Calif. Opposes Trump Plan to Pump More Delta Water South; Flood Recharge Could Boost San Joaquin Groundwater; Kaweah Officially Off Groundwater ‘Naughty’ List; IID Shifts from Salton Sea Authority to State Conservancy
The Trump administration plans to weaken environmental
protections for threatened fish in California’s
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and pump
more water to Central Valley farmlands, according to letters
obtained by the Los Angeles Times. … The U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation recently notified California agencies that it plans
to pump more water out of the delta into the southbound
aqueducts of the federally operated Central Valley Project. …
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife wrote that it is
concerned about weakened protections for winter-run and
spring-run chinook salmon, steelhead trout, delta smelt and
longfin smelt.
The San Joaquin Basin faces significant water management
challenges due to decades of groundwater overdraft and severe
floods. According to the Department of Water Resources, their
newly released San Joaquin Basin Flood-MAR Watershed Studies
highlight strategies to address these issues across several
watersheds, including Calaveras, Stanislaus and
Tuolumne. The studies emphasize capturing and storing
floodwater underground, known as Flood-Managed Aquifer
Recharge, as a key strategy. This approach aims to transform
extreme weather events into opportunities to replenish
groundwater and support ecosystems.
The holiday season in the Kaweah subbasin got a little more
jolly thanks to its formal removal from the state’s groundwater
enforcement process on Tuesday. The state Water Resources
Control Board passed a resolution at its Dec. 2 meeting that
officially ended the threat of state intervention for the
Kaweah subbasin, which covers the northern part of Tulare
County’s flatlands and a portion of Kings County. It will
continue to work under Department of Water Resources oversight
to implement plans to reduce excessive groundwater pumping.
The Imperial Irrigation District (IID) on Dec. 2 announced its
transition from the Salton Sea Authority to the State of
California’s newly established Salton Sea Conservancy. IID’s
transition in participation from the Salton Sea Authority to
the Conservancy will strengthen alignment among state and
federal agencies and facilitate project operations and
management. This next step reflects a natural evolution of
IID’s long-standing leadership in Salton Sea progress that has
led from studies to planning to on-the-ground projects, along
with ongoing efforts to restore habitat and address regional
air quality concerns.
Amazon Web Services has pulled out of its long-planned role as
future operator of the Project Blue data center complex on the
Tucson area’s far southeast side, three sources told the Star.
Amazon has left the embattled project because its operations
aren’t compatible with the project’s recently announced plans
to use air cooling instead of water cooling of the data
centers’ servers. … Project Blue officials had pledged
to build a $100 million pipeline to deliver reclaimed water to
the data centers. But outside critics said the city would be
unable to effectively enforce those and other water-related
requirements for the project, including a commitment by the
company to be “water positive.”
