California’s rich agricultural productivity comes with a price.
The dry climate that provides the almost year-round growing
season also can require heavily irrigated soils. But such
irrigation can also degrade the local water quality.
Two of the state’s most productive farming areas in particular,
the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and parts of the Imperial
Valley in southern California, have poorly drained and naturally
saline soils.
A federal jury awarded the city of Pomona $48 million in
damages to be paid by a foreign corporation for contaminating
its groundwater with a toxic chemical mixed with fertilizer and
sold to citrus farmers for decades. On Sept. 7, the city won
its case against the American subsidiary of a multi-billion
dollar Chilean company, Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile,
known as SQM. The case, which began in 2011, bounced between
courts until the city won after presenting its full argument
recently in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The Central Valley’s rice fields and wetlands are widely
heralded as key rest and refuel stops for millions of migratory
birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway. The rice fields
provide more than 50% of the diet for the ducks and geese
during their fall and winter migration. To view rafts of
waterfowl feeding on public wildlife areas or seeing thousands
of geese taking flight from a rice field are indicators of a
healthy environment and visual examples of how vital the
Central Valley is to the Flyway. -Written by Jeff McCreary, director of operations for the
Western Region, Ducks Unlimited, and Tim Johnson, president and
CEO of the California Rice Commission.
At the end of the growing season, as the Sacramento Valley
transitions from summer to fall, we shift from the agronomic
season to the bird season as waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors and
other birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway begin to arrive
as part of their annual migration. Birds and other species
using the Pacific Flyway are reliant upon varied land uses in
the Sacramento Valley that include ricelands and managed
wetlands (both privately managed wetlands and public refuges
and state wildlife areas) to meet their habitat needs.
Driving between her northern Central Valley rice fields with
the family dog in tow, fifth-generation farmer Kim Gallagher
points out the window to shorebirds, egrets and avocets
fluttering across a thousand-acre sea of green flooded in six
inches of water. … The nearly 500,000 acres of sushi
rice grown in the Sacramento Valley each year serve as the
wetland habitat for thousands of migrating birds along the
Pacific Coast. Yet the crop also uses more water than most, and
about half of the product is exported to countries including
Japan and South Korea.
Located in California’s Central Valley, the Sacramento National
Wildlife Refuge Complex is made up of six individual National
Wildlife Refuges including Sacramento, Colusa, Delevan, Butte
Sink, Sutter and a long stretch of the Sacramento River from
Red Bluff south to Princeton. The complex adds up to 10,819
acres and was originally established by Franklin D. Roosevelt
on Feb. 27, 1937, as a Migratory Waterfowl Refuge. Waterfowl
using the Pacific Flyway to migrate currently and historically
used the area as a winter refuge. Written by Kevin
Deacon, a recent graduate of Tuleyome’s California Naturalist
Certification course, and Kristie Ehrhardt, Tuleyome’s
Land Conservation and Stewardship Program Manager.
Water conservation is on everyone’s mind in California
agriculture, especially this year. One staple crop that may
have potential for future water savings is rice. Netafim, who
invented drip irrigation, is now applying that technology to
rice, which is typically grown through flooding. Here’s chief
sustainability officer John Farner.
Greater buffer zones around bodies of water and more consistent
enforcement of water protection regulations are needed to
reduce agriculture-based pollution in the Western U.S., a
recent review from Oregon State University found. Prior
research has shown that agricultural pollution, both from
croplands and rangelands, is the cause of 48% of water-quality
impairment in U.S. surface waters, which in turn disrupts
habitat for fish and insects and reduces biodiversity in
aquatic environments.
The future of millions of waterfowl that visit the region each
fall could be up in the air if dry conditions continue.
Fourth-generation rice farmer Brian McKenzie farms about 4,000
acres and his fields are filled with wildlife. … This year’s
drought has decreased the number of birds and the number of
acres farmed. … And that has many worried about what
will happen to what is known as the Pacific flyway this fall.
This could be a good time to downsize the lawn. Thanks to your
water provider, you may get more cash for your grass. The
reason? We’re in a drought – again. But this may be no ordinary
dry spell. … Sacramento’s new rebates, which went
into effect July 1, double the amount available for River
Friendly Landscape conversions. Customers can receive up to $3
per square foot of turfgrass removed. That adds up quickly; a
10- by 10-foot block of gone lawn equals $300.
Except for a brief stint in the military, Paul Crawford has
spent his entire life farming in southern Oregon. First,
as a boy, chasing his dad through hayfields and now, growing
alfalfa on his own farm with his wife and two kids, who want to
grow up to be farmers. … The American west is drying out
as the region faces an unprecedented drought. Few places
are as devastated as the Klamath Basin, where Crawford’s farm
sits. Straddling the border between California and Oregon, the
watershed spans 12,000sq miles – from agricultural lands fed by
Upper Klamath Lake to tribal communities surrounding the
Klamath River.
The drought is intensifying efforts to conserve all of Sonoma
County’s water resources, including a supply that has eluded
oversight until recently: groundwater. But even as plans for
groundwater monitoring and sustainable use proceed, tensions
are building over its management. The authority to evaluate and
regulate groundwater comes from a 2014 law crafted in the
middle of the state’s last drought.
As science and policy director for Santa Barbara Channelkeeper
and a 14-year resident of Carpinteria, I appreciated Bob
Franco’s June 16 letter to the editor, “Don’t drink the water,”
for its effectiveness in raising awareness about an important
pollution issue impacting Carpinteria’s local waterways.
Channelkeeper is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to
protecting and restoring the Santa Barbara Channel and its
watersheds. -Written by Ben Pitterle, Channelkeeper’s interim
executive director and science and policy director.
Help may be on the horizon for the about 700 residents of East
Orosi dependent on bottled water. The Tulare County Board of
Supervisors has directed county staff to begin negotiating the
scope of work and a budget … to take control of the East
Orosi Community Services District public water system.
… East Orosi’s water has been plagued with nitrates from
fertilizers and coliform bacteria since at least 2003, for
which their water system has been cited for violating the
Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) both contaminants dozens of
times.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
I am now working through my third drought as the Director of
Water Quality for Northern California Water Association (NCWA),
where I have learned the importance of broadening my
perspective beyond my own tap in Roseville that brings
delicious American River water into my home. A pillar in NCWA’s
Strategic Plan and 2021 Priorities is to advance
multi-benefit water management that supports nature-based
solutions, which provide essential benefits for our economy,
health and quality of life …
Driving into Southern California’s Palo Verde Valley from the
Arizona border, fields of vibrant green appear out of the
desert like a mirage. Near the town of Blythe, water from the
Colorado River turns the dry earth into verdant farmland, much
of it to grow a single crop — alfalfa, a type of plant used
mainly to feed dairy cows. For decades, a significant portion
of alfalfa grown here and elsewhere in the western United
States — as much as 17 percent in 2017 — has been loaded onto
trucks, driven hundreds of miles to ports on the west coast,
and shipped around the world, mainly to China, Japan, and Saudi
Arabia.
The driest year California has experienced since the 1970s will
have wide-ranging impacts in the West. In the Sacramento
Valley, a reduced water supply will lead to about a 20 percent
reduction in rice plantings. The loss of about 100,000 acres of
rice fields has implications well beyond the farm level. The
reduced plantings will impact rural communities that depend on
agriculture as their foundation. It’s also a concern for
wildlife, which greatly depend on rice fields for their
habitat.
The Mendocino County Farm Bureau encourages local, state and
federal leadership to focus current drought relief measures on
multi-purpose projects that address agricultural, municipal,
environmental, recreational and fire suppression water needs.
… On-stream ponds are created by damning a water course and
off- stream ponds are created by diverting from a river, a well
or a flood control contract.
Growers in the Central Coast region of California produce most
of the cool-season vegetables for the U.S. from March to
mid-November. After several years of multi-cropping vegetables,
the groundwater in many of the coastal valleys has become
contaminated with nitrate. Some wells have concentrations of
nitrate several times the federal drinking water standard of 10
ppm (parts per million) nitrate-N. Rural communities that rely
on groundwater as their sole source of drinking water must
purchase bottled water or install small reverse osmosis
systems.
EPA’s Office of Water is kicking off quarterly meetings with
agricultural and environmental groups to discuss the thorny
issue of which waterways and wetlands qualify for federal
protections.
With the driest year in memory, the water resources managers
and landowners in the Sacramento Valley are working hard to
serve multiple benefits throughout the region with limited
water supplies. This has required all hands-on deck and
creative management within the region as all surface water
supplies have been significantly reduced, with hundreds of
thousands of farmland acres idled throughout the region, urban
suppliers working with their citizens to implement various
conservation measures to reduce water use and there will
undoubtedly be challenges for domestic groundwater wells.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors today approved a $2
million loan to the Three Rivers Levee Improvement Authority to
complete the construction of a new levee near the Yuba
Goldfields that will bring a 200-year level of urban flood
protection to southern Yuba County. The 2.5-mile-long levee,
which will be fully complete in June, runs parallel to
Hammonton-Smartsville Road and extends to high ground near
Beale Air Force Base. The 200-year level of protection means
there is a 1-in-200 chance in any given year that a storm could
come along that is bigger than the levee is designed to handle.
