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.
One of the weirder side effects of climate change is what
it’s doing to rainfall. While most people think about global
warming in terms of extreme heat—the deadliest kind of natural
disaster in the United States—there is also an increasing risk
of extreme precipitation. On average, it will rain more on
Earth, and individual storms will get more intense.
Intuitively, it doesn’t make much sense. But the physics is
clear—and highly consequential, given how destructive and
deadly floods already were before climate change.
Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval acknowledged the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act’s (SGMA) importance to
the valley in his opening remarks. … As water supplies
decline, said Central Valley Community Foundation CEO Ashley
Swearengin, it is key to bring all the valley’s many players to
the table to hammer out coping strategies. The need for
coordination is paramount, given the magnitude of the
challenge. As PPIC research fellow Andrew Ayres explained,
reducing groundwater pumping ultimately will help the valley
maintain its robust agricultural industry and protect
communities. But even with new water supplies, our research
found that valley agriculture will need to occupy a smaller
footprint than it does now: at least 500,000 acres of farmland
will likely need to come out of intensively irrigated
production.
As March rolled into April, Ken Beck was keeping his eye on the
snowdrifts piled on slopes around Vallecito Reservoir in
Colorado’s southwestern mountains. Snow reports showed there
was about 300,000 acre-feet of water in that snow waiting to
flow into the reservoir, he said. … Beck, superintendent of
the Pine River Irrigation District, which manages the reservoir
located northeast of Durango … was in good company:
Reservoir managers around the state saw water levels rise this
year, a boon to downstream users who depend on stored water for
drinking, growing crops, supporting industries and managing
ecosystems. And as the year progressed, precipitation just kept
coming in the form of rain, hail and severe storms.
The terrain just outside the town of Ocotillo in California’s
Imperial County is rugged. With volunteers from a humanitarian
group, we recently drove alongside an old railroad track path
tasked with servicing and repairing large barrels of water
meant to keep people lost in the desert alive. … For 24
years, Water Station, an all-volunteer organization, has been
installing large blue barrels containing water in Imperial
County’s deserts to prevent people from dying from
environmental exposure during March to October, the hottest
months of the year. -Written by Pedro Rios, director of the American
Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border program and a
longtime human rights advocate.
In a proactive move to address the challenges posed by climate
change and to align with statewide water management objectives,
Roseville has received an $8 million grant from the California
Natural Resources Agency and Department of Water Resources.
This financial infusion, thanks to the efforts of the Regional
Water Authority and local water agencies, will help finance the
development of two groundwater wells within the city by
covering nearly half the cost. Roseville’s share is part
of a more extensive regional funding package totaling $55
million, dedicated to supporting essential groundwater
infrastructure initiatives spanning the Sacramento region.
After a four-year decline in potato production nationwide, this
season’s crop appears poised to buck the trend, spurred by
strong demand and improved water supplies. While higher
processing contract prices are driving much of the increased
acreage, California’s mostly fresh-market growers may see
prices decline once harvest starts elsewhere, said Almuhanad
Melhim, a fruit and vegetable market analyst for Rabobank’s
RaboResearch division. … During the past few years,
processors have been short on russet potatoes that go into
french fries, so they snapped up fresh-market russet supplies,
driving up fresh prices. To encourage more processed potato
production this year, processors increased contract prices
substantially.
The Colorado River is in trouble, and farmers and ranchers are
on the front lines of the crisis. A new report surveyed more
than 1,020 irrigators across six of the seven states that use
the river’s water: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah, and Wyoming. About 70% said they are already responding
to water shortages but many identified a trust gap with state
and federal agencies that are trying to incentivize further
water savings. The report, from the Western Landowners Alliance
and the University of Wyoming’s Ruckelshaus Institute, sheds
light on attitudes in an industry that has an outsized role in
the fate of the Colorado River.
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)
has announced approximately $2 million in funding for projects
to support tribal drought resilience as part of President
Biden’s Investing in America agenda. This investment will help
tribal nations address current and future drought risk on
tribal lands across the Western U.S. while informing
decision-making and strengthening tribal drought resilience in
a changing climate. Proposals may request funding of up
to $700,000 total to be disseminated in the first year and
expended over three years in the form of cooperative
agreements. A total of 3–5 projects may be funded depending on
the project budget requested.
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have
created a searchable atlas that compiles regional research and
efforts to deal with water scarcity and drought. The map,
called the Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas, was developed by
the agency’s Southwest and California Climate Hubs and so far
contains 183 case studies from Arizona, California, New Mexico,
Nevada and Utah. … The map offers a range of case studies,
many of them related to agricultural and ranching practices,
crop choice, and irrigation methods. Silber-Coats hopes it can
be a resource for agricultural professionals and advisers, like
cooperative extension workers.
Last week, the U.N. hosted a summit on sustainable development,
including access to clean water. I have previously written
about declining water levels in the western U.S. and the use of
desalination to transform seawater into freshwater. Although
over 17,000 desalination plants are operating worldwide, there
are only about 325 in the U.S., with 45% in Florida, 14% in
California, and 9% in Texas. The reason they have not been more
widely adopted is traditionally, they are expensive to build
and use a lot of energy. Most of the desalination plants
operating today heat the salt water and pump it through
specialized membranes that separate the water from the
salts.
Some states in the arid West are looking to invest more money
in water conservation. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico
have agreed to re-up a water conservation program designed to
reduce strain on the Colorado River. Those states, which
represent the river’s Upper Basin, will use money from the
Inflation Reduction Act to pay farmers and ranchers to use less
water. The four states are re-implementing the program amid
talks with California, Arizona, Nevada and the federal
government to come up with more permanent water reductions by
2026.
Less than one week until California’s new water year begins,
experts say the state is nearly free of drought — but there is
no guarantee that another wet winter is soon to arrive.
The state, according to the Sept. 19 U.S. Drought Monitor, is
93% free of drought, a big improvement since measuring at 72%
drought-free three months ago. Only small regions of
drought remain along the state’s southeast corner bordering
Arizona and in the northernmost region at the Oregon border.
A nonprofit in Peru is gaining attention for its work in
developing a simple system that gathers moisture from fog and
channels it to storage containers for use in areas where water
is in short supply. The systems are dropping in price and
increasing in efficiency, experts say. The “fog catchers” have
been installed in several countries and were even considered
for possible use in the San Francisco area. … “It’s a
very intriguing idea,” says Jay Lund, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering and director of the Center for
Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis.
… Lund explored the idea of demisting
fogs over San Francisco in the aftermath of the droughts
in the Bay Area between 2012 and 2016, but concluded it would
likely not be economically viable.
Colorado River managers [last week] decided to continue a water
conservation program designed to protect critical elevations in
the nation’s two largest reservoirs. The Upper Colorado
River Commission decided unanimously to continue the federally
funded System Conservation Program in 2024 — but with a
narrower scope that explores demand management concepts and
supports innovation and local drought resiliency on a
longer-term basis. … The System Conservation Program is
paying water users in the four upper basin states — Colorado,
New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — to voluntarily cut back with
$125 million from the Inflation Reduction Act. According to
Upper Colorado River Commission officials, nearly $16.1 million
was spent on system conservation in 2023.
… a conference held this past week at Fresno State, “Managing
water and farmland transitions in the San Joaquin Valley,” drew
a large crowd of growers and water district managers. The
event was sponsored by the Public Policy Institute of
California [PPIC], a nonpartisan group that provides analysis
on key issues facing the state.The PPIC’s report on the
Valley’s water situation makes clear the stakes: Even if
growers do everything right, a half million acres could go out
of production because of water-supply shortages. … Using
water wisely while re-purposing land properly will be the key
issue facing San Joaquin Valley farmers for years to
come. -Written by Tad Weber, The Bee’s opinion
editor.
We’re just days away from turning the page from summer to fall.
Drought in the United States expanded and intensified in Summer
2023, largely influenced by not only lack of precipitation, but
extreme heat and evaporative demand. While the number and size
of wildfires were relatively small in the western U.S. compared
to recent summers, unhealthy levels of smoke still poured into
the contiguous United States from record-breaking Canadian
wildfires, and a wildfire in dry Maui destroyed the town of
Lahaina. The maps below show how precipitation, temperature,
and evaporative demand influenced drought and wildfires across
the United States and Canada during Summer 2023.
… Recent floods left more than a third of California’s table
grapes rotting on the vine. Too much sunlight is burning apple
crops. Pests that farmers never used to worry about are
marching through lettuce fields. Breeding new crops that can
thrive under these assaults is a long game. Solutions are
likely to come from an array of research fronts that stretch
from molecular gene-editing technology to mining the vast
global collections of seeds that have been conserved for
centuries. … Here’s a quick look at some of the most
promising.
California is on the verge of recording a second straight year
of relatively mild wildfire damage, after historic rains put
the state on track to avoid the calamities of recent fire
seasons. … Cal Fire also says the state benefited from a
program that nearly doubled the acreage deprived of fuel by
prescribed burns from a year ago and the addition of 24
aircraft leased during fire season that improved response
times.
… In recent decades, California has experienced five
prolonged drought periods (1976-77, 1987-1992, 2007-09,
2011-16, 2020-22). Urban water agencies have responded with
investments in supply and demand management measures, which
have made California’s cities more resilient to drought
effects. What motivated these investments? Our current habits
of water use in California’s cities are shaped by past policies
and habits.
Sept. 24 is World Rivers Day, first celebrated in 2005
following a declaration by the U.N. General Assembly that
2005-2015 would be the “Water for Life” decade. … Concern
about abuse and neglect of rivers has led to an international
movement to recognize rivers as living entities with
fundamental rights, entitled to legal guardians. … The
ability of America’s public health system to detect the
emergence and spread of diseases, or to mount timely responses
to them, is hampered by the lack of a national data system.
Post-pandemic, it’s one of the major priorities of public
health officials to change this.
Decades of drought in the West has made water quality and
quantity a major issue requiring government funding and
innovation to fix, members of a U.S. Senate panel said
Wednesday. Demand for water in growing municipalities is
stretching agricultural and tribal communities, while shrinking
availability is leading to higher water prices, witnesses told
the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Water and
Power Subcommittee. … Kyle Jones, the policy and legal
director at the advocacy group Community Water Center, told the
panel about a woman whose California well ran dry as her
husband recovered from open-heart surgery. A new well would
have required a $30,000 loan, he said.
