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.
The first big winter storm of the season is dumping inches to
feet of snow across Colorado — bringing some drought relief
with it. Coloradans, especially those in the southern and
eastern parts of the state, have seen buckets of steady
snowfall since early this week. … This week’s winter
storm is likely to offer relief from summer and fall drought
conditions in some parts of the state. About 34% of the state
was experiencing some level of drought in early
November, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. These
conditions, which are linked to wildfires and suffering crops,
were mostly reported in northern, central and eastern Colorado.
When it comes to drought relief and boosting soil moisture, the
news is good for the southeastern plains. This storm system
will likely bring enough moisture to bolster areas that were
short on rain over the summer back up to average precipitation,
Schumacher said.
Humanity’s heating of the planet, driven by the burning of
fossil fuels and unchecked emissions of greenhouse gases, has
become the main driver of worsening droughts in California and
the American West, according to new research.A team of UCLA and
NOAA scientists found that while droughts in the last century
were caused mainly by decreases in precipitation through
natural cycles, an entirely different pattern has taken hold as
a result of the rising temperatures this century. The
researchers determined that since 2000, human-caused warming
has become the dominant force leading to more drought severity
in the Western United States. In the case of the intense
Western drought from 2020 to 2022, the scientists attributed
61% of its severity to high temperatures, and only 31% to
reduced precipitation.
The Colorado River Basin is in the midst of a 23-year drought.
Reduced precipitation, mostly in the form of snow in the
western mountains, has caused water administrators at the
federal, state and local level to seek ways to cut back usage.
But many of us in the high country do not need water managers
to tell us to reduce usage. Mother nature kindly, or unkindly,
does that for us. With limited storage at higher
elevations, snowpack is the source for virtually all water on
the West Slope. As the Basin experiences a steady decline in
precipitation, West Slope water users, especially irrigators,
find that in many years, they are subject to “natural
curtailment.” Less snowpack means less water.
Every US state except Alaska and Kentucky is facing drought, an
unprecedented number, according to the US Drought Monitor. A
little more than 45% of the US and Puerto Rico is in drought
this week, according to the tracker. About 54% of land in the
48 contiguous US states is affected by droughts.
… California, which relies heavily on the agricultural
industry to support its economy, lost $1.7bn in crop
revenue in 2022 due to the ongoing drought. Dry conditions can
also result in low water levels on rivers and other
waterways. Ports and other water-borne transportation may
become limited due to a reduction in available routes and
cargo-carrying capacity, which increases transportation costs.
Almost the entire United States faced drought conditions during
the last week of October. Only Alaska and Kentucky did not have
at least moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S.
Drought Monitor, a record in the monitor’s history. The
past four months were consistently warmer than normal over a
wide swath of the country, said Rich Tinker, a drought
specialist with the National Weather Service. But in June,
while roughly a quarter of the country was dry to some degree,
he said, now 87 percent of the nation is.
Major reservoirs across California are performing above or near
their historical average, but a dry summer has contributed to
falling water levels. Regardless of the plunge, most of
the Golden State’s major reservoirs are in a much better state
than at their lowest point in 2022. After years of drought,
several reservoirs in California reached concerningly low water
levels in the summer of 2022. However, an abnormally wet winter
that followed alleviated much of the state’s drought and
replenished the lakes. A similarly wet winter last year brought
a deluge of rain to the state. Reservoir water levels rose
across the state, with several reservoirs nearing their
capacity in 2023 and 2024, including the state’s two
largest reservoirs, Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville.
Butte County has launched a Drought Resilience Outreach Project
(DROP) to assist residents with wells that have been damaged by
recent wildfires or drought. The county administration said
that the DROP would allow qualified residents to get their
damaged wells repaired at little to no cost. Funding for this
project comes from the State Water Resources Control
Board. Applications for the program are being accepted
throughDecember 31, 2024, with applications being reviewed in
January. … For those accepted into the program, well
repairs or replacement is expected to begin in April 2025.
Managing waterways for ecosystems with minimal loss to existing
water uses is increasingly difficult. As we’ve discussed in the
first two blogs in this series (here and here, now
with Spanish language translations), California and Chile both
struggle with this challenge. Both are mostly dry regions with
deep economic and human dependence on water and very disrupted
and vulnerable native ecosystems. Both also face the dual
challenges of droughts and floods. For the last year, an
international collaboration on environmental flows between
Chile’s Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD)
and Universidad de Talca, and the University of
California, Davis (UCD) focused on these common issues to
draw lessons from California’s experience. … The project
supports further investigation of a functional
flows approach for Chilean watersheds, implemented through
a collaborative portfolio of water management instruments. This
blog summarizes the findings of the research group.
