In an outcome that could change whether Silicon Valley’s
largest water district moves forward with a $2.5 billion plan
to build a new dam at Pacheco Pass, voters have shaken up the
Santa Clara Valley Water District Board. Gary Kremen, a tech
investor who co-founded Match.com and once owned domain names
like sex.com, jobs.com and housing.com, has been defeated in
his effort to seek re-election to a third term by Rebecca
Eisenberg, a Palo Alto attorney. Kremen conceded Wednesday
after county elections officials updated the count and reported
he was trailing 54.8% to 45.2% — or by 7,765 votes with roughly
8,000 ballots left to count.
The Santa Margarita Water District is getting started on its
first drinking water treatment plant, which will be in Rancho
Mission Viejo. … The [Ranch Water Filtration Plant] will
treat groundwater from the San Juan Basin to supply some 1.6
billion gallons of drinking water per year to customers,
according to SMWD Public Information officer Nicole Stanfield.
Currently, all the district’s water is sourced from Northern
California and the Colorado River. The plant, however, would
establish a local source of drinking water.
With the federal government calling for major cuts in water use
to address the historic shortage on the Colorado River, the
leaders of 30 agencies that supply cities from the Rocky
Mountains to Southern California have signed an agreement
committing to boost conservation, in part by pledging to target
the removal of one especially thirsty mainstay of suburban
landscapes: decorative grass. The water agencies, which supply
Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Santa Monica, Burbank, San Diego
and other cities, have committed to a nonbinding list of
actions, including creating a program to remove 30% of
“nonfunctional” grass and replace it with “drought- and
climate-resilient landscaping, while maintaining vital urban
landscapes and tree canopies.”
A Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday heard arguments on whether
federal judges can vacate a rule by the Trump-era U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency without finding the rule
unlawful. In July 2020, the Trump administration revised the
“Clean Water Act 401 Certification Rule,” which narrowed what
issues state and tribal governments can consider when
determining whether a project, particularly one discharging
pollution into a waterway, complies with state water quality
standards. The rule affected the permitting and relicensing
process for thousands of industrial projects, including natural
gas pipelines, hydroelectric plants, wastewater treatment
facilities and construction sites near sensitive
wetlands.
As drought extends its grip on California and the West, the
important work of educating about water becomes even more
important. Since 1977, the Water Education Foundation has been
a trusted source of water news and programming, putting water
resource issues in California and the West into context. You
can support the important work of our nonprofit by making a tax-deductible gift via a one-time payroll
deduction or a set amount per pay period through
your employer, whether you work for a federal or state agency
or a private employer.
Colorado River Commission Chairman Herbert Hoover gathered the
seven states’ representatives at opened at 11:00 a.m. Nov. 15,
1922, for the 17th meeting in their efforts to forge an
agreement to share the Colorado River. They had been holed up
at Bishop’s Lodge outside Santa Fe for five days, wrestling
with how to divide the river. By that point in the negotiations
they had settled on a general framework, dividing the river
into an “upper” and “lower” basin, but were stuck on the
question of how much water the upper states would be required
to send each year to the lower states. Hoover intentionally set
a later starting time that day to give the upper river states
plenty of time to caucus among themselves to consider his
proposal from the previous day that the Upper Basin deliver 82
million acre-feet every ten years plus a 4 and ½ million acre
foot minimum annual flow.
Earlier this year, officials in Southern California declared a
water shortage emergency resulting in restrictions such as
limiting outdoor water use to one day of the week. While
mandatory restrictions vary across the region, Amir Haghverdi,
University of California Cooperative Extension specialist
and associate professor of agricultural and urban water
management at UC Riverside, is using research to pinpoint
irrigation strategies that will help communities reduce their
demand for water and increase supply. Haghverdi and his
team are responding to a hotter and drier California by working
to identify changes that can make a substantial difference in
water savings.
On November 10, 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta
announced that he had filed a lawsuit against 3M, DuPont, and
sixteen other companies for their roles in manufacturing per-
and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The lawsuit seeks money
damages, which could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, for
damages, penalties, and restitution, as well as injunctive
relief and abatement. Some consider the lawsuit the broadest of
its kind brought by any state. PFAS is an umbrella term
that covers dozens of types of man-made chemicals. PFAS were
used for a variety of purposes, including in nonstick cookware
and firefighting foam, although their usage has been phased out
voluntarily by companies in the United States over the past
20-25 years.
A slate of candidates aiming to reform the powerful Westlands
Water District swept into victory on Monday night, cementing a
new board majority and likely spelling the end of the line for
the district’s general manager. The four candidates –
Justin Diener, Ernie Costamagna, Jeremy Hughes, and Ross
Franson – captured the four available seats in preliminary
results. In the process, they are primed to boot the lone
incumbent running for re-election from his seat – current
Westlands board president Ryan Ferguson.
For the second time since the Delta Stewardship Council’s
establishment in 2010, its regulatory authority has been upheld
by California’s judicial branch, clearing the way for the
Council to continue to apply its expertise and exercise its
broad authority in determining how to accomplish the goals and
objectives of the Delta Reform Act. On November 4, the Superior
Court of California ruled in favor of the Council regarding
lawsuits filed by 17 parties challenging two amendments to the
Delta Plan and the Programmatic Environmental Impact Report
(PEIR) prepared pursuant to the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA).
