Drought— an extended period of limited or no precipitation— is a
fact of life in California and the West, with water resources
following boom-and-bust patterns.
No portion of the West has been immune to drought during the last
century and drought occurs with much greater frequency in the
West than in other regions of the country.
Most of the West experiences what is classified as severe to
extreme drought more than 10 percent of the time, and a
significant portion of the region experiences severe to extreme
drought more than 15 percent of the time, according to the
National Drought Mitigation Center.
Experts who have studied recent droughts say a drought occurs
about once every 10 years somewhere in the United States.
Droughts are believed to be the most costly of all natural
disasters because of their widespread effects on agriculture and
related industries, as well as on urbanized areas. One of those
decennial droughts could cost as much as $38 billion, according
to one estimate.
Because droughts cannot be prevented, experts are looking for
better ways to forecast them and new approaches to managing
droughts when they occur.
Back in September, while wildfires raged and the pandemic wore
on, California Gov. Gavin Newsom held a virtual press
conference to announce a bold new climate goal. By 2035, he
said, all new cars and trucks sold in California would be
zero-emission, in order to seriously curtail climate
warming-emissions. … But while Newsom has grabbed
attention for his clean car policy … environmental
experts say he hasn’t moved boldly enough on ecological
issues… Last summer, the governor issued a water
resilience portfolio that outlines 142 state
actions to help the state deal with water as the climate
crisis worsens….
Californians have recently endured increasingly aggressive
wildfires, rolling power outages, and smoke-filled air for
days. Unless the state government changes course, we can
add water shortages to this list. … However, the dirty
little secret is that 50 percent of California’s water supply
is used for environmental purposes and is ultimately flushed
out into the Pacific Ocean, 40 percent goes to agriculture, and
only 10 percent goes for residential, industrial, commercial,
and governmental uses. -Written by Daniel Kolkey, a former judge and former
counsel to Governor Pete Wilson and board member of Pacific
Research Institute.
Ongoing drought in parts of the West could trigger water
conservation measures across seven states this year. It would
mark the first time that cutbacks outlined in drought
contingency plans drafted two years ago have been put in place.
Everything from hydroelectric power generation to agricultural
production to the bubbling fountains at Las Vegas casinos could
be impacted. Impacts on hydro generation could have ripple
effects across the Southwest, including solar and energy
storage.
Federal officials, showing how rapidly the Biden administration
is overhauling climate policy after years of denial under
former President Donald J. Trump, aim to free up as much as $10
billion at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to protect
against climate disasters before they strike. The agency, best
known for responding to hurricanes, floods and wildfires [such
as those that struck California last year], wants to spend the
money to pre-emptively protect against damage by building
seawalls, elevating or relocating flood-prone homes and taking
other steps as climate change intensifies storms and other
natural disasters.
As wildfires, heat waves, water scarcity and threats to
wildlife intensify in the West, California’s effort to confront
these environmental crises now has support in Washington, a
stark change from the past four years. Even as former President
Donald Trump spent his final days in office on the sidelines,
lamenting his election loss, his administration continued to
roll back environmental conservation and gut climate
regulations.
Winter weather is finally arriving in Northern California. And
after weeks of dry, warm conditions and growing drought
concerns, it’s coming in hard. Forecasters say a sizable storm
— the first significant atmospheric river event to hit the
greater Bay Area this winter season and likely the biggest
storm in at least 12 months — will soak much of California
starting Tuesday night, continuing Wednesday, and bringing wet
roads, downed trees, power outages and the possibility of
mudslides.
Federal officials entrusted with managing millions of acres of
forest in Colorado and surrounding states say they’re facing
accelerated decline driven by climate warming, insect
infestation, megafires and surging human incursions. They’ve
been struggling for years to restore resilience and ecological
balance to western forests. But they’re falling further behind
on key tasks…
The dry 2020 and the lack of snow this season has water
managers in seven states preparing for the first time for
cutbacks outlined in drought contingency plans drafted two
years ago. A sobering forecast released this week by the
Bureau of Reclamation shows the federally owned Lake Mead and
Lake Powell — the nation’s two largest reservoirs and critical
storage for Colorado River water and its 40 million users —
dipping near-record-low levels.
After 10 days of protests, Britain’s Parliament did a
surprising thing: Its members approved a proposal to declare a
state of emergency in response to the rapidly overheating
planet. And while the U.K. was the first country to do so, it
wasn’t the last. Today, at least 38 countries around the world
— including the whole of the European Union, Japan, and New
Zealand — and thousands of towns, cities, and counties have
issued some kind of resolution declaring climate change a
crisis. … A week into his term, President Joe Biden is
already under pressure to do the same.
In Oregon, the Klamath Basin wildlife refuges have fallen into
their winter silence now. The huge, clamorous flocks of geese
that fill the sky during migration have moved south. This
summer, a different silence gripped the basin. A dead silence.
The 90,000 acres of marshes and open water that make up the
Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges are a
small remnant of vast wetlands that once filled this region on
the Oregon-California border. -Written by Pepper Trail, a contributor to Writers on the
Range and a conservation biologist in Ashland, Ore.
Oh, that the rain of the past few days would be enough. And,
perhaps it will be, if forecasts for more during the upcoming
week hold true. At the least, however, the rain that does fall
will not dampen the possibility of more fires. Think about
that: Fires in January?
Warm temperatures. High winds. Wildfires. In January. Many Bay
Area residents were caught off-guard this week by the
unexpected chain of weather events that left them patching up
fences and clearing wind-whipped debris. The week started out
feeling more like late summer fire season than a midwinter day.
A combination of unseasonal heat, low humidity, lack of
rainfall and predicted offshore winds created the perfect
recipe for a wildfire, triggering a rare red flag warning late
Monday morning.
There are many ways to gauge the severity of a drought. This
winter in Colorado, all you have to do is look around. “The
stream flows across the state have been really, really, really
down throughout the whole fall season, so that is an
indicator,” said Karl Wetlaufer. Wetlaufer is a rafter, so he
pays attention to stream flow. It’s also part of his job as a
hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation
Service Snow Survey Program.
Rivers may seem like immutable features of the landscape but
they are in fact changing color over time …The overall
significance of the changes are unclear and could reflect
various ways in which humans are impacting the environment,
said lead author John Gardner, an assistant professor of
geology and environmental science at the University of
Pittsburgh. One stark example from the study of rapid color
change is Lake Mead along the Colorado River.
The Trump administration left President Biden a dilemma in the
California desert: a plan to remove protections from millions
of acres of public lands and open vast areas to solar and wind
farms. Biden’s team could easily block the proposed changes,
which were slammed by conservationists as a last-gasp effort by
the outgoing administration to support private industry at the
expense of wildlife habitat and treasured landscapes….There
are also places to put solar and wind installations besides
intact habitat, including Central Valley farmland with
dwindling water supplies …
California’s wildfire threat could ease over the next few
weeks, with a series of storms bringing much-needed moisture
after heat and drought torched record acreage in the state. The
first downpour is already spreading across Northern California
Friday, and that will be followed by progressively stronger
systems through next week …
We had a very late start to the rainy season this year, similar
to what we have seen in recent years. We’ve seen about
one-third of the normal rainfall for the current date—well
below the normal amount. There could be a weather pattern
explaining some of the lack of rain. That is called a La Niña
weather pattern.
Increasingly bleak forecasts for the Colorado River have for
the first time put into action elements of the 2019 upper basin
drought contingency plan. The 24-month study released in
January by the Bureau of Reclamation, which projects two years
of operations at the river’s biggest reservoirs, showed Lake
Powell possibly dipping below an elevation of 3,525 feet above
sea level in 2022. That elevation was designated as a critical
threshold in the agreement to preserve the ability to produce
hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam.
