An already grim situation just got worse for California in this
week’s U.S. Drought Monitor report. ‘Exceptional drought’
expanded in parts of California’s agricultural Central Valley
in this week’s report. That is the most severe of the weekly
update’s four drought categories. The area includes portions of
Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Madera, Mariposa and Tuolumne counties.
The flat region that dominates the central part of the state
has some of the most productive farmland in the country,
including miles of crop fields with fruits, grains, nuts and
vegetables.
If you think about the pollution your car causes, chances are
you’re not thinking about the tires. And probably even less
about a faraway creek, where a Coho Salmon is dying. But
researchers at the University of Washington and elsewhere
… say as the rubber wears away from car tires during
everyday driving, it spreads tiny micro particles, including a
destructive chemical called 6PPD. … Now, with
information gathered in part by the [San Francisco Estuary]
Institute, the State of California is stepping in, laying the
groundwork for potential regulations to curb the toxic tire
pollution.
Old environmental arguments over the consequences of nuclear
power had seemed almost resolved in California. Antinuclear
sentiment was intensified by the 33-year succession of
accidents, from Three Mile Island in 1978 to Chernobyl in 1986
to Fukushima in 2011, severely diminished their appeal.
California was getting ready to wave goodbye to its last
nuclear plant. Up Close We explore the issues, personalities,
and trends that people are talking about around the West. The
political realities of 2022 and the need to reduce carbon
emissions might change things.
Central California Coast steelhead historically thrived in Bay
Area waters, but today, populations are collapsing with only a
fraction of their historical abundance remaining, according to
CalTrout’s SOS II Report. California Trout, along with our
partners at California Department of Fish and Wildlife, San
Mateo Resource Conservation District (RCD), Trout Unlimited,
and others such as California State Parks, private landowners,
and NOAA Fisheries- the federal agency tasked with managing
steelhead and salmon nationwide- are determined to improve this
system for the overall health of the watershed and for its
inhabitants — both fish and people.
Etched in dirt, a narrow furrow is the only clue that the
grasslands of Lime Ridge Open Space will soon be restored to
their original splendor, cleared of dangerous power lines that
could ignite nearby subdivisions. The undergrounding project,
costing $3.75 million a mile, represents the beginning of a
10,000-mile-long effort by Pacific Gas and Electric to bury the
state’s distribution lines to cope with the growing risk of
winds and wildfires linked to global warming. The utility
long resisted calls to bury its power lines as being too
costly.
For two winters in a row, La Niña has steered desperately
needed rain and snow storms away from the U.S. Southwest,
exacerbating a decades-long drought that has shriveled
reservoirs and spurred horrific wildfires. Now, hopes that the
climate pattern would relent and allow moisture to rebound next
winter have suffered a serious blow. La Niña — Spanish for “the
girl” — persisted through April, and there’s a 61 percent
chance she’ll stick around for a third winter, according to the
latest monthly update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
Despite being surrounded by water, Bay Area residents are
routinely told during dry years to take shorter showers, let
lawns brown and slow the rush of water from their taps. But as
climate change prolongs drought and challenges local water
supply, regional water managers are warning that none of those
actions will be enough. Many say the time has come to invest in
technically feasible, though politically and environmentally
complicated alternatives like purifying wastewater and sucking
salt out of seawater to bolster stores.
As drought and climate change tighten their grip on the
American West, the sight of fountains, swimming pools, gardens
and golf courses in cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los
Angeles, Salt Lake City, Boise, and Albuquerque can be jarring
at first glance. Western water experts, however, say they
aren’t necessarily cause for concern. Over the past three
decades, major Western cities — particularly in California and
Nevada — have diversified their water sources, boosted local
supplies through infrastructure investments and conservation,
and use water more efficiently.
Californians can expect to see more yellow grass around
hospitals, hotels, office parks and industrial centers after
water regulators voted Tuesday to ban watering of
“nonfunctional” turf in commercial areas. The State Water
Resources Control Board also moved to order all the state’s
major urban water providers to step up their conservation
efforts. The moves are the strongest regulatory actions state
officials have taken in the third year of the latest drought.
