A German parliamentary delegation canceled plans Monday for a
visit to fruit farms in a drought-hit region of southern Spain,
after a campaign in Germany to discourage consumers from buying
“drought berries” sparked political controversy. The
cross-party visit by nine German lawmakers this week was meant
to include a stop in the Doñana national park in Andalusia,
home to some of Europe’s most important wetlands. The
conservative regional government of Andalusia, which is
experiencing its worst drought in nearly three decades, wants
to expand water extraction rights in the wetlands. Spain’s
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has made the matter an
issue in the campaign ahead of elections next month.
In the summer of 1938 the first women known to travel the
entire Colorado River—and survive—documented the flora and
fauna of the region before it was further reshaped by Western
development. They were white botanists in academia who battled
both the usual obstacles in scientific expeditions and some
unusual ones: doubters telling them they were doomed to fail, a
lack of funding, the serious risk of injury or even death and,
for one of the botanists, her father’s permission. Elzada
Clover and Lois Jotter wrangled the only experienced river
runner available, Norm Nevills, who insisted they find some
river runners turned expedition volunteers to accompany them
safely through the journey.
Healthy ecosystems are good for everyone in California—they
provide us with abundant wildlife and fisheries, clean drinking
water, and needed space in nature for recreation, among other
benefits. Here at the PPIC Water Policy Center, we’ve studied
restoration issues in the past—including the importance of
restoring more natural flow patterns, improving
permitting, and storing water for the environment. This year we
brought in three CalTrout Ecosystem Fellows to look at another
major challenge in river restoration: community engagement.
There is a lot of literature on the importance of stakeholder
engagement in restoration work. Studies in the US and
internationally have shown that robust engagement can improve
restoration outcomes.
Who gets California’s water, and how much, is a high-stakes
affair, and it’s based on a system of water rights born long
ago, when the West was wild — and often unfair. The
first-come, first-served pecking order established during
European settlement gave the new and dominant landowners first
dibs on pumping rivers and creeks. The beneficiaries, which
include the likes of San Francisco and its pristine supplies in
Yosemite, continue to enjoy tremendous advantage, consuming
water with little constraint while others sometimes go without.
Amid growing water shortages and focus on equity, the system
has begun drawing increased scrutiny. Last week the state
Legislature weighed in with the unusual step of advancing
measures that would help regulators rein in the most privileged
and profligate water users.
If we farmed the Central Valley or managed water supplies for
San Francisco, San Jose, or Los Angeles, we might think that
freshwater flowing from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers
through the Delta to San Francisco Bay is “wasted” because it
ends up in the Pacific Ocean as an unused resource. However,
different perspectives emerge as we follow the downstream
movement of river water through the Delta and into San
Francisco Bay. If we were Delta farmers or administered Contra
Costa County’s water supply, we would value how high flows
reduce salt intrusion (Jassby et al. 1995) and protect water
quality for drinking, growing crops, and meeting other customer
needs. If we were responsible for protecting at-risk species,
we would value river water that flows through the Delta to the
Bay and ocean because it stimulates migration and spawning of
native Chinook salmon, Delta Smelt, Longfin Smelt, and
Sacramento Splittail …
It looks at times as if Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to imitate
Jerry Brown as he tries to gut California’s main environmental
protection law, at least for large infrastructure projects like
reservoirs, road and bridges. Brown certainly did reduce the
clout of the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA,
usually pronounced “see-qua”) during his fourth and final term
as governor, mainly clearing the way for large spectator sports
facilities … Essentially, CEQA would have few teeth if
Newsom gets his way. One pet plan is a long-stymied version of
the old Peripheral Canal project, rejected overwhelmingly 43
years ago by state voters. That has now morphed into a plan to
bring Sacramento River water south to customers of the state
Water Project via a tunnel under the Delta of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin rivers. -Written by Email Thomas Elias, author of ”The
Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and
the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It.”
A bill in the state Assembly would make it harder for local
water districts to leave their regional partnerships if they’re
seeking cheaper water rates. That’s what two small, North
County farming communities have been fighting to do for the
last three years. Rep. Tasha Boerner’s bill, AB 530,
seeks to change the County Water Authority Act by requiring a
countywide vote before any water district could buy water from
a different county. Background: Rainbow Municipal Water
District and Fallbrook Public Utility District want to ditch
the San Diego County Water Authority to buy cheaper water from
Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County.
Wetlands provide a range of ecosystem services related to water
quality, flood control, aquifer recharge, shoreline
stabilization and species habitats. A broader lesson is that
environmental law, to be effective, must take science into
account. … Sadly, the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling
in Sackett v. Environmental Protection
Agency demonstrates that a majority of the justices never
learnt that lesson. The case has eviscerated federal protection
of wetlands under the Clean Water Act, the principal federal
law responsible for the improvement of the country’s water
quality over the past 50 years.
While ancient cultures are substantially different to our
current reality and there is much more to say than what I write
here, learning about ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian
civilizations can give us some clarity to better understand
California today. … Unsustainable agriculture in the San
Joaquin Valley, which is the most profitable agricultural
region in the United States by far, has caused the destruction
of 95% of its original wetlands, making it an arid land rather
than the once-humid region it was. That destruction also ended
most of the natural resilience of the San Joaquin Valley to
cope with climate extremes, including the unpredictable
and destructive floods we are seeing this year.
… In one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas
in the country, it’s a boom time — water-intensive microchip
companies and data centers moving in; tens of thousands of
houses spreading deep into the desert. But it is also a time of
crisis: Climate change is drying up the American West and
putting fundamental resources at ever greater risk.
