The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended
Alternative 3 – Salmon Closure during the final days of the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) meeting mirroring
the opinions of commercial and recreational charter boat
anglers. The department’s position is a significant change from
early March. The PFMC meetings are being held in Seattle from
April 6 to 11, and the final recommendations of the council
will be forwarded to the California Fish and Game Commission in
May.
Today, Congresswoman Norma Torres and Congressman David Valadao
– members of the House Appropriations Committee – announced the
introduction of the bipartisan Removing Nitrate and Arsenic in
Drinking Water Act. This bill would amend the Safe Drinking
Water Act to provide grants for nitrate and arsenic reduction,
by providing $15 million for FY25 and every fiscal year
thereafter. The bill also directs the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to take into consideration the needs of
economically disadvantaged populations impacted by drinking
water contamination. The California State Water Resources
Control Board found the Inland Empire to have the highest
levels of contamination of nitrate throughout the state
including 82 sources in San Bernardino, 67 sources in Riverside
County, and 123 sources in Los Angeles County.
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But
demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital
water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the
region – particularly from the Colorado River – was top of mind
at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference, an
event organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West
that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars
to discuss solutions to urgent problems facing rural Western
regions.
Water bubbles up in streets, pooling in neighborhoods for weeks
or months. Homes burn to the ground if firefighters can’t draw
enough water from hydrants. Utility crews struggle to fix
broken pipes while water flows through shut-off valves that
don’t work. … Across the U.S., trillions of gallons of
drinking water are lost every year, especially from decrepit
systems in communities struggling with significant population
loss and industrial decline that leave behind poorer residents,
vacant neighborhoods and too-large water systems that are
difficult to maintain.
A much-anticipated water bill brought by one of the most
powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill became public Thursday.
Senate President Stuart Adams’s SB 211, titled “Generational
Water Infrastructure Amendments,” seeks to secure a water
supply for decades to come. It forms a new council comprised of
leadership from the state’s biggest water districts that will
figure out Utah’s water needs for the next 50 to 75 years. It
also creates a new governor-appointed “Utah Water Agent” with a
$1 million annual budget that will “coordinate with the council
to ensure Utah’s generational water needs are met,” according
to a news release. But combing through the text of the bill
reveals the water agent’s main job will be finding an
out-of-state water supply. … The bill also notes the
water agent won’t meddle with existing water compacts with
other states on the Bear and Colorado rivers.
Water, the essence of life, is an indispensable resource
intricately woven into the fabric of our daily existence. From
the food on our plates to the gadgets in our hands, water
silently plays a pivotal role in the creation of almost
everything we encounter. In a world where water scarcity is a
looming concern, it is essential to explore the profound impact
of water in the production of goods and services that shape our
lives as well as the food we feed our families. -Written by Mike Wade, executive director of the
California Farm Water Coalition
The Delta Protection Commission today released a public-comment
draft of the Management Plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta National Heritage Area (Delta NHA). … The Delta
NHA was created in 2019 by Congress (PDF). It is
California’s first, and so far only, National Heritage Area.
… The Delta Protection Commission is scheduled to vote
on the plan March 7, 2024, after which it will be
submitted to the Secretary of the Interior for approval.
After approval, implementation of the plan can begin.
Moab is a growing town of 5,300 that up to 5 million people
visit each year to hike nearby Arches and Canyonlands national
parks, ride mountain bikes and all-terrain vehicles, or raft
the Colorado River. Like any western resort town, it
desperately needs affordable housing. What locals say it
doesn’t need is a high-end development on a sandbar projecting
into the Colorado River, where groves of cottonwoods, willows
and hackberries flourish. “Delusional,” shameful” or
“outrageous” is what many locals call this Kane Creek
Preservation and Development project. - Written by Mary Moran, a contributor to Writers on
the Range
The attention is on Southern California right now, but an
atmospheric river’s path will extend inland with potential
flooding — and possible drought relief. If you’re watching the
weather, it’s still a little early to tell whether these storms
will go where they can hope Las Vegas the most. That’s anywhere
in the Upper Colorado River Basin, where there’s a chance they
could produce snow to help the river that supplies 90% of the
water used in Southern Nevada. … The paths of this
year’s atmospheric rivers are unlike the ones that slammed
the Sierras last year. Those storms carried snow straight
east through Northern Nevada and Utah, feeding the Rocky
Mountains with snowpack levels that reached 160% of normal by
the end of winter.
Beyond evacuations, mudslides, outages and road flooding, the
atmospheric river that drenched Southern California over the
last few days brought eye-popping rainfall totals to the region
— with still more to come Tuesday. Rainfall topped 11 inches in
some areas of Los Angeles County in three days, easily
surpassing the average amount recorded for the entire month of
February, according to the National Weather Service. “And
February is our wettest month,” said Ryan Kittell, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard… As
of 10 p.m. Monday, downtown Los Angeles had recorded 7.04
inches of rain over the prior three days. The February average
is 3.80 inches. That three-day total is nearly 50% of the
average amount of rainfall for an entire year for downtown Los
Angeles.