With California butting up against 840 miles of
ocean, desalination seems an obvious solution to the
state’s water woes. However, the cost, energy demands and
environmental impacts have made the technology largely
unworkable. Three years of drought may be
changing the calculus. The latest push for desalination is
on the Monterey Peninsula, where a plan for a plant, which has
faced more than a decade of hurdles, is poised to win approval
this week from the California Coastal Commission. The $300
million-plus proposal calls for pumping seawater from wells
beneath Monterey Bay, near the city of Marina, and piping it
ashore to the popular tourist region to help relieve a longtime
water shortage… the Monterey Peninsula Water Management
District, which works with Cal Am to ensure water for the area,
said the new supply could run as much as $7,000 per acre
foot.
Recycled wastewater is not only as safe to drink as
conventional potable water, it may even be less toxic than many
sources of water we already drink daily, Stanford University
engineers have discovered. … The engineers found that,
after treatment, potable reuse water is cleaner than
conventional drinking water sourced from pristine-looking
rivers. In most rivers, someone upstream is dumping in their
wastewater with much less treatment than occurs in potable
reuse systems. Conventional wastewater treatment plants just
aren’t equipped to deep clean. This leaves many organic
contaminants, such as chemicals from shampoos and medicines,
floating down river and straight into a drinking water plant.
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Vice Chair
Cynthia Kurtz told a City committee she predicted the
implementation of more mandatory water reductions by next year
as the region faces the challenges of climate change
and extended drought. Kurtz knows Pasadena’s water
situation well. She served as Pasadena City Manager twice, most
recently stepping down as Interim City
Manager in August. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the first three months of 2022 have seen record dry
weather, and pushed nearly 94% of California into
severe drought conditions.
If challenger Eric Averett maintains his lead over incumbent
Phil Cerro for a seat on the powerful Kern County Water Agency
board, it may prove just how effective a campaign statement can
be. Averett said he tried to withdraw his name from the ballot
after belatedly learning Cerro would run. But he missed the
deadline to have his name removed, Averett told SJV Water in
September. He vowed not to campaign – dropping out of the race
in spirit – and said he would support Cerro. But when Averett
filed his paperwork to run, he did one thing Cerro didn’t, he
submitted a campaign statement.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland
may come out of irrigated production in the coming decades to
help balance overdrafted groundwater basins under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. At the same time,
California needs to ramp up clean energy development to meet
the goals of SB 100—and the valley has high solar potential. At
a virtual event last week, PPIC Water Policy Center research
fellow Andrew Ayres moderated a panel of experts and local
stakeholders; they explored how solar development could help
California meet multiple objectives while overcoming some
challenges and delivering lasting benefits to the region.
Register to join us Thursday, Dec. 8, for our Winter
Outlook Workshop in Irvine. The past
three-year span, 2019 to 2022, has officially been the driest
ever statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into
this winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for
California or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new
reality of climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our
reliance on historical patterns to forecast California’s water
supply? The event is ideal for anyone involved in managing
water resources or simply interested in the
topic … Register here!
Productive agriculture is essential to civilization, but water
privateering – the seizure of public trust water for exorbitant
private profit – is not. California’s water privateers often
present themselves as farmers. But while they may use the water
they’ve commandeered from state and federal water conveyance
projects for industrial-scale agribusiness initiatives, they’re
not farmers. They’re water brokers. If there’s money to be made
in irrigating almonds or pistachios, they’ll do that. If
there’s more money to be made by selling their allocated water
to cities or other agribusiness operations, they’ll choose that
option instead. It’s not about a devotion to agriculture – and
certainly not about food security or land stewardship.
With a multi-year drought bearing down on California and the
West, there’s an intense focus on nearly every drop of water.
But in a few weeks, we may begin to get a history making look
at where that water is and where it’s going. Not just here, but
around the entire planet. … Using technology, including a
sophisticated form of radar, the satellite will survey and
measure nearly all the water on the Earth’s surface, including
lakes, rivers, reservoirs and the ocean itself.
… Experts believe understanding flood patterns could
help us recover and store valuable water that’s currently being
lost. Perhaps diverting it into underground aquifers or
reservoirs.
From water infrastructure failures in Jackson, Mississippi, to
a political and financing puzzle in California, water
affordability is an emerging policy concern for an industry
already facing huge challenges. Tune is as Brownstein’s Jessica
Diaz speaks to industry experts Jennifer Capitolo and April
Ballou about how the issue of water affordability and
fragmentation is playing out among providers, the potential and
pitfalls that come with federal assistance programs and the
critical balance of providing affordable water without
sacrificing safety or reliability.
Incumbent John Allen is leading two challengers in his quest
for a third term representing Long Beach on the Water
Replenishment District Board of Directors. With mail-in ballots
counted, Allen had 52% of the vote, while challengers Mike
Murchison has 23% and Gerrie Schipske has 25% in the race for
the Area 3 board seat. The Area 3 seat represents 800,000
residents in seven cities: Long Beach, Signal Hill, San Pedro,
Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens, Artesia and Cerritos.