Astronomical fall begins Friday night, and autumn storms are
already knocking on California’s door. A major September storm
is forecast to bring heavy rains and strong winds to
Washington, Oregon and Northern California beginning Sunday
night. … The jet stream is forecast to strengthen across the
Pacific Ocean this weekend, pushing an atmospheric
river all the way from Japan to the western U.S.
Atmospheric rivers are ribbons of moisture that can ferry large
amounts of moisture thousands of miles through the sky.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox says he isn’t surprised by a new report
showing that mitigating dust from the Great Salt Lake would
likely cost at least $1.5 billion in capital costs, but it
highlights why the state is “so passionate about getting more
water” into the drying lake. The Utah Office of the Legislative
Audit General released a report on the state’s “critical
vulnerabilities” this week, which notes Great Salt Lake dust
mitigation is “estimated to be at a minimum $1.5 billion in
capital costs with ongoing annual maintenance of $15 million,”
increasing in cost as more of the lakebed is exposed.
Damien Lopez, age 4, has symptoms that many people who live
near Southern California’s Salton Sea also have. “His cough
gets very wheezy. I try to control him,” his mother Michelle
Lopez said. … A 2019 University of Southern
California study published in the International
Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that
between 20% and 22% of children in the region have asthma-like
symptoms, a little more than triple the national rate for
asthma, according to numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Dr. David Lo, a professor of biomedical
sciences at the University of California, Riverside, led a
university study last year that determined the Salton Sea
itself is responsible for the high incidence of asthma for
those who live near it.
Hollywood icon Leonardo DiCaprio urged his fans to sign a
petition asking Utah’s political leaders to protect and restore
the Great Salt Lake. In an Instagram post on Monday, DiCaprio
posted a photo of a receding Great Salt Lake shoreline, sharing
with his over 61 million followers the dangers a disappearing
lake poses. … DiCaprio shared his support for the group
of conservation organizations that filed a lawsuit against
the State of Utah over alleged “failures” to protect the
lake. The lawsuit claims Utah’s diversion of water upstream is
preventing necessary water from reaching the lake, depleting
water levels.
When the operator of the nation’s tallest dam applied for a new
federal permit in 2005, few expected the process to drag on for
more than a decade. It’s still not done. California’s Oroville
Dam is among a dozen major hydroelectric projects that have
been waiting over 10 years to receive a long-term permit from
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The sluggish process
is fueling uncertainty about the future of a key source of
clean power that has bipartisan support in Congress — but that
faces new challenges as the climate warms.
A state bill on the verge of becoming law would ban the use of
drinking water to irrigate decorative grass, a mandate endorsed
by Marin leaders who are already largely prepared for it.
Assembly Bill 1572, which has made its way to Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s desk, would involve the kind of grassy areas in street
medians, business parks and city sidewalks. Decorative grass
could still be irrigated with recycled water. The restrictions
proposed under were first implemented by the state as temporary
provisions during the recent three-year drought. The rules are
set to expire in June. The bill would make these rules a
permanent way of life in California. Violations would carry
fines of $500.
Outbreaks of harmful algal blooms have wreaked havoc on
California river ecosystems for years. The toxic algae — a neon
green layer of muck that floats atop water — thrives in warm,
stagnant conditions brought on by drought. Presence of
this algae can make life difficult for other plants and fish in
the river, and even cause concerns for humans that accidentally
ingest or possibly breathe the area around it. But this year
was different. Faster, colder river waters led to fewer
outbreaks of the harmful algae throughout the state.
Warm ocean waters from the developing El Niño are shifting
north along coastlines in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Along the
coast of California, these warm waters are interacting with a
persistent marine heat wave that recently influenced the
development of Hurricane Hilary. … In its September
outlook, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration forecast a greater than 70% chance for a strong
El Niño this coming winter. In addition to warmer water, El
Niño is also associated with a weakening of the equatorial
trade winds. The phenomenon can bring cooler, wetter conditions
to the U.S. Southwest and drought to countries in the western
Pacific, such as Indonesia and Australia.
A local water district is proposing an ambitious plan to turn
ocean water into drinking water, and while the idea of a “Blue
Water Farm” sounds promising, some environmental groups say
that ocean desalination should be a last resort and that more
can be done to conserve water in affluent communities.
Over the last two years, customers of the Las Virgenes
Municipal Water District (LVMWD) have seen restrictions and
fines over how much water they use. [District communications
manager Mike] McNutt added that the water district is
exploring new ways to keep lawns lush and green in big-money
neighborhoods like Calabasas, Westlake Village and Hidden
Hills. … Officials are hoping that they can bring in
precisely 10 million gallons of fresh water a day to the
district.
Despite a megadrought, states in the West have been able to
avoid drastic cuts to their allocations of Colorado River water
this year not only because of surprising storms but also thanks
to generous financial incentives from all levels of government
that have encouraged people to conserve. The temporary Colorado
River water-sharing agreement that Arizona, California and
Nevada announced in May depends on an injection of $1.2 billion
from the federal government. Some of the 30 tribal nations in
the river basin also are getting federal dollars. The Gila
River Indian Community, for example, will receive $233 million
from the feds over the next three years, mostly to conserve
water. Fueled by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law, the feds will spend a total of $15.4
billion for drought resiliency programs …
Even though California enacted sweeping legislation nearly a
decade ago to curb excessive agricultural pumping of
groundwater, new research predicts that thousands of drinking
water wells could run dry in the Central Valley by the time the
law’s restrictions take full effect in 2040. The study,
published this month in the journal Scientific Reports, casts
critical light on how the state is implementing the 2014
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The research reveals
that plans prepared by local agencies would allow for heavy
pumping to continue largely unabated, potentially drawing down
aquifers to low levels that would leave many residents with dry
wells.
An irrigation district in the Klamath Project can no longer
divert water from the Klamath River under a state-issued water
right without approval from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a
federal judge has determined. Reclamation sued the Klamath
Drainage District in July 2022 for taking water from the river
despite curtailments intended to protect endangered fish. The
2022 irrigation season was severely hampered in the project
following several consecutive years of drought. Reclamation
allotted just 62,000 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake
for irrigators, about 14% of full demand, including zero water
for districts with junior rights.
Despite the name, “Community Disaster Resilience Zones” are not
local havens capable of withstanding storms and other extreme
weather. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better
known as FEMA, is spending billions in hopes that they can be.
The agency has identified nearly 500 such “zones,” swaths of
land generally covering several miles that are ill-prepared to
tolerate flooding, earthquakes, heat waves, wildfires,
landslides and other natural hazards. As extreme weather is
expected to continue shattering expectations and local records
— from downpours drenching Death Valley to hurricanes pummeling
California’s coastline — these areas will be prioritized for
additional funding for protective improvements.
[Editor's note: Scroll to fourth section of story
for water-related bills]A bill headed to
Newsom’s desk would ban the use of drinking water to irrigate
purely decorative grass that no one uses. Another bill approved
by lawmakers would allow cities to ban the installation of
artificial turf at homes, based on research showing that fake
grass can result in microplastics washing into streams and the
ocean. Assembly Bill 249 would tighten standards for lead
testing in schools’ drinking water. In the latest chapter
in San Diego County’s ongoing water drama, lawmakers approved a
bill that could make it harder for local water agencies to
withdraw from larger regional water authorities — but too late
to stop the contentious bureaucratic divorce already underway
in San Diego County due to high water costs. Assembly Bill
779 would tweak California’s work-in-progress groundwater rules
to “level the playing field for all groundwater users,
particularly small farmers and farmers of color,” according to
three UCLA law students who helped write the bill.
With no end in sight for Arizona’s megadrought, many
researchers at Arizona State University are developing
innovations to mitigate the drought’s effects on residents,
agriculture and industry, and promote water resilience and
security. Claire Lauer, a professor of technical communication
in the School of Applied Professional Studies, part of the
College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (CISA) at ASU’s
Polytechnic campus, is applying her knowledge of user
experience, or UX, and Arizona’s water landscape to educate the
public about the intricacies of water usage because “there’s a
lot of misinformation about water out there,” she said.
“Educating the public on water management will help communities
make informed decisions, which can have a huge effect on
Arizona’s water policies and conservation efforts.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will
reopen the Shasta Valley Wildlife Area in Siskiyou County to
limited waterfowl hunting this season after a complete closure
the past two seasons. Although many parts of California
received record rainfall and snowpack during the winter and
spring of 2022-23, northeastern California remained
comparatively dry. As a result, only dry field hunting will be
allowed for waterfowl hunting this season at the Shasta Valley
Wildlife Area. The Northeastern Zone waterfowl season runs from
Oct. 7, 2023, through Jan. 17, 2024. Hunting at the Shasta
Valley Wildlife Area will be allowed on Wednesdays, Saturdays
and Sundays throughout the season.
A water district best known for supplying the celebrity-studded
enclaves of Calabasas and Hidden Hills could soon become famous
for a very different reason. The Las Virgenes Municipal Water
District recently partnered with California-based OceanWell to
study the feasibility of harvesting drinking water from
desalination pods placed on the ocean floor, several miles off
the coast of California. The pilot project, which will begin in
Las Virgenes’ reservoir near Westlake Village, hopes to
establish the nation’s first-ever “blue water farm.” … The
process could produce as much as 10 million gallons of fresh
water per day — a significant gain for an inland district
almost entirely reliant on imported supplies.
Successful implementation of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) is vital to the long-term health of the
San Joaquin Valley’s communities, agriculture, environment, and
economy. But the transition will be challenging. Even with
robust efforts to augment water supplies through activities
like groundwater recharge, significant land fallowing will be
necessary. How the valley manages that fallowing will be
paramount to protecting the region’s residents—including the
growers and rural, low-income communities who will be most
directly impacted by the changes. With coordinated planning and
robust incentives, the valley can navigate the difficult water
and land transitions coming its way and put itself on a path to
a productive and sustainable future.
The Arizona Water Banking Authority is exploring the
possibility of buying purified wastewater to distribute later –
which would be unprecedented. At the AWBA commission’s meeting
on Sept. 13, new bank manager Rebecca Bernat asked whether she
should look into the possibility of the bank using effluent
water credits. Until 2019, AWBA has only used excess Colorado
River water long-term storage credits. That’s for the Central
Arizona Project water stored in aquifers. Users can get the
water later during a potential shortage by pumping it back out.
