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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California state government and many local agencies put a
premium on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to
climate change. But recent developments underscore the parallel
emphasis on adapting to the effects of global warming — from
advances in sea-level rise strategies to stretching water
supplies to thinning forests at high risk for wildfire. The
scientific consensus that global warming is an existential
threat is facing renewed challenge, especially with
skeptic-in-chief Donald Trump taking up residence in the White
House again next month. Regardless of what one thinks about
climate change, it’s a fact that the seas are
rising, wildfires are more intense and
drought-afflicted water supplies are shrinking. Like efforts to
slow or reverse climate change, projects to adapt to it aren’t
cheap. But in many cases, not making the investments can be
more expensive. —Written by Michael Smolens, columnist for The
San Diego Union-Tribune
Two local environmental groups have initiated a potential
lawsuit against SeaWorld San Diego alleging ongoing Clean Water
Act violations in and around Mission Bay connected with the
marine park’s fireworks displays and wastewater discharges. The
Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation and San Diego
Coastkeeper have sent a notice of intent letter to SeaWorld
addressing numerous alleged violations of both its fireworks
and waste discharge permits. … The letter describes “shocking
amounts” of evidence collected from the waters surrounding
SeaWorld’s fireworks launch barge. SeaWorld routinely
discharges plastic caps, wires, trash, and other chemical-laden
debris into Mission Bay in violation of multiple requirements
of the regional Fireworks Permit, and fails to follow its
post-event cleanup protocols, claims CERF and San Diego
Coastkeeper in their notice letter. SeaWorld has defended its
continuing seasonal fireworks displays as a major attraction of
its annual schedule. “SeaWorld’s fireworks displays are
monitored and regulated by multiple government agencies …
The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
on Wednesday, Dec. 18, signed a ceremonial agreement that will
provide the Nation with $800,000 toward extensive improvements
to a 50-year-old wastewater system serving low-income
households at Xaa-wan’-k’wvt (Howonquet) Village and Resort in
Smith River, Calif. The Nation’s Tribal Council met with U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers representatives for a ceremonial
signing of the agreement, exchange gifts and enjoy a meal while
taking in the view of the Smith River Estuary, just a few miles
south of the California/Oregon border. Attendees discussed the
wastewater system project planned for the area as well as
Tolowa Dee-ni’ culture, history and environmental practices.
The California Fish and Game Commission (Commission) acted on a
variety of issues affecting California’s natural resources
at its Dec.11-12 meeting in Sacramento, including
emergency action to list the invasive golden mussel as a
restricted species. The Commission also acted to extend
emergency regulations 90 days for the recreational
catch-and-release white sturgeon season and added language for
permitted catch handling. The public was able to participate in
the meeting in person, via webinar and by phone. To protect
California against the spread of invasive golden mussel
(Limnoperna fortunei) discovered Oct. 17 at the Port of
Stockton, and in the days following as far south as San Luis
Reservoir’s O’Neill Forebay, the Commission added golden
mussel to the list of species restricted from live
importation, transportation and possession. This discovery is
North America’s first; golden mussel is native to China and
Southeast Asia and was likely transported across the ocean on
large ships.
A barrage of storms known as atmospheric rivers is expected to
soak the West Coast over the next eight to 10 days, raising the
risk of flooding, power outages and holiday travel disruptions
leading up to Christmas in a region that has already
experienced significant weather activity this season. The bulk
of the rain and snow is likely to fall between British Columbia
and Northern California, with Washington and Oregon poised to
have some of the wettest, sloppiest weather. Several storms,
including one that swept into the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday
night, are stacked up in the forecast, said Marty Ralph, the
director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes
at the University of California, San Diego.
Sonoma County has once again suspended permitting for
non-emergency well drilling, this time under the order of a
Sonoma County judge. The order follows an August ruling in
which Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo determined the county
violated state environmental law in its attempt to draft a
controversial ordinance governing wells and groundwater use. In
light of that finding, the county must halt non-emergency
well-permitting until it can complete an environmental review
of the ordinance in alignment with state law, the court
ordered. The county received the directive Wednesday afternoon
and “immediately stopped” issuing permits for non-emergency
wells, said Tennis Wick, director of Permit Sonoma, the
county’s planning and permitting department. But the county has
not yet begun the environmental review process because it plans
to appeal the decision, Wick said.
The California Legislature and state agencies approved over
1,000 new laws and regulations which will go into effect in
2025, including a State Water Resources Control Board (State
Board) regulation requiring water conservation planning and
reporting, amendments to the Ralph M. Brown Act (Brown Act),
significant penalties for violation of certain housing laws,
and employment legislation pertaining to the use of paid leave,
worker protections, and job postings. … The State Board’s
regulation, Making Conservation a California Way of Life
(Regulation), was adopted in summer 2024 and takes effect in
2025, implementing two laws enacted in 2018 that directed the
State Board to develop a regulatory framework advancing
long-term water use efficiency.