A month before she began campaigning for the second-highest
political position in the United States, now-Vice President
Kamala Harris briefly turned her attention to a small town with
a big drinking water problem. “Utterly unacceptable that in
2020, we still can’t guarantee clean water to communities
across America. It’s a fundamental human right,” Harris said in
a July 9 tweet about the town of Earlimart in California’s
Central Valley.
The Colusa and Glenn Groundwater Authorities will host an
online workshop about a Well Monitoring Pilot Program the
agencies are implementing. The voluntary, non-regulatory
program will gather information about groundwater use in the
Colusa Subbasin while also providing participants with
near-real time access to information on well production and
groundwater levels at their wells, according to a press
release.
A booming agricultural industry in the state’s San Joaquin
Valley, combined with punishing droughts, led to the
over-extraction of water from aquifers. Like huge, empty water
bottles, the aquifers crumpled, a phenomenon geologists call
subsidence. By 1970, the land had sunk as much as 28
feet in the valley, with less-than-ideal consequences for
the humans and infrastructure above the aquifers. … All
over the world—from the Netherlands to Indonesia to Mexico
City—geology is conspiring with climate change to sink the
ground under humanity’s feet.
The historic run of dry weather has been one for the record
books across the Western US, but now forecasts show some much
needed relief is on the way. Over 70% of the Southwest is in
grip of extreme drought. … Long-range models suggest
three, or possibly four, separate storms will impact
California, Nevada and Arizona during the final two weeks of
January.
High winds, dry vegetation and unseasonably warm weather fueled
several wildfires in Northern California on Tuesday as hundreds
of residents were forced to evacuate, state fire officials
said. Fire crews were working on multiple fronts to contain at
least five active fires that ignited within the CZU Complex
Fire burn area in Santa Cruz County. Several nearby
neighborhoods were evacuated and firefighters struggled to gain
access because of hazardous tree conditions from the previous
blaze, according to state fire officials.
California is enveloped in balmy weather that’s more like
spring than mid-winter — and that’s not a good thing. We have
seen only scant rain and snow this winter, indicating that the
state may be experiencing one of its periodic droughts and
adding another layer of crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and
economic recession. The all-important Sierra snowpack,
California’s primary source of water, is scarcely half of what
is deemed a normal depth. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters columnist.
San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California cities are
facing different but equally daunting water challenges.
For Valley farmers, the requirement to achieve groundwater
sustainability in coming years has heightened interest in
expanding water supplies to reduce the need to fallow irrigated
farmland. For Southern California, falling demands since the
early 2000s have reduced water stress during normal and wet
years, but a warming climate makes future droughts a major
concern. Both regions’ water futures could be more secure if
they jointly developed and managed some water supplies. -Written by Alvar Escriva-Bou, a research fellow at the
Public Policy Institute of California
While they remain hopeful the rest of winter will provide much
more rain and snow, water resources managers in the Sacramento
Valley are preparing for the potential for a dry year. While
the prospect of a dry year is always jarring and challenging,
we have confidence in the experience and knowledge that our
water resources managers gained in 2014-15, and the strategies
this region has implemented since that time to prepare for a
dry year.
If 2020 taught us anything, it is that ACWA member agencies are
highly skilled at delivering essential services to their
customers even during the most unexpected and unprecedented
times. As we gear up for the new year, our members continue to
impress with their collaborative and coordinated efforts on
vital issues affecting California water management, including
the implementation of additional long-term water use efficiency
strategies to increase resiliency in dry years.
About a mile of bare, cracked earth now lies like a desertscape
between the boat ramp at the north end of Lake Mendocino and
the water’s edge of a diminished reservoir that helps provide
water for 600,000 Sonoma and Marin County residents. The
human-made lake near Ukiah is about 30 feet lower than it was
at this time last year, and Nick Malasavage, an Army Corps of
Engineers official who oversees operations at the reservoir,
said the scene is “pretty jarring.”
From the wildfires that destroyed millions of acres across
Australia and California to a record-setting hurricane season,
climate change has collided with COVID-19 to mark one of the
most difficult years in modern human history. And while two
highly effective vaccines have provided hope for the pandemic’s
end, we must not become complacent. We must act aggressively on
climate to prevent future pandemics from occurring more
frequently.
Written by Christine James, of Climate Health Now, and
Sweta Chakraborty, news commentator for CNN, FOX and BBC.
Sensational headlines, like those speculating that Wall Street
will make billions off the Colorado River or that West Slope
farmers should pack it in now, certainly attracts readers.
Unfortunately, these articles wholly fail to convey the reality
of the water challenges facing the Colorado River Basin. …
The Colorado River is certainly in bad shape. Last year was
marked by extremely hot temperatures, low flows and massive
fires.
Written by Dan Keppen, executive director of Family
Farm Alliance; Scott Yates, director of Trout Unlimited’s
Western Water & Habitat Program; and Taylor
Hawes, Colorado River Program director for The Nature
Conservancy.
At the height of what should be California’s rainy season,
PG&E Corp. is warning it might need to shut off power to
thousands of customers to reduce the risk of a wildfire.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it could impose a “public
safety power shutoff” … in portions of nine counties —
Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Madera, Mariposa, San Luis Obispo,
Santa Barbara, Tulare and Tuolumne counties. By Sunday,
PG&E scaled back the planned blackout down by 15,000
customers to approximately 6,100 in Fresno, Kern, Madera,
Mariposa and Tulare counties.
A study published Monday found billions more could face food
insecurity as Earth’s tropical rain belt shifts in response to
climate change, causing increased drought stress and
intensified flooding. … Researchers at the University of
California, Irvine and other institutions analyzed how the
tropical rain belt would respond to a future where greenhouse
gas emission continued to rise through 2100, UCI News reported.
Their findings, published in Nature Climate Change, revealed
the rain belt will shift northward over the Eastern Hemisphere,
impacting countries in southeastern Africa.
California is home to over 1,000 golf courses, so when there
was a lack of water and public officials had to decide where to
allocate the water, the choice should have been obvious.
California should have shut down the golf courses and made sure
that every resident had access to clean drinking water.
However, this was not the case. As many as two-thirds of
Californian golf courses stayed open and the average 18-hole
course continued to use 90 million gallons of water each day.
Written by Alex Noble, a columnist for the newspaper
The pandemic and its economic fallout are affecting many
aspects of water management, while climate change has major
implications. And a much-needed national conversation about
racism has illuminated water equity issues—such as how we
address climate change, safe drinking water, and water
scarcity.
California’s Central Valley produces much of the nation’s food,
including about 40% of the country’s fruits and nuts and has
the nation’s second most pumped aquifer system. Its drier
southern portion, the San Joaquin Valley, has decreasing
surface water supply reliability due to frequent and prolonged
droughts, stricter environmental regulations, and growing
competition among water users. Many farmers pump groundwater to
provide their unsupplied water demand. The resulting
groundwater overdraft has numerous impacts on the Valley’s
agriculture and residents.
The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the American West, but
the viability of the massive river basin is being threatened by
climate change. To plan future water use in the region — which
includes Arizona — the Central Arizona Project is teaming up
with NASA and Arizona State University, to evaluate how climate
and land-use changes will affect patterns of hydrology. Using
state-of-the-art satellite imaging, scientists will measure and
evaluate how water flows throughout the basin.
