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.
… As reservoirs shrink, groundwater dries up and rainy
seasons become more erratic, some believe one answer to this
crisis lies in the reservoirs of moisture in our skies.
Atmospheric water harvesting is a tantalizing prospect and a
rush of new research is generating excitement, but there are
sizeable obstacles: It has historically been energy intensive,
it produces small amounts of water and even the new methods are
many times more expensive than tap water.
The Conejo Valley has long been recognized for its innovation,
resilience, and economic vitality. … Yet beneath this
prosperity rests an increasingly fragile foundation: our water
supply. That’s why the Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of
Commerce strongly supports the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) —
a once-in-a-generation modernization of California’s water
infrastructure designed to safeguard the reliability of our
most essential resource. –Written by Danielle Borja, president/CEO of the Greater
Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce.
A fixed-wing Cessna Cargomaster, for five days in January, flew
over the full 32-mile stretch of Putah Creek, capturing Lidar
images and data that Max Stephenson said is like having a
“virtual reality simulation” of the stream channel. So vivid
are the images, tread marks from tractor tires can be seen in
the neighboring farmlands also captured by the aerial survey.
House Republicans narrowly passed legislation on Thursday that
would slash $766.4 million from the budgets of the Department
of Energy, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and
their related agencies compared to what they received last
year. … It also increases authorizations for a number of
water projects, including allocating $1.8 billion for the
Navajo-Gallup water supply project in New Mexico, and provides
$1 billion for water management improvement grants, and $177.5
million for water recycling and reuse projects.
On Thursday, Speaker Crystalyne Curley of the 25th Navajo
Nation Council, accompanied by several Council Delegates and
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, hosted senior officials
from the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Bureau
of Reclamation (BOR). … Tribal leaders urged federal
officials to support the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water
Rights Settlement Agreement, which is designed to resolve
longstanding legal disputes and secure reliable, long-term
water access for the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, and the San
Juan Southern Paiute Tribe. … Discussions also addressed
the importance of reaching agreement among various Upper and
Lower Basin states along the Colorado River.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to complete within nine months a delayed assessment of
whether the San Francisco Estuary local population of white
sturgeon should be listed as threatened under the U.S.
Endangered Species Act. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros in
San Francisco wasn’t persuaded by the agency’s arguments that
it would need until 2029 to complete the so-called 12-month
finding because of a backlog of pending petitions and staffing
shortages from layoffs and a hiring freeze.
U.S. senators from New Mexico, Colorado and Idaho introduced
legislation Wednesday to increase funds for local partnerships
to prevent water pollution and restore watersheds. … [The
Headwater Protection act,] if passed, would triple the
yearly funding for the Water Source Protection
Program for the U.S. Forest Service in order to
provide more than $30 million per year for farmers, ranchers,
water utilities and local and tribal governments for restoring
forests or cleaning up watersheds. The legislation would
prioritize giving funds to projects to improve drinking water
quality and harden forested areas to wildfire and climate
change.
… Drilling for fresh water under the salt water off Cape Cod,
Expedition 501 extracted thousands of samples from what is now
thought to be a massive, hidden aquifer stretching from New
Jersey as far north as Maine. It’s just one of many
depositories of “secret fresh water” known to exist in shallow
salt waters around the world that might some day be tapped to
slake the planet’s intensifying thirst. … The potential
is enormous. So are the hurdles of getting the water out and
puzzling over who owns it, who uses it and how to extract it
without undue harm to nature.
Federal lawsuits were filed Thursday against Southern
California Edison in connection with damage caused by two
deadly Southern California wildfires, including the January
fire in Altadena. In copies of the lawsuits filed Thursday
and obtained by NBCLA, federal prosecutors named Southern
California Edison as defendants and sought payment for costs
and damage related to the Eaton Fire and the September 2022
Fairview Fire in Riverside County. … The lawsuit,
seeking $40 million in damages, also said the fire affected
water quality and allowed non-native
vegetation to invade the area.
A new report shows America’s water systems need more than a
trillion dollars in upgrades in the coming decades. In the
West, states are dealing with shrinking reservoirs, worsening
drought, and a lack of data to plan for the future. Many
Western states use outdated methods to measure their water
system needs according to an analysis by Pew Charitable Trusts,
a nonpartisan research group. Some states don’t even have
inventories of basic assets, like aging pipes, or where lead
service lines still exist. … Nationwide, the
Environmental Protection Agency estimates water and wastewater
systems will need more than a trillion dollars in upgrades over
the next 20 years.
The Tahoe Fund will livestream the journey of Deep Emerald, a
custom-built remotely operated vehicle as it explores Lake
Tahoe’s 1,570-foot depths. This event is a partnership between
the Tahoe Fund and the Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation,
allowing anyone to witness the ROV’s expedition on Friday
through the Tahoe Fund’s website starting at 9:30 a.m. The two
organizations say the event is the first-ever livestream to
show the bottom of the lake.
A public health and environmental crisis continues to unfold at
the Salton Sea, according to two new expert briefs published on
Thursday by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute. …
The briefs, drawing from over a year of high-frequency data
from the Salton Sea Environmental Timeseries (SSET) project,
document widespread nutrient pollution and dangerously low
oxygen levels in the lake, which lead to frequent emissions of
hydrogen sulfide.
Recently elected San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre
took office in July promising to wield the full powers of her
new job against the sewage crisis in the Tijuana
River. … Aguirre plans to ask the county to begin work
immediately on two region-wide studies approved by the Board in
June. … She also will ask the Board to spend roughly $100,000
to hire a new lobbyist to educate federal lawmakers about the
extent of sewage pollution in South County and build support
for a comprehensive bi-national cleanup effort.
… Collinsville is in the news because the California Forever
or Flannery investor billionaires are working their uncommon
influence to persuade the California Legislature to funnel
federal funds for shipbuilding for a facility a little east of
the Town of Collinsville. … The Army Corps of Engineers
with over seventy technical studies determined that deepening
the Sacramento ship channel likely needed for the Collinsville
area proposed ship building would introduce additional salt
water into the Delta. Such introduction would compromise water
quality for 23 million municipal and agricultural users and
water conveyance for the State Water Project. –Written by Elizabeth Patterson, vice-chair of the Delta
Heritage Area Advisory Commission.
… Californians are exposed to PFAS through products like
nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing and cosmetics, and
cleaning products. When PFAS treated products are washed, the
chemicals can go down the drain and possibly end up in our
groundwater. Experts estimate that more than half of
Californians are exposed to PFAS in our water. … That’s
why CALPIRG is working to pass laws that would phase out PFAS
from consumer products and require water departments to filter
PFAS out of our water supply. … And last week we went to
the Capitol and delivered that support from the public.
… Species that are built to survive being baked and broiled
are being cooked by climate change, which is worsening faster
than their evolutionary traits can keep up with. Thanks to
climate change, heatwaves are lasting longer. Also, wildfires
are more unpredictable, and rainfall is all but nonexistent in
some parts of the desert. … The Sonoran pronghorn, a
magical-looking deer-like animal endemic to Arizona, has become
reliant on the man-made water stations that Arizona officials
now refill year-round because actual natural water sources are
in short supply.
President Claudia Sheinbaum announced today the advances made
in the regularization of water concession titles nationwide,
describing the process as a “deprivatization” of the resource.
The initiative has allowed the federal government to recover
over 4 billion m³ of water, equivalent to three to four times
the annual consumption of Mexico City. … Authorities
highlighted cases where agricultural concessions, exempt from
fees, were misused for housing or commercial projects. In other
situations, companies voluntarily returned unused excess
volumes.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