As South Pasadena prepares for the upcoming November 5
election, residents are set to vote on Measure SP, a
significant local ballot measure that could reshape the town’s
landscape and housing policies. The measure seeks to modify the
current 45-foot building height limit in specific areas of the
city, which has been in place since 1983, and allow for greater
flexibility in housing development. … South
Pasadena, like much of California, has faced water
shortages and rising water costs during extended
droughts. The addition of more housing units will
increase demand on already-strained water resources, with no
clear plan in Measure SP on how the city will handle this added
burden. Critics argue that the measure leaves too many
financial and infrastructural questions unanswered, adding
uncertainty about how these developments will be managed
long-term.
A weak La Niña is forecast to appear this winter and affect
weather patterns across the country, likely bringing
drier-than-average conditions in much of the Southwest and
wetter-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest,
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. The outlook is uncertain, however, for
much of California, where NOAA experts predict there
are equal chances of below-average, average or above-average
winter precipitation. “For California, there was quite a bit of
uncertainty,” said Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational
Prediction Branch at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “Drought
is not favored to develop in California at the current time,
but it’s something we will be watching very closely as we go
into the winter, because La Niña events do sometimes have a dry
signal, especially in Southern California.”
The San Pedro River, nestled in southeastern Arizona’s San
Pedro Valley just north of the US-Mexico border, is one of the
last undammed rivers in the Southwest and is considered a
biodiversity hotspot. Lined with cattails, willows and
cottonwoods, the marshy waterway shelters hundreds of diverse
bird species, including many considered endangered and
protected by federal law. The area is also home to the Fort
Huachuca US Army base, which has been heralded as an example of
the military’s efforts to become more environmentally
conscientious due to its use of solar power and other “green”
initiatives. Ten years ago, Fort Huachuca forged a plan to
achieve “net-zero” by 2025. But today, that goal has been
largely abandoned, and an expanding group of critics says the
installation’s well-meaning conservation efforts are falling
short, and the Army instead is posing a dire threat to a
protected conservation zone as a result of the base’s rampant
pumping of precious groundwater.
The Water and Resource Conservation group held a meeting at the
local Chico library on Monday morning, where they invited local
members of the community to give their feedback on their
current and future plans. The group called the meeting “Coffee
with Water”. Originally, only seven people had signed up to
attend the event. To the department’s surprise, almost 30
people were in attendance. A main concern for everyone in the
room was the ground-level water, which has been reported to be
at a deficit within Butte County areas like Vina. Many locals
drove from their small towns to express their worries about
another drought and what that could mean for landowners who
mainly live off well water. Members of the conservation group
were able to show maps and future plans that they hope to put
into place, to give peace of mind to those concerned about the
well-being of their homes.
At the end of 2022, 65 percent of the Western United States was
in severe drought, the result of a two decades long mega
drought in the Colorado River Basin … However, it was
flooding, not drought, that was making headlines when we began
our research for this story about OpenET, a revolutionary new
online platform geared towards helping farmers and water
managers monitor and reduce water use in watersheds where
supplies were not keeping up with demand. … According to
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System it will
take more than one wet winter to replenish groundwater in many
parts of the western United States. Groundwater levels across
the California Central Valley and many parts of the Ogallala
Aquifer continue to decline. The need for better water
management remains essential, and yet the data necessary to
support new approaches has not been broadly available.
Enter the OpenET project, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative
effort to make satellite-based evapotranspiration (ET) data
available to the public.
California has endured three severe droughts over the past 15
years. Its five largest wildfires in recorded history have all
occurred since 2018. Heat waves with temperatures above 110
degrees are breaking records summer after summer. With that
backdrop, along with a state budget that lawmakers have
struggled to balance over the past year, California voters will
decide the fate of Proposition 4, a bond measure on the
November ballot that would authorize $10 billion in spending to
address climate change and its impacts. The money would
fund a range of programs, from increasing forest thinning to
planting more trees in cities to reduce temperatures during
heat waves. It also would pay for programs to expand water
conservation and recycling, enlarge state parks and create
coastal wetlands to buttress rising sea levels.
