For Las Vegas to keep its taps flowing, Rep. Susie Lee says
this one drought measure must survive federal spending purges:
water recycling. Lee, D-Nev., and Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz.,
introduced the Large-Scale Water Recycling Reauthorization Act
in Congress on Thursday to reauthorize a federal grant program
that will sunset in 2026. While it doesn’t currently add any
more money to the program, Lee said it would allow the Bureau
of Reclamation to dole out $125 million in unused funds,
extending the program to 2031.
… On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to
strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands
and streams, narrowing the reach of the Clean Water
Act. On Wednesday, federal wildlife agencies announced
changes to the Endangered Species Act that
could make it harder to rescue endangered species from the
brink of extinction. And on Thursday, the Interior Department
moved to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3
billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region
in the high Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.
If the Trump administration’s proposals are finalized and
upheld in court, they could reshape U.S. environmental policy
for years to come, environmental lawyers and activists said.
Other federal water and environmental policy news:
A new report released today by the Pacific Institute and the
Center for Water Security and Cooperation (CWSC) provides the
most comprehensive framework to date for assessing and
improving whether laws enable climate-resilient U.S. water and
sanitation systems. The report, “Actionable Criteria for
Achieving Equitable, Climate-Resilient Water and Sanitation
Laws and Policies,” is the fourth publication in
the Water, Sanitation, and Climate Change in the United
States series. It is intended as a resource for frontline
communities and their supporters – including local and state
legislators – to identify new or improved legal strategies for
building more equitable, climate-resilient water and
sanitation.
The California State Coastal Conservancy awarded more than $7.3
million in grants Thursday to help restore, protect and improve
access to coastal areas in the greater Bay Area and on the
North Coast. Most of the projects support forest and
vegetation management and wildfire abatement, funded by
Proposition 4. … Friends of the Eel River will receive
$181,400 to create the Eel River Native Plant Project, a
regional native plant network that will support habitat
restoration in the upper Eel River basin in Mendocino, Lake and
Humboldt counties in response to the anticipated removal of the
Scott and Cape Horn dams — known collectively as the Potter
Valley Project — in 2028.
Boat launches at two East Bay Municipal Utility District
reservoirs will reopen in 2026 on a limited basis, following a
yearlong closure aimed to stave off the invasive golden
mussel. The reopening plan was approved last week by the
EBMUD Board of Directors for the San Pablo Reservoir in the
East Bay and the Camanche Reservoir South Shore in the Sierra
foothills. … The destructive species hasn’t been
detected at any of EBMUD’s reservoirs, but the golden mussel
has spread quickly throughout the state since it was first
identified in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in October 2024.
California reservoir water levels are in “incredible shape,”
with all of the state’s major reservoirs at or above 100
percent of historical average for this time of year, according
to data from the state’s Department of Water Resources (DWR).
… California’s water storage levels have surged to some of
the highest seen in recent years, providing critical relief
after years of persistent drought. All of the state’s major
reservoirs, which serve as key water sources for nearly
40 million residents and vast agricultural operations,
now hold 100 percent of the average capacity for this time of
year or above, helping to safeguard water supplies for the
hotter, drier months ahead.
From high in the mountains of Sequoia National Park to the
fertile farmland of the valley floor, the Kaweah River is one
of the central California’s major rivers. We explore its
history and what makes it unusual, today on KVPR’s Central
Valley Roots. … [A]s the river enters the floor of the
San Joaquin Valley, it does something unusual, at least for our
region. While most of our other rivers continue to collect
smaller tributaries as they head downstream, the Kaweah does
the opposite. It spreads out in multiple smaller creeks, in a
broad alluvial fan, creating the fertile Kaweah Delta.
If you feel like you’ve tried just about every beer on the
market, a California-based company is bringing brews made from
an unexpected ingredient: recycled water. Epic Cleantec has
announced that it will begin distributing its Shower Hour IPA
and Laundry Club Kölsch across several states, including
Oregon. The San Francisco-based business describes itself as a
“pioneer in onsite water reuse solutions for the real estate
industry.” It partnered with the San Carlos-based Devil’s
Canyon Brewing Company to create the new products that feature
shower and laundry water from the buildings that use Epic’s
on-site purification systems.
A feared hike in water costs for local farmers won’t be as bad
as first expected following a reversal from the San Diego
County Water Authority. Water officials have bailed on earlier
plans to sharply reduce a special water-rate discount enjoyed
by many San Diego-area farmers — a discount the agricultural
sector sees as a key policy keeping their struggling industry
afloat. In May, the authority had warned it might have to roll
back the special discount because of falling demand for its
water and other financial challenges. But on Thursday, the
authority’s board unanimously backed a plan to spend millions
in property tax revenue each year to keep farmers’ water costs
down.
Leaping over small man-made jumps and swimming determinedly
upstream in Alameda Creek, a small group of bright red chinook
salmon are back from the Pacific Ocean and ready to
spawn. … Once native to the stream, chinook salmon
have been unable to reach the upper portion of Alameda Creek
for decades due to concrete barriers and other water supply
infrastructure blocking their path. … But over the past
three decades, the Alameda County water and flood control
districts and other agencies — urged on by environmental groups
— have completed restoration projects meant to encourage fish
migration.
