The Natural Resources Defense Council is winding down its San
Francisco Bay-Delta program and losing two key staff attorneys
as it shifts resources to protecting wetlands. Kate
Poole retired this summer, and Doug Obegi is
expected to leave in October. After 20 and 15 years at NRDC,
respectively, the hard-charging and respected duo will leave a
void in the environmental advocacy on the Delta, where anglers,
farmers and cities are duking it out over a limited but
precious water source. The decision was taken in the wake
of the Supreme Court ruling this spring that slashed federal
protections under the Clean Water Act, Drew Caputo, NRDC’s
chief program officer, said in a statement. - Editor’s Note: Scroll to bottom of story for
water-related content.
Warm ocean waters from the developing El Niño are shifting
north along coastlines in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Along the
coast of California, these warm waters are interacting with a
persistent marine heat wave that recently influenced the
development of Hurricane Hilary. … In its September
outlook, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration forecast a greater than 70% chance for a strong
El Niño this coming winter. In addition to warmer water, El
Niño is also associated with a weakening of the equatorial
trade winds. The phenomenon can bring cooler, wetter conditions
to the U.S. Southwest and drought to countries in the western
Pacific, such as Indonesia and Australia.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has before him about a thousand bills
approved by the California Legislature that now await his fate
but some are far more explosive and politically consequential
than others. These bills in Newsom’s pile could reveal how the
governor is evolving as a leader, and now he has less than a
month to review them. … Here is an obscure bill that
will reveal a lot about how much Newsom listens to his inner
circle or his own common sense. Two water districts in Southern
California want to switch water suppliers and leave the San
Diego County Water Authority, the long-time primary provider
for the region. The county’s Local Agency Formation Commission
said yes, including an exit fee intended to address impacts to
the SDCWA budget.
Reservoir hydropower offers a compelling combination of
stability and flexibility services for modern water and power
grids. However, its operating flexibility is poorly
characterized in energy system planning, missing opportunities
to cost-effectively uptake variable renewable energy (VRE) for
a clean energy transition. In this study, we have developed a
fully coupled reservoir operation and energy expansion model to
quantify the economic and environmental benefits attained from
adaptive hydropower operation in a high VRE future. Our case
study of the China Southern Power Grid reveals that, in a 2050
net-zero grid, simply adapting hydropower operations to balance
VRE can reduce 2018–2050 total system costs by 7% (that is,
US$28.2 billion) and simultaneously save 123.8 km3 of water
each year …
With no end in sight for Arizona’s megadrought, many
researchers at Arizona State University are developing
innovations to mitigate the drought’s effects on residents,
agriculture and industry, and promote water resilience and
security. Claire Lauer, a professor of technical communication
in the School of Applied Professional Studies, part of the
College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (CISA) at ASU’s
Polytechnic campus, is applying her knowledge of user
experience, or UX, and Arizona’s water landscape to educate the
public about the intricacies of water usage because “there’s a
lot of misinformation about water out there,” she said.
“Educating the public on water management will help communities
make informed decisions, which can have a huge effect on
Arizona’s water policies and conservation efforts.”
Successful implementation of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) is vital to the long-term health of the
San Joaquin Valley’s communities, agriculture, environment, and
economy. But the transition will be challenging. Even with
robust efforts to augment water supplies through activities
like groundwater recharge, significant land fallowing will be
necessary. How the valley manages that fallowing will be
paramount to protecting the region’s residents—including the
growers and rural, low-income communities who will be most
directly impacted by the changes. With coordinated planning and
robust incentives, the valley can navigate the difficult water
and land transitions coming its way and put itself on a path to
a productive and sustainable future.
