A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday by veteran journalist Matt Weiser.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays. Or subscribe via RSS feed.
Please Note: 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.
Commodity prices across some crops, record cotton yields and
ample water supplies combined to catapult Fresno County’s gross
crop value to a record $7.88 billion in 2018, eclipsing last
year’s figure by over 12 percent, and besting the previous
record by nearly as much.
The tropical Pacific Ocean probably won’t be particularly warm
or cool this winter, climatologists said Thursday, depriving
forecasters of their best clue to how much snow will pile up in
the Cascade Range and the rest of the Northwest.
The Metropolitan Water District’s new rebate program is still
about removing grass, but it has a tighter focus on improving
the looks and sustainability of our collective front yards. And
it pays $2 for every square foot of lawn you remove, even more
in some areas where local water agencies supplement the rebate.
The California Department of Water Resources still has
unfinished business at Lake Oroville, despite completion of
major construction on the spillways earlier this year following
the 2017 events that triggered more than 180,000 people living
downstream to evacuate.
Tiscornia Beach, an area on the lower American River frequented
by summer visitors, tested 7.5 times higher than the safety
threshold on Tuesday, according to data from the county and the
Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Samples of
river water taken two weeks earlier at nearby Discovery Park
tested almost 5.5 times higher than the safety threshold.
The fight for clean water in eastern Tulare County turned
“ugly” this week, as Exeter City Council voted “no action” on
measures that would have allowed its unincorporated neighbor to
connect to the city’s water supply. Exeter Mayor Mary
Waterman-Philpot pointed toward “public perception” as a reason
for nixing discussions with Tooleville…
At the Association of California Water Agencies‘ spring
conference, a panel of lawyers covered the basics of the legal
framework for the Delta. The panel was billed as ‘All the
Acronyms You Need to Know”, but no 1.5 hour panel discussion
could possibly cover all that. However, the panel did a good
job of hitting the main ones and highlighting current issues.
Completion and operation of the much-anticipated Pure Water
Monterey recycled water project have been delayed again and it
is now expected to miss another key water delivery deadline set
for the end of this year.
The project would build a new dam and expanded reservoir on the
North Fork of Pacheco Creek that could hold 140,000 acre-feet
of water, a substantial increase from the 5,500-acre-foot
capacity of the existing reservoir built 80 years ago.
A nonprofit that advocates on behalf of water issues is suing
Ventura for what it claims is a faulty environmental report
prepared in anticipation of the city connecting to state water.
The groundbreaking ceremony was decades in the making for the
North Pleasant Valley Groundwater Desalter Plant, which aims to
convert brackish water from the Calleguas Creek watershed into
potable water for the city of Camarillo.
Heather Hansman’s new book Downriver: Into the Future of Water
in the West explores the water emergency with remarkable calm
and even-handedness. She focuses on a single river, the Green
River, where ranchers, frackers, rafters, fishermen, and
urbanites all fight for their share of the water, while
contending with Byzantine state policies.
Removing the four aging hydroelectric dams from the river would
significantly improve ecological and geomorphic conditions
throughout the Klamath watershed and play a key role in
returning salmon to stable population levels.
It didn’t take long for the completion of the Drought
Contingency Plan to create value to Arizona and the Colorado
River Basin. Its focus on stabilizing Lake Mead and creating
incentives to “bank” water in the reservoir already are paying
dividends.
Because there are moral, aesthetic, and legal obligations to
provide fish with water in streams, biologists like me often
get asked the question “Just how much water do the fish need,
anyway?” This, of course, is the wrong question…
Efforts to increase recycled water use in California got a
significant boost this week with the State Water Board’s
issuance of an order authorizing the Sacramento Regional County
Sanitation District’s program to deliver an average of 45
million gallons per day of recycled water from the Sacramento
Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant …
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years of drought and the dramatic
decline in water levels at the river’s key reservoirs have
pressed water managers to adapt to challenging conditions. But
even more extreme — albeit rare — droughts or floods that could
overwhelm water managers may lie ahead in the Basin as the
effects of climate change take hold, say a group of scientists.
The Trump administration rolled back a key provision of the
Clean Water Act on Thursday, doing away with protections for
many wetlands and streams across the country… The repeal of
the Waters of the United States rule, however, will not
directly affect landowners and businesses in California. State
regulators in April passed a sweeping wetlands policy that
secured state oversight of California’s waterways…
The flood insurance program has been plagued for years by
outdated maps of at-risk flood zones and billions of dollars in
accumulating debt, compounded by rising sea levels and
increasingly powerful storms strengthened by warming oceans.
… The result is that insurance premiums fail to reflect the
true risks to properties…
The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California
history had a severe impact on the water system in the town of
Paradise. Participants on our Oct. 2-4 Northern California Tour
will hear from Kevin Phillips, general manager of Paradise
Irrigation District, on the scope of the damages, the obstacles
to recovery and the future of the water district.
