Citing numerous studies indicating the breadth of environmental
damage caused by single-use plastics – common in restaurant
take-out products – the Monterey County Supervisors Tuesday
afternoon will consider banning their use. If passed, an
ordinance banning the use of single-use plastic will join a
groundswell of restrictions by cities, counties and the state.
The state has enacted Senate Bill 1046 set to take effect Jan.
1, 2025 that will ban all single-use plastic bags provided
prior to checkout at food stores. The most common of these are
the plastic bags used in produce sections. Los Angeles County
has already banned single-use plastics anywhere in the
unincorporated area of the county.
The Board of Directors of the Monterey Peninsula Water
Management District plans on holding a public hearing to
consider the acquisition of the Monterey Water System. The
board is considering adopting a Resolution of Necessity for
taking by eminent domain in order to convert the privately
owned and operated water system to public ownership and
control. Currently, the Monterey Water System is privately held
by the California American Water Company.
Eleven-year-old Gabriel Coleman and his friends Maarten and
Merel dug through driftwood piled on the shoreline under the
Dumbarton Bridge, doggedly on the hunt for pieces of plastic
and other debris to fill their white trash bags. “With
teamwork-makes-the-dream-work, we’ve been finding big pieces
and small pieces all over,” Gabriel proudly explained. The trio
from Newark was among thousands of volunteers who turned out
Saturday for the 39th annual California Coastal Cleanup at 695
beaches, lakes, creeks and rivers throughout the state —
including dozens of sites across every county in the Bay Area.
A nonprofit in Peru is gaining attention for its work in
developing a simple system that gathers moisture from fog and
channels it to storage containers for use in areas where water
is in short supply. The systems are dropping in price and
increasing in efficiency, experts say. The “fog catchers” have
been installed in several countries and were even considered
for possible use in the San Francisco area. … “It’s a
very intriguing idea,” says Jay Lund, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering and director of the Center for
Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis.
… Lund explored the idea of demisting
fogs over San Francisco in the aftermath of the droughts
in the Bay Area between 2012 and 2016, but concluded it would
likely not be economically viable.
Potent winter storms, summer heat, and tropical storm Hilary
have bred a surge of invasive, day-biting Aedes mosquitoes in
California, spawning in some regions the first reported human
cases of West Nile virus in years. The statewide rise has
brought 153 West Nile reports so far, more than double last
year’s, according to the California Department of Public
Health.
In 1883, two years after he created Hotel Del Monte, railroad
baron Charles Crocker facilitated the construction, near
Cachagua, of the so-called Chinese Dam – the Carmel River’s
first – which aimed to provide 400 acre-feet of water annually
to his hotel. … There is a plan in the works, years in the
making, though not yet quite near the finish line: the Rancho
Cañada Floodplain Restoration Project. The project calls
for widening and restoring the riverbed and banks where the
river flows through a 40-acre, mile-long stretch of Palo Corona
Regional Park through the section that was reclaimed from part
of the Rancho Cañada Golf Course in a purchase facilitated by
the Trust for Public Land, Trout Unlimited the Santa Lucia
Conservancy and the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District.
The Pleasanton City Council voted Tuesday to delay a
controversial plan to raise water rates by 62 percent over the
next three years. Council members voted to conduct further
analysis based on numerous resident concerns, and reconsider
the hikes at their Nov. 7 meeting. The council voted
unanimously to delay the vote, though Councilmember Julie Testa
left before the vote due to a family emergency.
The past summer was the hottest ever in the Northern
Hemisphere. In fact, scientists announced last week that June,
July and August this year were the warmest on record globally,
confirming that the horrific heat waves in many places were as
awful as they seemed. But, as you’re probably already
aware, the summer didn’t bring record-breaking heat to
California. Some daily temperature records were broken in
July in Palm Springs, Anaheim and Redding, but overall, the
Golden State actually enjoyed its coolest summer since 2011.