Tribal members celebrated the return of more than 1,200 acres
of their ancestral lands in the jagged hills above Weldon on
Saturday in a ceremony marked with gratitude, emotion and
prayer. Chairman Robert Gomez opened the event by thanking a
large number of people who helped find, purchase and deed the
land back to the Tübatulabal tribe, which has called the Kern
River Valley home for more than 5,000 years. Western Rivers
Conservancy was chief among those Gomez called out for their
help in obtaining the land. Western Rivers, a non profit
dedicated to restoring rivers, helped secure funding through
the state Wildlife Conservation Board and Sierra
Nevada Conservancy and facilitated the handover of the land to
the tribe.
Seizing a generational opportunity to leverage unprecedented
state funding to combat drought and climate change, the State
Water Resources Control Board provided an historic $3.3 billion
in financial assistance during the past fiscal year (July 1,
2021 – June 30, 2022) to water systems and communities for
projects that bolster water resilience, respond to drought
emergencies and expand access to safe drinking water. The State
Water Board’s funding to communities this past fiscal year
doubled compared to 2020-21, and it is four times the amount of
assistance provided just two years ago.
As the nation faces a future of increasing flooding, drought
and wildfires, millions of 60-pound rodents stand by, ready to
assist. Beavers can transform parched fields into verdant
wetlands and widen rivers and streams in ways that not only
slow surging floodwater, but store it for times of drought. …
Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of physical geography at
the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities … who
spoke earlier this week at the first-ever Midwest Beaver
Summit, is part of a broader “beaver restoration” movement that
has gained ground in recent years with ecologists in Colorado
using simplified human-made beaver dams to encourage the
animals to recolonize waterways, and California passing a new
law encouraging nonlethal approaches to human-beaver conflicts.
El Niño — a weather pattern that can cause impacts around
the world — developed in summer and is expected to persist
through winter, long-term forecasters said Thursday. In
its latest monthly forecast, the federal Climate Prediction
Center said there’s a 95% chance El Niño will
continue through winter, January to March, and it will most
likely be strong, as opposed to weak or moderate. In
California, El Niño has near-celebrity status, as the state has
seen some epic wet winters when it has developed in the past,
but meteorologists say that the state has also seen dry or
normal precipitation in El Niño winters.
We are living in the Anthropocene, an era being defined by
global mass extinctions caused by humanity. While on-going and
impending extinctions of birds and other terrestrial
vertebrates gain the most attention, the situation with
freshwater fishes (and other freshwater organisms) is as bad or
worse, partly because many freshwater extinctions are nearly
invisible events, hidden by murky waters (Moyle and Leidy
2023). The extinction threat is especially high for obligatory
freshwater fishes including many species endemic to California
(Moyle and Leidy 2023). The ultimate cause is competition
between people and fish for clean water.
More than 11,000 people are now known to have died, with
thousands still missing, after Mediterranean storm Daniel made
landfall in Libya over the weekend. Inland areas were flooded,
as seen in Sentinel 2 images released by the European Union’s
space programme on Wednesday. Coastal settlements built near or
over alluvial fans and deltas of ancient Wadi — the Arabic term
traditionally referring to river valleys — were swept away. In
Derna alone, the worst affected city, the flood destroyed
two-thirds of all buildings and killed over 2,000 people.
… A “grey swan” is what experts describe as a
predictable, yet improbable, event with significant and
wide-ranging long-term impacts. Modern dams, reservoirs and
infrastructure to control floods are build to withstand
meteorological conditions as experienced in the last 100
years. -Written by David Bressan, a freelance geologist
working mostly in the Eastern Alps.
Summer of 2023 was Earth’s hottest since global records began
in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of
Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The months of June, July, and
August combined were 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit (0.23 degrees
Celsius) warmer than any other summer in NASA’s record, and 2.1
degrees F (1.2 C) warmer than the average summer between 1951
and 1980. August alone was 2.2 F (1.2 C) warmer than the
average. June through August is considered meteorological
summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This new record comes as
exceptional heat swept across much of the world, exacerbating
deadly wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, and searing heat waves
in South America, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., while likely
contributing to severe rainfall in Italy, Greece, and Central
Europe.
