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.
For almost four decades, water flowed faithfully from Fred and
Robin Imfeld’s private well here in rural Tehama County, a
region where thirsty orchards of walnuts, almonds, plums and
olives stretch across thousands of acres. But that
reliable supply of household water began to sputter last year,
and then ceased completely this summer amid
California’s driest three-year period on record.
… Across California, domestic wells are drying up in
record numbers due to severe drought and the overpumping
of underground aquifers. The crisis has hit rural farming
areas particularly hard and left some families to fend for
themselves or wait years for permanent solutions as nonprofits,
state water officials and well drillers struggle with a growing
backlog of assistance requests.
The odds that the drought-enhancing La Nina will fade by the
end of California’s rainy season are rising, offering some hope
of an easing of parched conditions across the US West. The
Pacific Ocean has a 71% chance of returning to normal
temperatures between February and April, bringing an end the La
Nina weather pattern that has persisted for three years, the
Climate Prediction Center said in a Thursday forecast. La Nina
has dominated global weather, prompting mild winters across the
US South, drought in the West and parched crops in parts of
Argentina and Brazil. More than 99% of California’s land
is gripped in drought, according to the US Drought Monitor. The
state gets almost all its annual rain and snow from November to
April …
New predictions by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show that
Lake Powell’s water levels may fall below the level needed to
produce power as soon as July 2023. The Bureau of
Reclamation issues two-year predictions for the water levels in
Lake Powell and Lake Mead and revises those predictions every
few months. It uses multiple projections to come up with
expected, worst, and best probable outcomes. One of those
projections shows that water levels at Lake Powell could fall
below what’s called minimum power pool, the lowest level that
would still allow the power plant in the dam to produce power
in only seven months…. While Lake Mead’s water levels
should remain safely above the minimum power pool level, Lake
Powell’s dropping levels add an extra layer of concern for both
reservoirs.
A new analysis says San Diego must raise water rates 17.6
percent over the next two years to fund the city’s Pure Water
sewage recycling system and cover rising costs to buy imported
water and replace aging pipes. The average monthly bill for a
customer in a single-family home would increase from $81.07 to
$95.03 in November 2023, and then to $103.06 in January 2025.
Bills for high-volume water users would likely climb even more.
Water rates in San Diego would jump from just below the current
median for local water agencies to what is currently the top
tier. The only water agencies in the county whose current rates
are higher than that planned level are Rincon del Diablo,
Fallbrook, Padre Dam, Rainbow and Del Mar.
Could the limited successes in bringing together disparate
water interests in the San Joaquin Valley be a model for a
collaborative solution to the water woes facing Monterey
County? Local elected officials on Tuesday listened to an
architect of such an effort in the neighboring valley in hopes
that the growing loggerheads over securing additional,
permanent water sources in Monterey County can be
alleviated…. the Board of Supervisors invited Tim Quinn,
a Stanford University Landreth Visiting Fellow and past
president of the Association of California Water Agencies, to
brief them on the work he and colleagues have put in to bring
farmers, environmentalists, social justice advocates,
governments and water agencies together….
Fort Bragg, long powered by timber, fishing and tourist
economies, is getting notice statewide for its push to create
monetary green out of the Blue Economy, state officials
said. … For Fort Bragg, Blue Economy leadership is also
helping to create innovative solutions to the
ever-worsening water shortage the city faces. The City of Fort
Bragg is ground zero for Oneka Technologies, a Canadian company
working all over the world with wave energy to make freshwater.
The company found Fort Bragg a willing partner to test its
revolutionary wave energy-powered desalination device on the
West Coast, a place that Oneka Technologies CEO and cofounder
Dragan Tutic wants to be. After a presentation before the
council, the city and Oneka put together a bid for a $1.5
million state grant that is now pending.
The Salton Sea, the body of water in Southern California’s
Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley, is shrinking over time as
the planet warms and exposing more lakebed and new sources of
dust in the process. High levels of dust already plague the
region, a situation likely to worsen as the sea continues to
shrink due to climate change. Not surprisingly, the communities
surrounding the Salton Sea have high rates of childhood asthma
(20–22.4%) — much higher than the California average of 14.5%.
A University of California, Riverside, mouse study, led by Dr.
David Lo, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences in
the School of Medicine, has found that dust collected at sites
near the Salton Sea triggered lung neutrophil inflammation in
mice. Neutrophils are a type of white blood cells that help
fight infection.
A coalition of agricultural associations and the Northern
California Water Association have launched the CA Drought Grant
Website – a portal for information on the CA Small Ag Business
Drought Relief Grant Program. The site,
agdroughtrelief.org, provides key information about the
$75 million program, grant eligibility and the ability to sign
up to receive instant program updates as it becomes available
in the upcoming months. When applications are available, they
can be accessed from the site as well.
Last month, the United Nations announced that the
Earth’s population had reached 8 billion. … Most folks would
agree that the real worry here is not the sheer numbers, but
their collective impact on the environment. We — the planet’s
human inhabitants — are clearing land, leveling forests and
mountains, mining and drilling minerals and burning fossil
fuels in order to sustain ourselves and our lifestyles. That,
in turn, is diminishing biodiversity, driving species to
extinction and stretching the planet’s carrying capacity to a
snapping point, thereby imperiling our own species’ survival.
The problems are exacerbated as planet-warming greenhouse gas
emissions soar, further diminishing freshwater stores and
hurting food production.
Sonoma Ecology Center is working with the community to adapt to
historic drought conditions. Its latest project is rainwater
harvesting system at Flowery Elementary School that serves as a
demonstration project to explore the feasibility of replicating
this system at other schools. Steven Lee, Senior Scientist who,
together with his team, monitors the Sonoma Creek Watershed,
had implemented a 70,000 rainwater harvesting system on his
property. This year, he brought his experience and expertise to
carry out a rainwater catchment system at Flowery Elementary
School.
U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, and Mitt
Romney, a Utah Republican, led a bipartisan group of senators
in asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to give parity to
Western drought needs with existing programs and funding. In a
letter addressed to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack the
senators from across the Western states asked for continued
resources to support projects for ranchers and farmers to
conserve water, improve their infrastructure and efficiency,
and provide technical support. The senators want to see funds
for agriculture conservation equally allocated “to reflect the
contribution of every region, including the West.”
Even as other communities in the Las Vegas Valley have recycled
water since the 1960s, the city closest to Hoover Dam uses up
to 500 million gallons a year one time and then casts it away,
lost to the air and desert. But that could change as Boulder
City’s new mayor favors ending the community’s decades-long
waste of precious water. Currently, Boulder City’s 16,000
residents use up to 1.5 million gallons of water a day for
drinking, bathing, cooking and other needs. The water is then
lightly treated, and some is sold for construction and other
nonhuman use, but the majority is pumped into nearby
evaporation ponds. In 2021, 250 million gallons were lost after
one use.
Despite opposition from an impressive who’s-who list of water
districts and agencies and the Kings County Farm Bureau, the
Kings County Board of Supervisors on a 3-2 vote adopted a
groundwater export ordinance that will require a permit to move
groundwater out of the county. Leading the charge was
Supervisor and farmer Doug Verboon, who says the passage came
after 12 years of battling to adopt an ordinance here to
protect local groundwater, an ordinance that most counties
already have. The county’s aim is to preserve groundwater for
local use, critical for both domestic, city, military and
agricultural users.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is leading a letter
signed by 14 other senators urging Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack to help Western states survive
what they are calling a “22-year mega-drought” that is
threatening farms and ranches across the West. … The
letter is the latest sign of growing economic pressure posed by
the changing climate and the competition for federal money to
help communities across the country cope with severe weather.
… The senators argue that many existing Department of
Agriculture programs “do not translate well to the needs of
Western agriculture” and want the department to promote
projects to help basins such as Colorado River Basin, the Rio
Grande Basin, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Basin and the
Columbia River Basin.
Just because the rainy season has arrived doesn’t mean
California’s water cops are off the job. With a fourth year of
drought looming, some of the Bay Area’s biggest utilities
continue to crack down on excessive outdoor watering…. One
city, though, has gone as far as shutting off water service to
repeat offenders. State regulators, meanwhile, are expected
this week to enact a second straight year of California-wide
prohibitions on outdoor water waste, continuing the ban on such
actions as watering lawns to the point of creating runoff,
washing a car without a shut-off nozzle on the hose and filling
up decorative fountains. Violators could face $500-a-day fines.
Winter is off to a running start in California, after a pair of
December storms dropped several feet of mountain snow and
soaking low-elevation rains across much of the state. Parts of
the Sierra Nevada have recorded more than double the expected
snowpack for the time of year, and another significant storm
could be on the way this weekend. However, officials are urging
caution and conservation given the depth of the state’s water
supply challenges. Longer range outlooks still point to a
fourth consecutive drought year for the state. Statewide snow
water equivalent — or the amount of water contained in snowpack
— is currently 175 percent of normal for the date. The Central
Sierra Snow Lab, located at Donner Pass northwest of Lake
Tahoe, is now sitting at 253 percent of its average.
Every winter, millions of migrating birds come to the
Sacramento Valley, but now these birds may find the marshes and
flooded rice fields dry. The marshes and flooded rice fields
here are a stopping point for the birds along the Pacific
flyway, and scientists are now putting GPS trackers on birds to
learn how they’re reacting to the dry environment. “A
migratory pathway for waterfowl and shorebirds that are coming
from northern areas, moving into the Central Valley and looking
for spots to feed, to rest and continue on their journey
farther south to warmer areas in the winter, and then heading
back north again in the spring,” Samantha Arthur, Audubon
California Working Lands Program Director, said.
The state of Colorado is projected to gain 1.8 million more
residents by the year 2050. While that can be a sign of
economic prosperity, a study by NumbersUSA indicates most
residents think that growth will have too many negative
impacts. … The study includes a scientific survey
of 1,024 Colorado residents conducted by the Rasmussen research
group. It focuses on several environmental issues, including
water. Citing increased traffic, the loss of open space,
and a strain on the water supply, 75% of Coloradans surveyed
said urban sprawl, which is the encroachment of cities into
natural space and agricultural space, is making Colorado a
worse place to live.
An expanded Atmospheric River Reconnaissance program began last
month as a result of the unexpected “bomb cyclone” in October
2021 that hit North America’s West Coast, followed by another
atmospheric river less than a month later that caused severe
flooding in Washington. … Atmospheric rivers are streams
of water vapor that carry 25 times the water equivalent of the
Mississippi River. Flowing at an altitude of about 10,000 feet,
atmospheric rivers average between 100 and 500 miles wide and
2,000 miles long. Where they hit the West Coast determines
where heavy rain, snow, and flooding occurs. They are also
critical to water supply, and improved forecasts of where
atmospheric rivers will make landfall are vital for more
effective management of reservoirs.
Arizona is preparing to enter for the first time into a Tier 2A
shortage for the lower Colorado River basin, with cuts
beginning at the start of the new year. For the state, this
means a reduction of 21% of Arizona’s Colorado river supply and
about 9% of the state’s total water use, according to the
Central Arizona Project. Cities that use the Colorado river
will see a 3% reduction while tribal supplies will be reduced
by 7%. And for the users of CAP water, there will no longer be
excess water and agriculture pools from the Colorado River.
According to the Agriculture & Water Council of Arizona, it
will have a big impact on farmers as they work out ways to
operate with less water.
As the twin threats of climate change and biodiversity loss
come to a head this decade, the fate of our fresh water lies in
the balance. Extreme weather is becoming increasingly common,
bringing massive rainfall and flooding in some regions and
widespread heat and drought in others, with disastrous impacts
on both humans and nature. At the same time, we have lost
nearly a third of the world’s freshwater ecosystems and 83% of
monitored freshwater species since 1970, a rate that is
significantly higher than that of terrestrial and marine
species in the same timeframe. Freshwater ecosystems deliver
the water on which all life depends. The urgency to better
protect them is now.
The Colorado River runs more than 1,400 miles starting as a
trickle of snowmelt in northern Colorado. It becomes a roaring
torrent as it cuts through canyons and five Western states. Now
after more than a century of dam building and development along
the river, it ends as a trickle again at the Arizona-Mexico
border. The river was once the lifeblood of the Cocopah, or
River People. The Cocopah Tribe has begun trying to return a
sliver of that landscape to what it once was. On this day you
hear the wind blowing and the traffic from Interstate 8 as cars
and trucks cross the Arizona-California border less than a mile
away. The Colorado River, or what’s left of it, meanders south
to Mexico with hardly any sound.
Citing Israel’s extraordinary success in meeting its
agricultural and household water needs, Marco Sermoneta told a
recent gathering of water industry professionals that his
country has much to offer other regions facing the dire problem
of water scarcity. … Sermoneta, who has been on the job
since August, was speaking at the Association of California
Water Agencies fall conference and exhibition, held Nov.
29-Dec. 1 in Indian Wells, near Palm Desert. The event
featured more than 40 programs, workshops and roundtable
conversations examining topics such as water management,
affordable drinking water and water supply. ACWA is a statewide
coalition of public water agencies.
A record low number of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon fry
migrated downriver from Redding to Red Bluff on the Sacramento
River this year, according to preliminary data collected by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) at Red Bluff Diversion
Dam. An estimated 158,764 fry (baby salmon) have made it from
below Keswick Dam to Red Bluff this drought year, compared to
an average number of 1.3 million winter Chinook salmon. This is
the second consecutive year that the service reported
alarmingly low numbers of Chinooks.
Sometimes old age and gritty stamina trumps youth and
resilience. It’s true for people. It turns out it’s true for
trees as well. Old-growth trees can endure the battering of a
drought better than their younger counterparts, scientists have
learned. In the face of increasingly frequent and more intense
droughts fueled by climate change, the new research underscores
the importance of ancient trees to sustain forests.