… In California, the history of introductions of all bass
species is murky and confusing because of poor record keeping
and the frequent treating of all species together as “black
bass” (Dill and Cordone 1997). Increasingly, predation by bass
species is regarded as an important factor contributing to
declines of native fishes in California. Furthermore, and
perhaps because of their warmwater thermal niche, bass tend to
grow best during droughts (Rypel 2009). Thus, as climate change
increases the duration and severity of droughts in California,
novel conditions increasingly favor the black bass complex
(Rypel 2021).
An exceptional October heat wave is shattering temperature
records and accelerating drought conditions throughout the
Southwest. Phoenix broke another temperature record Wednesday,
the city’s 16th consecutive day with a new record. The hot
weather is causing more evaporation than normal across the
desert, which the U.S. Drought Monitor noted in its weekly
update. … Severe drought or worse plagued 9.9% of the
West last week but expanded to 14.6% this week’s update. Areas
of severe drought recently expanded into California’s Mojave
Desert for the first time since April 2023. Much of the severe
drought is in the Colorado River Basin, which feeds Lake Mead,
the largest reservoir in the United States.
The Almond Alliance offered its support for a $14 billion
disaster relief legislation introduced by U.S. Reps. David G.
Valadao, R-Calif., and Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., which offers
support for farmers and rural communities impacted by natural
disasters in 2023 including floods, droughts and wildfires. The
bipartisan Agriculture Disaster Relief Supplemental
Appropriations Act proposes $14 billion in disaster relief
funding to the agriculture secretary’s office for 2023 disaster
expenses, according to a news release. It incorporates
provisions from past relief programs, including drought
definitions and direct payments and ensures simultaneous
payment administration for all producers.
It was over three years ago when Governor Gavin Newsom
proclaimed a state of emergency amidst dire drought conditions.
.. As of today, it means we’re en route to a drought if
conditions do not change. In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom
signed a series of drought emergency declarations asking
Californians to reduce water use voluntarily by 15%, state
reservoirs to conserve water, bolster funding water
conservation projects and increase difficulties for those
obtaining well drilling permits in order to procure the rights
to drill. And despite the looming shadow of La Niña,
which could bring both drought and extreme storms resulting in
floods this winter, last month Gov. Gavin Newsom let the
drought emergency declaration expire, canceling out both
drilling permit requirements and voluntary requests made to
conserve water. This opens the door for a flood of well
requests, which were stymied by what some may call government
red tape.
A diverse group representing competing interests believes it is
on the verge of something long thought impossible: an agreement
that guides sustainable water use across California’s San
Joaquin Valley. Born out of a September 2020 “Uncommon
Dialogues” session, the San Joaquin Valley Water Collaborative
Action Program (CAP) has assembled a framework for cooperation
that engenders feelings of optimism among participants. Tim
Quinn, the group’s co-facilitator, said an agreement on policy
recommendations could be endorsed by stakeholders as early as
next month. Progress hasn’t always been easy. For decades,
water policy in the Valley has been characterized by conflict
and strife, as farmers, water districts, and environmental
protection advocates fought battles in political arenas and the
courts. A years-long drought — and growing uncertainty brought
on by climate change — have increased tensions and injected a
sense of urgency into discussions, leading all sides to seek
common ground.
The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest
year in more than three decades for the world’s rivers, as the
record-hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and
contributed to prolonged droughts in some places. The World
Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers
in many countries suffered the largest loss of mass in the last
five decades, warning that ice melt can threaten long-term
water security for millions of people globally. “Water is the
canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress
signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods
and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and
economies,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, releasing
the report on Monday. She said rising temperatures had in part
led the hydrological cycle to become “more erratic and
unpredictable” in ways that can produce “either too much or too
little water” through both droughts and floods.
Energy, water, and food are the top three threats to humanity,
Nobel laureate Richard Smalley of Rice University stated in
2003. Two decades later, those three challenges remain on any
list of imminent and long-term threats to global stability.
Producing energy requires ample amounts of clean water, and
both plentiful sources of energy and water are required to
produce food. The key, though, is ample amounts of water. The
data listed above highlight the challenges of accessing and
developing supplies in key parts of the American West. Meeting
these challenges starts with planning. In Texas, for example,
water planners focus on “desired future conditions” for the
state’s nine major and 22 minor aquifers. Without a roadmap,
targets are likely to go unmet when a catastrophe like a
prolonged severe drought arises.