The bulldozers are back at Randall and East Valley roads this
month, working on the final phase of the Montecito’s newest
debris basin — a giant bowl designed to trap boulders and
fallen trees and help protect the downstream homeowners on San
Ysidro Creek from catastrophic debris flows. When it is
finished in late August, the $10 million Randall Road basin
will be the fifth on Montecito’s deadly creeks.
The lowly sidewalk tree often stands invisible. We rest in its
shade, bask in the scent of springtime flowers, and we don’t
notice it until it’s gone. But the tree works hard. It captures
and filters stormwater runoff and helps replenish groundwater.
It cleans our air and cools our neighborhoods. It improves our
mental health. It saves lives. With Southern California
officials clamping down on outdoor water use amid worsening
drought, the message is clear: It’s fine for lawns to go brown,
but we need to keep trees alive and healthy.
A pre-Memorial Day heat wave will prime the Bay Area for
another dry fire season, roasting the region’s landscape with
some of the hottest weather so far in 2022 and pushing
temperatures in some cities close to 100 degrees. A month ahead
of the official start of summer, high temperatures could climb
5 to 20 degrees above normal on Tuesday and Wednesday for much
of the Bay Area — a pre-Memorial Day blast of hot weather that
prompted a heat advisory for the entire Central Valley and a
red flag warning for a broad swath of Northern California
stretching from Vallejo to Redding…. Already,
California’s drought has depleted reservoirs and contributed to
some of the state’s largest fires on record in recent years.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday warned major water agencies to show
better conservation results or face mandatory statewide water
restrictions as California heads into its third summer of
severe drought. The threat is a sign of Newsom’s growing
impatience with the state’s failure to reduce urban water use,
as he has requested since last year. In fact, people have been
using more. … Newsom also said the state will closely monitor
the situation over the next 60 days, and he told the agencies
to submit water use data more frequently to the state and to
step up outreach and education efforts to communicate the
urgency of the crisis to the public.
More than half a dozen wildfires broke out across California in
a 48-hour span late last week, an unsettling picture of what’s
to come as temperatures warm and drought conditions worsen this
summer….Today and tomorrow, gusty winds, low humidity and
unseasonably hot temperatures are creating high fire risk
across an inland swath of California between Redding and
Sacramento.
Fire danger is on the rise in California, as warm, dry and
windy weather heralds a potentially long and difficult season.
For several consecutive years, increasingly extreme,
climate-change fueled wildfires have devastated parts of the
state. The area of greatest concern late this week is in
Northern California, where strong northerly winds will combine
with dry vegetation in the Sacramento Valley…. The risk of
fast-spreading blazes may ease this weekend, but officials have
expressed serious concerns about the months ahead as the
entirety of California contends with a historically severe
drought that has turned many areas into a tinderbox.
Much of the western U.S. has been in the grip of an unrelenting
drought since early 2020. The dryness has coincided with
record-breaking wildfires, intense and long-lasting heat waves,
low stream flows and dwindling water supplies in reservoirs
that millions of people across the region rely on. … One
driver of the Western drought has been persistent La Niña
conditions in the tropical Pacific since the summer of 2020.
… The other and perhaps more important part of
the story is the hotter and thirstier atmosphere, caused
by a rapidly warming climate.
Local and state water leaders were practically upbeat two years
ago at the last in-person Water Summit put on by the Water
Association of Kern County. At least as upbeat as California
water folks typically get. They advocated for new ideas,
radical partnerships and solutions that could benefit both ag
and environmental interests. That was then. Facing a third year
of punishing drought and the bleak realities of new groundwater
restrictions, the vibe at this year’s summit was more “in the
bunker” than “in it together.”
For Executive Pastor Mark Spurlock, expanding classroom space
at the Twin Lakes Christian School in Aptos has been addition
by subtraction. At least when it comes to saving water.