Our 2024 California Water Leaders cohort completed
its year with a report on its policy recommendations for
ensuring the state’s over-pumped groundwater
basins reach sustainability under the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act. The landmark law known as SGMA
turned 10 in 2024 as many of the state’s sustainability plans
were moving into implementation. The goal is for those basins
to become sustainable by 2040 or 2042. The Water Leaders
cohort of 20 up-and-coming leaders – engineers,
attorneys, planners, scientists, water managers and other
professionals from water-related organizations –
worked collaboratively and had full editorial control on the
report.
Endangered fish recovery programs in Colorado and three other
Western states were given renewed access to federal funds
thanks to a bill passed Wednesday by Congress. Lawmakers
gave the go-ahead to the Bureau of Reclamation to spend tax
dollars on the programs with just days left in a lame-duck
session, which adjourns Friday. The news was welcomed in
Colorado, where the programs help protect four threatened and
endangered species in the Colorado River and
San Juan River basins. Lawmakers voted to reauthorize
the federal funding for seven years for two programs: the
Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program
— which operates in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — and the
San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program — which
spans Colorado and New Mexico. The total funding amount is yet
to be determined. The federal government allocated about $16.6
million, total, for the two programs between October 2023 and
September 2024.
Negotiations focusing on how Friant Water Authority will repay
the Bureau of Reclamation for a $22.2 million study mapping out
how to fix the northern and southern portions of the sinking
Friant-Kern Canal began Wednesday in Fresno. “We anticipate
these talks should go smoothly, and we look forward to the
conversation,” Wilson Orvis, Friant’s chief financial officer,
said at the beginning of the meeting, which went on for another
three hours as both sides scoured the draft contract line by
line. The details are vitally important, said one observer who
is involved in multiple legal actions over how to pay for
already completed repairs on one section of the canal. “Clarity
would have and will avoid further disputes as has occurred with
Phase 1 of the Middle Reach Capacity Correction Project,” said
Sean Geivet, General Manager of the Terra Bella, Saucelito and
Porterville irrigation districts.
Kate MacGregor, who served as Interior deputy secretary during
the Trump administration, is leading the Trump transition
effort at that department, according to a person who works for
the Biden administration. MacGregor, who could return as
Interior’s deputy in a second Trump term, held several other
senior posts at the department under Trump, including as deputy
chief of staff for policy and principal deputy assistant
secretary for land and minerals management. The Trump
transition landing team had not yet arrived at the Interior
Department headquarters as of Wednesday afternoon, said the
Biden administration source, who was granted anonymity to
discuss transition details that had not been publicly
announced.
For decades, California’s water debates have centered on a
familiar tension: agriculture versus urban consumption.
Agriculture, which consumes 80% of the state’s developed water
supply, has long dominated discussions about conservation and
efficiency. Yet, a new contender is emerging, one poised to
dwarf agriculture in water demand and reshape the state’s water
future: artificial intelligence (AI). … For decades,
agriculture has been framed as the primary focus of water
conservation efforts, with farmers frequently cast as both
stewards and villains of California’s strained water
resources. While agriculture dominates the present, the
future tells a different story. AI, fueled by data centers
housing millions of servers, is on a trajectory to become a
massive water consumer. These data centers rely heavily on
water-intensive cooling systems to maintain the functionality
of high-performance chips that power AI applications. —Written by Dean Florez, past senator from Central
Valley and a member of the California Air Resources Board
A recent study found elevated levels of radiation at a former
dump turned busy community space, but experts say the public
has little to worry about. Similar to other public parks, the
Albany Bulb was formed on top of what was previously a landfill
created along the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bayfront,
just north of Berkeley. The main portion of the park, about 40
acres, is owned by Albany while the East Bay Regional Parks
District owns the northern stretch of land leading up to the
bulb and the state owns the southern portion. … Albany
was ordered to survey the Albany Bulb for radiation by the
San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control
Board after staff found a letter dated March 28, 1980,
from Stauffer Chemical Company to the Department of
Health Services that indicated the company had been disposing
of toxic waste in the old landfill between 1960 and 1971.
A coalition of environmental groups challenged California’s
leading climate regulator Wednesday, alleging that a recent
update to a leading climate program will create additional
pollution in the state’s San Joaquin Valley. Their lawsuit
filed in Fresno county superior court calls on the California
Air Resources Board to “adequately disclose, analyze and
mitigate the significant environmental impact” caused by
amendments to Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).
… Environmental laws “require CARB to acknowledge the
obvious—that providing substantial financial benefits for the
production of fuel derived from manure at factory farms
incentivizes factory farm expansion,” environmentalists wrote
in the complaint. But the agency “fails to adequately evaluate
and mitigate their impacts, including increased local
air pollution, impacts to groundwater, and climate
change,” they determined. CARB’s environmental review,
the petitioners concluded, “cannot support a meaningful process
or informed decisions about the LCFS amendments.”