When a city must find its water 50 miles away and 1,400 feet
underground, in an aquifer whose origins first had to be pegged
to the late Cretaceous and the early Paleogene periods, and
further delineated between Colorado turf on the surface or
Wyoming land just a skosh to the north, while drilling two-way
wells at $1 million each on the way to an eventual price tag
approaching $400 million, and then filter out dissolved
uranium, it would seem a stretch to call this plan the easy way
out. But for Greeley, bent on doubling its current
population of 109,000 by 2060, this is indeed the simpler
choice. Greeley will store and retrieve its biggest future
water supply at Terry Ranch, at the Wyoming border, because
it’s the most convenient way to create a new bucket in a state
where just getting the permit for building a dam takes more
than 20 years.
Dr. Benjamin Cook is a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
where he studies drought and the interaction between hydrology
and climate. We asked him to tell us more about drought and
aridity in California. You’ve studied drought all over the
world. How do you measure drought? When most people think
about drought, they think about precipitation: rainfall and
snow. That’s obviously very important, because that’s how most
droughts start. When we talk about water resources needed by
people and ecosystems, however, we’re really talking about soil
moisture, streamflow, and groundwater. I tend to focus more on
these aspects of drought because they’re not just dependent on
rainfall—they also depend on things like evaporation, which is
sensitive to temperature. Generally speaking, as temperatures
rise, evaporation also rises, drying out the soil; this is why
we expect soils to become drier with climate change in many
regions.
Today, Reps. Jimmy Panetta (CA-19) and David G. Valadao (CA-22)
introduced the Agriculture Disaster Relief Supplemental
Appropriations Act. The bill provides an additional $14 billion
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to assist
agriculture producers impacted by losses caused by natural
disasters in 2023. … “Natural disasters like drought and
flooding have caused devastating losses for Central Valley
producers over the last two years,” said Rep.
Valadao. “These extreme weather events negatively affect
the security of our nation’s food supply, prices for consumers,
and jobs throughout our community. My legislation provides USDA
with the funding necessary to assist farmers in California and
across the country who have been impacted by natural disasters.
Producers in the Central Valley have had a difficult and
uncertain couple of years, and I’ll continue working to ensure
they have the resources and support they need to grow the food
that feeds the world.”
Forests are burning more often and especially intense and hot,
which can destroy seeds that normally survive fire, harden the
ground like concrete and leave barren slopes susceptible to
washing away in rainstorms, polluting waterways. … In
California’s Sierra Nevada, where up to 20% of the
world’s mature giant sequoias and their seeds have been killed
by fire in recent years, there are massive
openings without seedlings. A U.S. Geological Survey study
concluded some groves will never recover without
replanting. But researchers say the odds of forests
growing back will worsen regardless of fire intensity because
of more heat and drought. That means burned forest could
convert to shrubland and grassland, leading to loss of snowpack
that provides drinking water and helps irrigate crops.
Climate change is exacerbating the risk of potentially
dangerous mosquito-borne diseases in California — threatening
to turn more of those annoying-but-harmless bites into severe
illnesses, experts say. … But officials are now warning of a
potential new foe: dengue, a viral infection that in the most
serious cases can also lead to life-threatening complications.
Until last year, all dengue cases reported in California were
associated with people traveling to a country where the disease
is common. But Los Angeles County public health officials are
now warning about the “unprecedented” local transmission of
dengue, which is commonly found in tropical and subtropical
climates. … Climate change is contributing to the spread
of these invasive, non-native mosquito-borne diseases, experts
say. The World Health Organization warned last
year that global warming “marked by higher average
temperatures, precipitation and longer periods of drought,
could prompt a record number of dengue infections worldwide.”
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
State health officials know that extreme heat can cost lives
and send people to the hospital, just like wildfire smoke. Now,
new research finds that when people are exposed to both hazards
simultaneously — as is increasingly the case in California —
heart and respiratory crises outpace the expected sum of
hospitalizations compared to when the conditions occur
separately. … The study joins a growing body of research
about the intersection of different climate risks. Last month,
California-based think-tank the Pacific
Institute published a report about how converging
hazards — including wildfires, drought, flooding, sea level
rise and intensifying storms — are harming access to drinking
water and sanitation in California and other parts of the
world. The deadly 2018 Camp fire in Butte
County impacted an estimated 2,438 private wells, the
report said.
After more than two decades of
drought, water utilities serving the largest urban regions in the
arid Southwest are embracing a drought-proof source of drinking
water long considered a supply of last resort: purified sewage.