The Shasta-Klamath Region organizes work around protecting
California source water and volcanic aquifers, working with
family farms to improve water management, and protecting legacy
fly-fishing waters like the McCloud River, Hat Creek, and Fall
River. In 2021, we are heavily invested in conservation
projects in the Shasta and Scott watersheds. These key Klamath
tributaries will be critical for recovering salmon populations
in the Mid-Klamath Basin after dam removal.
What was already forecasted to be a historically bleak water
year in the Klamath Project has quickly become a living
nightmare for farms and ranches fighting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut
down the Project’s A Canal for the entire irrigation season May
12 in response to worsening conditions — allotting zero surface
water from Upper Klamath Lake for thirsty crops and livestock.
It is the first time in more than a century the A Canal will
deliver no water. Meanwhile, irrigators are left to wonder how
they will pay the bills as fields turn to dust.
A state appeals court has upheld California’s cleanup standards
for a cancer-causing chemical that was added to pesticides and
has polluted groundwater in the Central Valley, rejecting
challenges by manufacturers that may have to pay the costs. The
State Water Resources Control Board’s 2017 mandate for removing
nearly all TCP (1,2,3-trichloropropane) from drinking water was
contested by the California Manufacturers and Technology
Association, representing Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Oil, which
included the chemical in worm-killing fumigants widely used by
farmers through the 1980s.
Three options for replacing non-reinforced concrete pipelines
will be reviewed by Solano Irrigation District directors when
they meet Tuesday. The recommended option calls for replacing
the entire pipeline over 28 years at a cost of $73 million,
using a combination of financing and $2.3 million in annual
Rehabilitation and Betterment funding. The proposed 2021-22
Suisun Solano Water Authority Capital Improvement Program is
also on the agenda, as is the Gibson Canyon Improvement
District Storage and Hardening Capital Improvement Plan for
bond funding.
When Sandra Chavez’ mother discovered she had stage four cancer
last year, one of Sandra’s first thoughts was about their
water. Her family’s private well is contaminated with nitrates
and Chavez wondered if years of drinking the water could have
caused her mother’s sickness. Chavez and her family have relied
on bottled water since they found out their well water was
unsafe in 2015. But sometimes they don’t have enough and are
forced to drink the contaminated water. So when Chavez
found out about a new program providing free bottled water
delivery for families with nitrate-contaminated wells, she was
frustrated she hadn’t been contacted.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced an expansion of the drought
emergency to 41 of the state’s 58 counties, dedicating $5.1
billion to boost water infrastructure and an additional $1
billion to paying off nearly the entirety of Californian
household water debt. Yet, while the governor’s plan includes
$150 million for groundwater cleanup and water recycling
measures, it does nothing to speed up the process to bring
overdrafted water basins into full and sustainable operation.
The deadline is currently 2040 for critically overdrafted
basins and 2042 for remaining high and medium priority basins.
Newly announced state funding for the Salton Sea is expected to
maximize habitat outcomes and provide immediate economic relief
to the community. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $5.1 billion water
infrastructure, drought response and climate resilience
proposal, which he announced Monday as part of his $100 billion
“California Comeback Plan,” includes $220 million for the
Salton Sea. At Tuesday’s Imperial County Board of Supervisors
meeting on Tuesday, District 1 Supervisor Jesus Eduardo Escobar
wanted to know what is meant by providing immediate economic
relief to the community and how this would occur.
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is
signaling the way climate change could play out across the
western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring,
farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds
over water in Upper Klamath Lake. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,”
… Centuries ago, the area was wetlands; but in the early
20th century, the land was opened up to agriculture. Members of
the Klamath Tribes say tree removal and drainage hastened
drying as the climate warmed.
Many dryland cities like Los Angeles, Cairo and Tehran have
already outstripped natural water recharge, but are expected to
continue growing, resulting in a deepening arid urban water
crisis. … The situations in arid and semi-arid cities
like Phoenix, Arizona; Bamako, Mali; or Dubai, UAE, differ in
their particulars, but rhyme in their impending disastrous
trajectory. These, and other arid-region cities, are
approaching the edge of an ecological cliff: dependent on
sustaining growth, which itself requires a growth in water
supplied by faraway and finite sources, and delivered by aging
infrastructure. But water in dryland regions is
getting scarcer and supplies
more unpredictable.
In water-stressed farming areas of California, farmers removed
productive trees and idled other land to divert what little
water they have to other crops, as the reality of the 2021
drought became ever more apparent. “We’re removing 15-year-old,
prime-production almond trees,” said Daniel Hartwig of Woolf
Farming in Fresno County. “We’re pulling out almost 400 acres,
simply because there’s not enough water in the system to
irrigate them, and long term, we have no confidence that there
would be water in the future.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $5.1 billion water infrastructure,
drought response, and climate resilience proposal
includes $220 million for the Salton Sea, and Assembly
member Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, applauded the announcement.
Garcia, chair of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks, and
Wildlife, stated in a press release from his office that the
funding would maximize habitat outcomes and provide immediate
economic relief to the community.
As California enters what could be a record-breaking drought, a
just-completed nine-year floodplain restoration project at the
confluence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers offers an
ambitious attempt at one mitigation solution. At a 1,600-acre
former dairy ranch called Dos Rios, the conservation
organization River Partners removed berms that farmers had
originally constructed to protect their alfalfa and wheat crops
from the river. It turned fields into seasonal pools where
endangered baby salmon and migratory birds can rest, and water
can trickle down to refill aquifers.
In 2020, the Salton Sea was described by Palm Springs Life
Magazine as “the biggest environmental disaster in California
history.” With the largest lake in California holding such a
bleak title, it’s amazing how obscure its legacy is. Over
spring break, we decided to go on a road trip to visit an
eccentric settlement in the middle of the lower Colorado
desert, known as a Slab City. This settlement is most well
known for being a site of post-apocalyptic garbage art and a
home for colorful nomads. Due to its libertarian ethos, it is
billed as the “last free place in America.”
Just a short drive south of Palm Springs, you’ll find
California’s largest lake. The drive along the circumference of
the Salton Sea reveals surprising, majestic views unlike
anything you’d expect to find in the desert. But for its
impressive sights and size, the Salton Sea is not a household
name, least of all in the very state it’s found. These days, if
you travel along the increasingly shrinking shorelines, you’ll
see suffering communities dotted with abandoned homes and lined
with silent streets.
Pregnant women exposed to too much nitrate in their drinking
water are at greater risk of giving birth prematurely,
according to a Stanford University study of more than 1.4
million California births. Agricultural runoff containing
fertilizer and animal waste can greatly increase the nitrate
level in groundwater, which naturally contains a low level of
the chemical. … The strongest effects of nitrate on
prematurity risk were seen in California’s agricultural
regions, including the San Joaquin Valley and the Inland
Empire, the study noted. A higher proportion of births in
these areas are to Hispanic women than in other regions of the
state …
Melting snow and flowing irrigation ditches mean spring has
finally arrived at the base of Grand Mesa in western
Colorado. Harts Basin Ranch, a 3,400-acre expanse of
hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge, in Delta County,
is coming back to life with the return of water. … The
ranch has the No. 1 priority water right — meaning the oldest,
which comes with the ability to use the creek’s water first —
dating to 1881. … [The ranch's owners] have been
accused of water speculation — which means buying up the ranch
just for its senior water rights and hoarding them for a future
profit.
The fate of Searles Valley Minerals may hinge on a special
virtual meeting of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater
Authority later this week, at least according to SVM’s Camille
Anderson. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday. At it,
the IWVGA will discuss how to respond to SVM’s non-payment of
the authority’s groundwater replenishment fee. … The
groundwater authority was formed in response to the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014, which requires all
California basins to eventually achieve
sustainability. The replenishment fee is part of the
IWVGA’s long-term plan to reach sustainability, but has proven
wildly controversial for some.
When Ramona Hernandez turns on her kitchen faucet in El Adobe,
an unincorporated town just a few miles southeast of
Bakersfield, the water that splashes out looks clean and
inviting. But she doesn’t dare drink it. … Drinking the
tap water in this tiny community of dusty ranches and unpaved
roads could expose Hernandez to arsenic. So, for years, she and
her husband, Gerardo, have shuttled twice a week to the nearby
town of Lamont to load up on bottled water. At a cost of about
$80 a month, it’s enough for drinking and cooking.
