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.
On a tour of increasingly parched California on Thursday, U.S.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited a water recycling
project in Irvine to tout her department’s allocation of more
than $310 million to combat a western “megadrought” fueled
largely by climate change. Joined by Rep. Katie Porter
(D-Irvine) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille
Calimlim Touton, Haaland stood before heavy equipment at the
Syphon Reservoir Improvement Project and said she felt
“overjoyed” to announce the funding of 25 water recycling
projects, 20 of which are in California…. Another water
official, however, voiced frustration over how the federal
government awarded assistance, and said there needed to be a
“new paradigm” for grants in the face of recurring drought.
The announcement from the federal Bureau of Reclamation was
addressed to three irrigation districts in the farming
communities along the Oregon-California border. It marks the
end of available water that can be diverted from Upper Klamath
Lake, the large body of water that feeds farms and several
National Wildlife Refuges along the state line. According to
Paul Simmons, executive director of the Klamath Water Users
Association, residents are frustrated because of mixed messages
about how much water they would get this year.
A new report shows what temperatures in the United States could
look like in 30 years — and the outlook isn’t good. The report,
from the First Street Foundation, a climate-focused research
organization, found that temperatures will likely rise
everywhere due to climate change, though the way that is
expected to play out varies in different parts of the U.S.
… For California, that means longer heat waves, more
often. While all areas of the state are projected to see
increases in the number of local hot days over the next 30
years, according to the report, Southern and Central California
are expected to face the biggest increases in heat waves, with
Imperial, Riverside and Fresno counties seeing the greatest
likelihood.
With drought pummeling the Southwest and the country’s most
important reservoirs scraping bottom, the Department of the
Interior announced that the seven states that rely on it must
reduce the water they pull from the Colorado River next year.
The announced cuts are unprecedented. They are also a small
fraction of what the federal government says is needed to keep
the Colorado River system from collapsing. Here’s what you need
to know.
Nature-based solutions, such as ecological forest management,
meadow restoration, and “regenerative” agricultural practices,
can yield multiple benefits for people and ecosystems. Those
benefits include climate emissions reduction and sequestration;
protection of people, ecosystems, and public health;
improvements in the quantity, quality, and timing of water
supplies; maintenance and restoration of biodiversity; and
more. While the benefits of nature-based solutions are
substantial, their implementation requires innovative ways of
thinking about land and resource management. … A report
authored by Stanford’s Felicia Marcus examines how
states are turning to nature in their efforts to combat
climate change.
Sen. Mark Kelly relied on numbers to persuade key
Democrats this summer, including pivotal negotiator
Sen. Joe Manchin, to squeeze $4 billion more into the tax,
health, and climate bill to address severe drought in the
West. Kelly (D-Ariz.) and a handful of other Western
senators knew they needed upwards of $5 billion in the package
for drought, but the starting point in negotiations was $1
billion. The former astronaut and naval aviator had to explain
to some of his colleagues that “the math just didn’t work,” he
said in an interview last week. … Along with fellow
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Colorado’s Michael
Bennet, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Kelly
ultimately secured $4 billion in the package (Public Law
117-169), which President Joe Biden signed earlier this week.
As sustained drought conditions reduce water in streams and
rivers to critical levels, the State Water Resources Control
Board yesterday readopted an emergency curtailment regulation
for Mill and Deer Creeks in Tehama County to preserve minimum
flows for the survival of multiple fish species and protect
threatened drinking water supplies. The existing one-year
regulation would have expired on Oct. 4. The creeks, which are
tributaries to the Sacramento River, also provide water for
agriculture, livestock and fire protection.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time was
in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium and
its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in Clear
Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of Lake
County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental director
for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic cyanobacteria.
More than 100 wells in Tehama County have gone dry as local
agencies work to provide water to those affected. Clint Weston
of Tehama County Environment Health provided the board of
supervisors with an update Tuesday on the wells’ status. The
county has a reported 135 dry wells that have been made aware
of services to provide free water or purchase water out of the
Corning municipal system. Many of these dry wells are in small
parcels scattered around the county’s southern portion, and
these are county wells not connected to any water systems.
Gov. Gavin Newsom sounded an alarm last week as he announced a
strategy to capture and store more water while investing in
infrastructure to avert catastrophic impacts of an anticipated
loss of another 10% in California water supplies by 2040.
Newsom’s water plan seeks to create storage space for up to 4
million acre-feet of water, in hopes of capturing more water in
wet years. … Just a day before Newsom’s water
message, the State Water Resources Control Board was hearing
concerns about environmental documents for a proposed
regulation to direct more river flows away from irrigators and
down the lower San Joaquin River tributaries to benefit
fish.
Southern Californians know about neighbors using more than
their fair share of water. But what about growers who steal
water from farms, businesses or even houses? L.A. Times
columnist Patt Morrison looked at the long history of poaching
in California and how it relates to today’s water fights.
Here’s what Patt says. Watch L.A. Times Today at 7 p.m. on
Spectrum News 1 on Channel 1 or live stream on the Spectrum
News App. Palos Verdes Peninsula and Orange County viewers can
watch on Cox Systems on channel 99.
I want to thank the now-former climate and conservation manager
at the State Water Resources Control Board who last month quit
his job, then widely distributed an email telling many of his
co-workers what he truly thinks of them. He gave us the
clearest proof yet that the water board is exactly what I and
many others have accused it of being — loaded with activist
staff who routinely undermine their own board members by
presenting selective, misleading, or just inaccurate
information and calling it fact. In the process of quitting,
this ideological zealot outed his efforts to work as a
taxpayer-funded environmental lobbyist, pushing an agenda
intent on destroying most of the San Joaquin Valley’s
agricultural economy. -Written by Assemblymember Adam Gray.
Firefighters battled new wildfire starts and older
blazes burning in the North State on Thursday. Conditions are
very dry despite isolated pockets of rain. This week, the
National Weather Service issued heat advisories in the
Sacramento Valley including Shasta, Siskiyou and Tehama
counties, and in the mountains including Siskiyou, Trinity and
Humboldt counties. Dry thunderstorms in the
mountains produced lightning strikes on Wednesday,
including 100 in the Klamath National
Forest, Forest Supervisor Rachel Smith said. “As of this
(Thursday) morning, we are actively working on eight new
starts.”
Gubernatorial administrations since Arnold Schwarzenegger have
prioritized the battle against climate change. We’ve taken
issue with the costs and effectiveness of many of those
policies, but our biggest beef has centered on the issue of
resilience. California can do little to change the entire
Earth’s climate, but it can enable the state to adapt and
become resilient in the face of warming conditions. That
concept is particularly crucial when it comes to the
availability of water, which is the lifeblood of our society —
especially given our generally arid conditions.
As our programs team at the Water Education Foundation is
busy this summer putting together fall events such as
tours, our annual Water Summit and our Water Leader alum
reunion, our journalism team is helping to raise water
awareness every day. You can access our newsfeed each morning of
the top articles on water issues in California and the West and
even get it sent to your inbox. You can also find interactive
maps showing reservoir levels, water-savings tips and more on
our special online drought
resource page. And we just published
our latest Western
Water article focused on a pilot program
in the Salinas Valley that is run remotely out of Los Angeles.
Led by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, federal and
state leaders on Wednesday pledged “once in a generation”
investments in water projects to help farmers in California’s
central San Joaquin Valley through a crippling drought.
… Haaland and others used the news conference to
highlight ways they said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and
the Inflation Reduction Act would benefit Central Valley
farmers. President Joe Biden signed the Inflation
Reduction Act into law on Tuesday. The legislation, which was
opposed by all Republican representatives, includes $4 billion
for water management and conservation efforts across the west,
according to a news release from the Department of the
Interior.
Tuesday’s announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that
it would require Arizona and Nevada to reduce their annual
allocation of water from the Colorado River came as no surprise
to most water experts. … The Colorado
River supplies water to 40 million people in two
countries, seven states, 29 federally recognized
Indigenous tribes and 4 million acres of farmland. But its
ability to provide that water faces a serious challenge
following 22 years of drought and a drier climate that reduced
its annual flow from 16.4 million acre-feet to around 14.5
million acre-feet on average since 2000.
Estimating just how catastrophic climate change will be for the
global economy has historically proven challenging. But this
summer, it’s increasingly evident how quickly costs can pile
up. Extreme heat and drought conditions are battering the
United States, Europe and China, compounding problems for
workers and businesses at a time when economic growth is
already slowing sharply and adding to upward pressure on
prices. … Around the world, rivers that support global growth
— the Yangtze, the Danube and the Colorado — are drying up,
impeding the movement of goods, messing with irrigation systems
and making it harder for power plants and factories to stay
cool.
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, and U.S. Rep. Tom
McClintock, R-Roseville, made an appearance in Nevada on
Tuesday to join this year’s Lake Tahoe Summit — an annual
discussion among state, federal and environmental leaders on
how to better the Lake Tahoe Basin. Hosted by U.S. Sen. Jacky
Rosen, D-Nevada, this year’s conference revolved around the
prompt “Protecting Lake Tahoe’s Future” — noting both the
accomplishments made over the years, and how to move forward as
climate change continues to bring about new or intensified
challenges to the community. Many leaders mentioned water
quality, forest management and wildfires as talking points.
Looking out across the San Francisco Bay, you might notice it’s
looking a little murky. Experts say the reason is a potentially
harmful algae bloom that’s spreading in waters throughout the
Bay Area. It’s called Heterosigma akashiwo and it’s what’s
currently causing the water in the bay to look so dirty and
brown. … Scientists at San Francisco Baykeeper, including
[Ian] Wren and field investigator Aundi Mevoli, are studying
the algae closely. They’ve been taking water samples from
different parts of the bay and sending them to a lab in
Richmond to be analyzed. He said they have seen the algae
around San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley and
Richmond. It’s also been reported in other areas, including
Lake Merritt.
As Southern California’s water supplies run perilously low,
more and more homeowners are doing something they might not
have imagined even a few years ago: ripping out their lawns. As
I reported this week, the shift away from thirsty grass toward
native plants and artificial turf marks the twilight of one of
Los Angeles’s most iconic fantasies — a vision of suburban
homesteading that evolved over centuries. American lawns have
their roots in 18th-century England, where wealthy people
started to accumulate land and private property.
The San Joaquin River was dried up decades ago when the federal
Bureau of Reclamation built Friant Dam north of Fresno to bring
water to farms and towns along the east side of the San Joaquin
Valley via the Friant-Kern Canal. A federally mandated salmon
restoration program reconnected the river for a short time, but
the current drought has kept sections of the river mostly dry.
Until 2022, the third year of one of California’s worst
droughts in history. A massive slug of water was run down the
river channel through July, bringing at least a portion of it
back to life.
Environmental justice groups today applauded California
Governor Gavin Newsom’s action on health and safety buffer
zones for oil and gas wells while at the same time warning that
the Governor’s overreliance on carbon capture will lock in
fossil fuel infrastructure. Governor Newsom has asked the state
legislature to end neighborhood oil drilling as part of a
climate package he’s aiming to pass before the end of the
year’s legislative session on August 31, according to a
press statement from VISION (Voices in Solidarity Against Oil
in Neighborhoods), a coalition of climate
and environmental justice groups.
