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 Doug Beeman.
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The drinking water for a family near Keyes comes from an
unusual source: It’s extracted from air. Such systems could
help parts of the Central Valley with polluted wells, and parts
of the world where water is always in short supply. The idea is
being tested by the Valley Water Collaborative, which has
delivered free bottled supplies since last year in parts of
Stanislaus and Merced counties. The new system yields just
10 gallons a day, but that’s enough for the drinking and
cooking needs of a typical household.
On a small scale, aquifers — subsurface natural basins — have
been recharged with flood waters from extreme storms for
decades. Now, a new Department of Water Resources (DWR)
assessment shows how Flood Managed Aquifer Recharge, or
Flood-MAR, can help reduce flood risk and boost groundwater
supplies across large areas of land. … In partnership
with the Merced Irrigation District, Sustainable Conservation,
and others, DWR experts analyzed how this would work in the
Merced River —a 145-mile-long tributary of the San Joaquin
River. The Merced River, which flows from the Sierra
Nevada to the San Joaquin Valley, could be much more vulnerable
to heavy flooding as storms intensify.
Anticipated bursts of intense rain soaking Reno this week
prompted a flood watch from the National Weather Service. The
phenomenon, known as a pulsing storm, is caused by a monsoonal
flow that works its way up from the Gulf of California and even
the Gulf of Mexico. When the monsoonal flow collides with
high pressure, the result is “torrential rainfall,” said
Heather Richards, meteorologist with NWS Reno. The effect was
first felt Wednesday night when 1.22 inches of rain fell in
just one hour at the Reno airport. This overwhelmed the
drainage capabilities, flooded streams and washed out some
downtown streets.
Californians say their top environmental issue is water supply
and drought, and most are unhappy with efforts by the state and
their own communities to respond. While residents link drought
and wildfires to climate change, they support only certain
policies meant to address the problem. In a recent
presentation, survey analyst Deja Thomas shared these and other
findings from the latest PPIC survey on Californians and the
environment and discussed insights from the report with survey
analyst Rachel Lawler.
The drought in the West and climate change have smaller cities
rethinking their economies, especially if their main business
is agriculture. On California’s Central Coast, one town is
trying to diversify beyond its main moneymaker – grapes and
wine. … Lynn Hamilton [a professor of agribusiness at
nearby Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo] says … “The attitude
here, it seems to be – until recently – that, oh, we’re just a
rainy season away from being saved. And I think people are now
starting to realize that that’s not true any longer.”
Los Angeles residents have continued to reduce water usage at a
steady pace to offset a historic drought, and those efforts
appear to be working, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
officials said at a council committee meeting Thursday.
Officials projected an 11% reduction in water use for the month
of July compared to the previous two Julys. That topped a 9%
reduction in the month of June, the lowest water use for any
June in Los Angeles since 1970. The report updating water
supply conditions and drought response actions was presented to
the Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and River
Committee on Thursday.
When we discuss the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (“ENSO” for
short) at the blog, we often take a rather human or physics-y
view of the climate phenomenon. We’ve published loads of
articles discussing the mechanics for how ENSO works in the
atmosphere and the ocean, and how ENSO impacts humans from
droughts and wildfires to floods. … If ENSO can
affect climate patterns thousands of miles away from the
central/eastern equatorial Pacific… why can’t it also affect
marine life within that distance? Specifically, might it affect
one of the poster fish of the North Pacific, the salmon?
It wasn’t until she was 26 and had one degree in environmental
science and another in water recycling that Nina Gordon-Kirsch
learned where the water in her faucet came from. The Mokelumne
River, which carries snowmelt from the Sierras through the
Central Valley and out to the San Francisco Bay delta, is
surprisingly little-known considering how many lives depend on
it.
The shell of the “All American,” an 85-foot boat that went up
in flames in June, floated in an industrial area of the
Sacramento River for the last six weeks with no one to claim
it. On Wednesday morning, the ship finally left the river. A
barge loaded with construction equipment moored beside the boat
and began dismantling it, ripping off pieces of wood to be
transported to a waste facility. Sacramento County leaders hope
that extraction marks just the beginning of their new push to
clear the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of dozens of abandoned
boats cluttering up waterways … and are asking state
lawmakers pass a bill that would set aside $25 million to seed
the cleanup work.
Small Valley communities are drying up. The latest town to find
itself waterless is Tooleville, east of Exeter on Highway 65.