In our latest effort to ensure that our water management and
farming practices both protect and enhance environmental
benefits in our area, Garden Highway Mutual Water Company
(Garden Highway) recently completed a project to screen its
diversion on the Feather River. This project allows us to
protect Chinook salmon and other fish species from entrainment
while diverting water year-round to irrigate crops and to
provide Pacific Flyway habitat during the fall and winter
months. The project was a cooperative effort between Garden
Highway, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau
of Reclamation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Family
Water Alliance.
A familiar scene has returned to California: drought. Two
counties are currently under emergency declarations, and the
rest of the state could follow. It was only four years ago when
a winter of torrential rain finally wrestled the state out of
its last major drought, which had dragged on for five years and
left thousands of domestic wells coughing up dust. That
drinking-water crisis made national headlines and helped shine
a light on another long-simmering water crisis in California:
More than 300 communities have chronically unsafe drinking
water containing contaminants that can come with serious health
consequences, including cancer.
Regenerative farming practices integrate the entire ecosystem —
building upon the relationships of the natural world — to
simultaneously produce healthier, more abundant crops and
restore the Earth’s natural resources. … And
restoring soil health and fertility produces more abundant,
nutrient-dense crops that better resist pests and disease. It
increases soil’s ability to filter and store water, reduce
erosion and sequester carbon. And it builds a diversity and
abundance of microbes that drive every function of soil.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
According to reports collected by Cal DFW, a low amount of Coho
Salmon, age 0+ and 1+, have been trapped this spring while
exiting the Shasta River Basin and Scott
River. … Felice Pace, the Water Chair of the North
Group Redwood Chapter Sierra Club, says … the Shasta and
Scott Rivers should be top producers of Klamath River Coho
Salmon, but links that poor regulated irrigation is preventing
the salmon to reach the best spawning grounds and is killing
juvenile Coho Salmon before they can move out of the Klamath
River.
While most irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin are enduring a
spring without surface water, canals in Klamath Drainage
District have been flowing since the middle of April. And KDD
says no laws were broken to make deliveries to its customers.
KDD opened the Ady and North canals on April 15, diverting
water from the Klamath River to serve its patrons. The Bureau
of Reclamation, whose operations plan for 2021 emphasized that
no water deliveries be made to the Klamath Project prior to May
15, sent a letter to KDD asking them to immediately cease the
diversions.
The Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Board of Directors is
pleased to announce it has unanimously appointed Jennifer
Hanson as its new General Manager during today’s Board of
Directors’ meeting. … Hanson will be NID’s 15th General
Manager and its first female in the District’s 100-year
history. Hanson comes to NID from the City of Lincoln, located
in South Placer County, where she served as its City
Manager. During her tenure as City Manager, Jennifer was
responsible for the daily operations of the full-service City
and for implementing the City Council’s strategic priorities.
No one will forget the intense challenges that 2020 brought us,
from record-breaking hurricanes and wildfires to a global
pandemic that devastated our economy and public health. As
Congress and the Biden administration look to help our country
rebuild and recover from these compounding crises, investing in
nature presents an opportunity to deliver multiple benefits for
communities, birds, and other wildlife. Audubon presents a new
suite of policy recommendations for making our communities and
wildlife more resilient to climate change, by putting our
wetlands, barrier islands, and other ecosystems to work.
For years it’s been relatively easy to measure pollution from,
say, a factory. At a factory, there might be just one pipe of
waste to measure. Easy enough. But what about a farm? We
might not typically think of farms as sources of pollution. But
they can have big impacts on the land over time. Unlike at a
factory, the waste filters slowly through soil across
the whole plot of land. This waste—excess nutrients from
fertilizer—can eventually reach groundwater.
Throughout California’s history, rivers have been diverted,
rerouted and contained by concrete. While these actions have
brought agriculture and communities to arid land, and reduced
large-scale flooding, it has also eliminated some of the
natural benefits provided by untamed rivers. Today, efforts are
underway to restore some of the natural riparian areas to the
benefit of both humans and wildlife.
As yet another season of drought returns to California, the
mood has grown increasingly grim across the vast and fertile
San Joaquin Valley. Renowned for its bounty of dairies, row
crops, grapes, almonds, pistachios and fruit trees, this
agricultural heartland is still reeling from the effects of the
last punishing drought, which left the region geologically
depressed and mentally traumatized. Now, as the valley braces
for another dry spell of undetermined duration, some are openly
questioning the future of farming here, even as legislative
representatives call on Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a drought
emergency.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has approved
approximately $33.5 million in grants to help enhance flows in
streams throughout California. A total of 30 stream flow
enhancement projects were approved for funding at its April 22
meeting. The approved projects will provide or lead to a direct
and measurable enhancement of the amount, timing and/or quality
of water in streams for anadromous fish or special status,
threatened, endangered or at-risk species, or to provide
resilience to climate change.
Thousands of wells that bring water to San Joaquin Valley homes
are at risk of drying up this summer, leaving families without
running water for drinking, cleaning and bathing. While no one
knows the extent of the threat from this second year of drought
conditions, Jonathan Nelson with the Community Water Center
says “the alarm bells are sounding.” Homes, farms and
entire communities that rely on shallow wells as their only
source of water are vulnerable to declining groundwater levels
from dry conditions and agricultural pumping.
Turlock residents impacted by nitrate groundwater contamination
will soon be supplied with safe drinking water as the state
seeks out more permanent solutions. The Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board is leading the charge on a
program which will provide bottled water deliveries or
bottle-filling kiosks to six geographic zones deemed to have
the most-serious groundwater contamination issues. The
Turlock Subbasin has been identified as a Priority 1 zone by
the board and is one of the two largest zones included in the
program.
Following a temporary delay in Colorado federal court, the
Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR)
will now take effect in Colorado on April 23, 2021. Under
the NWPR, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
Army Corps of Engineers will no longer require permits for
operations affecting certain categories of streams and wetland
areas previously subject to the Clean Water Act.
The Yolo County Farm Bureau as well as two former Farm Bureau
presidents have filed a lawsuit against the City of Woodland
and the Woodland City Council over the Woodland Flood Risk
Management Project. The suit — which was filed on March 25
— is a Verified Petition for a Writ of Mandate and
Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, or a way to
get the judicial branch to reaffirm previous contracts.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will begin releasing warmer
water from the upper layers of the Shasta Reservoir directly
into the Sacramento River to maintain flows, while saving
colder water for the winter-run Chinook salmon migration.
In what one board member called a hearing that isn’t going to
be topped, the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District
Hearing Board voted 4-0 to issue an order of abatement against
the Imperial Irrigation District over the Red Hill Bay project
site at the Salton Sea. … The Red Hill Bay project
is aimed at creating hundreds of acres of shallow marine
wetlands to provide aquatic bird habitat and reduce airborne
dust from playa exposed due to a shrinking Salton Sea.
California was the first U.S. state to legally recognize access
to safe, clean and affordable water as a human right. But
substantial parts of the state lack access to drinking water
that meets those criteria. A new study published by the
California State Water Board and supported by UCLA research
identifies a risk for failure among a significant portion of
the state’s small and medium-sized public water systems.
A final decision on the pending Irrigated Lands Regulatory
Program known as Ag Order 4.0 is expected by Friday, April 16.
Producers have anxiously been monitoring the development of the
program from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control
Board. Stakeholders have repeatedly provided feedback on the
proposal, detailing the challenges it would create within
agriculture. As the adoption deadline quickly approaches,
industry members still have concerns about multiple provisions
of the measure.
The Yuba Water Agency manages water storage and deliveries to
downstream customers while having a hand in preserving fish
habitats and recreational areas. Currently, the agency has
already begun doubling its reservoir releases at a time when
visitors to the river are also expected to go up. Due to
the time of year, those releases from upstream reservoirs are
dictated by irrigation needs of downstream growers.
The state plans to inspect three dairy ranches in the Point
Reyes National Seashore after independent water quality tests
conducted in nearby creeks and lagoons earlier this year found
E. coli bacteria concentrations up to 40 times higher than
state health standards. The San Francisco Regional Water
Quality Control Board plans to inspect Kehoe Dairy, McClure
Dairy and R&J McClelland Dairy, which are located near
Kehoe Creek and waterways that flow into Abbotts Lagoon in the
northern region of the national seashore.
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project
that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they
will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst
drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance
the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and
endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of
several tribes. Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in
the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is
working with congressional delegates, the White House and
federal agencies to find relief for those affected.
Harmful algal blooms (or HABs) occur when colonies of algae,
under the right conditions, grow out of control and produce
toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine
mammals, and birds. Every U.S. coastal and Great Lakes state
experiences harmful algal blooms. In California, reports
of harmful algal blooms have increased from 91 in 2016 to 241
in 2019. In 2020, Stockton experienced a severe harmful
algal bloom; it marked the first year that algal blooms spread
into the San Joaquin and Calaveras Rivers so early in the
summer and fall months. Drought and heat are factors that
increase harmful algal blooms …
The San Joaquin Valley’s quest for groundwater sustainability
will result in large amounts of irrigated agricultural lands
being retired. A new book explores how some of these lands
could be restored to natural areas that bring multiple
benefits. We talked to Scott Butterfield, a senior scientist at
The Nature Conservancy and one of the book’s editors, about
this vision.