Northern California is home to nearly four million people, from
downtown Sacramento to mountain towns to small farming
communities. Of those four million, approximately 600,000 are
living in disadvantaged communities. For the past decade, the
Legislature and Governor have implemented various policies to
support disadvantaged communities in California, ensuring these
communities have access to reliable, clean water when they turn
on the tap. This dynamic was particularly vivid with the
recognition of a Human Right to Water (HR2W) in 2012, making
California the first state to enact legislation recognizing
“safe, clean, affordable, and accessible” water as a human
right.
On August 11, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom released California’s
Water Supply Strategy – Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future. The
19-page plan is designed to help the state adapt to the impacts
of climate change on its water supply, including precipitation
more likely to fall as rain than snow; precipitation events
that are fewer in number, but more severe in magnitude; and an
overall reduction of water supply by up to 10% by 2040. A 10%
loss in California’s water supply would equate to roughly 6-9
million acre-feet (MAF), which is enough water to supply
roughly 18-27 million households for a full year.
Growing impatient with the crop of political and legal
obstacles in its way, the Monterey Peninsula Water Management
District’s board of directors unanimously voted Aug. 15 to step
on the accelerator in carrying out the voter-supported effort
to buy out private water utility California American Water. The
$315,000 the board agreed to spend so an appraisal firm can
calculate the price value of Cal Am’s local assets is the last
step before the governmental agency decides whether to submit
an offer for the system. The degree of precision in
estimating the value of the system will depend on whether Cal
Am voluntarily lets the appraisal firm onto their property, a
decision Cal Am has not yet made according to its spokesperson
Josh Stratton.
For the fifth time since May, human remains were discovered at
Lake Mead as water levels have fallen to historic lows at the
country’s largest artificial reservoir. Details are scant, but
rangers with the National Park Service reported the skeletal
remains were found around 8 p.m. Monday at the lake’s Swim
Beach. The area was closed off, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan
Police Department’s dive team responded to assist with securing
the remains. … Water levels on Lake Mead have dropped to
lows not seen since the 1930s. A bathtub-like ring encircles
the water, showing where the lake once reached. … On
Wednesday, water levels were at 1,042 feet, compared with 1,067
feet this time last year and 1,084 feet in 2020, according to
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Many cities across Southern California currently have programs
in place to help residents convert their laundry and other grey
water to help plants and trees. In a time of drought, where
every drop of water makes a difference in California, the water
that goes down the drain is getting a second look. Grey water
systems capture gently used water from tubs, showers, and
laundry, and re-uses it to water your garden. There are a
number of different ways to reuse the water in your home. This
house has a simple system that distributes the water from the
washing machine to the garden.
After Colorado River Basin states failed to meet a deadline for
emergency drought reductions Tuesday, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation announced new emergency water cuts for Arizona,
Nevada and Mexico as the nation’s two largest reservoirs
decline to perilously low levels. The seven states that rely on
Colorado River water were told two months ago to develop plans
to drastically reduce water use by 2 million to 4 million
acre-feet, but those talks have grown acrimonious. At a news
conference Tuesday, federal officials said that an agreement
was urgently needed and that it was declaring a Tier 2 shortage
for next year — a historic first for the shrinking river.
… Arizona’s annual water apportionment will be reduced
by 21%, Nevada’s by 8% and Mexico’s by 7%. There is no required
water savings contribution for California.
The drought is just three years old, by official reckoning. But
the reality is likely worse. Scientists believe California is
suffering through a megadrought of a decade or longer — an
extended crisis, interrupted by the occasional rainy winter,
that ranks with the worst dry spells of the past 1,200 years.
It’s anyone’s guess when it will end. … That’s not all.
Climate change appears to be driving California beyond droughts
or megadroughts, into a condition that’s considerably worse: a
permanent state of progressively hotter and drier
weather.
California’s Republican congressional delegation, led by House
GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, has opened up a new
front in the state’s ongoing water wars, urging Gov. Gavin
Newsom to support the expansion of the Shasta
Dam. … The letter says that there has been no
“objective, scientific analysis” that raising the dam 18.5 feet
would impact the free-flowing condition of the McCloud. In
light of Newsom’s recently stated goal of increasing above-and
below-ground water storage by 3.7 million acre-feet, the letter
makes three recommendations to the governor.
A bipartisan group of California and Nevada lawmakers and
community members gathered Tuesday for the 26th annual Lake
Tahoe Summit, an event dedicated to protecting the future of
the region. The event fell on the same day President Joe Biden
signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which promises hundreds of
billions of dollars in clean energy investments and action
plans to reduce emissions. … Democratic Sen. Alex
Padilla was also in attendance. He has supported $7 million in
funding for fire suppression water infrastructure in the Tahoe
Basin through the federal fiscal year 2022.
At a Senate committee hearing on June 14, Bureau of Reclamation
Commissioner Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton sat before
federal lawmakers and delivered a grave ultimatum on the
Colorado River. Without significant cuts to water use, she
warned, Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the nation’s two largest
reservoirs — could fall so low that hydropower production could
cease in the near future. At that point, the Bureau of
Reclamation, which manages both reservoirs, would struggle to
deliver water to the majority of the 40 million people who rely
on the Colorado River.
Native people have lived in the Southwestern U.S. for millennia
and have traditional ways to manage water that have worked for
them. When settlers arrived, they upended that system. Now,
tribes in the Colorado River Basin are trying to elevate
indigneous approaches to water management. University of
Arizona doctoral candidate Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan is finishing
a dissertation on the history of land and water in the San
Xavier District, part of the Tohono O’odham Nation, just south
of Tucson. Some of her research has taken her to the Santa Cruz
River. On a quiet stretch tall trees, made archways and
provided shade from the sun.
The Great American lawn, the setting for barbeques,
wiffleball games, and picnics for generations, could be the
next causality of the climate crisis in the west. In reality,
experts say the lawn should never have existed in California in
the first place. … Grass consumes large amounts of
water, water that the west does not have to
spare, according to Scientific American. About half
of residential water use in a single-family home goes to
outdoor watering, like grass, according to Carlos Eliason,
spokesperson for the city of Sacramento. Meanwhile,
drought-tolerant landscapes use about a third of the water as
regular lawns.
Summers in the Bay Area are an invitation to water. Kayaks
floating along the shoreline at Big Break, vacationers lounging
at Niles Beach, adventurers tubing the Russian River, and
fishers hanging lines off the pier at Lake Temescal. As the
1970 Mungo Jerry hit put it “In the summertime, when the
weather is fine, We go fishing or go swimming in the sea.” But
all of these recreational spots have had advisories for harmful
algal blooms (HABs) or toxic algal mats in July this year. HABs
are increasing in incidence, duration, and toxicity statewide
and so are their health impacts on humans, domestic animals,
and wildlife. Many reservoirs that store drinking water have
also been impacted.
Boasting some of California’s most stunning stretches of
shoreline and world-famous pier, Santa Monica has embarked on
an ambitious journey of water self-sufficiency. Forget 2050
ambitions set for decades into the future. Instead, the city
plans to become water resilient and self-sufficient by 2023.
For the record, that’s in several months’ time. Using a “one
water” approach, Santa Monica is reducing its reliance on
imported water supplies. … A brackish water desalination
facility providing half of the city’s water, Arcadia will be
the first major municipal installation in the U.S. to use Flow
Reversal Reverse Osmosis (FR-RO) technology.
Drought could dry up development in St. George and other areas
without some significant changes in the use and conservation of
water, Sen. Mitt Romney warned during his visit Tuesday with
water officials in Washington County. Washington County’s
population is expected to more than double over the next 40
years — from 182,000 to nearly 465,000. The county’s current
water supply is woefully inadequate to keep pace. … Amid the
stench of sulfur at La Verkin Hot Springs, about 20 miles east
of St. George, Romney and Zach Renstrom, executive director of
the Washington County Water Conservancy District, examined one
possible change — desalinating water in the springs the
district owns on the Virgin River. The move could theoretically
create as much as 8,000 acre-feet — roughly 2.6 billion gallons
— of additional drinking water per year.
On August 11, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom released California’s
Water Supply Strategy – Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future. The
19-page plan is designed to help the state adapt to the impacts
of climate change on its water supply, including precipitation
more likely to fall as rain than snow; precipitation events
that are fewer in number, but more severe in magnitude; and an
overall reduction of water supply by up to 10% by 2040. A 10%
loss in California’s water supply would equate to roughly 6-9
million acre-feet (MAF), which is enough water to supply
roughly 18-27 million households for a full year.
Alternatively, the reduction could lead to cuts in water
available to agriculture, which uses roughly 40% of water in
the state, or environmental uses, which constitute roughly 50%
of water used in the state.
Mechanical thinning of overstocked forests, prescribed burning
and managed wildfire now being carried out to enhance fire
protection of California’s forests provide many benefits, or
ecosystem services, that people depend on. In
a paper published in Restoration Ecology, researchers
at UC Merced, UC ANR and UC Irvine reported that stakeholders
perceived fire protection as central to forest restoration,
with multiple other ecosystem services also depending on
wildfire severity.
California’s drought is a multi-billion dollar issue that we’ve
dumped a lot of resources into, but climate scientists are
finding that working with what nature provides could be more
effective than our synthetic solutions. They say sometimes, you
just gotta leave it to the beavers.
In 2019, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled what the city
calls “The Green New Deal.” This ambitious sustainability plan
stipulates many policy and infrastructural changes to prepare
the four-million-person city for climate change. To name a few,
the Deal includes: transitioning the power grid to 100%
renewable energy by 2045; modifying 100% of buildings to be net
zero carbon by 2050; increasing zero emission vehicles, and
electrifying all Metro and LADOT buses, to reach zero carbon
transportation by 2050. … One solution is to reduce the
city’s dependence on imported water by recycling 100% of its
wastewater by 2035.
Sacramento is no stranger to hot weather, but this week
temperatures are expected to heat up to triple digits and last
longer than usual. Sacramento is forecast to endure its longest
100-degree stretch of the year so far, which began Sunday and
will continue until at least Saturday, according to the
National Weather Service. If the forecast holds, Sacramento
will see a seven-day streak of temperatures at 100 or above for
the first time since 2020.
News release: As the worsening drought
crisis continues to impact communities across the West, the
Department of the Interior today announced urgent action to
improve and protect the long-term sustainability of the
Colorado River System, including commitments for continued
engagement with impacted states and Tribes. The Bureau of
Reclamation also released the Colorado River Basin August 2022
24-Month Study, which sets the annual operations for Lake
Powell and Lake Mead in 2023 in light of critically low
reservoir conditions.
Lake Mead will head into 2023 under a federal water shortage
for the second straight year as the worsening drought continues
to ravage the West….“Every sector in every state has a
responsibility to ensure that water is used with maximum
efficiency. In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the
Colorado River System and a future of uncertainty and conflict,
water use in the Basin must be reduced,” Assistant Secretary
for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo said in a written
statement ahead of Tuesday’s press conference.
Southern California water districts are grappling with what the
fallout could look like if supplies from a critical source —
the rapidly drying Colorado River — are cut next
year. The US Bureau of Reclamation warned at a U.S.
