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.
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At the dawn of the new year in 1997, the Truckee River
transformed. The winter season had thus far been great for
snow, but when a subtropical storm from near the Hawaiian
Islands rolled in, it carried with it unseasonably warm rain.
The warm rainfall combined with snowmelt to swell the rivers,
with the Truckee burying much of downtown Reno under water. Two
people were killed amidst the nearly $1 billion disaster, and
it wasn’t the first nor the last time that warm rains triggered
severe flooding in the area. These types of storms, called
“rain-on-snow” storms, can produce river flows 50-80% higher
than typical spring snowmelt. Nevada cities nestled against the
dramatic peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains are at
particularly high risk from these storms: Reno and Carson City
have records of flooding linked to these storms as early as
1862 and as recent as 2017.
The California Water Resources Control Board said it still
needs more than 40% of the required water usage reports that
were due at the beginning of the month.
Salmon face many perils during their migration to the ocean,
including disease, entrainment, degraded water quality, and
predation. However, predation has been the factor that has
generated the most interest and debate. FISHBIO has been
conducting a research program focused on fish species that prey
on other fish in the Stanislaus River to understand how
predatory fishes may affect juvenile salmon migration.
… The most frequently encountered predators were the
non-native striped bass (Morone saxatilis) and black bass
(multiple species in the genus Micropterus), and the
native Sacramento pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus grandis). Analysis
of their diet contents revealed that the non-native basses
consumed native fish species such as fall-run Chinook salmon
(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus
tridentatus) at significantly higher frequencies than native
predators …
Toxic “forever” PFAS chemicals are a serious environmental
health issue in California and across the globe, linked to
numerous health harms. California has been a leader in
addressing PFAS, including banning PFAS use in multiple
products (such as fire-fighting foam and textiles). Yet PFAS
continue to be used in hundreds of different consumer and
industrial products and our new analysis, released today,
shows drinking water sources serving up to 25 million
Californians are or have been contaminated with PFAS. A
bill by Senator Nancy Skinner, also introduced today, proposes
a much needed comprehensive, efficient, and health-protective
approach to phasing out the use of these highly problematic
chemicals. Such preventative legislation will be key to helping
to address the PFAS crisis. We also need to tackle current
contamination by setting drinking water standards for PFAS.
Visiting Death Valley today, it is hard to imagine nearly all
of it once underwater. It contains the lowest point in the U.S.
It is known for record-setting heat and aridity. But the land
there — and many of the basins that dot the Mojave and the
Great Basin — were once filled with water. During the last
Ice Age, in the late Pleistocene, a lake filled much of what is
now called Death Valley to a depth of about 600 feet. That’s
only a bit shallower than the modern-day Lake Huron (with a
max. depth of about 750 feet). It is believed that the body of
water, later described as Lake Manly, stretched 90 miles long
and 11 miles wide. And it was hardly alone. Further east, in
the heart of the Great Basin, Lake Lahontan and Lake
Bonneville, at their peak, stretched hundreds of miles.
A California environmental group has sued Radius Recycling
(RDUS.O), opens new tab, alleging the recycled steel company’s
operations are polluting the San Francisco Bay and its
tributaries with dirty stormwater runoff. San Francisco
Baykeeper filed its lawsuit on Tuesday in Oakland federal
court, alleging the company has violated the federal Clean
Water Act by failing to stop heavy metals and other pollutants
from washing away during storms at four of its facilities in
the San Francisco Bay area where cars are
dismantled. Radius Recycling was formerly known as
Schnitzer Steel, and was recognized last year by the
research firm Corporate Knights as the world’s most sustainable
company due to its reported improvements in things like energy,
carbon, water and waste use.
…Local artists and curators…have taken on the task of
remembering the [Mexicali] region’s departed waters. Since
2020, [they] have overseen the Archivo Familiar del Río
Colorado, or Colorado River Family Album, a project that brings
together contemporary art, environmental education and
historical research to document bodies of water that are
disappearing or are already gone … In 2024, an
exhibition at Planta Libre will collect archival documents and
artwork that engages with water and its loss. Local artists
will lead a series of walks in the surrounding region so that
visitors can develop their own relationship with it
… the absence of the Colorado River and the waters it
nourished forms a cartography of loss that is written on the
landscape. Their mission is to make those absences visible — to
keep their memories alive, and to imagine possibilities for the
future.