… Forests in the southwest U.S., for example, are
currently in the grip of the worst drought of at least the
last 1200 years. Such droughts can be lethal for trees,
causing their vasculature to collapse or weakening their
ability to withstand pests and diseases. In one
study of California forests, as many as half the trees in
some places died during the drought that ran from 2012 to 2015.
California’s water system uses energy to pump, convey, treat,
and heat water. Although agriculture uses roughly four times
more water than cities, cities account for most water-related
energy use. Water is also required for hydropower generation,
thermoelectric power plants, and oil and gas extraction.
Improving water use efficiency can reduce energy consumption;
conversely, improving energy efficiency can reduce impacts on
water supply and quality. … The water system
uses approximately 20% of the state’s electricity and 30%
of its natural gas for business and home use, according to data
from 2001—accounting for more than 5% of California’s
greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas across the West,
and for the parched mega-drought region, the December snow is a
welcome gift. With back-to-back-to-back winter storms across
the West, the snowpack is thriving. Parts of the Sierra and the
Pacific Northwest are seeing above-average snowpack for this
time of year. In Central California, the Sierra stands at 200%
of normal for snowpack average to date…. The Colorado River
Basin is another area gaining a lot of attention for water
shortages. They are counting on a good snowpack. Right now,
most of the Colorado River Basin is running low…
In the early hours of a cold fall morning, thousands of birds
would sit in the puddles of water in the empty rice fields just
outside the Sacramento Valley. At many of those fields
this year, there isn’t a single bird that can be seen. It’s
because there’s no water. There are no plants. The fields are
empty and bone dry. They’ve become fallowed. The streams of
water that once flowed to allow the beavers and deer feed and
drink are gone. The ground looks like slabs of cracked
concrete. Economists and farmers warn that there could be
severe environmental and economic consequences that stretch
beyond these dry fields that farmers are challenged
with. California is now experiencing the driest
three-year period since late 1800s.
Spring runs of a large minnow numbering in the millions have
nourished Pomo Indians since they first made their home
alongside Northern California’s Clear Lake more than 400
generations ago. The Clear Lake hitch glinted like silver
dollars as they headed up the lake’s tributaries to spawn, a
reliable squirming crop of plenty, steeped in history and tasty
when salted and dried like jerky. In all that time, the
hitch’s domain, about 110 miles northwest of Sacramento, had
never suffered the degradation of recent years. Now, with
a growing sense of sorrow, if not anger, the Pomo Indian tribes
of Clear Lake are watching the symbol of abundance and security
they call chi dwindle into extinction…. The
hitch is a 12-inch-long minnow found only in and around the
oldest, largest and perhaps most polluted and wildfire-prone
watershed in California.
A forest’s resilience, or ability to absorb environmental
disturbances, has long been thought to be a boost for its odds
of survival against the looming threat of climate change. But a
new study suggests that for some Western U.S. forests, it’s
quite the opposite. In the journal Global Change Biology,
researchers have published one of the first large-scale studies
of U.S. forest land exploring the link between forest
resilience and mortality. The study is based on more than three
decades of satellite image data used for assessing forest
resilience, and more than two decades of ground observations of
forest tree death across the continental United States.
Saving the endangered Riparian brush rabbits could also protect
large swaths of rural south Manteca as well as part of Lathrop
from flooding. It is because efforts of the non-profit River
Partners at the 2,100-acre Dos Rios Preserve located at the
confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers to assist the
rabbit subspecies, five endangered birds, and three endangered
fish could also provide 10,000 acre feet of critical transient
floodwater storage to reduce flood stages as far north as
Stockton.
Native people had been living in California’s Owens Valley
since time immemorial when the first permanent settler arrived
in 1860. More followed, and within a year, fences erected
around homesteads blocked access to traditional sources of food
and water. The Indigenous Paiute who crossed fence lines were
shot, a sudden clash between a culture built on partnership
with nature and one striving to profit from what the natural
world had to offer. This pattern was repeated over and over as
Americans pushed westward to fulfill the country’s “manifest
destiny” and natural resources were harnessed to grow its
capitalist economy.
Seems like most people are falling all over themselves
celebrating the “historic” deal between the Imperial Irrigation
District, Coachella Valley Water District, the U.S. Department
of Interior (Bureau of Reclamation), and the California Natural
Resources Agency that will supposedly bring up to a
quarter-billion dollars to the Salton Sea for restoration
projects. I certainly understand the need to conserve water and
help bolster the elevation at Lake Mead to try to restore some
kind of balance to the Colorado River, but at what cost to the
people of the Imperial Valley? The Imperial Valley is giving up
1 million acre-feet of water over four years for maybe $250
million and that just doesn’t seem like an even trade off; it
feels like a bad deal – like my friends over at Comite Civico
del Valle so aptly put it – “half-baked.” -Written by John Hernandez, a Brawley resident
and executive director of Our Roots Multicultural Center.
Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, introduced legislation on Monday to
expand provisions of his Water Shutoff Protection Act, ensuring
more low-income Californians have uninterrupted access to
essential drinking water, especially in times of skyrocketing
costs. … Sen. Dodd has a long history of water-related
legislation. In response to rising water rates, he authored the
Water Shutoff Protection Act of 2018, which extends due process
protections to people at risk of service discontinuance because
they are unable to pay their bills. Among other things, it
affords those served by water systems of 200 customers or more
a 60-day grace period to cover past debt and establishes a
system for making payments. The bill was signed into law by
Gov. Jerry Brown.
On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’re
discussing the future of the Colorado River, one of the
country’s most important sources of fresh water. Forty million
people in seven states, 29 federally recognized tribes, and
northern Mexico depend on the Colorado River, but it’s drying
up fast. It could lose 50 percent of its flow by 2050 if
temperatures continue to rise. The River also irrigates 5.5
million agricultural acres of land, including 15% of American
agriculture and about 90% of the nation’s winter vegetables,
according to Utah Water Resources. How is climate change
affecting the flow of the Colorado River?
Anthem Country Club just replaced all 18 greens and fairways.
That effort is expected to save around 30,000,000 gallons of
water a year. … The course has been closed since last June to
make the changes and just reopened last Friday. The Southern
Nevada Water Authority is requiring golf courses to reduce
their water budgets by 2024 or face a significant penalty.
… A water savings of 30,000,000 gallons of water per
year is equivalent to filling up 600,000 50-gallon bathtubs. If
Anthem Country Club saved that much water a year for 30 years,
the Southern Nevada Water Authority says that would about fill
up the entire Luxor pyramid.
For the first time in almost three decades, the Bureau of Land
Management is preparing a new rule to guide its management of
cows and other livestock grazing on federal lands, a long
divisive issue that has only grown more contentious in the West
after two decades of drought. But advocates on both sides
expressed skepticism that BLM’s update, which is expected to be
released in draft form early next year, will include sweeping
changes to the current regulations in place since 1995. That
would be just fine with the livestock industry, ranchers and
some local government leaders who say BLM has begun reaching
out to them for input over the past several weeks.
A one-inch-diameter pipe carrying drinking water has been
leaking under Highway 128 at 2960 Foothill Blvd. in Calistoga
for more than three months. The leak has caused water to puddle
on the highway. … After several complaints from
residents brought the issue to the city’s attention,
[councilmember Gary] Kraus pulled the issue from the
consent calendar at the Nov. 15 City Council meeting, prompting
a response from Public Works director Derek Raynor.
… When the customary bidding process began back in
August, Raynor estimated the broken pipe was losing 30 gallons
of water a day and continued to leak at that rate though
mid-October. Since then the leak has gotten worse. Since
mid-October, he estimates, the pipe has been leaking at a rate
of two gallons a minute.
As drought dried up rivers and reservoirs across Europe this
year, grim warnings from the past surfaced from the depths.
Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine, read the inscription on a
“Hunger Stone” exposed on a bank of the River Elbe in the Czech
Republic: “If you see me, then weep.” Still, as bad as the
drought appeared on the surface, a new satellite analysis
estimating freshwater availability in Europe shows that “what’s
even worse is the groundwater story that people cannot see,”
says the hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, director of the Global
Institute for Water Security at Canada’s University of
Saskatchewan. Famiglietti and collaborators analyzed two
decades of data from the U.S./German satellite missions known
as GRACE to find the rate of change in freshwater stored on the
European continent.
Fortunes are made and lost on the weather. In 1588 Spain went
to attack England and a storm wiped out its armada. The loss
was so devastating even with its New World holdings Spain never
again arose to its former place of prominence as the greatest
European power. From 1930 to 1936 a drought centered in the
Texas and Oklahoma panhandles caused 2.5 million people to
leave the center of the country for other parts. And while
bad weather can lead to major problems, what about the good
weather? California is blessed with a Mediterranean climate.
Hot summers, cool but not frozen winters, plenty of sunshine
and good soil. And due to the foresight of others since gone,
California’s fickle water supply has been harnessed for the
beneficial use of us all.
Zone 7 Water Agency staff are set to update the Pleasanton City
Council on Tuesday about its regional groundwater modeling and
PFAS contamination, which will serve as foundational
information in future council decision-making on water supply
issues. City staff will also seek approval from council to keep
the city’s wells 5 and 6 offline and to purchase replacement
water from Zone 7 until a water supply alternatives study is
completed and the council can decide what to do about the
city’s long-term water supply. According to the staff report,
“Zone 7 has indicated that it can provide the additional water,
initially through a short-term arrangement. This cost would be
funded by the Zone 7 pass-through to utility ratepayers.”
The Bureau of Reclamation is for the first time legally
signaling its intent to make major cutbacks in water deliveries
from Lake Powell to Lake Mead and the Lower River Basin to
protect the reservoirs that are on the edge of collapse. In
online presentations last week, the bureau said it’s working
through a formal process that could lead to cutting deliveries
from Powell by 2 million to 3 million acre-feet annually and
possibly more. That could happen if states in the Lower River
Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — can’t reach agreement
by Jan. 31 on how to slice their take from the river, the
agency said. The bureau didn’t specify when cuts would begin or
how they would be divided among states, saying those questions
will be answered later. But “it means that we’re looking at
unprecedented reductions in supplies.”
Salmon that spawn in the Sacramento River in the Redding area
are enduring the lowest survival rate on record this year.
About 149,000 young winter-run chinook salmon have made it from
Redding to Red Bluff this year on their annual trek to the
Pacific Ocean, according to data from the University of
Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. In an
average year, about 1.3 million of the winter-run salmon would
be counted near the former Red Bluff Diversion Dam. This is the
second-straight year the number of winter-run salmon migrating
down the Sacramento River to the ocean has been very low,
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Last year, only 557,652 young salmon got as far
as Red Bluff.
Colorado River water was virtually free in the early 20th
Century when pioneers dug the valley’s first canals that would
later transform this desert landscape into a $2 billion
agricultural industry. Imperial Valley farmers now pay about
$20 an acre foot to transport Colorado River water to their
fields, a price unchanged since 2011. … Farmers next door in
San Diego County pay between $799 and $1,109 per acre foot.
Even the Coachella Valley Water District, just north of
Imperial Valley, charges farmers about $37 per acre foot,
nearly twice what the Imperial Irrigation District charges its
farmers…. Because water is so cheap, Imperial Irrigation
District doesn’t make enough selling it to cover expenses on
water revenues alone….
A line of storms that ushered in a chilly, soggy start to
December should continue to move across Northern California
early this week, offering more chances for rain in the Bay Area
and a fresh coat of powder over the Sierra
Nevada. One-third to a half-inch of rain could still fall
over lower-lying portions of the Bay Area from Sunday through
Tuesday morning — further boosting already healthy rainfall
totals over the past several days. Three-quarters of an inch of
rain could fall in that same time span over the coastal
mountains, particularly in Sonoma County, said Brayden Murdock,
a National Weather Service meteorologist. To the east,
another 1 to 2 feet of snow was expected to fall Sunday and
Monday over parts of the Sierra Nevada …
The state Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced Dec. 1
that it would provide 5% of contracted amounts across the board
for agricultural and municipal customers in 2023. That may
sound bad, but the initial allocation announced for 2022 was 0%
for ag and only enough water for municipal contractors to
protect health and safety. At this early stage of the water
year, it’s hard to get too excited one way or another about the
initial allocation, said Ted Page, Chair of the Kern County
Water Agency Board of Directors. … With a La Niña
winter predicted this year, the state is preparing for a fourth
dry year, according to the DWR announcement reprinted below.
In drought-prone northern California, limited water resources,
private water rights allocations, and inefficient transport and
use of water resources causes tension between freshwater
conservation and private landownership (Garibaldi et al. 2020,
Vissers 2017). In the face of a changing climate, drought
curtailments will likely become more frequent, ratchetting
stress on all water users (Vissers 2017). From an engineering
perspective, efficiently managing water rights as arid
landscapes become drier and less predictable will be essential
to preservation of working landscapes and the environment.
Water purchases and leases are a common tool for securing water
rights for environmental purposes. California recently
considered a budget proposal to allocate $1.5 billion to
buy-back private agricultural water rights to mitigate drought
and support ecological uses (Bork et al. 2022).
Last week, the federal government announced it will spend a
quarter of a billion dollars over four years to clean up what
remains of the Salton Sea, a lake in southern California that
has been shrinking due to climate change-driven drought.
For decades, communities living near the sea have been
afflicted by health problems caused by algae blooms and dust
storms spurred by wind kicking up drying sediment from the
sea’s ever-widening shores. The government’s new plan aims to
help remediate some of those health impacts while
simultaneously encouraging farms in the region to reduce their
reliance on water from the Colorado River.
