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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
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.
California regulators this week proposed delaying new rules
aimed at reducing how much water people use on their lawns,
drawing praise from agencies that said they needed more time to
comply but criticism from environmentalists who warn that the
delay would damage the state’s already scarce supply. Last
year, California proposed new rules that would, cumulatively,
reduce statewide water use by about 14%. Those rules included
lowering outdoor water use standards below the current
statewide average by 2035. On Tuesday, regulators proposed
delaying that timeline by five years, until 2040. The State
Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to vote on the rules
later this year. The state would not punish people for using
too much water on their lawns.
The Sacramento Superior Court has ruled in favor of the State
Water Board’s 2018 Bay Delta Plan update, denying all 116
claims by petitioners. In December 2018, the State Water
Resources Control Plan adopted revised flow
objectives for the San Joaquin River and its three major
tributaries, the Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Merced rivers. The
new flow objectives provide for increased flows on the three
tributaries to help revive and protect native fall-run
migratory fish populations. The Board also adopted a revised
south Delta salinity objectives, increasing the level of
salinity allowed from April to August. Several petitions
were filed in several counties challenging the Board’s
action.
… A windswept county in the Sacramento Valley — whose
entire population of 22,000 people is just one-third of Palo
Alto’s — may soon be known for something else: the largest new
reservoir anywhere in California in the past 50 years. Last
weekend, President Biden signed a package of bills that
included $205 million in construction funding for Sites
Reservoir, a proposed $4.5 billion project planned for the
rolling ranchlands west of the town of Maxwell, about 70
miles north of Sacramento. … The make-or-break moment
for Sites is a series of hearings scheduled to run from June to
November in which the State Water Resources Control Board will
analyze fisheries studies and other documents and decide
whether to award it the water rights to move forward.
Snowfall this week in the Rockies has improved the water
picture for the Colorado River, but one expert says she’s not
counting her chickens before they’re hatched. Current
information on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s website shows
that snowpack levels in the Upper Colorado River Basin are at
110% of normal for this time of year. That’s an improvement
over March 1 when it was at 101%. … important weeks are
still ahead, even though the snowpack peak is typically
measured on April 1 each year.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering three
options for the ocean salmon season, set to begin May 16. The
federal council that manages water from California, Oregon and
Washington state came up with two options that would entail a
short salmon season, and it’ll come with small harvest limits
for both commercial and sport fishing. The last option includes
closing off the ocean fisheries for the second consecutive
year. Last year, commercial and recreation salmon fleets in
California were left anchored following the PFMC’s decision to
cancel the 2023 fishing season due to years of drought, low
river level and dry conditions affecting the Chinook salmon
populations in the Klamath and Sacramento rivers.
California enjoyed a second consecutive winter of above-average
precipitation this year, and many are hoping that will
translate to another relatively calm fire season. But that’s
far from a sure thing, even though the outlook for the next few
months is good, experts say. In 2023, about 320,000 acres
burned statewide due to wildfires, well below the five-year
average of 1.7 million acres. Storms that winter played a part:
Rain revitalized a landscape parched by years of drought and a
colossal Sierra Nevada snowpack provided additional moisture as
it melted through the warmer months. … The Northern
California Geographic Area Coordination Center’s
four-month outlook issued March 1 calls for minimal
fire activity across Northern California from March through
May.
After decades of advocating, tribal members cheered as a blast
at JC Boyle Dam this year kicked off the process of drawing
down the reservoirs behind three Klamath River dams. The
removal is expected to restore the river and reopen spawning
habitat that salmon haven’t been able to reach for more than a
century. OPB science reporter and editor Cassandra Profita
brings us the perspective of the tribes living along the
Klamath River: what the country’s largest dam removal project
means to them and their hopes for the future.
This half-hour special dives into the troubles and triumphs at
the Salton Sea. The sea is the largest body of water in
California. It formed after a levee at the Colorado River burst
in the early 1900s, and after the levee was fixed, it cut off
the flow of fresh water. Since then, the sea has become
polluted with chemical runoff from nearby farms. It’s also
slowly evaporating. The chemical-filled water releases gases
that trigger asthma in nearby communities, and toxic dust from
around the shoreline acts as an irritant as well. Despite
all of the negatives, there are a few positives. New wetlands
are forming as the sea slowly pulls away from the shoreline,
playing host to thousands of migrating birds. Developing
wetlands make the sea an important stop along the Pacific
Flyway.
The United States suffers the world’s second-highest toll from
major weather disasters, according to a new analysis — even
when numbers are adjusted for the country’s wealth. The report
released late last month by Zurich-based reinsurance giant
Swiss Re, which analyzed the vulnerability and damages of 36
different countries, suggests that weather disasters may become
a heavy drag on the U.S. economy — especially as insurers
increasingly pull out of hazardous areas. Those disasters are
driving up insurance rates, compounding inflation and adding to
Americans’ high cost of living. … Some insurers have
stopped offering home insurance policies in California, which
has seen numerous large wildfires in the past few years.
In a Sacramento office building, university students carefully
scan pieces of paper that underpin California’s most
contentious and valuable water disputes. One by one, they’re
bringing pieces of history into the digital era, some a century
old and thin as onion skin. The student workers are beginning
to digitize the state’s water rights records, part of a project
launched by the state’s water regulator earlier this year. It
may seem simple, but scanning two million musty pages is part
of a $60 million project that could take years. The massive
undertaking will unmask the notoriously opaque world of
California water. Right now, it’s practically impossible to
know who has the right to use water, how much they’re taking
and from what river or stream at any given time in the state.