Water supplies have tightened to the point that Phoenix and the
water supplier for 19 million Southern California residents are
racing to adopt an expensive technology called “direct potable
reuse” or “advanced purification” to reduce their reliance on
imported water from the dwindling Colorado River.
The climate-driven shrinking of the
Colorado River is expanding the influence of Native American
tribes over how the river’s flows are divided among cities, farms
and reservations across the Southwest.
The tribes are seeing the value of their largely unused river
water entitlements rise as the Colorado dwindles, and they are
gaining seats they’ve never had at the water bargaining table as
government agencies try to redress a legacy of exclusion.
Water conservation has become a way of life throughout the West
with a growing recognition that water supply is not unlimited.
Drought is the most common motivator of increased water
conservation. However, the gradual drying of the West due to
climate change means the amount of fresh water available for
drinking, irrigation, industry and other uses must be used as
efficiently as possible.
Every five years the California Department of Water Resources
updates its strategic plan for managing the state’s water
resources, as required by state law.
The California Water Plan, or Bulletin 160, projects the
status and trends of the state’s water supplies and demands
under a range of future scenarios.
A new but little-known change in
California law designating aquifers as “natural infrastructure”
promises to unleash a flood of public funding for projects that
increase the state’s supply of groundwater.
The change is buried in a sweeping state budget-related law,
enacted in July, that also makes it easier for property owners
and water managers to divert floodwater for storage underground.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
The three-year span, 2019 to 2022, was officially the driest ever
statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. But that most recent period of overall drought
also saw big swings from very wet to very dry stretches such
as the 2021-2022 water year that went from a relatively
wet Oct.-Dec. beginning to the driest Jan.-March period in the
state’s history.
With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into the
winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for California
or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new reality of
climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our reliance on
historical patterns to forecast California’s water supply?
Participants found out what efforts are being made to
improve sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) precipitation
forecasting for California and the Colorado River Basin at our
one-day Winter Outlook Workshop December
8 in Irvine, CA.
Beckman Center
Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Managers of California’s most
overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s
landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable,
detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered
basins into balance. It was a task that required more than 250
newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the
drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather
data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on
multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a
groundwater basin.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour ventured 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.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
This page is a resource for all things drought – where you
can find real-time reservoir levels, drought severity
maps, special reports, a newsfeed of current
developments on the drought that began in 2020 and general
background on droughts in California and the West, as well as
answers to common drought questions and tips for how you can save
water at home.
What is Drought?
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.
During California’s 2012-2016 drought, much of the state
experienced severe drought conditions: significantly less
precipitation and snowpack, reduced streamflow and higher
temperatures. Those same conditions began reappearing in late
2020, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom in May of 2021 to declare
drought emergencies in watersheds across 41 counties in
California. Restrictions were later extended to all 58 counties.
Gov. Newsom relaxed those restrictions finally in March 2023,
after an exceptionally wet winter filled reservoirs and packed
the Sierra Nevada with record snowfall.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water
supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the
numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another
drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most
of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project
will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low
number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more
rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather
forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing. The National
Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and
windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems.
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.
Practically every drop of water that flows through the meadows, canyons and plains of the Colorado River Basin has reams of science attached to it. Snowpack, streamflow and tree ring data all influence the crucial decisions that guide water management of the iconic Western river every day.
Dizzying in its scope, detail and complexity, the scientific information on the Basin’s climate and hydrology has been largely scattered in hundreds of studies and reports. Some studies may conflict with others, or at least appear to. That’s problematic for a river that’s a lifeline for 40 million people and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
Many of California’s watersheds are
notoriously flashy – swerving from below-average flows to jarring
flood conditions in quick order. The state needs all the water it
can get from storms, but current flood management guidelines are
strict and unyielding, requiring reservoirs to dump water each
winter to make space for flood flows that may not come.
However, new tools and operating methods are emerging that could
lead the way to a redefined system that improves both water
supply and flood protection capabilities.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
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.
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years
of drought and the dramatic decline in water levels at the
river’s key reservoirs have pressed water managers to adapt to
challenging conditions. But even more extreme — albeit rare —
droughts or floods that could overwhelm water managers may lie
ahead in the Basin as the effects of climate change take hold,
say a group of scientists. They argue that stakeholders who are
preparing to rewrite the operating rules of the river should plan
now for how to handle these so-called “black swan” events so
they’re not blindsided.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
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.