Last week, Lake Mead water levels started to even out after
experiencing a steep increase for the last five months, but it
isn’t expected to last for long. After years of drought, Lake
Mead, which is in Nevada and Arizona, reached drastically low
levels last summer, prompting fears that a dead pool—the point
where water levels are too low to flow downstream—would occur
much sooner than originally thought. Water levels started to
recover this year because of above-average precipitation and
snowpack that melted throughout the summer. The lake has since
recovered more than 20 feet, supplemented at times by excessive
rainfall such as that from storm Hilary in August. AccuWeather
meteorologist Alex DaSilva told Newsweek that he doesn’t expect
the lake to rise much more this water year, which ends
September 30.
Seizing a generational opportunity to leverage unprecedented
state funding to combat drought and climate change, the State
Water Resources Control Board provided an historic $3.3 billion
in financial assistance during the past fiscal year (July 1,
2021 – June 30, 2022) to water systems and communities for
projects that bolster water resilience, respond to drought
emergencies and expand access to safe drinking water. The State
Water Board’s funding to communities this past fiscal year
doubled compared to 2020-21, and it is four times the amount of
assistance provided just two years ago.
During the winter of 2022, Utah lawmakers on Capitol
Hill boarded a pair of Black Hawk helicopters to tour
something bleak: the sprawling exposed lakebed, drying mud
flats and the water that remained at the Great Salt Lake, which
had reached an all-time low. It inspired them to
act. The following months saw a flurry of water
conservation bills and millions of dollars dedicated to
reversing the lake’s decline, including a $40 million
trust. The Great Salt Lake sunk to a record low in the fall of
2022, and another round of water reforms followed. Then
came a record-busting amount of snowpack in 2023 that many
Utahns hoped would buy some time and stave off the lake’s
collapse.
The state of California filed a lawsuit against some of the
world’s largest oil and gas companies, claiming they deceived
the public about the risks of fossil fuels now faulted for
climate change-related storms and wildfires that caused
billions of dollars in damage, officials said
Saturday. The civil lawsuit filed in state Superior Court
in San Francisco also seeks creation of a fund — financed by
the companies — to pay for recovery efforts following
devastating storms and fires. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said
in a statement the companies named in the lawsuit — Exxon
Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — should be held
accountable.
El Niño — a weather pattern that can cause impacts around
the world — developed in summer and is expected to persist
through winter, long-term forecasters said Thursday. In
its latest monthly forecast, the federal Climate Prediction
Center said there’s a 95% chance El Niño will
continue through winter, January to March, and it will most
likely be strong, as opposed to weak or moderate. In
California, El Niño has near-celebrity status, as the state has
seen some epic wet winters when it has developed in the past,
but meteorologists say that the state has also seen dry or
normal precipitation in El Niño winters.
Las Vegas isn’t just a hot spot for revelers. Thousands of
businesses, particularly from California, have moved to the
region over the past few decades, and the population is booming
alongside other Southwestern cities. All of that growth in a
region plagued by extreme heat, drought, and a dwindling water
supply raises tough questions for city and state officials who
want to spur economic growth without draining the Colorado
River dry. In one example of that challenge, Arizona’s governor
in June halted construction in areas around Phoenix, citing a
lack of groundwater.
Conservation and community groups have filed a lawsuit against
Utah for what they claim is the state’s failure to ensure
enough water gets to the Great Salt Lake, to avoid what they
call an “ecological collapse.” The lawsuit seeks a court order
requiring Utah to let more water reach the largest natural lake
in the Western Hemisphere. John Leshy, professor emeritus of
law at the University of California-San Francisco, said the
lake is a “public trust” resource per the state’s constitution.
He added the court will examine what the designation means when
it comes to managing and protecting it. Back in the 1970s, the
California Supreme Court stepped in to protect Mono Lake from
its water being diverted to Los Angeles utilizing the Public
Trust Doctrine. Leshy argued it could set a strong precedent in
Utah.
The California Department of Water Resources awarded
multimillion-dollar grants to two groundwater subbasins in
Butte County. DWR announced that the Vina subbasin, which
includes Chico and Durham, and the Wyandotte Creek subbasin,
which covers the Oroville area, are among 32 subbasins that
will receive a total of $187 million to “help support local
sustainable groundwater management.” Vina and Wyandotte Creek
each received $5.5 million. The county’s third subbasin, Butte,
did not get a grant in the funding announced this week. Tod
Kimmelshue, chair of the Butte County Board of Supervisors and
a member of the Vina subbasin board, praised the state for
supporting local efforts.
It was the largest algal bloom on record and it took place in
June off the California coast. The planktonic algae made the
water look green while producing a toxin. Seals, sea lions and
dolphins eat fish that have eaten these algae, therefore
hundreds died as a result. … Using satellite data, Gierach
and other scientists created new ways to study the changes in
the ocean. … Satellites can even measure color and
temperature changes. A lot of the increase in algal bloom is
caused by what we dump into the ocean, runoff, fertilizer and
climate change.
Leveling off after steady increases since early April, Lake
Mead appears to have reached its peak for the year — more than
22 feet above last year. … Average daily levels computed by
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show the surface of Lake Mead at
1,066.32 feet above sea level on Thursday, Sept. 7. Since then,
it has hovered around the same level and come down slightly,
now at 1,066.25 feet as of midday Wednesday.
California businesses and institutions will have to stop
irrigating decorative grassy areas with drinkable water under
legislation approved by state lawmakers. The bill now goes to
Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. Newsom’s office declined
to comment today, but he previously called for an irrigation
ban that led to a similar emergency measure that’s in effect
until next June. Authored by Assemblymember Laura
Friedman, a Democrat from Burbank, the legislation would ban
use of potable water — water that is safe to drink — to
irrigate ornamental lawns or grasses at businesses,
institutions, industrial facilities and certain developments.
The grass could only be irrigated with recycled water.
The wave of unusual disasters this summer now includes
Hurricane Lee, a storm that swelled from Category 1 to Category
5 in just 24 hours as it barreled toward Canada. It’s a prime
example of rapid intensification made worse by warming ocean
temperatures. It will add to what’s already been an exceptional
year of extreme weather. The US has set a new record for the
number of billion-dollar disasters in a year — 23 so far — in
its history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). And this doesn’t even include the costs
from Tropical Storm Hilary in California or from the ongoing
drought in the South and Midwest, because those costs have yet
to be fully calculated.
Reservoirs across the state of California remain
elevated as another wet season approaches. Following
the record wet winter, lakes and reservoirs were nearly full to
the brim as the melting snowpack made its way into them.
Following the melt-off period, Lake Shasta — the keystone of
the Central Valley Project — was at 98% capacity,
Oroville was at 100% capacity, and Folsom Lake was nearly full
as well at 95% capacity. These bodies of water were quite
parched heading into the winter due to the three years of
drought preceding the past winter’s deluge and ranged from
25-32% capacity before the atmospheric river events rolled in.
Researchers have found a way to predict whether or not a forest
will survive based on drought conditions – information that can
help forest managers deal with climate change. The researchers
from the University of California Davis looked at a drought
that caused the loss of tens of millions of trees in the Sierra
Nevada forest from 2012 to 2015. In the early years, the trees
were doing fine, despite drought conditions. But by 2015, 80%
of them were essentially dead.
Outdoor watering accounts for roughly half of total water use
in Southern California’s cities and suburbs, and a large
portion of that water is sprayed from sprinklers to keep grass
green. Under a bill passed by state legislators this week,
California will soon outlaw using drinking water for some of
those vast expanses of grass — the purely decorative patches of
green that are mowed but never walked on or used for
recreation. Grass covers an estimated 218,000 acres in the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s six-county
area. Nearly a quarter of that, or up to 51,000 acres, is
categorized as “nonfunctional” turf — the sort of grass that
fills spaces along roads and sidewalks, in front of businesses,
and around parking lots.
California’s largest lake didn’t even exist 120 years ago, but
now it looms large over questions about how to manage the
Colorado River. Depending on who you ask, the Salton Sea is
either an important wildlife ecosystem or an environmental
disaster that’s ticking like a time bomb — 50% saltier than the
Pacific Ocean and a major source of dust as water recedes. The
Salton Sea Authority, an organization created 30 years ago to
work with the state of California to oversee comprehensive
restoration of the lake, filed an 11-page response to the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation to lend its voice to decisions about the
future of the Colorado River.
California will spend about $300 million to prepare a vast
groundwater and farming infrastructure system for the growing
impacts of climate change. California Department of Water
Resources announced Tuesday that it has awarded $187
million to 32 groundwater sub-basins, which store water for
future use that mainly flows from valuable snowmelt, through
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Grant
Program. Governor Gavin Newsom also announced
Tuesday that California’s Department of Food and
Agriculture will award more than $106 million in grants to 23
organizations, which will design and implement new carbon
sequestration and irrigation efficiency projects.
Microsoft said that the company consumed 6.4 million cubic
meters of water in 2022, primarily for its cloud data centers.
That represents a 34 percent jump over the year before, with
generative AI workloads believed to be at least partially to
blame. In its annual environmental sustainability
report, Microsoft reiterated its goal to be a water positive
company by 2030. As part of that effort, it said that it had
invested in six new projects that are expected to replenish
more than 15 million cubic meters of water over the next
decade.
Community leaders along the Mississippi River worried that dry
southwestern states will someday try to take the river’s water
may soon take their first step toward blocking such a
diversion. Mayors from cities along the river are expected to
vote on whether to support a new compact among the river’s 10
states at this week’s annual meeting of the Mississippi River
Cities and Towns Initiative, according to its executive
director Colin Wellenkamp. Supporters of a compact hope it will
strengthen the region’s collective power around shared goals
like stopping water from leaving the corridor.
Napa County civic leaders want to keep exploring whether the
dozens of local agencies that deliver water to tens of
thousands of residents and businesses should be working
together more closely. County agencies involved with water
range from the city of Napa serving 80,000 residents to rural
districts serving a few hundred customers. They have various
water sources and make their own water decisions. A study three
years ago by the Local Agency Formation Commission of Napa
County suggested they form some type of county water agency or
district to better work together. The idea hasn’t been
forgotten.
Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S., with
an economy that offers many opportunities for workers and
businesses. But it faces a daunting challenge: a water crisis
that could seriously constrain its economic growth and
vitality. … Israel’s approach to desalination offers
insights that Arizona would do well to consider.