Following development offset rules outlined by the Soquel Creek
Water District, the school engineered water-saving solutions to
offset the new space they were building including replacing
lawn areas with a drought-friendly plaza that catches and
diverts water routed from nearby rooftops. … To
better understand seawater intrusion, Duncan says the layman
can think of the Santa Cruz area’s aquifer as a giant bathtub
with mountain watershed on one side, and ocean on the other.
Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing funding to support what he
calls a “creative climate solving hero” – the North American
Beaver. The rodent is known to help restore drought-stricken
areas of California by restoring wetlands and groundwater
basins. The governor is initially requesting more than $3
million in the next few fiscal years to support and maintain a
beaver restoration program within the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
In a sophisticated chemical analysis published Tuesday in
Environmental Science & Technology, the team found that
DDT-related chemicals were seven times more abundant in coastal
condors than condors that fed farther inland. Looking at the
birds’ coastal food sources, researchers found that dolphin and
sea lion carcasses that washed ashore in Southern California
were also seven times more contaminated with DDT than the
marine mammals they analyzed along the Gulf of California in
Mexico.
California’s towering redwoods have been around for thousands
of years, but the trees are still yielding some surprises about
what makes them so resilient. UC Davis scientists recently
discovered that redwoods have two different types of leaves
… The trees’ peripheral leaves, like those on most
trees, are food producers that convert sunlight into sugar
through photosynthesis. But the axial leaves serve an entirely
different role, researchers found — absorbing water. … [T]he
study is further evidence of the big trees’ ability to adapt to
environmental changes — including drought.
As the Western United States endures an ongoing megadrought
that has spanned more than two decades, an increasing number of
cities, towns and water districts are being forced to say no to
new growth. There’s just not enough water to go around. Last
month, the California Coastal Commission urged San Luis Obispo
County to stop all new development requiring water use in the
communities of Los Osos and Cambria.
A settlement has finally been reached in the seven year-lawsuit
regarding the 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill. Plains All American
Pipeline has agreed to pay $230 million to fishers, fish
processors and shoreline property residents who are members of
two classes in a class-action lawsuit filed against the
company. The lawsuit was filed after a corroded pipeline
spilled an estimated 15,000 barrels of crude oil into the
Pacific Ocean in 2015.
Five months after 8.5 million gallons of raw sewage spilled
from a ruptured mainline in Carson, an independent engineer’s
report has pinpointed its cause and offered practical advice
for the county agency responsible. … The rupture was
primarily caused, the report said, by corrosion of both a
48-inch diameter, 1960s-era concrete pipe and a sewer cover at
the intersection of 212th Street and South Lynton Avenue.
… Another contributing factor in the failure, the report
said, was a rain event on Dec. 30.
If you were hoping to go boating on Lopez Lake after Memorial
Day, there might be a small kink to your plans. The San Luis
Obispo County Parks and Recreation Department has announced it
is closing the popular South County lake’s boat launch ramp on
Monday, May 16, due to low lake levels. Park Ranger Miles
Tuinstra told The Tribune on Friday the closure was due to the
lake’s dropping water levels. “We’ve kept it open as long
as we can,” he said. “There’s just no water.”
Everything everyone — by which I mean the wrong ones, the
NIMBYs — says about housing in Southern California is always
wrong. … Fact: Take your average Southland single-family
homestead, raze it and replace it with an eight-unit apartment
building, and you’d be … saving water. That’s because,
even in our xeriscaped age, unless you have Astroturfed your
entire yard, your landscaping uses a lot more water than your
sinks, shower and dishwasher do. -Written by Larry Wilson, a member of the Southern
California News Group editorial board.
On May 17, the Monterey City Council will discuss four
city-owned properties it hopes to turn into affordable housing,
and will be asked to wrestle with some challenging questions
about how to move forward with making them a reality. At the
top of that list is water, or the lack thereof: The city has
5.2 acre-feet of water annually it can allocate to the
projects. But dedicating all the water to one or more of the
projects, City Manager Hans Uslar says, would hinder the city’s
ability to give water to public works projects….