Senate hearing in mid-June that seven western states had 60
days to voluntarily reach a deal: Cut Colorado River water use
by 2 to 4 million acre-feet in 2023 or face federally-mandated
cuts instead. It’s a massive amount — at least seven times more
than Nevada is entitled to in a year. … The Department
of the Interior is expected today to address the status of the
negotiations, the drought and future Colorado River conditions.
The word got out and the environmental lobby was quick to
pounce: After years of silence on the issue, Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s administration was reviving a controversial plan to
burrow a tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the
fragile hub of California’s water-delivery system.
Environmentalists said the tunnel would wreck the Delta, not
fix it. Ailing fish populations would be driven further to
extinction. The reworking of the Delta’s plumbing would leave
Delta farmers with water too salty for raising grapes, tomatoes
and other crops, they said.
It takes a lot of water to make power. From spinning turbines
to hydraulic fracturing to refining fuel, the flow of water is
critical to the flow of electrons and heat. About 40 percent of
water withdrawals — water taken out of groundwater or surface
sources — in the United States go toward energy production. The
large majority of that share is used to cool power plants. In
turn, it requires energy to extract, purify, transport, and
deliver water. So when temperatures rise and water levels drop,
the energy sector gets squeezed hard. The consequences of water
shortages are playing out now in swaths of the American West,
where an expansive, decades-long drought is forcing drastic
cuts in hydroelectric power generation.
Drought-pummeled lawns across Los Angeles County will be a
little bit thirstier for 15 days in September when officials
suspend outdoor watering in several areas to repair a leaking
pipeline, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California announced Monday. The emergency repair will shut
down the 36-mile Upper Feeder pipeline — which delivers water
from the Colorado River to Southern California — from Sept. 6
to 20, the MWD said. The leak was discovered this year, and the
pipeline has been operating at reduced capacity under a
temporary fix while officials designed a more permanent
solution.
As implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA) gets underway, questions are emerging about what it will
mean for lands protected under the Williamson Act, California’s
chief farmland preservation policy. For nearly 60 years, the
Williamson Act has helped protect 16 million acres—roughly half
of the state’s crop- and rangelands—from development. But as
SGMA’s limitations on groundwater extraction go into effect—and
as warmer, more intense droughts begin to push land out of
irrigation–the context within which the program operates is
shifting. In July, we gathered a group of agriculture, solar,
and county stakeholders to explore the interplay between the
Williamson Act and SGMA in the San Joaquin Valley. Here is what
we learned.
About 300 miles southwest of San Antonio, water taps have run
dry in a major Mexico city. Thousands of residents wake up
at dawn to check their taps and fill up containers. Others line
up with large jugs, bottles and buckets at cisterns around the
city, where fights have broken out when people try to jump the
line. This is the scene in the industrial hub of
Monterrey, Mexico—the nation’s third largest city and one of
its wealthiest. … But Monterrey isn’t alone in
its water crisis. Drought is sapping the water from huge
swaths of North America and making it increasingly hard for
humans to count on running water.
Above-average temperatures are expected throughout California
this week, with inland regions in the southern and northern
parts of the state bracing for extreme heat that could push 110
degrees in some spots. … Tuesday and Wednesday will probably
be the warmest days this week for Southern California. San
Bernardino and Riverside counties are under a heat advisory
beginning Monday afternoon through 8 p.m. Wednesday, according
to the National Weather Service. High temperatures in those
regions are expected to reach 104 degrees, the advisory said.
This drought isn’t going away anytime soon. One study projects
a 75% chance that it lasts through 2030. But if climate change
escalates unabated, dry conditions could last even
longer. It’s time for our elected leaders to take a hard
look at the biggest water abusers and drivers of climate
change. It’s time to take on big agribusiness and the fossil
fuel industry. … On top of climate-changing carbon
emissions, oil and gas production uses a huge amount of water.
In California, the oil and gas industry has used over 3
billion gallons of water since 2018. … Another
culprit behind the megadrought: Big Ag. In the West, thirsty
farms abound. Agriculture makes up 80% of California’s
water use, most of it industrial.
Two months ago, federal officials took the unprecedented step
of telling the seven states that depend on Colorado River water
to prepare for emergency cuts next year to prevent reservoirs
from dropping to dangerously low levels. The states and
managers of affected water agencies were told to come up with
plans to reduce water use drastically, by 2 million to 4
million acre-feet, by mid-August. After weeks of negotiations,
which some participants say have at times grown tense and
acrimonious, the parties have yet to reach an agreement. The
absence of a deal now raises the risk that the Colorado River
crisis — brought on by chronic overuse and the West’s drying
climate — could spiral into a legal morass.
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los
Angeles is offering a test case for how California could
provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities
plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial
means or expertise to connect to a larger water system. The
high-tech system developed by the University of California, Los
Angeles removes common contaminants from groundwater, allowing
residents of a cluster of Salinas Valley disadvantaged
communities to finally turn on their taps without fear. UCLA’s
smart systems are smaller and cheaper to implement than
traditional water treatment plants and can be operated via
smartphone or tablet by an expert located hundreds of miles
away.
As politicians across the West confront the consequences of the
climate-fueled Millennium Drought, many of them are heeding the
words of Chinatown [“Either you bring the water to L.A., or you
bring L.A. to the water”] and trying to bring in outside water
through massive capital projects. There are at least half a
dozen major water pipeline projects under consideration
throughout the region, ranging from ambitious to outlandish.
Arizona lawmakers want to build a pipeline from the Mississippi
River more than a thousand miles away, a Colorado rancher wants
to pipe water 300 miles across the Rockies, and Utah wants to
pump even more water out of the already-depleted Lake Powell.
Heavy monsoon rains have helped to relieve the Southwest’s
historic drought, but water officials say the deluge isn’t
enough to reverse a drying trend that has depleted the region’s
primary water sources. Much of the West remains entrenched in a
23-year “historically unprecedented” drought driven by climate
change, said Jonathan Deason, an environmental engineering
professor at George Washington University. … Most of the
Southwest has received more than double its normal amount of
rain since June, according to the latest US Drought
Monitor. Some areas, especially in New Mexico, have seen
drought conditions improve over the summer from exceptionally
extreme to just severe or abnormally dry.
California is amid its driest period since
record-keeping began, a drought made drier by climate
change. In June, the state curtailed water
allotments for thousands of users across the state,
including in agricultural areas like the San Joaquin Valley,
where Christine [Gemperle] farms. … The narrative around the
almond industry’s excessive consumption of water frustrates
Christine; everything in American refrigerators takes water to
produce, and she thinks the media wields statistics about
almond farming’s use of water like a weapon. Christine takes it
personally. Water scarcity has undoubtedly put strain on the
farm; last year she ripped out one orchard early to save water.
Jared Blumenfeld, California’s top environmental regulator and
a key climate adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, will leave the
administration at the end of the month, Newsom announced
Friday. Newsom, a Democrat, appointed Blumenfeld as secretary
of the California Environmental Protection Agency on his first
day in office in 2019. Blumenfeld will become president of the
Waverley Street Foundation, a $3 billion climate initiative
funded by Laurene Powell Jobs. As head of the state’s
environmental agency, he was responsible for departments that
regulate air pollution, water use, recycling, toxic substances,
pesticides, environmental health hazards like extreme heat.
Erin Brockovich made her name decades ago as an environmental
activist who exposed corporate wrongdoing that polluted
drinking water. So she felt a bit defensive when a television
reporter asked how her name landed on a list of water guzzlers
during a dire California drought. At one point last year, she
received a $1,700 bill for two months of water and fines. Ms.
Brockovich ultimately decided she had to get rid of her lawn, a
central part of the backyard oasis she had built over more than
two decades living in Agoura Hills, a suburb of large homes
with immaculate yards about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los
Angeles. She replaced 3,100 square feet of grass with high-tech
artificial turf.
As California deals with a lingering drought, Governor Gavin
Newsom is announcing his plans to address the ongoing water
crisis in the state. He says the time has come to invest tens
of billions of dollars in water recycling, storage and
desalinization over the next two decades, this to shore up
supply as the state gets drier and hotter. The Governor’s
proposal coming as drought continues to grip the western half
of the U.S, the State Department of Water Resources saying
California may lose 10% of its water supply by 2040.
A century after her grandfather arrived to eke a living out of
the hot, red dirt here, Susan Savage still structures her life
around the groundwater. Twice daily, she checks the well her
family’s pasturelands, orchards and animals depend on, watching
its level drop in recent years amid punishing drought. These
days, she and some others in this rural town of fewer than
1,000 people are casting a wary eye 15 miles south, where St.
George, the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan area, is
churning out houses — and scrambling to find new water
sources … The county’s population of about 180,000 is
expected to more than double by 2050 — even though its single
water source, the Virgin River basin, is dwindling as the West
remains locked in the worst drought in 1,200 years.
Residing less than a mile from the Salton Sea, Purépecha
farmworkers like [Meriguildo] Ortiz stand on the frontlines of
one of the greatest environmental and health justice crises in
the state. As the Salton Sea continues to evaporate, local
residents report increasingly common cases of asthma, nose
bleeds and allergies. The state has proposed solutions, such as
the 10-year Salton Sea Management Program, but Purépecha
community members who speak neither English nor Spanish, face
limited internet access and lack high levels of education can
rarely participate in decision-making.
The third attempt could be the charm for repairing California’s
main waterworks, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. On
paper at least, the latest plan by a governor to upgrade the
delta into a more reliable state water supply seems to make
much more sense than what his predecessors promoted. Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s single-tunnel proposal is smaller and more respectful
of the bucolic estuary’s small farms, waterfowl habitat, unique
recreational boating and historic tiny communities. So, it’s
potentially less controversial. But it still can legitimately
be labeled a Los Angeles and corporate agriculture “water
grab.” -Written by LA Times columnist George Skelton.
Forecasters expect a heat wave to bake the inland regions of
the Bay Area this week, with temperatures pushing into the 90s
and lower 100s. People living in the Central Valley and areas
around Sacramento face the highest risk of dangerous,
sweltering heat, according to a map tweeted Sunday by the
National Weather Service. It shows hot spots along the eastern
side of the Bay Area, and the weather becoming more moderate
toward the coast. … This week’s broiling weather
comes at the tail end of a ruthless summer in
California, marked by persistent drought and rising
temperatures. The season arrived with 100-degree
heat and a string of wildfires.
As summer begins to wind down, the dry weather that has plagued
California this year continues, leading to a number of new
drought-related issues. Over the course of the past 30 days, 11
new dry well reports in Butte County have been sent to the
California Department of Water Resources. That comes out to 39
in the past year and 98 total. Additionally, Glenn County has
seen 105 total dry well reports and Tehama County has reported
229, according to data from DWR.
With California enduring historic drought amplified by global
warming, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday released a new plan to
adapt to the state’s hotter, drier future by capturing and
storing more water, recycling more wastewater and desalinating
seawater and salty groundwater. The governor’s new water-supply
strategy, detailed in a 16-page document, lays out a series of
actions aimed at preparing the state for an estimated 10%
decrease in California’s water supply by 2040 because of higher
temperatures and decreased runoff. The plan focuses on
accelerating infrastructure projects, boosting conservation and
upgrading the state’s water system to keep up with the
increasing pace of climate change.