On average, more than 60 percent of
California’s developed water supply originates in the Sierra
Nevada and the southern spur of the Cascade Range. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This tour ventured into the Sierra to examine water issues
that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
This tour journeyed through a scenic landscape and
explored an area of California dealing with
persistent threats to its water supply and quality. Along
the way, we learned about solutions that were being
implemented.
Although Santa Barbara County had lifted its drought
emergency declaration after the 2019 storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery has often
lagged behind much of the rest of the state. It is a region
particularly prone to drought, wildfires and mudslides.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As stakeholders labor to nail down
effective and durable drought contingency plans for the Colorado
River Basin, they face a stark reality: Scientific research is
increasingly pointing to even drier, more challenging times
ahead.
The latest sobering assessment landed the day after Thanksgiving,
when U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate
Assessment concluded that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly
compared to the pace of natural variations that have occurred
throughout its history, with greenhouse gas emissions largely the
cause.
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
Just because El Niño may be lurking
off in the tropical Pacific, does that really offer much of a
clue about what kind of rainy season California can expect in
Water Year 2019?
Will a river of storms pound the state, swelling streams and
packing the mountains with deep layers of heavy snow much like
the exceptionally wet 2017 Water Year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30,
2017)? Or will this winter sputter along like last winter,
leaving California with a second dry year and the possibility of
another potential drought? What can reliably be said about the
prospects for Water Year 2019?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine?, a one-day event on Dec. 5 in Irvine,
water managers and anyone else interested in this topic will
learn about what is and isn’t known about forecasting
California’s winter precipitation weeks to months ahead, the
skill of present forecasts and ongoing research to develop
predictive ability.
“Dry, hot and on fire” is how the
California Department of Water Resources described Water Year
2018 in a recent report.
Water Year 2018 – from Oct. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2018 -
marked a return to dry conditions statewide following an
exceptionally wet 2017, according to DWR’s Water
Year 2018 report. But 2017 was exceptional as all but two of
the water years in the past decade experienced drought.
Was Water Year 2018 simply a single dry year or does it
signal the beginning of another drought? And what can
reliably be said about the prospects for Water Year 2019? Does El
Niño really mean anything for California or is it all washed up
as a predictor?
Attendees found out at this one-day event Dec. 5 in
Irvine, Water Year 2019: Feast or
Famine?
Beckman Center
Auditorium - Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
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.
People in California and the
Southwest are getting stingier with water, a story that’s told by
the acre-foot.
For years, water use has generally been described in terms of
acre-foot per a certain number of households, keying off the
image of an acre-foot as a football field a foot deep in water.
The long-time rule of thumb: One acre-foot of water would supply
the indoor and outdoor needs of two typical urban households for
a year.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
This winter’s wild swings in weather
– an early lack of rain, then late-season Sierra snowstorms,
followed by a torrent of subtropical moisture – shows the need in
California for long-range tools to better manage water supply.
At a Paleo
Drought Workshop in San Pedro on April 19, six experts will
discuss research on centuries-long precipitation and streamflow
records, new forecasting tools and planning strategies to help
reduce Southern California’s vulnerability to drought.
Learn what new tree-ring studies in
Southern California watersheds reveal about drought, hear about
efforts to improve subseasonal to seasonal weather forecasting
and get the latest on climate change impacts that will alter
drought vulnerability in the future.
At our Paleo
Drought Workshop on April 19th in San Pedro, you will hear
from experts at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of
Arizona and California Department of Water Resources.
Dramatic swings in weather patterns
over the past few years in California are stark reminders of
climate variability and regional vulnerability. Alternating years
of drought and intense rain events make long-term planning for
storing and distributing water a challenging task.
Current weather forecasting capabilities provide details for
short time horizons. Attend the Paleo Drought
Workshop in San Pedro on April 19 to learn more about
research efforts to improve sub-seasonal to seasonal
precipitation forecasting, known as S2S, and how those models
could provide more useful weather scenarios for resource
managers.
California’s 2012-2016 drought
revealed vulnerabilities for water users throughout the state,
and the long-term record suggests more challenges may lie ahead.
An April 19
workshop in San Pedro will highlight new information about
drought durations in Southern California watersheds dating
back centuries.
Every day, people flock to Daniel
Swain’s social media platforms to find out the latest news and
insight about California’s notoriously unpredictable weather.
Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the
Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, famously coined the
term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 to describe
the large, formidable high-pressure mass that was parked over the
West Coast during winter and diverted storms away from
California, intensifying the drought.