There is almost no disagreement any longer among scientists
that climate change is a reality and that its effects are
already upon us. A number of researchers at Cal State Monterey
Bay are engaged in work that is either measuring those effects
or finding ways to combat them. Among the studies are those
looking at off-gassing from agricultural fields, warmer ocean
water’s impact on coral reefs, and wildlife preservation.
… Arun Jani, assistant professor in the Biology and
Chemistry department, is trying to determine the optimum use of
nitrogen as a fertilizer in agricultural fields in the hope of
reducing current levels. His projects run from fields near
Soledad to test plots in Watsonville. In addition to
decreased fertilizer use, Jani is also evaluating the effects
of using a material called biochar in the soil and determining
ideal crop rotations. … Nitrogen fertilizers not only produce
nitrous oxide gas, but they can also leach into groundwater and
raise levels of nitrate, a harmful chemical. The industry
standard for nitrogen fertilizers is to use 150 pounds per
acre. Jani’s studies have shown that much less of the chemical
can be used effectively for area crops.
Imperial Irrigation District is considering sharply raising
electric rates over the next three years to meet what its
senior staff and a consultant say could be a future $100
million shortfall in covering costs of service and
infrastructure upgrades necessary to provide reliable power to
all of Imperial County and large stretches of the Coachella
Valley. The district’s budget is presently in the black, with
large cash reserves available now, a close read of the
consultant’s report shows. But officials stressed those could
dry up in future years. The rate hikes would affect all
categories of customers, including residential, agricultural,
commercial and municipal if IID’s board of directors adopts the
recommendations in a report prepared by NewGen Strategies and
Solutions, which was presented on Tuesday. IID is not about to
go bankrupt. The agency procured $318 million in various
government grants for power and water programs in 2024, has
applied for another $400 million, and has hefty total cash
reserves, though a spokesman could not immediately provide an
exact amount.
A little more than a third of the country is experiencing some
level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The
worst-hit areas include parts of Arizona, Utah and California,
as well as some regions of Texas. But areas in New Jersey,
Delaware and Massachusetts are also seeing extreme drought, and
much of the East Coast is currently in a moderate drought.
While this is somewhat new for those East Coasters, the West
has been dealing with drought for years. But that’s not the
only difference between drought in the East and drought in the
West. Andrea Thompson, associate editor for earth and the
environment at Scientific American, has written about this and
joined The Show to discuss, starting with what some of those
differences are.
… In 2020, watchdog groups first discovered PFAS in certain
pesticides, which directed national attention to whether farm
chemicals might be another source of contamination. How
significant of a PFAS source pesticides might be remains
unresolved, especially because different highly accredited labs
have produced conflicting tests. One initial study found high
levels of PFAS in common pesticides, but when the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did its own testing on
the same products, it reported none. Environmental groups are
currently contesting the agency’s report. Regardless of
those results, a few things have become clear: Based on the
most commonly used global definition of PFAS, more than 60
pesticides registered by the EPA contain an active ingredient
defined as PFAS. Other pesticides may contain PFAS as
undisclosed additives or from chemicals leaching from the
plastic containers in which they’re stored.
A new dataset for the Santiam River in Oregon, published by the
U.S. Geological Survey, provides a highly detailed underwater
3D elevation map that will help support fish habitat
restoration and flood modeling work. The work was done as
part of the USGS 3D Elevation Program, known as 3DEP, which
uses a next-generation mapping technology to obtain highly
detailed three-dimensional elevation information about the
natural and constructed landscapes of the Nation, including
surfaces under rivers and other inland waterbodies. Known as
topobathymetric lidar, the technology uses laser pulses that
penetrate water to provide accurate measurements of both the
riverbed and the surrounding topography. The data are essential
for understanding river dynamics, aquatic habitat conditions
and flood risk. It will also be used to develop models of
habitat availability for salmon and steelhead and other fish
species in relation to river flow below Willamette Valley
system dams.
Coby Hunt’s farm field near the southeast Utah town of Green
River would normally be filled with alfalfa growing up to his
knees. This year, however, it was barren — pale gray dirt
cracking under the late summer sun. The only green things were
scraggly scraps of whatever accidental plants somehow survived
without irrigation. … “It hurts,” he said as he surveyed
the desolate field. “But there’s also a benefit of it looking
like this, right?” That benefit is taking the water he could
have used to irrigate his land and leaving it in the nearby
Green River, which flows to the increasingly strained Colorado
River. … Across Utah, farmers are experimenting with ways to
tighten their water use as agriculture, drought and population
growth collide to put pressure on the state’s limited water
resources. Some are installing more efficient irrigation
technology. Others are testing unconventional crops. In Hunt’s
case, he’s taking some of his farmland out of commission
entirely — for a time and for a price.