Imperial Irrigation District apparently has decided not to
sweat Michael Abatti’s decision to appeal his case against the
district to the nation’s highest court. IID announced Monday it
will not file a response to Abatti’s petition to the U.S.
Supreme Court over his ongoing legal dispute with the district
over water rights. The exception would be if the court requests
a response. IID General Counsel Frank Oswalt said in a press
release that a response is unnecessary.
California’s shrinking Salton Sea is getting a closer look
scientifically with the state, local air districts, and
community groups examining air, water, and even dust from the
parched shoreline where water was once plentiful. The increased
scrutiny comes as the state has continuously failed to meet
dust suppression and habitat goals set in a 2017 management
plan to restore nearly 30,000 acres of the state’s largest body
of water by 2028. The sea spans Imperial and Riverside counties
near the Mexican border, where disadvantaged communities
breathe some of the nation’s worst air and suffer from high
asthma rates. Chronic nosebleeds are also common.
Salinity has often become a major limit for irrigated
agriculture in semi-arid regions, from ancient Mesopotamia to
parts of California today. A previous blog post showed that
conjunctive use with more saline groundwater can differ
fundamentally from freshwater aquifers. Higher salinity limits
groundwater use for irrigation during dry years, when less
surface water is available to dilute groundwater salinity, and
increases aquifer pumping in wetter years to avoid
water-logging. Brackish groundwater can no longer serves as
drought storage, but becomes a supplemental water supply in all
years, limited by availability of fresh surface water for
diluting salts. This greatly reduces groundwater’s ability to
support permanent crops and increases variability in annual
crop acreage across different water years, thus reducing
profit.
With a salmonella outbreak in eight states already under
investigation by the Centers for Disease Control, officials are
watching in California for another disease that impacts
waterfowl. Botulism killed thousands of waterfowl and other
birds last year on two national wildlife refuges near the
border of California and Oregon. Some estimates were as high as
60,000 dead birds. The Lower Klamath Basin and Tule Lake
national wildlife refuges were among the first created more
than 100 years ago. Millions of waterfowl and shore birds,
along with songbirds, migrated along the Pacific Flyway into
the two refuges and beyond. Today, between severe
restrictions on water flowing into and out of the refuges
and a crippling drought that shows no sign of letting up,
the refuge marshes are going dry.
Groundwater is a key resource for water users in California’s
Central Valley, a major agricultural hub with an economic
output of tens of billions of dollars annually. Surface
deformation in the Central Valley has long been linked to
changes in groundwater storage, but the timing and movement of
water flow beneath the surface has been poorly understood due
to a lack of reliable data. Now, for the first time,
scientists at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps
Institution of Oceanography and School of Global Policy and
Strategy, as well as the U.S. Geological Survey are using
advanced satellite data to map the “pulse” of groundwater flow
through the San Joaquin Valley, the southern portion of the
Central Valley.
In June 2017, the California Regional Water Quality Control
Board and the Central Valley Region adopted a Basin Plan
Amendment for the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River Basins
for the control of pyrethroid pesticide discharges. The
amendment establishes controls for pyrethroid discharges,
including prohibition of discharges of pyrethroid pesticides
above certain concentrations, total maximum daily loads (TMDLs)
for pyrethroid pesticides, recommendations for agency
regulation of pyrethroids and potential monitoring
requirements. Synthetic pyrethroids are the most common forms
of commercially available urban pesticides for ants, termites
and flying insects…
California remains far behind its targets for addressing
exposed playa around the Salton Sea, according to data released
in the 2021 Salton Sea Management Program annual report.
But state officials expressed optimism in a public
workshop that they are finally beginning to catch up to those
goals. The state was supposed to implement dust suppression
projects or build wetlands habitat across 3,500 acres of
exposed playa by the end of 2020 to tamp down dust that’s
imbued with a century’s worth of salts, pesticides and other
agricultural runoff.
Chuang Cheng-deng’s modest rice farm is a stone’s throw from
the nerve center of Taiwan’s computer chip industry, whose
products power a huge share of the world’s iPhones and other
gadgets. This year, Mr. Chuang is paying the price for his
high-tech neighbors’ economic importance. Gripped by drought
and scrambling to save water for homes and factories, Taiwan
has shut off irrigation across tens of thousands of acres of
farmland. … Officials are calling the drought Taiwan’s worst
in more than half a century. And it is exposing the enormous
challenges involved in hosting the island’s semiconductor
industry, which is an increasingly indispensable node in the
global supply chains for smartphones, cars and other keystones
of modern life. Chip makers use lots of water to clean
their factories and wafers, the thin slices of silicon that
form the basis of the chips.
Tractors are working ground in the Sacramento Valley, as the
2021 rice season is underway. Whether it’s farmers, those in
cities or for the environment, this year will pose challenges
due to less than ideal rain and snowfall during the fall and
winter. Jon Munger At Montna Farms near Yuba City, Vice
President of Operations Jon Munger said they expect to plant
about one-third less rice this year, based on water cutbacks.
As water is always a precious resource in this state, rice
growers work hard to be as efficient as they can. Fields are
precisely leveled and will be flooded with just five-inches of
water during the growing season. Rice is grown in heavy clay
soils, which act like a bathtub to hold water in place.
High-tech planting and harvest equipment also help California
rice farms and mills operate at peak efficiency.
The fight between Imperial Valley farmer Michael Abatti and the
Imperial Irrigation District over control of the
district’s massive allotment of Colorado River water could
be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court if Abatti gets his way. He
and his lawyers have announced that they have petitioned the
nation’s highest court to take up the litigation that has
dragged on since 2013….Abatti is seeking to have the
country’s apex court hand control of IID’s water over to
landowners, a move that would leave most of the valley’s water
with a few larger agricultural operations.
Eelgrass, a plant that grows in “underwater meadows” along the
California coast and emerges like a floating carpet at low
tide, is already known to be an important habitat for fish,
birds and baby Dungeness crabs. It turns out it can also reduce
seawater’s acidity back to preindustrial levels, creating
refuges for animals who can’t tolerate that byproduct of
climate change. … [S]eagrass meadows, which have shrunk in
number and size globally because of pollution and
development … may support wildlife as well as the
production of farmed oysters, mussels and
abalone. … The state already has efforts in place
to protect its eelgrass habitat. The California Ocean
Protection Council has a goal of preserving the state’s
existing 15,000 acres of seagrass beds and adding another 1,000
acres by 2025.
A groundwater market, which caps total pumping within one or
more basins, allocates portions of the total to individual
users and allows users to buy and sell groundwater under the
total cap, is a promising tool for basins implementing
California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA). … [G]roundwater markets can be a useful tool for
achieving basin sustainability, but they are not a good fit for
every basin or groundwater sustainability agency (GSA). … The
Fox Canyon groundwater market benefitted from the four enabling
conditions (water scarcity, fixed allocations, agricultural
stakeholder support, and capacity and funding) described below.
San Francisco Bay’s life support systems are unravelling
quickly, and a wealth of science indicates that unsustainable
water diversions are driving this estuary’s demise. Yet,
with another drought looming, federal and state water managers
still plan to divert large amounts of water to their
contractors and drain upstream reservoirs this summer.
Meanwhile, the state’s most powerful water districts are
preparing yet another proposal to maintain excessive water
diversions for the long-term. By delaying reforms that the
law requires and that science indicates are necessary, Gov.
Gavin Newsom encourages wasteful water practices that
jeopardize the Bay and make the state’s water future
precarious. -Written by Jon Rosenfield, a senior scientist for SF
Baykeeper.
Restoration projects, like species, evolve. The Sonoma Creek
Enhancement Project, originally about mosquito control, has
shown itself to be a boon to special-status tidal marsh
wildlife as well. More than a decade of adaptive management
actions made that happen. The existing marsh, formed
rapidly beginning in the 1960s by deposited sediment, lacked
the dendritic channels of a mature marsh. High tides brought in
water that pooled in a central basin and didn’t drain out,
providing breeding habitat for mosquitos. The disadvantages of
chemical treatment prompted land managers to look for
alternatives.
Arsenic naturally occurs in the region’s groundwater and
Allensworth is served by two groundwater wells that have
contained arsenic levels up to 60 percent higher than state
defined safety levels for drinking water. … To tackle
those challenges in Allensworth, the community is collaborating
with SOURCE to outfit their local community center with two
Hydropanels to sustainably generate drinking water. The
Hydropanels use the warmth of the sun to draw clean,
pollutant-free water vapor out of the air through a patented,
water-absorbing material and into a reservoir inside the
panel.