… The decision by Arizona in the past week to limit
residential construction in some parts of the fast-growing
Phoenix suburbs is another major warning about how climate
change is disrupting lifestyles and economies in the West.
The San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary
Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan) is currently
undergoing its periodic review of updates and amendments by the
State Water Resources Control Board. Tribal representatives
have requested the incorporation of recognized Tribal
Beneficial Use (TBU) definitions to the Bay-Delta Plan. If
these definitions are incorporated in the Bay-Delta Plan, the
State Water Board must also amend or establish water quality
objectives and implementation programs to achieve and maintain
water quality sufficient for these designated beneficial uses.
… The State Water Board is holding an informational
meeting on June 7, 2023, to discuss the potential addition of
TBUs to the Bay-Delta Plan.
Groundwater depletion has been an acknowledged fact in
California for decades, but for a long time it was stuffed into
a thick file labeled “Something Somebody Oughta Do Something
About Sometime.” That changed forever in 2014, when the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was passed by the state
government. SGMA (pronounced sigma) has a goal of
groundwater sustainability by 2040. That means less water
pumped out of the ground, and in many parts of state, that will
mean less agriculture. Estimates of the amount of land that
will have to be fallowed range up to 900,000 or 1 million
acres.
In a sweeping decision, the Supreme Court last week eliminated
federal protection for more than half the wetlands in the
United States…The Supreme Court decision only
impacts federal regulation of wetlands. States are
free to impose their own regulations. And California
does…Developers in California will need to continue to step
carefully where wetlands are involved.
As the United States Senate will soon vote to suspend the debt
ceiling, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, D-California, is pushing
for the federal government to spend more on water. Padilla
serves as Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife. He hosted
a hearing this week entitled “Water Affordability and Small
Water Systems Assistance” which looked at, “rising water rates,
aging infrastructure, and extreme weather events are increasing
water affordability challenges for communities across the
country,” according to a press release from his
office. During the meeting, advocates pushed for a
permanent national water assistance program; they argued that
such a program would particularly benefit rural areas.
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., convened his first hearing as
chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee
on Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife, on Wednesday. Sen. Padilla
appeared on the KCRA News morning show on My58 and said the
hearing will focus on how rising water rates, aging
infrastructure and extreme weather events have affected access
and affordability of clean water across the country.
… According to a state audit in 2022, California
required an estimated $64.7 billion to upgrade its water
infrastructure. In April, the EPA awarded a fraction of that,
$391 million. To hear more about the subcommittee’s
initiatives, watch the attached video.
Each and every day, the Carpinteria Sanitary District sends
over one million gallons of highly treated water through our
outfall pipeline and into the Pacific Ocean. In 2016 we began
working in partnership with the Carpinteria Valley Water
District on a plan to recapture this valuable resource and
create a new, drought-proof water supply for our community. The
Carpinteria Advanced Purification Project, or CAPP, has now
moved into the final design stage. We are just a few short
years away from having a reliable source of highly purified
water that will augment our local groundwater aquifer and meet
a quarter of Carpinteria’s demand for potable water. -Written by Craig Murray, General Manager of
the Carpinteria Sanitary District.
California will send $95 million to flood victims in a
long-awaited program to assist undocumented residents suffering
hardship and damage from the recent months of storms. The money
will be available in many affected counties starting in June,
according to the state’s Department of Social Services.
The announcement comes two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom
promised flood victims that help would come from the state’s
Rapid Response Fund. Since then his office provided few details
despite repeated queries and criticism. Alex Stack, a
spokesperson for Newsom, said state officials were trying to
ensure the program would be accessible to a population that is
often hard to reach, while also protecting taxpayer funds from
fraud.
My fellow Californians often remark that the weather in this
state feels like it has been reduced to two seasons, both
defined by natural disasters: In summer and fall, huge, intense
wildfires rip their way across dry land, while winter and early
spring bring intense atmospheric rivers with heavy rainfall,
floods and landslides along with winds that take down trees.
The weather extremes here are so common, and climate change is
so in your face, that many people now just expect to jump from
one natural disaster to the next. And this pessimism means it’s
hard to enjoy it when — for once — nature deals us a good hand.
But this year, after several brutal years of fighting drought,
we finally got the water that we have so sorely needed for so
long. We damn well better enjoy it. -Written by Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist and
station manager at the University of California, Berkeley,
Central Sierra Snow Lab.
(Editor’s Note: This is a repost of a blog originally published
in June 2020).
Damming rivers was once a staple of public works and a signal
of technological and scientific progress. Even today, dams
underpin much of California’s public safety and economy, while
having greatly disrupted native ecosystems (Quiñones et al.
2015, Moyle et al. 2017), displaced native peoples (Garrett
2010), and deprived residents of water access when streamflow
is transported across basins. California’s dams are aging and
many will require expensive reconstruction or rehabilitation.
Many dams were built for landscapes, climates and economic
purposes that no longer exist. California’s current dams
reflect an accumulation of decisions over the past 170 years
based on environmental, political, and socio-economic dynamics
that have changed, sometimes radically.
Senior water rights holders have arguably the sweetest deal in
California water. They often have ironclad deals and some even
get access to substantial water during the worst of
drought. But three new bills in the state legislature are
taking aim at senior water rights in an attempt to level the
playing field. The bills propose expanding the authority
of the state Water Resources Control Board. Senior water rights
date back to before 1914, when there was no permitting or state
water authority yet. For years, advocacy groups have
decried the water rights system and demanded changes. Some of
those changes could become reality if legislators and the
governor approve the current bills.