Researchers from the University of California, Riverside, found
that health impacts from pollution associated with California’s
computer processing data centers tripled from 2019 to 2023 —
and could rise by another 72% by 2028 unless mitigation
policies are enacted. … From 2019 to 2023, the total
evaporated water — including both direct evaporation for
cooling and indirect evaporation for electricity generation —
used by California data centers increased by more than
96%, reaching 49.9 billion liters, mostly from
indirect evaporation. By 2028, that number could rise to
116 billion liters annually — a concern in a state that
regularly faces drought and water shortages.
The city of Antioch is doing what many Bay Area communities
have only talked about: turning salt water into drinking water.
The city’s new $120 million desalination
plant, which began operating in September, was built
to ensure that the local water supply, from the vast
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, would
remain drinkable despite its rising salinity. The city now can
get up to 30% of its total water from desalination. …
Across California, communities are looking to firm up their
water supplies in the face of myriad climate pressures,
including increasing droughts and decreasing
snowpack. Several water agencies are turning to desal.
About 30 ranchers and residents sat quietly in the Cuyama
Valley Family Resource Center recently, hanging on every word
from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Highberger
as he succinctly laid out the history, the status and the
substantial stakes of an ongoing groundwater
adjudication started by mega carrot farming companies
Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms in
2022. … Highberger has already determined the safe
yield for the Cuyama basin, which is the amount that can be
pumped without causing problems such as land sinking or
groundwater levels continuing to drop. … Current pumping is
between 42,000 and 44,000 acre feet per year, or more than
double what can be extracted without putting the basin into
overdraft. Highberger must now determine which pumpers will be
allotted how much of that 20,370-acre-foot pie.
After an atmospheric river dumped heavy rain and strong winds
on parts of Southern California earlier this month, more
weather woes were on the way to the region on Nov. 21 with
forecasters warning of additional rain and flash flooding. Two
back-to-back low pressure systems are set to impact Southern
California and the Desert Southwest on Nov. 21 and 22, the
National Weather Service said. … The second system will
come right on the heels of the first, keeping most of the heavy
rain over Mexico but creeping up into Arizona and New Mexico by
the end of the weekend, the weather service said.
… [T]he San Francisco Estuary Institute and Estuary
Partnership have just released a detailed report card, called
the State of our Estuary. … On the positive side are the
years of restoration work. Nearly 60,000 acres of Tidal marsh
now surround the Bay shoreline, benefiting several key species
of shore birds. Conditions at most Bay beaches also boasted
positive water quality. … But traveling inland to the
Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, the report points to man-made
changes having the opposite effect. … [F]reshwater flow
through the Delta has been cut nearly in half. This is mainly
the result of deliberate diversions for farming, drinking water
and other human uses.
Power plants. Sewage treatment facilities. Fossil fuel ports.
Radioactively contaminated sites. These are just a few of the
249 hazardous sites across the Bay Area that could flood as
seas rise in the coming decades in the worst-case scenario,
according to a new report published Thursday in the journal
Nature Communications. The researchers project that 5,500
hazardous sites across the nation could be at risk of coastal
flooding by the end of the century. Around two-thirds of these
facilities are at risk of coastal flooding within the next 25
years, during 100-year flood events.
Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to
lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean
Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across
the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states
face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s
proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run
when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the
desert Southwest. The EPA proposed Monday a reduced scope of
federal jurisdiction over waterways and wetlands as waters of
the US, or WOTUS. The proposal appeared in the Federal Register
pre-publication notices Wednesday and is open for public
comment for 45 days.
… EBRPD [East Bay Regional Park District] changed its boat
inspection and banding policies back in May to help protect its
waterways from the golden mussel, instituting new color-coded,
lake-specific, tamper-proof bands and no longer accepting
EBMUD’s [East Bay Municipal Utility District] bands. Boats
without a band for that specific waterbody had to go through a
full inspection and pay a fee, each time. … The change
seems to have largely worked, with an asterisk in Antioch. …
[T]he critter was found in Contra Loma Reservoir, so boats that
have been in that lake must stick there only or complete a
30-day quarantine. Meanwhile, a half-inch-long juvenile
golden mussel was recovered at Zone 7’s Patterson Pass Water
Treatment Plant this year.
Arizona will provide taxpayer money to help private companies
develop plans for at least two and possibly three desalination
plants in California or Mexico under proposals approved by a
state agency’s board. The three projects are among seven that
the board of the Water Infrastructure Finance Agency decided to
move ahead on developing new water supplies for Arizona.
… [A]gency officials and board members stressed that the
water garnered from the augmentation projects is not expected
to compensate for all the cuts the state’s cities and farms
will have to take in CAP and other Colorado River-based water
deliveries.
… Today, the Rio Grande-Bravo water basin is in crisis.
Research published Thursday says the situation arguably is
worse than challenges facing the Colorado
River, another vital lifeline for western U.S. states
that have yet to chart a course for how best to manage that
dwindling resource. Without rapid and large-scale action on
both sides of the border, the researchers warn that
unsustainable use threatens water security for millions of
people who rely on the binational basin. They say more
prevalent drying along the Rio Grande and persistent
shortages could have catastrophic consequences for farmers,
cities and ecosystems.