Colorado is headwaters to a hardworking river that provides for
40 million people. The importance of the Colorado River to the
state and the nation cannot be overstated, and its recent
hydrology serves as a reminder that we must continue to find
workable solutions that will sustain the river. History shows
that we are up to the challenge. … Colorado and the other
Basin states face big challenges. Drier hydrology, competing
demands on the river, and those who seek to profit from such
circumstances, impact the types of tools available to address
these challenges. Written by Rebecca Mitchell, who serves as the state of
Colorado’s Colorado River Commissioner as well as director of
the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
California Water Service (Cal Water), in partnership with the
California Association of Science Educators (CASE) and
DoGoodery, today announced the launch and expansion of the
seventh annual Cal Water H2O Challenge. The free, project-based
competition invites fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classrooms
in Cal Water service areas to develop and implement solutions
for local water issues. … The revamped and expanded Cal Water
H2O Challenge will build on best practices gleaned from the
previous six years to engage more people in caring for water at
a range of levels.
Available freshwater is on track to decline sharply across
two-thirds of Earth’s land surface toward the end of the
century mostly due to climate change, with the number of people
exposed to extreme drought doubling, researchers have reported.
Even under a scenario of moderate decline in greenhouse gas
emissions, land area scorched by extreme to exceptional drought
conditions increases from three to seven percent
… Mexico City is currently facing a water crisis, and
California has been coping with a lack of rain for most of the
last decade.
The halfway point of meteorological winter is Friday, Jan. 15,
and while that might seem like the light at the end of the
tunnel for those tired of snow and cold, many cities still
average more than half their season’s snowfall after this date.
Winter in meteorological record-keeping is from Dec. 1 to Feb.
28. But for some parts of the nation, snowy conditions are
still possible deep into March and even April.
Arizona depends heavily on the Colorado River, and it is
over-allocated, meaning, we collectively take more water from
the system than nature puts in. To make matters worse, the
Colorado River basin has been experiencing a prolonged drought
of more than 20 years. When you take the longer term view,
a lot of communities in Arizona are heavily dependent on fossil
groundwater supplies. Once you pump them out, they’re gone
forever. There are real problems looming when it comes to
groundwater management and the Colorado River.
The Southwest U.S. is mired in an ever-worsening drought, one
that has left deer starving in Hawaii, turned parts of the Rio
Grande into a wading pool, and set a record in Colorado for the
most days of “exceptional drought.” Why it matters: These
conditions may be the new normal rather than an exception,
water experts say, as climate change runs its course. And
worsening drought will intensify political and legal battles
over water — with dire consequences for poor communities.
Major cities across Turkey face running out of water in the
next few months, with warnings Istanbul has less than 45 days
of water left. Poor rainfall has led to the country’s most
severe drought in a decade and left the megacity of 17 million
people with critically low levels of water … and farmers in
wheat-producing areas such as the Konya plain and Edirne
province on the border with Greece and Bulgaria are warning of
crop failure.
Available freshwater is on track to decline sharply across
two-thirds of Earth’s land surface toward the end of the
century mostly due to climate change, with the number of people
exposed to extreme drought doubling, researchers have reported.
Even under a scenario of moderate decline in greenhouse gas
emissions, land area scorched by extreme to exceptional drought
conditions increases from three to seven percent, while the
population at risk jumps from 230 million to about 500 million
… Mexico City is currently facing a water crisis, and
California has been coping with a lack of rain for most of the
last decade.
The local region’s current water year is shaping up to be one
of the driest on record according to Turlock Irrigation
District, with below-average rainfall amplifying California’s
existing state of drought. Data provided by TID
Hydrologist Olivia Cramer during Tuesday’s Board of Directors
meeting showed that from September 2020 through Jan. 10, 2021,
the Tuolumne River Watershed has so far received 5.55 inches of
precipitation. Compared to TID’s historical average of 19.02
inches for those same dates, the recent 2020-2021 rainfall
numbers account for just 37.9% of normal.
Large swathes of land in densely populated parts of the world
are subsiding rapidly as a result of groundwater depletion.
Paired with rising sea levels caused by global warming, this
could place many coastal cities at risk of severe flooding by
2040.
The U.S. Department of Energy will soon announce semifinalists
for its Solar Desalination Prize. The goal: a system that
produces 1,000 liters of usable water for $1.50… Such
systems could surmount a big downside of reverse osmosis: it
typically desalinates only half of the input saltwater, and the
solution left behind eventually builds up enough salt to clog
the membrane…
Last year was one for the record books, with the pandemic, a
statewide wildfire emergency, ongoing drought, and a lingering
recession roiling California’s water landscape. These crises
have exacerbated longstanding inequities in access to water
services, and made it that much harder to accomplish important
work to improve the resilience of the state’s water system and
vulnerable ecosystems. Yet despite all the setbacks, the
essential work of providing drinking water and wastewater
services proceeded without a hitch—to which we all owe water
workers a debt of gratitude.
Colorado is no stranger to drought. The current one is closing
in on 20 years, and a rainy or snowy season here and there
won’t change the trajectory. This is what climate change has
brought. “Aridification” is what Bradley Udall formally calls
the situation in the western U.S. But perhaps more accurately,
he calls it hot drought – heat-induced lack of water due to
climate change.
The convergence of a multi-decadal, climate-fueled
drought, a trillion-dollar river-dependent economy, and a
region with growth aspirations that rival any place in the
country has peaked speculative interest in owning and profiting
from Colorado River water.
The world watched with a sense of dread in 2018 as Cape Town,
South Africa, counted down the days until the city would run
out of water. The region’s surface reservoirs were going dry
amid its worst drought on record, and the public countdown was
a plea for help. … California also faced severe water
restrictions during its recent multiyear drought. And Mexico
City is now facing water restrictions after a year with little
rain. There are growing concerns that many regions of the world
will face water crises like these in the coming decades as
rising temperatures exacerbate drought conditions.
2020 has tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, the European
Union’s climate monitoring service said Friday, keeping Earth
on a global warming fast track that could devastate large
swathes of humanity. The six years since 2015 are the six
warmest ever registered, as are 20 of the last 21, evidence of
a persistent and deepening trend, the Copernicus Climate Change
Service (C3S) reported.
Did you know Ventura is one of the largest cities in Southern
California to rely solely on local water supplies? Rainfall
feeds the Ventura River, Lake Casitas, and local groundwater
basins to meet all the water needs of our community. Water
is at the core of our identity and the future of its security
is in jeopardy. Although our community’s conservation efforts
have reduced water use by 20%, Ventura’s rain-dependent water
supplies remain vulnerable to future droughts.
A dinosaur bone. The footprint of a woolly mammoth. An ancient
shell imprinted on a rock in your backyard. These are the
images the word “fossil” calls to mind. But, buried deep within
the earth, there’s another kind of fossil you might not expect
— ancient aquifers, created by rain and snow that fell more
than 10,000 years ago. And unless the fossil water stores are
better protected, scientists say, they may become a thing of
the past. New research on fossil water from Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory suggests that drinking wells that pump
fossil water can’t rely on it being replenished — especially
during times of drought.
Utah officials want to build a 140-mile-long pipeline to bring
precious Colorado River water west to the thriving town of St.
George, in the state’s far southwestern corner. In an era of
perennial drought, when the future of the Colorado River
watershed, the lifeline of the U.S. Southwest, is the subject
of fierce debate in state capitols across the region, the idea
of bringing more than 26 billion gallons of water a year to a
community of fewer than 200,000 people on the edge of the
Mojave Desert strikes many as folly. To officials in Washington
County, of which St. George is the county seat, though, it is a
critical resource for the future.
