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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Drought is back in California for the first time in nearly a
year. The update from the U.S. Drought Monitor comes as
firefighters battle the state’s largest wildfire of 2024 near
Chico. As of midday Thursday, the Park Fire had burned more
than 71,000 acres across Butte and Tehama counties and was
approximately 3% contained. According to Thursday’s update,
“moderate drought” is isolated to Northern California, while
“abnormally dry” spots are scattered across the state.
Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is warning that
negotiations over how to share a drought-stricken Colorado
River among Western states are moving too slowly — creating a
potential melee over dwindling supplies — and blaming the Biden
administration for failing to aggressively intervene. A series
of existing agreements for management of the Colorado River
will expire at the end of 2026, which prompted officials from
the seven states that share the river to begin formal
negotiations more than a year ago. Those discussions largely
center on how the states will share the pain of a shrinking
water supply. Some estimates suggest the 1,450-mile-long river
contains 20 percent less water than it did in 2000 due to
persistent drought.
Noting that Kern County residents could suffer “urgent impacts”
to their drinking water from continued agricultural groundwater
overpumping, staff at the state Water Resources Control Board
announced Thursday they are recommending the entire Kern
subbasin be put on probation. Probation is the first step
toward a possible state pumping take over. A hearing before the
Water Board is set for Feb. 20, 2025. The finding was a blow to
area water managers who had hoped a new groundwater plan
submitted in May would address concerns about its 2022 plan,
which was deemed inadequate in 2023. Managers of Kern’s
20 groundwater sustainability agencies had worked since then to
revamp the plan.
There’s another proposal on the table to build a pipeline from
Lake Powell, but the water wouldn’t go to St. George. Arizona
lawmakers this month introduced legislation that would
fund a pipeline to bring water from Lake Powell to three tribes
with Colorado River rights. The
$5 billion deal — negotiated by the tribes, the federal
government and the state of Arizona in May — includes $1.75
billion for the pipeline, and now needs approval from Congress.
The state of Baja California will get 200 liters of water per
second from the San Diego County Water Authority to help
Tijuana residents during the hot summer months. The water will
be delivered through an international line that crosses the
border from San Diego to Tijuana. … Carlos Alberto Machado
Parra, director in Tijuana for Baja’s Public Service and
Planning Commission … stated his department is prepared to
pay 85 million pesos, or about $5 million, for the water this
summer.
New research shows that California’s Central Valley, known as
America’s breadbasket, gets as much as half of its groundwater
from the Sierra Nevadas. This is significant for a farming
region that, in some parts, relies almost entirely on
groundwater for irrigation. … Scientists have long
recognized that the Sierras are a key water source for the
Central Valley aquifer, but this new UC Riverside-led study is
the first to quantify the groundwater contribution from the
mountains. Published in the journal Water Resources Research,
the study shows that contribution is as much as 53% in the
southern Central Valley.
San Diego’s main water seller OK’d a less-doomy price increase
than the region was expecting, setting it at 14 percent on
Thursday. To make that work, the San Diego County Water
Authority will have to find $2 million it can cut from its
budget and delay some anti-earthquake-related upgrades to its
biggest aqueducts. Those cuts save ratepayers from an
anticipated 18 percent beginning January 1. But 14 percent is
still the largest annual rate increase on the wholesale price
of San Diego water since 2011, Water Authority records
show. Now each of San Diego’s 22 separate water districts
will have to figure out how to shoulder that cost or pass it
onto customers, depending on the health of their own
budgets.
Summers that follow wet winters usually bring high hopes for
big water infrastructure projects to capture it all, and this
year is no exception. Gov. Gavin Newsom has fast-tracked Sites
Reservoir, lauding the proposed project northwest of Sacramento
as a panacea for a California that still remembers the
challenges of an extreme drought. But big water storage and
conveyance projects such as Sites and the Delta tunnel, another
massive boondoggle, pose huge environmental and financial
risks. These are old ideas that claim to respond to climate
change when in fact they destroy intact ecosystems and wildlife
habitats. —Written by Sofia Prado-Irwin, staff scientist at the
Center for Biological Diversity.