Across the diverse landscapes of California, reliable access to
water is often an existential issue of survival. Sustainable
water management is critical to the future of the state, for
numerous vulnerable communities, and in the preservation of
some of our most endangered bird habitat. The Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was enacted to ensure
sustainable groundwater supplies for communities, the
environment, and other users. However, without proper and
additional implementation safeguards, SGMA is on course to
deprive small communities of essential water supply and destroy
the last remaining wetlands. AB 828 offers a measured and
reasonable approach to protect safe and clean water
accessibility for all California communities and safeguard the
dwindling managed wetland acreage.
A community group is worried a project to strengthen levees in
Sacramento will lead to the removal of several hundred trees
along the American River Parkway, creating long-lasting
environmental effects while damaging a popular regional
recreation area. The community group, American River Trees, is
specifically concerned about a portion of the levee upgrade
project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers known as the
“Contract 3B site,” where erosion protection measures will be
constructed upstream of Howe Avenue along the river to Watt
Avenue. … Project officials said the upgrades are needed to
“armor the riverbank to reduce and prevent erosion which, if
left unaddressed, could result in levee failure.” William
Avery, a Sacramento State biology professor emeritus and a
member of American River Trees group … said the project plans
call for the removal of about 500 trees south of the river and
about 200 trees on the north side …
After a slow start to the year, the Sierra Nevada snowpack has
grown by leaps and bounds in recent weeks, thanks to a series
of heavy storms with especially big impacts in the northern
Sierra. The latest measurements from the California
Department of Water Resources places the statewide snowpack at
85% of normal for this time of year, according to data as of
Tuesday. In comparison, the snowpack was just 52% of average on
Jan. 30 and a paltry 25% of average on Jan. 2. But the gains
haven’t been evenly distributed. “Recent storms have
provided a boost (to) the snowpack, but the Central and
Southern Sierra still have not caught up from the deficit
accumulated earlier this season,” said Michael Anderson, DWR’s
state climatologist.
Kayakers and nature lovers are flocking to Death Valley
National Park in California to enjoy something exceedingly rare
at one of the driest places in the United States: Water. A
temporary lake has bubbled up in the park’s Badwater Basin,
which lies 282 feet below sea level. What is typically a dry
salt flat at the bottom of Death Valley has for months been
teeming with water after record rains and flooding have
battered eastern California since August. In the past six
months, a deluge of storms bringing record amounts of rain led
to the lake’s formation at the park.
For the sixth year in a row, no Delta smelt were collected in
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater
Trawl (FMWT) Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
from September through December 2023. Once the most abundant
species in the entire estuary, the Delta smelt has declined to
the point that it has become virtually extinct in the wild. The
2 to 3-inch fish, found only in the Delta, is an “indicator
species” that shows the relative health of the San Francisco
Bay/Delta ecosystem. When no Delta smelt are found in six
years of a survey that has been conducted since 1967, the
estuary is in a serious ecological crisis. The Delta smelt
is listed as “endangered” under both the federal Endangered
Species Act and the California Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently awarded $20.9
million for six projects along the Colorado River aimed at
reducing the costly amount of salt in its water. Five of the
projects are in Colorado. In a Feb. 12 press release, the BLM
estimated economic damages currently caused by excess salinity
in the Colorado River water at about $332 million per year.
That economic damage mostly comes from the inability to plant
certain types of crops which need the river’s water for
irrigation, as well as costs associated with treating the
river’s water for residential and commercial usage, according
to a BLM report released six years ago. ”This funding will
prevent approximately 11,661 tons of salt each year from
entering the Colorado River,” the BLM announced in its press
release.