As water in the Western U.S. becomes an increasingly rare
commodity, the driest states are grasping at solutions for an
even drier future — investing heavily in technologies to
maximize the conservation, and creation, of the region’s most
precious resource. … With more than a thousand miles of
Pacific Ocean coastline, California appears to have access to a
wellspring that other arid states lack. The technology to
transform that unlimited sea supply into potable drinking water
has existed for decades, through a process called desalination.
Yet while two new desalination plants have received approvals
in the past couple months, California’s coast isn’t exactly
teeming with such facilities.
California’s water supply crisis has hit a tipping point, with
impacts spreading far and wide, reaching local communities and
critical industries, putting us once again in jeopardy. This is
a pivotal moment in the state’s future – one in which bold
political leadership will emerge, or future generations will
suffer. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent announcement on his new
water supply plan, is encouraging that leadership is
materializing, but the proof is in the pudding. The new
plan, California’s Water Supply Strategy: Adapting to a
Hotter, Drier Future, underscores the significant challenges we
face as a result of a changing climate, the need to transform
the current water system, and the importance of significantly
investing in California water systems to secure the future of
California’s water supply and reliability. -Written by Gary Arant, General Manager at Valley
Center Municipal Water District; and Kimberly
Thorner, the General Manager at Olivenhain Municipal Water
District.
Several inches of rain forecast across parts of the Southwest
through Monday will benefit parched areas of the desert. Still,
while helpful to drought-stricken areas, the heavy rainfall is
also causing some localized flooding in Arizona. On Saturday,
Phoenix Sky-Harbor International Airport recorded .76 inches of
rain, making it the wettest day of 2022 for the city. FOX
Forecast Center meteorologists say this rainfall is
notable because it comes after the typical monsoon
season when the average amount of rain for the entire
month of December is .74 inches.
On the surface, these would appear to be challenging times for
investors in San Dimas-based water utility holding company
American States Water Co. Its water utility subsidiary, Golden
State Water, has several systems along California’s Central
Coast, one of the regions hardest hit by the ongoing drought,
which in turn has forced the utility to pay more for imported
water. Even more challenging is a year-long delay in Golden
State Water’s rate case before the California Public Utilities
Commission. The case is supposed to set water rates for this
year through 2024. Yet as 2022 draws to a close, the case is
still lingering before the commission, and a decision is not
expected until the first quarter of next year.
California water agencies that serve 27 million people will get
just 5% of what they requested from the state to start 2023,
water officials announced Thursday. The news of limited
water comes as California concludes its driest three-year
stretch on record and as water managers brace for a fourth
year with below-average precipitation. But if the winter is
wetter than expected, the state could boost how much supply it
plans to give out — as it did last year when allocations
started at 0% and ended the winter at 5%. Absent an end to
the drought, water-saving measures are poised to continue,
including calls for people to rip up decorative grass, limit
outdoor watering, take shorter showers and run dishwashers only
when full.
The winter storm that dropped rain across the Bay Area dumped
snow on the Sierras and ski resorts across Tahoe. Heavy snow
and slick roads also made for dangerous driving conditions but
the precipitation is a boon for California’s water
supply. Building on gains during a storm in early
November, this latest storm brought statewide snowpack up to
106% of normal for December 1, according to the California
Department of Water Resources. The snow is beneficial but
it’s still early in the season, said Andrew Schwartz, the lead
scientist at UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory. The
previous water year, for example, started out with plentiful
rains during October and December 2021 but were followed by
an extremely dry start to 2022.
It’s hard to overstate how crucial this snow season is for the
western United States. Regions such as the West that receive a
great deal of their precipitation in the form of snow face a
number of challenges when snow droughts occur, including
shrinking water supplies. And western water supplies are truly
shrinking as some states are facing their second or third
drought year in a row and a large part of the region is stuck
in a 20+ year megadrought. Hanging over all of this is climate
change–influenced aridification in the Southwest that is
increasing evaporative demand, causing water supplies to
dwindle from rising temperatures even when there is adequate
precipitation.
A bipartisan bill meant to address declining saline lakes in
the West, including the Great Salt Lake, passed the U.S. Senate
with unanimous approval Wednesday. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah,
introduced and co-sponsored the Saline Lake Ecosystems in the
Great Basin States Program Act with Democratic Sens. Jeff
Merkley of Oregon, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Catherine Cortez
Masto of Nevada, Roy Wyden of Oregon and Diane Feinstein of
California. The bill earmarks $5 million each year over five
years for the U.S. Geological Survey to study saline lakes
throughout the Great
Basin…. Owens and Mono lakes in
California are also named, which water diversions have turned
into sources of toxic and dangerous blowing dust.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has
completed the removal of a drought salinity barrier from the
West False River in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The
barrier was installed in June 2021 to prevent saltwater
intrusion with less fresh water from upstream reservoirs and
streams flowing into the Delta during California’s ongoing
extreme drought conditions. DWR was required to remove
the structure by November 30 to comply with environmental
permits. … The barrier was initially constructed in response
to Governor Newsom’s April 21, 2021 state of emergency
proclamation directing the Department to initiate actions
necessary to prepare for and address potential Delta salinity
issues during prolonged drought conditions.
The first of seven monthly Kern River Snow and Water reports
put out by water watcher Scott Williams arrived in email boxes
Dec. 1 and the news was, fairly, well – “eh.” The watershed is
below average in terms of precipitation but not that below
average, according to Williams’ report, which uses a
compilation of data from multiple public websites. He typically
publishes the monthly updates based on water data from Nov. 1
through May 31. The North Fork of the Kern has 3.71 inches of
precip, or 86% of average, and the South Fork has 1.82 inches,
or 73 percent of average, according to the report. With storms
arriving this week, there’s a glimmer of hope for more. But
Williams’ report also notes there’s a 76% chance of a La Niña
winter this year, which typically means drier weather.
As the nation learned that the midterm election led to a change
in the balance of power in the next U.S. Congress, a delegation
of California Farm Bureau leaders met with representatives
during an advocacy trip to Washington, D.C., to discuss
pressing issues affecting agriculture. … Farm Bureau
executives, the organization’s Leadership Farm Bureau class and
county leaders were joined by the organization’s federal policy
team and met face to face with lawmakers Nov. 14-17 in the
nation’s capital. Discussions focused on issues including
California’s ongoing drought, water, labor and trade, as well
as the next federal farm bill.
The Colorado River Compact is 100 years old. A University of
Arizona conference and the upcoming Colorado River Water Users
Association will mark the anniversary. But there’s no reason to
celebrate. Twenty-two years into a drought and with reservoirs
at all-time lows, the federal government may soon intervene in
the states’ management of the river. The Compact has failed.
Don’t blame the river. We need a new system that manages with
the river and provides all users with fair shares. In 1922, the
seven Colorado Basin states used an optimistic estimate of the
river’s annual flow to allocate the waters. The states chose
the biggest estimate because that made it easy to agree.
Everyone could pretend the river could satisfy all anticipated
demands. That was the first mistake. -Written by Karl Flessa, an Arizona resident since
1977 and an emeritus professor of geosciences at the
University of Arizona.
When drought strikes, California farmers often pump water from
underground aquifers to water their crops. But increasingly dry
conditions are straining that resource. … [David
Freyberg of Stanford University] says many people are looking
at ways to replenish the state’s dwindling groundwater
supplies. In California, a lot of water typically comes
from winter snow that falls high in the mountains.
During warmer months, that snow melts and trickles down to
farmland. But as the climate warms, more precipitation is
falling as rain instead of snow. So it rushes into rivers and
runs past many areas where it’s needed.
Kelly Gleave converted his grass lawn to xeriscape in April. In
June, he and his wife saw a 3,000 gallon reduction in their
water use. “For me, it was less about maintaining the grass and
it was more about the fact that the Valley is getting a lot of
people and we need to do more to conserve water,” said Gleave,
who’s one of 450 Mesa homeowners who have taken advantage of
the city’s grass-to-xeriscape incentive. The U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation announced in August that deliveries of Colorado
River water – the majority of which is used for agriculture –
to Arizona would be cut an additional 21% next year. According
to the bureau, megadrought and low runoff conditions
accelerated by climate change have resulted in record low water
levels in Lakes Powell and Mead, the two largest reservoirs in
the country.
A long-standing drought in the American Southwest is getting
worse by the day, threatening reservoirs and groundwater
supplies. And the first sign of “serious damage” could be a
whirlpool, according to the operators of the nation’s
second-largest reservoir, Lake Powell, reports the Washington
Post. Lake Powell is already a quarter of its size and a drop
in the water level of another 38 feet down the concrete face of
the 710-foot Glenn Canyon Dam would put the surface of the
reservoir close to the tops of eight underwater openings that
allow river water to pass through the hydroelectric dam.
Savannah Barteau dropped out of college to become a rancher
nearly nine years ago. Now, the 26-year-old Flagstaff native
runs the beef business at Date Creek Ranch outside Wickenburg
with her husband. … Date Creek Ranch still uses
Knight’s grazing management techniques. It sells beef locally
instead of transporting cattle out of state. It uses water from
the creek instead of relying on groundwater or the Colorado
River. The ranch’s herd is only 120 head because the fewer
cattle on pastures, the better. In addition, Date Creek Ranch
recently installed solar panels that provide power to
structures on the property, irrigation and beef freezers.
Corn goes back to their very creation story. As the Hopi people
emerged into this world, the Creator gave them three things: a
gourd of water, a planting stick and a short ear of blue corn.
… Clark grows heirloom Hopi blue, gray, red and white
corn in the valley between First Mesa and Second Mesa in the
middle of the 2,532 square mile Hopi Reservation in northern
Arizona. The seeds that he plants have been cultivated over
countless generations to grow in this dry climate of the high
desert. He, like most Hopi farmers, uses traditional dryland
farming methods in which, rather than irrigating crops, he
relies solely on snowmelt and the rain that falls directly on
his fields. … But now, more than two decades into the
worst drought in the southwestern United States in a millennia,
making the desert bloom is harder than ever.
Things are popping in Baja’s emerging wine scene. Earlier this
century, there were only a dozen or so wineries. Now, there are
almost 200. By all indications, Valle de Guadalupe is ready to
take its place among the world-class gastronomic
destinations. But, under the surface, there’s something
larger lurking. “The big problem today is lack of water,”
says Camillo Magoni, the 82-year-old winemaker of Casa
Magoni, who’s worked 58 harvests in Baja. … San Diego
County’s own winegrowers are also facing a water crisis.
… With all the crises facing the world, some might
dismiss the issue of growing grapes for premium wine to be a
minor, bougie, first-world problem. But wine has always been a
window into much larger farming issues.
It’s looking likely December will bring a series of storms to
Northern California, raising hopes for a wetter winter than
last year. … The southern Cascades including Mount
Shasta could see 10 to 30 inches of snow, while the Sierra
Nevada range could see one to three feet…. The state is
still looking to narrow the gap from the last dismal water
year. The California Drought Monitor map updated Nov.
23 shows most of California in severe drought or worse,
with a significant portion of most of the Central Valley and
Southern California at exceptional drought….[Eric Kurth, a
National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento,] said
compared to last year, when the state had received around 16
inches of total precipitation by this time, this year is very
behind — measuring at just 4.3 inches or half of normal
precipitation as of Wednesday.
The first sign of serious trouble for the drought-stricken
American Southwest could be a whirlpool. It could happen if the
surface of Lake Powell, a man-made reservoir along the Colorado
River that’s already a quarter of its former size, drops
another 38 feet down the concrete face of the 710-foot Glen
Canyon Dam here. … The normally placid Lake Powell, the
nation’s second-largest reservoir, could suddenly transform
into something resembling a funnel, with water circling the
openings, the dam’s operators say. If that
happens, the massive turbines that generate electricity
for 4.5 million people would have to shut down — after nearly
60 years of use — or risk destruction from air bubbles.
… Such an outcome — known as a “minimum power pool” —
was once unfathomable here. Now, the federal government
projects that day could come as soon as July.
The use of smart meters to enforce water restrictions could
encourage widespread conservation — but not without local
backlash, a new study has found. Amid California’s
ongoing drought, researchers partnered with the city of Fresno
in summer 2018 to access and identify water violations via
household meter data. While a resulting surge in fines
brought a dramatic reduction in both water use and violations,
a barrage of complaints thwarted the program’s survival,
according to the study, released on Wednesday by the
University of Chicago’s Energy & Environment Lab.
Hear what may be ahead for California’s water supply in 2023 as
well as the latest improvements to snowmelt runoff forecasts at
our Winter
Outlook Workshop next Thursday, Dec.
8 in Southern California. The one-day workshop in
Irvine will include insight into whether La Niña conditions
projected to persist into this winter really mean anything as a
predictor in the new reality of climate whiplash. You also
will learn about what is and isn’t known in forecasting winter
precipitation weeks to months ahead, the skill of present
forecasts and ongoing research to develop predictive
ability. This event is ideal for anyone involved in
managing, modeling or forecasting water resources or anyone
simply interested in hearing the latest science.
Several public interest groups sued the City of Bakersfield
Nov. 30 alleging the city has been derelict in its operation of
the Kern River by diverting most of its flows to agriculture
and other uses leaving a dry riverbed through the heart of
town. … Even though the city operates the river per a century
of agreements and judicial decrees, the lawsuit states, the
city still has an obligation to study the harm those diversions
may cause to the environment, fisheries and even the
recreational value of a flowing river. The case hinges on a
concept known as the “public trust,” under which the state
holds all natural resources, including water, in trust for the
most “beneficial use” for the public. That includes water
covered by 100-year-old rights, which includes most of the
rights to waters on the Kern.
