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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The First Descent Expedition of the Klamath River by young
members of Tribes living along the river will begin Thursday,
June 12. Participants in the Ríos to Rivers Paddle Tribal
Waters Program will lead the first-ever 30-day source-to-sea
descent of the newly undammed Klamath River. An opening
celebration marking the beginning of the month-long,
310-plus-miles expedition will be held June 12 at the
headwaters of the Wood River, an invitation-only event. From
the starting point, the kayakers will cross Upper Klamath Lake,
portage around the Link River Dam, and cross Lake Ewauna to the
Klamath River. … Organizers said the event will “explore
the long-awaited return of Chinook salmon to their ancestral
spawning grounds, the far-reaching benefits of dam removal and
the revival of an entire ecosystem. Experts will share
insights on water quality improvements, habitat restoration and
the lasting impacts on wildlife and river communities.”
An Idaho businessman tapped to become the new leader of the
U.S. Forest Service faced little questioning over his past land
disputes with the agency during his confirmation hearing.
Michael Boren, who co-founded the multi-billion dollar
investment firm Clearwater Analytics, has sparred with the
Forest Service in recent years over his ranch in central Idaho.
The property is within the protected Sawtooth National
Recreation Area. Neighbors said he built an airstrip before
getting the required permits, and the Forest Service accused a
company formerly linked to him of building an unauthorized
cabin on federal land. President Donald Trump nominated Boren
to serve as the U.S.D.A undersecretary for natural resources
and environment, which oversees the Forest Service and the 193
million acres of land under its jurisdiction.
Lined up alongside many of the homes inside the Riverview
Mobile Home Estates are five-gallon jugs of water, some full,
some empty. They started piling up in November 2022 when many
of the around 250 residents of the Hughson-area park became
eligible to receive free state-funded water. The mobile home
park, previously known as Pinewood Meadows, is considered a
severely disadvantaged community located near Fox Grove Park,
between a walnut orchard, a honey farm and a defunct landfill.
…The tap water at the park comes from two wells; one
regularly exceeds safe water standards for both uranium and
nitrate. … Nitrate is one of the most prevalent groundwater
issues in Stanislaus County, mostly associated with
agricultural runoff from fertilizer, manure and sewage from
septic tanks.
How trees fare under drought depends heavily on their past
experiences. In some cases, adversity breeds resilience: Spruce
trees that experience long-term droughts are more resistant to
future droughts, owing to an impressive ability to adjust their
canopies to save water, researchers in Germany report May 16 in
Plant Biology. On the other hand, trees may suffer when they’ve
known only wet conditions and are blindsided by droughts.
… Together, the results illustrate how trees can
“remember” times of abundance as well as scarcity. The latter,
as illustrated by the spruce study, bodes well for trees’
ability to cope with a warming world. These findings are among
the first to show that trees can become more drought-resistant
by adjusting their canopy structure.
Having the San Joaquin out of sight and mind is one of Fresno’s
tragic realities. … But hopefully that will change soon.
… The San Joaquin River Conservancy is a state agency whose
mission is to create a 22-mile-long parkway in the floodplain,
from Friant Dam northeast of Fresno to Highway 99. The river is
to be kept in a natural state, but a trail would be constructed
and access points would be made along the river. Work on
creating the parkway is ongoing, but slow. … It is time,
however, for the San Joaquin River to be a more recognized fact
of life in Fresno. City leaders, if you want new energy in
Fresno, prioritize the river and its opportunities. –Written by Tad Weber, opinion writer for The Fresno
Bee.
For the first time in more than 12 years, Rio Vista residents
will see increases in water and sewer rates, after the City
Council Tuesday night approved five years of rate hikes set to
begin July 1. The amount of the increase depends on which
treatment plant serves the neighborhood. Customers served
by the Northwest Wastewater Treatment Plant will
experience the steepest rise of a 55% jump in the first
year, followed by a 35% increase in year two and a 5% increase
in each of the following three years. … City officials
said the increases are necessary to fund long-deferred
infrastructure projects and avoid system failures. Officials
say Rio Vista is facing $23.4 million in capital project needs
at the Northwest Plant and another $27.5 million at the Beach
Plant. … Meanwhile, the 19-year-old Northwest Plant,
which serves the city’s growing residential areas, faces an
annual funding gap of over $300,000.
Water watchers say Great Salt Lake has peaked for the year and
will lose water between now and fall. And with a hot, dry
summer in the forecast, lake levels could take a step
back. Great Salt Lake typically rises and then falls about
2 feet every year, with snow and then summer heat. But
year-over-year, the levels have only gone up since bottoming
out in 2022, thanks to a couple of great winters. It broke even
last year and only went up by about a foot and a half this
winter. Utah Snow Survey Program Supervisor Jordan Clayton said
the lake gets most of its water from the snowpack, which was
hampered a bit by this warm, dry spring. “Our inflow forecast
for how much water we were going to get from all that snow,
which again is the main source for water into the lake, did
decrease as a result of the early melt and the kind of
disappointing April snowpack that we received.”