Western states that rely on the Colorado River Basin for their
water supplies face a Tuesday deadline to tell the Bureau of
Reclamation how they plan to cut back during the crushing
drought that has shrunk the river. But as that date nears, the
consequences for failure remain a key unknown. Reclamation
Commissioner Camille Touton announced in June that states in
the Colorado River Basin need to propose how to conserve
between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water before a
mid-August deadline, when the agency releases its 24-month
projections for water levels in lakes Powell and Mead…
You can now register for the in-person return of the
Foundation’s 38th annual Water
Summit, a one-day conference highlighting the
latest information and perspectives on water resources in
California and the West. The event includes an evening
reception along California’s largest and longest river, the
Sacramento River, for an opportunity to network with speakers
and other attendees from a variety of backgrounds. Find more
details about our Water Summit along with our fall tours and
Water Leaders Alum Reunion.
La Niña continues! It’s likely that the La Niña three-peat will
happen: the chance that the current La Niña will last through
early winter is over 70%. If it happens, this will be only the
third time with three La Niña winters in a row in our 73-year
record. ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the whole La Niña
and El Niño system) has the greatest influence on weather and
climate during the Northern Hemisphere cold season, so
forecasters pay especially close attention when it looks like
ENSO will be active in the winter.
It’s a picture-perfect day in Southern California. The sun is
beating down on this Carlsbad beach, where volleyballs hit the
sand and surfers paddle out into the waves. Just steps from
here, the salty water lapping the shore is being transformed.
This beach neighbors the largest desalination facility in the
Western Hemisphere. The Carlsbad Desalination Plant uses a
complex web of pipes, tanks and specialized filters to pull
salt and impurities out of ocean water, turning it into part of
the drinking supply for San Diego County.
When Sen. Joe Manchin III and Senate Majority Leader Charles E.
Schumer landed a surprise agreement on a healthcare, climate
and tax bill last month, all but one Senate Democrat accepted
the deal rather than risk collapse with further negotiation.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the inscrutable Arizona Democrat who has
at times voted against her party’s demands, staked her vote on
two changes. Most attention focused on her push to eliminate a
proposed tax on wealthy investors. But Sinema’s last-minute
efforts also added $4 billion to address the water crisis along
the Colorado River as the region endures its most intense
drought in centuries, a 23-year run of extreme dryness
compounded by the effects of climate change.
The Paso Robles Groundwater Basin lost another 81,800 acre feet
(AF) of water storage this spring compared to last spring—the
fourth consecutive recorded decline in aquifer levels since
2020 and a continued sign of drought and overpumping, according
to SLO County Groundwater Sustainability Director Blaine Reely.
… The spring-over-spring snapshot is a first for SLO County,
which typically does its Paso groundwater measurements in the
fall of each year.
Marin officials might amend the county’s general plan to permit
denser housing in environmentally sensitive areas and areas
lacking water and sewer service. The Board of Supervisors and
the Planning Commissioners held a joint meeting Tuesday to
discuss changes to the general plan to allow more housing. The
county is under a state mandate to zone for 3,569 more
residences in the unincorporated areas over eight years,
beginning in 2023. The general plan allows development to occur
only at the lowest end of the density range in the Ridge and
Upland Greenbelt, the Baylands Corridor, areas with sensitive
habitat and areas without water or sewer connections.
Amid recent reports of so-called “forever chemicals” found
in drinking water, it’s not hard to imagine that some people
might be hypersensitive when it comes to the taste of their tap
water this summer. If you do notice an odd taste, however, the
reason might be more benign than you think. Complaints of an
“earthy” or “musty” taste or smell might just be the result of
a regular summer phenomenon for some of California’s water
systems. The taste is due to the accelerated growth of some
algae compounds in the warmer weather.
[C]onservation can help. That’s why Gov. Gavin Newsom has
called on Californians since July to voluntarily reduce their
water use by 15 percent (as compared to 2020 levels) and why
the city of San Diego’s Public Utilities Department director is
urging locals to contribute to the conservation efforts in a
new commentary in The San Diego Union-Tribune. But the latest
state data shows Californians cut back on water use by just 7.5
percent overall in June 2022 compared to June 2020 — and data
provided by city officials shows San Diegans are only at a 1
percent reduction.
Agriculture in California faces an uncertain future as drought,
wildfires and other climate extremes become more commonplace in
the West. But a fledgling industry focused on growing and
distilling agave plants, which are used to produce tequila and
mezcal in Mexico, could be California’s answer to fallowed
fields and a lack of water. Earlier this year a group of
growers, distillers and retailers formed the California Agave
Council to foster collaboration and offer a chance to share
knowledge among members who previously had no formal network.
One year after a wind-whipped wildfire charged across a craggy
mountainside above Lone Pine, California, flashes of new growth
are emerging in this still-charred corner of the Inyo National
Forest, a hiking, camping, and fishing playground about 350
miles southeast of San Francisco. … It’s the start
of a long recovery, and a cycle that’s being repeated more
often across the West as climate change brings drier, hotter
seasons and more wildland fires.
Tens of thousands of fish died over the weekend in the Klamath
River, the result of the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County,
California, just south of the Oregon border. As the fire
burned, thunderstorms and flash floods unleashed landslides of
ash and mud into the water, causing parts of the river to swell
even as its oxygen levels dropped. Scientists say that dead
fish started appearing last Thursday — adult and juvenile
suckerfish, juvenile chinook and coho salmon, steelhead,
lamprey, crawdads and more.
Where does the water go? The Kern River’s abrupt stop,
practically mid-channel, can be jarring. The full river
suddenly goes dry just outside Bakersfield leaving a dusty
channel snaking through the heart of town. Why? Where does all
that water go? Who owns it? How does it all work? Our video
project, “Law of the River,” answers those questions and
more as we look at the river’s history, how it operates, who
owns the water and what the future may hold. This is the
first in a series of videos that will look at each stop along
the way for Kern River flows.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday said California must do more to
expand its water supplies by building new reservoirs,
desalination plants and recycled water facilities to address
worsening droughts and water shortages from climate change.
Newsom released a 19-page plan that directs state agencies to
accelerate permitting and offer increased financial assistance
to local water projects as the state struggles with its eighth
year of drought in the past 11 years.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday will be in the Bay Area to
announce a new water supply strategy for California as the
state contends with a historic drought. Newsom is scheduled to
be in Contra Costa County for a news conference detailing
“water supply actions” California is taking to adapt to hotter,
drier conditions caused by climate change, the governor’s
office said. He also is expected to announce new
leadership for California’s infrastructure
efforts. Drought has been a major concern for
Californians. A new study by the nonpartisan Public Policy
Institute of California found that 68% of state residents say
the water supply is a big problem where they live.
The next “big thing” in California water development may not be
soaring 300-foot high dams. Instead, it may be intentionally
diverting winter storm runoff to flood almond orchards
northeast of Ripon and vineyards near Manteca and similar
permanent cropland throughout the San Joaquin Valley. Proactive
recharging of groundwater using California’s immense acreage of
permanent crops such as almond orchards and grape vineyards
could emerge as a pivotal and critical component of a plan to
meet water demands as well as address hydrology patterns
expected to be modified by climate change.
Michael Jones ducked under an idle sprinkler and strode across
the sandy soil where he planned to plant drought-resistant
crops, hoping to save water amid the driest period in more than
1,200 years. … A company known as Renewable Water Resources
(RWR) aims to drill a series of deep wells on a nearby ranch it
owns and pipe the water more than 200 miles north to a Denver
suburb, where sprinklers rotate on manicured lawns. The
firm recently sought $10 million from Douglas County to
kickstart its project. … If the state engineer’s office,
its water court, and federal regulators were to approve RWR’s
plan, it would mark the first time that private investors could
ship water from an aquifer in one part of the state to a
community in another.
Many small and rural communities across California are
vulnerable to drought and water shortages as they lack the
diverse water sources and infrastructure of big cities like San
Francisco and Los Angeles. In some cases, these communities are
forced to rely on bottled water or water hauled in from
elsewhere, which experts say is costly and
unsustainable. Data from the state water board’s 2022
“Drinking Water Needs Assessment” shows that nearly 90 water
providers across the state, including six in the Bay Area, have
had to resort to bottled or hauled-in water to fully meet their
communities’ drinking water needs in the past three years.
The unveiling of the Inflation Reduction Act lit a fuse in
Washington, just before the lazy days of the August recess…
The House is expected to vote on the bill on Friday. With its
drought provisions, the bill focuses attention on the Bureau of
Reclamation…. The $4 billion dollars in the Inflation
Reduction Act is more than double its annual budget. It’s
certainly a large chunk of money, said Jennifer Gimbel, senior
water policy scholar at the Colorado Water Institute at
Colorado State University. But it is “a drop in the bucket for
what is needed” to address a growing aridity that now covers
more than 70 percent of the West in some stage of
drought.
Until the development of the major state and federal water
projects that began delivering surface water to the area in the
second half of the 20th century, the Central Valley relied
almost exclusively on groundwater. Heavy pumping of groundwater
has led to significant land subsidence throughout the valley,
causing major damage in some areas to canals, aqueducts, and
other infrastructure. This subsidence was particularly
pronounced in the valley’s southern half, which is known as the
San Joaquin Valley. By 1970, approximately half the San Joaquin
Valley, or roughly 5,200 sq mi, had subsided by at least 1 ft,
according to the website of the U.S. Geological Survey. Some
locations had subsided by as much as 28 ft.
It’s a sound we haven’t heard very often during the last few
month. It’s the sound of rain. One of the nation’s leading
climatologists says those sounds could continue to be
infrequent, with key indicators showing that we could be in for
a third straight year of drought. “This is the third year in a
row that La Nina has hung in there,” said Dr. Bill Patzert. “It
keeps the jet stream farther north. The southern tier of the
United States tends to be drier, and the northern tier tends to
be stormier.” He said it’s too late in the year for an El Nino
to develop, which could mean above average rainfall.
Nowhere is the Southwest’s worst drought since the year 800
more evident than Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the pair of
artificial Colorado River reservoirs whose plunging levels
threaten major water and power sources for tens of millions of
people. Already, the region is being forced to adapt to the
sweeping effects of climate change, and the lakes and their
surrounding area are nearing an environmental point of no
return. … Lake Mead is projected to get down to 22
percent of its full capacity by year’s end, while Lake Powell
is expected to drop to 27 percent, according to estimations
from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. Both now sit at
record lows.
California farmers and ranchers affected by a third consecutive
year of drought and related emergency curtailments of water
deliveries have planted fewer acres, fallowed fields or reduced
livestock herds to make it through the season. Siskiyou County
rancher Ryan Walker, president of the county’s Farm Bureau,
said farmers affected by emergency water curtailments—readopted
in July by the State Water Resources Control Board—face water
shortages and high hay prices, which impact ranchers’ ability
to maintain livestock herds.
[A]s climate change brings hotter, drier conditions, the
American dream is getting harder to achieve in the Valley.
