When the weather heats up, many want to grab a drink, get on a
boat and spend time with friends and family on the water. This
year, at Lake Camanche, it’s a different story. “We’ve taken
the precaution, a difficult one, to shut down our boat launches
for this year as we try to get our arms around this and figure
out the best way to prevent its introduction to East Bay MUD’s
water system,” East Bay Municipal Utility District spokesperson
Christopher Tritto said. The reason is because of the recently
discovered golden mussel found in the
Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta. While this invasive species
hasn’t made it into the reservoir, the utility district is
taking this ban a step further: no kayaks, no paddleboards, and
more. The only boats allowed are those with a permanent
slip or boats that have been in the water before the launches
closed.
A Placer County man is going to jail after the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife busted an illegal fish selling
operation. According to the CDFW, their Delta Bay Enhanced
Enforcement Program and Special Operations Unit investigated a
conspiracy to sell Pacific lamprey, leading to the arrest of
Justin D. Lewis. Lewis sourced Pacific lamprey, a California
state species of special concern, from the Klamath River in Del
Norte County and resold the fish to sellers across Colusa
County and beyond. The CDFW said lamprey are often used as bait
for sturgeon and other fish, but also are valued highly by the
Yurok tribe in Del Norte County as a food source and cultural
emblem. Lewis was sentenced on May 21 to two years — one
in the Colusa County Jail, and another on supervised release.
He also must pay more than $20,000 in fines and his fishing
privileges are suspended.
Coronado’s shoreline closed over Memorial Day weekend as
wastewater from the ongoing Tijuana sewage crisis pushed
bacteria into coastal waters. … Agencies in both the US
and Mexico are working to repair the failing infrastructure
that causes the ongoing pollution. Mexico is currently in the
second phase of repairing its International Collector, which
carries Tijuana’s wastewater to treatment plants and is prone
to leaks. It is unclear if the weekend’s closures were related
to the project, although the US International Boundary and
Water Commission said ahead of the project that excess sewage
flow might arise from the project. During the project’s
first phase, Mexico diverted excess sewage into the Tijuana
River, which ultimately caused beach closures in Coronado.
… In the US, the IBWC is working to repair its own
infrastructure, the most notable of which is the South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Lawyers for the Sweetwater Authority water agency are demanding
that former authority board member Josie Calderon-Scott retract
claims she made recently to Voice of San Diego that the
authority knew about elevated levels of toxic industrial
chemicals in its main reservoir years before alerting the
public. But Calderon-Scott said she’s not backing down.
And she challenged the authority to produce documents that she
said would settle the issue. In a May 23 letter, lawyers
for the agency’s law firm, Best, Best & Krieger, demanded that
Calderon-Scott retract claims she made in a May 13 Voice
newsletter that the agency knew “for years it had a
PFAS [chemicals] problem in its reservoir” and
that “this problem existed for a long time before [the agency]
notified the public.” Those statements, the lawyers wrote,
“are false and untrue, are defamatory, and create alarming
confusion for residents served by the authority.”
Westlands Water District leader Allison Febbo characterized
Tuesday’s announced 5% federal water allocation increase as
“disappointing” in light of California’s full reservoirs while
also calling for more investment in new water
infrastructure. “While an increase is appropriate, given
current reservoir levels and snowpack, a 5% increase is
disappointing and highlights a critical reality: Even in
average hydrological years, California’s outdated water system
falls short of delivering the water our communities require,”
said Febbo. … The Bureau of Reclamation’s increase means that
the Central Valley Project’s South-of-Delta ag
contractors such as Westlands will receive 55% allotments. All
north-of-Delta CVP contractors are receiving 100% allotments.
Municipal and industrial water service and repayment
contractors will receive a 5% boost to 80% of their historical
use, or public health and safety needs, whichever is greater,
the Bureau said.
The Kern County Water Agency named two longtime employees to
run the powerful entity after the board let its general manager
go just one month before his contract was set to expire.
Administrative Operations Manager Nick Pavletich and State
Water Project Manager Craig Wallace will co-manage the agency
while a recruitment committee begins the search for a new
general manager. The two were named as interim managers after a
special meeting held Tuesday morning. Pavletich, who has been
with the agency for 24 years, will oversee local activities.
Wallace, who has worked at the agency a little more than 10
years, will oversee the agency’s statewide activities with a
focus on the Delta Conveyance Project, a
tunnel proposed to bring water beneath the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta. The agency board also announced it would form an
advisory committee of board members to work with the
co-managers “to ensure stability.”
“I want to be crystal clear. Fast-tracking the Delta Conveyance
Project (DCP) is a direct attack on our region’s environmental
integrity, economic stability and public trust,” Assemblymember
Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) warned Gov. Newsom. Wilson, a
member of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), was
speaking at a press conference on May 20 at the State Capitol
organized to push back against the Governor’s plans to speed up
$20 billion worth of improvements to the State Water Project
(SWP), a tunnel that delivers water from Northern California to
areas in the south of the state. … Other Delta Caucus
members — a bipartisan group of lawmakers representing counties
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the tunnel
begins — also attended, along with officials from the Delta
Coalition of Counties, regional environmental leaders and
tribal leaders from the Delta.
Launching the PPIC Water Policy Center ten years ago was a
risk. How was a small team going to have a big impact on such
intractable problems? After a decade, the proof is in the
pudding. We’ve done it by being interdisciplinary, seeking out
facts amid controversy, and really trying to understand the
challenges and opportunities in each water sector. Despite the
many difficulties and complexities of California’s water, the
state has made tremendous progress on water management in the
last decade, and the Water Policy Center has worked hard to
support that progress with forward-looking, nonpartisan
research. We follow where the facts lead, and that commitment
to the facts—even if the results are not popular—has made us a
trusted voice on some of the thorniest challenges in the field.
Since the center launched ten years ago, we’ve released a wide
range of impactful research. Here are just four major areas of
research we’ve conducted on issues that matter deeply to all
Californians.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the
world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an
immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these
reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries
production and management potential, indicates a study from the
University of California, Davis. The study, published
in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S.
reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of
fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems
could play major roles in food security and fisheries
conservation.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
California has unveiled an ambitious plan to help combat the
worsening climate crisis with one of its invaluable assets: its
land. Over the next 20 years, the state will work to transform
more than half of its 100 million acres into multi-benefit
landscapes that can absorb more carbon than they release,
officials announced Monday. … The plan also calls for
11.9 million acres of forestland to be managed for biodiversity
protection, carbon storage and water supply protection by 2045,
and 2.7 million acres of shrublands and chaparral to be managed
for carbon storage, resilience and habitat connectivity, among
other efforts.
Catastrophic weather events wreaked havoc on U.S. agriculture
last year, causing nearly $22 billion in crop and rangeland
losses, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
California accounted for $1.14 billion of that figure,
including nearly $880 million in damages from severe storms and
flooding. The figures represent a significant shift from
previous years, when drought and wildfires were California’s
biggest challenges. Since then, atmospheric rivers, Tropical
Storm Hilary and other weather events battered our farming
communities. - Written by Matthew Viohl, director of federal
policy for the California Farm Bureau
