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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No matter where you look at Lake Shasta you can see the
dramatic “bathtub ring” – bright orange soil contrasting with
the blue water and the green tree line. It’s a visual
reminder of the severity of California’s drought, and one not
seen on a day-to-day basis in places like the Bay Area. But for
those who work and live at Lake Shasta, it serves as a
daily warning. … The lake was last completely full in
2019. The all-time low point for Lake Shasta was in 1977 when
the lake was 230-feet below its maximum level. The very
next year, after a very wet winter, it was nearly full.
New data suggest Californians are steadily reducing water usage
in the face of severe drought, although cities and towns in the
northern part of the state are cutting back more than those in
the thirsty and more heavily populated south. Water use in
cities and towns across the state decreased 7.6% in June when
compared with the same month in 2020 — significantly short of
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s voluntary 15% goal last year, but a
significant shift compared with the previous month, according
to data released by the State Water Resources Control Board. In
May, statewide savings were just 3.1%.
A proposed fee system to manage irrigated land in Madera County
has sparked a successful protest, leaving one groundwater
agency unfunded and at least one farmer claiming the process
was done with minimal notice. … Three newly formed
groundwater sustainable agencies — Chowchilla Subbasin, the
Madera Subbasin and the Delta Mendota Subbasin — are left with
no funding for four ongoing groundwater projects required under
California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. It’s the
County of Madera that oversees the land, said Stephanie
Anagnason, director of water and natural resources for Madera
County.
Federal energy regulators say Pacific Gas & Electric can begin
drastically reducing Eel River water diversions bound for Lake
Mendocino, which will likely result in additional curtailments
of water rights for hundreds of landowners, ranchers and
communities in the Russian River watershed. The new flow
regime, approved last week after more than two months of
consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
authorizes PG&E to divert as little water as it did last
year even though there is almost 50% more water in Lake
Pillsbury than there was at the same time last year.
Mechanical thinning of overstocked forests, prescribed burning
and managed wildfire now being carried out to enhance fire
protection of California’s forests provide many benefits, or
ecosystem services, that people depend on. In a
paper published in Restoration Ecology, researchers at UC
Merced, UC ANR and UC Irvine reported that stakeholders
perceived fire protection as central to forest restoration,
with multiple other ecosystem services also depending on
wildfire severity…. The study showed that the total
effect of an action … aimed at reducing fuels includes …
secondary effects… such as providing water and
hydroelectricity for agriculture and communities across the
state ….
Drought cut short a pilot program to bring South Fork Kern
River water through Lake Isabella and down 60 miles to farmland
northwest of Bakersfield. Now, a raft of lawsuits could upend
the environmental impact report in support of the project,
which has been a goal of the Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage
District since it bought the old Onyx Ranch in 2013. The
project was doomed from the start, said one board member of the
water district that led the lawsuit charge.
Federal officials crossed the border Tuesday morning to assess
the damage from the latest sewage disaster on the Baja side.
The good news is that Tijuana isn’t currently pumping sewage to
a broken wastewater treatment plant called Punta Bandera that
effectively spills it, untreated, straight into the Pacific
Ocean. The bad news is, that’s because at least one of a
critical set of pipes that gets it there is completely busted
in half. The other is precariously perched atop a crumbling
cliff face. That means a lot of the sewage that would
otherwise be flushed into the sea about six miles south of the
border is making its way into the Tijuana River. The river’s
mouth empties into the ocean just below the city of Imperial
Beach….
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.
San Diego gave emergency authorization this week to pay an
extra $80 million to chemical suppliers that say they need to
sharply raise prices because of pandemic-related supply-chain
issues, higher fuel costs and rising costs for raw materials
due to inflation.
The Public Policy Institute of California is sparking new
conversations around innovative alternatives to keep farmland
in production and avoid devastating environmental and health
impacts from fallowing as much as a million acres of land under
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. PPIC has embarked
on the first major research endeavor to investigate options for
keeping farmers farming and for the complex policymaking needed
to finance and expedite a suite of farming practices and
regulatory restructuring. The hope is it would build some
flexibility into California’s highly specialized agricultural
system.
