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 Doug Beeman.
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Please Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing. Also, the headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here, and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
Ranchers and Republican lawmakers are welcoming a Supreme Court
ruling that narrows the range of waters subject to federal
regulation, calling it a win for private property rights that
reins in overeager regulators. … But environmental groups
said the ruling in Sackett v. EPA will be “disastrous for
Arizona, where water is rare and protecting it is critically
important to both people and endangered species.” “It leaves
almost all of Arizona’s creeks, springs and washes without any
federal protections against water pollution.” said Taylor
McKinnon, Southwest director for the Center for Biological
Diversity. … The ruling earlier this month ends a
long-running dispute between Michael and Clara Sackett, who
wanted to build a house on land they bought near Priest Lake,
Idaho, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which said the
property contained wetlands.
Groundwater recharge – or the lack of it – was a driving force
behind the sweep of new board members who took over the
behemoth Westlands Water District last fall. “Urgently develop
groundwater recharge,” was the top plank in the platform of
four candidates who won election in November. And the district
has, indeed, built a 30,000-acre network of grower-owned
recharge ponds with enough capacity to recharge, or absorb,
3,300 acre feet a day into the overtapped aquifer. So, it
was surprising that the district showed it was only recharging
a total of about 572 acre feet per day through April
30, according to a report at Westlands’ May 16 board
meeting. A map presented at the meeting shows only a small
fraction of recharge ponds in use.
News of water shortages, exacerbated by climate change,
population growth, mining and other development, is everywhere
these days in the American Southwest. But on the Navajo
Reservation, a sovereign tribal nation that sits on about 16
million acres in northeast Arizona, southern Utah and western
New Mexico, nearly 10,000 homes have never had running
water. How that can and should be resolved is one aspect
of a case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 20,
with the justices’ decision due any day now.
The people of Fairmead, California, in the Central Valley, have
struggled to gain reliable access to drinking water for years.
The unincorporated community of around 1,300 — “mostly people
of color, people of low income, people struggling and trying to
make it,” according to Fairmead resident Barbara Nelson —
relies on shallow wells to meet its needs. But in recent years,
the combination of drought and excessive agricultural pumping
has caused some domestic wells to go dry, and one of the
town wells is currently very low. Last year, Fairmead
received a grant to help plan for farmland retirement in order
to recharge groundwater under California’s Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA.
Water conflicts are nothing new to the arid West, where myriad
users long have vied for their share of the precious resource
from California’s Central Valley to the Colorado and Missouri
rivers. But few have waded into the legal question playing out
in rural Nevada: To what extent can local residents, farmers
and ranchers claim the water that is soaking into the ground
through the dirt floor of an antiquated, unlined irrigation
canal? A federal appeals court recently breathed new life into
litigation that has entangled the U.S. government and the
high-desert town of Fernley ever since a 118-year-old canal
burst and flooded hundreds of homes in 2008. This year the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation began work on a plan to line parts of the
31-mile (50 kilometer) canal with concrete.
Having secured $635 million in federal loans for Sunnyvale’s
20-year Cleanwater Program, city staff on May 24 took the
opportunity to show federal and local environmental officials
what they’ve achieved with the funding so far. The low-interest
loans are being used to rebuild Sunnyvale’s aging wastewater
treatment plant, which was originally built in 1956 and is one
of the oldest on the West Coast. … The tour highlighted
projects that have received federal funds through the Clean
Water State Revolving Fund and the Water Infrastructure Finance
and Innovation Act of 2014. Radhika Fox, the Environmental
Protection Agency’s assistant administrator for water, said
Sunnyvale is a “power user” of federal funding.
As California contends with floods this year, PPIC Water Policy
Center director Ellen Hanak spoke with Insurance Commissioner
Ricardo Lara about how to better protect the state’s residents
from flood risk, which is growing in our changing
climate. How many people are insured for floods in
California? There are two important things to know about the
flood insurance landscape in California. First, Californians
have an insurance protection gap: only 2% of Californians
have flood insurance. The vast majority don’t have it, even
though flooding is expensive and common. Second, we have a
knowledge gap: most people don’t know that home insurance
doesn’t cover floods, or that much of the state is at risk of
flooding.
