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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… Advocates for communities overburdened by industrial
pollution and the impacts of climate change say years of
progress toward cleaner air, water and corporate accountability
are at stake. … While it took down environmental justice
maps and datasets, the EPA published a new webpage inviting
fossil fuel and chemical companies to apply for presidential
exemptions to pollution limits. … The EPA recently set
up a new webpage with step-by-step instructions to apply for
two-year waivers from nine major EPA pollution protections. …
The rules include tougher limits on dangerous pollution from
smokestacks and chemical plants, new emission standards for
cars and trucks for reducing asthma and lung disease, and a
historic rule designed to update water systems and protect
children from lead in drinking water.
California’s largest lake is shrinking—and transforming. NBC
Palm Springs’ Olivia Sandusky set sail from Bombay Beach to
explore the beauty, controversy, and potential of the Salton
Sea. Stretching 343 square miles and sitting 226 feet below sea
level, the Salton Sea is both majestic and endangered. Local
photographer Kevin Key, who now calls Bombay Beach home, says
he fell in love with the tranquility and surreal sunsets. But
the picturesque views mask serious problems: pollution from
agricultural runoff, receding shorelines, and a sharp decline
in wildlife. Despite decades of restoration attempts, many
question whether meaningful progress is being made. At the
sea’s south end, an ambitious future is taking shape: Lithium
Valley. With over 17 million metric tons of lithium beneath its
geothermal brine, the area is a focal point for renewable
energy development.
Understanding how solar PV installations affect the landscape
and its critical resources is crucial to achieve sustainable
net-zero energy production. To enhance this understanding, we
investigate the consequences of converting agricultural fields
to solar photovoltaic installations, which we refer to as
‘agrisolar’ co-location. We present a food, energy, water and
economic impact analysis of agricultural output offset by
agrisolar co-location for 925 arrays (2.53 GWp covering
3,930 ha) spanning the California Central Valley. We find that
agrisolar co-location displaces food production but increases
economic security and water sustainability for farmers. Given
the unprecedented pace of solar PV expansion globally, these
results highlight the need for a deeper understanding of the
multifaceted outcomes of agricultural and solar PV co-location
decisions.
The Trump administration on Wednesday signaled it intends to
approve a land transfer that will allow a foreign company to
mine a sacred Indigenous site in Arizona, where local tribes
and environmentalists have fought the project for decades and
before federal courts rule on lawsuits over the
project. … The federal government’s initial
environmental impact statement for Resolution Copper’s mine
concludes that the project will destroy sacred oak groves,
sacred springs and burial sites, resulting in what “would be an
indescribable hardship to those peoples.” It would also use as
much water each year as the city of Tempe,
home to Arizona State University and 185,000 people. It would
pull water from the same tapped-out aquifer
the Phoenix metro area relies on, where Arizona has prohibited
any more extraction except for exempted uses like mines.
The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is
taking legal action against the new owners of the pipeline
involved in the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill. On Thursday, the board
unanimously voted to refer Sable Offshore Corp. to the
California Attorney General for allegedly violating state water
laws by polluting waterways. The company is accused of
performing pipeline work along the Gaviota Coast without proper
permits and dumping waste into nearby streams. Sable reportedly
ignored warnings and withheld key information.
… According to state officials, Sable’s work on the
offshore platform – which includes the pipeline tied to the
2015 Refugio oil spill – violates several sections of the
state’s water code and threatens water quality.
Water is essential to daily life, but few people realize the
journey it takes before reaching their taps. In Burbank. Every
drop of drinking water originates from hundreds of miles away,
making Burbank uniquely dependent on external suppliers. The
cost of importing this water continues to rise, and it is
important to understand the factors driving these costs and how
they may impact our community in the future. Unlike other
cities that can tap into local rivers or lakes, Burbank’s
drinking water is entirely purchased from the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California (MWD). This imported
water originates from two sources – water from the San
Francisco Bay Delta, which includes runoff from melting snow in
the Northern Sierra Nevada mountains, and the Colorado
River. –Written by Richard Wilson, assistant general manager,
water systems at Burbank Water and Power.
