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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Officials involved in the talks over how to cut Colorado River
water use amid a historic drought say they’re optimistic a
consensus will be reached by states before a Feb. 1 deadline
even though the negotiations are in a delicate place. If the
seven Western states don’t reach consensus, the Interior
Department’s Bureau of Reclamation will consider mandating
water cuts—a move the states are working feverishly to avoid.
More than likely, “we’re going to end up with some kind of
hybrid outcome in which we have agreement in part, and some
mandatory imposed outcomes from the federal government,” said
Tom Buschatzke …
President Joe Biden will visit California’s storm-wracked
Central Coast on Thursday to survey recovery efforts with Gov.
Gavin Newsom. The White House said Biden and Newsom will meet
with local officials, residents affected by the storms and
public safety responders in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz
counties, where storms have caused severe floods and
landslides. Biden is expected to arrive around noon at Moffett
Federal Airfield in Mountain View, where he will speak with
reporters before taking a helicopter to view storm damage from
the air on his way to Watsonville Municipal Airport. From
there, the president will travel to Capitola to meet with
merchants and residents affected by the storms, which damaged
the Capitola Wharf and nearby businesses. Biden will also
travel to Seacliff State Park, where another pier was damaged
by tidal surges.
One of the Foundation’s most popular events, our
daylong Water
101 Workshop on Feb. 23 offers a
once-a-year opportunity for anyone new to California water
issues or newly elected to a water district board — and really
anyone who wants a refresher — to gain a solid statewide
grounding of California’s most precious natural resource.
Hosted at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Water 101
details the history, hydrology and law behind water management
in California and is taught by some of the state’s leading
policy and legal experts.
As California emerges from a two-week bout of deadly
atmospheric rivers, a number of climate researchers say the
recent storms appear to be typical of the intense, periodic
rains the state has experienced throughout its history and not
the result of global warming. Although scientists are still
studying the size and severity of storms that killed 19 people
and caused up to $1 billion in damage, initial assessments
suggest the destruction had more to do with California’s
historic drought-to-deluge cycles, mountainous topography and
aging flood infrastructure than it did with climate-altering
greenhouse gasses. Although the media and some officials were
quick to link a series of powerful storms to climate change,
researchers interviewed by The Times said they had yet to see
evidence of that connection.
Rainfall from the recent storms in California have been an
encouraging sign for rice farmers in the north state. Lake
Oroville, which feeds water to farmers along the Feather River,
has surpassed its historical average capacity for this time of
year with its elevation measured at about 779 feet on
Sunday, a rise of more than 100 feet since Dec. 1. The lake is
at 56% of its total capacity and carries more water now than
last year’s highest recorded capacity of 55% in May
2022… Colleen Cecil, executive director of Butte County
Farm Bureau, said conversations about how much water will be
allocated to farmers are happening now, but that the area will
likely have enough water to produce as much or more than last
year.
When Kitty Bolte looked at her yard at the start of
California’s powerful winter storms, she saw more than half a
foot of standing water behind her house. At first Bolte, a
horticulturalist by trade, contemplated pumping it out onto the
street. But with the historic rains coming in the midst of a
historic drought, that seemed oddly wasteful. So instead, she
and her boyfriend decided to save it. They found a neighbor
selling IBC totes – large 330-gallon plastic containers
surrounded by wire – on Craigslist, and filled them up using an
inexpensive Home Depot pump. They also dragged some spare
garbage cans outside to sit under the downpour, gathering 800
gallons in all. … One inch of rain on a 1,000 sq ft roof
can result in 600 gallons of water – enough to water
a 4 by 8 ft food garden for 30 weeks. In her cisterns,
Dougherty collects much more – 2,000 gallons at a time that are
stored in large plastic vessels that can be closed off.
Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the
United States is the equivalent of drinking a month’s worth of
water contaminated with toxic “forever chemicals,” new research
said on Tuesday. The invisible chemicals, called PFAS, were
first developed in the 1940s to resist water and heat and are
now used in items such as non-stick pans, textiles, fire
suppression foams and food packaging. But the indestructibility
of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, means the
pollutants have built up over time in the air, soil, lakes,
rivers, food, drinking water and even our bodies. There have
been growing calls for stricter regulation for PFAS, which have
been linked to a range of serious health issues including liver
damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses and several
kinds of cancer.
