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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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.
Nearly four years after a Cold War-era warship slipped beneath
the surface of Little Potato Slough, federal crews are cutting
it apart piece by piece, a complex demolition effort aimed at
removing the last in a trio of sunken vessels contaminating one
of California’s most fragile waterways. Divers worked below the
surface this week, carving into the corroded hull of the HMCS
Chaleur, a 152-foot decommissioned former WWII Canadian Navy
patrol vessel and a later minesweeper following the war that
has been partially submerged in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta near Stockton since 2021. … Once the Chaleur is
gone, the slough will be clear of major wrecks for the first
time in years. But the larger Delta remains vulnerable, with no
centralized agency assigned to monitor or prevent vessel
abandonment.
A water district 200 miles north of Kern County is fighting
back against a local agency’s threat to terminate an agreement
that has supplied a 600-home development for the past 24 years.
Residents of the development, called Diablo Grande just west of
Patterson, approved a 200% increase to their water rates,
agreeing to pay $600 a month, in order to make payments on what
the Kern County Water Agency (KCWA) has said is a $13 million
debt. But that only bought them six months of supplies as
KCWA vowed to end its agreement with Western Hills Water
District, which exclusively serves Diablo Grande, on Dec. 31.
An attorney for Western Hills, however, said killing the deal
“…is improper and not authorized under the Agreement,”
according to a July 14 letter to KCWA.
The Central Arizona Project. It sounds more like a band name
than the name of a critical 336-mile-long aqueduct that
shuttles Colorado River water through the state. While you may
have heard of CAP, you may not be exactly sure how it all
works. KJZZ recently took a behind-the-scenes tour of the
system that keeps the flow going for millions of Arizonans. CAP
crews were planning a “blow off.” That’s what engineers call it
when millions of gallons of water is discharged from a
1-mile-long siphon in northwest Phoenix. It only happens about
once per decade.
California legislative staffers and environmental advocates
took flight Tuesday to get a rare aerial view of watershed
restoration in the Sierra Nevada, a project they say is
critical to protecting the state’s water supply. Much of
California’s drinking water begins in places like the Yuba
River Watershed, where decades of fire damage and climate
change have left ecosystems fragile. … The restoration
work includes removing invasive plants, planting native trees,
and clearing sediment from streams and meadows. Some trees
removed are repurposed into biochar, which helps filter toxins
from the water system. Since 2020, SYRCL has funneled $23
million into local restoration efforts, hiring regional
contractors and supporting environmental jobs.
… Much of Marin County’s spiderweb of coastal and bayside
transit options is at risk of inundation from rising sea levels
in the coming decades, according to a recent study identifying
the climate vulnerabilities of its built infrastructure. The
county, surrounded by water on three sides, is already plagued
by flooding during high tides several times a year. Now it has
a greater understanding of its future sea level rise risk due
to the effects of human-caused climate change, thanks to the
study unveiled last week by the Transportation Authority of
Marin, or TAM, in collaboration with environmental consulting
firm Arup. Researchers identified 19 areas along the Marin
County shoreline that are prone to flooding, sea level rise and
groundwater rise, noting that “tipping points”
at which flooding becomes permanent are just decades out in
some locations.
Every summer for the past 20 years, biologists with Sonoma
Water don their waders and boots, not to catch fish but to
count them. Seven days a week, at five different put-ins,
Sonoma Water biologists Miguel O’Huerta and Sanoe Deaver wade
into the cold Russian River to scoop small fish from traps laid
in late spring. One-by-one they tally each salmonid — fish in
the salmon family. … First they record the species,
counting only steelhead, chinook and coho. Then they record the
lifestage. … [Russian Riverkeeper Don] McEnhill said he
appreciates Sonoma Water and the Army Corps’ improvements,
mandated by the National Marine Fisheries Service, to protect
the endangered salmon. But he also said those agencies can’t
fix all the habitat problems.
It’s a sunny day in the middle of Lake Tahoe when Katie Senft,
Carina Seitz and Consuelo Del Rio are aboard the University of
Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe’s research vessel. The research team
is testing the quality of water in Lake Tahoe by looking at
microplastics, light and other biological parameters.