As California confronts another extended drought and its
impacts, it is more obvious than ever that the state has failed
to address its water supply and management challenges for far
too long. The immediate fallout of the unprecedented
situation we find ourselves in is frightening: local residents
with wells running dry; urban water rationing and critical
shortages; massive fallowing of some of the nation’s most
productive agricultural land and the resulting impacts on food
prices; and significant uncertainty about our ability to adapt
to the future. The long-term effects are even more
dire. The viability of California’s $3.4 trillion economy
is at stake. -Written by Tom Coleman, General Manager at Rowland
Water District; and Federico Barajas, Executive Director
of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority.
In a warming and drying California, water agencies across the
state are looking for new water sources and trying to better
utilize the ones they have. Pacifica has a potential source of
water not available to many communities: the drippy gray
moisture that blows ashore in the form of fog. Fog is composed
of tiny water droplets; together, a cubic mile of fog can carry
some 56,000 gallons of water. The North Coast County Water
District … installed experimental fog-catchers over the
summer at three district sites … The fog-catching
devices are simple: a 1-meter square of polyethylene mesh
stretched over a frame and installed facing into the prevailing
wind. When the fog blows in, the mesh collects droplets of
water like a giant spider web. The drops fall into a collecting
trough below and flow through a gauge that measures the amount
of water.
Nearly 20% of California’s urban water agencies reported they
could see significant water shortages in the coming months as
the state braces for a potential fourth consecutive year of
drought. After surveying urban water agencies representing
roughly 90% of the state’s population, the California
Department of Water Resources early this week released its
first annual water supply and demand report that assesses how
the state is faring with water supply amid unrelenting drought
conditions. The assessment, which includes annual data through
July 1, found that while a vast majority – 82% – of urban water
suppliers who submitted reports say they have enough water to
meet projected demand in the coming year, around 18% – 73 out
of the 414 water suppliers – reported they will soon face
potential shortages.
At a special meeting of California’s Imperial Irrigation
District this week, the influential water agency voted 3-2 to
sign an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the
California Natural Resources Agency and the Coachella Valley
Water District regarding the management of the Salton Sea. The
deal, which would provide $250 million for restoration, is by
far the largest injection of federal funds to date for the
ailing sea. The federal funds will go toward environmentally
beneficial projects, including air quality improvements, public
health programs and ecosystem restoration projects.
Over the last four decades, the area covered by lakes globally
has grown by close to 18,000 square miles, an expanse nearly
twice the size of Lake Erie. Scientists used satellite imagery
and artificial intelligence to map 3.4 million lakes around the
world between 1984 and 2019, finding that lake area grew as
reservoirs expanded and rising temperatures melted glaciers and
permafrost, particularly in Greenland, the Rocky Mountains, and
the Tibetan Plateau. Growth in these regions offset losses in
central Asia, northern China, southern Australia, and the more
arid parts of the U.S. West, where drought and water drawdowns
sapped lakes. The findings were published in Nature
Communications.
Policy researchers are hopeful the agricultural industry in
California will continue to thrive with continued adaptation.
But conditions are shaping up for another dry year and the
Colorado River shortage is creating challenges that will
require more changes for growers and landowners.
This has been an unprecedented year for extreme heat events.
Californians experienced several heat waves throughout the
summer, all-time temperature records were broken across the
state, and the state’s power grid was pushed to its limit. Now
that winter is approaching, California has a good opportunity
to prepare for the extreme heat that will return next summer
and in future years. As climate change progresses, extreme heat
events will become more frequent, more severe, and longer in
duration. They will also pose major public health risks:
extreme heat can exacerbate problems like respiratory and
cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, and put sensitive
populations like the elderly, children, manual laborers, and
people experiencing homelessness at risk.
The Bureau of Land Management on Nov. 15 called for its state
offices to work with state wildlife agencies and tribes to
preserve and improve habitat connectivity – the ability of fish
and wildlife to move freely across landscapes and seasonal
ranges. The agency says this guidance will translate to
activities like removing unnecessary fencing and other
barriers, installing signs to prevent vehicle-wildlife
collisions, and pursuing landscape restoration projects.
Russell Kuhlman, executive director of the Nevada Wildlife
Federation, said this kind of work is increasingly urgent
across the drought-stricken West.
Fort Bragg City Council unanimously approved a plan Monday
night to purchase a 582-acre parcel of land from Mendocino
Coast Recreation and Park District for $2,420,579, to build
three reservoirs on around 30 acres. The city hopes to
establish a community forest on the remaining 550 acres of
land, preserving the habitat there through a deed restriction
or conservation easement. This vision would ensure the property
is “utilized to every inch of its capacity,” councilmember
Marcia Rafanan said ahead of the approval. Fort Bragg hopes to
install three reservoirs to store a potential total of 44
million gallons of water, in a location that connects
conveniently to treatment plant infrastructure and high-power
PG&E transmission lines.
On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss the California
Coastal Commission’s recent approval of a controversial
desalination plant in Monterey County. The plan was approved 9
years after it was first proposed, following 13 hours of debate
at a public hearing. Proponents of the plan view desalination
as a critical source of drinking water in a drought-starved
region. Environmental justice advocates argue the plant could
raise costs for low income residents and harm marine life and
other wildlife habitats. What is the future for desalination in
the west, during an era of climate-induced mega-droughts?
Most of California’s urban water agencies believe they have
enough supplies to last through another seven months of
drought, but nearly 20% of them — including many in Southern
California — say they could be facing significant shortages,
according to a new state report. The California Department of
Water Resource’s first annual water supply and demand
assessment surveyed the state’s urban water agencies to see how
they are managing tight supplies through conservation efforts
and improved drought planning. … [Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California] spokeswoman Rebecca Kimitch added
that deteriorating conditions on the Colorado
River mean the rest of Southern California could also see
calls for increased conservation in the coming months.
Boosting what has been a mediocre start so far to the winter
season, a storm from the Pacific Northwest is expected to bring
widespread rain to the Bay Area early Thursday and blanket the
Sierra Nevada with up to 3 feet of new snow. … The
storm system would be the first significant rain or snow in
Northern California in more than three weeks, and comes as the
state is entering its fourth year of drought. A hoped-for storm
fizzled last weekend, but this one is on track, forecasters
say….California desperately needs a sustained pattern of rain
and snow this winter. The last three years have been the driest
three-year period statewide since records began in the 1800s.
Southern California’s powerful Imperial Irrigation District
voted late Tuesday 3-2 to ink an agreement with federal and
state officials that could yield as much as $250 million for
Salton Sea restoration projects in exchange for not using
another 250,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water… The vote
came despite livid objections from Imperial County farmers and
environmental groups, who questioned why such a major agreement
was being voted on just 24 hours after it was made public,
and four days before two newly elected board members are slated
to be sworn in to the five-member panel….But director JB
Hamby, agreeing with a majority of the board and the district’s
general manager and water director said, “there is no down
side” to the agreement … because while it does not bind
the district to cuts, it guarantees critical federal support if
cuts are implemented.
Kings County Supervisors took a crack at a long-promised push
to restrict the ability of swashbuckling Kings County farming
giants to sell their groundwater to far-flung southern
California locales. Tuesday, the Kings County Board of
Supervisors approved the Groundwater Export Ordinance, which
was initially conceived to reign-in major water players in the
area, including water maven John Vidovich. Instead, based
on lingering commentary from local farmers, it may only create
additional red tape with the lack of teeth necessary to stop
outsiders from buying up water rights for the express purpose
of selling the resources to Southern California water agencies.
Four small Bay Area drinking water systems will receive
millions of dollars as part of California’s effort to protect
water deliveries as the drought drags into its fourth year. On
Tuesday, the California Department of Water Resources announced
$44 million in statewide Small Community Drought Relief Program
grants about $6.5 million of which is earmarked for four water
systems in Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties. The
program is aimed at small systems with fewer than 3,000 service
connections that are most likely to suffer from aging
infrastructure and often rely on a single source of water.
“Small communities are the most vulnerable to the impacts of
our new hotter, drier climate and lack the resources to
immediately deal with these challenges,” DWR Director Karla
Nemeth said in a news release.
Tucson Water is offering to leave “significant volumes” of its
annual Central Arizona Project water supply in the Colorado
River for the next three years in return for financial
compensation from the federal government.But its letter to the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation making that offer didn’t propose a
specific cut to the city’s annual CAP allocation. Supplying
144,191 acre-feet a year to Tucson Water, CAP provides
virtually all of the drinking water served to more than 730,000
utility customers. Tucson has enough left over from that supply
after serving those customers to recharge nearly one-third of
the water into the ground to store for future use.
It’s not easy enforcing water regulations in the West. Just ask
the officials in California who have been trying for almost a
decade to penalize a man who took water from the river system
that feeds San Francisco and bottled it for sale to stores like
Starbucks. It sounds like a tall tale, but it’s
illustrative of just how hard it is to stop scofflaws from
using water the rest of the state needs during a water crisis.
In 2015, at the height of a severe drought, California’s state
water agency received a series of complaints about water theft
on a small tributary of the Tuolumne River, the source of the
Hetch Hetchy reservoir that supplies most of San Francisco’s
water. G. Scott Fahey, the owner of a water bottling
company called Sugar Pine Spring Water, was siphoning water
from the spring and loading it on trucks, the complainants
said.
With the brassy stutter of a rusty wheel whizzing downhill, an
American coot announces itself from the shores of Pinto Lake as
Kendra Hayashi scoops water from the side of the dock. Today,
the sample in her glass bottle looks mostly clear, as does the
liquid buoying the bird. But three weeks earlier, she says, the
lake’s surface bloomed with potentially toxic algae. The coots
and mallards didn’t seem to notice. … Hayashi manages a lab
at UC Santa Cruz that monitors microcystin—a toxin produced by
algae in the genus Microcystis—in Watsonville’s Pinto Lake.
Though it once had among the highest measured levels of
microcystin of any freshwater body on earth, the lake hasn’t
had a toxic event in years, thanks to local cleanup efforts.
Climate change poses a significant threat for all of
agriculture, but it has particularly disruptive potential for
the wine industry. This is because wine quality is closely
linked to weather and quality is linked to value. … There are
many potential impacts to consider. Climate Change will
probably mean more frequent and severe droughts such as the one
that the California is currently experiencing. The
availability of ground or surface water varies greatly between
regions in the state, but it is possible that this issue will
inhibit any further planting and render some vineyards
inoperable. Severe temperature spikes can lead to sunburning
and yield/quality loss for the fruit and those events are
likely to become more common.
It is imperative more now than ever for residents of Sonoma
County to be aware of exactly how our groundwater resources are
being used. Understanding how much water is being pumped will
enable actual protections for our residential users that are
increasingly experiencing dry wells. In addition, knowledge of
groundwater pumping from wells will also ensure that the
important public trust resources we all hold dear are not
adversely impacted. It is time for these harmful practices to
come to an end. By challenging the County to fulfill their
public trust obligations in a robust and transparent way, we
can begin to rectify some of these past and ongoing harms, and
bring our groundwater use in line with the increasing realities
of climate change.
Federal water managers on Monday warned California cities and
industrial users receiving water from the Central Valley
Project to prepare for a fourth year of drought and possibly
“extremely limited water supply” during 2023. The U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation, an agency of the Interior
Department that oversees water resource management, said
drought conditions in California have persisted despite early
storms this month, and warned of looming water conservation
actions. … The agency said water storage is near
historic lows in the reservoirs it oversees in the state, which
irrigate more than 3 million acres of land in central
California and supply major urban centers in the Greater
Sacramento and San Francisco Bay areas. The project’s water
provides supplies for approximately 2.5 million people per
year.
The federal government said Monday it will spend $250 million
over four years on environmental cleanup and restoration work
around a drying Southern California lake that’s fed by the
depleted Colorado River. The future of the Salton Sea — and who
is financially responsible for it — has been a key issue in
discussions over how to stave off a crisis in the Colorado
River. The lake was formed in 1905 when the river overflowed,
creating a resort destination that slowly morphed into an
environmental disaster as water levels receded, exposing
residents to harmful dust and reducing wildlife habitat. The
lake is largely fed by runoff from farms in California’s
Imperial Valley, who use Colorado River water to grow many of
the nation’s winter vegetables as well as feed crops such as
alfalfa.
December is cutting in line and bringing its entourage of rain,
wind and snow to Northern California this week. Bay Area
residents are already getting a taste of this
upcoming shift in the weather pattern as bitter, cold air
sweeps into the region today. This cold air will be
followed up by a winter storm that will bring strong winds and
rounds of rain to most of Northern California…. The
bitter cold air mass settling in Tuesday will help keep the
snowline in the Sierra Nevada close to 1,000 feet through the
rest of the week…. This means that parts of the Sierra
Nevada, including Donner Pass and several ski resorts above
7,000 feet like Kirkwood and Palisades could end up seeing as
much as 4 feet of snow between Thursday and Friday.
Today on Giving Tuesday, a global day of philanthropy, you can
support impartial education and informed decision-making on
water resources in California and the West by making a tax-deductible donation to the
Water Education Foundation. Your support ensures that our
45-year legacy of producing in-depth news, educational
workshops and accessible information on water reaches new
heights in 2023.
As directed by 2018 legislation, the Department of Water
Resources (DWR) today submitted a first report to the State
Water Resources Control Board summarizing how urban water
districts assess the adequacy of their supplies over the next
seven months. Broadly, the assessments show the
importance of conservation by individual Californians to help
suppliers meet demands through June 30, 2023. In this
year’s assessments, urban water suppliers indicate that they
will rely on either continued conservation or more aggressive
actions to meet demand through June 30, 2023, if dry conditions
persist. They report that they can ensure adequate water
supplies through water-saving strategies, such as requiring
customers to limit outdoor water and providing leak detection
and repair services.
The intersection of freshwater and climate is a frequently
ignored but critical element of the climate problem, according
to a new study from Sweden that explores the link and offers
solutions that will help lower emissions. Two years in
the making, the study, “The Essential Drop to Reach Net-Zero:
Unpacking Freshwater’s Role in Climate Change Mitigation,”
published by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, identifies
forests and freshwater wetlands as a crucial depository of
carbon. More than 30 percent of estimated global carbon
emissions are sequestered in wetlands. So the need to protect
and restore them is urgent.
