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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This time last year, the administration of President Donald
Trump tried to decimate one of the nation’s premier scientific
institutions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. … It is heartening that, through
tireless advocacy on Capitol Hill, multiple rallies and
litigation, those who understand how critical this organization
is to our daily lives have succeeded in pushing back on the
attack and persuading Congress to fund NOAA at a steady level.
… As we look to the future, we also have a chance to think
about how the agency should evolve, and consider critically
what works and what does not. – Written by Craig N. McLean, former assistant
administrator and chief scientist of NOAA Research.
Even though golden mussels were only detected in California in
October 2024, they pose a significant and immediate threat to
the state’s waterways. … Unfortunately, many of the common
inspection programs and methods—like boat inspections or
eDNA—can be costly, labor intensive, and slow. While these
methods offer comprehensive results, the rapid spread of golden
mussels requires tools that deliver immediate answers as
boaters enter waterways. Luckily, a new solution is on the
rise: dogs that can smell invasive species. From time on the
treadmill to weekly weigh-ins, golden mussel-sniffing dogs are
treated like star athletes at Mussel Dogs, an Oakdale-based
canine training and environmental consulting business.
Lake Mead is headed for an even more concerning, record-low
level near the end of 2027, according to projections from
federal forecasters released Friday. In November 2027,
the reservoir is likely to dip to 1032.76 feet above
sea level — nearly 8 feet below the previous record
low recorded in 2022, when receding levels began to reveal
skeletal remains. That’s a chilling number based on an
unseasonably warm winter and falling projections for
runoff into Lake Powell, the releases of which flow into
Lake Mead. … According to Friday’s projection, Lake
Powell could dip below so-called “minimum power pool” as soon
as January.
The warm winter has left very little snow in California’s
Sierra Nevada, and now an extreme heat wave is accelerating the
rapid melt in the mountains. The Sierra snowpack
measures 48% of average for this time of year,
according to state data, down from 73% of average in late
February. … California relies on the Sierra snowpack for
about 30% of its water, on average. But the extraordinary
warmth across the West this winter, which broke records in many
areas, brought more precipitation falling as rain instead of
snow. Scientific research has shown that human-caused climate
change is pushing average snow lines higher in the mountains
and changing the timing of runoff.
Landowners and farmers in the Tule and Tulare Lake subbasins
can now log onto the state’s groundwater reporting system
ahead of the May 1 deadline. The state Water
Resources Control Board announced that its groundwater
extraction annual reporting system, or GEARS, is open for
pumpers to begin reporting how much they pump and paying fees.
Pumpers are required to meter their wells, pay $300 per well to
register then with the state and pay $20 per acre foot of
groundwater pumped. … This is all part of the region’s
probationary designation for lacking an adequate groundwater
plan.
Arizona state lawmakers tend to vote in lockstep with their
party on water issues, but when it comes to proposed Colorado
River cuts, they may break ranks. Republicans hold majorities
in the state House and Senate. Members of each party usually
vote in blocs, but that seems likely to change. Arizona is in
the midst of Colorado River negotiations and will likely take a
serious water cut. Unlike other states in the Colorado River
Basin, the plan will need to be approved by Arizona’s 90 state
lawmakers. But some legislative districts will be hit much
harder than others. … For the time being, all Arizona
lawmakers are united in advocating for the best deal for the
state.
The legislator who wrote a law modernizing California’s water
infrastructure says there’s no concrete estimate for the cost
to respond to worsening drought conditions. In a press
conference held Friday at the San Luis Reservoir in western
Merced County, Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced County, author of
last year’s successful Senate Bill 72, said there is no way to
know the cost of developing 9 million acre-feet of
water by 2040. … Caballero added she’s proposing a
bond that could pay for implementing much-needed updates to the
state’s water plan. Meanwhile, certain water infrastructure
projects in California have already cost billions of dollars.
… [S]cientists from across the state and as far away as
Norway published a study tracking the long-term collapse of
salmon age diversity, finding that today’s Chinook salmon
populations in the Central Valley are all-in on a single bet.
Three-year-olds dominate the group, while 5-year-olds are rare
and 6-year-olds are mostly absent. The study was focused on the
Feather River and its tributary, the
Yuba River. … The loss of age diversity
helps explain why modern salmon runs swing so wildly from
abundance to collapse.
… [A] public lands access group has proposed an eye-poppingly
ambitious plan to build eight massive desalination plants off
the California coastline, turning ocean water into fresh for
farming, and reducing demand on the ailing Colorado
River. To meet the energy demand, the plants might
have to be powered with nuclear reactors. … The plan’s
authors at the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition say their $40
billion proposal offers a viable long-term solution at a time
when President Donald Trump is slashing environment-based
regulatory delays and encouraging the country to think big.
There’s been levee breaks over the years all over the delta,
according to San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency executive
director Darren Suen. … Democratic state Senator Jerry
McNerney introduced SB 872 that would direct $300 million
annually in greenhouse gas reduction fund (GGRF) dollars to
levee repairs in the delta and to shore up SWP’s canals to
prevent interruptions in essential water deliveries.
… The bill would include, according to Suen, fixing
their levees to prevent subsidence and saltwater intrusion.
… Suen also said these levied systems were started
during the Gold Rush and a lot of them haven’t been maintained
up to “federal standards.”
… Escondido and surrounding environs are the center of the
San Diego region’s avocado industry. The cities and towns of
the avocado belt, especially Escondido, also have some of the
priciest water in San Diego County, a region notorious for its
high water costs. For growers of a water-intensive crop like
avocados, those high costs are exceptionally burdensome. On
average, 60% of operating costs for Escondido avocado groves go
just to water, according to a 2024 report from the California
Avocado Commission. … Escondido water officials have no
plans to secede. But like the districts that did, they also
blame their high costs on the county water authority.
… [L]onely as it may be, Mono [Lake] has
revolutionized environmental law in California, the American
West, and the U.S., bringing about important changes to water
use and air quality regulations in recent decades and showing
the way ahead for tribal resource rights today. … Now
the Mono Basin could be part of making water history again. In
2017, California began using so-called Tribal Beneficial Uses
(TBUs)—water quality standards keyed to protecting traditional
tribal fisheries and cultural practices—as a way to incorporate
long-ignored tribal needs into state environmental management.
The first regional board to incorporate the definitions of TBUs
into a watershed management plan was the Mono Basin, in
2020.
A proposal to build a hydroelectric power plant near the Red
Rock Canyon National Conservation Area won preliminary approval
from federal regulators earlier this month. The Desert Bloom
Project is a large-scale, closed-loop pumped storage proposal
that promises to produce 1,170 gigawatt-hours of power
annually. … Pumped storage projects require massive
amounts of water to generate hydroelectric power. … The
proposed project would require 9,800 acre-feet of water stored
across two reservoirs. … The Las Vegas Valley Water
District, which serves the area, said the project is out of
step with Southern Nevada water conservation policy.
The ongoing debate over a state plan to construct a 36-foot
underground tunnel below the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
to carry water to a reservoir in Alameda County has now been
given the novelization treatment. Santa Cruz author Victoria
Tatum, who swam in the Delta in her youth, tells a fictional
story of a farmworker family’s fight over the tunnels in “More
Than Any River.” The book will be published March 24.
… Tatum said she emerged as “a water nerd” by the end of
the research. “More Than Any River” focuses on farming families
along the Delta standing their ground against the agribusiness
owners of the Delta tunnel project.
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.