Himanshu Gupta knows full well the heavy toll climate change is
taking on agriculture. Growing up in India and eventually
working in public policy, he saw how the unpredictably late
monsoon season was damaging crops and worsening farmers’ lives.
… That eventually led him to co-found ClimateAi, a Bay
Area-based startup that aims to help farms and other businesses
prepare for a hotter, more disruptive climate using the power
of artificial intelligence. By harnessing machine learning
models, the company says its customers can anticipate and
prepare for climate risks to their supply chains and operations
over periods ranging from weeks to seasons.
Think of it as water in the bank for not-so-rainy days. To help
bolster reserves, the City of Roseville and Placer County Water
Agency (PCWA) recently amended their longstanding water
agreement to allow Roseville to purchase and “bank” more water
during “wet” years. … That additional water will be stored in
the region’s vast underground aquifers for Roseville’s use as
needed.
Returning middle and high school students in Walnut are adding
an extra item to their agendas – helping members of their
community monitor their home’s water usage. Dubbed Project
Bright, the students earn community service hours by engaging
with the public over the environmental and fiscal benefits of
more efficient water usage. They spot any leaks with the help
of water sensor technology, Flume, provided through the Walnut
Valley Water District. … When water flows through a water
meter, a magnetic disc spins inside the meter. The rate at
which this disc spins indicated the water’s flow rate. The
Flume Water Sensor straps onto the meter to measure the
magnetic field.
Water conservation has become a way of life throughout the West
with a growing recognition that the supply of water is not
unlimited.
Drought is the most common motivator of increased water
conservation but the gradual drying of the West as a result of
climate change means the amount of fresh water available for
drinking, irrigation, industry and other uses must be used as
efficiently as possible.
With the nation beginning to transition from fossil fuels to
clean energy like solar and wind power, oil and gas companies
are beginning to plug their wells here. So local leaders are
looking for the next economic development opportunity. And they
may have found their solution—divert more Colorado River water
with a new dam and reservoir that will generate more
hydropower, irrigate more agriculture and store more water for
emergencies. They’re not alone in that
quest. Wyoming ranchers are pushing for a new
dam to be used for irrigation. Colorado has
some diversions already under construction, with more
proposed across the state, to help fuel growth. Across the
states of the Upper Basin of the Colorado River—Wyoming,
Colorado, Utah and New Mexico—new dams are rising and new
reservoirs are filling …
Dirt roads neatly bisect acres and acres of vibrant green
plants here: short, dense alfalfa plants fed by the waters of
the Colorado River, flowing by as a light brown stream through
miles of narrow concrete ditches. But on a nearby field, farmer
Ronnie Leimgruber is abandoning those ditches, part of a system
that has served farmers well for decades. Instead, he’s
overseeing the installation of new irrigation technology, at a
cost of more than $400,000, and with no guarantee it will be as
dependable as the open concrete channels and gravity-fed
systems that have long watered these lands. … What
Leimgruber is pursuing on his acreage is part business savvy
and part guarding against a drier future. Like many farmers in
this region, he’s figuring out how to keep growing his crops
with less water. Two decades of drought have shrunk the
Colorado River, which feeds farms in the Imperial Valley, an
agricultural oasis fed solely by the 82-mile All-American
Canal, which delivers river water to this arid Southern
California region.
Climate solutions like solar panels and electric cars require
lots of minerals – copper, lithium, manganese. The U.S. plans
new mines for these metals across the West. But as NPR’s Julia
Simon reports, the country’s need for these metals can
sometimes collide with the region’s lack of water. … You
do have a miner in there. JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: On a
107-degree morning in the mountains east of Phoenix, a miner in
a hard hat peeps out of the top of an 11-foot-tall bucket.
Tyson Nansel, spokesperson for the Resolution Copper mine, says
the miner’s about to plunge… SIMON: …Where the copper
lies. To process it, the mine will use water – a lot, says
geologist James Wells, much of it from an area east of
Phoenix. JAMES WELLS: The equivalent of a brand-new city
of something like 140,000 people – that’s how much water we’re
talking about.
Bill Leikam was reviewing footage from a wildlife camera he
placed along a Palo Alto creekbed recently when something
unfamiliar scampered across the screen. … Eventually, he
recognized the mysterious creature as a critically important
species that has long been missing from his beloved Baylands —
a mammal that California wildlife officials have hailed as a
“climate hero.” … For decades, developers,
municipalities and farmers focused on beavers as a problem that
required mitigation or removal. Now, the species known
as Castor canadensis is seen as offering myriad
benefits: It can help to mitigate drought and wildfires through
natural water management; it is considered a keystone species
for its ability to foster biodiversity; and it can restore
habitat through its ecosystem engineering.
In the 1980s, the Great Salt Lake in Utah covered an area
larger than Rhode Island. Now it has shrunk to less than half
that size. Without major changes in local water use, it’s
possible that it could dry up completely before the end of this
decade. “Right now, the Great Salt Lake is on life support,”
says Ben Abbott, an ecosystem ecologist at Brigham Young
University. The ecosystem could collapse even before the water
disappears. As the lake shrinks, the water is getting saltier,
making it harder for the brine shrimp that live there to
survive—and meaning that the 10 million birds that migrate
through the area may soon have nothing to eat. The shrinking
coastline means that former islands are now connected to land,
and wildlife face new predators; this year, pelicans that used
to raise young on one former island were forced to abandon it.
The Morris Graves Museum of Art, at 636 F St., Eureka, will
hold a closing celebration of Becky Evans’ Installation “30,000
Salmon” on Sept. 17 from 2 to 4 p.m. Museum-goers will hear a
dozen poems about rivers and dams, water and power, spawning
and dying, salmon and community, and half a century of life
upriver and downriver and on Humboldt Bay by Jerry Martien.
Martien will be accompanied by Becky Evans, Fred Neighbor
(guitar), Gary Richardson (bass) and Mike Labolle (percussion
and trumpet). … Engaging educators, students, community
members and artists, the project culminated in an installation
of 30,000 objects depicting or symbolizing the fish die off on
the Klamath River, which was exhibited at the First Street
Gallery in 2004.
The hottest summer on record for many Texas cities has brought
millions of dollars in damage to municipal plumbing and the
loss of huge volumes of water during a severe drought.
Authorities across the state are struggling to keep up with
widespread leakage even as they plead for water conservation
and have restricted outdoor water use. The impact on Texas’s
water systems highlights both the vulnerability of basic
infrastructure to a warming climate and the high costs of
adaptation.
At The Ranch at Laguna Beach, golfers tee off under the
dramatic shadow of a vast canyon, zipping around in electric
carts and strolling along gleaming grassy fairways. From the
lush greenery, you’d never know California is emerging from a
historic mega drought. Golf and the Southern California climate
make for uneasy bedfellows. The sport is often a target of
water cuts by regulators — and of environmentalists who believe
the game uses far too many resources in a world of water
scarcity. Kurt Bjorkman, The Ranch’s general manager, is quick
to agree with all of it. He’ll also tell you that golf can be
part of the solution. Since reopening in 2016 after an
extensive renovation, the course has cut back its water use by
switching to reclaimed water and planting less thirsty
grass varieties.
By changing the climate, humans have doubled the magnitude of
drought’s impact on the availability of vegetation for
herbivores, including livestock, to eat in the greater Four
Corners region, according to a study published this summer in
the journal Earth’s Future. This is because increasing air
temperatures and increasing levels of evaporative demand – or
more water being soaked up into the atmosphere – stresses the
grasses and shrubs that livestock and many other herbivores
rely upon. Emily Williams, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at
the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of
California Merced, was the lead author of the study. At the
time, she was a doctoral student at the University of
California Santa Barbara.
A new but little-known change in California law designating
aquifers as “natural infrastructure” promises to unleash a
flood of public funding for projects that increase the state’s
supply of groundwater. The change is buried in a sweeping state
budget-related law, enacted in July, that also makes it easier
for property owners and water managers to divert floodwater for
storage underground. The obscure, seemingly
inconsequential classification of aquifers could have a
far-reaching effect in California where restoring depleted
aquifers has become a strategic defense against climate change
— an insurance against more frequent droughts and more variable
precipitation.
So far, 2023 has been a wild year for weather. Flooding,
drought and hail have all made their way into the headlines -
not to mention the extreme high and low temperatures seen
throughout the seasons. While weather patterns have been
anything but predictable this year, Eric Snodgrass, Principal
Atmospheric Scientist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, says America’s
heartland may start to see wetter weather conditions just in
time for fall. … Back in early June, scientists at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)
Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño
advisory, noting that El Niño conditions were present and
would likely strengthen into the fall and winter months.
… El Niño winters also bring better chances for
warmer-than-average temperatures across the northern tier of
the country.
Goats and sheep have proved their worth in devouring grasses
and other potentially flammable vegetation, all without
traditional mowing’s noise, pollution and, on hot days, risk of
igniting fires. In 2021, Cal Fire awarded more than $10 million
in grants for wildfire mitigation projects involving grazing.
North Bay residents likely have seen animals grazing on public
lands. Sonoma County Regional Parks use sheep and goats
seasonally for vegetation management at Helen Putnam, Laguna de
Santa Rosa Trail, Foothill, Cloverdale, Gualala and Maxwell
parks. Cows deploy at Taylor Mountain, Crane Creek, North
Sonoma Mountain and Tolay Lake parks. The parks agency notes
that properly conducted and monitored grazing benefits the
ecosystem by reducing invasive plant species, fertilizing the
soil and making grassland more permeable for recharging
groundwater, as well as reducing the risk of wildfire.
The drought that gripped Minnesota in the summer of 2021 was
one of the worst on record. Day after day a blazing sun
shriveled leaves, dried up waterfalls and turned ponds to
puddles. In a state known for its 10,000 lakes, many people
could do little except hope for rain. But big farmers had
another option. They cranked up their powerful irrigation
wells, drenching their fields with so much water that they
collectively pumped at least 6.1 billion gallons more
groundwater than allowed under state permits. Nearly a third of
the overuse happened on land affiliated with one company, R.D.
Offutt Farms.
Federal restrictions are being eased on the Colorado River
starting next year, partly due to a snow-packed winter. Tom
Davis with the Yuma County Water Users’ Associations said water
levels have been looking great and are on the right path across
the state, especially with the recent rainfall around Arizona.