Locals call it May gray and June gloom. … The featureless
marine-layer stratus clouds occur at low levels of the
atmosphere, and they generally don’t produce any rain, although
they’re capable of producing drizzle or mist. More important,
they serve as a natural heat shield for heavily populated
coastal Southern California, efficiently reflecting the sun’s
rays back into space. … Scientists are studying the ways
that climate change may be chipping away at the coastal marine
layer. A study published in 2018 found that the frequency of
coastal stratus clouds had declined by 20% to 50% since the
1970s …
The Woodland City Council received an update on the city’s
planned water supply for 2022 and adopted a resolution
implementing stage two of Woodland’s water shortage contingency
plan. “The state of California is in the third year of a
drought and issued a governor’s executive order in March 2022
requiring urban water suppliers to implement at least stage two
of their water shortage contingency plans,” the city staff
report stated. “Stage two of the WSCP implements a goal of
reducing water use by 20%.”
The worst fire impacts this year are predicted to hit Northern
California’s higher elevation forests and Southern California’s
chaparral-clad mountainous National Forest lands. To aid
recovery, UC Riverside ecologists are collaborating with the US
Forest Service to target these spots with new post-fire
ecological restoration strategies. Wildfires are becoming
more ferocious, damaging, and expansive in the West. California
just weathered its worst two years ever in terms of total acres
burned. And conditions are no better this year, with the Golden
State having its driest winter on record.
A lack of rainfall across the Golden State and the Central
Coast is limiting blooms and leaving some tourists disappointed
about what’s missing at Carrizo Plain National Monument. Aside
from increasing drought conditions, 2022 started off with the
driest first three months of the year in the last century,
limiting the number of wildflowers able to germinate.
… This lack of blooms is not only due to the dry start
to 2022 but also a buildup of several years of drought.
Despite official calls to increase conservation amid worsening
drought, urban water use across California increased by nearly
19% in March, according to the State Water Resources Control
Board. The startling conservation figure was among a number of
grim assessments water officials offered reporters Tuesday in a
California drought outlook. Others included critically low
reservoir levels and major shifts in the water cycle due to
climate change. … The increase was even greater in the South
Coast Hydrologic Region, which is home to more than half the
state’s population. In this region, which includes Los Angeles,
urban water use increased 26.9%.
Ventura has struck a 20-year deal with a Riverside County water
wholesaler that would save the city millions of dollars in
costs to maintain its rights to imported state water. Under the
agreement approved last month, the city would lease its share
of imported water to the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency in
Beaumont, an arrangement that would reap $1.1 million this
year and cover nearly half of the $2.27 million it will owe to
keep its state water entitlement. San Gorgonio would
increase its share of the costs starting next year.
Throughout the state, water agencies are telling Californians
that they must seriously curtail lawn watering and other water
uses. We can probably scrape through another dry year, but were
drought to persist, its impacts would likely be widespread and
permanent. … It didn’t have to be this way. We could
have built more storage to capture water during wet years, we
could have encouraged more conservation, we could have more
efficiently captured and treated wastewater for re-use and we
could have embraced desalination. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters
columnist.
If you waste water in Santa Clara County, water cops could soon
be on the way. Since last summer, Santa Clara County residents
have been asked to cut water use by 15% from 2019 levels to
conserve as the state’s drought worsens. But they continue to
miss that target — and by a growing amount. In March, the
county’s 2 million residents not only failed to conserve any
water, but they increased use by 30% compared to March 2019,
according to newly released data…. Santa Clara Valley
Water District … is proposing to hire water enforcement
officials to issue fines of up to $500 for residents …
wasting water ….
