US Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced the US Army Corps
of Engineers will receive $172.5 million in federal funding to
help move forward critical water infrastructure projects in
California. This funding comes from the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Disaster Relief
Supplemental Appropriations Act…. Highlights of California
projects receiving funding include: $28 million to restore
and revitalize the Los Angeles River. … $35 million for
the San Joaquin River Basin to help reduce flood risk to
the city of Stockton….$1.5 million for a Salton Sea
feasibility study to facilitate the development of
long-term solutions for public health and environmental impacts
of the Salton Sea.
Some marine species can help protect others from climate change
by shielding them from heat, according to a new study by Texas
A&M University at Galveston and other scientists. Laura
Jurgens and colleagues at the University of Vermont and the
University of California, Davis detail the findings in the
journal Ecology. The team studied how tiny crabs and isopods –
marine versions of pill bugs — that live on rocky shores react
to warming of their habitats. The researchers found that the
mussel beds these animals live in protect them from temperature
swings and keep them from drying out on hot, sunny days.
… The research was conducted near Bodega Bay in northern
California.
There is just about a week left to apply for our inaugural
Colorado River
Water Leaders program in 2022, which marks the 100th
anniversary of the Colorado River Compact. The biennial program
is modeled after our highly successful Water Leaders program in
California, now 25 years strong. Our Colorado River program
will select rising stars from the seven U.S. states and
tribal nations that rely on the river – California, Nevada,
Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – to
participate in the seven-month class designed for working
professionals.
Acknowledging that the U.S. Forest Service has fallen short
when it comes to preventing wildfires, the Biden administration
this week said it would spend nearly $3 billion to reduce risk
across the most fire-prone areas of the United States, largely
in the American West. The impact could be significant in
California, where the federal government is the largest
landowner, responsible for nearly half of all land area in the
state, including 20 million acres of federal forests vexed by
an enduring wildfire crisis.
Dr. Alison Cobb of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La
Jolla is hunting atmospheric rivers with planes known as
Hurricane Hunters. More specifically, she is part of a
scientific team analyzing data coming from instruments deployed
by special Hurricane Hunter planes tracking atmospheric rivers.
The hope is that learning more about these naturally occurring
weather phenomena will make them more predictable.
In 2021 the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the
federal circuit appeals court for California, Arizona and
Alaska, remained — save only the U.S. Supreme Court — the most
important court in the United States when it comes to
environmental law. This year the 9th Circuit also maintained
its role as the most prodigious source of key environmental
decisions of any federal appellate court — issuing nearly one
per week. … United States v. Walker River Irrigation
District, (Jan. 28).
Supporters of the Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022 put
a call out for donations Friday to help get the measure on the
California ballot. In a “last call” for major donors,
supporters of the ballot measure wrote, “the campaign finds
itself in the inexplicable position of having a solution
everyone wants, but unable so far to raise funds to qualify it
for the ballot.
This year, our reservoirs were reaching near historic lows in
September. We were faced with the realistic prospect of running
out of water by the summer of 2022. Then the “atmospheric
river” storm in October set rainfall records in Marin. Despite
predictions of a dry winter, the rain continued and now five of
our seven reservoirs are full, eliminating the danger of
running out of water this summer. The pendulum swung fast. But
the lessons of the past year are clear: We must prepare now for
what broad scientific consensus tells us the future holds,
particularly the extreme swings in precipitation due to climate
change. -Written by Monty Schmitt, representing San
Rafael’s District 2 as a member of the Marin Municipal Water
District Board of Directors.
The El Dorado Water Agency has been awarded a $300,000
grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART Drought
Response Program: Drought Resiliency Projects. EDWA’s
proposed project is for an intelligent hydroclimatic
information system for water and power management in the
American River Basin and was one of 18 projects selected in the
Western United States. This project will provide critical
real-time data and support water supply forecasting needed to
help the region better prepare for, identify and respond to
drought.
Data released by NASA and NOAA show that, globally, 2021 was
the sixth hottest year on record for Earth’s atmosphere. That
means that nine of the planet’s 10 hottest years have come in
the past decade. Only 2012 is not in that top 10 list.
… Sacramento experienced its longest stretch of dry
time on record at 212 days. June, July and September were
also each in the respective “top 10 hottest” list for that
month. On the other side of the coin, October brought
the wettest day on record for downtown Sacramento
with 5.44 inches falling in a 24 hour period on Oct. 26.
December was also much wetter and snowier than average.