Warm ocean waters from the developing El Niño are shifting
north along coastlines in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Along the
coast of California, these warm waters are interacting with a
persistent marine heat wave that recently influenced the
development of Hurricane Hilary. … In its September
outlook, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration forecast a greater than 70% chance for a strong
El Niño this coming winter. In addition to warmer water, El
Niño is also associated with a weakening of the equatorial
trade winds. The phenomenon can bring cooler, wetter conditions
to the U.S. Southwest and drought to countries in the western
Pacific, such as Indonesia and Australia.
Water — that essential and often-elusive element so critical to
our very existence — is the subject of a new juried exhibition
focusing on California national parks at the Wildling Museum of
Art and Nature in Solvang. Titled California National Parks:
Stories of Water, the exhibition explores various impacts of
water — and sometimes the lack of it — in our national parks,
with artists using through a wide range of media and
techniques, from acrylic, oil, and watercolor paintings to
photography, mixed media, and textile art. The exhibit features
37 artists and 39 selected artworks juried from a pool of more
than 240 submissions by artists across the U.S., competing for
$4,000 in awards.
It’s been six months since the levee protecting the small
Central Coast farming community of Pajaro burst, flooding the
town and forcing thousands out of their homes. And
while repairs are underway, a permanent fix is still years
in the making.
When California lawmakers enacted the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act in 2014, it was an effort to tame the wild, wild
west of water. Nearly a decade later, there’s been some
progress creating local sustainability plans, but Big Ag
corporations are still hogging water and bullying smaller
groundwater users. Look no further than the fight heating up in
the Cuyama Valley, where small farmers and rural residents are
calling for a boycott of carrots produced by a pair of big
corporate growers who use a lot of water in an increasingly dry
place. … The problem is that more water is being pumped
from the ground than
is being replenished. Cuyama Valley is one
of California’s 21 over-pumped, or
“critically overdrafted” basins.
On September 9th, 2023 the Sixth Appellate District of
California’s Court of Appeals upheld the County of Monterey’s
decision to authorize permits for construction of California
American Water’s Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project
desalination facility.
A water district best known for supplying the celebrity-studded
enclaves of Calabasas and Hidden Hills could soon become famous
for a very different reason. The Las Virgenes Municipal Water
District recently partnered with California-based OceanWell to
study the feasibility of harvesting drinking water from
desalination pods placed on the ocean floor, several miles off
the coast of California. The pilot project, which will begin in
Las Virgenes’ reservoir near Westlake Village, hopes to
establish the nation’s first-ever “blue water farm.” … The
process could produce as much as 10 million gallons of fresh
water per day — a significant gain for an inland district
almost entirely reliant on imported supplies.
El Niño — a weather pattern that can cause impacts around
the world — developed in summer and is expected to persist
through winter, long-term forecasters said Thursday. In
its latest monthly forecast, the federal Climate Prediction
Center said there’s a 95% chance El Niño will
continue through winter, January to March, and it will most
likely be strong, as opposed to weak or moderate. In
California, El Niño has near-celebrity status, as the state has
seen some epic wet winters when it has developed in the past,
but meteorologists say that the state has also seen dry or
normal precipitation in El Niño winters.
While the California American Water Co. has repeatedly said
they have no plans to sell their water system that serves much
of the Monterey Peninsula, the local water management district
board of directors is considering using eminent domain to take
over the system. The public will get a chance to weigh in on
that possibility at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 10 in a hearing in the
Irvine Auditorium at the Middlebury Institute of International
Studies, 499 Pierce St., Monterey. … The resolution of
necessity would entail taking by eminent domain the Monterey
water system, which is currently privately owned, operated and
held by Cal Am. If approved, the water system would be
converted to public ownership and controlled by the Monterey
Peninsula Water Management District.
Standing on top of the largest groundwater well in eastern
Alameda County, and flanked by twenty-foot cream-colored water
vessels, five board members of the Zone 7 Water Agency, a water
wholesaler for the tri-valley, cut the ribbon on an advanced
groundwater treatment facility Wednesday in Pleasanton. The new
technology is called Ion Exchange, which uses positive and
negative particles to remove PFAS from ground water. PFAS,
or polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widely used, long-lasting
chemicals, the components of which break down very slowly over
time. Thousands of different PFAS are found in many different
consumer, commercial, and industrial products, like hiking gear
and non-stick cookware.