Last week, Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria introduced AB 2060 to
help divert local floodwater into regional groundwater
basins. AB 2060 seeks to streamline the permitting process
to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in support of
Flood-MAR activities when a stream or river has reached
flood-monitor or flood stage as determined by the California
Nevada River Forecast Center or the State Water Resources
Control Board (SWRCB). This expedited approval process would be
temporary during storm events with qualifying flows under the
SWRCB permit.
Partners have pulled together to support the recovery of
endangered Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon in the last few
years. However, the species still faces threats from climate
change and other factors. That is the conclusion of an
Endangered Species Act review that NOAA Fisheries completed for
the native California species. It once returned in great
numbers to the tributaries of the Sacramento River and
supported local tribes. The review concluded that the species
remains endangered, and identified key recovery actions to help
the species survive climate change. While partners have taken
steps to protect winter-run Chinook salmon, blocked habitat,
altered flows, and higher temperatures continue to threaten
their survival.
Water regulation in Arizona has devolved into a game of
chicken. The governor and farmers are rivals revving their
engines, hoping their opponent will flinch first. Caught
in the middle is Gila Bend, a groundwater basin south of
Buckeye, where the state could decide to impose its most
stringent form of regulation, whether folks like it or not.
Both sides are using Gila Bend as a bargaining chip to win
support for competing legislative proposals. But to what
end? - Written by Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic digital
opinions editor
The continued wet weather in the Northstate has left quite an
impact at Shasta Lake. California’s largest reservoir rose a
foot from Thursday to Friday, and 5 feet from January 26 to
February 2. Currently, Shasta Lake sits at 1,035 feet, roughly
30 feet from capacity. That’s an increase of 47 feet from this
date last year. … Overall, the weather station at Shasta
Dam has reported 36.56 inches of rain since the water year
began on October 1.
Tesla will pay several district attorney’s offices $1.5 million
over violations of hazardous waste laws, per an agreement it
reached this week in San Joaquin County Superior Court. The
payment stems from Tesla’s handling, transporting and disposing
of hazardous materials from its facilities in California. Tesla
knew about policies and procedures for handling that waste and
violated the law by disposing of waste at unauthorized spots.
It also failed to determine whether waste created at its
facilities was hazardous and didn’t properly label and store
it.
Colorado legislators in 2022 passed a bill that delivered $2
million to programs across the state for removal of turf in
urban areas classified as nonfunctional. By that, legislators
mean Kentucky bluegrass and other thirsty-grass species that
were meant to be seen but rarely, if ever, otherwise
used. Now, they are taking the next step. The Colorado
Senate on Tuesday, Jan. 30 voted in favor of a
bill, Senate Bill 24-005, that would prevent thirsty turf
species from being planted in certain places that rarely, if
ever, get foot traffic, except perhaps to be mowed.
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an
important hearing Thursday on S. 2385, a bill to
refine the tools needed to help Tribal communities gain access
to something that most non-Indian communities in the western
United States have long taken for granted: federally subsidized
systems to deliver safe, clean drinking water to our homes.
… This is the sort of bill (there’s a companion on the
House side) that makes a huge amount of sense, but could easily
get sidetracked in the chaos of Congress. The ideal path is for
the crucial vetting to happen in a process such as Thursday’s
hearing, and then to attach it to one of those omnibus things
that Congress uses these days to get non-controversial stuff
done. Clean water for Native communities should pretty clearly
be non-controversial.
How will selling groundwater help keep more groundwater in the
San Joaquin Valley’s already critically overtapped aquifers?
Water managers in the Kaweah subbasin in northwestern Tulare
County hope to find out by having farmers tinker with a pilot
groundwater market program. Kaweah farmers will be joining
growers from subbasins up and down the San Joaquin Valley
who’ve been looking at how water markets might help them
maintain their businesses by using pumping allotments and
groundwater credits as assets to trade or sell when water is
tight.
State health officials know that extreme heat can cost lives
and send people to the hospital, just like wildfire smoke. Now,
new research finds that when people are exposed to both hazards
simultaneously — as is increasingly the case in California —
heart and respiratory crises outpace the expected sum of
hospitalizations compared to when the conditions occur
separately. … The study joins a growing body of research
about the intersection of different climate risks. Last month,
California-based think-tank the Pacific
Institute published a report about how converging
hazards — including wildfires, drought, flooding, sea level
rise and intensifying storms — are harming access to drinking
water and sanitation in California and other parts of the
world. The deadly 2018 Camp fire in Butte
County impacted an estimated 2,438 private wells, the
report said.
For as long as he can remember, Rob Sowby has heard people call
Utah the second-driest state in the nation. Over the years,
that claim has become nearly inescapable, echoed by everyone
from state departments, city governments and water conservancy
districts to national news outlets without a clear citation for
what data it’s based on. … Now a Brigham Young
University civil engineering assistant professor focused on
sustainable water supplies, he decided to get to the bottom of
it. Using precipitation data, he found that Utah is actually
the nation’s third-driest state, behind Nevada and
Arizona.