Nancy Caywood worries about water constantly. Water – or the
uncertainty of it – has kept the 69-year-old Arizona farmer
awake at night since supplies began dwindling about two decades
ago due to chronic overuse and drought in the American west.
During one particularly low point in late 2021, every field on
the 255-acre family farm was either fallow, shrivelled or
dormant. … [It] is now surrounded by fallow fields,
tumbleweed and solar farms. … About half the irrigated
farmland will be left unplanted in Pinal county this year, and
hundreds of rural jobs have already been lost. Farms are having
to rely almost exclusively on groundwater, further depleting
the aquifers. … The region’s water crisis isn’t new and
cuts were not entirely unexpected, yet most farmers have
continued to farm the same water-guzzling crops using the same
wasteful irrigation techniques …
In a historic consensus, California, alongside the six other
states that rely on the Colorado River for survival, announced
an agreement last week for a plan to cut back water usage over
the next three years. The proposal drafted by the three lower
basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada – would cut water
use from the river by at least 3 million acre-feet by the end
of 2026 through conservation to prevent the river’s reservoirs
from falling to critically low levels. Of that total, 1.5
million acre-feet at minimum will be conserved by the end of
next year under the proposal. One acre-foot of water supplies
enough water for about 2.5 households of four people per year.
Last fall, before the epic, near-biblical rains of early 2023
pushed California’s historic drought off our collective radar,
the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced a pilot
water-conservation program that sounded too good to be true.
According to the announcement, for just $24, single-family
homeowners in the city would be able to track real-time water
usage, detect leaks and create a water budget from a smartphone
app using a Wi-Fi-enabled, easy-to-install Flume water-meter
sensor. Both eager to conserve water where I could and cynical
that the gadget would end up being as affordable, user-friendly
and effective as described, I took the plunge and ordered one.
Most of the meadows around South Lake Tahoe have had a lot of
standing water over them this spring, and those surrounding
Trout Creek and the Upper Truckee River have seen more water
than they’ve experienced in years. Both waterways went over
their banks weeks ago, and it may be several weeks until water
moves back into its normal flow pattern. Extensive restoration
has occurred on both the Upper Truckee River and Trout Creek,
and what is occurring now is exactly as planned and more
natural.
For most of the year, California’s quest to rid itself of
fossil fuels seems on track: Electric cars populate highways
while energy from wind, solar and water provides much of the
power for homes and businesses. Then it gets hot, and everyone
in the nation’s most populous state turns on their air
conditioners at the same time. That’s when California has come
close to running out of power in recent years, especially in
the early evenings when electricity from solar is not as
abundant. … Another area ripe for new energy development
is the Salton Sea, a large saltwater lake in Southern
California that has been slowly drying up. Beneath the
surface of the lakebed, heat from the Earth warms underground
water. Geothermal power plants use steam from this water to
spin turbines that generate electricity.
As the Earth’s ice melts and sea levels rise, cities along the
coast are considering ways to hold back the rising waters. But
a new government study predicts that many of California’s most
iconic beaches are in danger of disappearing. As he takes one
of his regular walks along the sidewalk overlooking the Santa
Cruz coastline, Pat Terrault says the evidence of climate
change is there for everyone to see. … West Cliff Drive
was battered by a massive storm on January 5th. Now there is
caution tape in places and warning signs at the cliff’s edge.
University of California, Santa Cruz earth sciences professor
Gary Griggs says a seven-foot swell and 27-foot waves rose up
over the cliffs, flooding the street and eroding the natural
sea wall.
The Colorado River plays a pivotal role in the lives of many
western state residents as a major municipal and agricultural
water source. Lake Powell, a reservoir on the border of Utah
and Arizona, is fed by the Colorado River. Water then flows
from Lake Powell into the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead
downstream. While the Colorado Rockies did not get quite the
snow year seen in Utah, Colorado did see above-average
snowpack. This year’s projections of water flow into Lake
Powell are nearing the 21st century record high flows of 2011.