San Diego County’s fragile shoreline and vulnerable beachfront
properties could be in for a rough winter, according to the
California Coastal Commission, the National Weather Service and
some top San Diego scientists. “We are looking at an emerging
El Niño event,” staff geologist Joseph Street told the Coastal
Commission at its meeting Wednesday in Eureka. An El Niño is a
meteorological phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years.
The water temperature at the surface of the Central Pacific
Ocean along the equator warms a few degrees above its long-term
average, creating conditions for stronger, more frequent
seasonal storms across much of the globe.
Folsom Lake has plenty of water heading into the fall. As of
Wednesday morning, the reservoir is at 73% of capacity. That is
the highest the water level has been in early September since
2019. … At this point in the year, the reservoir is
drawn down as managers send water to local customers and
provide for environmental needs. At the same time, a notable
amount of water is lost to the dry air sitting just above it
through evaporation. … Last month, evaporation accounted
for 6,500 acre-feet of water loss at the lake, a rate of about
100 cubic feet per second. Lessard said that compared to the
size of Folsom, which can hold more than 900,000 acre-feet,
that loss is relatively small.
Over the weekend, Burning Man attendees were forced to shelter
in place when the usually-parched Black Rock Desert got roughly
3 months’ worth of rain in 24 hours. … In the U.S.,
there’s strikingly little mainstream discussion of scaling
what’s arguably the simplest, cheapest and most sustainable
solution for harvesting water: catching it from the sky.
The time is ripe for a national policy agenda to dramatically
scale up rainwater harvesting. Around the world, humans
have been systematically gathering rainwater since ancient
times. The technologies are simple: Collect rainwater from
rooftops—on homes, warehouses, factories—and send it down
gutters into tanks, where it can be filtered and used for
domestic purposes, landscaping, or industrial processes. For
farms, harvesting rainwater typically means configuring land
with slopes and basins that maximize natural irrigation. -Written by Justin Talbot Zorn, senior adviser to the
Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Israel Mirsky is a
New York-based writer and technologist.
On Wednesday, Stockton East Water District and the California
Department of Water Resources (DWR) joined local and federal
officials to highlight a $12.2 million project that will
support groundwater recharge, water quality and habitat
restoration project along the Calaveras River. … The
event was held at the Bellota Weir Modification Project site on
the Calaveras River. Funded by DWR’s Urban Community
Drought Relief Program, the project will make conveyance
improvements and install a modern fish screen at the Stockton
East Water District’s Bellota municipal diversion intake on the
Calaveras River. The conveyance improvements would double the
amount of groundwater recharge per year and improve water
reliability and quality for the city of Stockton’s drinking
water. Additionally, the fish screen and new fishways will
restore fish habitats along the Calaveras River and allow safe
passage through the river for the threatened Central Valley
Steelhead and Chinook Salmon.
Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to save the Great
Salt Lake as its water continues receding and its lakebed blows
dust. The case uses a legal concept that recently stifled plans
to turn Utah Lake into a private island development and, years
ago, stopped a salty lake from getting sucked dry in
California. A complaint filed in 3rd District Court on
Wednesday invokes the public trust doctrine, claiming the Utah
Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has failed in its duty to
protect the largest saline ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere
for the benefit of its residents. While lawmakers and resource
managers have taken steps in recent years to bolster the
imperiled Great Salt Lake and the unique ecology it supports,
they must take more drastic steps to reduce Utahns’
overconsumption of water, the suit argues.
With California facing a hotter and drier future — punctuated
by bouts of extreme weather — state officials are moving
forward with a new framework for urban water use that could
require some suppliers to make cuts of 20% or more as soon as
2025. Many of the suppliers facing the harshest cuts are
located in the Central Valley and in the southeastern part of
the state — large, hot and primarily rural areas that have
historically struggled to meet conservation targets. … The
move marks a shift away from the one-size-fits-all approach
that has governed California water for years. If adopted, the
new rules would require the state’s more than 400 urban water
suppliers to come up with a new water-use budget every year
beginning in 2025. They could face hefty fines for failing to
comply or meet their targets.
A new but little-known change in
California law designating aquifers as “natural infrastructure”
promises to unleash a flood of public funding for projects that
increase the state’s supply of groundwater.
The change is buried in a sweeping state budget-related law,
enacted in July, that also makes it easier for property owners
and water managers to divert floodwater for storage underground.
Searching 150 Best Quotes About Agriculture for something
appropriate to discuss The Future of Agriculture and Food
Production in a Drying Climate, this comment stood out — “At
the very heart of agriculture is the drive to feed the world.
We all flourish…or decline…with the farmer.” That core concept,
“the heart of agriculture”, resonated with Bobby Robbins, a
cardiologist by trade whose day job is President of the
University of Arizona in Tucson. Living in the Northern
Sonora Desert, Robbins has watched a changing climate threaten
food and agriculture systems in the arid Southwest. “The
agriculture industry needs innovative research-based solutions
to continue producing food year-round,” he said in announcing a
high-IQ Commission to tackle the job.
Los Angeles saw its eighth wettest season in 145 years last
winter. The torrential downpours did more than fill aquifers,
shrink water waste complaints and ease drought concerns—they
also led to the biggest cutbacks in regional residential water
use in four years. The average customer of the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power used 59.5 gallons per day
from Jan. 1–May 31, according to publicly available water use
and conservation data from the California State Water Resources
Control Board. This marked an 11% drop from the same period
last year, and was the lowest recorded figure since 2019 (the
2023 figures are preliminary and subject to a slight revision).
Wildfires and climate change are locked in a vicious circle:
Fires worsen climate change, and climate change worsens fires.
Scientists, including those at the World Resources Institute,
have been increasingly sounding the alarm about this feedback
loop, warning that fires don’t burn in isolation — they produce
greenhouse gases that, in turn, create warmer and drier
conditions that ignite more frequent and intense fires.
Last week, wildfire smoke prompted another round of unhealthy
air quality in California. Fires in Oregon and Northern
California sent smoke into Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay
Area. And it’s a global nightmare: This summer, world
temperatures hit an all-time high, the worst U.S. wildfire in
more than a century devastated Maui, a deadly fire in Greece
was declared Europe’s largest ever, and swaths of the Midwest
and Northeast have been blanketed by smoke from Canada’s forest
fires.
Cities and economic development organizations could start
saying no to incoming businesses seeking tax abatements and
grants if they consume too much water and won’t bring enough
economic benefits to Southern Nevada. The Southern Nevada Water
Authority is nearly finished developing its new “water
investment tool,” which ranks businesses on a scale from one to
five based on how much water they would annually consume. The
Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development and the Las
Vegas Global Economic Alliance partnered with the water
authority to develop the ranking system over the last year and
a half.
For years, environmentalists have argued that the Colorado
River should be allowed to flow freely across the Utah-Arizona
border, saying that letting water pass around Glen Canyon Dam —
and draining the giant Lake Powell reservoir — would improve
the shrinking river’s health. Now, as climate change increases
the strains on the river, this controversial proposal is
receiving support from some surprising new allies: influential
farmers in California’s Imperial Valley. In a letter to the
federal Bureau of Reclamation, growers Mike and James Abatti,
who run some of the biggest farming operations in the Imperial
Valley, urged the government to consider sacrificing the
Colorado’s second-largest reservoir and storing the water
farther downstream in Lake Mead — the river’s largest
reservoir.
California experienced triple the amount of average rainfall
within the first few months of 2023, leading to heavy plant
growth across the Central Coast. It even caused a super bloom
of wildflowers off of Highway 1 and 58, creating excitement for
locals and visitors alike. Months later, one of the Central
Coast’s biggest industries is grappling with the storms’
after-effects, as harvest season for vineyards is looking a lot
different this year. Walking through Paso Robles on a hot
August afternoon, it’s almost like the storms never happened.
The rolling hills at Tablas Creek Vineyard are lined with
healthy grapevines and olive trees.
Sudden shifts from drought conditions to heavy floods are
becoming more common in the U.S. as the climate changes, a
study has found. The findings were presented in a study
published in Communications Earth & Environment. … Over
time, from 1980 to 2020, researchers found that such whiplash
trends in the weather increased approximately a quarter of a
percent to 1 percent per year. These extreme shifts
in weather patterns have manifested in parts of the U.S.
recently, and in California in particular.
Dozens of California cities could be required to impose
permanent water conservation measures starting in about a year
— and keep them in place even when the state is not in a
drought — under proposed new rules from state water regulators.
The landmark rules are required by two laws that former Gov.
Jerry Brown signed in 2018 after a severe five-year drought.
Environmentalists and some water districts support them, saying
they are critical as the state grapples with climate change and
more severe droughts. But some water agencies have been
strongly opposed, saying Sacramento is beginning a new era of
micro-managing how local communities use water. Under the new
rules, roughly 400 of the California’s largest cities and water
districts are required to come up with a water-use budget every
year beginning Jan. 1, 2025.
In 2015, when California was deep into a severe drought, state
Senate Bill 88 tightened requirements for reporting water use.
This posed a challenge for growers in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta’s 415,000 acres of farmland, where many
irrigation systems are fed by siphons instead of pumps and so
lack electricity to run water meters. Alternative power
sources proved troublesome. … So when former Delta
Watermaster Michael George suggested that [farmer]
Brett Baker look into OpenET, a new online platform that
uses satellites to track how much water plants consume, Baker
was primed to make it work. That was in 2020. This year marked
the launch of an OpenET-based website for reporting water use
in the Delta, and 70 percent of growers there have already
adopted it.
Cassie Cerise lives on her family’s ranch on Missouri Heights,
a mesa above Carbondale named for the home state of some of the
area’s earliest settlers. Like her parents and grandparents,
she runs cattle and irrigates hay and alfalfa fields — some by
sprinklers, others by flood — with water from Cattle Creek. But
this season, Cerise and her husband, Tim Fenton, decided to let
about 73 acres go dry and get paid for the water they aren’t
using as part of the federally funded System Conservation
Program, which is aimed at addressing the crisis on the
Colorado River. According to Cerise’s contract with the Upper
Colorado River Commission, which oversees the program, not
watering her fields this season will save about 83 acre-feet of
water.