On March 24, 2021, deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) served one search
warrant to investigate illegal cannabis cultivation in the
Salmon Creek area. … Assisting agencies found one water
diversion violation (up to $8,000 fine per day, per violation).
Additional violations with civil fines are expected to be filed
by the assisting agencies.
When the first European explorers arrived in California’s
Central Valley, they found a vast mosaic of seasonal and
permanent wetlands, as well as oak woodlands and riparian
forests. What remains of those wetlands are still the backbone
of the Pacific Flyway; along with flooded agricultural fields,
they support millions of migrating waterbirds each
year. According to a just-released study from Audubon,
tens of millions of land birds rely on the Central Valley as
well… But today, the situation is dire. More than 90% of
wetlands in the Central Valley – and throughout California –
have disappeared beneath tractors and bulldozers.
-Written by Samantha Arthur, the Working Lands Program
Director at Audubon California and a member of the
California Water Commission.
Many of the wetlands in the western United States have
disappeared since the 1700s. California has lost an astonishing
90 percent of its wetlands, which includes streamsides, wet
meadows and ponds. In Nevada, Idaho and Colorado, more than 50
percent of wetlands have vanished. Precious wet habitats now
make up just 2 percent of the arid West — and those remaining
wet places are struggling. Nearly half of U.S. streams are in
poor condition, unable to fully sustain wildlife and people,
says Jeremy Maestas, a sagebrush ecosystem specialist with the
NRCS who organized that workshop on Wilde’s ranch in 2016. As
communities in the American West face increasing water
shortages, more frequent and larger wildfires and unpredictable
floods, restoring ailing waterways is becoming a necessity.
The rivalry between farms and wildlife for water and land was
long seen as a zero-sum game, especially in California where
water is such a precious commodity that the state’s water
futures are traded on the stock exchange. That competition has
been particularly sharp in the Central Valley: 95% of the
region’s historic wetlands have transformed into farmland, and
the region’s increasingly scarce water supply has been
prioritized for farming. As a result, some of the migratory
birds that rely on the Central Valley for habitat, food, and
water sources have seen steep declines in the past
century.
Water quality testing commissioned by two groups lobbying for
the end of ranching in the Point Reyes National Seashore shows
fecal contamination exceeding federal recreational standards in
several waterways feeding the Pacific Ocean. In response,
seashore personnel point to their nearly finalized general
management amendment, which requires water quality
improvements. The tests from two rainy January days included
samples from and near Kehoe Lagoon, Abbotts Lagoon and Schooner
Creek, and showed exceedances in levels of E. coli and
Enterococcus—bacteria that serve as common indicators for fecal
contamination.
Nitrogen pollution is one of agriculture’s biggest and most
intractable problems. Crops can’t grow without the critical
nutrient, and because sources of nitrogen are easy to come
by—synthetic fertilizer is cheap and manure from large animal
agriculture operations is plentiful—farmers often apply too
much, to try to ensure the highest yields. Because plants can’t
use it all, the excess makes its way into groundwater and
washes into waterways where it contaminates drinking water and
creates vast dead zones in oceans and lakes.
… California’s largest hotspot unsurprisingly includes
21 counties that cover the Central Valley, America’s produce
capital.
The Porter-Cologne Water Quality Act, California’s state clean
water law, passed in 1969 and became the model for the 1972
federal Clean Water Act. Nearly half a century after passage of
the landmark federal law, it is time for both the state and the
nation to assess progress and chart a new course. Once again,
California is leading the way with Assembly Bill 377, a new
bill introduced by Assemblyman Robert Rivas (D-Hollister).
Although new legislation is needed, the existing federal and
California clean water acts have produced successes that should
be celebrated. -Written by Terry Tamminen, president of 7th
Generation Advisors and founder of Santa Monica
Baykeeper.
Through collaborative projects, birds and endangered fish are
returning to areas they once reared in more than 100 years ago.
Partnerships among farmers, conservationists, universities, and
state and federal agencies are proving that by reactivating our
historic floodplains and using our bypasses during key times of
the year, we can create high-quality habitat that produces safe
haven and up to 149 times more food for salmon than the river.
These key projects demonstrate some of the work being done on
the wet-side of the levee.
Wildlife officers with the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s (CDFW) Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) conducted a
raid of a clandestine cannabis grow on the North Grasslands
Wildlife Area, Gadwall Unit in Los Banos. The property is home
to dozens of species of nesting waterfowl, migratory birds,
rabbits, pheasants, birds of prey, small rodents and native
plants. … Several dead birds, including one Western
Meadowlark were discovered within the grow site. Thousands of
feet of black polyethylene pipe were stretched across the
property and was siphoning water from the permanent wetlands in
the closed zone. Officers also discovered dozens of dangerous
pesticides and chemicals.
Longtime family farmer Laura Cattani was appointed to the board
of the powerful Kern County Water Agency during a special
meeting on Monday. She is the second woman to serve on the
board of directors in the 60-year history of the agency.
Cattani will bring much needed diversity to the board, several
directors said during Monday’s meeting, not only because she’s
a woman, but also for her age. Cattani is 39.
A unique deal between ranchers and wildlife advocates may at
long last bring a reliable water supply to Lower Klamath
National Wildlife Refuge — and the wetlands and birds that
depend on it. Since it was largely drained in the early 20th
Century, the mosaic of wetlands formerly known as Lower Klamath
Lake has relied on water from the Klamath Irrigation Project to
grow food and provide suitable habitat for millions of
migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway each year. Wetlands in
the Klamath Basin support nearly 80% of the Pacific Flyway’s
migratory waterfowl during the spring and fall.
A judge has ordered the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power to continue providing historic quantities of irrigation
water to lessees of its pasturelands east of Yosemite, despite
the agency’s assertion that climate change is making water
resources in the Sierra Nevada watershed increasingly
unreliable.
In the Capital Region, water determines destinies. The
10-county area is both plagued by drought and one of the
country’s most at-risk regions for catastrophic flooding. The
physical existence of Sacramento and surrounding cities and the
viability of the region’s heavily irrigated agriculture depend
on water resources engineers like Mary Paasch.
Cannon Michael has been reelected as chairman of the San Luis
and Delta-Mendota Water Authority Board and Keith Murfield has
announced his retirement as CEO of the United Dairymen of
Arizona.
In a January test of the water in Abbotts Lagoon [at Point
Reyes National Seashore] …, the number of E. Coli cells found
in water samples was twenty times the safe amount. At Kehoe
Lagoon, the safety margin was exceeded by a factor of 40. It
gets worse for E. Coli’s nasty bacterial cousin known as
Enterococcus. It can devour your heart, stomach, brain, and
spinal cord. This monster thrives in raw sewage and intestines.
Kehoe Lagoon seethes with 300 times the acceptable amount of
this voracious creature. … Gee, you’d think the Park
Service would put up a few warning signs. But, no, there are
zero signs cautioning those who touch these waters that a drop
can wound and kill.
There’s one type of oyster that’s indigenous to the San
Francisco Bay, and that’s the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida).
It’s named after Olympia, Washington, though these small, tangy
oysters can be found up and down the west coast from Alaska all
the way down into central Mexico. Olympias — or Olys for short
— can still be found in the San Francisco Bay today. But
scientists say pollution from agricultural runoff is too high
for commercial fishing.
California’s Governor broke new ground this year when he
committed to “transition away from harmful pesticides.” His
budget proposal to update fees charged on pesticide sales would
generate new funding that could be used to offer better
protections for farm workers, agricultural communities, and
vulnerable ecosystems, as well as help farmers adopt more
sustainable practices. … Pesticides remain a
widespread drinking water contaminant, particularly in
rural areas, and exposure to these pesticides has
been linked to increased vulnerability to COVID-19.
Salinity is an eventual threat to agriculture and groundwater
sustainability in parts of California, and other irrigated
parts of the world. Irrigation, lower groundwater levels, and
natural conditions have dramatically increased groundwater
salinity in parts of California over the last 150 years. Nearly
two million tons of salt accumulates per year in the San
Joaquin Valley (CV-SALTS), where 250,000 acres of irrigated
land have been fallowed, 1.5 million acres are potentially
salt-impaired (Great Valley Center 2005), with $1.2 – $2.2
billion/year losses by 2030 without management.
A disappointingly dry February is fanning fears of another
severe drought in California, and cities and farms are bracing
for problems. In many places, including parts of the Bay Area,
water users are already being asked to cut back. The
state’s monthly snow survey on Tuesday will show only about 60%
of average snowpack for this point in the year, the latest
indication that water supplies are tightening. With the end of
the stormy season approaching, forecasters don’t expect much
more buildup of snow, a key component of the statewide supply
that provides up to a third of California’s water.