Because of severe drought the past few years, farmers have left
some fields unplanted. And with fewer acres to plant and
harvest, many workers have had their hours cut or lost their
jobs. … [State senator Melissa Hurtado] says many of
these workers are struggling to pay rent and feed their
families. So she’s proposed legislation that
would provide qualified farmworkers with a $1,000 monthly
stipend for three years.
The Glenn Groundwater Authority (GGA) is encouraging residents
to conserve water at home, work and on the farm to help the
local groundwater basin. … The GGA is the Groundwater
Sustainability Agency managing the Glenn County portion of the
Colusa Subbasin, which covers the area generally south of Stony
Creek, east of the coast ranges, west of the Sacramento River,
and north of the Glenn-Colusa County line.
Tulare Lake. Gone. Owens Lake. On a resuscitator but near
death. Mono Lake: Its life hangs in the balance. They —
and many more California lakes and rivers — were the victim of
defying Mother Nature and sucking massive amounts of water from
one basin to another. Bypassing a massive amount of water from
the Delta ecological system by tunneling under it — what could
possibly go wrong? It is why the recent latest reincarnation of
Los Angeles’ not-to-secret plan to destroy the Delta along with
their partners-in-crime on the western side of Kern County is
pure tunnel vision.
[At the California State University Monterey Bay’s student
union] Chants of “No Cal Am, save our water,” could be heard
from the parking lot, as around 50 people representing or
supporting the grassroots organization, Citizens for Just
Water, protested outside the building before the meeting
started. Tensions were equally high inside, as residents
shouted over Cal Am representatives, criticizing them and the
proposed desalination project. But despite the agitation, Cal
Am’s Manager of External Affairs Josh Stratton said the
public’s vocal frustration was exactly what the organization
was expecting when they decided to hold the forum.
Temperatures have been soaring in LA for much of this week, and
it seems like the days will keep getting hotter. With climate
change happening, and concerns about loss of habitat for
creatures big and small, some folks are looking for little ways
to make a big impact. Enter microforests. At their smallest,
they’re 10 foot by 10 foot, planted in urban areas with diverse
native trees and shrubs to help provide wildlife habitats and
clean the air. Native plant horticulturist and educator
Katherine Pakradouni planted LA’s first microforest in Griffith
Park, and says it has already attracted a wide range of
animals, including bugs, birds, lizards, and squirrels.
Recent severe rains in Death Valley that flushed debris across
roadways, damaged infrastructure and carried away cars are
being described by meteorologists and park officials as a
once-in 1,000-year event. The arid valley was pelted with
roughly an inch and a half of rain on Friday, near the park’s
rainfall record for a single day. The storm poured an
amount of water equal to roughly 75% of the average annual
total in just three hours, according to experts at Nasa’s Earth
observatory.
On Wednesday, Kern’s Congressmen Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield)
and David Valadao (R-Hanford) sent a letter to the Interior
Secretary requesting documents related to her review of the
2019 Biological Opinions. The opinions determined operations
for the Central Valley Project and California State Water
Project did not jeopardize endangered species. Valadao
noted if the review ended with a reversal of the decision, it
would be detrimental for our local economy and Valley farmers.
We urge the legislature to pass and Gov. Newsom to sign SB 1469
which offers water providers a powerful tool to help encourage
customers to save water and fight the drought. … SB 1469
makes permanent a program called decoupling which sounds
technical but is really a very simple concept to conserve
water. … Decoupling changes the water utility business model
from selling to conserving water by severing the link between
water sales and everyday system operations. It eliminates an
incentive for water providers to sell more water. SB 1469 will
… establish progressive, equitable water rates so those who
use more water pay more, and those who use less will pay
less. -Written by Roberto Barragan, executive director
of the California Community Economic Development Association,
which advocates for community revitalization in diverse urban
and rural neighborhoods.
In another promising sign that residents are taking calls for
conservation to heart, Angelenos in July achieved an 11%
reduction in water use — more than any other July on record,
officials announced this week. The report from the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power comes as drought continues to sap
supplies across the region. But while July’s conservation
surpassed the record 9% reduction achieved in L.A. in June,
officials urged residents to keep going.
As the Sacramento Valley grapples with its most damaging
natural disaster to date, California agriculture is eyeing a
massive spending package in Congress and pressing for emergency
relief funding to ensure local economies survive the drought.
Dennis reported seeds sales were down as much as 85% for De
Pue, the nation’s largest independent drying and storage
company, with 14 rice facilities along the I-5 corridor. As one
of the primary seed providers for the Sacramento Valley, the
company projects it will have just 10% of its regular volume at
harvest. If the drought were to end this year, it would not
have enough seed for farmers in the next growing season.
On Monday, Republican members of Congress continued their fight
when it comes to the biological opinions that help determine
water deliveries from the federal Central Valley Project and
State Water Project, sending a letter to Secretary of the
Interior Deb Haaland expressing their “grave concerns” over the
process to reconsider those biological opinions. The California
Republican Congressional delegation said the reconsultation
process of 2019 biological opinions developed by the Trump
administration will decrease the amount of water delivered to
the San Joaquin Valley.
The climate change and health care bill nearing final approval
in Congress includes $4 billion to rent, buy or save water that
could go a long way to help restore the beleaguered Colorado
River Basin amid a historic megadrought, Senate supporters and
water advocates say. The money can be used by states and
local agencies to temporarily buy farmers’ water rights, fund
permanent conservation programs like city lawn buy-ups, or
negotiate with tribes to keep their water rights in the basin,
said Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who with two
other Western senators negotiated to keep the $4 billion alive.
As the state reckons with a fast-changing climate and water
cycle, tribal leaders are calling on California to stand with
them as they assert their water rights. Yurok Tribal Chairman
Joe James joined several other tribal leaders from across
California at a joint session of the Assembly Water, Parks and
Wildlife Committee and the Assembly Select Committee on Native
American Affairs on Tuesday morning for an informational
hearing. James and the other tribal leaders spoke about the
water issues their communities are facing, as well as how the
government’s long history of marginalizing their concerns has
fostered these problems.
A new web-based tool developed by the Department of Water
Resources (DWR) will allow the public to explore thousands of
groundwater projects across California to get a better
understanding of one of the state’s most critical water supply
resources. The virtual mapping tool is part of the State’s
ongoing commitment to develop new, innovative solutions to
provide information and resources to address the effects of
California’s changing climate and ongoing severe drought.
The fragile little fish that swim around in dark tanks in a lab
are the last hope for their kind. The lab director who oversees
their care, Tien-Chieh Hung, explained that when the Delta
smelt captives are young, scientists at the UC Davis Fish
Conservation and Culture Laboratory put snails in the black
interiors of the tanks as a slow-moving mollusk cleaning crew.
… With a California Delta habitat especially damaged by
the rising temperatures and drought wrought by human-caused
climate change and the unslakable thirst of people and farms in
California, the smelt are perilously close to extinction.
Ensenada is at the end of the line for water from the Colorado
River and now there’s not enough of it for the seaside town in
Baja California. … One Ensenada resident, Lucero Perez
Badillo, told them in July it had been nearly three months
since her home had water service – and the water she received
that day came from a desalination plant, delivered by truck and
dumped into a rooftop storage tank. … Historically,
Ensenada relied on the groundwater aquifers. As the population
has grown and agriculture sucked up much of that water, those
aquifers now account for just 25 percent of the city’s water
needs.
The city of Antioch sits right next to the largest source of
fresh water in Northern California. But it’s facing a water
supply crisis because of changes to the Delta, both natural and
man-made. … So, they’re doing what a lot of other
cities have only pondered–they’re building the first
surface-water desalination plant in the Bay Area. The new
facility, located at the city’s wastewater treatment plant,
will use large reverse-osmosis filters to create 6 million
gallons of fresh water per day–about a third of the city’s
needs–but with room for expansion.
Natural climate solutions (NCS), the uptake of carbon from the
atmosphere by ecological processes to mitigate climate change,
are a topic of intense interest. … The State of
California has ambitious plans for NCS but Wang et
al. [2022] show that patterns of land use, drought and
wildfire put these plans at risk. The team
demonstrates that California lost ~7% of its forest cover with
losses due to fire exceeding gains and more than balancing
regrowth after fire. Losses were higher in the warmer regions
of the state, and gains more frequent in the cooler regions,
suggesting that continued warming will put additional regions
at increased risk.
The megadrought in the West is a time of reckoning for farmers.
… California is in a better position than western desert
states, because some areas of the state have adequate
rainfall. For California, the problem is not so much
growing water-intensive crops, but growing them in the driest
areas in the state. The arid scrubland on the southern floor of
the San Joaquin Valley gets about 7-8 inches of rain on
average. The farmland in this region was traditionally used for
grazing and low-water use crops such as winter wheat. … The
expansion of permanent crops has increased farm income, but has
also been a major cause of groundwater depletion.
In a paper published today in BioScience, “Rewilding the
American West,” co-lead author William Ripple and 19 other
authors suggest using portions of federal lands in 11 states to
establish a network based on potential habitat for the gray
wolf — an apex predator able to trigger powerful, widespread
ecological effects. … By felling trees and shrubs and
constructing dams, beavers enrich fish habitat, increase water
and sediment retention, maintain water flows during drought,
improve water quality, increase carbon sequestration and
generally improve habitat for riparian plant and animal
species.
A flash flood that stranded more than 200 people on the Palm
Springs Aerial Tramway on Monday in California’s latest bout of
heavy summer rainfall is expected to close the attraction for a
week. Citing extended cleanup efforts, officials said the
tramway is scheduled to reopen next Monday. … The
tramway begins its 2.5-mile scenic trek in the Sonoran
Desert and ends in an alpine forest, going from the floor
of the Coachella Valley to near the top of San Jacinto
Peak, some 8,500 feet above sea level. It opened in 1963
and is considered one of the largest rotating aerial trams in
the world.
The newly built staircase stands ready for the pitter-patter of
feet. The hillside awaits transformation into a slippery slope.
The hollowed mud pit languishes mud-less. The just-constructed
forts remain vacant. After a two-year COVID hiatus, Adventure
Playground was slated to reopen this summer at Central Park in
Huntington Beach. Although perhaps not better than ever — with
its heyday, arguably, five decades ago — the renovated,
summertime playground promised to be its best in years. But now
Adventure Playground will have to cool its heels for at least
another year. Due to California’s drought crisis, the city
decided this was not the time to unveil a park featuring water,
water everywhere.
Californians in a new statewide survey cite drought and water
supply issues as their chief environmental concern for the
third year in a row. Thirty percent of respondents ranked water
as the most pressing issue — topping wildfires and climate
change, which garnered 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively,
in the poll, released by the Public Policy Institute of
California. About 68 percent of respondents, regardless of
political affiliation or region, said they consider the state’s
water supply to be a “big problem,” per the survey.
A major hiccup during the early construction stages of San
Diego’s Pure Water sewage recycling system will cost the city
at least $20 million — and potentially much more if it delays
completion of the interdependent system’s other key components.
