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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The Arizona Water Banking Authority is exploring the
possibility of buying purified wastewater to distribute later –
which would be unprecedented. At the AWBA commission’s meeting
on Sept. 13, new bank manager Rebecca Bernat asked whether she
should look into the possibility of the bank using effluent
water credits. Until 2019, AWBA has only used excess Colorado
River water long-term storage credits. That’s for the Central
Arizona Project water stored in aquifers. Users can get the
water later during a potential shortage by pumping it back out.
We are living in the Anthropocene, an era being defined by
global mass extinctions caused by humanity. While on-going and
impending extinctions of birds and other terrestrial
vertebrates gain the most attention, the situation with
freshwater fishes (and other freshwater organisms) is as bad or
worse, partly because many freshwater extinctions are nearly
invisible events, hidden by murky waters (Moyle and Leidy
2023). The extinction threat is especially high for obligatory
freshwater fishes including many species endemic to California
(Moyle and Leidy 2023). The ultimate cause is competition
between people and fish for clean water.
Avid hiker Alyssa Johnston was exploring a trail in the High
Sierra when something in the distance caught her eye. She
approached the bright colors and realized they were Mylar
balloons — and did not belong in the wilderness. Mylar
balloons, which have a metallic coating and are filled with
helium, have become a concern for biologists and nature lovers,
disrupting the enjoyment of outdoor spaces and posing harm to
wildlife. Their ability to travel long distances in the air
means they are polluting extremely remote areas, although
responsible balloon shops are working to educate customers on
safe disposal. Johnston has pulled balloons out of lakes
numerous times. Often, she said, “they’ll just disintegrate and
I’m just trying to pick up all the little pieces because it’s
this beautiful, pristine lake and then now you have this ‘Happy
Birthday’ balloon.”
Tribal members celebrated the return of more than 1,200 acres
of their ancestral lands in the jagged hills above Weldon on
Saturday in a ceremony marked with gratitude, emotion and
prayer. Chairman Robert Gomez opened the event by thanking a
large number of people who helped find, purchase and deed the
land back to the Tübatulabal tribe, which has called the Kern
River Valley home for more than 5,000 years. Western Rivers
Conservancy was chief among those Gomez called out for their
help in obtaining the land. Western Rivers, a non profit
dedicated to restoring rivers, helped secure funding through
the state Wildlife Conservation Board and Sierra
Nevada Conservancy and facilitated the handover of the land to
the tribe.
During the winter of 2022, Utah lawmakers on Capitol
Hill boarded a pair of Black Hawk helicopters to tour
something bleak: the sprawling exposed lakebed, drying mud
flats and the water that remained at the Great Salt Lake, which
had reached an all-time low. It inspired them to
act. The following months saw a flurry of water
conservation bills and millions of dollars dedicated to
reversing the lake’s decline, including a $40 million
trust. The Great Salt Lake sunk to a record low in the fall of
2022, and another round of water reforms followed. Then
came a record-busting amount of snowpack in 2023 that many
Utahns hoped would buy some time and stave off the lake’s
collapse.
Seizing a generational opportunity to leverage unprecedented
state funding to combat drought and climate change, the State
Water Resources Control Board provided an historic $3.3 billion
in financial assistance during the past fiscal year (July 1,
2021 – June 30, 2022) to water systems and communities for
projects that bolster water resilience, respond to drought
emergencies and expand access to safe drinking water. The State
Water Board’s funding to communities this past fiscal year
doubled compared to 2020-21, and it is four times the amount of
assistance provided just two years ago.
San Diego water bills would rise nearly 20 percent under a
rate-increase proposal the City Council is scheduled to
consider Tuesday. The increase, which city officials began
studying last fall, would be the first comprehensive rate hike
approved by the council in nearly eight years. It would include
a 10.2 increase this December and an 8.75 percent jump in
January 2025. City officials say they need additional revenue
increases to cover rising costs for imported water, upgrades to
thousands of aging pipes and a long list of short-term and
long-term capital projects. The capital projects include the
Pure Water sewage-recycling system, which has been under
construction since last year, and upgrades needed to several
aging city dams that state officials have deemed in poor
condition.