Work is still underway on a sinkhole in San Francisco’s Cow
Hollow neighborhood. A section of Fillmore Street remains
closed after a water main broke Monday damaging the street and
nearby homes and businesses. Repairs to the water main have
been fixed, but that’s just the beginning. ABC7 News reporter
Luz Pena has been covering this story and on Tuesday went with
one of the crews surveying the damage.
Water and sewer bills in Grover Beach could increase by nearly
20% to make up for a $2 million deficit in revenue, the city
announced Wednesday in a news release. At its Sept. 5 meeting,
the Grover Beach City Council learned about the findings from a
recent utility rate study, heard recommendations and
unanimously instructed the city staff to start the Proposition
218 process, a step in notifying the public about proposed rate
changes, the release said. Prior to the 2023 study, the city
conducted rate studies approximately every five years, with one
conducted in 2021.
Iron be gone. Manganese, away. A $14.2 million groundwater
treatment facility that scrubs iron and manganese from supplies
at a wellfield in El Rio has switched on. The plant will
improve drinking supplies for thousands of Ventura County
residents, including families living at Naval Base Ventura
County. On Wednesday morning, officials and dignitaries
celebrated the United Water Conservation District project at
its El Rio facility at 3561 N. Rose Ave., north of Oxnard.
… Wednesday’s gathering marked completion of the plant’s
first phase after construction started around February
2022. The facility treats supplies pumped from deep
wells. The first phase will treat up to 3,500 gallons of
groundwater per minute. Future phases can expand capacity to
about 8,250 gallons per minute.
Residents in the area of Anderson Dam over the next few weeks
may hear loud warning horns and explosive sounds as crews
continue to excavate a tunnel under construction for the dam’s
seismic retrofit project, according to Valley Water.
Water district staff say the impact to residents and passing
traffic should be minimal. Starting on Sept. 12,
construction crews will begin the controlled blasting of hard
rock for the Anderson Dam Tunnel Project. Scheduled detonations
over the next few weeks will take place Monday through Friday,
and possibly on Saturdays, from 8am-7pm, Valley Water
spokesperson Matt Keller said.
Here is NOAA’s list of these 23 disasters, in chronological
order, along with their latest damage estimates. 1. California
Flooding ($4.6 billion): A parade of Pacific storms began just
after Christmas 2022 and lasted into March, dumping flooding
rain in parts of Northern California and the Central Valley, as
well as feet of record snowfall in parts of the Sierra and
Southern California high country. … 15. Late June Severe
Weather ($3.5 billion): This siege of storms from June
21-26 began in the High Plains, including destructive
hailstorms in Colorado, one of which injured almost 100
concertgoers near Denver, and a deadly tornado in
Matador, Texas.
Kaiser, California’s largest healthcare provider, has agreed to
a $49 million settlement with the State Attorney General’s
Office and six district attorneys, including in Alameda County,
for illegally dumping hazardous waste, medical waste, and the
protected health information of more than 7,000 patients at
Kaiser facilities statewide, Attorney General Rob Bonta
announced on Friday. … [He said]: “Batteries containing
toxic, corrosive chemicals could leach into the surrounding
environment and pollute the soil and groundwater. Prescription
medications could leach into the water table and affect our
drinking water.” He added that hazardous chemicals could
start a fire that pollutes the air and harms the local
ecosystem.
Bill Leikam was reviewing footage from a wildlife camera he
placed along a Palo Alto creekbed recently when something
unfamiliar scampered across the screen. … Eventually, he
recognized the mysterious creature as a critically important
species that has long been missing from his beloved Baylands —
a mammal that California wildlife officials have hailed as a
“climate hero.” … For decades, developers,
municipalities and farmers focused on beavers as a problem that
required mitigation or removal. Now, the species known
as Castor canadensis is seen as offering myriad
benefits: It can help to mitigate drought and wildfires through
natural water management; it is considered a keystone species
for its ability to foster biodiversity; and it can restore
habitat through its ecosystem engineering.