Constant flooding of a site off Morena Boulevard where a
contractor is trying to build a large sewage-pump station has
forced the contractor to halt work while city officials make
plans to build a large dam-like structure around the area being
flooded. The need to build the dam not only will delay
construction of the pump station and swell its cost from $110
million to $130 million. … The additional costs may be
passed on to the city’s 275,000 sewer and water
ratepayers
The prospect of being sent to California’s “groundwater cop”
strikes dread in the hearts of most water managers. But for
John Vidovich, having the Tulare Lake subbasin come under the
glare of the State Water Resources Control Board may be the
only way to end an irrigation practice by the J.G. Boswell
Company that he says is wasteful, abusive and contributing to
the sinking of an entire town. Boswell, which has not responded
to requests for comment, pumps large amounts of groundwater
into massive shallow ponds for later irrigation, something
Vidovich, who runs Sandridge Partners, has complained about for
years.
Tribal leaders stood proudly in front of a row
of flags from the 10 Indigenous communities whose
lands converge with the Colorado River. They spoke about their
status as equal players in the future of the Colorado and the
role they will play in the high-stakes negotiations to set
new management protocols for the river that more than
40 million people depend upon for their lives and livelihoods.
… They were part of tribal delegations
from throughout the Colorado River Basin gathered in Las
Vegas in December 2021 during the annual meeting of
the Colorado River Water Users Association.
State officials have denied a request by Southern California
municipal water districts for more water to mitigate wildfire
risk. The agencies had worked with the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California to ask the California
Department of Water Resources to allocate 26,300 more acre-feet
of water under the health-and-safety exception to drought
rules, using the rationale that the exception should include
supplies to reduce wildfire hazards by irrigating vegetation in
high-risk areas. … Residents and officials should reduce
risk by hardening structures with fire-resistant materials,
creating defensible space and putting in place fuel management
programs, the letter recommended.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema introduced a new water advisory council at
Hoover Dam on Monday to discuss how to spend $4 billion in
water and drought aid included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The $4 billion is meant to stave off the worst effects of
drought across the Colorado River system, which is suffering
from overuse and two decades of drought exacerbated by climate
change. The effects of the drought were clear Monday as Sinema
and regional water officials met at Lake Mead, which sits at
just over one-quarter capacity, the same as the upstream Lake
Powell.
Dust from all over the world is landing in the Sierra Nevada
mountains carrying microbes that are toxic to both plants and
humans. Research from UC Riverside shows higher
concentrations of the dust are landing at lower elevations,
where people are more likely to be hiking. … The
researchers detail the types of fungi and bacteria landing from
low to high elevations in the mountains in a new Frontiers in
Microbiology paper.
Four-plus decades ago, when a young governor named Jerry Brown,
was advocating a “peripheral canal” to carry Sacramento River
water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, he argued that
it would not only improve water deliveries but would stop the
degradation of the Delta’s water quality. The latter contention
initially attracted some positive attention from environmental
groups which were complaining that pulling water directly out
of the Delta for shipment to San Joaquin Valley farms and
Southern California’s homes had upset flows that were vital to
healthy fish populations. -Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
As a native of the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs where it
hardly ever rains, Joaquin Esquivel has always known that water
is precious. His uncle often took him to the Salton Sea, and he
had family served by a well. He carries that respect for
the resource as chair of California’s State Water Resources
Control Board. … At the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom,
who declared a drought last year, the board has adopted
emergency regulations requiring residents to cut back water
use, such as turning off fountains and not watering decorative
grass at commercial sites.
The severe flooding that recently hit Death Valley is an event
only seen once in a thousand years, according to the National
Park Service (NPS). Nearly a year’s worth of rain fell on the
California national park in just three hours, and caused severe
damage to surrounding areas, the NPS said in a statement,
calling it a “historic event.” The NPS expects roads within the
park to be closed for “days to months depending on the severity
of damage.” … The flooding has caused “severe
asphalt damage” to hundreds of miles of roads throughout the
area. Flood debris washed onto roads has made access to some
areas of the park “impossible by vehicle,” the NPS said.
Officers in rural Siskiyou County, fueled by racial prejudice
and drug fear-mongering, are stopping the county’s small
population of Asian American drivers at 12 times the rate of
other drivers, according to a new lawsuit in federal court.
County supervisors are also restricting Asian American
residents’ access to water and illegally placing liens on their
property, in a policy “designed to drive a disfavored racial
minority from the county,” the suit said. It was filed
Wednesday in Sacramento by the American Civil Liberties Union
and Asian Americans Advancing Justice as a proposed class
action on behalf of the county’s 1,200 Asian American
residents.
The megadrought California is enduring right now is the worst
in more than a millennium. … Most residents, though, have not
been moved to replace their lawns by the kinds of stark facts
that seem only to lead to more restrictions. But what if moving
to a low-water landscape meant more butterflies, more birds,
and a startling array of colors and textures? Since about half
of all residential water use goes to landscape irrigation,
that’s a good place to look first to make some significant cuts
in your water use, and your water bill. So, what are the best
ways to begin? And are there other benefits to low-water
landscaping besides the obvious?
In a life flight that could change the course of one tribe’s
history, a helicopter delivered 20,000 endangered salmon eggs
to a remote area in Shasta County, in an effort to save the
winter-run Chinook species struggling to survive in
California’s warming river waters. … For Sisk and
members of her tribe, it was a monumental moment, personally
helping a new generation of winter-run Chinook towards the
McCloud River. The eggs will be among the first salmon to reach
these waters since Shasta Dam was built more than 80 years ago.
The San Joaquin Valley is California’s largest agricultural
region, but it’s facing an uncertain future. A combination of
persistent drought and the rollout of California’s Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act will increase regional water
scarcity in the coming decades. Water scarcity will have a
major effect on land use: At least half a million acres are
projected to come out of irrigated production in the San
Joaquin Valley by 2040. This raises a thorny question: What
happens to all this newly fallowed land? -Written by Andrew Ayres, a research fellow of
the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center;
and Caitlin Peterson, associate director of the
Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center.
The massive climate and healthcare package that passed
Sunday in the Senate includes $4 billion to help shore up
the rapidly dwindling Colorado River and its massive
reservoirs. California officials who are pushing to meet an
August deadline for huge water savings in Lake Mead and Lake
Powell praised the bill’s passage…. Officials with two
powerful southern California agencies — the Imperial Irrigation
District serving rural farmers and the Metropolitan Water
District serving greater Los Angeles — are haggling
over 400,000 acre-feet in possible reductions, as reported
Thursday by The Desert Sun.
Thousands of acres of crops, from corn to nectarines, surround
Melynda Metheney’s community in West Goshen, California — one
of the key battlegrounds where residents say irrigation and
overpumping have depleted drinkable water. … In 2012,
Community Water Center (CWC) told the Goshen community of about
3,300 that its water was contaminated with nitrates. Residents
spent two years fighting to connect to Cal Water — the third
largest regulated utility in the nation — and only some did.
Some of Metheney’s West Goshen neighbors still don’t have well
water.
Although we’re currently mired in the dog days of summer, it’s
time to look ahead to the rainy season. The state thirsts for a
wet winter, with extreme drought existing in just under 60% of
California. Below-average rain and snow have plagued the state
the last couple of years, coinciding with La Niña conditions
and expanding drought conditions. The Climate Prediction
Center (CPC) currently puts the odds of a third straight La
Nina year at 62-66%. With an exceedingly rare “triple dip” La
Niña expected, what can we expect for our water year that
begins in October?
Tucked high in a mountain range in San Diego County,
California, ranch managers Rob Paulin and Jeremey Walker rely
on “spunky” cows to mitigate wildfire by grazing on the
chaparral brush and shrubbery that traditional market cattle
won’t seek—let alone eat. … Originally from the Andalucía
region of Spain, these Raramuri Criollo cattle are small and
trim—weighing about 800 pounds each, compared to a
1,200-plus-pound Angus cattle. After being brought from Spain
500 years ago, they evolved in the mountains of Chihuahua,
Mexico, where they learned to survive by searching for food in
the far corners of the rough landscape.
Monterey Peninsula residents will have the opportunity to share
their perspectives and give feedback on local water issues next
week. California American Water will host a community forum
from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9 at CSU Monterey Bay. Cal Am
staff, engineers, consultants and customer service
representatives will be in attendance to discuss water
resources. One of the main topics up for discussion at next
week’s forum will be the Monterey Peninsula Water Supply
Project — a proposed solution to the water crisis on the
Peninsula. The project aims to reduce existing water use on the
Peninsula by replacing reliance on the Carmel River.
Several hundred ranchers, grape growers, tribes, landowners and
community water suppliers, including the city of Healdsburg,
were barred Friday from exercising some of their rights to
water from the Russian River amid tightening supplies in an
unrelenting drought officials say is likely to get worse. The
third round of curtailments imposed by the State Water Resource
Control Board was prompted by drastic reductions in Eel River
water diversions, which are critical to boosting diminishing
storage in Lake Mendocino, which in turn feeds the Russian
River. The water board also formally suspended a new voluntary
sharing arrangement that allowed some of those with older,
“senior” water rights to share water with those whose rights
have been curtailed.
In a drought-prone area like Los Angeles, rainwater provides
tremendous potential to boost local water supply, as well as
provide multiple other ecosystem and community benefits. That’s
why in 2018, L.A. County voters approved Measure W, a tax that
raises about $280 million annually to capture, clean and reuse
water runoff. Measure W and the program it created, the Safe
Clean Water Program, funds projects to clean and strengthen the
local water supply and build community resilience. Research by
the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and Stantec is helping to
ensure that these investments benefit all Angelenos, especially
residents of disadvantaged communities, as the program already
calls for.
A natural resources investment company announced Thursday it
intends to allocate up to 5,000 acre-feet of water annually to
the Salton Sea and Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Tribe
as part of a public-private partnership intended to help
reinvigorate the dying Salton Sea and ensure reliable potable
water for communities on tribal land. Los Angeles-based Cadiz
Inc. said that an agreement with the Salton Sea Authority,
tribe and Coachella Valley Water District will be part of a
wider water distribution enterprise known as the Cadiz Water
Conservation & Storage Project, which originally focused on
drawing water from the Colorado River and delivering it to
Southern California metropolitan areas via a single pipeline.
A torrential downpour stranded 1,000 visitors and workers at
Death Valley as rain washed out hundreds of miles of roads in
the national park in California. All of the more than 1,000
miles of roads within the park remain closed while workers
evaluate the damage, the National Park Service said in a news
release Saturday, Aug. 6, one day after heavy rains slammed the
desert. The monsoon downpour, which dumped 1.46 inches of
rain — narrowly missing the 1911 record of 1.47 inches —
trapped 500 visitors and 500 workers in the park, CNN
reported.
Charlie Hamilton hasn’t irrigated his vineyards with water from
the Sacramento River since early May, even though it flows just
yards from his crop. Nearby to the south, the industrial
Bay Area city of Antioch has supplied its people with water
from the San Joaquin River for just 32 days this year, compared
to roughly 128 days by this time in a wet year. They may be
close by, but these two rivers, central arms
of California’s water system, have become too salty to use
in some places as the state’s punishing drought drags on.
Water is the lifeblood in the parched San Joaquin Valley,
sustaining endless acres of trees, seeds and pastures that feed
a hungry nation. But a controversial pipeline sits empty, as
dry as dust, caught in an angry feud between two of
California’s largest land barons, Silicon Valley developer and
farmer John Vidovich and Pasadena-based longtime cotton king
J.G. Boswell Company. Vidovich needs the pipe to move water.