… Today, more than 27 million people in the three states rely
on water from the Colorado River—roughly two-thirds of the
total population that the river serves. Yet even as that
dependence on the river grew, a collision between human and
environmental needs was brewing. … For municipal and
agricultural water managers who depended on the Colorado, the
growing list of endangered species was a wakeup call. It
spurred a decade-long effort to craft a multi-party agreement
that allowed water agencies to continue delivering water to
their users while staying ahead of the mounting endangered
species issues. That effort has largely proven successful, but
as the program now crosses the 20-year mark, new questions are
arising about how to keep it strong for the next three decades
in the face of grinding drought, contentious negotiations over
the river’s future, and new uncertainties about the federal
government’s role in its continued implementation.
The end of the last California ice age 10,000 years ago did the
final carving of Yosemite Valley. It’s part of the
400-mile-long stretch of granite we now call the Sierra that
tectonic forces pushed upward over 2.4 million years ago. The
global warming that followed the end of the last ice age gets
credit for creating the Rodney Dangerfield of California’s
great natural wonders — the Sacramento San Joaquin
Delta. Before temperatures started heating up to force the
retreat of the vast glaciers that once covered a large swath of
what is today eastern California, the sea level was more than
300 feet lower with the edge of present-day San Francisco
nearly 20 miles from the ocean. The Great Central Valley was a
massive inland sea. And at the bottom of that sea was what is
today the Delta.
As Trump administration firings at the National Weather
Service continue to impact local offices across the U.S.,
the agency announced Thursday that staffing limitations may
further reduce or suspend the launch of weather balloons. The
announcement follows weeks of legal uncertainty over
widespread staff reductions, and comes the day after the
agency’s Sacramento office announced that it would stop
answering public phone lines and reduce the extent and
frequency of certain forecasting products due to “critically
reduced staffing.” Prior to that announcement, the office
said it would be limiting its weather updates on social
media. The changes are among the first of many that weather
service managers say they are likely to make as they prepare
for an era of “degraded operations” under the current
administration.
With the summer tourism season on the horizon, a bipartisan
group of Western Slope state lawmakers is warning of “serious
risk” to Colorado’s public lands if U.S. Forest Service cuts
aren’t reversed. In an April 2 letter to United States
Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers
called for thousands of recently-fired Forest Service staff to
be rehired. … The letter states that mountain snowpack
runoff — the majority of which flows from national forest lands
on Colorado’s Western Slope — supplies three-quarters
of the water supply for the state’s four major river
systems. “The surface water from these national
forestlands supports drinking water needs, agriculture,
industrial uses, recreation, and habitat for aquatic life
throughout the West,” the letter states. “The potential is
great for national forest management to positively or
negatively influence the reliability of these water supplies,
both in quantity and quality.”
This week, a public federal process determined there will be no
commercial salmon fishing off California’s coast for the third
year in a row. It’s a grim milestone for our state. While
we will see some recreational ocean fishing, we’re at the
low-water mark. … For the salmon lovers among us, these
are dark times. But I see glimmers of hope. … Two weeks ago,
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife revealed the
progress on California’s “Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier
Future.” It was an update on the strategy Gov. Gavin Newsom
released last year, which outlined dozens of key action items
the state must take to better support healthy salmon
populations. In the last year alone, state fish and
wildlife and its partner agencies have made critical headway on
nearly 70% of the action items set by Gov. Newsom. Another 26%
are already done. –Written by Charlton H. Bonham, director of the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
While cooler temperatures and more rain in March helped
mitigate drought in some regions in California, drought
conditions aren’t forecasted to improve for large swaths of the
state in the coming months. A seasonal drought
outlook by the Climate Prediction Center released on
Thursday, April 17, valid through July 31, forecasts that
Southern California and a central pocket of the state will see
drought conditions persist with no improvement. It comes as a
National Integrated Drought Information System update issued on
April 10 reported that below-normal temperatures and
higher-than-normal rainfall in March helped mitigate drought in
the Central Valley and San Diego. Yet nearly 40% of
California is in a drought, according to the latest available
data from the U.S. Drought Monitor accessed on April 17.
The Marin Municipal Water District took another step this week
in pursuit of what the agency says is its largest supply and
drought resiliency project in 40 years. The district board
voted unanimously on Tuesday to authorize spending $9.7 million
to design a pipeline that would tap into an existing aqueduct
system to get Sonoma County water to Marin reservoirs. The
pipeline project was selected in February as the district’s
priority effort to boost supply. If completed, it would be the
largest water supply project since Kent Lake was expanded in
1982, according to the district. … Estimated at $167
million, the proposed project would construct a 13-mile,
36-inch pipeline and a pump station to redirect some of that
(excess) water into the Nicasio Reservoir for storage. The
pipeline could yield 3,800 to 4,750 acre-feet of water a year.
