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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The board of California’s largest urban water supplier voted on
Tuesday to spend $141.6 million for a large share of the
preliminary planning work on the state’s proposed water tunnel
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. With the decision,
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will
continue covering nearly half of the preconstruction costs for
the proposed 45-mile tunnel beneath the Delta, which Gov. Gavin
Newsom says the state needs to protect the water supply in the
face of climate change and earthquake risks. “This is about
planning for the next 100 years,” said Adán Ortega, Jr., chair
of the MWD board. The MWD’s 38-member board decided to approve
the funding after heated debate.
… The [U.S. Supreme Court] justices heard oral arguments over
the controversial stretch of track that would connect the
remote Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah to national rail lines,
allowing more waxy crude from one of the nation’s largest oil
fields to be transported to refineries on the Gulf Coast. On
its surface, the case is about the 88-mile rail line, but it
has also become a proxy battle over how far federal agencies
should go in assessing the environmental impact of highways,
pipelines and other projects before deciding whether to approve
them. … Five environmental groups and the county that
is home to Vail, Colorado, argue that [the National
Environmental Policy Act] calls for a more holistic
review, saying the rail project could have devastating impacts
on local habitats, could lead to oil spills in the
Colorado River and would quintuple oil production,
worsening climate change and pollution near refineries in the
South.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday reaffirmed his support for
building Sites Reservoir, a proposed $4.5 billion project that
would be the largest new reservoir constructed in California in
50 years, as a way for cities and farms to better prepare for
droughts made worse by the warming climate. “We are going to
continue to do everything we can to put the pressure on to get
this project done,” Newsom said. “We are going to continue to
advocate for federal resources,” he added. “Donald Trump, this
is your kind of project.” Sites would be California’s eighth
largest reservoir, a 13-mile-long off-stream lake that would
divert flows from the Sacramento River during wet winters to
provide water to 500,000 acres of Central Valley farmlands, and
24 million people, including residents of Santa Clara County,
parts of the East Bay and Los Angeles.
The Colorado River is shrinking as climate change worsens the
Southwestern drought, so the Biden administration has been
paying farmers and cities not to use water. It’s spending
nearly $5 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to ensure
the nation’s biggest reservoirs don’t go dry. But
President-elect Trump’s campaign has threatened to cut that
funding. And as KUNC’s Alex Hager reports, people who share the
river’s water are worried.
Local fishing businesses joined together to announce their
support for the creation of a new national monument in northern
California to permanently protect the water, habitat, and
sporting values of the Sáttítla region. Sáttítla, also known as
the Medicine Lake highlands, is an area of public lands
with truly unique geologic, hydrologic, and habitat values.
Much of this area’s productivity for fish and wildlife stems
from the fact that the Sáttítla landscape is an enormous,
largely pristine hydrological recharge and storage resource,
which may absorb as much water as California’s 200 largest
reservoirs combined and which discharges over 1.2 million
acre-feet of snowmelt annually. Andrew Harris, owner of
Confluence Outfitters based out of Red Bluff, California, said,
“The world-famous trout fishery of the Fall River depends on
the waters absorbed and filtered by the Sáttítla landscape.
This river is California’s largest spring creek and its
abundant waters feed the Pit River, Lake Shasta, and the
Sacramento River … ”
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are associated with some of the
largest flood-producing extreme precipitation events in western
North America. As the primary storm mechanism in California,
the difference of a few large AR storms in a year dramatically
changes precipitation totals and drives the state towards water
abundance or drought. Current records of AR activity are
limited to just 70 years of instrumental data. So, the key
question motivating this work was: what is the long-term
history of AR storms in California? We can get insight
into past extreme precipitation by looking to the sediment
record. Under the right circumstances, clues to past climate
and extreme precipitation are preserved in layers of sediment
and allow us to reconstruct their history going back centuries
to millennia. Long-term data help water managers avoid
underestimation of potential flood risks and aid future
planning scenarios, particularly for water infrastructure.
Federal wildlife officials formally listed the San Francisco
Estuary longfin smelt as an endangered species in July. Whether
the action is a first step toward recovery or just an
administrative milestone on the path to extinction is too early
to say, but one thing is already clear: The longfin smelt is
ominously close to vanishing. Now, as its existential clock
ticks, scientists are hustling to better understand the
species’ biology and environmental requirements and, with luck,
safeguard its future. The estuary’s population of longfin
smelt—Spirinchus thaleichthys, a species that can live in
saltwater and ranges as far north as Alaska—has been declining
for several decades, with an accelerated dip starting around
the turn of this century. Once plentiful enough to be a target
for commercial fishers, it now shows a feeble presence in
annual sampling programs.