The seven-year-long California drought that ended in early 2019
and the wildfires that ensued are just two recent events that
have cast a spotlight on the far-reaching consequences of
worsening water shortages…. Data centers are under
particular scrutiny. In the U.S. alone they are expected to
consume an estimated 174 billion gallons of water in 2020. A
15-megawatt data center can use up to 360,000 gallons of water
a day.
Very little rain and snow are expected across California over
the next few weeks, and what the clouds have dropped in the
Sierra Nevada so far is about half of average for this time of
year. That has scientists worried California is headed not only
for prolonged drought, but a fire season similar to or worse
than the one that devastated the state in 2020.
It may be a new year, but Colorado’s statewide drought will be
baggage it carries well into 2021. More than a quarter of the
state is in the worst level of drought, and with snowpack
significantly below what’s expected this time of year —
especially on the Western Slope — scientists are warning that
it will take more than just a big snowstorm to alleviate this
dry spell.
Drought is an insidious climate threat — by the time it has a
hold of a region, impacts on ecosystems and water supplies can
be locked in. It may not grab extreme weather headlines like
the disrupted polar vortex or record hurricane season, but
drought during 2020 and heading into 2021 is a looming story
likely to grow in importance….In the Southwest, population
growth and years of drought conditions are putting the region
on a collision course with drastic water management decisions.
On Wall Street, traders can now bet on California water
futures on commodity markets, enabling them to hedge
against future scarcity…
Manteca-Lathrop-Ripon experienced its second driest fall since
rainfall records started being kept in the mid-1800s. The
0.9 inches of rain the South County received between Sept. 1
and Nov. 30 was 4 percent of average according to the National
Weather Service’s Fall 2020 Climate Summary released on
Wednesday.
In an attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change that
are attacking Long Beach, the city has put together a
comprehensive Climate Action and Adaptation Plan with input
from scientists, business people, city leaders and the
public…The mammoth document and its appendices clocks in at
more than 900 pages and tackles the main challenges of climate
change: drought, sea level rise and flooding, extreme heat and
air quality.
Drought conditions in parts of the Southwest have intensified
by up to five times in the last year and the prospects for
significant relief are slim for the foreseeable future. The
final U.S. Drought Monitor report of 2020 released last week
shows how U.S. drought conditions now compare to those from a
year ago… Through November, Arizona, California,
Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah are all on pace to have
a top-five driest year in 2020…
As far as the weather was concerned, 2020 will go down as one
of the most challenging years our state has ever endured, with
record-breaking temperatures, below-average rain and snow, and
numerous wildfires covering California with a thick blanket of
diabolical smoke.
A decade ago, a diverse coalition of tribes, farmers and
conservationists hashed out water-sharing settlements that
would have given the [Klamath basin] refuges a steady supply of
water each year, and in the process stopped years of lawsuits,
protests and acrimony. But Congress killed their efforts. Now
the refuges — and Lower Klamath in particular — are at risk of
drying up. And the fighting over water will only continue as
the watershed grows increasingly dry from climate change.
The first snow survey in California was ambiguous. While
it showed the mountains just southeast of Lake Tahoe contains a
snowpack that is approximately average for this point of the
winter, the automatic snow sensor network shows an impoverished
snowpack throughout the Sierra, particularly in the southern
reach of the range.
The Visalia City Council’s last meeting was a fitting end to
2020 bringing news of an impending drought and the possibility
the city’s groundwater reaching a new low. At the Dec. 21
meeting, Visalia’s water resource manager Andrew Munn told the
council he was recommending the city move into Stage 2 of its
water conservation ordinance on March 1, 2021 and to move into
Stage 3 if the aquifer drops to a historic low.
The ability of science to improve water management decisions
and keep up with the accelerating pace of climate change. The
impact to precious water resources from persistent drought
in the Colorado River Basin. Building resilience and
sustainability across California. And finding hope at the
Salton Sea. These were among the issues Western Water explored
in 2020. In case you missed them, they are still worth taking a
look at.
With just a few weeks left, 2020 is in a dead-heat tie for the
hottest year on record. But whether it claims the top spot
misses the point, climate scientists say. There is no shortage
of disquieting statistics about what is happening to the
Earth…climate scientists say the warming climate set the
stage for fires to get out of hand. California experienced the
hottest October on record…
A set of guidelines for managing the Colorado River helped
several states through a dry spell, but it’s not enough to keep
key reservoirs in the American West from plummeting amid
persistent drought and climate change, according to a U.S.
report released Friday.
All signs are pointing to a dry start to 2021 across much of
the Colorado River watershed, which provides water to about 40
million people in the Western U.S. A lack of precipitation from
April to October made this spring, summer and fall one of the
region’s driest six-month periods on record. And with a dry
start to winter, river forecasters feel more pessimistic about
the chances for a drought recovery in the early part of 2021.
Santa might be able to lose the heavy red coat when he makes
his rounds in the Southland, and he probably won’t need an
umbrella either. The extended outlook from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration favors above-average
temperatures and below-average precipitation in the Los Angeles
region from Dec. 24 through Dec. 30. Although the astronomical
winter officially arrives in Los Angeles at 2:02 a.m. Monday,
the region’s stubbornly warm, dry weather pattern doesn’t show
much sign of stopping.
Last week’s storm did little to ease the drought in Arizona’s
reservoirs. But there’s still plenty of winter left. The Bureau
of Reclamation makes two-year projections, based on weather and
water levels in Colorado River reservoirs, and its most recent
projections have been dire. That could set the stage for an
Arizona water shortage in 2022. Snowpack in the mountains is
now 69% of normal. The water level at Lake Mead is about
40%.
In recent years, researchers have been learning more about how
an increasingly “thirsty atmosphere” in California and the West
is influencing drought. We talked to Mike Dettinger—a climate
scientist and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s
research network—about this phenomenon.
The drought’s getting worse and the reservoirs are drying up.
Best get used to it, say a growing number of climate prediction
models. The whole of the southwest remains in the grip of a
severe drought. In Arizona, that means a failed monsoon season
followed by a so-far dry fall. Much of Arizona set records on
both fronts this year. The predicted storms this week did
little to cushion the blow of a bone-dry year, with water
experts predicting more water rationing next year together with
a dangerous fire season.
For Daniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA, weather is an
obvious inroad into engaging people on climate change, as
people are way more likely to respond to a fire or flood at
their doorstep than a chart of rising emissions…Swain studies
why extreme events are changing, how we’re experiencing them,
and what we can do to adapt to a new, disaster-prone world.
This year, he released papers tying flood
exposure and autumn wildfires in California to
climate change…
The state of Colorado has activated the municipal portion of
its emergency drought plan for only the second time in history
as several cities say they need to prepare for what is almost
certainly going to be a dangerously dry 2021.
In a bold step toward a new kind of collaboration in the
Colorado River Basin, the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California and Southern Nevada Water Authority are
partnering to explore development of a drought-proof water
supply that could reduce reliance on the over-stressed river.
All of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties are now in severe
drought. So is most of Merced County. And the three watersheds
in the Central Sierra that the Northern San Joaquin Valley
counties rely on to meet urban and agricultural needs are in
moderate drought. Topping that, all three of the Central Sierra
reservoirs that do the heavy lifting for water storage for the
Northern San Joaquin Valley as of Tuesday were all
significantly below average capacity for Dec. 8.
The Hopi have lived for thousands of years on the mesas of the
Colorado Plateau. Flowing springs and seeps have sustained
them, providing sources where they have collected drinking
water, grown corn and beans, and maintained a spiritual
connection to life-giving water. But the springs are
dwindling. Some are completely dry.
Lake Mendocino currently sits at 712 ft above sea
level… That’s very low. But despite years of dry
conditions … it’s not the lowest the lake has ever been.
