There’ll be an audit of California’s water supply forecast
after the state overestimated and prematurely released 700,000
acre-feet of water last year, officials announced Monday. A
news release from Assemblymember Adam Gray (D-Merced) announced
that Gray’s request for audit was approved. It aims to examine
the impacts of the flawed forecasts and the Department of Water
Resources (DWR) and State Water Board. … California’s
water operations overestimated the forecast by 68% for the
Sacramento River region, 45% for the San Joaquin River
region and 46% for the Tulare Lake region, according to a
state report. Those overestimations left the operators with
less stored water than was necessary, according to Gray’s news
release.
For many decades, the Colorado River was managed with the
attitude that its water levels would remain roughly stable over
time, punctuated by alternating wet and dry periods. But in the
face of possibly the river’s driest period in 1,200 years, a
new approach is now needed to managing the river’s reservoirs —
one that can account for “deep uncertainty” about future
climate and runoff conditions, says the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation. And for the next two months, the bureau wants to
hear from the public about how it should go about operating
reservoirs including Lake Mead, Lake Powell and other parts of
the river system under such conditions.
In the parched southwestern United States, few forecasts are as
important as the future height of Lake Mead, which tells
federal authorities how much water to release to the 20 million
people living downstream of the giant reservoir. This year, the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is testing out a new tool it hopes
will make those projections a little better: A model that can
predict — months in advance — the summer rainfall associated
with the North American Monsoon.
Water resource planners regularly rely on computer models to
illuminate relationships between human- and
natural-systems. Anyone who has tinkered with one of
California water supply models knows this is a deeply
left-brained exercise. During Winter 2021, as part of Jay
Lund’s Art and Water class, water resource engineering students
took a break from creating and analyzing mathematical models to
exercise the right side of their brains and enjoy some art.
Please enjoy this collection of art pieces curated by a group
of graduate students who can’t quite figure out how to unplug…
NASA has been coming to Mono Lake for many years, and they are
back on our shores once again. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) team arrived last Sunday and set up a mobile
laboratory in the Mono Basin Scenic Area Visitor Center parking
lot for the week. The tiny space contains several labs,
including a microbial analysis lab in a single portable box,
and the hope is that this mobile lab will be able to be
transported and utilized anywhere. NASA JPL is here at
Mono Lake as part of the Ocean Water Life Surveyor (OWLS)
project. This project is working to prepare and fine tune
their methods for a trip to Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons,
Enceladus and Europa, respectively.
Jonas Minton, who served Californians for decades as a member
of the DWR team and Deputy Director, passed away this week at
the age of 73. Jonas had a passion for protecting the
environment and water during his impressive 33-year career with
DWR. Jonas was manager of DWR’s Office of Water Supply Division
from 1978 to 1994. During the 1990s, he worked for the El
Dorado County Water Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and
the Executive Director of the Water Forum before being
appointed Deputy Director at DWR by Governor Gray Davis in
2000. He was a member of the Water Education Foundation Board
of Directors for nine years, through 2014.
In the rainless season we call summer in California, images of
shrinking bodies of water have a way of looming large. After
more than 22 years of drought compounded by warmer
temperatures, Lake Mead and Lake Powell — water sources that
are vital to life in the Southwest — have declined to their
lowest levels since they were filled. The two reservoirs now
sit at just 28 percent of capacity. But now, I don’t have
climate change on my mind. Instead, I’m thinking about another
reservoir that’s nearly empty: our reservoir of empathy. -Written by Steven P. Dinkin, president of the
National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group
working to create solutions to challenging issues, including
intolerance and incivility.
Jonas Minton, a California water policy expert and
environmentalist who maintained a high profile around the
Capitol for decades, has died. Minton, 73, the senior water
policy advisor at the nonprofit Planning and Conservation
League, died Wednesday due to a heart condition. As a former
deputy director of the California Department of Water
Resources, he was instrumental in securing protection for 1,200
miles of California rivers under federal law in 1981. He was
the former executive director of the Sacramento Water Forum, a
group that brokered a wide-ranging deal in the early 2000s
between environmental groups and area water agencies to share
the waters of the American River.
Less than a month after sweeping water
restrictions took effect across Southern California, early
indications suggest residents are finally heeding calls to
conserve as officials report a noticeable drop in demand
throughout the region. Officials at the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California reported that demand was 5%
lower than what they hoped to see under the first three weeks
of restrictions. At the same time, water waste complaints
have soared throughout Los Angeles, signaling perhaps that many
residents have taken conservation to heart.
At its June 23, 2022 meeting, the Delta Stewardship Council
voted Vice-Chair Virginia Madueño to the post of chair. “It’s
been a pleasure and a privilege acting in the absence of a
full-time chair,” said Chair Madueño. “I see this as a huge
responsibility and will rise to the occasion with all of you.
Together, we can work creatively as a unified body to meet the
needs and challenges we will face in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta.” Chair Madueño’s duties will take effect after she takes
an oath to the position, which has been vacant since former
Chair Susan Tatayon’s term ended in February 2022.