A chorus of Republicans and moderate Democrats in the San
Joaquin Valley has called for the Newsom administration to ease
pumping restrictions and export more water to drought-stricken
regions of the state. For two weeks a surge of floodwater
flowed nearly unimpeded through the Sacramento–San Joaquin
Delta and into the bay. It was another missed opportunity to
seize on a wet year to export and store more water, argued the
lawmakers. Climate extremes and a lack of preparation underline
the challenge. But the fault lies with an inflexible process
for updating the pumping permits rather than on water managers,
according to a group of irrigation districts and water agencies
with contracts for the exports. This week the same regulatory
inertia put up another obstacle in the way of Delta pumping.
During the recent storms that left widespread flooding in their
wake, water wasn’t just coming down from the sky or in from the
ocean. It was also bubbling up from underground into basements
and inundating wastewater systems. Shallow groundwater, the
layer of water just underground, rises up during wet winter
weather, contributing to flooding problems. The groundwater
table is expected to go up as the sea level rises, according to
climate scientists. … The report maps out current
and future groundwater levels along the bay shoreline in
San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda and Marin counties, based on
climate change models, to give local governments newly
available data to incorporate into planning for sea level rise.
Some 2,000 gallons of gasoline are estimated to have reached
the Colorado River after an accident in Glenwood Canyon Tuesday
resulted in fuel spilling from a tanker. Kaitlyn Beekman, a
spokeswoman with the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment’s Water Quality Control Division, said in an email
Wednesday that the estimated volume of gas that made it to the
river came from the Colorado State Patrol’s on-scene
responders, with whom CDPHE has coordinated. … She said
that upon learning of the spill, her department immediately
began contacting downstream water systems to alert them.
California voters approved a ballyhooed $7.5-billion bond issue
eight-plus years ago thinking the state would build dams and
other vital water facilities. But it hasn’t built zilch. True
or false? That’s the rap: The voters were taken. The state
can’t get its act together. Republicans and agriculture
interests in particular make that charge, but the complaint
also is widespread throughout the state. There’s some
truth in the allegation. But it’s basically a bum rap. No dams
have been built, that’s true. But one will be and two will be
expanded. And hundreds of other smaller projects have been
completed. -Written by LA Times columnist George Skelton.
As drought persists and future impacts of climate change
threaten, salmonids across the state will increasingly seek out
refuge from warming waters. Cold-water streams like Big
Mill Creek, a tributary to the East Fork of the Scott River,
offer important refuge for these fish including the federal and
state threatened coho salmon. In the next few years, CalTrout,
with the support of The Wildlands Conservancy and our project
partners, will prepare to implement a project to restore fish
access to upstream habitat in Big Mill Creek creating impacts
that could ripple throughout the whole watershed. … Much
of the river is warm, but there are cold-water pockets where
thousands of coho salmon can be found.
California may be flooding, but the multiyear drought is far
from over. It only makes sense that the city of Bakersfield has
its eye on reducing water use over the long term on city-owned
properties and streetscaping along Bakersfield’s busy avenues
and major traffic arteries. It’s why the city has begun taking
advantage of incentives offered by California Water Service Co.
that have the potential to return hundreds of thousands of
dollars to city coffers, while saving millions of gallons of
water annually. CalWater has established a program for
customers, both big and small, that incentivizes turf
replacement with drought-tolerant landscaping, sometimes called
xeriscape. The program reimburses CalWater’s account holders up
to $3 for each square foot of turf removed.