The 2020 wildfires that incinerated a record 4.3 million acres
in California harken to centuries past when huge swaths of the
state burned annually, researchers have found, but today’s
climate-driven conflagrations are far more destructive to the
environment and human health. “California is in for a very
smoky future, and the continued resilience and even persistence
of numerous terrestrial ecosystems is not assured,” concluded a
new study published in the journal Global Ecology and
Biogeography …
On Dec. 21, 2021, The Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo
County completed three contiguous conservation easements on the
Attiyeh Ranch near Lake Nacimiento. The easements permanently
protect a whopping 7,682 acres of oak woodland, annual
grasslands, and chaparral, as well as significant freshwater
resources and wildlife habitat.
[D]esalinization … draws in saltwater and, utilizing
reverse osmosis, purifies the water to a consumable standard.
Around the globe, countries have adopted desalinization as a
considerable part of their water portfolio. … California is
shockingly behind the curve when it comes to embracing the
practice. .. Rather than removing [Diablo Canyon Power
Plant] from the region, we should double down on
production and build an additional site to power a mega-sized
desalinization plant. -Written by Assemblymember Devon J. Mathis.
With more than 1.1 million acres across the drought-afflicted
West already charred, 2022 is shaping up to be another year of
extremely intense fire activity … the prospect of dry
lightning associated with tropical storms off the coast of
Mexico in mid- to late-summer and continued dry La Niña
conditions heading into fall and early winter — and perhaps
beyond. That could mean a potential fourth year of abnormally
low rainfall and the threat of lightning-sparked wildfires like
those in August 2020 that ravaged the region and much of
California.
Long Beach Water Department customers will be seeing a small
decrease in their monthly bills after the city’s water
commission voted Wednesday to lower rates after the city’s
legal defeat over transferring excess revenue from the
department into its general fund. The 2.54% decrease will
result in a savings of about $2 per month for most residential
customers for the rest of the fiscal year that ends in
September. Lauren Gold, the department’s public information
officer, said the reduction will result in a loss of about $3
million for the department.
Multiple San Joaquin Valley groundwater projects got a
significant shot of state funding this week to kickstart
recharge, and other, projects. On Monday, the Department of
Water Resources (DWR) announced $150 million was awarded to 20
agencies through its first round of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Grant Program. That includes almost $84 million for
11 agencies in the San Joaquin Valley.
Public developments on the California coast would be required
to capture carbon in wetlands or other natural systems under an
Assembly bill that calls for projects to add “blue carbon”
measures to their mitigation plans. Blue carbon refers to
coastal habitat such as wetlands, marshes, kelp forests and
eelgrass beds that capture and store carbon in soil, plant
matter and the sea floor. AB 2593, authored by
Assemblymember Boerner Horvath, D-Encinitas, would require
projects on public lands to compensate for greenhouse gas
emissions by building or contributing to blue carbon projects.
New legislation that U.S. Reps. Mike Levin and Nancy Mace
introduced late last month could provide more grant funding to
the study and advancement of desalination technology,
benefiting endeavors including the proposed Doheny Ocean
Desalination Project in Dana Point. If enacted, H.R. 7612, or
the Desalination Research Advancement Act, would increase the
number of research grants the Bureau of Reclamation is
authorized to fund, raising the cap from $5 million to $20
million per year through the 2026 fiscal year.
Heat waves. Severe drought. Extreme wildfires. As Southern
California braces for unprecedented drought restrictions,
long-range forecasts are predicting a summer that will be
fraught with record-breaking temperatures, sere landscapes and
above-average potential for significant wildfires, particularly
in the northern part of the state. … Unlike its wetter
and better known sibling, El Niño, La Niña typically brings dry
winters to Southern California and the Southwest.
After the driest start to the year across much of Northern
California, April saw the return to near average rainfall for
areas north of San Francisco – this after many areas missed out
on nearly 7 to 15 inches inches of rain from January through
March. While the April rain totals weren’t much, it appears the
rain and the cooler temperatures have made a short term
positive change when it comes to Bay Area fire danger and
drought conditions.