Construction has officially begun on a new $267 million water
treatment facility along Navajo Route 36 near Shiprock, New
Mexico. The San Juan Lateral Water Treatment Plant, expected to
be completed by late 2028, will play a vital role in securing
clean drinking water for more than 200,000 people over the next
four decades, including communities in Arizona. … Once
operational, the plant will treat up to 18.8 million gallons of
water daily—meeting Safe Drinking Water Act standards—with the
capacity to double that output to 37.6 million gallons per day
as needed. In addition to delivering long-term water security,
the facility is expected to create 200 jobs during its
development.
A new partnership between three organizations will explore
options for raising the dam at Lake Mendocino to boost the
water supply supporting agriculture and recreation. State and
local politicians, tribal officials and representatives from
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met this past Friday at Lake
Mendocino to formalize a cost-sharing agreement for the Coyote
Valley Dam General Investigation Study. According to the
Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, Lake
Mendocino provides drinking water for over 650,000 people in
Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties and plays a role in flood
control. The study, led by a partnership between the
commission, the Lytton Rancheria and the Corps of Engineers
will assess the prospects of greater water supply and potential
federal interest in reducing flood risks.
Imperial Beach city leaders are calling for more federal
accountability and legislative actions to address the ongoing
Tijuana River pollution. In a four to one vote, the city
council approved a resolution Wednesday night that lists
several priorities to help solve the public health
crisis. Mayor Paloma Aguirre was the only dissenting vote.
The resolution, spearheaded by Councilmember Mitch McKay, is
largely symbolic as Imperial Beach has no jurisdiction over any
of the actions, but it intends to send a message to the federal
government, as well as state and local partners, about possible
next steps. … The resolution urges Congress to adopt
legislation that strengthens enforcement of international water
and environmental treaty obligations, and hold Mexico
accountable for failing to control transboundary pollution in
the Tijuana River.
At least one more dose of winter is headed to Utah’s mountains
while the state’s snowpack melts. After previously issuing a
winter storm watch, the National Weather Service issued a
winter weather advisory for Utah’s central and southern ranges,
which could receive up to a foot of snow at its highest points
by Friday night, as an incoming storm will likely impact those
regions the most. Still, other mountain ranges in the state
could pick up decent totals over the next few days. “(It’ll be)
a good dose of water for our state,” said KSL meteorologist
Matt Johnson.
Last October, an invasive species never before seen in
North America was discovered in the deep waters of the
Port of Stockton, about 92 miles east of San Francisco. No
larger than the size of a paperclip, the seemingly innocuous,
caramel-colored shells of golden mussels clinging to buoys and
monitoring equipment in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — and
subsequently found at O’Neill Forebay in the San Luis Reservoir
near Los Banos — have left California officials scrambling to
stop the spread. On Wednesday, the California Department
of Fish and Wildlife released its plan to address
what it’s calling an “urgent invasive species threat,” with
strategies to prevent further distribution of golden mussels
and to minimize their impact on the environment, recreation,
agriculture and, notably, drinking water infrastructure.
Wastewater industry professionals are split when it comes to
President Donald Trump’s performance in office so far. In a
poll conducted by Wastewater Digest following President Trump’s
first few months in office, roughly 50% of respondents felt
“very negative” or “somewhat negative” about his performance so
far as it relates to the wastewater sector. Roughly 44% felt
“very positive” or “somewhat positive,” and around 6% were
“neutral” on the topic. Responses about President Trump’s
performance varied, with some people praising his first few
months in office, while others were concerned about the future
of the country. Hot topics included comments about the economy,
regulations, tariffs and the environment.
A team of researchers at the University of Oxford have
uncovered crucial evidence for the origin of water on Earth.
Using a rare type of meteorite, known as an enstatite
chondrite, which has a composition analogous to that of the
early Earth (4.55 billion years ago), they have found a source
of hydrogen which would have been critical for the formation of
water molecules. Crucially, they demonstrated that the
hydrogen present in this material was intrinsic, and not from
contamination. This suggests that the material which our planet
was built from was far richer in hydrogen than previously
thought. The findings, which support the theory that the
formation of habitable conditions on Earth did not rely on
asteroids hitting Earth, have been published in the journal
Icarus.