“During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years,
and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the
dry years. It was always that way.” Sadly, nothing much has
changed in California and the Salinas Valley since 1952, when
John Steinbeck wrote those words for the opening chapters of
his novel, “East of Eden.” As a result, the atmospheric rivers
drenching the state have been a decidedly mixed blessing. The
rainfall means for the first time in more than two years, the
majority of California is no longer in a severe drought. The
Sierra snowpack is at 226% of average for this time of year,
the largest we’ve seen in more than two decades. Reservoirs are
filling at a rapid rate. … Then there’s the bad news,
starting of course with the deaths of 17 Californians …
The storms that have been battering California offer a glimpse
of the catastrophic floods that scientists warn will come in
the future and that the state is unprepared to endure. Giant
floods like those that inundated the Central Valley in 1861 and
1862 are part of California’s natural cycle, but the latest
science shows that the coming megafloods, intensified by
climate change, will be much bigger and more destructive than
anything the state or the country has ever seen. A new state
flood protection plan for the Central Valley presents a stark
picture of the dangers. It says catastrophic flooding would
threaten millions of Californians, putting many areas
underwater and causing death and destruction on an
unprecedented scale. The damage could total as much as $1
trillion.
Across the sun-cooked flatlands of the Imperial Valley, water
flows with uncanny abundance. The valley, which straddles the
U.S.-Mexico border, is naturally a desert. Yet canals here are
filled with water, lush alfalfa grows from sodden soil and rows
of vegetables stretch for miles. … But now, as a
record-breaking megadrought and endless withdrawals wring the
Colorado River dry, Imperial Valley growers will have to cut
back on the water they import. The federal government has told
seven states to come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to reduce their
water supply by 30%, or 4 million acre feet. The Imperial
Valley is by far the largest user of water in the Colorado
River’s lower basin — consuming more water than all of Arizona
and Nevada combined in 2022 — so growers there will have to
find ways to sacrifice the most.
Without a doubt, weeks of rain and snow since late December are
absolutely helping with California’s water supply. But how much
help exactly is a question many have been asking. KCRA 3 Chief
Meteorologist Mark Finan goes over where water reservoirs in
Northern California stand. Spoiler alert: It’s a lot of good
news. … Shasta is the state’s biggest reservoir, able to
hold 4 1/2 million acre-feet of water. As of Jan. 17, it stands
at 52% capacity compared to 34% a year ago. … As of Jan.
17, [Folsom] is at 54% capacity compared to 56% a year
ago. The thing to understand about Folsom’s capacity right now
is that it is already in flood control mode, meaning that water
is already being released to balance out the reservoir because
there is still plenty of the year to go. And then there’s the
snowpack to consider when it melts.
Happy New Year to all the friends, supporters, readers and
tour and workshop participants of the Water Education
Foundation! We’re grateful to each and every person who
interacted with us in 2022. As we turn the page to 2023,
flood-swamping atmospheric rivers have put a dent in our
drought in California and across the West. Time will tell
just how much. Ideally we want storms more spaced out through
the winter. However they come, you can always keep up with the
latest drought/flood/snowpack developments of our “feast
or famine” water world with our weekday news aggregate known as
Aquafornia. At the
Foundation, our array of 2023 programming begins later
this month as we welcome our incoming Water Leaders class.
We’ll be sure to introduce them to you and let you know what
thorny California water policy topic they’ll be attempting to
solve.
A massive amount of water is moving through the Sacramento–San
Joaquin Delta in the wake of recent storms, and calls have
risen from all quarters to capture more of this bounty while
it’s here. We spoke with PPIC Water Policy Center adjunct
fellow Greg Gartrell to understand what’s preventing that—and
to dispel the myth of “water wasted to the sea.”
… People complain that we’re wasting water to the ocean.
While it’s true that there are pumping restrictions right now
to protect fish, the maximum the projects could be pumping is
about 14,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), not quite double what
they’re currently pumping (8,000 cfs on Jan 12). With current
outflows at about 150,000 cfs, we’d still see 144,000 cfs
flowing to the ocean if they were pumping without restrictions.
A pier in Santa Cruz split in half. Extensive flooding in
Soquel Village, Capitola and Planada. Vital bridges badly
battered or closed. More than 500 reported mudslides across
California in the last few weeks, including some that damaged
homes and cars in L.A. hillside communities. The atmospheric
river storms that pummeled California for weeks inflicted
“extensive” damage to as many as 40 of the state’s 58 counties,
and total repairs could reach as much as $1 billion, according
to authorities. The estimated cost is likely to change as teams
of local, state and federal officials on Saturday began damage
assessment that is expected to continue for several weeks,
according to Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Governor’s
Office of Emergency Services.