Rural residents in Tulare County are more likely to be exposed
to harmful water than a third of the state’s population and the
State Water Board has been slow to flow funds into areas to fix
failing water systems. A report by the California State Auditor
last month revealed Tulare County was among nine counties in
the state that represented almost 90% of Californians
vulnerable to water systems with poor water quality.
The forests and meadows of the Sierra Nevada, Coast Range, and
Cascade Mountains are the source waters for much of the
Sacramento River Basin and the State of California. Healthy
headwaters ensure increased water supply reliability and
reduced flooding risks, improved water quality, reduced impacts
from catastrophic wildfires, increased renewable energy
supplies, enhanced habitat, and improved response to climate
change and extreme weather.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority has signed an
agreement to spend $6,396,000 to buy the rights to 750
acre-feet of state water per year to import from southwestern
Kings County. A nonbinding letter of intent signed Tuesday and
obtained by the Daily Independent lays out the terms between
the IWVGA and an entity called Utica LJL, LLC to purchase water
assets. Utica LJL is in the early stages of developing a site
along Interstate 5 about four miles south of Kettleman City to
build gas stations, restaurants, motels, an industrial park,
and farmland.
EPA is poised to announce a new rule that would require states
to oversee more than 1,000 water utilities’ cybersecurity
plans, according to a top White House official. Anne Neuberger,
deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging
technology, said at an event hosted by the Center for a New
American Security that EPA will be issuing a rule “shortly” to
expand the regular reviews to include cybersecurity as threats
at facilities mount across the country.
For decades, Imperial County has been a dumping ground. Home to
one of three hazardous dumps in the state, we absorb toxic,
dangerous waste from our metropolitan neighbors. One of the few
remaining wetland habitats in California, our Salton Sea, is
today polluted by decades of agricultural runoff filled with
dangerous chemicals that create clouds of toxic pollution.
-Written by Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico
del Valle, a community-based organization focused on civic
engagement and health-based initiatives. Olmedo also leads the
Lithium Valley Community Coalition and serves on the state’s
Lithium Valley Commission.
The Morro Bay National Estuary Program is getting $4.5 million
over five years to protect and restore water quality and
habitat, the Biden administration announced on Monday. The
funding comes from the bipartisan $978 billion Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act that Biden signed last November.
Californians began paying more attention to their water use as
summer arrived, but statewide conservation remains well short
of what the governor has requested during the drought. In June,
municipal water consumption dropped 7.6% compared to the same
month in 2020, marking a second straight month of savings,
according to state data released Tuesday, and parts of the Bay
Area did considerably better. The four prior months, however,
saw increases in water use, sometimes by double digits.
… California has experienced three extraordinarily dry
years, exacerbated by rising temperatures, that have left
reservoirs low, groundwater diminished and alternative supplies
like desalination pinched.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in eastern Kern
County has signed a “letter of intent” to buy the rights to 750
acre feet of state water for $6,396,000 from a State Water
Project contractor in Kings County. The purchase is part of the
authority’s plan to bring that overdrafted groundwater basin
into balance. The seller is Utica J.L.J. LLC, which purchased
the Jackson Ranch and is developing a truck stop and industrial
center on 400 acres at Utica Avenue and Interstate 5, just
south of Kettleman City.
This month will be a moment of truth for Arizona cities. The
Federal Bureau of Reclamation is scheduled to release its
“24-month study” that announces how much water Lake Powell and
Lake Mead will release in 2023. Meanwhile, seven western states
must also present a plan to dramatically cut 2-4 million
acre-feet of water. According to federal records, that amounts
to as much as 25% of water allocated to the states.
A fire big enough to make its own lightning used to be as rare
as it sounds. But the McKinney fire, which erupted Friday [ in
the Klamath National Forest], generated four separate thunder
and lightning storms within its first 24 hours
alone. … The troposphere is where weather happens,
and where eye-searing clouds of smoke and soot circulate even
from moderately sized fires. But when a smoke column such as
those emanating from the McKinney fire shoots through that
layer and enters the stratosphere — the higher, more stable
layer above — it creates havoc with local weather and seeds the
Earth’s atmosphere with aerosol pollutants whose consequence
science is still sorting out.