The Sweetwater Authority, which supplies drinking water to more
than 200,000 households in southern San Diego County, alerted
city officials in its service area on Friday that it had
discovered toxic industrial chemicals in its main reservoir at
levels that exceed state and federal standards. The PFAS
chemicals, also known as “forever” chemicals because of their
longevity in the environment, were discovered during newly
mandated testing in late October. The chemicals, known by the
technical names PFHxS and PFOA, have been shown to interfere
with thyroid function and cause cancer in laboratory
animals.
With a single ballot outstanding, a recount of votes cast in a
heated race for a Laguna Irrigation District board seat was
abruptly stopped Tuesday afternoon, initially leaving the race
in a tie of 101 to 101. By law, voters in the district had 24
hours to request the recount be restarted. And that’s exactly
what happened. Now the recount is back on, confirmed Fresno
County Registrar of Voters James Kus. The office needs to
provide at least 24 hours notice of the restarted recount,
which is conducted in public view. Kus wasn’t sure if it would
happen Thursday or Friday but “We’ll get it done this week,” he
said.
… The Franklin fire is burning within much of the footprint
of 2018’s devastating Woolsey fire, which destroyed more than
1,600 structures and burned about 97,000 acres in Malibu, the
Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding communities of Thousand
Oaks, Oak Park and Agoura Hills. Research shows wildfires have
grown more intense in recent decades, fueled by wildfire
weather (hot, dry conditions plus wind) that’s become more
frequent — especially in California. “Southern California had a
couple of wet years in a row, and that means a build-up of
fuels in wildlands,” Alex Hall, director of UCLA’s Center for
Climate Science, wrote in a statement. “The current wet season
has been very dry so far. The sequence of very wet followed dry
conditions sets the stage for big wildfires.”
The California Water Commission has released its 2025 Strategic
Plan. The Plan contains goals and objectives that will provide
direction for the Commission’s work for the next five-year
period. Goal 1: Implement the Water Storage Investment
Program to achieve public benefits. Goal 2: Support smart
water management through outreach, engagement, and a commitment
to equity. Goal 3: Utilize public forum to explore
pressing water management issues. Goal 4: Advise the
Department of Water Resources to support implementation of
DWR’s Strategic Plan. Goal 5: Exercise statutory
authorities to ensure transparency, accountability, and sound
public processes.
At the start of 2020, California Resources Corporation (CRC),
one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers, was in
financial trouble. The firm’s stock price had plunged, and its
credit rating was in “junk bond” territory. Then the pandemic
struck, roiling international oil markets. A few months later,
in July 2020, CRC and nearly two dozen of its subsidiaries
filed for bankruptcy, citing the “unprecedented market
conditions.” The company was nearly $5 billion in debt. The day
after the filing, two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and
the Center for Biological Diversity, sent a letter to Gov.
Gavin Newsom, raising concerns that CRC might use its
bankruptcy proceedings to avoid cleaning up the thousands of
oil wells it owned or operated. Oil and gas wells can leak
pollutants into the air and groundwater,
including planet-warming methane. The letter warned that
California taxpayers could be on the hook for CRC’s cleanup
costs if the company went out of business or was able to avoid
its environmental obligations.
Ellen Hanak launched PPIC’s work on California water policy as
a research fellow in 2001, and she went on to serve as the
institute’s research director before starting the PPIC Water
Policy Center in 2015. As she prepares to retire from PPIC at
the end of this year, we asked her to reflect on her momentous
career in California water, and to tell us what’s next.
… What are some exciting recent developments or
innovations in California water? It’s amazing to me how people
have taken the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)
seriously and worked to get it off the ground and implement it
in creative ways. To be sure, some of the hardest work is still
ahead, but there’s already been tremendous transformation in
the decade since this law was enacted.
The Martinez Refining Company has agreed to pay $4.48 million
to settle allegations of federal Clean Water Act violations
tied to its Contra Costa County refinery, and the money will go
to environmental projects, according to the San Francisco Bay
Regional Water Quality Control Board. Owned by PBF Energy Inc.,
the refinery produces a variety of petroleum products. Between
2022 and 2023, the company allegedly discharged millions of
gallons of wastewater from its oil refinery operations, causing
harm to water quality and aquatic life in the large undeveloped
marshes connected to the Carquinez Strait.