As the nation faces a future of increasing flooding, drought
and wildfires, millions of 60-pound rodents stand by, ready to
assist. Beavers can transform parched fields into verdant
wetlands and widen rivers and streams in ways that not only
slow surging floodwater, but store it for times of drought. …
Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of physical geography at
the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities … who
spoke earlier this week at the first-ever Midwest Beaver
Summit, is part of a broader “beaver restoration” movement that
has gained ground in recent years with ecologists in Colorado
using simplified human-made beaver dams to encourage the
animals to recolonize waterways, and California passing a new
law encouraging nonlethal approaches to human-beaver conflicts.
There’s a new hotspot in the world of geothermal energy: a
seemingly sleepy valley in Beaver County. Its secret? The
valley sits on top of bedrock that reaches temperatures up to
465 degrees Fahrenheit. Joseph Moore, who manages the Utah
FORGE research project, pointed across a dirt parking lot to a
well being drilled at the University of Utah’s subterranean
lab. … The mission of the FORGE project — which stands
for Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy —
isn’t to produce its own electricity. It’s to test tools and
techniques through trial and error and, in the process, answer
a big question: Can you pipe cool water through cracks in hot
underground rock and create a geothermal plant almost anywhere?
Residents of a senior community in east Lodi want to know which
agency is responsible for removing downed trees from the
Mokelumne River. Joyce and Mike Tracy said the heavy storms
that hit Lodi at the beginning of the year caused three trees
to fall into the river in March, blocking water flow
downstream. As a result, water levels have risen to the top of
the riverbank, causing damage to properties in the Casa de Lodi
community at 29 Rio Vista Drive.
Jesus Campanero Jr. was a teenager when he noticed there was
something in the water. He once found a rash all over his body
after a swim in nearby Clear Lake, the largest freshwater lake
in California. During summertime, an unbearable smell would
waft through the air. Then, in 2017, came the headlines, after
hundreds of fish washed up dead on the shore. “That’s when it
really started to click in my head that there’s a real issue
here,” says Campanero, now a tribal council member for the
Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians of California, whose
ancestors have called the lake home for thousands of years. The
culprit? Harmful algal blooms (HABs).
California is among the states that will share in more than $1
billion in federal funding to help plant trees in an effort to
mitigate extreme heat and combat climate change, officials
announced last week. The Golden State will receive about $103
million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Forest Service … for tree planting and maintenance, urban
canopy improvements and other green efforts. The funding comes
from President Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act and
marks the act’s largest investment to date in urban and
community forests, officials said. … “This grant funding
will help more cities and towns plant and maintain trees, which
in turn will filter out pollution, reduce energy consumption,
lower temperatures and provide more Californians access to
green spaces in their communities,” read a statement from U.S.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) about the program.
Call it a win for the little species, though all kinds of
endangered animals and plants stand to benefit. A sweeping
legal settlement approved this week has put the Environmental
Protection Agency on a binding path to do something it has
barely done before, by its own acknowledgment: Adequately
consider the effects on imperiled species when it evaluates
pesticides and take steps to protect them. … In the same
area as crop-damaging insects, there may be threatened
bumblebees and butterflies; among unwanted weeds, endangered
plants. At the same time, pesticides help farmers produce
enough food to meet the demands of a growing population.
… Aquatic species like salmon and mussels do, too, as
they are particularly vulnerable to pesticides that contaminate
nearby water …
Would a proposed Salton Sea Conservancy help efforts in the
troubled region? Elected officials and local organizations are
split, with some saying it will just add another layer of
bureaucracy to already mired efforts. California Senate Bill
583, authored by state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, and
coauthored by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, would
create the Salton Sea Conservancy, “tasking it with
coordinating management of all conservation projects in the
region to restore the shrinking sea and reducing the negative
health impact the Sea imposes,” according to Padilla’s office.