An invisible line splits the rural road of Avenue 416 in
California’s Tulare county, at the point where the nut trees
stretch east toward the towering Sierra Nevada mountains in the
distance. On one side of the line, residents have clean water.
On the other side, they do not. On the other side lies East
Orosi, an unincorporated community of about 700 where children
grow up learning to never open their eyes or mouths while they
shower. They know that what comes out of their faucets may harm
them, and parents warn they must not swallow when they brush
their teeth. They spend their lives sustaining themselves on
bottled water while just one mile down Avenue 416, the same
children they go to school with in the community of Orosi can
drink from their taps freely and bathe without a second
thought.
For centuries, farmers have found ingenious ways of making the
best of the water available, but access to fresh water is
becoming more and more unpredictable. Extreme weather events
and drought is as much of a threat, as flash flooding in farms
and food producers. … In California’s Central
Valley, a region that produces a quarter of the USA’s food and
relies mostly on water pumped from underground, to irrigate the
crops, is fast running out of its water supply.
Conservation groups said 80 species were known to have gone
extinct, 16 in the last year alone. Millions of people rely on
freshwater fish for food and as a source of income through
angling and the pet trade. But numbers have plummeted due to
pressures including pollution, unsustainable fishing, and the
damming and draining of rivers and wetlands. The report said
populations of migratory fish have fallen by three-quarters in
the last 50 years. Over the same time period, populations of
larger species, known as “megafish”, have crashed by 94%.
Lower groundwater levels can prevent drainage of water and
salts from a basin and increase aquifer salinity that
eventually renders the groundwater unsuitable for use as
drinking water or irrigation without expensive desalination.
Pauloo et al. (2021) demonstrate this process for the
Tulare Lake Basin (TLB) of California’s Central Valley. Even if
groundwater pumping does not cause overdraft, it can cause
hydrologic basin closure leading to progressive salinization
that will not cease until the basin is opened by allowing
natural or engineered exits for groundwater and dissolved salt.
The process, “Anthropogenic Basin Closure and Groundwater
Salinization (ABCSAL)”, is driven by human water
management.
California’s $86 million date industry produces more than half
of the nation’s dates. Most of the fruit is grown in the arid
Coachella Valley. Despite efforts by growers to conserve water,
data was lacking on date palms’ actual water use to refine the
best irrigation management for the crop until a recent research
project led by Ali Montazar, UC Cooperative Extension
irrigation and water management advisor for Imperial and
Riverside counties.
A western water conference that draws national speakers each
year — and normally draws Basin irrigators to Reno for the
weekend — is being held virtually this Thursday and Friday due
to COVID precautions. The Family Farm Alliance conference,
organized in part by Klamath Falls-based executive director Dan
Keppen, is themed “A Bridge over Troubled Water” this year. The
alliance advocates for irrigated agriculture in 17 western
states, including in Oregon.
Growers all over the U.S. are concerned about labor, and those
in the Golden State are no exception. The California Fresh
Fruit Association (CFFA) announced the results of their “Top
Issues Survey” for 2021, and labor- and water-related issues
were prominently featured. CFFA members were recently surveyed
to rank the top issues for the association to focus its efforts
on this year.
The Kern County Farm Bureau issued a “call to action” this week
asking local growers and ranchers to participate in a series of
upcoming meetings that will influence the role California’s
agricultural lands will be expected to play, or continue to
play, in fighting climate change.
On January 20, 2021, the California State Water Resources
Control Board (State Water Board) adopted a new statewide
general Waste Discharge Requirement (WDR) order for winery
process waste discharge facilities (New Winery Order). This
action will affect thousands of wineries and wine processing
facilities throughout the state.
California Water Service (Cal Water) has announced temporary
leadership changes for its Oroville District. Evan Markey has
been named Interim District Manager, while previous District
Manager George Barber is serving as Interim Director of Field
Operations for the utility’s northern California region. Tavis
Beynon will continue to serve as the Interim District Manager
for the Chico District.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday released the
final rule for its Agricultural Conservation Easement Program,
or ACEP, which enables agricultural producers and private
landowners to protect farmlands, grasslands, and wetlands with
conservation easements. The rule updates ACEP as directed by
the 2018 Farm Bill and incorporates public comments made on an
interim rule.
Reclamation maintains and operates over 8,000 miles of water
distribution systems that use, among other means, reservoirs
and canals to store and deliver water. Water lost to seepage
reduces the efficiency of the water delivery to the users and
can cause undermining/erosion, subgrade soil migration, adverse
vegetation growth, and even canal failure….This prize
competition seeks innovative solutions that can reduce the
costs and burdens associated with installation and maintenance
of seepage reduction methods, and improve durability in a range
of climatic conditions.
Moving from competition to cooperation can help solve water
problems facing farms in the San Joaquin Valley and cities in
Southern California, and better prepare both for a changing
climate. At a virtual event last week, PPIC research fellow
Alvar Escriva-Bou summarized a new PPIC report showing how
cooperative investments in new supplies and water-sharing
agreements can help address both regions’ needs.
A new set of winery wastewater guidelines will be imposed on a
statewide basis. The State Water Resources Control Board
recently adopted a general order regulating how wastewater will
be processed and discharged. … While the wine industry
is concerned with water quality issues, there is some concern
that a statewide mandate may not be the best approach to the
issue.
A detailed analysis released by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
could change its approach in operating the Klamath Project in
compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
U.S. Representative David G. Valadao introduced the
Responsible, No-Cost Extension of Western Water Infrastructure
Improvements, or RENEW WIIN, Act, a no-cost, clean extension of
operations and storage provisions of the WIIN Act (P.L.
114-322).
Farm groups say a proposed regulatory permit known as the
Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program for Central Coast
agriculture, which regulates waste discharge from irrigated
lands throughout the Central Coast, would make it more
difficult for farmers to achieve the desired results, while
harming the region’s agricultural economy.
According to the U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment
of Global Water Security, by 2030 humanity’s “annual
global water requirements” will exceed “current sustainable
water supplies” by 40%, highlighting the importance of building
a water resilient future.
Dry conditions are the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years
across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking
and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the
American Southwest. As the latest round of federal
forecasts for the river’s flow shows, it’s plausible, maybe
even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year.
Understanding and explaining the depth of the dryness is up to
climate scientists throughout the basin. We called several of
them and asked for discrete numbers that capture the current
state of the Colorado River basin.
Water suppliers along the drought-stricken Colorado River hope
to tackle another tricky issue after the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation installs a new leader: salty water. The river
provides water for 40 million people from Colorado to
California, and helps irrigate 5.5 million acres of farm and
ranchland in the U.S. But all that water also comes with 9
million tons of salt that flow through the system as it heads
to Mexico, both due to natural occurrence and runoff, mostly
from agriculture. Salt can hurt crop production, corrode
drinking water pipes, and cause other damage.
Since the early 1920s, the Long Valley plains east of Yosemite
have inspired comparison to a rustic Western paradise
… Much of this great, green expansiveness, however, owes
to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which
aggressively purchased land and water rights here more than a
century ago. The department’s routine annual deliveries of free
surplus water to its tenants have helped sustain ranching
operations and habitat for many decades. But that relationship
is now at risk of ending, and could carry dire consequences for
one of California’s most striking and violently formed
landscapes.
U.S. Reps. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, and Juan Vargas,
D-San Diego reintroduced a bill this week that is aimed at
cleaning up the New River, a highly polluted waterway
originating near Mexicali, Mexico that flows
north, emptying into the Salton Sea. The bill, HR491,
would direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to create
an organization to be called the California New River
Restoration Program, which would coordinate funding and cleanup
projects.
A California agricultural developer has agreed to pay a civil
penalty, preserve streams and wetlands, effect mitigation, and
be subject to a prohibitory injunction to resolve alleged
violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA) on property near the
Sacramento River located in Tehama County, California, the
Justice Department announced today. Roger J. LaPant Jr.
purchased the property in this case in 2011 and sold it in
2012…
Almond trees shed leaves, grow woody tissue, and undergo other
processes similar to trees in a real forest. These all have
effects on carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrient cycles. These
characteristics can often mean that nutrients flow off of the
field. They can get into areas like groundwater aquifers, where
they can impact drinking water supplies for rural communities.
Clear Lake continues to struggle with long-lasting impacts of
nutrient pollution. High concentrations of nutrients such as
nitrogen and phosphorus fuel large algal blooms and contribute
to poor water quality in the lake.
How did two of the most important waterfowl refuges in the
United States reach such a sad state? The decline of the Tule
Lake and Lower Klamath refuges was a hundred years in the
making. There are no villains here; rather it is simply a tale
of too little water to go around on an arid landscape.
