The California Water Commission approved a white paper that
contains its findings and the potential next steps for State
engagement in shaping well-managed groundwater trading programs
with appropriate safeguards for vulnerable water users: natural
resources, small- and medium-size farms, and water supply and
quality for disadvantaged communities. The white paper will be
shared with the Secretaries for Natural Resources,
Environmental Protection, and Food and Agriculture, who
requested the Commission’s engagement on this topic.
Annette Morales Roe learned how to waterski off the north shore
of the Salton Sea in the 1960s. … Her family stopped visiting
in the early 1970s, around the same time scientists began
warning that the Salton Sea would shrink and become
inhospitable to wildlife without a sustainable water source.
… Now, Roe is certain that she knows how to fix the
problem — and has the team to do it. As managing partner
and chief strategy officer of Online Land Planning LLC,
she is advocating for a plan that would reroute recycled water
that’s currently flowing into the Pacific Ocean to the Salton
Sea …
Bits of your pants, shirts, socks and fleece jackets are
polluting local waters. Cal Lutheran biology students have
discovered this disturbing fashion dilemma as part of a
scientific research project. For the past four years, CLU
biology professor Andrea Huvard, PhD, has guided dozens of
students in a long-term research project: They are studying the
presence of microfibers in the ocean, sediments and marine
animals around Southern California.
Engineers at UC Riverside are the first to report selective
breakdown of a particularly stubborn class of PFAS called
fluorinated carboxylic acids (FCAs) by common
microorganisms. Under anaerobic conditions, a
carbon-carbon double bond is crucial for the shattering the
ultra-strong carbon-fluorine bond by microbial communities.
While breaking the carbon-carbon bond does not completely
degrade the molecule, the resulting products could be relayed
to other microorganisms for defluorination under in aerobic
conditions.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday warned major water agencies to show
better conservation results or face mandatory statewide water
restrictions as California heads into its third summer of
severe drought. The threat is a sign of Newsom’s growing
impatience with the state’s failure to reduce urban water use,
as he has requested since last year. In fact, people have been
using more. … Newsom also said the state will closely monitor
the situation over the next 60 days, and he told the agencies
to submit water use data more frequently to the state and to
step up outreach and education efforts to communicate the
urgency of the crisis to the public.
This blog is a short introduction to a lesser known federal
bill that is one of the most significant pieces of fish and
wildlife legislation in decades. In Spring of 2021, Rep. Debbie
Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) introduced
the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. During July 2021, a
separate adaptation of the act was also introduced in the
Senate (S.2372) by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Sen. Roy
Blunt (R-MO). At its core, the bipartisan bill seeks to provide
$1.39B in annual funding for state and tribal fish and wildlife
agencies to protect and conserve declining species.
A Trump era decision has further imperiled endangered fish
species in the Trinity River, and commercial fishermen and
local tribes are demanding the federal government take action.
This week, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations and its sister organization Institute for
Fisheries Research sent the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a 60-day
notice of their intention to sue the federal agency for
violating the Endangered Species Act. The amount of water the
bureau is diverting from the Trinity River to the Central
Valley Project has decimated the river’s salmon populations
…
The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
announced the appointment of Eileen White as its executive
officer, succeeding Michael Montgomery. Her first day is July
11. White most recently served as director of East Bay
Municipal Utility District’s Wastewater Department, where she
recently led the development of EBMUD’s Integrated Master Plan
for its main wastewater treatment plant, along with EBMUD’s
Climate Action Plan, to guide operations, investments and
priorities for decades to come. White managed a workforce of
280 people.
Outdoor watering restrictions area set to take effect in Los
Angeles at the end of the month, and the prospect of an
improvement in drought conditions appears dim. Just how bad is
the drought? According to state figures, the first three months
of the year were the driest in the state’s recorded history.
California is currently in the third year of a
drought. Wade Crowfoot is the state secretary for natural
resources. The one resource he oversees that we all use is
water. According to his agency, the drought is getting worse,
not better.
A ruling by federal regulators has put a damper on plans to
turn 300 miles of rail line from Humboldt County to Marin
County into the Great Redwood Trail. The Surface Transportation
Board issued a decision Tuesday that it will not prioritize
trail use … Maintaining the rail line along the Eel
River is financially infeasible because of landslides and other
risks, but the North Coast Railroad Co. wants to take over that
portion of the line. … U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman and
state Sen. Mike McGuire … issued statements saying they
weren’t surprised by the decision, but that they are taking
steps to ensure the “toxic coal train” doesn’t become a reality
on the North Coast.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Bakersfield) and state Sen. Dave
Cortese (D-San Jose) are calling for U. S. Attorney General
Merrick Garland to investigate possible drought profiteering
and water rights abuses in the western states. … A
county supervisor in Arizona joined the California state
senators in calling for the investigation. … In addition
to raising anti-trust questions, Hurtado and Cortese expressed
concern about the potential for hedge funds to divert water
intended for food production to cannabis growing operations.
City of Porterville Manager John Lollis … announced at
Tuesday’s Porterville City Council meeting the County and State
may exercise its right to take 3 million gallons of
water a month at no charge from a city well as part of the
arrangement the city, county and state reached to supply East
Porterville with water after the 2015 drought. … Lollis
noted the state still hasn’t fulfilled its portion of the
agreement which called for the development of three wells for
the City of Porterville as part of the East Porterville
project.
San Diego County lagoons and wetlands may get more funding for
protection and restoration under the Resilient Coasts and
Estuaries Act, introduced Tuesday by Reps. Mike Levin, D-San
Juan Capistrano, and Brian Mast, R-Fla. The bill would
authorize $60 million per year through 2026 for the Coastal and
Estuarine Land Conservation Program, which distributes money to
preserve the “conservation, recreation, ecological, historical,
and aesthetic values of estuaries,” Levin stated. That funding
could support conservation of local wetlands, including the San
Mateo Creek, San Luis Rey River, San Elijo Lagoon and others…
Despite two board members expressing doubts that a new spending
measure would be approved by voters, the Mendocino County Board
of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with a
possible sales tax ordinance to fund projects protecting local
water supply and boosting local fire services.
One hundred years after a landmark agreement divided the waters
of the Colorado River among Western states, the pact is now
showing its age as a hotter and drier climate has shrunk the
river….Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who oversaw
management of the river under President Clinton, said it’s
become clear that the 1922 Colorado River Compact should be
revamped to adapt to the reduced amount of water that is
available as global warming compounds the 22-year megadrought
in the watershed.
As the drought deepens and an election nears, Gov. Gavin Newsom
is taking extra steps to increase pressure—and
responsibility—on the Water Commission for the Sites Reservoir
Project proposal. During a Senate budget subcommittee
hearing on Tuesday, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot
said the governor has tasked him with ensuring the commission
“isn’t slowing down the progress of getting those [Proposition
1] projects online.” Newsom also charged Crowfoot with finding
ways to remove regulatory barriers and accelerate the approval
process for those projects.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
Managing water resources in the Colorado River Basin is not for the timid or those unaccustomed to big challenges. Careers are devoted to responding to all the demands put upon the river: water supply, hydropower, recreation and environmental protection.
All of this while the Basin endures a seemingly endless drought and forecasts of increasing dryness in the future.