The massive deaths of non-native fish and the deluge of
sediments resulting from the drawdown of reservoirs as part of
the Klamath River dam removals was expected and is predicted to
result in long-range benefits. Public concern has been
expressed following because of the recently completed initial
drawdown of reservoirs created by the John C. Boyle, Copco 1
and Irongate hydroelectric dams. Copco 2, a diversion dam, was
removed late last year because it would have interfered with
the Copco 1 drawdown. The dam removal project is the largest in
U.S. history. During a Thursday video news conference, Mark
Bransom, chief executive office for Klamath River Renewal
Corporation, which is overseeing the dam removal project, and
Dave Coffman, the habitat restoration as program manager for
RES (Resource Environmental Solutions), briefly discussed the
ongoing project and impacts of the recently completed initial
drawdown.
After a torrential downpour, most post-storm damages are
impossible to miss: submerged cars, houses torn in half by
fallen trees, debris floating through the streets. But in
California, extreme weather is also mixing up a soup of rain
and disease. Climate-fueled outbreaks: In Southern California,
an atmospheric river unleashed more than a foot of rain in
parts of the region at the start of February. These types of
storms also ravaged the state last year, following a
decades-long period of drought. The climate-fueled cycle of
rain and drought is driving an uptick in a fungal disease known
as coccidioidomycosis, or Valley fever …
According to a new analysis by the Sites Project Authority, the
proposed Sites Reservoir would be 80% full after recent storms
had the long-planned project been in place. In development for
several years, Sites Reservoir is considered one of the largest
reservoir projects in California. It is an off-stream water
storage project that will be situated north of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Sites Valley, 10 miles west of
Maxwell where Colusa and Glenn counties meet. Officials said
once built, the reservoir will capture and store a portion of
stormwater from the Sacramento River – after all other water
rights and regulatory requirements are met – and release water
to benefit communities, farms, businesses, and wildlife across
the state during drier years.
Twelve years ago, a San Diego County grand jury urged the city
of Encinitas to find a long-term solution to improve the
existing stormwater infrastructure in Leucadia Roadside Park, a
neighborhood in Encinitas. Last month, historic flooding
across San Diego County damaged the homes and businesses of
more than 1,000 residents – Leucadia Roadside Park was one of
the communities hit hard. The area’s inadequate stormwater
infrastructure was a major reason why. … Five of those
businesses had substantial damage, four are still closed for
repairs, she said, and one of those businesses may not be able
to reopen. Repairs are costing some business owners tens of
thousands of dollars.
In the quest to bolster domestic lithium production, a county
in Southern California is emerging as a crucial player. The
Salton Sea, a salty lake located in Imperial County three hours
east of Los Angeles, contains some of the world’s largest
lithium deposits. According to a Department of Energy report
published last November, there are approximately 18 million
tons of lithium here—enough to meet the demand for 375 million
EV batteries, significantly more than all EVs currently on
American roads. But there’s a catch. Extracting lithium
from the Salton Sea involves a special extraction method that
hasn’t been proven yet, leaving uncertainty about its
commercial viability.
Over the years, Marin has taken the initiative to restore its
wetlands. The focus and work is a recognition of the importance
this soggy acreage plays in the ecological chain that keeps our
bays and oceans healthy and thriving. In many cases, it means
restoring historic wetlands covered by years of built-up silt
and blanketed by landfill. The announcement that work will soon
start on two such projects is another sign that progress is
being made to restore and revive these shorelines. In
Kentfield, work will soon start to lower sections of the tall
concrete flood-control walls built along Corte Madera Creek in
the 1960s.
The evidence is undeniable: Southern California steelhead
teeter on the brink of extinction. Southern steelhead serve as
crucial indicators of watershed health and river ecosystem
integrity. These fish play a role within the ecosystem that
you, your family, neighbors, and friends are also a part of. If
one piece of the ecosystem changes or disappears this ripples
throughout the rest of the ecosystem affecting every other
species – plant, animal, and human. Historically,
Southern steelhead thrived, with tens of thousands of them
swimming through Southern California rivers and streams. Today,
it’s rare to see them in double digits. Their dwindling numbers
stem from habitat loss, fragmentation, and the encroachment of
urbanization. We must act urgently to prevent the
irreversible loss of this species.