The Boswell Company wants it blocked, saying it threatens the
company’s own water supplies, which run through a canal over
the pipeline’s underground route.
The last leg of Nina Gordon-Kirsch’s monthlong hiking journey
was a 10-mile ascent up the western flank of the Sierra Nevada
to a pair of gleaming alpine lakes near Ebbetts Pass, about
equidistant between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite
National Park. … The moment capped a 33-day sojourn along the
length of the Mokelumne … She’s not alone: California’s
complicated relationship with water, strained by historic
drought, is driving all kinds of people to embark on “water
walks.” The practice involves tracing a river or waterway “from
sea to source,” or in reverse direction, under one’s own power,
in an effort to gain perspective on our complex water supply.
The McKinney fire began on July 29 and has exploded to more
than 60,000 acres, killing four people and becoming
California’s largest fire so far this year. According to local
tribal leaders, the fire has also led to the mass fish kill in
the Klamath River, which runs for more than 250 miles from
southern Oregon, through Northern California and out to the
Pacific Ocean. Up to three inches of rain fell on areas burned
by the fire on Tuesday, sending a debris flow of burned soil,
rocks and downed timber into the river, said Mike Lindbery, a
public information officer for the McKinney fire. That debris
turned into a plume of brown “sludge” that made its
way downriver …
Millions of people in the Western U.S. are at risk of seeing
reduced access to both water and power as two of the nation’s
biggest reservoirs continue to dry up inch by inch. The United
Nations issued a warning on Tuesday that the water levels in
Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at their lowest ever and are
getting perilously close to reaching “dead pool
status.” Such a status means that the water levels are so
low that water can’t flow downstream to power hydroelectric
stations. At Lake Mead, located in Nevada and
Arizona, the country’s largest artificial body of water, levels
have gotten so low that it’s essentially become a graveyard
– human remains, dried-out fish and a sunken
boat dating back to World War II …
Knowing they are targets, farmers in southern Arizona and
California who receive irrigation water from the Colorado River
are discussing a plan that could go a long way toward meeting a
federal conservation mandate in the drying basin. With key
reservoirs Mead and Powell at record lows and despite the
continued decline of the Salton Sea, federal officials are
demanding historic cuts in water use next year, on the order of
2 million to 4 million acre-feet, or roughly one-third of the
river’s recent annual flow.
The drinking water for a family near Keyes comes from an
unusual source: It’s extracted from air. Such systems could
help parts of the Central Valley with polluted wells, and parts
of the world where water is always in short supply. The idea is
being tested by the Valley Water Collaborative, which has
delivered free bottled supplies since last year in parts of
Stanislaus and Merced counties. The new system yields just
10 gallons a day, but that’s enough for the drinking and
cooking needs of a typical household.
Island-dweller Lori Snell grimaced as she tallied her bill
recently at the Avalon Laundry — nearly $50 for three large
loads. … That preoccupation with water has now become
critical as severe drought grips California and its
Channel Islands — a rugged, eight-isle archipelago that hosts
several human outposts and a handful of species that exist
nowhere else on Earth. But although some of the island’s
wildlife is struggling for survival, conditions for humans are
a little different today than in droughts past, due largely to
a desalination plant that opened in Avalon in 2016. The plant
today provides about 40% of Avalon’s drinking water.
The drought in the West and climate change have smaller cities
rethinking their economies, especially if their main business
is agriculture. On California’s Central Coast, one town is
trying to diversify beyond its main moneymaker – grapes and
wine. … Lynn Hamilton [a professor of agribusiness at
nearby Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo] says … “The attitude
here, it seems to be – until recently – that, oh, we’re just a
rainy season away from being saved. And I think people are now
starting to realize that that’s not true any longer.”
Californians say their top environmental issue is water supply
and drought, and most are unhappy with efforts by the state and
their own communities to respond. While residents link drought
and wildfires to climate change, they support only certain
policies meant to address the problem. In a recent
presentation, survey analyst Deja Thomas shared these and other
findings from the latest PPIC survey on Californians and the
environment and discussed insights from the report with survey
analyst Rachel Lawler.
On a small scale, aquifers — subsurface natural basins — have
been recharged with flood waters from extreme storms for
decades. Now, a new Department of Water Resources (DWR)
assessment shows how Flood Managed Aquifer Recharge, or
Flood-MAR, can help reduce flood risk and boost groundwater
supplies across large areas of land. … In partnership
with the Merced Irrigation District, Sustainable Conservation,
and others, DWR experts analyzed how this would work in the
Merced River —a 145-mile-long tributary of the San Joaquin
River. The Merced River, which flows from the Sierra
Nevada to the San Joaquin Valley, could be much more vulnerable
to heavy flooding as storms intensify.
Healthy soil is a potent tool to combat the impacts of drought
on farms and ranches. By using conservation practices that
build healthy soil—like cover cropping, conservation tillage,
and compost—growers increase the natural water storage
potential of their land. Healthy soil captures more water when
it rains and holds onto that water for future crop use,
allowing farms with healthy soil to deliver stable yields, even
in drought years.
Los Angeles residents have continued to reduce water usage at a
steady pace to offset a historic drought, and those efforts
appear to be working, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
officials said at a council committee meeting Thursday.
Officials projected an 11% reduction in water use for the month
of July compared to the previous two Julys. That topped a 9%
reduction in the month of June, the lowest water use for any
June in Los Angeles since 1970. The report updating water
supply conditions and drought response actions was presented to
the Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and River
Committee on Thursday.
Anticipated bursts of intense rain soaking Reno this week
prompted a flood watch from the National Weather Service. The
phenomenon, known as a pulsing storm, is caused by a monsoonal
flow that works its way up from the Gulf of California and even
the Gulf of Mexico. When the monsoonal flow collides with
high pressure, the result is “torrential rainfall,” said
Heather Richards, meteorologist with NWS Reno. The effect was
first felt Wednesday night when 1.22 inches of rain fell in
just one hour at the Reno airport. This overwhelmed the
drainage capabilities, flooded streams and washed out some
downtown streets.
On a recent, scorching afternoon in Albuquerque, off-road
vehicles cruised up and down a stretch of dry riverbed where
normally the Rio Grande flows. The drivers weren’t
thrill-seekers, but biologists hoping to save as many
endangered fish as they could before the sun turned shrinking
pools of water into dust. For the first time in four decades,
America’s fifth-longest river went dry in Albuquerque last
week. Habitat for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow — a
shimmery, pinky-sized native fish — went with it.
Small Valley communities are drying up. The latest town to find
itself waterless is Tooleville, east of Exeter on Highway 65.
In the middle of July, with temperatures soaring and the
intense Valley summer in full swing, residents of the town
found the well they rely on was delivering just a dribble where
it was working at all. With the aid of Self-Help Enterprises,
the town is now dependent on a pair of water tanks and costly
daily deliveries of trucked-in water.
As I wrote this, news arrived that Sen. Joe Manchin — the
coal-loving Democrat from West Virginia — finally agreed to
support a climate bill that would potentially cut
planet-warming emissions by some 40% by 2030. It will be a huge
step forward (fossil fuel-friendly provisions aside) if it
makes it through Congress, but it won’t do much to ease the
West’s desiccation anytime soon. That gives the collective
users of the region’s water no choice but to cut our
consumption, and fast. -Written by Jonathan Thompson, a contributing
editor at High Country News and author
of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became
the Battlefront of American Public Lands.
In their pleas to Western states to cut back on water use from
the Colorado River Basin, federal officials are keenly focused
on keeping Lake Powell’s elevation at 3,490 feet — the minimum
needed to keep hydropower humming at Glen Canyon Dam. But if
federal efforts can’t stop the reservoir from shrinking to new
lows — its elevation is 3,536 feet as of Monday — the lights
going out might not even be the worst problem. If it dips 60
feet below its current level, the already dwindling Colorado
River could trickle down into a fraction of what is expected
for states below the dam, a new analysis by conservation groups
found.
Just a day after it ignited on July 29th, California’s McKinney
Fire exploded in intensity, burning so hot that it exceeded a
satellite sensor’s ability to measure it while lofting multiple
fire clouds high into the atmosphere. Now, heavy rains in the
area have sent torrents of water, mud and debris down streams,
knocking out a bridge and inuring a man who was helping to
battle the blaze — which has grown to a third of the size of
New York City.
The Western US is an empire built on snow. And that snow is
vanishing. … That snowmelt, often traveling hundreds of
miles from mountain top to tap, sustains the booming
desert communities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake
City — even coastal Los Angeles and San Francisco.
… Those dwindling snow levels — a trend that’s
extremely unlikely to reverse as temperatures keep rising
— will demand hard choices if the 11 states in the Western
US are to continue to thrive. So far, responses to the
worsening water crisis have not matched the scale of the
problem.
No matter where you look at Lake Shasta you can see the
dramatic “bathtub ring” – bright orange soil contrasting with
the blue water and the green tree line. It’s a visual
reminder of the severity of California’s drought, and one not
seen on a day-to-day basis in places like the Bay Area. But for
those who work and live at Lake Shasta, it serves as a
daily warning. … The lake was last completely full in
2019. The all-time low point for Lake Shasta was in 1977 when
the lake was 230-feet below its maximum level. The very
next year, after a very wet winter, it was nearly full.
New data suggest Californians are steadily reducing water usage
in the face of severe drought, although cities and towns in the
northern part of the state are cutting back more than those in
the thirsty and more heavily populated south. Water use in
cities and towns across the state decreased 7.6% in June when
compared with the same month in 2020 — significantly short of
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s voluntary 15% goal last year, but a
significant shift compared with the previous month, according
to data released by the State Water Resources Control Board. In
May, statewide savings were just 3.1%.
A proposed fee system to manage irrigated land in Madera County
has sparked a successful protest, leaving one groundwater
agency unfunded and at least one farmer claiming the process
was done with minimal notice. … Three newly formed
groundwater sustainable agencies — Chowchilla Subbasin, the
Madera Subbasin and the Delta Mendota Subbasin — are left with
no funding for four ongoing groundwater projects required under
California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. It’s the
County of Madera that oversees the land, said Stephanie
Anagnason, director of water and natural resources for Madera
County.
Federal energy regulators say Pacific Gas & Electric can begin
drastically reducing Eel River water diversions bound for Lake
Mendocino, which will likely result in additional curtailments
of water rights for hundreds of landowners, ranchers and
communities in the Russian River watershed. The new flow
regime, approved last week after more than two months of
consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
authorizes PG&E to divert as little water as it did last
year even though there is almost 50% more water in Lake
Pillsbury than there was at the same time last year.
The forests and meadows of the Sierra Nevada, Coast Range, and
Cascade Mountains are the source waters for much of the
Sacramento River Basin and the State of California. Healthy
headwaters ensure increased water supply reliability and
reduced flooding risks, improved water quality, reduced impacts
from catastrophic wildfires, increased renewable energy
supplies, enhanced habitat, and improved response to climate
change and extreme weather.