Ten years. That’s how much time the Bay Area’s 37 wastewater
treatment plants will have to reduce fertilizer and sewage in
their water by 40%. The estimated price tag for the facility
upgrades is $11 billion. The San Francisco Regional Water
Quality Control Board plans to adopt the change as part of its
new discharge permit requirement beginning June 12. Previous
permits did not require reductions …The regulatory change
follows a damaging algae bloom in 2022 and 2023. A brown algae
species called Heterosigma akashiwo, which feeds off the
nitrogen in wastewater, infected the Bay and damaged aquatic
ecosystems.
Nearly six weeks after a major winter storm led to flooding and
landslide throughout Southern California, some homeowners in
Beverly Glen are still trying to return home. On Caribou Lane,
a landslide knocked a home off its foundation, and the debris
slid into the neighbors’ homes. That debris and mud left Samila
Bahsoon’s home with a lot of damage. … She has
potentially more than $600,000 in damage, and two insurance
companies already denied her claims. … She also
said when the neighbor’s home was knocked off the foundation,
the debris broke her water main. And it led to a massive water
bill. “LADWP sent me a $9,500 water bill, which is 6,500%
more than average for the last 35 years that this house has
been used,” she said.
Set against the context of unprecedented demand for water
supply solutions, Brownstein and WestWater Research brought
together water industry and finance leaders for the second
annual Sustainable Water Investment Summit. The World Resources
Institute’s latest data helps articulate the scale of the
demand for water supply reliability, sustainability and
innovation: by 2050, an additional billion people will be
living in arid areas and regions with high water stress, and by
2050, around 46% of global GDP is expected to come
from areas facing high-water risk (up from 10% currently).
Given these realities, it’s unsurprising that diverse interests
are now converging to meet the challenges of ensuring a
resilient and accessible water future. Polls find that 63% of
global companies now undertake water-related risk assessments,
and 1,100 CEOs have annual performance reviews tied to results
around water goals.
A restoration project at Talbert Marsh got the go-ahead
Thursday after the state Coastal Commission approved a coastal
permit application submitted by the Huntington Beach Wetlands
Conservancy as part of its consent calendar. The roughly 25
acres of Talbert Marsh stretch between Brookhurst Street to the
Santa Ana River Trail and make up one of four wetlands the
nonprofit owns and maintains. More than 90 bird species have
been observed at the marsh in addition to the adjoining
wetlands, according to the organization. The project along the
southeastern and western shorelines of South Island will
address erosion, which Coastal Commission staff said causes the
disappearance of coastal salt marsh vegetation and depletes
refuge spaces for sensitive bird species that live there.
Water bubbles up in streets, pooling in neighborhoods for weeks
or months. Homes burn to the ground if firefighters can’t draw
enough water from hydrants. Utility crews struggle to fix
broken pipes while water flows through shut-off valves that
don’t work. … Across the U.S., trillions of gallons of
drinking water are lost every year, especially from decrepit
systems in communities struggling with significant population
loss and industrial decline that leave behind poorer residents,
vacant neighborhoods and too-large water systems that are
difficult to maintain.
A much-anticipated water bill brought by one of the most
powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill became public Thursday.
Senate President Stuart Adams’s SB 211, titled “Generational
Water Infrastructure Amendments,” seeks to secure a water
supply for decades to come. It forms a new council comprised of
leadership from the state’s biggest water districts that will
figure out Utah’s water needs for the next 50 to 75 years. It
also creates a new governor-appointed “Utah Water Agent” with a
$1 million annual budget that will “coordinate with the council
to ensure Utah’s generational water needs are met,” according
to a news release. But combing through the text of the bill
reveals the water agent’s main job will be finding an
out-of-state water supply. … The bill also notes the
water agent won’t meddle with existing water compacts with
other states on the Bear and Colorado rivers.
… California’s 2024 Water Year could still be quite dry
and/or bring floods, but it seems unlikely to become among
California’s wettest years, if only because the water year’s
first months have been dry. Today, the Northern Sierra
precipitation index is about 66% of average for this time of
year. San Joaquin and Tulare basin precipitation indices
are at 46% and 40% of average, respectively. … Given the
precipitation so far, 2024 is highly likely to be wetter than
the very driest years of record, but is also highly unlikely to
be among the very wettest years in the past 100 years or
so.
Water, the essence of life, is an indispensable resource
intricately woven into the fabric of our daily existence. From
the food on our plates to the gadgets in our hands, water
silently plays a pivotal role in the creation of almost
everything we encounter. In a world where water scarcity is a
looming concern, it is essential to explore the profound impact
of water in the production of goods and services that shape our
lives as well as the food we feed our families. -Written by Mike Wade, executive director of the
California Farm Water Coalition
Beyond evacuations, mudslides, outages and road flooding, the
atmospheric river that drenched Southern California over the
last few days brought eye-popping rainfall totals to the region
— with still more to come Tuesday. Rainfall topped 11 inches in
some areas of Los Angeles County in three days, easily
surpassing the average amount recorded for the entire month of
February, according to the National Weather Service. “And
February is our wettest month,” said Ryan Kittell, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard… As
of 10 p.m. Monday, downtown Los Angeles had recorded 7.04
inches of rain over the prior three days. The February average
is 3.80 inches. That three-day total is nearly 50% of the
average amount of rainfall for an entire year for downtown Los
Angeles.
The attention is on Southern California right now, but an
atmospheric river’s path will extend inland with potential
flooding — and possible drought relief. If you’re watching the
weather, it’s still a little early to tell whether these storms
will go where they can hope Las Vegas the most. That’s anywhere
in the Upper Colorado River Basin, where there’s a chance they
could produce snow to help the river that supplies 90% of the
water used in Southern Nevada. … The paths of this
year’s atmospheric rivers are unlike the ones that slammed
the Sierras last year. Those storms carried snow straight
east through Northern Nevada and Utah, feeding the Rocky
Mountains with snowpack levels that reached 160% of normal by
the end of winter.