Last month, I hung up my yellow vest for the last time. We were
there after wildfires tore through Los Angeles communities,
standing alongside survivors in shelters, donation centers,
disaster recovery centers and scorched neighborhoods. We helped
Californians take their first steps toward rebuilding. And now,
we’re gone. After the federal government cut funding for
AmeriCorps’ disaster relief programs, more than 60 of us in the
California Emergency Response Corps were told our service was
ending early. … At a time when wildfires, floods
and climate-driven disasters are only becoming more frequent,
we need competent and experienced disaster response
professionals. They don’t magically appear. They have to get
their start somewhere. Programs like this are how we grow the
next generation of emergency responders, crisis managers and
community resilience leaders. –Written by Lauren Levitt, an emergency preparedness
outreach lead and California Emergency Response Corps member
with AmeriCorps.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution
Wednesday that urges the federal government to pressure Mexico
to end the Tijuana River sewage crisis. The resolution, brought
forth by Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond, passed by a vote of
3-1. But it was Desmond who ultimately cast the lone “no” vote
because the amended version officials approved doesn’t go far
enough, he said. … Specifically, the resolution calls on
Congress to pass legislation that would hold Mexico accountable
for failing to prevent sewage from polluting communities in the
county’s southwest region. Some measures suggested include
federal authorization to divert or restrict the Tijuana River
temporarily in south San Diego. It also urges curtailing the
export of potable water to Tijuana or limiting cross-border
activity at U.S. ports of entry during sewage-linked
emergencies that the county declares.
California is facing a growing challenge as climate change
drives more extreme weather, leading to periods of either too
little water or more than we can effectively manage. Rising sea
levels push saltwater further inland, adding pressure to
ecosystems already under strain. With agriculture, cities, and
the environment all relying on California’s water, how can we
prepare for these changes? Two innovative projects are tackling
these questions head-on. The Collaboratory for Equity in Water
Allocations (COEQWAL) is developing tools and strategies to
help communities adapt, while the Just Transitions project is
analyzing the Delta’s salinity changes and exploring ways to
respond. … At the Delta Independent Science Board’s March
meeting, Dr. Brett Milligan, Professor of Landscape
Architecture and Environmental Design at UC Davis, shared an
in-depth look at these initiatives.
… Two proposals have advanced rapidly through the
Legislature: one to wipe away the law (CEQA) for most urban
housing developments, the other to weaken the rules for most
everything else. Legal experts say the efforts would be the
most profound changes to CEQA in generations. Newsom not only
endorsed the bills last month, but also put them on a fast
track to approval by proposing their passage as part of the
state budget, which bypasses normal committee hearings and
means they could become law within weeks. … Nearly the
entire 55-year history of the California Environmental Quality
Act has featured dueling narratives about its effects.
… Many credit CEQA for helping preserve the state’s
scenic vistas and waterways while others decry its ability to
thwart housing and infrastructure projects, including the
long-delayed and budget-busting high-speed rail.
Monitors observing Lake Powell’s water levels are issuing a
dire warning: The second largest reservoir in the country, and
one of the most popular destinations for Arizonans and Western
tourists, will suffer yet another year of
drought and accelerated decline. Hydrologists
say this is the consequence of a lack of winter 2024 runoff,
itself the product of an unseasonably dry cold season. Experts
predict the winter melt, which is responsible for replenishing
the endangered lake, will total just 55% of the annual average.
… As the lake continues to shrink, surrounding states
disagree on how to reduce their 40 million residents’
collective water use to stave off the reservoir’s
total destruction. Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming legislators are sparing over which
locales should decrease their residential, commercial, and
agricultural intakes.