California’s newest infrastructure project will hit two
proverbial climate birds with one stone. And Los Angeles city
officials just decided last week to try one of its own. The
plan is to cover some of California’s exposed water canals with
solar panels. It will prevent evaporation amidst the state’s
historic drought. It will also create renewable energy as the
state attempts to meet lofty decarbonization goals. The idea
gained traction in California after researchers at UC Merced
studied the possibility on the state’s canals last year.
“If we put solar panels over all 4000 miles of California’s
open canals, we estimated we could save 65 billion gallons of
water annually,” says Brandi McKuin, who led the study. “That’s
enough for the residential water needs of 2 million people –
enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland.”
Rumors sometimes lead to news stories and sometimes not. In the
case of Slippery Rock Ranch — TV mogul Dick Wolf’s property in
the Goleta foothills — the gossip was that Montecito residents
were filling their swimming pools with water from the ranch’s
aquifers. While a publicist with the ranch stated last
week that Slippery Rock was not selling water or filling
Montecito swimming pools, the Goleta Water District
confirmed that they quietly settled a long-simmering
water dispute with the Law & Order creator in
the sum of $10 million. In Santa Barbara Superior Court,
Slippery Rock Ranch and the Goleta Water District had disputed
since 2015 over possession of the rainwater sluicing off and
infiltrating down under the ranch. The Water District pointed
out that the ranch — 740 acres above the border of Los Padres
National Forest — was in a watershed that contributed to the
district’s Goleta Groundwater Basin.
The Colorado River has long been regarded as the “lifeline of
the Southwest.” It supplies water to 40 million people in
seven states, 29 Native American tribes and parts of
Mexico. Farmers use it to irrigate nearly 5.5 million acres of
agricultural land. One hundred years ago this month, the
signing of the Colorado River Compact laid the foundation for
how water from the river is used today. But the signers of the
1922 agreement had no way of knowing what the future would
bring. Decades of overuse because of faulty science and
population growth—along with climate change—have all reduced
the river’s flow and the water levels in the nation’s largest
reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Now, the basin is facing
a crisis.
America’s west is experiencing the worst drought in 1,200
years. The Colorado River is at record lows, threatening the
livelihoods of 40 million people who rely on the river
everyday. And though the government could impose additional
water supply cuts, some Arizona communities are already feeling
the effects. Arizona resident Karen Nabity has appreciated
living in Rio Verde Foothills, about an hour northeast of
Phoenix. That is, until her surroundings began to run dry.
According to reports, Maricopa County, which includes the Rio
Verde Foothills, is the fastest-growing in the nation.
The California Coastal Commission recently approved the
construction of two more desalination plants, one near
Monterey, and one by Dana Point. This adds to the four already
providing drinking water in the state. But in 2020, this same
commission advised not to build the Monterey plant. What
changed? The state has faced its driest three years on
record, and it needs more potable water for its almost 40
million residents, especially the ones living on the coast.
… Many countries in the Middle East, and even parts of
the United States, rely almost exclusively on desalinated
water, which is ocean water with the salt and other impurities
removed. Nevertheless, there are significant costs in terms of
energy needed for the desalination process and environmental
damage. In the case of the plant near Monterey, local residents
complained about other factors too.
The San Francisco Bay is the largest estuary in Western North
America and a key link in the 4,000-mile Pacific Flyway, one of
the primary migratory routes used by birds to move north and
south across the continent. It’s a place where birds come to
rest and refuel for their long trip, or breed and nest the next
generation. But in the span of a few human generations, 90% of
California’s wetlands have disappeared to development and
agriculture, endangering migrating and local birds. Now drought
and sea level rise are further diminishing important bird
habitats. As climate change becomes a bigger threat to the Bay
Area’s local and migratory birds, scientists and
conservationists work to help habitats adapt to climate change
to ensure bird’s futures.
Millions of people in the Horn of Africa – a region at the
intersection of some of the worst impacts of climate change,
recurring humanitarian crises and insecurity – are facing the
driest conditions in four decades along with extreme food
shortages. The top UN World Food Programme (WFP) official in
the region, Michael Dunford, is warning that the situation
there is likely to get worse before it improves. … He
warned that famine is still a threat, and while WFP was
watching the situation closely, “we may see before the end of
this year, or perhaps early next, a declaration of pockets of
famine in parts of Somalia. What scares me most is that until
we have serious rains, the drought will continue, and
we could see a situation [of possible famine] replicated in
some of the neighboring countries as well.”
After three years of virtual events, the PPIC Water Policy
Center’s annual fall conference made a welcome return to an
in-person format in Sacramento on Friday, November 18. The
half-day event began with a welcome from PPIC Water Policy
Center assistant director Caity Peterson and a presentation by
senior fellow Jeffrey Mount. “The elephant in the room is that
conditions have changed,” said Mount. “We’re no longer talking
about some future existential threat….we have now moved into
the era of the hot drought.” Hotter droughts, he said, coupled
with a thirstier atmosphere, are testing California’s water
system as never before.
The West uses too much water. For such a simple problem, the
obvious solution — use less — lies frustratingly out of reach.
That inability to change may seem hard to understand, but the
root of the problem becomes clearer if we consider the role of
the West in the historical development of the United States:
The purpose of our system of “free water” — heavily subsidized
water for irrigation — was to provide opportunities to
settlers. … With the New Deal, the Bureau of Reclamation
came into its own: Hoover Dam, completed in 1935 as the world’s
largest dam, served as a symbol for the country’s ability to
conquer nature. Progressives championed desert reclamation at
the turn of the century, but the federal government’s
willingness to build infrastructure and give water away on
extravagantly lenient terms was just as appealing for
conservatives after World War II. -Written by Revelator contributor Nate Housley.
As Colorado River water users prepare to meet in Las Vegas next
month, the reality they face is one of growing uncertainty with
few simple options left on the negotiating table. The math is
well understood: There are more demands for the river than
there is water coming into its reservoirs. But cutting
back at the scale necessary — and on a voluntary basis — has
proven painstakingly difficult this year as top officials from
across the Colorado River watershed have failed to reach a
settlement. If the cuts are inevitable based on physical
realities, questions remain about what form they will take.
Will they be voluntary? Mandatory? Both? And how would they be
enforced?
Thomas Birmingham, general manager of the massive Westlands
Water District since 2000, Wednesday announced plans to step
down at the end of 2022. His announcement follows the election
of four new members to the Westlands Board of Directors on Nov.
8 who would give a so-called “change coalition” a solid
majority of six seats on the nine-member board. The top
priority for the coalition is “a change in leadership,”
according to Sarah Woolf, who along with Jon Reiter helped
coordinate a group of increasingly frustrated Westlands farmers
to run the slate of change candidates, SJV Water
reported.
Drought, human-caused climate change, invasive species and a
“legacy” of environmental issues are permanently altering
California’s landscape and placing some communities and
ecosystems at increasing risk, a panel of experts told water
officials recently. Invasive species and decades of disruptions
from massive land and water developments are partly responsible
for a continuous decline in native California species, experts
told the California Water Commission on Nov. 16. Also, rural
communities, many of whom are lower income and rely on
privately owned wells, are disproportionately contending with
water contamination and scarcity amid recurring cycles of
drought, experts said.
A lot has changed for California’s reservoirs over the last
five years. In April 2017, then-Governor Jerry Brown issued an
executive order that declared California’s drought state of
emergency over in most counties (Fresno, Kings, Tulare and
Tuolumne counties were initially excluded). The emergency order
had been in place since 2014 following several years of
historic drought conditions. … Shasta is currently
at 31% capacity, down from its historical capacity of 57%
this time of year. Storage level graphs from the
California Department of Water Resources show today’s water
level hovering above 2014’s historically low levels.
As California awakens to the worsening risk of extreme climate
events, researchers are shedding new light on last year’s
anomalous and extreme Pacific Northwest heat wave. One study
published this week said such heat waves could become 20 times
more likely to occur if current carbon emissions continue
unabated. … The nine-day event in late June and early
July 2021 seared parts of Northern California, Oregon,
Washington and British Columbia, where Canada saw its highest
temperature on record, 121.3 degrees. The heat wave claimed
hundreds of lives, sparked several devastating wildfires and
killed an estimated 1 billion sea creatures. … In
California and other parts of the western United States,
increasing heat, drought and aridification are
contributing to long-term drying of soils, which means there’s
less water to be evaporated into the air.
The San Joaquin River is a vital source of water for
agriculture and the environment and it is also home to a unique
program that hopes to restore native fish runs. It is a complex
program and SJV Water was fortunate to take advantage of a tour
offered through the Water Education Foundation Nov. 2-3 that
helps break down the various aspects of restoration efforts.
The restoration program is a nearly one billion dollar endeavor
to restore spring-run Chinook salmon to the river which went
extinct there after Friant Dam and other obstructions were
built.
As California prepares for a fourth consecutive year of drought
and farmland across the Golden State increasingly goes idle,
growers continue to face mounting economic challenges. In a new
report about the financial toll of the state’s extreme drought
conditions, researchers estimated that the state’s irrigated
farmland dropped by 752,000 acres, or nearly 10%, from 2019 to
2022. Fields meant to harvest rice, almonds and other crops are
instead going unplanted, causing the level of fallowed land
across California to surpass the prior peak seen during the
state’s last drought that ran from 2012 to 2016. As a result,
the researchers found, California crop revenues fell by $1.7
billion, or 4.6%, during that time …
California already has one of the most variable climates in the
United States, and it’s getting more extreme. Our “weather
whiplash,” as it’s becoming known, is increasingly marked by
long periods of warm, dry conditions punctuated by stronger and
wetter atmospheric river storms. … Recognizing the
influence of atmospheric rivers on California’s changing
climate, Yuba Water is working with the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at
UC San Diego, the California Department of Water Resources, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others to
implement Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations in the
Yuba and Feather river watersheds. FIRO is a flexible water
management strategy that uses improved weather and water
forecasts …
Without any regard to impacts on wildlife, fire danger, rural
residents or recreational users at Loveland Reservoir near
Alpine in San Diego’s East County, the Sweetwater Water
Authority (SWA) on November 16 began draining down the lake
with an intent to reduce it to “dead pool” level – less than
one-half of one percent of the reservoir’s capacity, once
draining is completed over the next couple of weeks or so. The
water is being piped to Sweetwater Reservoir in Otay Mesa. From
there, it will be used to provide drinking water and other
water needs to residents in the South Bay communities of Chula
Vista, National City and Bonita. -Written by Miriam Raftery.
The entire Mississippi River basin is experiencing drought
conditions that are being compared to the Dust Bowl days of the
1930s. The scenes — from exposed shipwrecks to sand dunes
cropping up where the river used to flow — are surreal, and
people from New Orleans to the Upper Midwest are getting
nervous. I’m increasingly being asked: Is this the future of
the Mississippi? And what would that mean for the world’s food
supply — 92% of all U.S. agricultural exports are produced in
the Mississippi River basin? Underpinning these questions is
the same fear: Will the Mississippi turn into a new Colorado
River—which is so oversubscribed it never reaches its historic
delta anymore? -Written by John Sabo, director of ByWater Institute at
Tulane University, avid fly fisherman.
Today at AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an
Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced it will be
water positive (water+) by 2030, returning more water to
communities than it uses in its direct operations. The company
also announced its 2021 global water use efficiency (WUE)
metric of 0.25 liters of water per kilowatt-hour, demonstrating
AWS’s leadership in water efficiency among cloud providers. AWS
is already well on the path to becoming water+ and as part of
this new commitment will report annually on its WUE metric, new
water reuse and recycling efforts, new activities to reduce
water consumption in its facilities, and advancements in new
and existing replenishment projects.
In a deep muddy creek near Silicon Valley’s busiest freeway, a
large furry head pokes up. And then quickly submerges. The
brief sighting, along with a growing collection of video
footage, confirms something remarkable: After being hunted to
extinction in the 1800s, the North American beaver is returning
to the creeks of the San Francisco Bay Area. Ecosystem
explorers, beavers were re-introduced to Lexington Reservoir in
Los Gatos about four decades ago, and made homes in upper Los
Gatos Creek. Since then, they’ve expanded their range north
along the edge of the Bay to the Guadalupe River, Coyote Creek,
San Tomas Aquino Creek in the wetlands by Sunnyvale’s Water
Pollution Control Plant – and, now, Palo Alto’s Matadero Creek.
Conservationists have notified U.S. wildlife officials that
they will sue over delinquent decisions related to protections
for two rare fish species that are threatened by groundwater
pumping in the drought-stricken West. The Center for Biological
Diversity sent a formal notice of intent to sue the Fish and
Wildlife Service last week over the Fish Lake Valley tui chub
near the California-Nevada line and the least chub in southwest
Utah. Utah and Nevada are the driest states in the country, and
the planned lawsuits are among the many fronts on which
conservationists are battling water districts and the users
they cater to over plans to siphon water to either maintain or
expand consumption.
The promise of job security and work-life balance drew Fernando
Gonzalez to become a water operator. Now that he’s worked as
one for a few years, he sees his job as much more than fining
people for using too much water. On a given day, he’s
patrolling neighborhoods spanning from farmland to Malibu
mansions, looking for evidence that residents are wasting
water. He hands out notices of leaky sprinklers or when
residents run sprinklers right after a rainstorm, sure, but the
most rewarding part of his job is interacting with customers
about how they can save water, and why it’s so
important. … Here’s how Gonzalez earns $70,000 a
year, or nearly $100,000 with overtime, as a water operator in
Calabasas, Calif.