While the California American Water Co. has repeatedly said
they have no plans to sell their water system that serves much
of the Monterey Peninsula, the local water management district
board of directors is considering using eminent domain to take
over the system. The public will get a chance to weigh in on
that possibility at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 10 in a hearing in the
Irvine Auditorium at the Middlebury Institute of International
Studies, 499 Pierce St., Monterey. … The resolution of
necessity would entail taking by eminent domain the Monterey
water system, which is currently privately owned, operated and
held by Cal Am. If approved, the water system would be
converted to public ownership and controlled by the Monterey
Peninsula Water Management District.
During three weeks in December and January, storms dumped 32
trillion gallons of rain and snow on California. With it came
unwelcome floods for many communities of color. The winter and
spring storms were a rare chance for drought-stricken
communities to collect rainwater, rather than have their farms,
homes and more overwhelmed by water. Much of the rain that fell
instead overflowed in lakes and streams, leading to disaster in
low-income Central Valley towns like Allensworth and
Planada. In the aftermath of the damage, community leaders
are reiterating a call to diversify water boards to give
marginalized groups more power. The California State Water
Resources Control Board, which oversees the distribution of
water in the state, has acknowledged that its workforce does
not reflect California’s racial composition.
Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District (GCID) General Manager
Thaddeus L. Bettner announced his plans to resign from his
position, effective September 22, 2023. The District is
extremely appreciative of Bettner’s leadership, dedication, and
outstanding service to the District and the Sacramento Valley,
and extends to him best wishes going forward. Bettner has
worked for the District since 2006 as its General Manager. He
is a registered civil engineer and recognized expert on issues
of water and the environment. He has guided the District
through critical water policy changes while improving the
District’s infrastructure and building and investing in
partnerships. Bettner has used his 33 years of experience
across California in the water resources field to bring
innovative solutions to historically challenging problems.
Meghan Holst studies the broadnose sevengill shark, so she was
naturally concerned when record-setting rain this year altered
the shark’s nursery grounds in San Francisco Bay. But the
species appears to have withstood the challenge, based on
initial observations from a recent outing on the water by
Holst, a 31-year-old doctoral student in conservation ecology
at the University of California, Davis. Next, perhaps,
will come California Fish and Game Commission protections for
the sharks in San Francisco Bay, which she considers a nursing
and pupping ground for a species believed to be in decline.
Research like hers can help support such a
designation. San Francisco Bay is one of the world’s only
known year-round nurseries for the species, Holst said, making
the habitat critical to monitor.
Change is coming to the heavily agricultural San Joaquin
Valley. We know that a combination of climate change, new
environmental regulations, and especially the implementation of
the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) are
leading to a decline in water available for irrigation. (By
2040, overall farm supplies in the valley could drop by as much
as 20%—and irrigated cropland by nearly 900,000 acres.) But
what we haven’t known is how these changes could impact farms
of different sizes in the valley—and there is understandable
concern about how the shift will play out, particularly for
smaller farms that have fewer resources and capacity to adapt.
Researchers have found a way to predict whether or not a forest
will survive based on drought conditions – information that can
help forest managers deal with climate change. The researchers
from the University of California Davis looked at a drought
that caused the loss of tens of millions of trees in the Sierra
Nevada forest from 2012 to 2015. In the early years, the trees
were doing fine, despite drought conditions. But by 2015, 80%
of them were essentially dead.
Today, U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02) announced new
grants for his district from the FY22 National Culvert Removal,
Replacement, and Restoration Grant Program (Culvert AOP
Program). Last Wednesday, Huffman visited the site of one of
these projects to examine how the award will be utilized and
the local impacts. … The grants have been awarded as
follows: $470,000 for the Wiyot Tribe Butte Creek
Fish Barrier Replacement Design, Humboldt County
… $5,000,000 for the Avenue of the Giants Fish
Passage, Humboldt County … $15,000,000 for the
State Route MEN-1 Fish Passage, Mendocino County…