Meteorologists are monitoring the potential for a “triple-dip
La Niña,” an unusual resurgence of cooler-than-normal sea
surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. While
such a phenomenon might seem remote, La Niña plays an enormous
role in our weather stateside. In addition to helping juice up
tornado season in the spring, La Niña has been known to
supercharge Atlantic hurricane season when it sticks around
into the summer and fall. La Niña is back. Here’s what that
means.
The California Coastal Commission wants San Luis Obispo County
to immediately halt all new water-using development, including
housing, in Los Osos and Cambria. … The Coastal Commission
also sent a letter on the same day to the Cambria Community
Services District (CCSD) notifying that it had violated the
California Coastal Act over more than three decades due to its
water extractions from wells in the San Simeon and Santa Rosa
creek aquifers …
Citing California’s worsening drought conditions, Gov. Gavin
Newsom on Friday made a powerful new push for a controversial
$1.4 billion desalination plant on the state’s coastline. The
proposed oceanfront facility in Huntington Beach has been under
debate for more than 20 years, and its fate could set a course
for other desalination plants on the state’s coast. The
California Coastal Commission is scheduled to take a final vote
on the project in two weeks. … Newsom said a no
vote by the full commission to kill the project would be
“a big mistake, a big setback.”
A colorful, widely visible, but graffiti-marred mural on a
flood-control dam near Corona that celebrated the nation’s
bicentennial no longer enjoys the protection of a court order.
But officials say a plan is in the works to replace the
patriotic image on Prado Dam, which was originally created with
toxic lead paint. The fate of the mural near the 91 and 71
freeways has been uncertain since the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, which controls the dam, announced plans to begin
removing the gigantic painting in spring 2015.
Following the driest three-month stretch in the state’s
recorded history and with warmer months ahead, the Department
of Water Resources (DWR) announced its seventh round of grant
awards for local assistance through the Small Community Drought
Relief program. In coordination with the State Water Resources
Control Board, DWR has selected 17 projects … 14 will
directly support disadvantaged communities, including three
Tribes, and will replace aging infrastructure, increase water
storage, and improve drinking water quality and supply.
Major water restrictions are about to take effect in areas
ranging from Rancho Cucamonga to Thousand Oaks, and Baldwin
Park to North Hollywood. But many nearby areas will escape the
mandatory one-day-a-week watering limits — among them Santa
Monica, Long Beach, Torrance and Beverly Hills. Why? The
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has targeted
these first-ever water restrictions for areas that
rely heavily or entirely on the State Water Project — a
Northern California water supply that officials say faces
a real risk of running dry.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) announced last month that nearly 60 percent of
the U.S. is experiencing some level of drought, including
severe conditions that threaten wildfires, heatwaves and low
precipitation. States along the Colorado River Basin have
entered into agreements to reduce their demands on the
dwindling river, including recycling local water to make up the
difference. This Water Week, we’re focused on a series of
remaining actions that will help unleash the full potential of
water recycling across the United States. -Written by Craig Lichty, client director
and vice president for Black & Veatch and president of the
WateReuse Association; and Patricia Sinicropi, the
executive director of the WateReuse Association.
Right on time, the Monterey Peninsula, along with the rest of
the region, learned on April 21 how many new housing units the
state not only expects, but will require, it to plan to build
between 2023 and 2031. Historically, for the Peninsula, this
has been as awkward as a relationship between local and state
government can get. The local governments here agree they need
to add housing, yet the region, served by water utility
California American Water, remains under a cease and desist
order from the state that has, for years, barred adding new
water connections.
During drought years, California relies heavily on its
groundwater supply. As droughts become longer and more intense
with climate change, it’s becoming more important than ever to
“bank” excess surface water during stormy weather patterns in
order to provide some long-term insurance. … [Dr. Helen
Dahlke, a hydrology expert at UC Davis] and a team of
researchers recently shared findings from their study showing
how California’s 8 million acres of farmland could be tapped as
one way to help get water back into the ground through a
process called ‘Ag-MAR.’