So far, 2023 has been a wild year for weather. Flooding,
drought and hail have all made their way into the headlines -
not to mention the extreme high and low temperatures seen
throughout the seasons. While weather patterns have been
anything but predictable this year, Eric Snodgrass, Principal
Atmospheric Scientist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, says America’s
heartland may start to see wetter weather conditions just in
time for fall. … Back in early June, scientists at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)
Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño
advisory, noting that El Niño conditions were present and
would likely strengthen into the fall and winter months.
… El Niño winters also bring better chances for
warmer-than-average temperatures across the northern tier of
the country.
San Diego County’s fragile shoreline and vulnerable beachfront
properties could be in for a rough winter, according to the
California Coastal Commission, the National Weather Service and
some top San Diego scientists. “We are looking at an emerging
El Niño event,” staff geologist Joseph Street told the Coastal
Commission at its meeting Wednesday in Eureka. An El Niño is a
meteorological phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years.
The water temperature at the surface of the Central Pacific
Ocean along the equator warms a few degrees above its long-term
average, creating conditions for stronger, more frequent
seasonal storms across much of the globe.
Marin Municipal Water District staff are recommending delaying
a proposed expansion of “smart” water meters to all customers
in order to address more urgent risks to the agency’s main
software system. On Tuesday, staff and consultants told the
district Board of Directors that attempting to simultaneously
complete two of the district’s largest technological upgrades
in decades may result in potential system failures. … For the
past 23 years, the water district has used the same software
system from the multinational company SAP to manage nearly all
of the agency’s functions, including billing, water-use
tracking, human resources, maintenance planning and customer
relations.
Innovative water treatment and desalination technologies hold
promise for building climate resilience, realizing a circular
water economy, and bolstering water security. However, more
research and development is critical not only to radically
lower the cost and energy of such technologies, but to
effectively treat unconventional water sources. Conventional
water supplies, such as fresh water and groundwater, are
typically used once and thrown away, rendering this valuable
and finite resource inaccessible for further use. Since its
launch in 2019, the National Alliance for Water Innovation
(NAWI) has made strides in developing new technologies to
economically treat, use, and recycle unconventional waters
(such as brackish groundwater, municipal and industrial
wastewater, and agricultural run-off), which could point to a
future where water equity and security is accessible to all.
As the Labor Day holiday weekend draws the summer to a close,
it’s been an unusually quiet season for fires across the
American west. Roughly 80,000 hectares (2m acres) have burned
across the country so far, according to the National
Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), roughly 61% less than the
10-year average for this time of year. The decrease has been
particularly pronounced in the fire-prone west, which has grown
accustomed to seeing swaths of their parched forests and
browning hillsides ignite but has largely been given a reprieve
from a summer of smoke-filled skies. … Well-timed
storms, including the unusual Tropical Storm Hilary, doused
southern California and other dry areas nearby, staving
off fire dangers that typically rise at the end of summer
and into autumn.
Roughly an hour from California’s Bay Area and less than a mile
from the Pacific Ocean, Kelli and Tim Hutton purchased a half
an acre property in the Central Coast town of Moss Landing last
summer. As with many others living in the area, they heavily
rely on their private well for water. After moving into the new
home with their newborn baby, the Huttons heard other residents
were concerned about high levels of saltwater intrusion, being
so near the ocean. Rising sea level and California’s whiplash
weather have been impacting their water table, with seawater
seeping in and causing pipes to corrode, making water
undrinkable.
Joe and Jennifer Montana are among the people suing San
Francisco, alleging city departments did nothing to prevent
“torrents of water and untreated sewage” from flooding their
homes. The lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco County Superior
Court on Aug. 24, was brought by dozens of families who live,
rent or own property in the Marina District. The families
allege that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and
Department of Public Works, as well as contractors they hired,
knowingly allowed negligent conditions to develop in their
neighborhood. … This problem came to a head during
winter storms over the past two years, the families say. The
suit claims 4.5 million gallons of “untreated
wastewater” flooded homes in Oct. 2021, and “torrents of
water and untreated sewage” inundated their properties again in
the storms of December 2022 and this past January.