… For the research team, the real fun begins once the
sieve sifting is over. Seitz pulls out a LISST 200X, a device
that measures the size and count of particles. She carefully
lowers into the water over the side of the boat and down to a
specific depth. This allows the team to visualize how
microplastics and other particles change in size or quantity
throughout the water.
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s urban
search and rescue unit has resigned, telling colleagues he was
frustrated by bureaucratic hurdles the Trump administration
imposed that delayed the agency’s response to deadly flooding
in Texas, according to three people familiar with his
reasoning. Ken Pagurek, who worked with FEMA’s search and
rescue branch for more than a decade and served as chief for
the past year, told associates that his concerns had been
mounting since the start of hurricane season and that the
administration’s changes to the agency were causing
“chaos.” He said he worried that a new policy that
requires purchases of more than $100,000 be personally approved
by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, could hurt
disaster response efforts that require speed and agility.
Scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of
Oceanography have unveiled a tool that forecasts
sewage-contamination levels at beaches in south San Diego
County. It’s called the Pathogen Forecast
Model hosted by the Southern California Coastal Ocean
Observing System at Scripps. The Pathogen Forecast Model
website provides detailed estimates shoreline sewage
concentrations and the likelihood of swimmers getting sick for
Playas Tijuana, Imperial Beach, Silver Strand State Park, and
Coronado. … According to [Scripps oceanographer Falk]
Feddersen, the tool is the first of its kind in the nation that
responds to a longstanding problem of raw sewage from Mexico
circulating in the coastal ocean on both sides of the border.
According to federal data, compared with white households,
Native American households are 19 times more likely to lack
indoor plumbing. That figure jumps significantly for Navajo
residents, who are 67 times more likely than other Americans to
live without access to running water. Citing this data, U.S.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) on Tuesday announced he and
colleagues from Colorado, Democratic U.S. Senators Michael
Bennet and John Hickenlooper, had introduced the Tribal Access
to Clean Water Act. … The bill’s components include
authorizing the United States Department of Agriculture to make
grants and loans for technical and financial assistance, as
well as for construction.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company has urged the public to
exercise caution as water flows will be higher on the North
Fork Feather River during the weekend of July 26-27. These
increased flows are intended for whitewater recreation. The
Rock Creek Reach, an 8.3-mile stretch of the river, will see
flows rise to a minimum of 1,100 cubic feet per second by 9
a.m. on July 26. Flows will then decrease to 900 cubic feet per
second until July 27, when they will gradually return to the
normal 400 cubic feet per second. … In collaboration
with the American Whitewater organization and the Rock
Creek–Cresta Ecological Resource Committee, these whitewater
flows are scheduled for four weekends annually. Additional
dates include August 23-24 and September 27-28.
… In a dramatic but inaccurate statement in [Epoch Times'
California Insider] podcast, [Comite Civico del Valle Executive
Director Luis] Olmedo calculated that the annual use of IID’s
precious water allocation by a new geothermal plant that will
use a closed system would equate to 3 pools for each resident
of Imperial County. … IID’s annual water allowance from
the Colorado River is 3.1 million-acre feet, with 500,000-acre
feet transferred through various federally mandated programs to
other water authorities, leaving IID with 2.6 million-acre
feet. … Here are the real facts. IID has reserved
25,000-acre feet of the 2.6-million-acre feet, or 0.0096% for
“industrial use” defined by IID as renewable energy with 11 BHE
geothermal plants, 2 for ORMAT, and 1 for Energy Source, plus
other contractual industrial users. … A new geothermal
plant may require as much as 5,000 acre feet for initial use,
which is a one-time use. After that, the “top off” volume is
less than 600-acre feet per year. –Written by Kay Day Pricola, retired executive director of
the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association.
Lawmakers are poised to give California’s water districts legal
cover from lawsuits as they work to meet strict new state
standards for a cancer-causing toxic chemical. It’s
called hexavalent chromium, more commonly known as
“chromium-6.” Drinking water with trace amounts of the chemical
over long periods has been linked to cancer. Last year,
state water regulators approved a nation-leading drinking water
standard for the chemical, which is found naturally in some
California groundwater. In other areas, chromium-6 leached into
the water from industrial sites. The regulations are
intended to protect more than 5 million Californians from the
toxin, including in the Central Valley, Inland Empire and along
the coast. Water districts say they plan to comply, but they
complain the new rules are going to cost tens of millions of
dollars, will jack up their customers’ water bills and could
take years to complete.