Swain’s research focuses on atmospheric processes that cause
droughts and floods, along with the changing character of extreme
weather events in a warming world. A lifelong Californian and
alumnus of University of California, Davis, and Stanford
University, Swain is best known for the widely read Weather West blog, which provides
unique perspectives on weather and climate in California and the
western United States. In a recent interview with Western
Water, he talked about the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, its
potential long-term impact on California weather, and what may
lie ahead for the state’s water supply.
Rising temperatures from climate change are having a noticeable
effect on how much water is flowing down the Colorado River. Read
the latest River Report to learn more about what’s
happening, and how water managers are responding.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
For decades, no matter the weather, the message has been preached
to Californians: use water wisely, especially outdoors, which
accounts for most urban water use.
Enforcement of that message filters to the local level, where
water agencies routinely target the notorious “gutter flooder”
with gentle reminders and, if necessary, financial penalties.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
In a state with such topsy-turvy weather as California, the
ability of forecasters to peer into the vast expanse of the
Pacific Ocean and accurately predict the arrival of storms is a
must to improve water supply reliability and flood management
planning.
The problem, according to Jeanine Jones, interstate resources
manager with the state Department of Water Resources, is
that “we have been managing with 20th century
technology with respect to our ability to do weather
forecasting.”
During drought, people conserve water. That’s a good thing for
public water agencies and the state as a whole but the reduction
in use ultimately means less money flowing into the budgets of
those very agencies that need funds to treat water to drinkable
standards, maintain a distribution system, and build a more
drought-proof supply.
“There are two things that can’t happen to a water utility – you
can’t run out of money and you can’t run out of water,” said Tom
Esqueda, public utilities director for the city of Fresno. He was
a panelist at a June 16 discussion in Sacramento about drought
resiliency sponsored by the Public Policy Institute of California
(PPIC).
Years of drought have sapped California’s water supply, creating
an accumulated deficit exacerbated by increasingly warmer
temperatures, a top researcher said at a recent briefing.
Michael Dettinger, research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological
Survey, said parts of California have fallen more than two years
behind where they should be in terms of receiving “normal”
precipitation. The situation augurs what would be expected under
projected climate change conditions as average annual
temperatures warm and the snow level declines.
A hydrograph illustrates a type of activity of water during a
specific time frame. Salinity and acidity are sometimes measured,
but the most common types
are stage and discharge hydrographs. These graphs show how
surface water flow responds to fluxes in precipitation.
California is no stranger to drought. When conditions become dry,
water storage declines and water conservation mandates make news
headlines; questions from the public often surface about what
appear to be easy solutions to augment the state’s water supply.
But the answers can be complicated and, in the end, there is no
silver bullet to ensure a resilient water supply, especially
during drought.
We explore “frequently asked questions” often posed by the public
and provide answers below. Simply click on the question for the
answer to appear.
The dramatic decline in water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell
is perhaps the most visible sign of the historic drought that has
gripped the Colorado River Basin for the past 16 years. In 2000,
the reservoirs stood at nearly 100 percent capacity; today, Lake
Powell is at 49 percent capacity while Lake Mead has dropped to
38 percent. Before the late season runoff of Miracle May, it
looked as if Mead might drop low enough to trigger the first-ever
Lower Basin shortage determination in 2016.
Read the excerpt below from the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here to subscribe to Western
Water and get full access.
This free briefing sponsored by the Department of Water Resources
and the Water Education Foundation will discuss forecasts of
water project operations in the coming year.
Water year 2016 has officially begun, and all eyes are on the
weather and the potential runoff. But even if the projected heavy
El Niño becomes reality, the state’s drought-impacted reservoirs
are still a major concern.
This issue examines the impacts of California’s epic
drought, especially related to water supplies for San Joaquin
Valley rural communities and farmland.
Drought doesn’t instantly ravage
the way flooding does. It advances at a steady, determined pace,
building and spreading during several years. Fields wither,
reservoirs drop to dangerously low levels and the memory of what
constitutes a normal water supply becomes more distant.
Read the excerpt below from the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here to subscribe to Western Water and
get full access.
California’s severe drought has put its water rights system under
scrutiny, raising the question whether a complete overhaul is
necessary to better allocate water use.
(Read the excerpt below from the July/August 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here
to subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
Introduction
California’s severe drought has put its water rights system under
scrutiny, raising the question whether a complete overhaul is
necessary to better allocate water use.
