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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Months after a judge ruled the City of San Diego is
overcharging some water customers, the city has yet to pay up,
or make changes to its rates. Attorneys say the delay is
costing taxpayers millions in penalty fees. They filed the
case back in 2017, saying San Diego was violating a portion of
the California constitution, which states governments that
provide services are not allowed to charge more for those
services than it costs them to deliver. … Specifically,
the suit alleged San Diego had been overcharging single family
residential customers in tiers 3 and 4, which are those who use
more water than the average customer.
The Mosquito Fire became the largest wildfire to burn in
California this year after growing over 63,000 acres Wednesday
night, fueled by dried vegetation in an area that was
cooling off after record-breaking heat last week. The massive
fire has been burning for more than a week since it ignited on
Sept. 6. It has spread over 14,000 acres since
Tuesday. As of Wednesday night, the fire now covers
over 63,000 acres in El Dorado and Placer counties, according
to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
(Cal Fire).
In a blistering third year of drought, Californians have been
asked to limit their indoor water usage to 55 gallons (208
litres) per person per day. It takes about 30 gallons to fill a
bathtub, so forget about a deep Jacuzzi experience. Yet in the
gated communities of Calabasas and Hidden Hills – exclusive
enclaves in the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu – lush
lawns and filled swimming pools and koi ponds make it clear
that some are ignoring the rules. So officials have created a
device to take power showers away from rich and famous water
hogs. A small metal disc with a pinhole drilled through the
middle, it has seriously reduced the flow of water into some
multimillion dollar homes. People here call Derek Krauss the
‘water police’.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne
National Laboratory have developed a new method to assess the
likelihood of extreme drought conditions in several different
regions of the United States over the remainder of the century.
Using this method, based on highly detailed
regional climate models, they have found that droughts are
likely to be exacerbated by global warming. This finding is
especially likely in regions like the Midwest, Northwestern
U.S. and California’s Central Valley. … In looking at
future forecasts of droughts over the course of the remainder
of the century, the researchers believe the new technique can
help them to understand “flash drought” events that have a
quick onset period that could be as short as few weeks.
The Board of Supervisors directed the chief administrative
officer Wednesday to update the county’s water and
drought-management strategies, including sustainability
efforts, and deliver a final report within the next year. The
overhaul, proposed by board Vice Chairwoman Nora Vargas, will
incorporate the entire region, including local municipalities,
Imperial County and bi-national cities.
A group of property owners in one San Luis Obispo County
community can’t build homes on their lots due to a severe lack
of water, a federal judge ruled recently. U.S. Central
California District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer made her ruling
on Sept. 6 — dismissing a 2019 lawsuit filed by five landowners
who claimed the Cambria Community Services District and San
Luis Obispo County ruined any economic benefits from their
Cambria properties by effectively refusing to allow them to
develop homes. The landowners — none of whom reside in
California — alleged that the community services district and
county wrongly deprived them access to water and sewer
services, therefore denying their right to build on their
properties.
The Sacramento River Valley is one of the top producers of
rice. Half of the crop is exported to Japan and Korea and much
of the sushi rice eaten in the United States is grown here. But
according to the California Rice Commission, of the 500,000
acres normally produced, only 250,000 will be harvested this
year. His crop is ready for harvest in a couple of
weeks. The California rice grower managed to squeak out
about a quarter of what he normally yields.
Severe drought continues to impact California, and many
residents need immediate relief. As summer winds down,
Northstate communities are battling the lowest water levels of
the year as is typically the case in September, and 2022 being
the driest year on record, in the 139 year history of data
keeping in Redding, has only exacerbated the problem. The
Shasta County Department of Resource Management received a
grant of over $2.4 million in July from the state Water
Resources Control Board to be used through 2024. Relief efforts
made possible by this grant include bottled water delivery,
well deepening, repairs and replacement.
Keeping Disneyland’s 17,000 trees green and 1,000 floral beds
blooming takes a mammoth effort by the Anaheim theme park’s
horticulture team that’s focused on reducing water consumption
during Southern California’s latest drought. Constant readings
from Disneyland’s weather station in the Toy Story parking lot
combined with a sophisticated irrigation control system have
allowed the horticulture team to cut water usage by 13%
compared to the same period last year, according to Disneyland
officials. … Disneyland is currently ahead of schedule
on its commitment to reducing irrigation usage by 11% under a
plan approved by the state, according to Disneyland officials.
Starting in late August of this year, the San Francisco
Baykeeper and state and regional authorities
began receiving increasingly frequent reports of
unprecedented numbers of dead fish in the path of a
massive “red tide” algae bloom on San Francisco Bay. The
fish included large sturgeon, sharks, bat rays, and
striped bass, as well as big quantities of smaller fish
such as gobies and anchovies, in the water and along the
shoreline of the bay. As a investigative reporter who has
focused on fish, water, environmental justice and
regulatory capture issues for 40 years, the images of the dead
fish and other marine organisms were particularly devastating,
since I’ve spent thousands of hours fishing on and reporting on
the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary.