Thanks to a new set of satellite technologies and water
management techniques dubbed FIRO, or Forecast Informed
Reservoir Operations (pronounced FEE-roh), the lake is still
more than a dozen feet above its record low.
The year 2020 will be remembered for so many things when we’re
taking a look back at history several years from now…. A
massive drought developed over much of the western United
States during 2020. The dry conditions fueled historic
wildfires, many of which set new all-time records for size in
states including Colorado and California.
The West is in a drought that’s only getting worse, and drought
is an even bigger problem in places that have uneven access to
water to start with. In the Navajo Nation, in the southwestern
U.S., many homes have no running water at all. The tribe is
working with the startup Source, which makes Hydropanels —
solar-powered panels that pull water vapor from the air and
condense it into clean drinking water.
A potentially dangerous mix of arid conditions and the threat
of gusty offshore winds in the coming days has meteorologists
contemplating the extraordinary step of issuing a red flag
warning — signaling a critical fire threat — in December for
parts of Northern California.
According to a new study, there’s been an eight-fold increase
since the mid-1980s in annual area burned by high-severity
wildfires — defined as a fire that kills more than 95% of
trees. The transformation in fire behavior has happened fast,
with this exponential increase happening in just one generation
over the course of 30 years. These more intense fires have a
lasting impact on the ecosystem…Five of the six largest
fires in California history and three of the
four largest in Colorado history all burned this
year.
Mike Hoover, a Santa Barbara geologist, wants to remind us of
the Medieval Drought, the epic dry period that held California
and the West in its grip for 400 years, beginning in 950 CE….
It was so bad, he said, that it may have led to malnutrition
and warfare among the prehistoric Chumash.
With no rain in the forecast for the rest of 2020 — thanks to a
La Niña weather pattern pushing storms north of the state — the
probability of California entering a multi-year drought is
increasing.
It’s easy to understand why people who rely on private wells
for their water can feel powerless about the future of their
supply — wells pump water from underground aquifers shared by
many neighbors.
Hopes are rising in the southern Central Valley that the
farmland expected to be fallowed in coming years because of
drought and groundwater restrictions won’t sit idle but will
instead be consolidated to make room for new land uses
including solar power generation.
If an options agreement between the [Ridgecrest] City Council
and Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority comes to
fruition, recycled water from the city’s wastewater facility
could help balance the groundwater basin… Both the council
and the groundwater authorities at their respective meetings
last week approved the option agreement between the two parties
for recycled wastewater.
By burning and brushing, nurturing important plants and
keeping lands around their homes clear of dead brush and
debris, Native peoples carefully stewarded the lands to sustain
the biodiverse ecologies California is known for. Their
work resulted in a richly productive landscape that provided
food and habitat for not only humans but many land, air and
water animals. That included the salmon, a staple of tribes in
the West for millennia. All that changed when California became
a U.S. state in 1850.
In September, Tucson declared a climate emergency, setting
the ambitious goal of going carbon neutral by 2030. The desert
city has gradually implemented policies over the past decade to
further rainwater harvesting with the aim of bolstering
conservation, lowering water bills and creating more green
spaces.
Winter is traditionally California’s wet season, when snowpack
accumulates and later melts, replenishing water supplies. But a
lot of rain and snow need to fall to make up for the dryness of
2020, a year of record-high temperatures and unusually low
precipitation in the state — a problem fueled by global
warming.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River’s hydrology began tumbling
into a historically bad stretch. … So key players across
seven states, including California, came together in 2005 to
attack the problem. The result was a set of Interim Guidelines
adopted in 2007… Stressing flexibility instead of rigidity,
the guidelines stabilized water deliveries in a
drought-stressed system and prevented a dreaded shortage
declaration by the federal government that would have forced
water supply cuts.
The North Yuba Forest Partnership has entered into an agreement
to receive $1.13 million to plan future forest health and
wildfire resilience treatments within the North Yuba River
watershed. This funding originated from the US Forest Service’s
Fireshed Program.
Karuk Tribe natural resources spokesperson Craig Tucker joined
John Howard to talk about the historic agreement, its impact on
the region’s Salmon fisheries, and the potential for
replication in other places where dams are contested.
Low-moisture air masses sometimes form and migrate thousands of
kilometers over the sea, similar to the way hurricanes behave.
… Some take more than half a year before they hit land, where
they can destroy crops and threaten water security. Yet the
long travel time means forecasters might be able to predict
when this newly recognized type of drought will impact key
regions, such as the western U.S.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Join us as we guide you on a virtual journey through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
This virtual experience focuses on the San Joaquin Valley, the southern part of the vast region, which is facing challenges after years of drought, dwindling water supplies, decreasing water quality and farmland conversion for urban growth. The tour gives participants an understanding of the region’s water use and issues as well as the agricultural practices, including new technologies and water-saving measures.
On Nov. 17, California, Oregon, PacifiCorp, and the Yurok and
Karuk Tribes announced a new agreement with the Klamath River
Renewal Corporation to reaffirm KRRC’s status as dam removal
entity and provide additional funding for the removal of four
hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. The agreement is the
latest development in a decade-long effort…
The Trump Administration Thursday released the Shasta Lake
Water Resources Investigation Final Supplemental Environmental
Impact Statement to increase water storage capacity in the
Shasta Lake reservoir by 634,000 acre-feet,
In a new study published in Earth’s Future…climate change
projections show consistent future increases in atmospheric
evaporative demand (or the “atmospheric thirst”) over
California and Nevada. These changes were largely driven by
warmer temperatures, and would likely lead to significant
on-the-ground environmental impacts.
The Kern County Water Agency board of directors voted
unanimously to approve an agreement with the Department of
Water Resources to pay $14 million over 2021 and 2020 as its
initial share of the early planning and design phase for what’s
now being called the Delta Conveyance Facility.
How did two of the most important waterfowl refuges in the
United States reach such a sad state? The decline of the Tule
Lake and Lower Klamath refuges was a hundred years in the
making. There are no villains here; rather it is simply a tale
of too little water to go around on an arid landscape.
For a city built in an arid desert basin in Nevada, the USA’s
driest state with around 10 inches of rainfall a year, this
doesn’t sound too surprising. But the climate emergency and
recent droughts have changed the complexion and urgency of the
problem.
The lower Colorado River Basin, which is primarily in Arizona,
is projected to have as much as sixteen percent less
groundwater infiltration by midcentury compared to the
historical record. That’s because warming temperatures will
increase evaporation while rain- and snowfall are expected to
remain the same or decrease slightly.
Placer County, Calif., is a postcard place of picturesque parks
and trails, quaint towns and wineries, high-elevation lakes,
and ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada.
America’s largest dam removal project has been brought back to
life with a new agreement among California, Oregon, tribes and
a utility owned by billionaire Warren Buffett. The decadeslong
effort to remove four dams on the Klamath River in Northern
California that have had a devastating impact on salmon runs
had appeared in danger following an unexpected July regulatory
order.
A new Stanford University study identifies residential water
use and conservation trends by analyzing housing information
available from the prominent real estate website Zillow. The
research … is the first to demonstrate how real estate data
platforms can be used to provide valuable water use insights
for city housing and infrastructure planning, drought
management and sustainability.
The U.S. Geological Survey is in the beginning stages of
learning more about this river via an expanded and more
sophisticated monitoring system that aims to study details
about the snowpack that feeds the river basin, droughts and
flooding, and how streamflow supports groundwater, or vice
versa.