On an overcast morning on Friday, Aug. 25, as jets of water
from sprinklers rain down on the surrounding fields of lettuce,
a gaggle of journalists, politicians and public officials are
gathered at a press event along the Pajaro River levee, just
more than a stone’s throw from where it breached last March.
The breach occurred after weeks of sustained rainfall on the
Central Coast, and it wasn’t a surprise – for over 50 years,
federal, state and local officials have known the levee was
deficient, but there was never enough buy-in, or urgency, to do
something about it. Seemingly, that is starting to change, but
time will tell if it’s real, or just a public relations
band-aid to save face after the flooding in the community of
Pajaro, which displaced thousands of residents from their homes
and left some of those homes unlivable.
Watermelon season has been a tough one this year after a late
start due to the weather. VP of Crops and Soils at Van
Groningen & Sons Incorporated, Bryan Van Groningen said their
planting was delayed about three weeks back in Spring.
Plantings usually go in around the middle of March, but this
year the earliest plantings did not start until the first week
of April. “At one time we had almost one million
transplants sitting in greenhouses in the last couple weeks of
March that were ready to be planted and we had no place to
plant them because the fields were too wet,” Van Groningen.
Landowners in the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin have been
fighting major agriculture producers, Grimmway Farms and
Bolthouse Farms, for their water rights. Everyone in the basin
was on track to cut water usage until the carrot growers filed
an adjudication in court against every landowner in the basin,
including the school district, temporarily halting the cutback,
and essentially leaving the courts with the decision on who
gets water rights in the basin. The Cuyama Valley Groundwater
Basin was designated as one of 21 basins or subbasins in
California that are in a state of critical overdraft. Local
Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSA), agencies under the
California Department of Water Resources, are responsible for
creating a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) to outline how
basins throughout the state will become sustainable by 2040.
Those plans then get updated every five years.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Santa Cruz Senator John Laird’s SB 756
into law on Friday, according to the governor’s office. The
bill addresses three issues regarding the State Water Board.
First, its ability to participate in the inspection of
unlicensed cannabis cultivation sites with law enforcement;
second, its ability to inspect these sites for violation of
water rights laws (including illegal diversion and/or use); and
third, its ability to serve various types of legal documents
and provide notice to unlicensed cannabis cultivation sites.
California experienced triple the amount of average rainfall
within the first few months of 2023, leading to heavy plant
growth across the Central Coast. It even caused a super bloom
of wildflowers off of Highway 1 and 58, creating excitement for
locals and visitors alike. Months later, one of the Central
Coast’s biggest industries is grappling with the storms’
after-effects, as harvest season for vineyards is looking a lot
different this year. Walking through Paso Robles on a hot
August afternoon, it’s almost like the storms never happened.
The rolling hills at Tablas Creek Vineyard are lined with
healthy grapevines and olive trees.
Earlier this month the Coastside County Water District Board of
Directors workshopped ideas for bringing recycled water to Half
Moon Bay. The district is in the early stages of a feasibility
study that will examine whether water from various sources,
including wastewater, could be used for agriculture or drinking
supplies. Throughout the process, CCWD must weigh the benefits
of diversifying local water sources with the costs of building
expensive infrastructure. Two months ago, the board agreed to
pay Water Works Engineers $299,977 to evaluate the region’s
hydrogeology, implementation options and permitting
feasibility. The district has applied for grants from the
Division of Financial Assistance that could pay for planning
and construction.
Early this year, severe storms battered California, bringing
huge waves that damaged infrastructure and forced people away
from the coast. That may be the new norm, as climate change
fuels severe weather that is making waves bigger, according to
a study published this month. The study, published in the
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, uses nearly a century
of seismic records to show that mean winter wave heights, as
well as the frequency of big waves, have significantly
increased along California’s coast since the 1970s. In recent
decades, the number of waves taller than 16 feet has more than
doubled, according to the paper, which showed that the Aleutian
Low, an area of low pressure over the Aleutian Islands in
southwest Alaska, has also intensified, likely increasing
storms.