This 2-day, 1-night tour traveled through the San Joaquin Valley
to explore the impacts of California’s unprecedented four-year
drought on the nation’s breadbasket and what steps are being
taken to avert disaster.
This 3-day, 2-night tour followed the course of the
lower Colorado River through Nevada, Arizona and California, and
included a private tour of Hoover Dam.
In wet years, dry years and every type of water year in between,
the daily intrusion and retreat of salinity in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta is a constant pattern.
The cycle of ebb and flood is the defining nature of an estuary
and prior to its transformation into an agricultural tract in
the mid-19th century, the Delta was a freshwater marsh with
plants, birds, fish and wildlife that thrived on the edge of the
saltwater/freshwater interface.
Living in the semi-arid, Mediterranean climate of California,
drought always lingers on the horizon. People believe they are
ready to face the next dry period, then conditions arrive testing
whether that is the case.
This printed copy of Western Water examines climate change –
what’s known about it, the remaining uncertainty and what steps
water agencies are talking to prepare for its impact. Much of the
information comes from the October 2007 California Climate Change
and Water Adaptation Summit sponsored by the Water Education
Foundation and DWR and the November 2007 California Water Policy
Conference sponsored by Public Officials for Water and
Environmental Reform.
This printed copy of Western Water examines California’s drought
– its impact on water users in the urban and agricultural sector
and the steps being taken to prepare for another dry year should
it arrive.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River drought, and the ongoing institutional and
operational changes underway to maintain the system and meet the
future challenges in the Colorado River Basin.
This printed issue of Western Water explores the
historic nature of some of the key agreements in recent years,
future challenges, and what leading state representatives
identify as potential “worst-case scenarios.” Much of the content
for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the Colorado River Symposium. The Foundation
will publish the full proceedings of the Symposium in 2012.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study and what its
finding might mean for the future of the lifeblood of the
Southwest.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water This issue of Western Water
looks at climate change through the lens of some of the latest
scientific research and responses from experts regarding
mitigation and adaptation.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at California
groundwater and whether its sustainability can be assured by
local, regional and state management. For more background
information on groundwater please refer to the Foundation’s
Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
This 3-day, 2-night tour travels the length of the San Joaquin
Valley, giving participants a clear understanding of the State
Water Project and Central Valley Project.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Nevada Water provides an
overview of the history of water development and use in Nevada.
It includes sections on Nevada’s water rights laws, the history
of the Truckee and Carson rivers, water supplies for the Las
Vegas area, groundwater, water quality, environmental issues and
today’s water supply challenges.
The Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch map, which is
suitable for framing, explains the river’s apportionment, history
and the need to adapt its management for urban growth and
expected climate change impacts.
It seems not a matter of if but when seawater desalination will
fulfill the promise of providing parts of California with a
reliable, drought-proof source of water. With a continuing
drought and uncertain water deliveries, the state is in the grip
of a full-on water crisis, and there are many people who see
desalination as a way to provide some relief to areas struggling
to maintain an adequate water supply.
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.
During California’s 2012–2016 drought, much of the state
experienced severe drought conditions: significantly less
precipitation and snowpack, reduced streamflow and higher
temperatures. Those same conditions reappeared early in 2021
prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom in May to declare drought emergencies
in watersheds across 41 counties in California.
California’s seasonal weather is influenced by El Niño and La
Niña – temporary climatic conditions that, depending on their
severity, make the weather wetter or drier than normal.
El Niño and La Niña episodes typically last 9 to 12 months,
but some may last for years. While their frequency can be quite
irregular, El Niño and La Niña events occur on average every two
to seven years. Typically, El Niño occurs more frequently than La
Niña, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA).
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36-inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
Just before summer officially began in June, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger publicly proclaimed what many people already knew:
California is in a drought. Consecutive years of sub par rainfall
coupled with a 2008 snowpack that literally dried up and blew
away before it could turn into runoff forced the issuance of the
state’s first drought declaration since 1991.
When a drought occurs as it has this year, the response is
couched in the three Rs of the waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse and
recycle.
The reduction part is well-known. State and local officials are
urging people to use less water in everything they do, from
landscape irrigation to shorter showers. Spurred by California’s
difficulties, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on June 4 declared a
statewide drought. On July 10, the governor and Sen. Dianne
Feinstein announced their support of the Safe, Clean, Reliable
Drinking Water Supply Act of 2008 – a $9.3 billion bond proposal
that would allocate $250 million for water recycling projects.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