It’s the kind of forecast that Northern California, weary from
historic wildfires, has been waiting months to hear. A cold
front moving through the Bay Area will bring widespread rain on
Tuesday, with 1 inch or more expected in the North Bay Hills
and Santa Cruz Mountains, and a quarter inch or so in most Bay
Area cities. Substantial snow also is forecast for the Sierra
Nevada…
A helicopter making low-level passes over the Santa Ynez Valley
towing a large hexagonal frame is using a technology first
developed in World War II to peer as far as 1,400 feet below
the surface to map the groundwater basin.
Plans to regulate groundwater for the first time ever in the
Ukiah Valley Basin are moving forward. And though the details
are wonky and a little esoteric, the results could affect water
and ag policy for years to come. Last week, the Ukiah Valley
Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency discussed how their
mammoth project of sustainably managing the groundwater is
coming along.
Whatever came down in the first rains of the season was a mere
drop in the bucket. The precipitation, the first for the rain
year that began Oct. 1, measured .15 inches in downtown
Sacramento, according to the National Weather Service. That
puts the city at 8 percent of normal for rainfall this year,
according to weather service records… A new storm system
is coming on Tuesday night, with showers continuing on into
Thursday, forecasters said.
Intersecting events such as major floods, decades-long
megadroughts, and economic or governance upheavals could have
catastrophic effects on the water supply for the 40 million
people who live in the southwestern United States and
northwestern Mexico.
A report by the U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday revealed what
anyone living in California or the Southwest already know: We
need rain. Badly…Much of the worst aspects of dry conditions
are centered on the Colorado River Basin of western Colorado,
which bodes ill for the millions of homes and businesses
downstream that rely on a robust flow of water from the
river…Extreme drought is growing in Northern California, but
only in the northern reaches of the state along the Sacramento
River.
Tanya’s a New Mexican, former chief counsel to the New Mexico
Interstate Stream Commission, and current member of the
commission. She served as a legislative aide to New Mexico Sen.
Jeff Bingaman, in Interior in the Officer of Water and Science,
and as executive director of the Colorado River Board of
California.
How wildfires can affect water quality are well documented. But
increasing—and increasingly intense—Western conflagrations are
leading to fears they also could constrict the water quantity
available in some of the nation’s most water-stressed
areas….“It’s absolutely a threat to our water supply—the
quantity and quality of the water that’s able to flow across
the landscape,” said Dave Eggerton, executive director of the
Association of California Water Agencies…
There’s some fascinating tension around a proposed wastewater
reclamation collaboration in Southern California. The project,
if it goes forward, would provide some 150 million gallons per
day (~170,000 acre feet per year) of treated effluent. Water
now being discharged into the ocean would instead be available
for aquifer recharge within Southern California.
Water-use restrictions went into effect Nov. 1 for residents
and businesses in the city of St. Helena, where a water
shortage emergency has been declared.
There’s a concept called “demand management” in the news in
Colorado, and here’s a simple definition: Landowners get paid
to temporarily stop irrigating, and that water gets sent
downstream to hang out in Lake Powell. It’s an idea long talked
about because of increasing drought and the very real danger of
both Lake Mead and Lake Powell dropping into “dead pool” where
no hydropower can be generated.
Private wells in the central San Joaquin Valley are at risk of
water quality issues, failing equipment and declining
groundwater supplies. To help residents address these concerns,
The Fresno Bee contacted public officials, water advocates and
other experts to answer frequently asked questions about common
issues.
A 2007 deal creating guidelines governing how Lake Powell and
Lake Mead are operated in coordination isn’t scheduled to
expire until 2026. But water officials in Colorado River Basin
states are already beginning to talk about the renegotiations
that will be undertaken to decide what succeeds the 2007
criteria.
Why are our food producers, including many century-old family
farms with 100-year-old water rights, facing a shortage of
water? Because we drain Oregon’s largest lake to artificially
increase water supply in California.
Managing water resources in the Colorado River Basin is not for
the timid or those unaccustomed to big challenges. … For more
than 30 years, Terry Fulp, director of the Bureau of
Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin Region, has been in the
thick of it, applying his knowledge, expertise and calm
demeanor to inform and broker key decisions that have helped
stabilize the Southwest’s major water artery.
Millions use Twitter to share their rapid-fire opinions,
observations and connections to real-time events. And natural
disasters are often major conversation starters. With that in
mind, National Drought Mitigation Center assistant director
Kelly Helm Smith wanted to see what tweets said about the
impacts of drought, and whether tweets [including from
California] could contribute to a drought early warning system.
In areas where groundwater levels have fallen because of heavy
pumping, people have often responded by drilling deeper wells.
But exactly how much that has occurred on a nationwide scale
wasn’t clear until water experts compiled nearly 12 million
well-drilling records across the country. In a new study,
[UC Santa Barbara] researchers found that Americans in
many areas from coast to coast are drilling deeper for
groundwater….The study confirmed that drilling deeper wells
is common in California’s food-producing Central Valley…and
household wells remain vulnerable to pumping by deeper
agricultural wells.
The San Joaquin Valley has received a specially addressed
message from the Union of Concerned Scientists about what it
thinks people across the region should be doing about looming
water shortages, worsening air quality and generally more
volatile weather in the years ahead.
California is expecting its first rain of the season this
weekend, a major shift in weather that’s likely to bring
scattered showers and chilly breezes to the Bay Area, and
freezing temperatures and snow to the Sierra. While the
unavoidable turn toward winter, starting Friday, is sure to
offer at least some relief from this year’s unrelenting fire
season, forecasters warn that wildfire risk is likely to
persist for another month — possibly much longer.
The winter may not bring needed rains. With the La Niña climate
pattern in play, drought is expected to continue and intensify
in California through February, according to a winter outlook
from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a “major change” in
the weather across the Bay Area on Friday and through the
weekend, with temperatures dropping, winds kicking up and the
potential for rain.
Two years ago, Cape Town, South Africa, a city of 4 million
people, informed its shocked citizens that the city was just a
few months away from running out of water due to drought. It
was a wake-up call for all of us to become much better stewards
of our own water. … California of course continues to have
its own foreboding water challenges.
Desertification is dawning on the Central Coast, according to
University of California, Santa Cruz ecology professor Barry
Sinervo, and the impact can be seen in the disappearance of a
uniquely giant and talkative amphibian from a southern Monterey
County site: the Pacific giant salamander.
Using a system of radio tags and electrical fields, the
equipment is expected to give researchers more accurate counts
of coho salmon that will return to Lagunitas Creek to spawn
beginning later this month as well as the young salmon leaving
the creek and entering the ocean in the spring.
Though the monthly average is just over 1 inch, October is a
highly variable month, and it’s not unusual to end the month
with little or no rain in the Bay Area. It is however
exceptionally bad timing to do it twice in a row for only the
second time in the last 170 years, as the state reels from
fires, heat and smoke, on the heels of a record-breaking dry
winter and as most forecasts [for California] call for a drier
than normal winter ahead.
Global climate experts are predicting a moderate to strong La
Niña weather event this year, meaning a stormy season for most
parts of the world but possibly drier-than-normal conditions in
Southern California.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
winter forecast for the U.S. favors warmer, drier conditions
across the southern tier of the U.S., and cooler, wetter
conditions in the North, thanks in part to an ongoing La Niña.
Forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center are also
closely monitoring persistent drought during the winter months
ahead…
Climate change, as I’ve often heard Brad Udall point out, is
water change. By that, Brad means that the effect of a changing
climate on people and ecosystems is most clearly felt through
changes in how much water there is.
Recognizing the central role that atmospheric rivers play in
both flood risk and water supply – two of Yuba Water’s core
mission areas – the agency is investing in new research and
tools to better understand, forecast and manage for these
powerful storms.