In the fall, rice fields in the Sacramento Valley usually shine
golden brown as they await harvesting. This year, however, many
fields were left covered with bare dirt. “It’s a disaster,”
said rice farmer Don Bransford. “This has never happened.
Never. And I’ve been farming since 1980.” … California
has just gone through the state’s driest three-year period on
record, and this year the drought has pushed the fallowing of
farmland to a new high. In a new report on the
drought’s economic effects, researchers estimated that
California’s irrigated farmland shrank by 752,000 acres, or
nearly 10%, in 2022 compared with 2019 — the year prior to the
drought. That was up from an estimated 563,000 acres of
fallowed farmland last year.
More than 600 East Bay households were fined for exceeding
limits on water use during the latest billing period — the
second consecutive billing period in which fines have been
issued — exhibiting behavior that water officials say is not
only a violation of drought policy but bad for everyone in the
region. Among the customers with heavy water consumption were
24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov, former NFL running back
Maurice Jones-Drew and retired Warriors basketball center
Adonal Foyle, all of whom were also fined during last decade’s
drought for using too much. … The top water user this
go-around, a household in Alamo, averaged 18,052 gallons of
water per day, about 90 times what the average residential
customer uses.
On November 24, 1922, representatives of the seven Colorado
River basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico,
Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming—gathered in Santa Fe, N.M., to sign
the Colorado River Compact, cementing into law a regime for
dividing the river’s water. Without exception, these men were
newcomers to a region inhabited since time immemorial by Native
American Tribes. Two of them represented states just a decade
old, none represented states more than 75-years-old, and their
purpose was to enable colonial settlers to establish a foothold
through irrigation-driven economic development.
A research team has found that the Andean region of Chile could
face noticeable snow loss and roughly 10% less mountain water
runoff with a global warming of approximately 2.5 degrees
Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels over the next three
decades. The study also shows that what happens in the Andes
could be a harbinger of what is to come for the California
Sierra Nevada mountain range, and highlights the importance of
carbon-mitigation strategies to prevent this from occurring.
… Last year, a study co-led by Alan Rhoades and Erica
Siirila-Woodburn, research scientists in the Earth and
Environmental Sciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), found that if global warming
continues along the high-emissions scenario, low-to-no-snow
winters will become a regular occurrence in the mountain ranges
of the western U.S. in 35 to 60 years.
When an irrigation canal was breached in the early 1900s, the
resulting flood created Southern California’s Salton Sea. It
was a rare event that quickly created a beneficial presence in
the Imperial Valley, as the lake provided recreation
opportunities, tamped down dust, and became a stopover for
birds on the Pacific Flyway. But now, with inflows declining,
this hundred-year-old sea is drying up, and that’s having a
host of negative consequences for wildlife and air quality in
the region. We spoke with Kurt Schwabe—professor of public
policy at the University of California, Riverside and adjunct
fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center—about some of the
biggest issues facing the sea, as well as potential solutions.
More than 500 households in the rural Arizona desert are set to
be without running water starting January, 1 2023, as first
reported by NBC News. The homes, located in Rio Verde
Foothills—an affluent, unincorporated community in the state’s
Maricopa County, were built without complying to Arizona’s
usual 100-year water supply requirement. Rio Verde Foothills
doesn’t have its own water system. Instead, people living in
the arid locale rely on private wells or water trucked up from
the nearby city of Scottsdale. However, in response to the
ongoing and worsening megadrought, Scottsdale declared late
last year that it would cease hauling water to communities
outside the city limits on Jan 1, 2023 and encouraged Rio Verde
Foothills to find an alternative. Now, with the set deadline
fast approaching, residents haven’t found a solution.
More cities have pledged to join Las Vegas in eliminating
unnecessary grass in a cooperative effort to use less precious
water from the Colorado River on lawns. A “Memorandum of
Understanding” with support from municipal governments
including Phoenix, San Diego and Denver, along with the water
agency that supplies 19 million people in the Los Angeles area,
is a sign that a more unified effort to conserve water has
support. Letters in support of better conservation efforts
provided a platform for governments to trumpet their success so
far — but there’s much more to do, according to John
Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water
Authority.
In 2022, deadly brain-eating amoeba infections were recorded in
states that had not seen the water-borne pathogen before. The
amoeba Naegleria fowleri thrives in warm freshwater — mostly
lakes and rivers, but it’s also been found in public splash
pads. If inhaled up the nose, the microscopic creature can
cause a devastating brain infection known as primary amebic
meningoencephalitis (PAM). In past years, this has meant that
health officials in southern states spend their summers on the
lookout for reports of mysterious brain infections. However,
the amoeba’s geographic footprint has expanded as temperatures
warm across the US. … The river runs along a similar
latitude to the Lake of Three Fires, as well as a Northern
California lake where officials believe a 7-year-old
contracted the amoeba last year.
Drought conditions and the implementation of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) are putting a squeeze on
California growers. Principal Analyst with the Almond Board of
California, Jesse Roseman said efforts to improve statewide
water storage and conveyance are underway. However, those are
more long-term solutions to current water constraints.
Implementing groundwater recharge projects in almond orchards
presents a more immediate option for helping to address water
issues in California. … Implementing groundwater
recharge projects in orchards can require frequent
communication with local irrigation districts and Groundwater
Sustainability Agencies. Roseman explained that projects can
often require new water rights, permits, and new conveyance.
However, the efforts can prove exceptionally beneficial when
surplus water is available.
Ever since European settlers crossed the Rockies, access to
water has defined the development of the American West. Water
irrigates farms, hydrates households, powers
machinery. But a prolonged drought that began in 2000 has
become the Southwest’s driest 22-year period in 12
centuries, according to analyses of tree-ring
records. This cycle of dryness comes amid a population
boom in drought-prone states like Utah. Its residents grew by
18% to 3.25 million from 2010 to 2020, faster than any
other state, even before the work-from-home trend took
hold. That migration has pushed up the price of real
estate and, as elsewhere, sparked debate in Utah over housing
availability and affordability for average families. But the
debate is increasingly laced with other concerns: Will there be
enough water for everyone? And who gets priority?
Napa County’s drought-easing ideas include using highly treated
wastewater for drinking, having communities with extra water
help out those in need, and tapping into the planned Sites
Reservoir in Colusa County. There are 22 proposals in all
within the recently released Napa Valley Drought Contingency
Plan. Those three rose to the top for further
exploration. The plan, done for local agencies along with
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, might not help much with the
current drought, should this winter be dry. Most of the ideas
would take time to become reality. … One idea is to turn
wastewater from the Napa Sanitation District and the city of
American Canyon into drinking water. NapaSan and American
Canyon already clean up wastewater to a degree that
it can be used for irrigation.
The spawning of fall-run chinook salmon concluded at the
Feather River Fish Hatchery in early November with millions of
fish eggs now fertilized and incubated. For the second year in
a row, the hatchery increased the amount of fall-run chinook
salmon eggs collected to offset effects of California’s current
drought now going on its third year. This year, the hatchery
collected about 9.5 million fall-run salmon eggs, according to
the Department of Water Resources. The average number of
fall-run chinook salmon eggs collected at the hatchery is 7.2
million. Raquel Borrayo, spokeswoman for the Department of
Water Resources, said DWR and the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife agreed to increase the amount of fall-run chinook
salmon grown at the hatchery “to enhance the salmon fishery
during this drought period as the overall Central Valley salmon
numbers have been lower due to the drought.”
A controversial proposed dam seems to have a new pathway
forward. But how far will it get through California’s byzantine
world of water rights? Nobody seems to agree on an
answer. The Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir is a joint
project between the Del Puerto Water District and the San
Joaquin River Exchange Contractor Authority on the west side of
the San Joaquin Valley. A Stanislaus County Superior Court
judge on Oct. 31 dismissed a host of environmental
challenges against the project as well as all concerns brought
by another group of irrigators, the Friant Water Supply
Protection Association.
Most Californians don’t expect to see anything like a white
Christmas, but this year, even a damp Christmas is looking
unlikely. An update to the Climate Prediction Center’s
official winter forecast shows a hot and dry season ahead
for much of the Golden State. The 90-day outlook was published
Thursday morning by the Climate Prediction Center, part of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)
National Weather Service. It gives people a rough idea of what
December, January and February will look like across the
country. The outlook shows the effects of La Niña still clearly
visible. A La Niña climate pattern tends to divide
the country in half, bringing a dry winter to the southern half
and a wetter winter to the northern half.
In other areas of the country, electricity grids are organized
under operators that coordinate and control the market across
state lines. But in the Western Interconnection, which serves
most of the western U.S. and parts of Canada, there are 38
different authorities responsible for balancing their own
grids. … That could be especially valuable as the West deals
with a decades-long drought that threatens hydropower, and as
states and utilities close large coal plants. A regional
market, experts say, would allow ample wind generation in more
central states to flow west, while solar production from states
like California and Arizona could be sent elsewhere.
There’s a mystery afoot in the upper Colorado River Basin: the
amount of winter snowpack and the resulting spring and summer
runoff haven’t added up in recent years. In 2021, for example,
measurements of the snowpack looked close to normal (80% of
average), but the streamflows in the spring and summer of that
year were only 30% of average, much lower than what was
expected. Where did that water go? In the megadrought-stricken
Western US, understanding the causes of this mismatch is a
question that the 40 million users of water sourced from the
Colorado River urgently need answered.
Recently, researchers from Stanford flew California skies on a
kind of airborne treasure hunt. Probing hundreds of feet into
the ground with electromagnetic signals, they were in search of
liquid gold – water, or more precisely a place to capture and
store it. … [Rosemary Knight, Ph.D., a researcher with
the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability] just released
a new study, confirming the airborne technology’s ability to
locate what is now popularly called “paleo valleys.” They’re
long, buried riverbed pathways created thousands of years ago
by the movement of glaciers that once covered the Sierra.
Filled with porous material, experts believe they could act
like a high-speed express lane to carry diverted flood water
deep into the aquifer.
Get rid of ornamental grass. Recycle more wastewater. Make
indoor and outdoor watering more efficient. Limit outdoor
watering to a few days a week. Create water rate structures
that encourage conservation. Minimize business use of thirsty
swamp cooling. Crack down on water leaks. A group of 30
cities and water districts, including Tucson, committed to
carrying out these water conservation measures in an agreement
signed last week. The measures, described by the agency
officials as unprecedented, are aimed at reducing water demand
by cities across the West to make the region less reliant on
dwindling Colorado River supplies.
An adaption strategy for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta must
address and reduce climate change impacts in a way that meets
the coequal goals, builds resilience for the future, and
prioritizes the most vulnerable communities. Climate change is
already altering the physical environment of the Delta,
resulting in significant impacts on its people and resources
that are only expected to worsen over time. The Delta
Stewardship Council recognized the need to address climate
change and completed the Delta Adapts Vulnerability Assessment
in 2021, which is the first comprehensive study of projected
climate hazards in the Delta and Suisun Marsh, identifying the
people and resources most vulnerable to increased flood risk,
extreme heat, drought, and wildfire smoke.
Sweetwater Authority has begun transferring water between its
two reservoirs in response to drought conditions, the agency
announced. The move has paused access to fishing at Loveland
Reservoir and local anglers fear that continued draining will
result in a permanent end to one of the few, free options to
fish in the region. Tuesday marked the beginning of a water
transfer from Loveland, which is near Alpine, to the Sweetwater
Reservoir south of Spring Valley, where it will be treated by
the agency and then supplied to its 200,000 customers in
Bonita, Chula Vista and National City.
On Friday, November 18, 2022, the Court of Appeal for the Sixth
Appellate District (Sixth District Court) reversed the Santa
Clara County Superior Court’s denial of an attorneys’ fees
award in favor of a group of California irrigation districts
and water agencies (Districts) that successfully challenged the
State Water Resources Control Board’s (State Board) decision to
issue certain water right curtailment notices during the 2015
drought. The Sixth District Court held that the Districts are
entitled to attorneys’ fees incurred prosecuting the Superior
Court litigation against the State Board. The full Opinion is
here.
The fierce struggle for water in a drought-stricken West
continues to roil politics — and embroil a host of tribal water
claims. The decades-long drought has dried up reservoirs and
forced federal water cutbacks for the 40 million people in
seven states who rely on the Colorado River for water. But it
has also dramatically increased the stakes for the region in
decades-old water claims by a host of tribes — including the
Navajo and the White Mountain Apache. The Tonto Apache Tribe
also has a decades-old claim to water from the Colorado River.
Efforts to settle that claim with water from the C.C. Cragin
Reservoir with a payment from the federal government to buy
into Payson’s pipeline have been stalled for years — and missed
out on a gush of federal pandemic and infrastructure aid to
tribes. -Written by contributor Peter Aleshire.
Arizona State University and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced
Nov. 16 that the university will lead a multi-year Arizona
Water Innovation Initiative to provide immediate, actionable
and evidence-based solutions to ensure that Arizona will
continue to thrive with a secure future water supply, according
to a news release. Ducey has committed resources and has
asked ASU to work with industrial, municipal, agricultural,
tribal and international partners to rapidly accelerate and
deploy new approaches and technology for water conversation,
augmentation, desalination, efficiency, infrastructure, and
reuse.
The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) Fall
Conference & Exhibition Nov. 29-Dec. 1 will draw local water
agency leaders from throughout California to Indian Wells for
three days of updates, analyses and perspectives on multiple
issues affecting the state’s water community. The event will
also feature an international perspective on water management
and connect attendees with a leader behind a movement to change
policy priorities in addressing catastrophic wildfires.
Delivering the Opening Breakfast keynote on Nov. 30, Ambassador
Marco Sermoneta, Consul General of Israel to the Pacific
Northwest, will share his insights about how Israel has
addressed water management challenges.