About a half-mile off San Juan Road, past the lettuce fields,
excavators and tractors have begun moving earth to repair the
exact spot along the 12-mile Pajaro River levee that failed on
March 11, leading to catastrophic flooding and generational
disaster. Elected officials and community leaders from Santa
Cruz and Monterey counties and representatives from the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers stood against a noisy backdrop of
construction Friday to update the community on where this
urgent project stands. The emergency repair underway will focus
on three sections of the levee. The first section, where the
levee burst in March, will finish by Nov. 2, according to Holly
Costa, emergency management chief for the corps.
Nearly six months after a Pajaro River levee breach upended the
lives of about 3,000 Pajaro residents, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers is trying to complete repairs on three parts of the
levee before anticipated winter rain. Emergency repairs are
expected to finish by the end of November but it could take
longer if there is rain, said Holly Costa, emergency management
chief for the Army Corps of Engineers. It is “very
unusual” for levees to be fully repaired in the same year they
were damaged, Costa said. When the levee was damaged in the
past, “we didn’t get those repaired until two or three years
afterwards,” she said. Completing the levee repairs before the
rainy season is crucial because wet conditions could make the
work difficult, Costa said.
Wildfires raging in rugged pockets of California’s far north
have killed a Siskiyou County man and added particulate plumes
to smoke drifting toward the Bay Area from big Oregon
blazes. California fire map: Active fires in Northern
California including Smith River Complex California’s fire
season is here, and with temperatures rising, lightning weather
in the forecast and autumnal winds always a threat, it’s likely
to intensify over the next few months and threaten more
populated areas. Roughly 173,000 acres have burned so far
this season — up 24% from 139,000 this time last year, a
surprisingly mild season, but down nearly 80% from an average
of about 812,000 acres over the past five years, which included
three years of historic drought.
Last week, a massive marine heat wave sitting roughly 60 miles
off California’s coast oozed eastward, providing warm water
fuel for Hurricane Hilary and its historic trek north. It was a
worrisome development for researchers who have monitored this
warm mass for nearly a decade — and who are watching a
developing El Niño in the equatorial Pacific. Ever since the
“blob” appeared in the northeastern Pacific at the very end of
2013 — a massive marine heat wave that gripped the West Coast
for nearly two years in heat and drought; disrupting marine
ecosystems up and down the coast — a massive offshore heat wave
has appeared nearly every year (with the exception of 2017 and
2018); expanding in the summer and shrinking in the winter.
The plan to save the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin is failing.
In 2014, the California Legislature passed the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), requiring local communities
to form groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to be
administered by groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs). If
you’ve been following the saga of the critically overdrafted
Paso Robles Groundwater Basin for the last 10 years, the
following news may depress you, but it probably won’t surprise
you. Some things have changed over that time—the basin now has
a groundwater sustainability agency and a groundwater
sustainability plan—but some other things have not, including
the mindset that still believes the problem can be solved by
voluntary conservation, supplemental water projects, and
digging deeper wells.
In an otherwise warming planet, new research shows that the
ocean off California’s Central Coast may be a thermal refuge
for marine wildlife. Cal Poly associate professor Ryan Walter,
who teaches physics, and fourth-year physics student Michael
Dalsin analyzed temperature data gathered from 1978 through
2020 at a site just north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
They found that while other areas of the world see sharp rises
in ocean temperatures and more frequent and more intense
heatwaves, the Central Coast hasn’t seen such intense
trends. The region still experiences marine heatwaves and
cold spells brought on by factors such as the ocean-wide
climactic patterns of El Niño and La Niña, but cold current
upwelling brought on by strong local winds helps maintain the
marine ecosystem along the Central Coast, according to a study
by Walter and Dalsin published on July 31.