In the middle of July, with temperatures soaring and the
intense Valley summer in full swing, residents of the town
found the well they rely on was delivering just a dribble where
it was working at all. With the aid of Self-Help Enterprises,
the town is now dependent on a pair of water tanks and costly
daily deliveries of trucked-in water.
For four years, thousands of soil samples and paint chips taken
from homes, schools, parks and parkways near the former Exide
battery facility have been stored inside shipping containers at
a Superfund site. Without consulting local officials or
residents, California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control
transported the samples to the Stringfellow facility, an Inland
Empire quarry that once served as an industrial dumping ground
— one that leaked toxic chemicals into groundwater and soil
over several decades.
Summer 2022 is a season of ecological restoration for the
Department of Water Resources (DWR). From June 23 to July
14, 2022, DWR and partners celebrated four multi-benefit
restoration projects taking place in California’s Central
Valley including the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta),
Suisun Marsh, and Yolo Bypass region. Each of these projects
have the capacity to deliver multiple benefits that include
habitat restoration, supporting endangered species, flood risk
reduction, or public access.
Healthy soil is a potent tool to combat the impacts of drought
on farms and ranches. By using conservation practices that
build healthy soil—like cover cropping, conservation tillage,
and compost—growers increase the natural water storage
potential of their land. Healthy soil captures more water when
it rains and holds onto that water for future crop use,
allowing farms with healthy soil to deliver stable yields, even
in drought years.
On a recent, scorching afternoon in Albuquerque, off-road
vehicles cruised up and down a stretch of dry riverbed where
normally the Rio Grande flows. The drivers weren’t
thrill-seekers, but biologists hoping to save as many
endangered fish as they could before the sun turned shrinking
pools of water into dust. For the first time in four decades,
America’s fifth-longest river went dry in Albuquerque last
week. Habitat for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow — a
shimmery, pinky-sized native fish — went with it.
American Cruise Lines have announced their first California
cruise through the California Delta, exploring San Francisco,
Napa Valley and the San Joaquin Valley. According to the news
release, operating round trip, the cruise will take guests from
San Francisco into Wine Country along the Napa River. It will
also take guests through the San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay,
and the San Joaquin River. The new cruise line will be eight
days with stops in San Francisco, Napa, Valley, Stockton, and
Sacramento.
As I wrote this, news arrived that Sen. Joe Manchin — the
coal-loving Democrat from West Virginia — finally agreed to
support a climate bill that would potentially cut
planet-warming emissions by some 40% by 2030. It will be a huge
step forward (fossil fuel-friendly provisions aside) if it
makes it through Congress, but it won’t do much to ease the
West’s desiccation anytime soon. That gives the collective
users of the region’s water no choice but to cut our
consumption, and fast. -Written by Jonathan Thompson, a contributing
editor at High Country News and author
of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became
the Battlefront of American Public Lands.
In their pleas to Western states to cut back on water use from
the Colorado River Basin, federal officials are keenly focused
on keeping Lake Powell’s elevation at 3,490 feet — the minimum
needed to keep hydropower humming at Glen Canyon Dam. But if
federal efforts can’t stop the reservoir from shrinking to new
lows — its elevation is 3,536 feet as of Monday — the lights
going out might not even be the worst problem. If it dips 60
feet below its current level, the already dwindling Colorado
River could trickle down into a fraction of what is expected
for states below the dam, a new analysis by conservation groups
found.
California lawmakers representing the state’s Delta area are
calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to cancel his plan for an
underground tunnel that would reroute water from Northern to
Southern California. Representatives John Garamendi, Josh
Harder, Jerry McNerney and Mike Thompson, all Democrats,
released a joint statement in response to the draft
environmental impact report for the project.
Just a day after it ignited on July 29th, California’s McKinney
Fire exploded in intensity, burning so hot that it exceeded a
satellite sensor’s ability to measure it while lofting multiple
fire clouds high into the atmosphere. Now, heavy rains in the
area have sent torrents of water, mud and debris down streams,
knocking out a bridge and inuring a man who was helping to
battle the blaze — which has grown to a third of the size of
New York City.
The Western US is an empire built on snow. And that snow is
vanishing. … That snowmelt, often traveling hundreds of
miles from mountain top to tap, sustains the booming
desert communities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake
City — even coastal Los Angeles and San Francisco.
… Those dwindling snow levels — a trend that’s
extremely unlikely to reverse as temperatures keep rising
— will demand hard choices if the 11 states in the Western
US are to continue to thrive. So far, responses to the
worsening water crisis have not matched the scale of the
problem.