Solvang will invest another $10 million into its wastewater
treatment plant, including tooling that could support future
wastewater recycling, after the council voted unanimously
Monday to support the least expensive of four potential
options. … During its goal planning sessions, the council
directed staff to explore the feasibility of producing and
delivering recycled water.
The late-season burst of snow and moisture that blanketed
Northern California in April helped make a small dent in
drought conditions, experts said, but the majority of the state
is still far below where it needs to be as it heads toward the
hot, dry months of summer. Several storms arrived weeks after
the final snow survey of the season on April 1, in which state
officials reported that statewide snowpack had dwindled to just
38% of average for the date after a bone-dry start to the year.
One of the most ambitious conservation efforts ever,
California’s 30×30 initiative aims to protect plant and animal
life across 30 percent of the state’s most critical land and
water by 2030. Gov. Gavin Newsom has described the plan as an
important step toward ensuring community well-being, equity,
and economic sustainability while staving off mega wildfires,
droughts, and other climate change-driven threats. Stanford
University experts have informed 30×30 through their
participation in public outreach sessions, meetings with the
plan’s leadership and a letter of support signed by faculty
members from all seven of the university’s schools.
A proposed California desalination plant that would produce 50
million gallons of drinking water per day failed a crucial
regulatory hurdle on Monday, possibly dooming a project that
had been promoted as a partial solution for sustained drought.
The staff of the California Coastal Commission recommended
denying approval of the Huntington Beach plant proposed by
Poseidon Water … [and] said the project was more
susceptible to sea-level rise than was understood when it was
first proposed more than two decades ago.
Extreme storms like the massive bomb cyclone that drenched the
San Francisco Bay Area last October are likely to become more
powerful in the coming decades as climate change alters
atmospheric conditions. The Bay Area could see between 26% and
37% more water from these mega-storms by the end of the
century, according to a new study from the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory commissioned by the city. … Even
though each mega-storm could pack more rain, other climate
change studies suggest water will overall be more scarce.
New data and reports now show that the Paso Robles groundwater
basin is being severely depleted — with unsustainable amounts
pumped throughout the entire last decade. As a result, it is
now considered a critically overdrafted groundwater basin in
need of management to ensure the long-term sustainability of
the water source…. Blame for the status of the groundwater
basin is tossed around between lack of regulation from local
politicians and overpumping from vintners…. But vintners
and local industry leaders interviewed by The Tribune said
placing the blame on the wine industry is oversimplifying a
complicated issue.
Valley Water is looking for ways to not only conserve but also
reclaim the precious crystal-clear liquid. In December, the
agency’s board of directors approved an agreement to work with
the city of Palo Alto to build an advanced water-purification
facility in Palo Alto. The 6.4-acre plant would be located at
the old Los Altos Regional Wastewater Plant at the eastern end
of San Antonio Road.
Happy Earth Day. As you probably know, April 22 is a day set
aside for appreciating the environment and demonstrating
support for laws that protect it. … But it was a massive
oil spill in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara that
ultimately served as a catalyst for Earth Day…. At the
national level, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean
Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, and President Richard
M. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mired in an extreme drought, California lawmakers on Thursday
took the first step toward lowering the standard for how much
water people use in their homes — a move that won’t be enforced
on individual customers but could lead to higher rates even as
consumption declines. California’s current standard for
residential indoor water use is 55 gallons per person per
day…. The California Senate voted 28-9 on Thursday to
lower the standard to 47 gallons per person per day starting in
2025; and 42 gallons per person per day beginning in
2030. The bill has not yet passed the Assembly, meaning it
is still likely months away from becoming law.
In a California forest torched by wildfire last summer,
researcher Anne Nolin examines a handful of the season’s
remaining snow, now darkened by black specks from the burned
trees above. Spring heat waves had already melted much of
the year’s limited snowfall across California and parts of the
West when Nolin visited in early April. But she and her
colleague are studying another factor that might’ve made the
snow vanish faster in the central Sierra Nevada — the scorched
trees, which no longer provide much shade and are shedding
flecks of carbon.