100 years ago, Wyoming signed onto a deal to divide the water
that flows through the Colorado River basin among seven
states. It’s based on a formula — one likely based on
mistaken beliefs about the river itself — that did not award
extra credit for living in the mountains where the snow piles
up. Instead, the states signed a compact allocating the
water where it would readily be put to work. It meant the
more populated states of California, Colorado and
Arizona would get the biggest shares.
… But more than two decades into a punishing
drought that climate scientists say will likely intensify with
more warming, the system can no longer supply everything
that some 40 million people in a warming and drying region
desire from it, or that grocers nationwide sell from its
verdant fields.
A lawsuit over groundwater plans in the northern end of the San
Joaquin Valley is being closely watched as it could have
implications for how the state’s groundwater mandate moves
forward, according to a recent briefing on the issue at the
Kern Groundwater Authority. At the Nov. 16 meeting, authority
attorney Valerie Kincaid explained that the lawsuit, filed in
2020, seeks to have a court invalidate six groundwater plans in
the Delta-Mendota Subbasin, which runs along the western edge
of the valley from west of Fresno north to west of Modesto. The
Department of Water Resources filed an amicus brief in the
suit, which was bought by the California Sportfishing
Protection Alliance, Kincaid explained. An amicus, or friend of
the court brief, can be filed by a group that has a strong
interest in a case.
After more than a decade in the trying, a major desalination
plant to serve the Monterey Peninsula has cleared a significant
hurdle—in theory, at least. In a 13-hour meeting that adjourned
just after 10pm on Thursday, Nov. 17, the California Coastal
Commission approved a conditional coastal development permit
for California American Water, the private water utility that
serves the greater Monterey Peninsula, to build a desalination
project in neighboring Marina, a city whose residents are
vehemently opposed to it, and who would not be served by
it. One thing that was continually brought up during the
meeting, and that was acknowledged in the Coastal Commission’s
staff report that recommended approval (with many conditions,
some potentially insurmountable), is that the project is rife
with complexity, both from technical and environmental justice
standpoints. … One question that remained unanswered was
who would pay for the project.
Utah is often ribbed and, at times, outright rebuked for the
amount of water its residents use. But some of the state’s
resources managers claim the data used to make comparisons
across states is flawed and unfair, making Utahns’ water habits
look much worse than they really are. A draft bill dropped last
week during legislative interim hearings that supporters say
would collect data about per-person water use that’s more
comparable to other arid states in the West. … Utah typically
estimates water use by totaling up the amount of water
diverted, whether from surface water streams or groundwater
wells, then dividing it by the population.
Noemi Barrera has spent four months without running water for
herself and her four children, and is among many people in
California living without it as wells across the state run
dry. … Tooleville sits on a well that is now
nearly unusable due to contamination from groundwater
overdrilling. The state stepped in last year after the
neighboring town Exeter refused to connect municipal water to
the community’s residents. … Barrera grew up in the
citrus-covered community but never faced this lack of running
water until she brought Ruby home from the hospital and could
not take a shower. And she is aware that many communities
across the state’s vital Central Valley are staring down the
same daily life, as their basins are depleted by
unprecedented drought and ongoing groundwater pumping.
California water policy is often discussed and depicted as
being impossibly complex. In its essentials, it can be
seen much more simply, as in the flow chart below.
Without extreme events (such as floods and droughts), the
policy process would be simpler, but ironically less effective,
and less well funded. … California’s remarkable water
history shows that frequent extreme events have activated
enough innovation and preparations over 170 years such that
floods, droughts, and earthquakes are now much less threatening
to California’s population and economy. However, frequent
failures have not yet motivated adequate preparation and
management for ecosystems and rural water supplies.
Today we’ll start with a short history lesson about one of Los
Angeles’s most vital (and most forgotten) landmarks: the Los
Angeles River. For centuries, the river, which begins in the
San Fernando Valley and ends in the ocean in Long Beach,
sustained small communities of Native peoples. In the 1800s it
nurtured hundreds of vineyards and orange groves, and exporting
the harvests helped expand the Southland’s reputation around
the globe. … But determining exactly how to redesign the
river is a tall task. There are competing demands from some
environmentalists, who want the concrete removed; from
community activists, who worry that any new development would
lead to the displacement of poor residents; and from
engineering experts, who say the risk of flooding remains too
high to restore anything like the original river.
States that use water from the Colorado River have been unable
to reach a realistic agreement on how to reduce consumption
enough to keep the river a viable source — especially since the
last drought has dropped reservoirs to record lows. So agencies
that provide water directly in six of those states have joined
together in a Memorandum of Understanding, saying they will
take the initiative to further reduce water use and find other
ways to stop taking so much from the Colorado River, according
to a recent press release. The Metropolitan Water District,
which supplies imported water to most of Southern California,
has signed the agreement, as has Long Beach Water and San Diego
County.
Remember a couple weeks ago when it rained half an inch in
Fresno and snowed in the Sierra? Sure was nice while it lasted.
But with nothing but sunny skies in the short-term forecast and
La Niña ocean conditions expected once again this winter, all
signs point to a fourth consecutive year of California drought.
… Because the San Joaquin Valley is experiencing
California’s worst drought conditions as well as our economic
dependence on agriculture, those of us living here should be
extra diligent about conserving water. Especially when
instructed to do so by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in July 2021
called for a 15% voluntary reduction in water use rather than
impose mandatory restrictions similar to those implemented in
2015 by former Gov. Jerry Brown. -Written by Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski.
Plans are advancing for importing water into the Indian Wells
Valley. At its Nov. 9 board meeting, the Indian Wells Valley
Groundwater Authority heard a presentation on three proposed
pipeline paths to get that water into IWV. The presentation was
given by Provost & Pritchard, a consulting group IWVGA
contracted to perform this imported water pipeline alignment
study. Jeff Davis–principal engineer with Provost &
Pritchard–presented the study to the IWVGA board. Davis told
the board that while there were many paths they investigated
for the pipeline, they’ve narrowed it down to three proposed
paths which each carry their own positive and negative aspects.
These three paths cross different regions of IWV, and are
therefore titled the West Alignment, the Central Alignment, and
the East Alignment.
The Tule River Tribe Chairman presented his case in Washington
D.C. on Wednesday, continuing the decades long effort to enact
federal legislation to provide water rights for the Tule River
Reservation that would address a dire need. Tule River Tribe
Chairman Neil Peyron testified in front of the Senate Committee
on Indian Affairs concerning the proposed Tule River Tribe
Reserved Water Rights Settlement Act of 2022. On September 15,
California’s two Democratic U.S. Senators, Alex Padilla and
Dianne Feinstein introduced the Tule River Tribe Reserved
Rights Settlement Act. The legislation is a product of an
effort that has lasted more than 50 years made by the Tule
River Tribe to obtain recognition of their federal reserved
Indian water rights.
The biggest dam-removal project in history moved one step
closer to reality Thursday after the federal government cleared
a key regulatory hurdle that would allow demolition to begin on
four hydroelectric dams along California’s border with Oregon.
The decision Thursday by the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission allows PacifiCorp, a utility company controlled by
financier Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, to surrender the
dams’ license to a nonprofit organization backed by California
and Oregon. Demolition on the Klamath River dams — three in
California and one in Oregon — could begin as quickly as a few
months from now.
The California Coastal Commission [Thursday night] approved
another desalination plant, despite citing its high costs,
risks to Monterey Bay’s environment and “the most significant
environmental justice issues” the commission has faced in
recent years. The commission’s divided, 8-to-2 vote came
after 13 hours of debate at a Salinas public hearing packed
with several hundred people, plus more crammed into overflow
space. Many of the 375 who signed up to speak opposed the
project — some in tears. Much of the debate focused on the
fairness of locating a for-profit company’s facility in the
Monterey County city of Marina — which does not need the water
and is home to designated disadvantaged neighborhoods. The
expensive supply will flow to other communities, including the
whiter, wealthy enclaves of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Pacific Grove
and Pebble Beach.
As California enters a fourth year of drought, experts warn a
likely drier-than-average winter means little relief for much
of California and Nevada. Nearly 41% of California and 43% of
Nevada is in extreme drought, according to the latest
California-Nevada Adaptation Program report prepared by program
manager Julie Kalansky. The U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that
over the last month drought conditions have not changed very
much. There was little to no precipitation throughout the
region to start off the water year in October, though a system
of storms in early November moistened the landscape and brought
some snow to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. So far 2022 has
been California’s driest and Nevada’s 8th driest in nearly 130
years of recordkeeping.
Thousands of years ago during the last Ice Age, rivers flowed
from giant glaciers in the Sierra Nevada down to the Central
Valley, carving into rock and gouging channels at a time when
the sea level was about 400 feet lower. When the glaciers
retreated, meltwater coursed down and buried the river channels
in sediment. These channels left by ancient rivers lie hidden
beneath California’s Central Valley. Scientists call them
paleovalleys, or incised valley fill deposits. As much as 100
feet deep and more than a mile wide in places, they are filled
with coarse-grained sand, gravel and cobbles. Because these
paleovalleys are highly permeable, scientists have pointed to
them as ideal pathways for water to quickly percolate down and
recharge groundwater.
Don’t miss our Winter
Outlook Workshop on Dec. 8 in Irvine to hear
an update on what might be in store for this water year,
the latest improvements to snowmelt runoff forecasts and
insight into whether La Niña conditions projected to persist
into this winter really mean anything as a predictor in this
new reality of climate whiplash. You will learn about what
is and isn’t known in forecasting winter precipitation weeks to
months ahead, the skill of present forecasts and ongoing
research to develop predictive ability.
As the Marin Municipal Water District nears the end of a nearly
yearlong study of potential new water supplies, some district
leaders say more information is needed on the costs and
benefits of bolstering water conservation investments.
… The district has been studying new water supplies
since March after facing the prospect of depleting local
reservoir storage following two years of severe drought. Rains
in late 2021 helped to nearly refill the district’s seven
reservoirs, giving it time to review new sources of
water. The district hired the Jacobs Engineering firm to
conduct the water supply study. The study seeks to compare
estimated costs and water yields for several options, including
desalination, recycled water, enlarging reservoirs and new
connections to outside water agencies.
Could San Luis Obispo’s wastewater help save Edna Valley
agriculture? That was the question of the night on Nov. 15 for
the SLO City Council, which took a deep dive into the future of
its recycled water program—including whether it wants to sell
any “extra” water to Edna Valley to help neighboring farmers
reduce their draw on groundwater. By a 4-1 consensus (with
Councilmember Jan Marx dissenting), the City Council agreed
that it’d be a good use of city resources to explore short-term
sales of recycled water to the Edna Valley region.
Tobyn Pilot took a few crunchy footsteps through the rough red
dirt near the edge of a towering cliff. Pilot, an operator at
the water plant in Page, Arizona, pulled out a hefty collection
of keys and unlocked a tiny plywood-paneled shed just a few
feet from the brink. The building is barely bigger than an
outhouse, but it’s a pivotal part of keeping the taps flowing.
… Hundreds of feet below, the Colorado River calmly chugged
along. It’s here, on the dusty precipice, that water from that
river is redirected into the Page’s city pipes. … Page
pulls its water from Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest
reservoir. It’s held back by the behemoth Glen Canyon Dam.
Inside the dam, a pipe siphons water to Page as it passes from
the reservoir to the river on the other side. Drought and
steady demand have drained the reservoir to historic
lows, putting Page’s drinking water system in jeopardy.
Miles and miles away from Washoe County’s border with
California, snowpack is starting to fall on the eastern Sierra
Nevada. Over the next several months, with a few more storms,
that snow will accumulate and begin to slowly melt and run off,
trickling into the streams that feed the Truckee
River. The Truckee River, which pours out of Lake Tahoe,
winds its way through California and crosses into Nevada, where
it is used as a source for water in Reno and Sparks. What
happens in the forests that the Truckee cuts across has a
direct effect on what happens downstream. That’s why the
Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the main utility for the
fast-growing region, is looking upstream to reduce the risk of
extreme wildfires that have, in recent years, torn through
forests across the West, scarring soil, eroding streambeds and
altering the water cycle.
According to the National Center for Environmental Information,
about 51 percent of the continental United States has been
experiencing drought conditions in the summer of 2022. More
than 70 percent of the western U.S. faces severe drought. The
Colorado River basin supply is rapidly declining, and Lake Mead
and Lake Powell are at critically low levels. Because of this,
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has declared a Tier 2 water
shortage on the Colorado River impacting seven western states
that depend on water from the river. … In the U.S., more
than 40 percent of the population relies on groundwater for its
drinking water. Groundwater is also used for irrigation,
domestic use, public use, and industrial and mining activities.
A Claremont friend of ours recently confessed, she is depressed
if she sees a brown lawn, and she is depressed if she sees a
green lawn. We think of our friend as reasonably well-adjusted,
so lawns do seem to be the culprits here. Indeed, out for one
of our walks on a Thursday evening — not a permissible
sprinkler day — my wife and I see homes in our neighborhood
with the sprinklers going full blast, with a steady flow of
water running into the street. The L.A. Times recently
interviewed Max Gomberg, who resigned as a senior manager with
the California State Water Board out of his frustration over
inaction in Sacramento on water. He described participants in
the water market as playing a game of chicken, waiting to see
who would blink first, taking us down an unsustainable
path. -Written by Stephen Marks, the Elden Smith
Professor of Economics at Pomona College.
More than 500 homes in this affluent desert community that
boasts mountain views, ample trees and ranches hidden in the
crooks of scrubby hills will run out of water by year’s end as
drought tightens its grip on the West. Residents of Rio Verde
Foothills outside Scottsdale have tried for years to resolve
the looming crisis to no avail as the deadline to stop their
water deliveries draws closer, forcing individual homeowners to
find their own sources of water for drinking, bathing, washing
dishes or doing their laundry.