There are currently 10 similar state conservancies under the
California Natural Resources Agency, including the local
Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy.
Summer of 2023 was Earth’s hottest since global records began
in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of
Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The months of June, July, and
August combined were 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit (0.23 degrees
Celsius) warmer than any other summer in NASA’s record, and 2.1
degrees F (1.2 C) warmer than the average summer between 1951
and 1980. August alone was 2.2 F (1.2 C) warmer than the
average. June through August is considered meteorological
summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This new record comes as
exceptional heat swept across much of the world, exacerbating
deadly wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, and searing heat waves
in South America, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., while likely
contributing to severe rainfall in Italy, Greece, and Central
Europe.
Las Vegas isn’t just a hot spot for revelers. Thousands of
businesses, particularly from California, have moved to the
region over the past few decades, and the population is booming
alongside other Southwestern cities. All of that growth in a
region plagued by extreme heat, drought, and a dwindling water
supply raises tough questions for city and state officials who
want to spur economic growth without draining the Colorado
River dry. In one example of that challenge, Arizona’s governor
in June halted construction in areas around Phoenix, citing a
lack of groundwater.
During three weeks in December and January, storms dumped 32
trillion gallons of rain and snow on California. With it came
unwelcome floods for many communities of color. The winter and
spring storms were a rare chance for drought-stricken
communities to collect rainwater, rather than have their farms,
homes and more overwhelmed by water. Much of the rain that fell
instead overflowed in lakes and streams, leading to disaster in
low-income Central Valley towns like Allensworth and
Planada. In the aftermath of the damage, community leaders
are reiterating a call to diversify water boards to give
marginalized groups more power. The California State Water
Resources Control Board, which oversees the distribution of
water in the state, has acknowledged that its workforce does
not reflect California’s racial composition.
Imperial County’s largest farming family has lost again in its
years-long bid to gain control of valuable Colorado River water
allocations associated with its land. The Imperial Irrigation
District on Tuesday won a motion to dismiss a case by Mike
Abatti and several relatives, close friends and business
associates that closely mirrored an ultimately unsuccessful
series of cases they had brought all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which declined to hear their petition in 2021.
U.S. Southern District Court Judge Michael Anello, based in San
Diego, issued the motion to dismiss the new case after hearing
oral arguments from both sides a week ago, based on res
judicata, a legal term meaning that the matter already had been
judged.
For decades, Mexico has dumped millions of gallons of sewage
from the Tijuana River Valley into the Pacific Ocean, without
any concern for the environment. The sewage then moves north,
contaminating the waters of Imperial Beach, and even Coronado.
Year after year, politicians have tried and failed to stop the
sewage. In September 2020, under President Donald Trump,
Congress allocated $300 million to the EPA as part of Trump’s
replacement for NAFTA, the US-Mexico-Canada agreement. Despite
the allocation of funds, the money was halted once the Biden
Administration took over, which is normal procedure. Biden
Administration officials wanted to “re-study” how best to use
the funding, to effectively attack the sewage problem.
California is looking to boost water supply and considering new
regulations to recycling wastewater straight to your tap. Some
refer to it as toilet to tap, however experts in the field say
this phrase is anything but accurate. … CBS 8 visited
San Diego’s Pure Water project. It’s in phase one of
construction and will supply nearly half of the city’s drinking
water by the end of 2035. The water goes through a rigorous
recycling process. Our crews got to see it all happen at the
Pure Water demonstration site. “Five different treatment
steps,” said Dough Campbell, the deputy director of Pure Water
operations. Campbell said water is treated at a wastewater
plant before it ever arrives to Pure Water. Then the water goes
through a five step process of ozone, biologically active
carbon filters, membrane filters, reverse osmosis and
ultraviolet lighting.