The largest wildfire currently burning in the United States is
raging in California’s densely forested northwest corner. The
Smith River Complex — actually a cluster of connected blazes —
covered a total of 79,000 acres and was only 7 percent
contained as of Wednesday evening. The fire began on Aug. 15
with a storm that scattered lightning strikes across the Six
Rivers National Forest in Del Norte County, just south of the
Oregon border. Since then, the fire has crossed into Oregon,
closed roads, forced power outages that lasted days, and
delayed the start of the school year for roughly 4,000 students
in Del Norte County’s public schools. On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin
Newsom declared a state of emergency for the county, where the
air quality has been abysmal for days and hundreds of people
are still under evacuation orders.
… After facing a La Niña winter for three years straight and
getting doused with a wet and snowy winter last year, El Niño
is expected to take California on a different winter ride. …
The winter season, which officially begins Dec. 21, in Northern
California is forecast to have an equal chance of being below
or above normal precipitation, according to the
December-January-February [NOAA] outlook. It was published Aug.
17. “It’s a little uncertain,” [Tom Krabacher, professor of
geography at Sacramento State] said about El Niño’s effect on
rain in Northern California. “It can bring more rain or can
have a relatively normal rain.” He said this is because the
weather event shifts the storm tracks, pushing the rain farther
south.
As implementation of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) proceeds, it’s no secret that the San
Joaquin Valley will have to adapt to a future with less water
for irrigation. Our research shows that overall irrigation
supplies may decline by as much as 20% by 2040. Land uses will
have to change, and some have raised concerns that SGMA’s
implementation could put smaller farms at a disadvantage, given
their more limited resources and capacity. To gain insight on
these issues, we conducted a detailed geographical analysis of
cropping patterns and water conditions by farm size on the San
Joaquin Valley floor, using county real estate records on
ownership of agricultural parcels (individual properties of
varying sizes) to identify farms.
As global temperatures rapidly climb, humanity is seeing more
and more of the disastrous effects scientists warned us about:
fiercer heat waves, more intense wildfires, and heavier rain.
The extremes of the past few months are but a preview of the
ever-worsening pain we’ll endure if we don’t dramatically
reduce carbon emissions. … What’s made this summer so
bad? For one thing, the base layer of global warming makes
extreme summer heat both more common and more severe than it
normally would be. Plus, this summer the Pacific Ocean
transitioned from the cooler waters of La Niña into the warmer
waters of El Niño, which goes on to influence Earth’s climate
globally.
The increasingly unpredictable climate is making growing grapes
an increasingly risky and costly business. France recently lost
an estimated $2 billion in wine sales after extreme weather
decimated the harvest. In 2022, California farmers lost an
estimated $1.7 billion to the drought alone, according to a
study conducted by researchers at the University of California.
And despite California’s abnormally wet winter in 2023, which
helped replenish reservoirs and groundwater aquifers, experts
warn that the wet weather won’t make up for decades of
diminished rain and extended periods of drought. How much water
a vineyard needs to produce great wine varies considerably, and
while there is an increasing effort to dry farm, the vast
majority of California vineyards are irrigated.
A difference of $38 million dollars in taxes to those in the
Indian Wells Valley hung in the balance as the Indian Wells
Valley Groundwater Authority discussed funding options for the
imported water pipeline project at the IWVGA’s board meeting on
Aug. 23. The mood of the room reflected the gravity of the
decision. Conversation slowed, political rivalries cooled, and
board members asked the same clarifying questions from subject
matter experts for a third or fourth time. Ultimately, too many
questions remained on such an important decision, and so the
IWVGA board tabled it until their next meeting on Sept. 13. No
further delays will be possible; the IWVGA will need to make a
decision at their September meeting.
California is at yet another critical point in its struggle
toward a sustainable water future, and yet we’re still talking
about the wrong solutions. On Wednesday, the water rights
protest period for Sites Reservoir will come to a close. Sites
Reservoir is the latest in a long line of proposed dams
promising to end our cycle of water insecurity. However, Sites
won’t add much to California’s water portfolio, and its harm to
the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem and communities that rely
on them could be irreversible and ongoing. -Written by Keiko Mertz, the Policy Director for
Friends of the River.
With three-quarters of Arizona’s fresh water supply going to
farmlands, the recent reductions imposed on Colorado River
supply are having a huge impact on agriculture in the state.
“It’s all about stretching that water dollar or that gallon of
water a little bit further.” Paul “Paco” Ollerton is a
third-generation farmer in Casa Grande, who says he’d already
been squeezing every last drop for his fields. “Our yields have
improved dramatically. Irrigation efficiencies have helped
quite a bit.” But it’s still not enough to keep his family
business afloat. The longtime cotton farmer has had to make
adjustments as well, turning to more drought-resistant crops
used for animal feed.
Ducks Unlimited and its scientific partners have several
studies planned or underway to study waterfowl and their
habitats in the Pacific Flyway. … The lack of floodplain
habitat for salmon and other migratory fish in the Sacramento
Valley in California has contributed to their decline. As a
result, there are proposals to manage floodplain habitats to
benefit fish. This study, led by a team in Ducks Unlimited’s
Western Region, will determine the effects of floodplain
reactivation for fish on waterfowl and Sacramento Valley
waterfowl hunting.
Population growth and climate change are stretching America’s
water supplies to the limit, and tapping new sources is
becoming more difficult each year—in some cases, even
impossible. New Mexico, California, Arizona, and Colorado are
facing the nation’s most significant strains on water supplies.
But across the entire American Southwest, water stress has
become the norm. … Farmers use the vast majority of
water withdrawn from the Colorado River to irrigate
crops—and 70 percent of that is for crops like
alfalfa and hay used to feed cattle. The river also supplies
drinking water to 40 million people in the Southwest,
and in 2022, Lake Mead—which the Colorado feeds—shrank to
its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s.
Global warming has focused concern on land and sky as soaring
temperatures intensify hurricanes, droughts and wildfires. But
another climate crisis is unfolding, underfoot and out of view.
Many of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s
water systems, and which have transformed vast stretches of
America into some of the world’s most bountiful farmland, are
being severely depleted. These declines are threatening
irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a
whole. The New York Times conducted a months-long examination
… In California, an agricultural giant and, like
Arkansas, a major groundwater user, the aquifers in at least 76
basins last year were being pumped out faster than they could
be replenished by precipitation, a condition known as
“overdraft,” according to state numbers.
A joint team of researchers have demonstrated successful
atmospheric water harvesting using ambient sunlight in the
Death Valley desert, according to a press release from the
Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH). The
study, published in the journal Nature Water, was led by
Woochul Song from the Division of Environmental Science &
Engineering POSTECH and Omar M. Yaghi, Professor of Chemistry
at the University of California, Berkeley. Harvesting
atmospheric water presents challenges, particularly in regions
with humidity less than 70%, as it necessitates a substantial
amount of energy to condense the vapor, rendering it an
ineffective solution.
Almost all of California is finally drought-free, after
Tropical Storm Hilary’s rare summer drenching added to this
winter’s record-setting rainfall totals. But despite all that
drought-busting precipitation, California continues to capture
only a percentage of that water. Much of the abundance in rain
from Hilary ended up running off into the ocean — not captured
or stored for future use, when California will inevitably face
its next drought. … Following the torrent of winter
storms from a parade of atmospheric rivers, much of California
pulled out of drought conditions after three of the
state’s driest years on record. And Hilary continued to build
on that trend — pulling one of the state’s driest regions out
of such dire conditions.
On a cloudy day on a crop farm north of Reno, Nev., Zach
Cannady tilts his head toward the sky and smiles. That’s
because it’s starting to rain, which wasn’t in the forecast.
… Cannady owns Prema Farms, a stone’s throw into California,
tucked in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. It grows a
colorful mix of crops – carrots, kale, peppers, onions, melons
and more. And harvests have been strong recently thanks to wet
winters and more frequent rain. But Cannady, who has a wife and
two kids, knows that can change fast in farming.
Weather in the desert seems mostly a dry subject. The
usual history of Palm Springs mostly starts in a dry spell at
the end of the 19th century when the little sprouting village
planted by John McCallum at the base of Mt. San Jacinto
desiccated and nearly perished despite all his efforts to bring
water from Tahquitz Canyon and Whitewater via extensive
flumes. The drought lasted some 11 years when the aptly
named Weather Bureau noted in 1901 a dying tropical cyclone
brought “two inches of rain to the mountains and deserts of
Southern California” ending the dry spell that nearly ended
Palm Springs itself. In the desert, when it finally rains, many
times, it pours. But perhaps the most famous and
influential deluge in the history of the Coachella Valley
didn’t occur here at all. In 1905, heavy rainfall in the
Colorado River basin caused the river to swell and eventually
breach a foolishly naïve Imperial Valley irrigation dike. -Written by Tracy Conrad, special to the Desert
Sun.
The Tule River Tribe has declared a water shortage emergency.
The tribe has been facing a clean water shortage for almost a
week. Tule River leaders say a lighting strike knocked the
power out and impacted this water plant last week leaving
hundreds of locals without clean water. In an already stressed
system. The murky river water is making it impossible for
locals to use 60% of their water supply. A little higher at
about 1,400 feet in elevation, the water at Painted Rock dam is
also dirty.
The seas are rising. Humans have already pumped enough
greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to raise ocean levels up
to 2 feet by the end of the century, according to
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If we
do not curb our use of fossil fuels, we are looking at up to 7
feet. That rise could drive 2 billion people from
their homes and cost $14 trillion a year. And once the
seas go up, they will not fall — not on any human timescale.
But what if they could? On the subreddit AskScience, one user
proposed a potential solution: What if we took our excess
seawater and dumped it into Death Valley? The national park,
located in the Mojave Desert, reaches 282 feet below sea level
and used to be the site of a massive lake.
Ahead of an annual US Department of Agriculture estimate for
California walnut production, the outlook is far more positive
in 2023, according to the California Walnut Board. In an update
published Aug. 9, the CWB credited heavy rains over a long
period last winter for restoring subsoil moisture and providing
“for healthy root zones, enabling trees to better tolerate late
season high temperatures,” the CWB said. Extensive snowpack
also helped sustain the trees during the growing season.
Rainfall, caused by atmospheric rivers in California, was
intense from the first of the year through late March,
affecting large areas of Southern California, the Central Coast
of California and northern parts of the state.
It’s no mystery why the tiny community of Pond was flooded out
this last spring. All you had to do was drive four miles south
to see the massive pile of debris at the Highway 43 bridge to
know all that water churning through the normally dry Poso
Creek was going bust out and go somewhere. It did. And it
headed straight for Pond. For generations, the Poso has been an
intermittent problem child – bone dry most years, then swelling
beyond its banks about every six to 10 years, flooding towns,
vital roadways and thousands of acres of farmland northwest of
Wasco.