A group of 30 agencies that supply water to homes and
businesses throughout the western United States has pledged to
rip up lots of decorative grass to help keep water in the
over-tapped Colorado River. The agreement signed Tuesday by
water agencies in Southern California, Phoenix and Salt Lake
City and elsewhere illustrates an accelerating shift in the
American West away from well-manicured grass that has long been
a totem of suburban life, having taken root alongside streets,
around fountains and between office park walkways. The
grass-removal pledge targets turf that people don’t work on,
like in front of strip malls, in street medians or at the
entrance to neighborhoods.
The driest grounds California ever experienced were perfectly
fertile for conspiracy theories. The state was in the
midst of its worst water crisis in over 1,200 years
… Fear, anger and conspiracy beliefs were flowing in
California when water wasn’t. The debunked “chemtrail”
conspiracy theory was searched more in the state,
and the nation as a whole, during the midst of the water
cuts when compared to any other time before or after, Google
Trends data shows. Arizona may be headed in the same
direction. Researchers who study conspiracy theories said
the state is ripe for new water-based misinformation to spread
as the Southwest U.S. water crisis worsens. Those researchers
also said understanding three reasons behind why the beliefs
spread may be the key to preventing them.
On a dirt road on a cool autumn morning, deep in the
rugged backcountry of San Benito County, Alex Hubner bounces
over boulders in his Toyota Tacoma truck, eyeing each passing
plant like a bounty hunter seeking prey. He stops suddenly
beside a lonely gray-green lump, its roots gripping the
inhospitable serpentine soil like skeletal fingers. Crouching
over the plant, Hubner takes a closer look. It’s a rare variety
of sulfur buckwheat — past its prime, seeds scattered.
… Based at UC Santa Cruz, Hubner and his wife, Lucy
Ferneyhough, are collectors for California Plant Rescue, a
state-funded consortium of botanical institutions that aims to
find and conserve the botanical diversity of the Golden State
… to store seeds and sprouts, each a modern-day Noah’s ark
that could help protect against the permanent loss of rich,
unique and irreplaceable lives.
Some residents in Planada are calling on county officials to
block a proposed expansion of a dairy. Merced County is
currently in the process of deciding whether to allow the
Hillcrest Dairy just north of the town to expand its herd from
8,050 cows to 9,750 cows. Some residents are saying that the
expansion would make current problems with bad smells and flies
worse, as well as threaten the community’s supply of
groundwater. … The matter is still in the process of review,
and has yet to come before the Board of Supervisors. But it
will ultimately be their call as to whether or not the
expansion with the dairy moves forward.
What is the cost of defying California’s environmental laws?
Less than $50. That’s all Northern California farmers will pay
for blatantly draining the Shasta River in defiance of the
state’s drought regulations last summer, likely killing
protected salmon. The Shasta River Water Association is an
irrigation district serving about 100 farmers and ranchers in
Siskiyou County. Over eight days, its members drained nearly
two-thirds of the river to fill livestock ponds in the
area. This was the primary finding of a Bee investigation
that suggests California is unable to stop farmers from
draining water as they wish — no matter how much damage is done
to the environment.
With the federal government calling for major cuts in water use
to address the historic shortage on the Colorado River, the
leaders of 30 agencies that supply cities from the Rocky
Mountains to Southern California have signed an agreement
committing to boost conservation, in part by pledging to target
the removal of one especially thirsty mainstay of suburban
landscapes: decorative grass. The water agencies, which supply
Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Santa Monica, Burbank, San Diego
and other cities, have committed to a nonbinding list of
actions, including creating a program to remove 30% of
“nonfunctional” grass and replace it with “drought- and
climate-resilient landscaping, while maintaining vital urban
landscapes and tree canopies.”
With drought conditions continuing to blanket the Western U.S.,
and farmers struggling to find adequate water supplies,
competing interests are pressuring the federal government to
cut the water supply farmers are using to grow our food,
including alfalfa, which is a foundational food chain crop. In
response, the Family Farm Alliance and California Farm Water
Coalition have produced a White Paper titled, “Our Food Supply
at Risk; The Importance of Alfalfa Production in the American
West,” detailing the valuable role alfalfa plays as a principal
feed source for the nation’s livestock and diary industries,
its environmental benefits, and contribution to effective
drought management.
California has long been a hub of innovation. But managing the
increasing variability of our weather in an era of climate
change will challenge even the best and brightest water and
land managers. Conditions are changing fast—and they will keep
changing. And the warmer, drier conditions are revealing some
profound weaknesses in our water supply systems. As we argue in
our new report, Priorities for California’s Water: Thriving
with Less, even if we do everything right, water supplies are
likely to decline. The grand challenge for 21st-century water
management in California is learning to thrive with less.
In recent years, severe droughts have affected many regions
around the world, including western North America, Europe,
East Africa, and China. In some cases, these events (and
others) have been referred to as “megadroughts,” a term
increasingly used in the media and scientific literature to
refer to almost any extreme or impactful drought event. There
is little consensus in the scientific community, however, on
when a drought becomes a megadrought, nor is there any
quantitative or established definition. A recently published
paper by a team of international scientists synthesized
information from the paleoclimate record, observations, and
climate models to summarize our current understanding of
megadrought dynamics around the world, from the last two
thousand years to the end of the current century.
San Luis Obispo County has been restricting new groundwater
wells in the Paso Robles subbasin for nearly a decade. Now
county supervisors are hoping to tack on a carbon sequestration
mandate.
Maricopa County’s population has more than doubled over the
past 30 years, making it one of the fastest growing regions in
the country. But meanwhile, Arizona’s water supply has become
more and more depleted. So as growth continues, can the state
sustain even more residents? In most areas of central
Arizona, a developer can’t build a new home without first
proving that there’s enough water to last that property 100
years. But there are loopholes for larger lots in rural areas,
like many homes in Rio Verde Foothills. And as water becomes
scarcer, some worry even properties with those 100-year plans
might not all be sustainable.
John Wesley Powell offered a poignant message for Western U.S.
communities when he was the featured speaker in a room full of
developers and government leaders at a major irrigation
conference held in Los Angeles in October 1893. Powell, then
director of the U.S. Geological Survey, started off strong,
receiving applause from those listening to him, noted Greg
Smoak, a professor of history and director of the American West
Center at the University of Utah. … “There is not enough
water to irrigate all the lands … There is but a small portion
of the irrigable land which can be irrigated when all the
water, every drop of water, is utilized,” Powell warned the
crowd, adding that he foresaw a future filled with battles over
water rights.
In 1995, Bill Clinton was president, Pixar produced Toy
Story (the first fully computer-animated feature film),
and a NATO offensive ended war in Bosnia. It was also the year
the California State Water Resources Control Board determined
that California American Water was pumping roughly three times
more water from the Carmel River than it is legally entitled
to. The board issued Order 95-10, requiring Cal Am to cut back
its use of river water to the legal limit. Here we are, 27
years later, and the cease-and-desist order is still in effect.
… And that brings us to the issue du jour, a
controversial desalination plant proposed by Cal Am, set to go
before the California Coastal Commission for a vote on
Thursday, Nov. 17. There are a lot of reasons to object to this
project … -Written by Sara Rubin, editor of the Monterey County
Weekly.
The Santa Margarita Water District is getting started on its
first drinking water treatment plant, which will be in Rancho
Mission Viejo. … The [Ranch Water Filtration Plant] will
treat groundwater from the San Juan Basin to supply some 1.6
billion gallons of drinking water per year to customers,
according to SMWD Public Information officer Nicole Stanfield.
Currently, all the district’s water is sourced from Northern
California and the Colorado River. The plant, however, would
establish a local source of drinking water.
Despite recent rain storms across the state, California’s
historic drought shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
With the lack of meaningful regular precipitation, capacity at
California’s reservoirs continue to decline, putting stress on
the state’s water supply. Across the board, nearly all of
California’s major water supply reservoirs managed by the
California Department of Water Resources are well below
historic averages. … Shasta, the largest state reservoir
with a capacity of 4,552,000 acre-feet of water, is currently
at 31% capacity. Historically, capacity at Shasta Lake is
usually around 57% this time of year. Lake Oroville, which
has a capacity of about 3,537,000 acre-feet of water, is in
even more dire straits. As of Nov. 14, Oroville is at 29%
capacity, almost half of the historic average of 58%.
In the last decade, California—along with the rest of the
world—has entered a new phase of climate change. The changes
that scientists predicted have started to arrive. California’s
already variable climate is growing increasingly volatile and
unpredictable: The dry periods are hotter and drier, and the
wet periods—lately too few and far between—are warmer and often
more intense. … The snowpack—that once-reliable annual source
of water—is diminishing as temperatures rise. Water withdrawals
during multiyear droughts are depleting the state’s reservoirs
and groundwater basins. … This report considers the
state of water in California: What changes are we seeing now,
and what should we expect in the near future?
California is enjoying fewer extreme wildfires than it has in
years, which experts attribute to a combination of summer rain,
calm weather and increased forest management. As of Thursday,
fires had blackened less than 363,000 acres throughout the
Golden State. That’s far less than last year, when 2.5 million
acres burned, and 2020, when fires torched a record 4 million
acres. … But Ferguson and other experts warned that
wildfires are now a year-round threat, largely thanks to
climate change, which dries out vegetation and soil with
record-breaking high temperatures and persistent drought.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-02) isn’t the only one from the North
Coast making the rounds at the United Nations Climate Change
Conference. On Tuesday, Danielle Frank, of Ríos to Rivers and a
youth leader of the Hupa Valley Tribe, and Brook Thompson, who
is a member of the Yurok Tribe and Karuk Tribe, shared the
story of the dams in the Klamath River basin at a panel titled
Centering the Protection of Rivers and Rights in Achieving
Climate Justice in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. They were speaking
alongside Indigenous people from other parts of the world who
have also been fighting to protect rivers in their communities.
… Six dams in the Klamath River basin have severely
impacted water quality, temperatures and flows, which in turn
have led to the degradation of the ecosystem. In 2002, the
river experienced one of the largest fish kills in its history,
leading to a 20-year legal fight to bring the dams down.
Already grappling with drought, lower commodity prices and
higher production costs, more farmers are feeling the added
pinch of groundwater regulations as local agencies implement
plans that include pumping limits and new fees to balance
long-term groundwater resources as required by the
state. … Regulations and fees by local agencies as
part of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA,
affect farmers more directly this year, including farmers in
Madera County. Madera County farmer Jay Mahil said
groundwater sustainability agency fees that are part of his
county property tax bill are “coming at a time when growers are
receiving all-time low returns on commodity prices, and farm
input costs have doubled.”
Modesto Irrigation District, Turlock Irrigation District and
the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission have signed a
memorandum of understanding with the state to advance a
voluntary agreement for the Tuolumne River. MID and TID, which
jointly operate the Don Pedro Reservoir on the Tuolumne River,
joined dozens of other California water agencies in committing
to collaborate with the state to finalize agreements that will
provide water supply reliability to communities, while
enhancing river ecosystems. Contra Costa Water District signed
onto the agreement in September. … The action by the
districts signals momentum towards an alternative to
regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board
in 2018, as part of the first phase of the state’s Bay-Delta
water quality control plan.
The wheels keep turning in the large-scale Glenn County water
project to help those with dry and drying wells connect to the
city of Orland’s water lines. Over the course of the past year,
the city has been working to connect those on wells within city
limits to the source. Orland City Manager Pete Carr said the
city has connected roughly 12 out of 34 of those households so
far. Carr added that the city expects to have all 34 homes
connected within the next couple of months. As part of the
overall project, DWR has provided some additional funding to
help the city drill a second well and put in an additional
water tank to up the storage in anticipation of the new
customers outside of the county, which consists of about 160
households.
In just a few months this year, abnormally low water levels in
rivers led China to shut down factories and to floods in
one-third of Pakistan, killing around 1,500 people and grinding
the country to a halt. A dried-up Rhine River threatened to tip
Germany’s economy into recession, because cargo ships could not
carry standard loads. And the Las Vegas strip turned into a
river and flooded casinos, chasing customers away. … With
mounting climate-fuelled weather disasters, social inequality,
species extinctions and resource scarcity, some corporations
have adopted sustainability programmes. One term in this realm
is ‘circular economy’, in which practitioners aim to increase
the efficiency and reuse of resources, including water —
ideally making more goods (and more money) in the process.
Alfalfa is often the target of critics of irrigated agriculture
who frequently rely upon simplistic explanations to heap scorn
upon growing a forage crop in the West during times of drought.
Two Democratic congressmen from Arizona — Ruben Gallego and
Raúl Grijalva — last month introduced the “Domestic Water
Protection Act of 2022” (H.R. 9194), which would impose an
excise tax on the sale of a “water-intensive” crop. The tax is
300% of the price for which the crop is sold and is paid by the
manufacturer, producer, or importer of the crop. The bill
defines water-intensive crop as a crop grown in an area
experiencing prolonged drought at the time such crop is grown,
and by a manufacturer, producer, or importer that is a foreign
corporation or foreign government. -Written by Dan Keppen, executive director of Family
Farm Alliance.
Starting around November 17, 2022 and lasting up to a month, a
helicopter towing a large hoop from a cable will make low-level
flights over areas of the western San Joaquin Valley in Fresno,
Kings, and Kern Counties near Coalinga and the Pyramid Hills,
with limited surveying near Lost Hills. Residents of these
areas may see a low-flying helicopter towing a large hoop
hanging from a cable. USGS scientists will use the data to
improve understanding of groundwater salinity and below-ground
geology to better understand groundwater conditions near
California’s oil fields. The helicopter will tow a sensor
that resembles a large hula-hoop about 100-200 feet above the
ground to measure small electromagnetic signals.
