental
incident broke out in the Yuba County foothills. A penstock
pipe at the new Colgate Powerhouse suffered a catastrophic
failure on Feb. 13, flooding the facility located south of New
Bullards Bar Reservoir and forcing workers to evacuate. The
14-foot-diameter pipe carried water from the reservoir through
a tunnel into the powerhouse for hydroelectric power
generation. … As of March 3, the state Office of Spill
Prevention and Response reported nearly all large, oily debris
has been recovered from Englebright Lake, totaling about 1,440
cubic yards. But much work still remains.
Salmon in Battle Creek will soon benefit from a $1.85 million
habitat restoration project. According to the North State
Planning and Development Collective at Chico State, the project
is part of more than $59.6 million in grants awarded by the
California Wildlife Conservation Board to enhance wildlife
habitats. Chico State says that the restoration aims to reverse
habitat fragmentation and improve floodplain connectivity.
Crews will construct a new perennial side channel and remove
about 1,700 feet of abandoned levee to support salmon rearing
and spawning.
More than a decade after efforts began to protect land along
the lower Eel River, the Fortuna City Council unanimously voted
Monday to approve moving forward with the purchase of more than
200 acres of undeveloped property. …The council approved the
process for purchasing two plots of land: a 7.2-acre parcel at
1320 Riverwalk Drive and a 236-acre property along the Eel
River, which will be returned to the Wiyot Tribe. … [City
Manager Amy] Nilsen said the purchase has been in the works for
more than a decade and would secure both parcels from the
landowners, with funding from the California River Parkways
Grant Program and forthcoming grant funding from the California
Coastal Conservancy.
Responding to residents who waged a social media campaign
against the spraying of herbicides in local creeks, Orange
County officials announced they will halt the practice in
waterways near Doheny State Beach. Members of the community
group Creek Team OC are calling the decision a huge victory.
After three weeks of nonstop Instagram posts demanding the
county stop using plant-killing chemicals in San Juan and
Trabuco creeks, officials held a town hall in Dana Point on
Monday. … County officials have long used the chemicals
in waterways to clear out vegetation and maintain the
water-carrying capacity of flood control channels.
A Fresno County supervisor says he’ll introduce an ordinance to
halt a type of human composting he recently learned has been
used near the San Joaquin River, but advocates
say he’s jumping the gun unnecessarily. The soil made from
human remains in question was placed in a field at the Sumner
Peck Ranch, land on Friant Road owned by the San Joaquin River
Parkway and Conservation Trust less than 3 miles south of Lost
Lake. Supervisor Garry Bredefeld said he was recently made
aware of the composting, which includes a process that turns a
person’s body into soil. He said he was not familiar with the
process, but said using the compost on trust land was “stupid.”
Every day, hundreds of thousands of drivers travel Phoenix-area
freeways lined with desert trees, shrubs and cactuses. Few
likely consider what it takes to keep those landscapes alive,
or how much water it requires. A new partnership between
Arizona State University and the Arizona Department of
Transportation is taking a closer look. Led by Harry
Cooper, director of water conservation innovation for
the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative … the ADOT Urban
Freeway Landscape Water Use Efficiency Project aims to better
understand how much water is used to irrigate freeway
landscapes, and how to use less while keeping plants healthy.
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.
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But
demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital
water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the
region – particularly from the Colorado River – was top of mind
at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference, an
event organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West
that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars
to discuss solutions to urgent problems facing rural Western
regions.