… A new reckoning is at hand. The Trump
administration has put the states on the clock to reach a
consensus deal by the end of this year to share the shrinking
river equitably — the only way they can control their own
fates. … [Assistant Interior Secretary Scott] Cameron also
urged the states to work with the 30 Native American tribes
living across the watershed, both to ensure that they have
adequate water and to partner with the tribes who have secured
substantial water settlements to store more water in the
reservoirs. … Federal officials have a trust
responsibility to secure water for tribes, which the Bureau of
Reclamation will need to account for in any interstate deal.
While some groundwater managers in the beleaguered Tulare Lake
subbasin look for ways to come together on pumping limits in
order to comply with state mandates, the giant J.G. Boswell
Farming Company has remained silent and intractable. The
company, which controls the El Rico Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA), still plans to allow so much groundwater pumping
within its boundaries that it could sink the old Tulare Lake
bed – including the small town of Corcoran – by another
10 feet. That’s only a foot less than it planned back in 2021
when the subbasin, which covers most of Kings County, submitted
its first management plan required under the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
For more than half a century, the Environmental Protection
Agency’s Office of Research and Development, or ORD, has
furnished the EPA with independent research on everything from
ozone pollution to pesticides like glyphosate. Last week, after
months of speculation and denial, the EPA officially confirmed
that it is eliminating its research division and slashing
thousands more employees from its payroll in the agency’s quest
to cut 23 percent of its workforce. … ORD science has
underpinned many of the EPA’s restrictions on contaminants in
air, water, and soil, and formed the basis for
regulations on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances,
PFAS or “forever chemicals,” in drinking
water, deadly fine particulate matter in air, carbon
dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, and chemicals and metals
like asbestos and lead.
Project Blue, a large data center proposed for near the Pima
County fairgrounds, promised to build a pipeline for reclaimed
water big enough to serve other users besides itself. But a
draft of the contract with the city raised questions about
whether the city would pay a share of pipeline costs after all.
… The City of Tucson is still bound by a non-disclosure
agreement that forbids revealing who will actually operate the
data center. One thing not under wraps was a promise from Beale
Infrastructure, the company building the project. That was to
build a pipeline 18 miles long to bring reclaimed water to cool
the center, and to oversize it so the city could have extra
capacity for other projects. … So is Project Blue
paying to build the City of Tucson an oversized water line or
not?
A water diversion agreement for the Potter Valley hydroelectric
project is set to see its approval by the Humboldt County Board
of Supervisors Tuesday, about a week before PG&E aims to
submit its plan to decommission the Scott and Cape Horn dams.
This full agreement contains more details on what future water
diversions from the Eel River would look
like. … The basic outlines of this plan were
approved by the Humboldt Supervisors in February. Tuesday’s
discussion is for approval of a full agreement, before PG&E
will submit its license surrender application and
decommissioning plan to the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC) by July 29. Importantly for the Humboldt
County Supervisors and the Eel River’s fish, the 63 page
diversion agreement spells out how much water would be taken
during high flow seasons — with diversion contingent on salmon
and steelhead runs on the Eel.
… For decades, pollution from both sides of the U.S. / Mexico
border have seeped into the Tijuana River. These impacts have
only been made worse by climate change. From the border
community of Imperial Beach at California’s Southern tip,
reporter Philip Salata tells us more about how pollution,
history, politics, and environmental racism all add up to a
massive public health crisis. … [Salata:] This is actually a
seasonal river, normally dry for most of the year. Not anymore.
Now it flows year round with sewage. There’s been almost 1300
consecutive days of beach closures.
… One of the people tasked with managing that aqua drama is
Jennifer Pierre, General Manager for the State Water
Contractors – a statewide, non-profit association of the public
water agencies that contract with the Department of Water
Resources to receive water from the State Water Project. The
SWP provides water for 27 million Californians and 750,000
acres of farmland. A UC Davis alumna with a bachelor’s in
environmental biology and conservation, Pierre has 20 years of
experience in Delta management and uses that experience to help
improve water supply and operations for the SWC. She joined us
to talk about challenges of climate change, issues from
overpumping groundwater, and if DC and and California can make
nice on Water Policy.