The San Joaquin Valley and urban Southern California each face
growing water challenges and a shared interest in ensuring
reliable, affordable water supplies to safeguard their people
and economies. Both regions’ water futures could be more secure
if they take advantage of shared water infrastructure to
jointly develop and manage some water supplies.
“Pineapple Express” or “Atmospheric River” are terms you may
hear often. But what do they mean, really? DWR Climate Change
Program Section Chief, Elissa Lynn, gave a presentation on
DWR’s Water Wednesdays live educational series where she
discussed these storm systems, what they mean for California,
and their impact on the state’s water reservoirs.
Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, a climate scientist at Utah State
University, used dynamic climate modeling to try to predict
water supply in the Colorado River. They found ocean surface
temperatures have a larger impact on predicting drought than
atmospheric processes like precipitation. … Chikamoto said
oceans provide a long-term memory that can be used to forecast
drought.
At the Oct. 22 meeting of the Delta Stewardship Council, Delta
Watermaster Michael George gave a detailed presentation on
estimating water use in the Delta… He also discussed
implementation of the state’s policy of reducing reliance on
the Delta and provided updates on the preparations for the next
drought…
Researchers at the Plumas National Forest in Northern
California received a startling result: Sticks and logs they
gathered from the forest floor to assess wildfire risk had a
moisture level of just 2%. The reading was the lowest ever
recorded in 15 years of measurements at a site in the forest’s
southwest corner. It also was a warning: The area was
tinderbox-dry and primed to burn.
Vastly increasing the number of these low-intensity, carefully
managed fires is key. Experts say it reduces dangerous levels
of highly combustible fuel and underbrush built up over more
than a century of trying to snuff out most every forest fire.
The conditions set by that longstanding federal and state
policy are now worsened by climate change, with fires growing
larger, more frequent and more destructive.
The lake is particularly small and low right now for a few
reasons, said Matt Graul, the East Bay Regional Park District’s
chief of stewardship. Wildcat Creek runs dry in the rainless
months of summer and early fall, but has been hit harder than
ever since the Bay Area received less rainfall than typical
last winter. Once the rains start and fill the creek, there
should be water again in the lake, he said.
Completely dry riverbeds, record low flows, and diminished fish
populations — that’s what staff and volunteers from a local
environmental nonprofit found when they surveyed tributaries of
the Eel River earlier this month.
The supply and demand of California water are geographically
and seasonally disconnected, a trend that could be exacerbated
by climate change. Agriculture, urban and environmental use
compete for limited supply in the state’s $1.1 billion water
market.
I can see clearly the challenge ahead for implementation of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Actcal act because I now
have first-hand experience with the kinds of water disputes
that can arise when the local parties involved are not given a
chance to work things out collaboratively.
The National Weather Service issued a high wind watch for the
entire Bay Area beginning Sunday evening, when meteorologists
say winds up to 70 mph could cause widespread damage and incite
new wildfires. The powerful winds, which officials say could be
the strongest of the year, have potential to bring down trees
and power lines, a major concern at a time of historically dry
vegetation.
The Del Puerto Water District is set to vote Wednesday on
approving a final environmental impact study on a much-disputed
storage reservoir in western Stanislaus County. … According
to proponents, the reservoir storing up to 82,000 acre-feet
will provide more reliable water deliveries to farmers south of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta… Water pumped from the
nearby Delta-Mendota Canal would be stored behind the dam.
A commonly held assumption among many Californians is that La
Niña means a dry winter is coming, and in years when the
opposite occurs, El Niño, a wet winter is considered more
likely. So brown lawns and water rationing are just around the
corner, right? Not necessarily.
On Sept. 30, we sent a letter to state officials requesting
that restoration projects coming out of the Salton Sea
Management Program consider impacts on nearby communities. We
hope those officials will share in our vision of reforestation
and green spaces around the Salton Sea, see the benefits of
such projects in addressing the sea’s deteriorating
environmental conditions, and act with the same urgency.
The desert Southwest is a hot place to live, but imagine
spending over half of the year with high temperatures of at
least 100 degrees. Parts of California and Arizona did just
that this year. … A series of high-pressure systems in
unfavorable locations have not only allowed for temperatures to
soar over the past few months, but have effectively blocked any
large, rainmaking storms from moving through the area.
In 2011, heavy snows in the Rocky Mountains filled the Colorado
River, lifting reservoirs—and spirits—in the drought-stricken
U.S. Southwest. The following year, however, water levels
dropped to nearly their lowest in a century… Now, scientists
say they may have come up with a potential early warning system
for the Colorado’s water levels—by watching temperature
patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, thousands of
kilometers away.
Oceanside finished second in a national water conservation
challenge among cities with populations between 100,000 and
299,999, behind only Lakeland, Florida, it was announced
Wednesday. … Oceanside residents pledged to save water and
protect the environment as part of the Wyland National Mayor’s
Challenge for Water Conservation.
The forecast looks warm and continued dry this winter in
California and the Southwest, which raises the disturbing
prospect of a perpetual fire season. … If this scenario
unfolds, it would exacerbate drought conditions in Arizona,
Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and California, and worsen the
wildfire outlook for the remainder of 2020 and into 2021.
California is facing an impending water shortage. With
widespread fires, a COVID-19 provoked economic recession
bringing widespread unemployment and a public health emergency,
it would be easy, but not prudent, to forget that we face a
water crisis around the next corner.
Even if mean annual snowfall decreases, an increase in the
intensity of snowfall events could prevent snow ablation, or
the loss of snow due to melting, sublimation or evaporation.
… In this study, Marshall et al. (2020) analyze spatial
patterns in snowfall using both observational data from snow
networks across the Mountain West [from the Sierra Nevada and
Cascade Mountains to the Rockies] and outputs from climate
change simulations.
Droughts usually leave individual trees more vulnerable to
subsequent droughts. “Compounding extreme events can be really
stressful on forests and trees,” says Anna Trugman, assistant
professor in the geography department at the UC Santa Barbara.
She compares the experience to a person battling an illness:
You’ll be harder hit if you get sick again while you’re still
recovering.
Several years into the research at the California Critical Zone
Observatories, a multiyear drought lasting from fall 2011 to
fall 2015 hit the state, causing massive tree death in the
southern Sierra, while in Northern California there was
essentially none. The massive die-off in the Sierra was a
wake-up call for land managers and researchers alike…
It’s still dry as dirt, but promises to be a central component
of future water supplies for the 165,000 people served by the
Santa Margarita Water District. While the district currently
imports 100% of its drinking water from the Colorado River and
northern California, the new Trampas Canyon Reservoir is part
of a plan to generate 30% of potable water supplies locally and
to recycle more wastewater.
Prescribed burning … targets brush, grasses, and other
accumulated vegetation, along with dead and downed trees, to
improve ecosystem health and reduce the fuels that power
wildfires. … “We’re trying to encourage a cultural shift in
our relationship with wildfire,” says Sasha Berleman, a fire
ecologist who runs a prescribed burn training program based in
the San Francisco Bay Area. “Fire isn’t going away, so let’s
change how we’re living with it.”
If certain hay species retain more nutrients than others when
on low-water diets, then ranchers know their cattle will
continue to eat well as they evaluate whether they can operate
their ranches on less H20…. Any water saved could be left in
the Colorado River, allowing it to become more sustainable,
even as the West’s population grows and drought becomes more
intense.
A new experiment is looking into how drought conditions, like
we’re currently in, can affect water traveling downstream in
the Colorado River. The pilot project involved shepherding
water from a high mountain reservoir to the Colorado-Utah state
line.