The state has assigned an engineering company to take control
of, and improve, the water system in the small Tulare County
town of Teviston. Teviston, a rural community of about 460
people, has been hard hit by water problems for years. The town
well broke down in the drought of 2021, leaving families
without water and many without any way to cool themselves in
soaring summer temperatures. Its water is also contaminated by
1,2,3, TCP, a dangerous carcinogen. The state Water
Resources Control Board gained the authority to appoint
administrators to water systems in 2018. Appointed
administrators take over struggling systems that can’t deal
with issues ranging from water quality to technical and
managerial challenges.
Wildfires raging in rugged pockets of California’s far north
have killed a Siskiyou County man and added particulate plumes
to smoke drifting toward the Bay Area from big Oregon
blazes. California fire map: Active fires in Northern
California including Smith River Complex California’s fire
season is here, and with temperatures rising, lightning weather
in the forecast and autumnal winds always a threat, it’s likely
to intensify over the next few months and threaten more
populated areas. Roughly 173,000 acres have burned so far
this season — up 24% from 139,000 this time last year, a
surprisingly mild season, but down nearly 80% from an average
of about 812,000 acres over the past five years, which included
three years of historic drought.
The Modesto City Council voted Tuesday evening to boost water
rates nearly 25% by 2027. The average residential bill will go
from $67.13 a month now to $83.66 in 2027, a staff report said.
Actual charges are much higher in the dry months and lower in
other times. Under state law, the proposal would have died if a
majority of the 75,584 customers filed protests. Only 144 did.
… During California’s three-year drought, state water
regulators banned watering “ornamental turf” at corporate,
industrial or government properties with potable water as a way
to preserve supplies. That emergency regulation is set to
expire next June. A new bill would make the ban permanent.
Under the measure, AB 1572, it would be illegal for businesses
like office parks, car dealerships, supermarkets, strip malls,
or corporate campuses to water decorative grass with drinkable
water — whether or not California is in a drought. Scofflaws
would face fines of up to $500 a day.
Climate scientists are bracing for potentially lengthy El Niño
and La Niña events, according to a new study revealing how the
underlying mechanism for climate variability is responding to
increased greenhouse gas emissions in unpredicted ways and
inducing El Niño-like conditions after volcanic eruptions. The
research published in Nature Wednesday details recently
discovered trends of the “Pacific Walker Circulation,” (PWC) an
atmospheric phenomenon relating to east-west circulation along
the equatorial Pacific. The pattern plays an atmospheric role
in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, the dominant mode of
global interannual climate variability that comprises two
phases: El Niño and La Niña.
Some places in the U.S. are already struggling
with groundwater depletion, such as
California, Arizona, Nebraska and other parts of the
central Plains. … [Jonathan Winter, an associate professor of
geography at Dartmouth College and an author on a new
study on future U.S. irrigation costs and benefits] used a
computer model to look at how heat and drought might affect
crop production by the middle and end of this century, given
multiple scenarios for the emissions of warming greenhouse
gases. In places like California and Texas where “everyone is
dropping their straw into the glass” of groundwater, as Winter
put it, current levels of irrigation won’t be viable in the
long term because there isn’t enough water. But use of
irrigation may grow where groundwater supply isn’t presently an
issue.
A panel of state lawmakers who lead in the water and
agriculture space said any water conservation program Colorado
conceives of shouldn’t go into place until after California and
Arizona first take action. The bipartisan panel spoke
Wednesday at Colorado Water Congress about the water policies
passed in the last legislative session, and where they see
Colorado water policy headed in the next year.
Earlier this summer, state water officials introduced draft
regulations that, if passed, would allow purified wastewater to
be directly introduced to drinking supplies. Currently,
purified wastewater has to be introduced to environmental
buffers like groundwater aquifers before being added to
drinking supplies, but the new regulations would allow treated
water to bypass this step after undergoing additional
purification processes.
The plan to save the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin is failing.
In 2014, the California Legislature passed the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), requiring local communities
to form groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to be
administered by groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs). If
you’ve been following the saga of the critically overdrafted
Paso Robles Groundwater Basin for the last 10 years, the
following news may depress you, but it probably won’t surprise
you. Some things have changed over that time—the basin now has
a groundwater sustainability agency and a groundwater
sustainability plan—but some other things have not, including
the mindset that still believes the problem can be solved by
voluntary conservation, supplemental water projects, and
digging deeper wells.
Sci-fi writers have long conceived worlds in which extreme
weather events upend the lives of its inhabitants, but with
every passing, warming year, their scenarios feel more
prophetic. Last September, record-shattering temperatures
nearly broke the state’s power grid, and according to a Times
investigation, extreme heat waves are killing more Californians
than official records show. In the winter, after the driest
three-year period on record that dried up wells and forced
farmers to fallow fields, atmospheric river storms pummeled the
state. Farms flooded. Levees failed. For decades,
scientists have warned us that human-caused climate change
will produce a growing number of weather catastrophes. But
as the impact of global warming unfolds across the world,
events once expected to happen decades from now are already
here.
As most Californians know all too well, the rain that drenched
the state this week was extreme and often record-breaking. As
Tropical Storm Hilary passed through California, more rain fell
in San Diego and Los Angeles on Sunday than on any other August
day on record. The same was true in the desert city of Palm
Springs, which received about 70 percent of its annual average
precipitation in a 24-hour period, according to Mark Moede, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s San Diego
office. “You look at those numbers, and you have to look
at it twice to say, ‘Is this really real?’” Moede told
me. Hilary arrived during what is usually California’s
driest time of year, and the peak of the state’s fire season.
Seven of the 20 largest wildfires in California
history started in August.
Colorado River Basin states don’t agree on very much when it
comes to the future operations of the basin’s largest water
savings banks. One thing they do agree on: The current rules
aren’t working. The seven states with land in the Colorado
River Basin and other stakeholders submitted comment letters
Aug. 15 to the federal government for consideration as part of
ongoing discussions over future operations at Lake Mead and
Lake Powell, which together comprise 92% of the basin’s entire
storage capacity. The federal long-term planning process
launched in June, a year after a storage crisis left water
users reeling. From 2000 to 2022, Mead and Powell dropped from
nearly full to less than 32% capacity, as of March 20. Water
experts attribute the crisis to prolonged drought, an
increasingly warm climate and overuse.
Salmon fishers across the state are pivoting to stay afloat
after the salmon fishing season was canceled earlier this
year. At dock 47 in San Francisco, the pier looks
different this time of year. More boats are tied up, an unusual
sight for what would be peak salmon season. “It hurts all
the way around,” Matt Juanes told CBS News Bay Area.
… But this year, the salmon fisher of 8 years is
exploring uncharted territory for him. He’s now looking to
catch shrimp and halibut after salmon season was canceled for
repopulation efforts. … The impact goes beyond the
fishermen and their families. California is projected to lose
$460 million from the closure with more than 20,000 jobs
impacted. Officials say the closure was necessary to
sustain the population after years of drought made the state’s
water supply unsustainable for salmon eggs that require cooler
water to survive. But experts say we could see future closures
unless water is reserved for the fish.
When Adel Hagekhalil speaks about the future of water in
Southern California, he often starts by mentioning the three
conduits the region depends on to bring water from hundreds of
miles away: the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado River
Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct. As general manager of the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Hagekhalil
is responsible for ensuring water for 19 million people,
leading the nation’s largest wholesale supplier of drinking
water. He says that with climate change upending the water
cycle, the three existing aqueducts will no longer be
sufficient. … For Southern California to adapt,
Hagekhalil said, it will need to recycle more wastewater,
capture stormwater, clean up contaminated groundwater, and
design new infrastructure …
When recycled for drinking, the millions of gallons of water
that Bay Area residents flush down toilets and showers every
day could be cleaner than the pristine Hetch Hetchy water that
flows from many taps in the region, according to a top
California water official. … Recycled water for human
consumption … will be so clean that workers will have to add
minerals to it, because the purification process strips the
water of necessary minerals that make it drinkable. But
recycling the region’s used water for drinking, a process
called “direct potable reuse,” is not happening anywhere in the
Bay Area — at least not yet.
July was the hottest month in modern times. Now, August is
shaping up to be a month of extremes. In the United States
alone, a tropical storm swept across the Southwest, another
struck Texas, Maui burned, and a blistering heat dome sat atop
the middle of the country. In India, torrential rains triggered
deadly landslides, Morocco and Japan hit new heat records, and
southern Europe braced for another scorching heat wave. Those
extremes have also brought high-stakes tests for public
officials: Where public alerts and education worked, death and
destruction were minimized. Where they didn’t, the results were
catastrophic. Maui has so far recorded more than 100 deaths
from the blaze that started Aug. 8, and that number is
projected to rise.
In 2021, hydropower contributed 16% to total global electricity
production, whereas in the United States it accounted for only
about 6% of the total (although it was responsible for 31.5% of
electricity generated domestically from renewable sources),
according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That
small share of U.S. production could be higher: The 2016
Hydropower Vision Report, published by the U.S. Department of
Energy’s (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), stated
that “U.S. hydropower could grow from 101 gigawatts (GW) of
capacity to nearly 150 GW by 2050.”
Strange times create strange bedfellows, as long-term water
supply for farms and cities in the Lower Basin aligns with the
best environmental alternative. The best solution for
California, Arizona, and Nevada to achieve water supply
security is to have the Colorado River bypass Glen Canyon Dam,
drain Lake Powell’s water into Lake Mead, and let the Colorado
River flow freely through Grand Canyon. As the comments are
made public in the Post-2026 Colorado River Scoping EIS
(Environmental Impact Statement) process, one thing is for
certain: an alternative examining bypassing water around or
through Glen Canyon Dam must be developed by the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation. The usual suspects — mostly environmental groups —
are calling for either completely decommissioning Glen Canyon
Dam or bypassing the Dam to support the “Fill Mead First”
alternative. -Written by Gary Wockner, a scientist and conservationist
based in Colorado.