The sea has long inspired a human attraction, perhaps even a
compulsion, to be as close to the edge as possible. Its sheer
power captivates us, even on its most turbulent days, and we
can’t help but dream of calling the shore our own. To be out by
the surf, to sense the very limits of where land can go, to
feel the rise and fall of each wave like our own breath is to
reckon with a force so alive it feels otherworldly. But the
ocean is not “out there” beyond the shore, it is upon us,
carving away at the coast each day despite our best efforts to
keep the water at bay. We thought that with enough ingenuity we
could contain the sea, but the rising tide is proving
otherwise. Studying this confluence of land, people and sea has
kept Gary Griggs busy for much of his life.
How much does it cost to grow an acre of romaine hearts in the
nation’s salad bowl? A new study from the University of
California at Davis Cooperative Extension gives us a
comprehensive breakdown for costs in the state’s Central Coast
region: Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito counties. The
short answer: for a 1,500-acre operation, growing costs,
$7,400, harvest costs $9,383, for a total of $16,793 per acre.
… Water costs (always a fascinating subject): low, at
$282 per acre-foot, reflecting the fact that Salinas Valley
crops rely more or less exclusively on groundwater. Total
irrigation costs are $582 per acre. Incidentally, although the
grower is responsible for pumping costs, any underground costs
(such as wells running dry) are borne by the landowner.
Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko announced on
Monday that charges have been filed against Daniel Conklin
Naumann for multiple felony counts of grand theft and theft of
utility services after diversion bypasses were discovered on
two commercial pumps that irrigated Naumann’s crops. The
Camarillo resident owns and operates Naumann Family Farms in
Oxnard and is a publicly elected board member of the United
Water Conservation District. For a portion of the period he has
been charged, Naumann was also an alternate board member of the
Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency.
Toxic chemicals have been leaking into the groundwater under
and around the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport for
about five decades. It’s not the only airport in the state
dealing with this contamination, but it is the first to address
the problem with a formal plan. That’s because the
contamination impacted dozens of private wells for homes and
businesses. Many affected residents feel like the process is
moving too slowly. … But the foam is full of harmful
chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
They’re often called “forever chemicals” because they don’t
break down in the environment. … Beginning in 2019, the
State Water Board ordered 30 airports in California to
investigate PFAS contamination. According to the board, all of
them showed some level of impact. As for the SLO airport,
a vast majority of the more than 70 wells in the area were
contaminated.
The latest phase of a decades-long effort to help restore
California’s largest tract of tidal salt marsh south of San
Francisco Bay is underway this summer, thanks to the efforts of
Ducks Unlimited and its partners at Elkhorn Slough. For
years, Ducks Unlimited has partnered with the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Elkhorn Slough Foundation
on the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve to
restore degraded salt marsh and surrounding habitats.
Meandering seven miles inland from the coast, the Elkhorn
Slough sits at the center of California’s iconic Monterey Bay.
Last century, the mouth of the sinuous waterway was relocated
to create a harbor which resulted in stronger tides washing in
and out of the slough. Instead of shallow salt marshes, the
slough began to function as a bay.
Three years on from the CZU Complex Lightning Fire, the state
of California has finally given approval for the Big Basin
Water Company to once again begin operating the local sewer
system. The approval was received by the company in an email
Wednesday. Homeowners say one of the obstacles to rebuilding
after the fires has been the county was not approving their
building permits because sewer lines were not
connected. Now, Big Basin Water Company, which is in
charge of the sewer plant in the area, says the state just
cleared them to operate again and says that will help
streamline the permit process for homeowners.
Undocumented Californians affected by winter storms and floods
are slowly starting to receive money from a special relief
program the state launched for them two months ago. In June,
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced it plans to spend $95
million from the state’s Rapid Response Fund to help thousands
of flood victims recover from storm damage and financial
setbacks. The beneficiaries would be immigrants who don’t
qualify for federal emergency assistance or state unemployment
insurance because they are undocumented. More than 20
nonprofits have contracts with the Department of Social
Services to distribute the money. So far they have begun
handing out nearly $18 million to about 12,000 residents — but
it’s at an uneven pace.
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.