The ongoing drought and another year of unprecedented low
rainfall have prompted the California State Water Resources
Control Board to push for the consolidation of small public
water systems across the state. In a letter sent on April 4,
the water board asked North Marin Water District to consider
partnerships or consolidations with small systems across West
Marin and beyond.
A group of business interests that have been historic
cheerleaders for a Monterey Peninsula desalination project has
written a letter to officials at Pure Water Monterey, the
provider of potable recycled water along the Monterey
Peninsula, questioning the adequacy of source water for it and
a planned expansion of the project, questions Pure Water
Monterey says it has already answered. The Pure Water Monterey
project is key to helping solve the Peninsula’s chronic water
shortages as state regulators have significantly scaled back
the amount of water that can be pumped from the Carmel River.
Some Santa Paula residents with overdue water bills are getting
a break thanks to a state grant for COVID-19 pandemic relief.
The city is using $366,000 in funds from the State Water
Resources Control Board through the California Water and
Wastewater Arrearage Payment Program to cover overdue
residential and commercial water bill payments as a result of
the pandemic, according to a news release.
A strong storm inbound for Northern California will peak
Thursday, blanketing the mountains with feet of snow that will
make travel extremely hazardous if not impossible, according to
the latest weather forecasts…. Rain and snow may put a
small dent in California’s drought conditions, but storms this
week and last week won’t be enough to bust it. Statewide
snowpack as of Wednesday morning stood at just 30% of normal
for the date, according to the Department of Water Resources.
Federal scientists have created a new tool for forecasting
marine heat waves, and they say one is currently forming in the
North Pacific Ocean not far from the California coast. The
marine heat wave currently predicted to linger into fall is not
expected to have the impact of “the blob” — the name for a
period of high seawater temperatures that persisted along the
West Coast from 2014 to 2016. But scientists say their new
prediction models will help forecast similar extreme ocean
warming events that are expected to increase in duration and
intensity with climate change.
This 3-mile stretch of sand and tide pools beneath a fortress
of 80-foot bluffs is a California tourism poster if there ever
was one. Nothing disturbs the pristine, sunny view, except –
once you’re aware of them – the nurdles. But you have to look
close – on-your-hands-and-knees close – to see one. And once
you do, you see another and another – so many that you may not
think of this, or any beach, the same way again. Mark
McReynolds is trying to bring into focus these tiny
preproduction plastic pellets that manufacturers melt down to
mold everything from car bumpers to toothpaste caps.
A pair of storms will reach Northern California this week, with
lighter showers Tuesday intensifying to heavy April snow in the
Sierra Nevada mountains later in the week….Spring snowfall
has helped boost California a bit after an exceptionally dry
January through March. But it’s still very unlikely to bust the
drought, as the recent storms represent just a fraction of the
snowpack lost to record-low precipitation earlier in the year,
and the window for more heavy snow is quickly closing before
summer heat arrives.
As our planet wobbles toward its 52nd Earth Day on Friday,
April 22, the global medical report is … not great. This month,
the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that
if we don’t stop pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
ASAP, we’ll soon be living in hell. California had its driest
first three months of the year in recorded history. Antarctic
ice shelves are melting before our eyes. Three new books
explore the perilous realities of life on Earth in 2022.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announces
California recreational ocean salmon fishing season dates are
now set for the remainder of 2022 and offer about the same
number of open days as last year. Sport fisheries opened south
of Point Arena on April 2 and the remainder of the coast will
open May 1. Although anglers can enjoy an earlier start to the
season than last year, there will be intermittent breaks in
fishing opportunity in management areas north of Pigeon Point.
More wet weather is on tap for the week as the Pacific storm
track continues to favor a wetter weather pattern for Northern
California. This is much-needed rain after Jan. and March 2022
ended as the driest on record for much of California. The
pattern shift in mid-April brought much-needed rain and snow
but not enough to catch up to big deficits that grew through
the end of the wet season.
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.