The Tulare County Farm Bureau presented a check for $65,000 to
Ben Curti and Tessa Hall of Curtimade Dairy to assist in their
legal fees as they defend against accusations of groundwater
pollution from the city of Corcoran…
Dow Chemical Company and Shell Oil Company have been hit with a
lawsuit by the central California county of Madera alleging
they knowingly polluted Madera’s drinking water wells by
manufacturing and selling fumigants, used in agricultural
fields, laced with a toxic chemical.
On the Oregon border lies Lower Klamath National Wildlife
Refuge. For over a century, visitors have flocked to Klamath’s
wild tule marshes and open waters to canoe, fish, bird watch
and hunt. … But this year, something sinister lies beneath
the Klamath Basin’s immense beauty.
Private wells in the central San Joaquin Valley are at risk of
water quality issues, failing equipment and declining
groundwater supplies. To help residents address these concerns,
The Fresno Bee contacted public officials, water advocates and
other experts to answer frequently asked questions about common
issues.
After more than a decade of East Orosi residents struggling
without clean drinking water, the State Water Board on Tuesday
took a huge and critically necessary step by issuing a
mandatory consolidation order for a neighboring district to
connect East Orosi to safe water, ushering in the long-overdue
promise of safe drinking water for the marginalized Tulare
County community.
Dairy producers will need to be mindful of enforcement actions
from the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Paul Sousa of Western United Dairies said enforcement typically
occurs during the rainy season. Enforcement actions have been
taken on six California dairies.
Local leaders, farmers and others in the Central Valley report
additional progress in addressing salinity in surface water,
and salt and nitrates in groundwater, in compliance with a
program adopted last fall by the State Water Resources Control
Board.
Environmental groups’ challenges to agricultural waste
discharge requirements for the eastern San Joaquin River
watershed have been denied by a judge in Sacramento, which a
California Farm Bureau Federation attorney described as a legal
victory for affected farmers and for farmers statewide.
Environmental Working Group analyzed California State Water
Resources Control Board data on the San Joaquin Valley
communities with nitrate levels in drinking water meeting or
exceeding the federal legal limit. We found that almost six in
10 are majority-Latino. Latinos are also a majority in Valley
communities with nitrate at or above half the legal limit,
which is linked to increased risk of cancer and other diseases.
Beneficial bacteria that quickly and effectively convert
tailwater nitrates into gases could help answer an
environmental challenge facing farmers, according to a
Salinas-based startup company.
Runoff and other discharges from agricultural lands affect
water quality by transporting pollutants including pesticides,
sediment, nutrients, salts, pathogens, and heavy metals from
cultivated fields into surface waters. … Sue McConnell is the
manager of the Central Valley Board’s Irrigated Lands
Regulatory Program. At the September 15 State Water Board
meeting, she gave an update on the implementation of Order
WQ-2018-0002, hereafter referred to as the ‘petition order’.
Bright-green blotches of algae have been popping up all over
the Delta since early summer, from Discovery Bay to the
Stockton waterfront, befouling the air and poisoning the water
with toxins that can sicken or even kill humans and animals.
Veteran Delta watchers believe that this year’s harmful algal
blooms may be the worst ever, and worry that some features of
Governor Gavin Newsom’s recently released Water Resilience
Portfolio for California will aggravate the problem.
Once a week, Florencia Ramos makes a special trip to the R–N
Market in Lindsay, California. “If you don’t have clean water,
you have to go get some,” says Ramos, a farmworker and mother
of four who lives in the neighboring Central Valley town of El
Rancho. She has been purchasing jugs of water at the small
store for more than a decade now.
The big kahuna of California water — Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California — has stopped taking supplies
from one Kern County groundwater bank because the water is
heavily tainted with a cancer-causing agent that is pervasive
in Central Valley’s aquifers. While only one banking program
has been affected so far, the emergence of this issue could
have huge implications for water storage and movement in the
Central Valley.
Major California farmers last week revived a long-standing
lawsuit challenging a politically tenuous federal irrigation
drainage plan that has never been fully implemented.
Contaminated water has long plagued California’s Southern
Central Valley, a region home to many farmworkers. SB 974, a
bill by Senator Melissa Hurtado, seeks to provide safe drinking
water by exempting small disadvantaged communities from certain
CEQA provisions.
Toxic algal blooms have resulted in a “danger” advisory not to
go in the water at Prado Regional Park Lake and not to eat fish
from the lake. A similar advisory at part of Big Bear Lake has
been posted since last month.
The California state water board is working on an update to a
permitting process with water discharge requirements that make
sure wineries are in compliance with water quality regulation
and allows them a pathway to compliance. The new order will
affect over 2,000 wineries that discharge winery waste to land
for the purpose of disposal or reuse for irrigation and soil
amendment.
To be clear, not all algae are dangerous. In fact the vast
majority are beneficial to ecosystems. They’re the base of the
marine and aquatic food webs, providing nutrients for fish and
shellfish, which in turn feed other animals — including people.
They also produce half of our oxygen. “But a small handful of
these organisms are harmful,” says phytoplankton ecologist Pat
Glibert of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental
Science.
Providing a reliable source of drinking water is a challenge
for many small water systems in the San Joaquin Valley, where
dropping groundwater levels, aging systems, and water quality
problems are acute. … We talked to Laura Ramos and Sarge
Green of Fresno State’s California Water Institute about this
effort.
The California Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control
Board said lab results from July 14 revealed high levels of a
toxin called microcystins in scum samples from Mormon Slough,
the downtown marina and Morelli Park Boat Launch that ranged
from four to more than 20 times the state’s Tier 3 danger
threshold.
The state of California, long derided for its failure to act in
the past, says it is now moving full-bore to address the Salton
Sea’s problems, with ambitious plans for wildlife habitat
expansion and dust suppression.
Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), which naturally occur in
waterbodies, can grow very rapidly into an algal bloom due to
factors such as warm water temperature, calm conditions, and
certain nutrients in the water. While some algae are harmless,
certain types can produce toxins that can make people and
animals sick.
The recovery from the COVID shutdown gives us a rare
opportunity to rethink our relationship with the global
ecosystems on which we depend. Like so many others, I long for
a return to normalcy. But that’s not what we need. We must come
out of this pandemic looking to address other looming crises.
Our unsustainable agricultural system, along with climate
change, are at the top of the list.
Health officials are urging residents and visitors to stay out
of the water in Discovery Bay after dangerous levels of harmful
algae were detected. Marisa Van Dyke of the State Water
Resources Control Board reported that recent lab results from
water testing showed “significant” harmful algal blooms
occurring in Discovery Bay. Multiple locations recorded a
“danger” level, the highest threshold, she said.
Over the years, much attention has been given to California’s
drought, but less is known about the more than one million
Californians in more than 300 communities who don’t have access
to clean drinking water. To address this crisis, CSU faculty
and students are performing community assessments, conducting
research and assisting local engineering projects, often with
support from Water Resources & Policy Initiatives. Take a look
at some of the CSU’s ongoing work.
Agricultural runoff is one of the largest sources of pollution
in the nation’s waterways. In recent years, scientific journals
and the media have been filled with reports of toxic algae
blooms and dead zones near and far… Unfortunately, in today’s
highly politicized federal climate, it is unlikely that an
effective solution to this problem will emerge from the U.S.
EPA – at least not at the moment. So efforts by state
regulators are particularly important.
Agricultural runoff is one of the largest sources of pollution
in the nation’s waterways….In California alone, more than a
quarter million residents in largely agricultural areas are
served by water systems with degraded groundwater quality.
In the past decade, environmental groups have had success
bringing back patches of life in parts of the river delta. In
these green islands surrounded by the desert, water delivered
by canals and pumps is helping to nourish wetlands and forests.
Cottonwoods and willows have been growing rapidly. Birds have
been coming back and are singing in the trees.
Over the last 20 years, UC research has shown that dairies in
the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys are potentially major
contributors of nitrate and salts in groundwater. To maintain
the quality of this irreplaceable natural resource, the
California Water Resources Control Board has ramped up
regulations to ensure that diary manure and wastewater
application isn’t contaminating the aquifer.
During a week full of COVID-19-related uncertainty, a pair of
new lawsuits are a reminder of one constant: disputes over
Klamath Basin water. This past week, PacifiCorp and Klamath
Water Users Association each filed petitions for review of
Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for temperature in the Upper
Klamath and Lost River subbasins.
Dozens of dead fish are floating to the surface along a Fresno
County waterway and people living nearby are worried about
their water. Fancher Creek flows from Pine Flat all the way
into Fresno, mostly to let farmers get irrigation water. But
fish also use the water, except right now, for about 200 yards,
all of them are dead.
The Atwater City Council this week unanimously declared its
highest priority public improvement project to be restoring the
city’s clean water. The urgent resolution came after a
carcinogenic chemical, 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP), was found
in several Atwater wells — and in quantities exceeding
state-approved maximum contaminant levels.