A bitter 15-year legal battle over water costs came to an end
Monday, with leaders of the San Diego County Water Authority
and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
signing an agreement establishing the price that will be paid
for delivering supplies. Managers and board members of the two
agencies said that the dispute persisted for years because of
inflexible positions, but that negotiations over the last year
made possible a comprehensive agreement. They said ending the
legal fight will enable greater collaboration among the
agencies to improve their finances and move water where it’s
needed. MWD Board Chair Adán Ortega Jr. said the litigation had
for too long complicated the relationship between his agency,
which delivers water for 19 million people, and the San Diego
County Water Authority, which is a member of MWD and supplies
water for 3.3 million people.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday
it will hire for “mission-critical field positions” amid expert
warnings that the National Weather Service has been cut too
sharply just as hurricane season arrives. An agency
spokesperson said in a statement the positions will be
advertised under a temporary reprieve from the federal
government’s widespread hiring pause “to further stabilize
frontline operations.” NOAA also said they are filling some
field office openings by reassigning staff, including some
temporary hires. The agency didn’t say how many jobs would be
posted and refused to provide more details. Elon Musk’s
Department of Government Efficiency cuts gutted NWS and NOAA —
which provide daily weather forecasts, up-to-the-minute severe
storm warnings, climate monitoring and extreme weather tracking
— earlier this year.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Uinta Basin Railway
proposal in Utah published Thursday was a consequential ruling
when it comes to the National Environmental Policy Act, or
NEPA, narrowing the scope of the legislation and giving federal
agencies more room to conduct their own analysis with more
limited interference from courts. But it did not approve
the controversial 88-mile railroad that supporters argue will
drive economic growth in rural Utah by connecting the Uinta
Basin’s oil field with the national rail network. And the
high court did not address the concerns of Eagle County, which
sued to reverse the Surface Transportation Board’s 2021
approval of the railroad, arguing the agency did not adequately
consider the risk to communities and the Colorado
River with increased tanker traffic on riverside
tracks. … The arguments before the Supreme Court
centered on NEPA, not Eagle County’s concerns.
The federal government has rescinded termination notices for
eight of nine USDA offices slated for closure in California.
The decision comes after California lawmakers argued that
closing the offices would burden farmers. The Trump
administration has reversed its decision to shutter eight
California outposts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
according to a letter from agency head Brooke Rollins. The
about-face came at the urging of a group of Democratic
California lawmakers led by Sen. Adam Schiff, who decried plans
from the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency to
close USDA offices in Bakerserfield, Blythe, Los Angeles,
Madera, Mt. Shasta, Oxnard, Salinas, Woodland and Yreka.
… The original closure plans came amid sweeping layoffs
and lease terminations at government agencies across the
country led by Elon Musk’s DOGE team — including nearly two
dozen California offices related to science, agriculture and
the environment. Musk has since stepped down.
California’s Westside farmers are once again caught in a cycle
of uncertainty as water allocations remain
unpredictable—despite full reservoirs and years of strong
snowfall. According to AgNet West’s Nick Papagni, this system
continues to punish growers trying to plan ahead for planting
season. Farmer Mike Omari explains that the decision-making
window is razor-thin. “We usually get our water allocation
announcement the last week of February, but our planting season
starts March 1st,” he says. “You’re gambling everything on a
number that might change later—but by then, your decisions are
already locked in.” This year’s initial allocation was only
35%, even with a full Lake Orville and favorable snowpack.
Although the number was later bumped to 55%, the delay in
information makes strategic crop planning almost
impossible.
A newly published study finds that California’s Salton Sea
emits hydrogen sulfide, a toxic and foul-smelling
gas, at rates that regularly exceed the state’s air
quality standards. The presence of these emissions in
communities surrounding the Salton Sea are “vastly
underestimated” by government air-quality monitoring systems,
the researchers found. The study, published in the
journal GeoHealth, underscores the risk posed by
hydrogen-sulfide emissions to communities already burdened by
other environmental and socioeconomic stressors, the
researchers say. … The study found that between 2013 and
2024, SCAQMD (South Coast Air Quality Management District)
sensors in the communities of Indio, Mecca and the Torres
Martinez Indian Reservation frequently showed hydrogen sulfide
readings exceeding State of California standards.
… The fish Delta smelt plays a pivotal role in
California’s perennial water wars. Its shaky survival status
has triggered orders to shut down the pumps near Tracy that
send water into the California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota
Canal at crucial points in Delta smelts’ life
cycle in the spring. When the pumps are running, the Delta
smelt get sucked in and killed. The Delta smelt has also
benefitted from massive releases of stored water to send more
fresh water into the Delta in a bid to help them. Those
releases have been criticized by farmers in the southern end of
the San Joaquin Valley who argue the water is simply going out
to sea and not being diverted for human uses especial during
drought periods. … The health of the ecological
system and the need for water that is being commandeered by
courts to help the Delta smelt is why the 2-inch fish has
become — depending upon how you look at things — the poster
fish for all that is wrong with California water development or
the whipping fish for how state water policy has been skewed.
After decades of planning and construction, the Richard L.
Schafer Dam Spillway at Lake Success is officially complete.
Leaders say this large reservoir will dramatically improve
flood control, protecting homes and lives in the area. This is
a historic milestone for our community,” said Congressman Vince
Fong. “We not only built a new emergency spillway, but we
raised this dam ten feet, that is more water storage for us.”
The improvements will increase the lake’s storage capacity by
28,000 acre-feet, bringing the total to 112,000
acre-feet. ”What that really means is 9.8 billion gallons
of water, additional water storage that we can now hold in this
lake so it’s critical for us,” explains Fong. … The
total cost of the project was $135 million.