The federal government plans to spend $7 billion to $8 billion
to build a hydrogen economy in the U.S. The money will be
allocated to seven regional “hydrogen hubs” across
the U.S. mainland. …. California gets a hub of its own — and
$1.2 billion. … The program will kick off with 37 projects —
yet to be announced — spread across the state with a heavy
concentration in the Central Valley. … Water is also an
issue in drought-prone California. “There are certainly
questions about where the water is going to come from,” said
[Katelyn Roedner Sutter, Sacramento representative for the
Environmental Defense Fund.]
California is experiencing whiplash between boom-and-bust
cycles of prolonged drought and atmospheric rivers. The
unpredictable nature of our climate makes management of
California’s water system extraordinarily challenging. But as
the lifeblood for every Californian and a key ingredient for
our agricultural communities, it is critical we have water
management and distribution systems in place that work during
both dry and wet years. This year’s water allocations from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and the Department of
Water Resources were at the very least frustrating and
demonstrate the need for improvements.
– Written by Allison Febbo, general manager of Westlands Water
District
California’s Geologic Energy Management Division is in the
midst of finalizing regulations to ban fracking across the
state, which will officially go into effect on October 1.
The department submitted its rule-making package for the ban to
the state’s Office of Administrative Law on July 15, where it
will be given a final review. It’s the last step needed to
formalize the regulation, which would prohibit CalGEM from
issuing fracking permits for oil and gas wells. ….
Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a process
where water, chemicals and sand are injected into oil and gas
wells at a high pressure to increase production. It’s long
received criticism from environmental groups because of the
pollutants emitted during the process.
A week after an untreated sewage spill marred North Lake
Tahoe’s tourist season, one of the two popular beaches affected
has reopened. The Carnelian West and Patton Landing beaches in
Carnelian Bay were initially closed just before sunset on July
18, when a private contractor, working on a Caltrans project,
damaged a pipeline belonging to the North Tahoe Public Utility
District. As a result, approximately 125,000 gallons of
sewage leaked into a nearby parking lot, with around 85,000
gallons reaching the pristine lake.
New research further magnifies the growing risk rising
groundwater poses to San Francisco and other low-lying Bay Area
cities. The nonprofit think tank San Francisco Bay Area
Planning and Urban Research Association and the East Palo Alto
community organization Nuestra Casa released a study earlier
this week analyzing the effects groundwater rise could have on
East Palo Alto. The research centered on the Peninsula city
because of its proximity to the water, making it one of the Bay
Area jurisdictions most susceptible to groundwater rise. But
the findings, researchers said, can be applied to all of the
Bay Area’s at-risk cities — including San Francisco.
Like some dystopian astronaut, Melissa Cobo would hike the
searing flats of the dried-out Great Salt Lake every
couple of weeks, hauling a heavy backpack attached by a hose to
what looked like the lid of a cake dome. … Through
these grueling treks, Cobo, then a Utah State University
graduate student, and her adviser, Soren Brothers, discovered
more disturbing evidence that dried-out lakes are a significant
source of carbon dioxide emissions — one that has not
been included in the official accounting of how much carbon the
world is releasing into the warming atmosphere. In
a new study in the journal One Earth, the researchers
calculated that 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases were released from the drying bed of
the Great Salt Lake in 2020, the year Cobo and others
collected the samples. This would amount to about a 7 percent
increase in Utah’s human-caused emissions, the
authors found.