The Marin Municipal Water District is preparing to launch more
in-depth studies of new water supply projects, beginning with
assembling consulting teams. The district board is set to vote
on contracts with new consulting teams next month to begin
preliminary technical, environmental and engineering studies of
larger, more complex projects. The projects include expanding
local reservoir storage, constructing a brackish Petaluma River
desalination plant and installing new pipelines to transfer
Russian River water directly into local reservoirs. Unlike the
broader study completed earlier this year that identified which
of the supply options the district could pursue, the more
in-depth analyses are needed to provide details on how and
whether they can be built, as well as the costs and
environmental impacts.
Tropical Storm Hilary made history Thursday, becoming the first
storm of its kind to enter California since 1997. The state
rarely sees landfalling tropical cyclones or hurricanes, thanks
to a confluence of cold water and unfavorable atmospheric
conditions off the coast. Experts say the occurrence will
likely remain relatively rare even as the climate
changes. But rising ocean temperatures mean the hurricanes
that do happen to make it up the coast may be stronger and more
damaging. On Sunday evening, Hilary brought extreme rainfall to
neighborhoods from San Diego to Los Angeles, trapping cars in
floodwaters and overwhelming drainage systems.
Phoenix officials said this week the city will remain in a
stage 1 water alert even though the United States Bureau of
Reclamation announced a return to a tier 1 shortage on the
Colorado River in 2024 as a result of a wet winter that
elevated levels at lakes Powell and Mead. “While this
favorable winter provides temporary relief to the Colorado
River system, Phoenix, which receives 40% of its water from the
river, is asking residents to continue conserving water due to
the unpredictability of the river, prolonged drought and
climate change,” city officials said in a release. Under the
city’s drought management plan, a stage 1 water alert is
declared when an insufficient supply of water appears likely
due to water system or supply limitations, triggering an
intensive public education and information program.
The morning sun was still rising over the shriveled wheat
fields, and the villagers were already worrying about another
day without water. Rainwater stored in the village well would
run out in 30 days, one farmer said nervously. The groundwater
pumps gave nothing, complained another. The canals, brimming
decades ago with melted snow from the Hindu Kush, now dry up by
spring, said a third. … Two years after its takeover of
Afghanistan, the Taliban is overseeing its first major
infrastructure project, the 115-mile Qosh Tepa canal, designed
to divert 20 percent of the water from the Amu Darya river
across the parched plains of northern Afghanistan. The
canal promises to be a game changer for villages like Ishfaq’s
in Jowzjan province.
OceanWell and Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD)
announced today their partnership to pilot California’s
first-ever Blue Water farm. LVMWD Board of Directors
unanimously approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that
paves the way for the public/private partnership to research an
environment-first approach that addresses the increasing
concern of water scarcity and reliability. Blue Water is fresh
water harvested from the deep ocean or other raw water sources.
This, first-of-its-kind project, will test OceanWell’s
proprietary water purification technology to produce safe,
clean drinking water without the environmental impacts of
traditional coastal desalination methods.
Federal researchers reported Wednesday that despite
last fall’s eradication efforts the number of
invasive smallmouth bass more than doubled in the Colorado
River below Glen Canyon Dam since last year, imperiling the
already threatened native humpback chub.
Technically — and legally — Manteca households can’t revert to
watering landscaping until Oct. 19. That’s because the
municipal ordinance approved unanimously by the City Council
Tuesday to make that happen under state law requires a second
vote and then a 30-day period before it goes into effect. In
the meanwhile, City Manager Toni Lundgren Thursday said
municipal staff will not cite anyone that waters a third day.
… An unless three of the council members flip their vote
on the second reading of the ordinance likely to take place
Sept. 19, it will be legal to water three days a week starting
Oct. 19.
Brown and Caldwell recently announced the addition of water
reuse technical leadership as Sandy Scott-Roberts joined the
firm as program management director to help California
communities tap into drought-proof drinking water sources.
Having spent most of her career at an internationally
recognized water district, Scott-Roberts has 20 years of
managing capital improvement projects, encompassing the
planning, design, and construction of water treatment
facilities, including pipelines, pump stations, recharge
basins, and injection wells. A career highlight includes
managing the final expansion of the 130 million gallons per day
Groundwater Replenishment System, the world’s largest water
purification system for indirect potable reuse.
Climate change — and changing political winds — are prompting
shifts in strategy at California’s largest agricultural water
district. Westlands Water District, which occupies some 1,100
square miles of the arid San Joaquin Valley, is in the midst of
an internal power struggle that will determine how water fights
unfold across the state. After years of aggressively
fighting for more water, Westlands is making plans to live with
less. In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned in the valley, promising
to “open up the water” for farmers in the then-drought stricken
state. Its leaders are now sounding a more Biden-esque note:
They are planning to cover a sixth of the district with solar
panels to start “farming the sun” instead of thirsty crops like
almonds and pistachios.
Numerous lightning-induced fires are erupting in Northern
California as thunderstorms pepper the region amid a scorching
heat wave. Both red-flag warnings for high fire danger and
excessive-heat warnings are in effect from far Northern
California into Oregon, and the Weather Service is warning that
any fires that develop “have a high probability of spreading
rapidly.” More ignitions are possible through Thursday, with a
chance of storms lingering into the weekend. … Given the
hot, unstable conditions, thunderstorm updrafts can intensify
any blazes already burning. Outflow winds between 40 and 60 mph
— essentially the exhaust from thunderstorms — are possible
Wednesday afternoon and evening, potentially causing dangerous
fire spread.
Hilary strengthened into a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean
southwest of Mexico on Thursday and is on track to pass along
Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. It threatens possible impacts in parts
of the West as a weaker system. Hilary is forecast to rapidly
intensify through the end of the week into a Category 4
hurricane with winds of at least 130 mph, forecasters at
the National Hurricane Center warned. … Hilary is
expected to weaken significantly before it reaches Southern
California and parts of the Southwest, but could potentially
bring significant impacts to these areas in the form of heavy
rain and flooding. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at
the University of California at Los Angeles, said on Wednesday
“multiple years’ worth of precipitation” could potentially fall
in some of California’s driest areas.
A research effort tracking water scarcity around the world
shows California, Arizona and other Western states are
experiencing water stress at high levels similar to arid
countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The analysis by
researchers with the World Resources Institute found that all
seven states that rely on the Colorado River face high or
extremely high water stress. Arizona ranked first for the most
severe water stress in the country, followed by New Mexico and
Colorado, while California ranked fifth.
Oregon water regulators rightly overturned an “automatic stay”
that shielded irrigators from the enforcement of the Klamath
Tribes’ water rights, according to a federal judge. Earlier
this year, the Klamath Tribes asked the state’s Department of
Water Resources to “regulate off” junior irrigators who draw
water from Upper Klamath Lake and its tributaries. The
agency ordered the 45 farms to stop irrigating, finding the
lake’s water level was low enough to adversely affect the
tribes’ oldest “time immemorial” water rights. However, four
farmers filed a lawsuit arguing OWRD should have ignored the
“futile” request because federal officials were releasing water
from the lake to improve habitat for protected fish.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
The three-year span, 2019 to 2022, was officially the driest ever
statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. But that most recent period of overall drought
also saw big swings from very wet to very dry stretches such
as the 2021-2022 water year that went from a relatively
wet Oct.-Dec. beginning to the driest Jan.-March period in the
state’s history.
With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into the
winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for California
or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new reality of
climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our reliance on
historical patterns to forecast California’s water supply?
Participants found out what efforts are being made to
improve sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) precipitation
forecasting for California and the Colorado River Basin at our
one-day Winter Outlook Workshop December
8 in Irvine, CA.
Beckman Center
Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Managers of California’s most
overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s
landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable,
detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered
basins into balance. It was a task that required more than 250
newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the
drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather
data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on
multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a
groundwater basin.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
This page is a resource for all things drought – where you
can find real-time reservoir levels, drought severity
maps, special reports, a newsfeed of current
developments on the drought that began in 2020 and general
background on droughts in California and the West, as well as
answers to common drought questions and tips for how you can save
water at home.
What is Drought?
Drought – an extended period of limited or no
precipitation – is a fact of life in California and the
West, with water resources following boom-and-bust patterns.
During California’s 2012-2016 drought, much of the state
experienced severe drought conditions: significantly less
precipitation and snowpack, reduced streamflow and higher
temperatures. Those same conditions began reappearing in late
2020, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom in May of 2021 to declare
drought emergencies in watersheds across 41 counties in
California. Restrictions were later extended to all 58 counties.
Gov. Newsom relaxed those restrictions finally in March 2023,
after an exceptionally wet winter filled reservoirs and packed
the Sierra Nevada with record snowfall.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water
supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the
numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another
drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most
of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project
will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low
number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more
rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather
forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing. The National
Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and
windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Practically every drop of water that flows through the meadows, canyons and plains of the Colorado River Basin has reams of science attached to it. Snowpack, streamflow and tree ring data all influence the crucial decisions that guide water management of the iconic Western river every day.
Dizzying in its scope, detail and complexity, the scientific information on the Basin’s climate and hydrology has been largely scattered in hundreds of studies and reports. Some studies may conflict with others, or at least appear to. That’s problematic for a river that’s a lifeline for 40 million people and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
Many of California’s watersheds are
notoriously flashy – swerving from below-average flows to jarring
flood conditions in quick order. The state needs all the water it
can get from storms, but current flood management guidelines are
strict and unyielding, requiring reservoirs to dump water each
winter to make space for flood flows that may not come.
However, new tools and operating methods are emerging that could
lead the way to a redefined system that improves both water
supply and flood protection capabilities.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years
of drought and the dramatic decline in water levels at the
river’s key reservoirs have pressed water managers to adapt to
challenging conditions. But even more extreme — albeit rare —
droughts or floods that could overwhelm water managers may lie
ahead in the Basin as the effects of climate change take hold,
say a group of scientists. They argue that stakeholders who are
preparing to rewrite the operating rules of the river should plan
now for how to handle these so-called “black swan” events so
they’re not blindsided.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
On average, more than 60 percent of
California’s developed water supply originates in the Sierra
Nevada and the southern spur of the Cascade Range. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This tour ventured into the Sierra to examine water issues
that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
This tour journeyed through a scenic landscape and
explored an area of California dealing with
persistent threats to its water supply and quality. Along
the way, we learned about solutions that were being
implemented.
Although Santa Barbara County had lifted its drought
emergency declaration after the 2019 storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery has often
lagged behind much of the rest of the state. It is a region
particularly prone to drought, wildfires and mudslides.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