California’s drought regulators have lost a major lawsuit that
could undermine their legal authority to stop farms and cities
from pulling water from rivers and streams. With California in
its third punishing year of a historic drought, an appeals
court ruled Monday that the State Water Resources Control Board
lacks the power to interfere with so-called “senior” water
rights holders and curtail their diversions of water from
rivers. The case stems from orders imposed by the state board
in 2015, during the previous drought, when it halted farms and
cities throughout the Central Valley from taking water from the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. … [Brian Gray, a
water-rights expert at the Public Policy Institute of
California] said the court’s ruling did suggest that the
board could exercise its authority over senior rights holders
by using emergency powers granted by the governor.
State and local governments across the country are suing
manufacturers of toxic chemicals that are contaminating much of
the nation’s drinking water, aiming to shield water customers
and taxpayers from the massive cost of cleaning them up. These
pervasive “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS, are linked to a
variety of health hazards, including cancer. Now, as state
lawmakers and federal regulators get serious about removing
them, scores of governments and water suppliers are in pitched
court battles over who is on the hook for hundreds of billions
of dollars in damage — the companies that created the chemicals
or the customers who are drinking them. … In Orange
County, Calif., water managers found PFAS in dozens of wells
that draw from a vast groundwater basin that supplies 2.5
million people.
Surrounding Bernal’s land are the vistas of the Grand Valley, a
strip of high desert situated on Colorado’s Western Slope
marked by dusty mesas and cliffs and the winding, ever-present
Colorado River, which plunges down from the mountains to the
east. Grand Valley farmers and ranchers use the water to
irrigate tens of thousands of acres, growing everything from
peaches and corn to wheat and alfalfa. But since 2000
flows on the river have declined 20% and water levels at Lake
Powell and Lake Mead have dropped to less than 30% of their
combined storage. With the river overtaxed, Grand Valley
farmers now face difficult questions regarding the future of
water in Colorado and the West.
For Mike McKoen, a year of uncertainty farming in the Klamath
Project has become a fight to the finish. With onion harvest
fast approaching, McKoen had been counting on a steady supply
of water from Upper Klamath Lake to irrigate his fields at a
critical point in the growing season. Otherwise, he risks the
crop dying in the ground and his investment turning to
dust. Then came the Aug. 19 announcement from the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation. The project had run out of water for the
summer, despite farmers’ arguments to the contrary. All
remaining water in the system was needed to protect endangered
fish, according to the agency.
Californians should brace for another year of La Niña as the
stubborn climate pattern in the tropical Pacific is expected to
persist for a third consecutive year, forecasters say. The
latest outlook, published Thursday by the National Weather
Service’s Climate Prediction Center, has increased the chances
of La Niña sticking around through November to 91%, a near
certainty. The pattern may also linger into winter, with an 80%
chance of La Niña from November to January and a 54% chance
from January to March. La Niña is the cooler phase of the El
Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern and is a significant
driver of weather conditions across the globe, including
temperature, rain and snowfall, jet streams and tropical
cyclones.
Day after day, week after week, the United States faces a
barrage of climate extremes: wildfires in California. Drought
on the Great Plains. Flooding in Florida. Yet assembling those
puzzle pieces into a clear picture often can be difficult. It’s
a problem the Interior Department and NOAA aim to address with
a new website that provides data on real-time extreme event
conditions as well as risk profiles at the national, state and
local levels. A key feature is a running tally of
climate-juiced hazards — such as droughts, wildfires and floods
— and the number of U.S. residents facing these threats. The
website is constantly updating these figures, but it also
provides historical data for context.
California’s wine country, including the famed Napa and Sonoma
valleys, faces a climate crisis so dire that it’s posing an
existential threat to the future of the state’s industry.
Grapes have been hit with one extreme after another. The 2022
season started out with a deep frost that iced over verdant
green buds, nipping them right off the vine. For the crops that
survived, the freeze quickly gave way to drought and heat. Just
in the past week, record-breaking temperatures baked parched
vineyards. Then there’s the ever-present threat of wildfires
and smoke damage.
In the parched Colorado River basin, water managers are turning
over every stone looking for ways to keep the taps flowing.
Now, they’re finding more water in some unusual places – shower
drains and toilet flushes. At a sprawling sewage treatment
plant in Carson, California, the occasional breeze delivers a
pungent whiff of a reminder of how used water becomes “reused.”
Here, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is
planting the seeds for a massive new facility, where a
multi-billion-dollar installation could help recycle wastewater
and keep drinking supply flowing for the agency’s 19 million
customers.
This diminutive puddle, which I have likely passed without
noticing many times, is actually evidence of natural springs
beneath the park that seep continually, he tells me. It’s a
small sign of water’s hidden life, the actions this
life-sustaining compound continues to pursue, despite our
illusion that we control it. As climate change amplifies floods
and droughts, people like Pomerantz are recognizing the
importance of such minutiae that highlight water’s agency. In
his free time, Pomerantz hunts and maps ghost streams, the
creeks and rivers that once snaked across the San Francisco
Peninsula before humans filled them with dirt and trash or
holstered them into pipes, then erected roads and buildings
atop them.
After months of missing water conservation targets while
California’s drought worsened, the 2 million residents of Santa
Clara County appear to have turned the corner and are making
significant progress now — much of it by dialing back
sprinklers that irrigate their lawns and other landscaping.
Santa Clara County residents reduced water use by 16% in July
compared to July 2019 levels, according to new numbers out
Tuesday, surpassing the goal of 15% set by the area’s main
water provider, the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
