The long-standing rule against swimming in Lake Cachuma has
come under renewed focus. Santa Barbara County is exploring how
to change the rule that prevents visitors from swimming in the
local reservoir while still maintaining its status as a water
source for the region. … The rule against swimming
in the lake goes back to its creation in 1953, when the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation created Lake Cachuma through the
construction of the Bradbury Dam. Even though the county
manages the park, the lake itself is still owned by the Bureau
of Reclamation. Brian Soares, the operations and maintenance
manager for Lake Cachuma, said the reason swimming has not been
allowed at the lake is that the water is used to supply Santa
Barbara County areas with drinking water.
Officials in Santa Barbara County are exploring the possibility
of allowing visitors to swim in Lake Cachuma, a human-made
reservoir in the Santa Ynez Valley where swimming has been
banned since its creation in 1953. … Swimming is banned
at the lake because it’s used as a local water source. That’s
been the case since the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation created the
lake in 1953 by constructing the Bradbury Dam, then called the
Cachuma Dam, thereby blocking the flow of the Santa Ynez River.
The lake is still owned by the Bureau of Reclamation, though
it’s managed by the county. Bantilan said the county is in
touch with local water agencies about allowing swimming at the
lake, a move that’s already taken place at other reservoirs in
the state.
The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is
taking legal action against the new owners of the pipeline
involved in the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill. On Thursday, the board
unanimously voted to refer Sable Offshore Corp. to the
California Attorney General for allegedly violating state water
laws by polluting waterways. The company is accused of
performing pipeline work along the Gaviota Coast without proper
permits and dumping waste into nearby streams. Sable reportedly
ignored warnings and withheld key information.
… According to state officials, Sable’s work on the
offshore platform – which includes the pipeline tied to the
2015 Refugio oil spill – violates several sections of the
state’s water code and threatens water quality.
… Since the summer of 2014, the California Department of
Water Resources has received 337 reports of dry wells over the
basin, San Luis Obispo County groundwater sustainability
director Blaine Reely said. In 2024, people pumped about
25,500 acre-feet of water more than was returned to the
underground reservoir, according to the most recent annual
report on the basin. The California Department of Water
Resources considers the basin “critically overdrafted,” and
residential property owners with dry wells are some of the
first casualties of a poorly managed groundwater supply. Those
residents blame farms and vineyards for pumping more than their
fair share of water. According to the basin’s 2024 report,
agriculture used about 94% of the water pumped from the basin.
Since 2010, California American Water, the investor-owned
utility that provides water to the Monterey Peninsula, has
pursued building a desalination project to bolster the local
water supply and put an end to its illegal overpumping of the
Carmel River. In that time, the volume of documents born out of
that effort – including by those trying to kill the
project – could fill a warehouse. Meanwhile, a cheaper
project – Pure Water Monterey, which recycles
wastewater – has outpaced Cal Am’s efforts, and has
already added enough water to the local portfolio to allow Cal
Am to stop its overpumping, although a cease-and-desist order
from the state remains in effect. … That raises some
obvious questions: Why build a costly desal project if the
water isn’t needed?
Facing the continued collapse of Chinook salmon, officials
today shut down California’s commercial salmon fishing season
for an unprecedented third year in a row. Under the
decision by an interstate fisheries agency, recreational salmon
fishing will be allowed in California for only brief windows of
time this spring. This will be the first year that any
sportfishing of Chinook has been allowed since 2022. … The
decline of California’s salmon follows decades of deteriorating
conditions in the waterways where the fish spawn each year,
including the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.
Pumping from the Paso Robles groundwater sub-basin continued at
unsustainable levels last year — with agriculture extracting
more water than domestic well owners and municipal water
systems combined, according to a new report. The
sub-basin, which pools underground from the area east of
Highway 101 to north of Highway 58, was designated as
“critically overdrafted” by the California Department of Water
Resources. Basin users pumped 75,100 acre-feet of water in
2024, up from 63,600 acre-feet in 2023 — an 18% increase,
according to the latest annual report for the
basin. … That’s far from the estimated sustainable
yield of 61,100 acre-feet per year. … This is the eighth
year in a row that pumping exceeded the sustainable yield.
One unique animal with a large task in the health of our local
creek and river systems. Along the Central Coast and the state,
beavers have become a vital source of assistance in protecting
against some of California’s biggest natural threats. …
Audrey Taub with the SLO Beaver Brigade invited KSBY to see the
work that beavers do right on the Salinas River, showing how
they thrive in riparian areas and ponds created due to the dams
formed by the local beaver population. Thanks to their dams
they help control and disperse the flow of water. Taub says the
rodents create resilient environments that can ward off the
spread of wildfires, decrease drought and in light of recent
storms, manage flooding.
A new lawsuit alleges Valley Water CEO Rick
Callender pushed to have his agency sponsor the NAACP
California-Hawaii State Conference — a private group he
personally oversees — with public dollars. The conflict of
interest claim comes from a civil complaint filed March 20 by
Salena Pryor, an NAACP colleague who worked under Callender in
his capacity as the statewide NAACP chapter president. She
accuses Callender of demeaning and undermining her on numerous
occasions while she helped coordinate NAACP events, from
distressing late-night video calls to public embarrassment. It
comes as Callender is on administrative leave from Valley Water
— which cares for Santa Clara County’s streams, flood
protection and wholesale water supply — while the agency
investigates an employee’s misconduct complaint against him.
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
Spurred by drought and a major
policy shift, groundwater management has assumed an unprecedented
mantle of importance in California. Local agencies in the
hardest-hit areas of groundwater depletion are drawing plans to
halt overdraft and bring stressed aquifers to the road of
recovery.
Along the way, an army of experts has been enlisted to help
characterize the extent of the problem and how the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014 is implemented in a manner
that reflects its original intent.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
Mired in drought, expectations are high that new storage funded
by Prop. 1 will be constructed to help California weather the
adverse conditions and keep water flowing to homes and farms.
At the same time, there are some dams in the state eyed for
removal because they are obsolete – choked by accumulated
sediment, seismically vulnerable and out of compliance with
federal regulations that require environmental balance.
A new era of groundwater management
began in 2014 with the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA), which aims for local and regional agencies
to develop and implement sustainable groundwater management
plans with the state as the backstop.
SGMA defines “sustainable groundwater management” as the
“management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be
maintained during the planning and implementation horizon without
causing undesirable results.”
This handbook provides crucial
background information on the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act, signed into law in 2014 by Gov. Jerry Brown. The handbook
also includes a section on options for new governance.