What two stooped and warped sentinels in the Great Basin are
telling us is a scary story, with a twist of possible
redemption. Approximately 1,800 years after popping out
of the ground as seedlings, live bristlecone pines are still
talking to us nearly 2 millennia later. … Rings from trees
that were alive in the west’s Great Basin in the second century
A.D. show a devastating 24-year drought back then that makes
our current 22-year Western drought look positively moist, the
research shows. The tree rings and other evidence from
caves and bogs show the drought cut 32% from the average flow
of the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, in northern Arizona near
the beginning of the Grand Canyon.
With the San Luis Reservoir serving as a backdrop, Assemblyman
Adam Gray renewed on his call for an audit of California’s
entire water regulatory system. Gray and State Sen. Anna
Caballero hosted a summit of top state, federal and Valley
water managers on June 17 at Grasslands Water
District. … Caballero echoed Gray’s concern, noting
the colossal miscalculations in 2021 that led DWR to mistakenly
release enough water to supply every household in the entire
Bay Area for a year after grossly miscalculating Sierra runoff.
The runoff was much lower, contributing to difficulties brought
on by the drought that has worsened this year.
The sheer acreage consumed by fire in California in recent
years is numbing: more than 2.5 million acres last year, and
4.3 million acres the year before that. Already in 2022, before
peak fire season has descended upon this drought-parched state,
fire has burned nearly 17,000 acres. Yet not all fires are
equal. New research from UC Irvine shows that fires caused by
human activity — be it arson, a neglected campfire, sparking
electrical equipment or ill-conceived gender reveal parties —
spread faster, burn hotter and destroy more trees than those
caused by lightning strikes.
Desert dwellers know it well: the smell of rain and
the feeling of euphoria that comes when a storm
washes over the parched Earth. That feeling – and the
additional health benefits that come with it – may be the
result of oils and other chemicals released by desert
plants after a good soaking,
new University of Arizona research
suggests. … [Gary Nabhan, a research social scientist at the
UArizona Southwest Center] is lead
author of two new studies … that explain how
volatile organic compounds that evolved to protect plants from
damaging solar radiation, heat waves, drought stress and
predatory animals may also have health benefits for
humans.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is cutting back
on watering lawns and landscapes at temples, meetinghouses and
other buildings across the West in an effort to conserve water
amid a worsening regional drought. … Officials said the
church already switched to water-wise irrigation systems and
low-flow plumbing systems for new projects beginning in the
early 2000s, and that it is working to retrofit other
properties that pre-date that time period. They plan on
expanding the use of smart controllers, hydrometers, rain
sensors, drip irrigation and use of secondary or reclaimed
water to help water lawns and landscapes effectively.
Last month, the state of California reached an important
milestone in its effort to proactively address water scarcity
and the changing agricultural landscape: The Department of
Conservation awarded over $40 million to regional organizations
to strategically repurpose previously irrigated farmland in
ways that create new public benefits while reducing groundwater
use. The highly competitive Multibenefit Land Repurposing
Program (MLRP) received 12 applications requesting over $110
million — more than twice the funding available during
the program’s inaugural year.
Beside a canal that runs through farmland, rushing water roared
through an irrigation gate and flowed down a concrete culvert
toward a wetland fringed with cottonwoods and willows. For
decades, so much water has been diverted to supply farms and
cities that the Colorado River has seldom met the sea and much
of its delta in Mexico has been reduced to a dry riverbed, with
only small remnants of its once-vast wetlands surviving. Over
the past eight weeks, water has been flowing in parts of the
delta once again, restoring a stretch of river in Mexico where
previously there had been miles of desert sand.
With an extreme drought tightening its grip, drawing concerns
about the future of water in Monterey County and throughout
California, the county’s Board of Supervisors overturned a
33-year-old law to allow the private ownership and operation of
desalination facilities within the county. Previously,
desalination facilities were limited to public ownership, a
rule that was criticized as more of a political decision than
anything else. The decision to overturn the law and allow
private ownership and operation passed 4-1 on June 21, with
Supervisor Wendy Root Askew dissenting.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been urging Californians
to conserve water after another dry winter. And according to
preliminary data from California State Water Resources Board,
Californians cut their water use in May by 5% from the previous
May. Erik Ekdahl, deputy director of the water board’s Division
of Water Rights, said a board meeting Tuesday that the snowpack
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is gone for the season and the
area will not see significant precipitation any time soon.
During the Moroccan desert summertime drought, fog nets are
being used to provide drinking water to hundreds of thousands
of people in remote mountain villages. Now villagers can
irrigate agricultural fields, turning desertified land back
into green gardens, all thanks to mathematician and businessman
Aissa Derhem. … The drought-affected state of
California, which has already borrowed water-saving strategies
from India, could utilize these nets along the coastlines of
San Francisco, Oakland, Point Reyes, Monterrey, and Santa
Barbara.