A bill that could help disadvantaged Central Valley towns
including ones in Tulare County provide safe and affordable
drinking water is facing opposition by Republican critics,
including GOP representatives from California. In December
2019, Rep. TJ Cox (D-Fresno) unveiled a $100 million proposal
to make improvements in small towns suffering from contaminated
drinking water.
More than dust-filled air could be plaguing residents around
the quickly evaporating Salton Sea in Imperial Valley.
University of California, Riverside research shows toxic
aerosols could also be filling the air. The problem has to do
with agricultural fertilizer in the Salton Sea wetland area.
The Central Valley Regional Water Board has issued a 25-year
permit for toxic discharges of agricultural wastewater into the
San Joaquin River and Bay-Delta… Fishermen and environmental
groups have appealed the water board’s decision to the state of
California, leaving the future of this permit uncertain.
Pure Water Monterey has finally secured a critical final state
approval and is poised to begin delivering potable recycled
water to the Seaside basin by mid-February. After an all-day
inspection of the $126 million recycled water project’s
advanced water purification facility by a nine-member team on
Tuesday, the state Division of Drinking Water signed off both
verbally and by email.
Tests are still finding such deadly pesticides as DDT, despite
the ban of its use in farming during the 1970s. There are also
untold amounts of ammunition from military testing as well as
uranium left over from the Atomic Energy Commission for
WWII-era testing. Proponents don’t claim sea water import is a
perfect answer; just the most feasible means of containing
these toxins as they are heavier than water.
At a breakfast event hosted by the Water Association of Kern
County shortly after the amendments were adopted, a panel
discussed what the new program from the Central Valley Regional
Water Quality Control Board means for dischargers in the
Central Valley. The panel speakers were Clay Rodgers, Assistant
Executive Officer at the regional water board; Tess Dunham, an
attorney with Somach Simmons & Dunn; and Richard Meyerhoff, a
water quality specialist with GEI Consultants.
The city of Corcoran and Curtimade Dairy have been neighbors
for more than 100 years. But about four years ago, their
relationship turned contentious. The city said it planned to
sue the dairy for contaminating its drinking water wells with
nitrates, a contaminant that if consumed, can interfere with
the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen to body tissues.
Many of the people and businesses that once relied on the lake
have left, driven away by the smell of dying fish or the fear
of health problems. Those who remain — farmworkers, families,
the elderly — are generally too poor to afford the rising cost
of property elsewhere in the valley.
The increasing spills that have polluted the Tijuana River Valley
and ocean off Imperial Beach have resulted in frustration and
anger in recent years, but also triggered broad political
collaboration at the local, state and federal level that has put
the region on the brink of real action.
When lawmakers in the House of Representatives approved the
Trump administration’s new trade deal with Mexico and Canada
last month, they authorized $300 million to help fix failing
sewer systems that send raw sewage and toxic pollution flowing
into rivers along the U.S.-Mexico border. … But environmental
groups are condemning the new United States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement, or USMCA, saying it fails to establish binding
standards to curb pollution in Mexico’s industrial zones.
The river is a powerful example of Mexico’s failure to protect
its environment: A New York Times analysis of 15 years of
efforts to clean up the Santiago found that attempts floundered
in the face of legal loopholes, deficient funding and a lack of
political will.
In 2018, there were more than 300 reported incidents of toxic
or harmful algae blooms around the world. This year about 130
have been listed on an international database, but that number
is expected to increase. … The causes of the blooms vary, and
in some cases are never known, but in many parts of the world
they are being increasingly linked to climate change and
industrialised agriculture.
The supervisors authorized the disbursal from the Coachella
Valley Air Quality Enhancement Fund to help pay for the planned
north end restoration of the 360-square mile lake, which will
include the establishment of a lagoon to overlay exposed playa
and mitigate the resulting atmospheric impacts.
The company, Watsonville-based Monterey Mushrooms Inc., was
accused of polluting a South Bay creek with manure for years,
despite orders and warnings dating back to the 1980s. The
judgment, the largest for a water pollution lawsuit in county
history, will be used in part to restore the damaged Fisher
Creek…
Environmentalists who had high hopes Gavin Newsom would lead
the way to sustainable water use in the San Joaquin Valley are
waking up to the knowledge that the new governor isn’t going to
be any more effective than the old governor. Sustainability is
just too big a lift.
It came as a bittersweet surprise to biologists and government
agencies monitoring the steadily shrinking Salton Sea’s slide
toward death by choking dust storms and salt. Thousands of
acres of exposed lake bed have become, of all things, the
unintended beneficiaries of lush marshlands that are homes for
endangered birds and fish at the outlets of agricultural and
urban runoff that used to flow directly into the Salton Sea.
Unfettered pumping has taken a toll on the state’s aquifers for
many years, but just as experts are calling for Arizona to
develop plans to save its ancient underground water, pumping is
accelerating and the problems are getting much worse. Big
farming companies owned by out-of-state investors and foreign
agriculture giants have descended on rural Arizona and snapped
up farmland in areas where there is no limit on pumping.
Just as they did more than two generations ago, Kern County
farmers are looking to another Central Valley river to the
north to refill their groundwater shortfall. But this time
around, natives in the Kings River watershed are “sharpening
their knives” to fight off what they say is a desperate water
grab.
Through a variety of panel discussions, presentations and a
showcase of student research, the Re:Border conference is
exploring how San Diego State University and its regional
partners can contribute to innovative solutions for
water-related challenges in the transborder region.
A bi-national conference at San Diego State University was
aimed at analyzing water resources in the Baja California and
San Diego border region where challenges include cross-border
pollution and water scarcity… Experts at the Reborder 2019
conference discussed ways to improve regional access to “a
secure and reliable water supply” through wastewater treatment
and desalination.
Initially, federal scientists wrote a draft report that found
increasing water exports would harm California’s native salmon
population, a species already imperiled. Those scientists were
reassigned. Now, the Trump administration and David Bernhardt
have released a new proposal, and guess what? Westlands can
grab even more water from the Bay-Delta.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spent months working with the
National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to mitigate potential harm to endangered sucker fish in
Upper Klamath Lake, as well as threatened coho salmon in the
lower Klamath River. … However, the bureau now says it
received “erroneous data” from an outside source during
consultation, meaning it must scrap the plans and start over
again.
A new study that looked back at 3 decades of satellite data
finds that these summertime algal blooms are indeed worsening
in large freshwater lakes around the world—and that climate
change may be undercutting efforts to combat the problem.
The board charged with overseeing the water quality in much of
the San Francisco Bay Area unanimously approved a plan
requiring local businesses, residents and government agencies
to reduce the amount of fecal bacteria they put into the
Petaluma River watershed, including San Antonio Creek.
Today, the quality of river water has improved markedly since
the early 1970s, though critics say the red tape imposed
through the Clean Water Act has become burdensome. The Clean
Water Act has not been altered much over the past 50 years,
though how we interpret the act has recently changed
dramatically.
The city’s fate is linked inextricably with the San Joaquin
River… Much of the water upstream is diverted for
agriculture, although a legal settlement ensures that the river
no longer runs dry. Additional diversions at the downriver end
… greatly reduce the amount of water that actually makes it
through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the San
Francisco Bay and then the Pacific. It is as if one of the
state’s two great arteries … is detached from its heart.
By looking at how to manage levels of salt, mercury and
nutrients heading into the San Joaquin River, researchers are
aiming to boost water quality and reduce impacts on fish and
other aquatic life in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
… The project will examine wetlands — about 40 miles
southwest of UC Merced’s campus — that drain into the San
Joaquin River.
In recent years the idea of nutrient management has been become
even more important with increasing regulations related to
nitrate levels in groundwater. Cooperation between water
agencies and CDFA has helped to provide better education and
outreach for the development of balance sheets for nutrient
management.
As the state focuses on providing clean and affordable drinking
water for millions of residents, those on private wells
typically face an uphill battle. Private well owners confront
significant financial challenges digging new wells, and
connecting to a public water system involves a daunting local
and state bureaucratic process…
The initial selling point of Prop. 65 — that it would eliminate
toxins in the water supply by holding big business liable for
its leaks — has largely been forgotten in 2019. These days, the
law is better known for requiring eyebrow-raising warning
labels on everything from bread to steering wheel covers to —
briefly — Starbucks coffee, and it has turned into a national
punchline.
A tiny community on the outskirts of the City of Sanger,
Tombstone is a bellwether for groundwater issues… Most of the
community’s 40 or so homes get their drinking water from
shallow domestic wells, which can be vulnerable to both aquifer
contaminants and falling groundwater levels.
A stipulated judgment in a lawsuit over a regulation to control
pollution in runoff from agricultural irrigation systems has
extended the expiration date for Agricultural Order 3.0 to Jan.
31, 2021.
Action by the state water board sets in motion a 35-year
program of activity and research to address nitrate and salt
content in Central Valley groundwater, in order to achieve
water-quality objectives.