The San Joaquin Valley has reached a dead end in its fight to
clean up a toxic contaminant from its drinking water, with
residents now facing the prospect of footing the bill for a
mess created by Shell and Dow products. Fresnoland reviewed
internal Shell and Dow memos, court records, and state
documents and interviewed key officials to uncover a
decades-long environmental crisis enabled by both corporate
greed and bureaucratic neglect. The documents show how the
companies’ products contaminated nearly 20% of San
Joaquin Valley drinking water with a substance the
EPA rates as toxic as Agent Orange’s deadliest
dioxin. The companies sold pesticides laced with
1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP), a manufacturing waste from
gunpowder and plastics production. Shell marketed the farming
products as pure – a scheme that saved them millions in
disposal costs. Over 25 years since discovering the
contamination, state water officials have failed to even map
how far and deep the cancer-causing chemical had spread into
the Valley’s aquifers.
Over a hundred years ago, the Klamath River was caught up
in the audacious endeavor to tame the West. Engineers built
the Klamath Hydroelectric Project over a 60-year period
starting in 1902, harnessing hydropower for a growing region.
Six dams were built on a 55-mile stretch of river flowing
through the shrubby basalt landscape of Southern Oregon and
Northern California. Within a few short decades, the dams came
to be seen as part of a fixed landscape—inevitable even. But of
course, infrastructure projects and landscapes aren’t fixed.
Rivers change course, bridges collapse, and even mountains
move—acts of God, or nature, or human failing.
Water managers from the Colorado River District met with Pitkin
County Commissioners Tuesday to talk about shared goals and
points of contention around keeping more water in Western Slope
rivers. Representatives from the Glenwood Springs-based
Colorado River Water Conservation District attended a work
session with commissioners to explain how a deal with a Front
Range diverter keeps more flow in the Roaring Fork, and about
their plan to purchase the water rights tied to the Shoshone
hydroplant in Glenwood Canyon.
How can metro Phoenix erase an acute housing shortage without
draining its aquifers, now that the groundwater on which much
of this growth once relied is spoken for? It’s a thorny policy
question to weed through. State law requires subdivisions in
metro Phoenix to prove they have enough water to sustain
themselves, before they build. And for years, that happened in
one of two ways: A designated water provider — one that has
enough renewable water to serve current and some future
customers for 100 years — could agree to serve the new
development. Or a housing subdivision could earn a certificate
from the state to pump groundwater, then join a district that
would replenish most of what they pump on their behalf. But the
state cut off the latter practice once it was clear that we had
begun bumping up against our groundwater supply’s limits.
I was fortunate to be raised in a traditional Karuk
family—where dipnet fishing, renewal ceremonies, and cultural
fire were practiced in concert with the annual cycles of the
natural world. When I was growing up, my dad would drive an old
rust-colored Chevy home from the dipnet fishery at Ishi Pishi
Falls in Northern California, the truck’s bed full of
glimmering áama, or salmon. We would stay up late
processing fish, hanging strips in the smokehouse, and chasing
away bears. As Káruk Va’áraaras, we are salmon people. We are
river people. We are fix-the-world people. We are taught that
our relationship to the fish is reciprocal and that as long as
there is one Káruk Áraar fishing, the salmon will continue to
be called to make the journey up our river to provide for us.
By Molli Myers, a member of the Karuk Tribe and a
co-founder of the Klamath Justice Coalition and COO of Ridges
to Riffles
Today, U.S. Representative John Garamendi (D-CA08) voted to
pass the “Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2024”
(S.4367) in the House of Representatives by a bipartisan vote
of 399 to 18. “The Water Resources Development Act passed
today continues our bipartisan tradition of meeting the water
infrastructure needs of communities across California and the
country. As a senior member of the Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, I secured several provisions in this
bill directing federal investment for Mare Island, restoring
Bay Area wetlands, and improving our precious water supply for
local communities in California’s 8th Congressional District.
This pivotal legislation will strengthen community resilience
from the threats of climate change, improve California’s water
resource projects that safeguard human health, and enrich
America’s vital natural aquatic ecosystems for generations to
come,” said Garamendi.