Lake Powell is a reservoir, unlike Great Salt Lake which is
terminal, so snowpack and water flow into Lake Powell greatly
impact numerous communities downstream.
Every community needs safe drinking water to protect public
health and to sustain the local economy. And every single
person needs access to safe water just to survive—for drinking,
cooking, bathing, sanitation, and, as the COVID-19 pandemic
highlighted, simply keeping our hands and homes clean to
prevent disease. Yet, in many communities,
water fails to meet safe drinking water standards, which
are often too weak to begin with and must
be strengthened. This exposes millions of people to toxic
chemicals like lead and the “forever chemicals” known
as PFAS. Communities of color and lower-income
communities disproportionately bear the brunt. At
the same time, in every community, there are people—often many
people—who struggle to afford their water and sewer bills
and face severe consequences.
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision scaling back federal
protections for many wetlands and streams has drawn criticism
from scientists and environmental advocates, who say the
gutting of safeguards will jeopardize water quality throughout
the arid West. California’s water regulators say the ruling
will be harmful for protections nationwide, but the more
stringent state protections of wetlands won’t be affected. To
examine the implications of the ruling, The Times spoke with
Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the State Water Resources Control
Board, about the potential effects of limiting federal
protections under the Clean Water Act and how the board will
continue to regulate wetlands and streams under the state’s
Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act.
The U.S. government can keep using chemical retardant dropped
from aircraft to fight wildfires, despite finding that the
practice pollutes streams in western states in violation of
federal law, a judge ruled Friday. Halting the use of the red
slurry material could have resulted in greater environmental
damage from wildfires, said U.S. District Judge Dana
Christensen in Missoula, Montana. The judge agreed with U.S.
Forest Service officials who said dropping retardant into areas
with waterways was sometimes necessary to protect lives and
property.
As trickling snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada slowly raises Mono
Lake — famed for its bird life and outlandish shoreline
mineral spires — advocates are pressuring state water officials
to halt diversions from the lake’s tributaries to Los Angeles,
which has used this clean mountain water source for
decades. Environmentalists and tribal representatives say
such action is years overdue and would help the iconic lake’s
ecosystem, long plagued by low levels, high salinity and dust
that wafts off the exposed lakebed. The city of Los Angeles,
they argue, should simply use less water, and expand
investments in more sustainable sources – especially recycled
wastewater and uncaptured stormwater. This, they say, could
help wean the city off Mono basin’s water for good.
After a four-year hiatus, El Niño is widely expected to make a
grand reentrance this summer, ushering in the possibility of
yet another wet, stormy winter. “It looks like it’s full steam
ahead,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a live
YouTube interview last week, in which he placed the likelihood
of a strong El Niño event at greater than 50% — even as
projections still vary widely. … [El Niño] can
reposition the jet stream and funnel storms toward the West
Coast, often resulting in increased rainfall across thousands
of miles, said John Monteverdi, emeritus professor of
meteorology at San Francisco State University. But a wet
winter is not at all guaranteed, he said, noting that only one
out of about six current models predicts a strong El Niño as
this year progresses.
To hear water stakeholders tell their stories, the connection
to the Russian River is every bit as personal and spiritual as
it is professional in nature. Take, for instance, Dry Creek
Rancheria Tribal Chairman Chris Wright. The Pomo Indians tribal
leader is spearheading a major grant-funded,
multi-million-dollar, drought-resistant water capture plan. He
hopes it will spark interest from Healdsburg-area wineries and
farms in a 7,000-acre area to help with the water supply that
keeps the Russian River economic microcosm going. … The
phased-in project aims to replenish the groundwater basin with
up to 9,000-acre feet of water savings annually, when the
Russian River increases to high flows. Traditionally, that
stormwater runoff represents a wasted supply.