California just recorded its hottest September on record,
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and the state looks to be stuck in a nearly
endless loop of hot, dry weather. With a strong La Niña
developing, the dry pattern is looking ever harder to break,
and could be settling in to stay for a while.
To inform landowners about their water budgets, Rosedale-Rio
Bravo Water Storage District in Kern County partnered with EDF,
Sitka Technology Group, WestWater Research and local landowners
to co-develop a new online, open-source water accounting and
trading platform. We asked general manager Eric Averett to
answer a few questions about how the platform…
A University of Arizona researcher is leading a National
Science Foundation project that is integrating artificial
intelligence to simulate the nation’s groundwater supply for
the purpose of forecasting droughts and floods. [One aim,
the researcher said, is to] “come up with better forecasts
for floods and droughts in the upper Colorado River Basin…”
A team of scientists at Utah State University has developed a
new tool to forecast drought and water flow in the Colorado
River several years in advance. Although the river’s headwaters
are in landlocked Wyoming and Colorado, water levels are linked
to sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific and
Atlantic oceans and the water’s long-term ocean memory.
Residents of Bolinas and Inverness must take further steps to
reduce their water consumption to stave off rationing. Both the
Inverness and Bolinas utility Districts lack significant water
storage in their systems; recently, they put increased pressure
on their customers to cut water use and warned of mandatory
restrictions should they fail to comply.
Tehama County Board of Supervisors received an update Tuesday
… on groundwater levels and well depths following reports of
south county wells going dry. … The majority of the calls
come from areas west of Interstate-5 as far as Rancho Tehama,
where at least two people have reported wells going dry. A few
others have reported declining groundwater levels.
In a new paper, researchers from UC Santa Barbara reveal how a
large-scale field experiment in messaging based on
psychological science significantly reduced water consumption
on the Central Coast of California.
In the new study, scientists at The University of Texas at
Austin in collaboration with the Union of Concerned Scientists
found that leading climate projections used by the state
strongly agree that climate change will shift the timing and
intensity of rainfall and the health of the state’s snowpack in
ways that will make water management more difficult during the
coming decades.
Despite that reduction in flow, total storage behind Glen
Canyon and Hoover dams has dropped only 2.6 million acre feet.
That is far less than you’d expect from 12 years of 1.2 maf per
year flow reductions alone. That kind of a flow reduction
should have been enough to nearly empty the reservoirs. Why
hasn’t that happened? Because we also have been using less
water.
in a bid to celebrate the importance of water in our lives, the
collaborative design office NUDES has conceived a rainwater
harvesting tower for San Jose in California. The soaring ‘rain
water catcher’ is a design proposal that aims to address the
global impact of climate change by advocating the need for
water conservation.
Despite little precipitation and a small snowpack in the 2020
water year, which ended Sept. 30, California weathered the year
on water stored in reservoirs during previous years’ storms.
Going into 2021, farmers note that weather officials predict a
La Niña climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which has brought
drought conditions in the past.
Every year, the Groundwater Resources Association of California
selects two speakers for the David Keith Todd Lectureship…
One of the speakers for the 2020 lecture series was Theresa
“Tess” Dunham, an attorney with Kahn, Soares & Conway LLP, who
spoke about groundwater quality and how the Porter-Cologne
Water Quality Control Act, the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act, and the state’s recycled water policy can work
together.
A Sept. 21 study published in the journal Water Resources
Research found that, of all the droughts that affected land
areas globally from 1981 to 2018, about 1 in 6 started over
water and moved onto land, with a particularly high frequency
along the West Coast of North America….The current Western
drought could soon rise to a crisis level, with federal water
managers warning that … two key Colorado River
reservoirs may drop to levels that could result in
economically damaging cuts to water allocations in the
Southwest and California.
In the area that the Moapa Valley Water District serves, water
users are facing an uncomfortable future: People are going to
have to use less water than they were once promised. Over the
last century, state regulators handed out more groundwater
rights than there was water available. Today state officials
say that only a fraction of those rights can be used, which
could mean cuts.
House lawmakers passed the bill Oct. 1, allowing irrigators to
access up to $10 million for emergency drought relief in the
basin straddling Southern Oregon and Northern California. The
bill passed the Senate in July, and now heads to President
Trump to be signed into law.
The new federal Drought Monitor map shows that localized
drought conditions are increasing in Northern California. The
Sept. 22 map had 3% of the state in extreme drought while the
Sept. 29 map released Thursday shows 13%.
As we leave 2020, the soils are dry (and ashen) and most
reservoirs and aquifers have been somewhat drawn down by the
dry year. Most major water storage reservoirs have below
average storage, but some are above average. We enter WY
2021 with less stored water than when we entered 2020.
Unfortunately, some Wall Street water companies are trying to
take advantage of California’s drought fears by pushing through
overpriced and unnecessary water projects. Poseidon Water Co.
is one of those companies. Poseidon has been working for years
to build a seawater desalination plant in Orange County,
seeking a deal that would lock the local utility into buying
their water for decades, regardless of need.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego report in
a new study a way to improve groundwater monitoring by using a
remote sensing technology (known as InSAR), in conjunction with
climate and land cover data, to bridge gaps in the
understanding of sustainable groundwater in California’s San
Joaquin Valley.
Two lawsuits accusing the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater
Authority of ramming through a plan that ignores water rights
and, according to one plaintiff, is intended to “destroy
agriculture” were filed this week. At issue is a controversial
$2,000-per-acre-foot fee that would be charged to certain
groundwater users over a five-year period. That money is
intended to raise $50 million to buy Central Valley water and,
somehow, bring it over the Sierra Nevada to replenish the
overdrafted desert aquifer.
One of the biggest challenges to implementing California’s
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act hovers around this
two-part question: Who gets to pump groundwater and how much do
they get to pump? Or, put another way, who must cut their
groundwater use and by how much? [Please note Oct. 20 webinar.]
Tensions between Mexico and the United States over water
intensified this month as hundreds of Mexican farmers seized
control of La Boquilla dam in protest over mandatory water
releases. The protesters came from parched Chihuahua state,
nearly 100 square miles of land pressed against the U.S.
border, where farmers are opposing the delivery of over 100
billion gallons of water to the United States by October 24.
Four days before dry lightning ignited this year’s statewide
wildfire siege, state and federal leaders signed an agreement
to vastly expand vegetation management in California. This
signals progress towards shared management of forests to reduce
the risk of large severe wildfires and improve their resilience
to the changing climate. … But are current funding sources
enough to keep pace?
Participants will pay $1,295 per acre-foot for treated water,
while municipal and industrial users will pay $1,769 per
acre-foot. Farmers who participate will receive a lower level
of water service during shortages or emergencies. That allows
the water authority to reallocate those supplies to commercial
and industrial customers who pay for full reliability benefits.
In exchange, participating farmers are exempt from fixed water
storage and supply reliability charges.
Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology
… are using a form of artificial intelligence known as
machine learning to map the sinking – called land subsidence –
to help water policy officials make informed decisions. … To
carry out their research, Smith and his Ph.D. student, Sayantan
Majumdar, compiled hydrologic and subsidence data from
satellites and ground-based GPS stations across the western
U.S., including California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Regional water conservation groups and a Clark County
commissioner welcomed a request by Utah officials Thursday to
extend the federal environmental review of a controversial plan
to divert billions of gallons of water from the Colorado River
to southwest Utah.
From the time when the pioneers first arrived, water, or the
lack of it, was a major problem for the valley. The first water
system was started by Reuben Hart, who came to the United
States from Derbyshire, England, first settling in New Jersey
with his brother, Thomas.
