A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday by veteran journalist Matt Weiser.
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Please Note: 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.
Aidee Guzman is focusing on these small farms to find out whether, ecologically, this diversity has any positive effects on soil health. Her work won’t be published for another two years, but there is already a large body of research that explains how large monocropping operations strip soils of their nutrients and make them less capable of storing carbon… As she works, she is documenting a potential alternative to the industrial mega-farms of the valley and the West.
The agency charged with monitoring water quality standards throughout the Greater Los Angeles region found that local cities have committed more than 2,000 water quality violations within a five-year period, but the violators suffered little if any consequences.
A presentation to the Madera City Council Wednesday evening focused on current water usage, projected peak water demands and highlighted the immediate need for a new 2.5 million-gallon concrete water storage tank to meet the water needs of today’s users and also to meet required fire-flow targets. The estimated cost of the project is more than $18 million…
This year 126 fish have been counted going over Los Padres Dam on the Carmel River. The number may not sound high but it is up from single digits in years past. Last year the count was 25 fish and during the peak of the drought, there were zero fish years. “After five years of drought it’s really welcome news,” said Brian Leneve with the Carmel River Steelhead Association.
The idea was to count the reductions in water consumption thanks to new irrigation sources, and count that water toward the city’s water yearly water allowance. After that, the city would make those excess water credits available for sale to the residents and businesses that had languished on the city’s water waiting list, sometimes for years.
According to a new study by Audubon California, the illegal mooring of private boats has caused significant harm to the eelgrass bed in that bay, with 25 to 41 percent of the seafloor habitat suffering damage. … The number of boats moored in Richardson Bay, known as “anchor-outs,” has increased from about 90 boats in the early 2000s to as many as 240 in 2016.
Napa County’s latest watershed symposium came at a time when tensions are high over how to protect trees and reservoirs in the area’s mountains. Close to 200 people from various backgrounds came to Copia on Thursday for an A-to-Z look at what’s happening in the watersheds. Scientists, elected officials, wine industry members and citizen activists all attended.
The funding allows CalTrout to develop a broad team of agency partners to restore a 950-acre tidal marsh estuary surrounding Cannibal Island, adjacent to the mouth of the Eel River. … The goal of restoration is to transform the monotypic landscape of diked and drained land back to a mosaic of natural habitats and pasture with reconnected tidal slough channels and access for aquatic-dependent species.
There is a unique partnership happening in Arizona between farmers, those involved in the malting process, and brewers that is saving thousands of gallons of water from being taken from the Verde River.
Well, apparently we’re all about to die again. The internet says so. And while the internet often says we’re all about to die, and we don’t, for some reason people still unquestionably believe the next scare to come down the information highway. So it is with the latest local scare, involving the Oroville Dam spillway.
The Colorado River — of which the Green is the biggest tributary — is the main water source for 40 million people. It’s already overallocated, and climate change is predicted to shrink flows by up to 50 percent by the end of the century. We’re finally coming to grips with those forecasts and beginning to heed Powell’s century-and-a-half-old warnings. But it’s taken drought and desperation to get us there, and we have to do better.
On March 28, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to promote increased oil and gas development… Then, in April 2019, in response to the President’s order, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed opening up more than 1 million acres of public land in California’s Central Valley and southern Central Coast to oil and gas production.
It takes more than one wet year to not only refill reservoirs but also recharge aquifers and return moisture in parched soils to normal levels. … All this upstream snowpack and rain is predicted to boost Powell to 47% of capacity by the end of the year, another three or four feet, but there’ll still be plenty of the “bathtub ring” visible. It’s been 36 years since Powell was full. It’s not likely it’ll ever fill again.
Clean water is important, and there are a million people in the Central Valley without access to it. But do we need a new tax to pay for it? Maybe we don’t. Just last week, a state Senate budget subcommittee eliminated Gov. Newsom’s recommendation for a water tax and replaced it with a $150 million continuous appropriation from the General Fund.
Federal engineers are raising alarms that a “significant flood event” could breach the spillway of Southern California’s aging Prado Dam and potentially inundate dozens of Orange County communities from Disneyland to Newport Beach. After conducting an assessment of the 78-year-old structure earlier this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it was raising the dam’s risk category from “moderate” to “high urgency.”
A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday to block the Federal Emergency Management Agency from moving forward with its plans to offer flood insurance to developers and property owners in 100-year flood zones in California, finding that the agency failed to consider effects development might have on endangered wildlife in those areas.
California agencies have appealed to air pollution control officials to change the rules after backup generators failed and water stopped pumping as wildfires burned last year. They said they need more time to test and maintain diesel-operated generators that power water facilities during a fire. Because of air pollution concerns, the agencies are limited to testing the diesel-powered generators as little as 20 hours per year in some cases.
Insisting the state made a commitment, a central Arizona lawmaker and farmers he represents are making a last-ditch pitch for $20 million from taxpayers to drill new wells and water delivery canals. Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, said Thursday the farmers in Pinal County agreed to give up their right to Colorado River water to help the state come up with a plan to deal with the drought. In exchange they were given the right to take additional water out of the ground.
When you hear news about ice loss from Greenland or Antarctica, an aquifer in California that is getting depleted, or a new explanation for a wobble in Earth’s rotation, you might not realize that all these findings may rely on data from one single mission
The Paradise Irrigation District said it plans on testing water from lot-to-lot instead of in zoned areas. The process will also give priority to people currently living in their homes or in temporary housing on their properties in Paradise. Kevin Phillips, the district’s director, said the majority of testing they’ve done shows no contamination in the main lines, but individual services lines are still showing volatile organic compounds, like benzene.