The More Water Now campaign was formed to qualify
the Water Infrastructure Funding Act to appear as a
state ballot initiative in November. Nearly every expert in
California agrees that more water infrastructure is necessary;
that conservation alone will not protect Californians from the
impact of climate change. Projects to capture storm runoff and
recycle urban wastewater are urgently needed, and this
initiative provides the funding to get it done. -Written by Edward Ring, lead proponent of the Water
Infrastructure Funding Act, a proposed state ballot
initiative.
Carson Jeffres is a senior researcher and lab director at UC
Davis’s Center for Watershed Sciences. For over 20 years, he’s
studied how native fish utilize and benefit from restored
habitats in both Brazil and California. His current research
focuses on the recovery of salmon populations in California. We
asked him to update us about the effort to save this iconic,
embattled fish.
After a soaking wet December that ended fire season, delivered
more 15 feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada, and boosted hopes
that California’s severe drought might be coming to and end,
dry weather is back, in a big way. Like a baseball player stuck
in a hitting slump, it hasn’t rained significantly in the Bay
Area for 14 days, since Jan. 4. Although reservoirs received a
nice boost from big storms in December and late October, they
still remain well below normal levels in most parts of the
state. Time to start sweating that the state’s two-year drought
might be turning into a three-year drought? Not yet, say
experts.
Citing the extreme drought that had Utah in a chokehold last
summer, pummeling residents to conserve water, Gov. Spencer Cox
released Thursday what is the first chapter in “Utah’s
Coordinated Action Plan for Water.” … The plan taps the
expertise of multiple state agencies and builds on a list of
more than 200 recommendations to safeguard water supplies in
the fastest growing state in the nation, gripped by challenges
of new development amid an increasingly arid climate.
The Biden administration last week quietly and abruptly
announced that developers can no longer rely on decisions made
under a high-profile Trump-era Clean Water Act rule about which
waters are federally protected to obtain new permits. Legal
experts say the move could have far-reaching effects throughout
the building, mining and agricultural sectors. At issue is a
Jan. 5 post on the Army Corps of Engineers website explaining
the agency will “not rely on” an approved “jurisdictional
determination” issued under the Trump-era Navigable Waters
Protection Rule “in making a new permit decision.”
For the second year in a row, California has been blessed with
a massive budget surplus, and Gov. Gavin Newsom is again
seeking to spend billions of those dollars responding to
climate change. The $22 billion Newsom proposed last week is
the largest investment in climate change in state history.
Combined with funds from last year’s state climate spending
package, it would provide California with a total of $37
billion for climate-related initiatives over a six-year period.
… There is money to clean the electric grid, prevent
wildfires, respond to the drought and protect coastal areas
from rising sea levels…
Perennial water shortages in California will likely only grow
worse due to climate change. But emerging technologies offer
hope—if Californians can stop taking water for granted, says
David Feldman, UCI professor of urban planning & public policy
and director of Water UCI. Water shortages will become
more severe as both droughts and floods become more intense,
with less rain and snow falling during dry seasons and more
falling during wet ones. Capturing the excess precipitation and
saving it for dry periods will also only get more challenging.
Gov. Doug Ducey says he’s all in for desalination to augment
Arizona’s water supply which has taken a big hit during the
prolonged drought. … Desalination has been talked about in
Arizona for a long time even with the construction of the
Central Arizona Project, which supplies most of the water used
by Phoenix and Tucson. Seven states use Colorado River water
and with unprecedented growth, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are
now at only 30% capacity and dropping.
Dr. Flora Cordoleani is a project scientist with UC Santa Cruz
and NOAA fisheries, where she conducts research to understand
better the dynamics of threatened populations of spring-run
chinook salmon in the Central Valley’s highly modified
environment, with the objective of providing management
recommendations for the recovery of the species. At the
2022 Bay-Delta Science Conference, Dr. Cordoleani discussed
research done in collaboration with Dr. Corey Phillis, Dr. Anna
Sturrock, Dr. Rachel Johnson, and George Whitman that studied
fish ear bones, also called otoliths, to look at the life
history strategies of the spring-run Chinook salmon population
in the Central Valley.
A $286.4 billion budget plan for the state of
California was introduced this week by Governor Gavin Newsom.
This budget will make investments to target the greatest
threats to the state. Those threats include fighting COVID
19, keeping the streets safe, confronting homelessness and
combating the climate crisis with an emphasis
on drought response. Last year’s budget
included an allocation of $5.2 billion over a 3-year period to
tackle water issues. In this 2022 budget proposal, an
additional $750 million will go directly to the general fund to
support drought resilience and response.