For decades, Riverside residents enjoyed a scene of serenity at
a local park’s lake. But over the past few weeks, it’s turned
into a horrifying scene with dozens of dead animals. Many
ducks, geese and other wildlife have turned up dead at the
Fairmount Park lake. One resident who visits the lake almost
every day started to notice the problem earlier this month. “I
mean, just two weeks ago it was beautiful. We loved coming
here,” said Jennifer Taylor, who held back tears over the loss
of so many animals. “Now I can’t even sleep at night because
all I think about is all my little friends that have died
already.” She’s counted dozens of dead animals but most of them
are ducks that spend their time in the water. An old video
taken by Taylor shows abundant wildlife flocking towards the
water, a sharp contrast to the lake right now.
Today (July 25), U.S. Representative John Garamendi (D-CA08), a
senior member of the House Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, secured key provisions in the “Water
Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2024″ (H.R.8812) for the
Bay Area and California Delta. The bipartisan legislation
passed the House of Representatives and is expected to become
law this year. “The biennial Water Resources Development Act
will upgrade our water infrastructure, harden our communities
to climate change, and restore aquatic ecosystems across the
Bay Area and California Delta,” Garamendi said. ”As a
longstanding member of the House Committee that writes this
law, I secured key provisions in this year’s bill to dredge the
Mare Island Strait, restore Lake Tahoe, and authorize the Army
Corps to remove abandoned and derelict vessels. I expect
President Biden to sign this bipartisan bill into law once we
negotiate a final compromise with the Senate.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has
completed its 2024 waterfowl breeding population survey. The
resulting data indicate the overall number of breeding ducks
has decreased by 25 percent, while mallards decreased 12
percent, the most abundant duck in the survey. “Despite another
good water year, the lack of adequate nesting habitat,
particularly in the Central Valley, continues to restrict
waterfowl population growth in California,” said CDFW Waterfowl
Program Biologist Melanie Weaver. The complete
2024 California Waterfowl Breeding Population Survey
Report is available at the CDFW website. The total numbers of
ducks (all species combined) decreased from 495,438 in 2023 to
373,864 this year. This estimate is 30 percent below the
long-term average.
As the Washington State Department of Transportation spends
billions of dollars removing concrete and metal pipes that
block spawning salmon, another state agency is finally
finishing a strategy to fix all the state’s fish migration
barriers. Department of Fish and Wildlife officials have
revealed key parts of a plan to prioritize which of tens of
thousands of these man-made blockages would, if replaced, bring
back the salmon. Without the strategy—which has taken more
than four years to produce—the administration of Gov. Jay
Inslee has been sinking billions into stream restorations that,
in many cases, are ineffective or useless today. Construction
crews have ripped out the pipes, known as culverts, which run
under state highways and replaced them with natural streambeds,
but a Seattle Times investigation in March found the state was
investing tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars, in
so-called “orphan” culverts.
Water availability and its scarcity affect our lives and
livelihoods. This is a case of applying the experience acquired
in one area of human activities to another despite the great
differences between the two areas. As improbably as it may
appear, it may make sense to apply the lessons learned in
controlling Avian flu to solve California’s almond production
issue. But first, the facts about almonds and water. About 80%
of the world’s supply of almonds is produced in California.
Essential nutrients are those that the body cannot produce on
its own or in sufficient quantities to meet its needs. Almonds,
while nutritious, do not contain any nutrients that exclusively
fulfil a common definition of “essential nutrients,” i.e.,
those the body cannot produce on its own or in sufficient
quantities to meet its needs. —Written by Richard Seifman, former World Bank senior
health advisor and U.S. senior foreign service officer
While California’s reservoirs are currently 116% of normal for
this time of year, other signs of drought are quickly creeping
in. The reason: July’s extreme heat. “We’ve supercharged
our drying,” said John Abatzoglou, a climatologist at UC
Merced. Over the past few weeks, the atmosphere has been
extremely thirsty, Abatzoglou said, pulling out large amounts
of moisture from live vegetation and dead fuels. The indicator
points to increased fire risk, beyond grasslands into higher
elevation forests. Scientists refer to this thirst as
evaporative demand. U.S. Drought Monitor maps also
indicate the return of drought to California. Over
just a few weeks, moderate drought emerged along the
state’s border with Oregon.