The Public Policy Institute of California is sparking new
conversations around innovative alternatives to keep farmland
in production and avoid devastating environmental and health
impacts from fallowing as much as a million acres of land under
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. PPIC has embarked
on the first major research endeavor to investigate options for
keeping farmers farming and for the complex policymaking needed
to finance and expedite a suite of farming practices and
regulatory restructuring. The hope is it would build some
flexibility into California’s highly specialized agricultural
system.
Californians began paying more attention to their water use as
summer arrived, but statewide conservation remains well short
of what the governor has requested during the drought. In June,
municipal water consumption dropped 7.6% compared to the same
month in 2020, marking a second straight month of savings,
according to state data released Tuesday, and parts of the Bay
Area did considerably better. The four prior months, however,
saw increases in water use, sometimes by double digits.
… California has experienced three extraordinarily dry
years, exacerbated by rising temperatures, that have left
reservoirs low, groundwater diminished and alternative supplies
like desalination pinched.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in eastern Kern
County has signed a “letter of intent” to buy the rights to 750
acre feet of state water for $6,396,000 from a State Water
Project contractor in Kings County. The purchase is part of the
authority’s plan to bring that overdrafted groundwater basin
into balance. The seller is Utica J.L.J. LLC, which purchased
the Jackson Ranch and is developing a truck stop and industrial
center on 400 acres at Utica Avenue and Interstate 5, just
south of Kettleman City.
This month will be a moment of truth for Arizona cities. The
Federal Bureau of Reclamation is scheduled to release its
“24-month study” that announces how much water Lake Powell and
Lake Mead will release in 2023. Meanwhile, seven western states
must also present a plan to dramatically cut 2-4 million
acre-feet of water. According to federal records, that amounts
to as much as 25% of water allocated to the states.
A fire big enough to make its own lightning used to be as rare
as it sounds. But the McKinney fire, which erupted Friday [ in
the Klamath National Forest], generated four separate thunder
and lightning storms within its first 24 hours
alone. … The troposphere is where weather happens,
and where eye-searing clouds of smoke and soot circulate even
from moderately sized fires. But when a smoke column such as
those emanating from the McKinney fire shoots through that
layer and enters the stratosphere — the higher, more stable
layer above — it creates havoc with local weather and seeds the
Earth’s atmosphere with aerosol pollutants whose consequence
science is still sorting out.
Riverside County supervisors Tuesday approved a $4.12 million
contract with an Encinitas-based firm to provide engineering
and design services for a project to revitalize a portion of
the dying Salton Sea. … The two-year agreement with Dudek
Consulting formally marks initiation of the Salton Sea North
Lake Pilot Demonstration Project, conceived four years
ago. … The North Lake project was first discussed
in 2018 and was ultimately incorporated into the larger
revitalization effort, which envisions maintaining and
improving segments of the 360-square-mile lake in Riverside and
Imperial counties.
The San Joaquin Valley is California’s agricultural heartland
and at the center of the state’s water challenges. As the
region brings its groundwater basins into balance under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), over half a
million acres of irrigated farmland may need to come out of
production. At a virtual event last week, PPIC researchers and
a panel of local experts moderated by Ellen Hanak, director of
the PPIC Water Policy Center, discussed how to manage this
massive transition while reaping the greatest benefits from
idled land and mitigating air quality concerns.
In the past few years, the San Francisco Estuary region has
confronted epic wildfires, historic rainfall intensity and
flooding, and chronic drought. The whiplash of these events has
confirmed that climate change has already begun to impact human
and wildlife communities from Sacramento to San Francisco, and
beyond. [T]he pervasive, horrific violence against Black,
Brown, and Asian and Asian-American people has amplified
long-term calls for racial justice, galvanizing new commitments
to address historic and present inequity through every thread
of our social fabric. These events have set the context for the
multi-stakeholder process that updates the San Francisco
Estuary Blueprint.
The Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service are
partnering to protect winter-run Chinook salmon in a crucial
year of their life cycle at the Livingston Stone National Fish
Hatchery and third consecutive drought year in California. The
Service operates the hatchery while Reclamation provides water,
power, and funding to support operations and maintenance of the
facility. Behind the scenes, water managers, fish biologists,
and project managers from Reclamation and the Service have been
working together to best meet critical water needs anticipated
during this unprecedented drought.
A top climate strategist with the State of California resigned
last month due to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration not
steering the state on the necessary path to deal with continual
drought. … [Max] Gomberg hasn’t shied away from commentary
about the state’s agricultural industry, a sector heavily
regulated by his former employing agency. In February, Gomberg
tweeted a thanks to progressive Asm. Alex Lee (D–San Jose) for
pressing for a wealth tax. In the same missive, he chided Sen.
Melissa Hurtado (D–Sanger) for “carrying water for the state’s
agricultural mafia.” Gomberg’s letter and his attack on Newsom
came at a welcome sight to the the California Republicans.
A key priority of the Newsom Administration – the Delta
Conveyance Project – has officially entered its next chapter.
On July 22, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) released
its draft environmental impact report (Draft EIR) for the Delta
Conveyance Project. The Delta Conveyance Project is DWR’s and
Governor Newsom’s plan to build an underground tunnel to bring
water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the State Water
Project pumps near Tracy in order to reduce the risk from
earthquakes and climate change to the State’s water supplies.
Is the heat getting to you? You are not alone. Southern
California has endured days of sticky conditions, as well as
intense heat, periods of heavy rain and even flash flooding.
The summer has been scored with temperatures in the triple
digits in some inland areas, with temperatures not cooling much
at night either. … A monsoonal storm is a shift in
wind patterns. Monsoon flows pull moisture up into Arizona,
California and Nevada after a shift in the pattern near the
upper troposphere and can sometimes last a few days or stretch
over longer periods, according to meteorologists.
Southern California’s sweltering heat is increasing the need
for water donations to help unhoused Angelenos, advocates say.
California suffered its first major heat wave of the year in
early June, and temperatures are expected to get hotter.
Complicating matters, these higher temperatures come at a time
when some advocates say they’ve seen a drop-off in donations of
drinkable water. Local relief organizations such as Midnight
Mission often receive surplus pallets of water from big
corporate donors, along with gallon jugs and bottles from
individuals.
Blooms of noxious, blue-green algae in California’s
second-largest freshwater lake have prompted Lake County
officials to issue warnings against consuming the water in
Clear Lake as toxin levels rise to a worrisome point. County,
health, and tribal officials urged Lake County residents and
tourists — and especially those who get their water from Clear
Lake — to be extra vigilant when getting near the water, and to
report any unusual medical symptoms to their doctors and the
county. … Blue-green algae, which is technically
cyanobacteria, occur in all freshwater and marine aquatic
ecosystems, and are not harmful to humans or animals when their
bacteria levels are low. But high nutrients and warm waters can
exacerbate the growth of those organisms …
The Western U.S. saw wildfire season kick into high gear last
week. … On the other side of the country, in swampy but
fire-free Washington, D.C., Democratic lawmakers were feeling
the heat. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a sweeping
package of bills to bolster wildfire response and drought
resilience on Friday…. Protecting and shoring up water
resources are major themes across the board in the package. It
would boost funding for water recycling and reuse
programs…. It would authorize the Interior Department to
spend $500 million on efforts to preserve water levels in Lake
Mead and Lake Powell, two major reservoirs with hydroelectric
dams that store water and generate power for much of the West.
August is off to a sticky, wet start as a monsoon flow dogs
California. Some parts of the state saw heavy rainfall over the
last few days, while others endured flash floods and debris
flows. … Monsoonal showers and thunderstorms could pass
over the mountains in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, along
with the Antelope Valley, according to forecasts….In the San
Francisco Bay Area, meteorologists are watching for thunder as
storms travel east from the coast. Meteorologist Sarah
McCorkle with the National Weather Service in Monterey said
downtown San Francisco saw one of its wettest Julys in recent
years.
When Maria Regalado Garcia tried to wash the dishes in her
California home one recent morning, only a trickle of water
emerged from the kitchen faucet. Other taps in her Tooleville
house in rural Tulare County ran similarly dry. … Garcia
and her neighbors, who intermittently lose tap water at home,
are among those most affected by a historic drought that’s
blanketed the West, scorched California and caused a growing
list of water troubles for residents and farmers.
Basking in the sunshine on a boat at Lake Powell is the
quintessential backdrop for a perfect summer getaway. The
human-made reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border has
been a beloved destination spot that has spanned generations
for many families. The glistening green waves against red rock
canyons is home to many summer memories — but also to one of
the nation’s greatest water reserves. … The blue-green water
levels are getting lower and lower each year, raising questions
about the future of the lake for tourism and recreation as well
as generating hydroelectric power.
In just one weekend, the McKinney Fire, fueled by strong winds
and high temperatures, burned more than 55,000 acres in
Northern California, becoming the state’s largest wildfire so
far this year. The blaze is only the beginning of the West’s
fire season, which traditionally peaks between mid-July and
October. All fires need fuel and a spark. In the West,
fuel is plenty, with flammable pine needles, shrubs and grasses
that can ignite easily. And while the region’s dry vegetation
has always made it prone to fires, climate change
is intensifying wildfires and lengthening fire
season.
In California’s Eastern Coachella Valley, some of the state’s
poorest workers toil in fields and groves of date palms.
… Three times a week, Pascual Campos Ochoa, 26, loads up
a duffel bag with a brown fleece blanket and a plastic
container of oatmeal. A van picks him up from the dusty trailer
park where he lives — where stray dogs wander among the
carcasses of old cars and working electricity is not a given —
and takes him to a clinic for kidney dialysis. Still, it
was not until recently, he said, that he considered that his
health problems may be tied to … the water tainted with high
levels of arsenic that spewed for years from its aging pipes.
Climate change has had a major impact across the world,
specifically in California, one example of it has been the
increasingly disastrous wildfires and drought issues we see
today. With aridification, or the gradual change to a drier
climate, changing the state, it does leave many wondering what
can be done to limit its effects on Californians. The stricter
statewide regulations on water, the state has shown a
willingness to take the situation seriously–but the recent
resignation of a California drought official did put into
question just how urgent California officials are viewing
aridification.
As California enters yet another year of a continued drought,
cities and counties across the state implemented water
restrictions in the hopes of reducing strain on the states
water sources. According to the state, banning the watering of
non-functional lawns will save hundreds of thousands of
acre-feet of water a year. In April, Contra Costa
Water District asked users to reduce water usage by
15%. The district proposed a temporary drought surcharge
of up to 15% starting in July.
In case you missed the memo: Glossy green lawns fed by
sprinklers arcing water into the sky just don’t work anymore in
these days of lingering drought. … Water districts are
offering rebates for removing lawns, but many won’t give you
money for installing artificial turf (which keeps water from
flowing into the ground, potentially killing trees and
beneficial micro-organisms in the soil) or a bunch of rocks and
a couple of cacti. Instead, you must include drought-tolerant
plants and an efficient way to keep them watered, such as drip
irrigation.
With typically arid springs and summers, droughts are normal in
California… but not at this intensity: Climate change is
intensifying drought across the state, which puts the state in
a precarious position that compromises water supplies for
drinking and agriculture, increases wildfire risk, and
threatens fish and wildlife. … We can adapt to future
droughts through reducing our water use and switching to more
sustainable water uses. We can expand our existing usage of
recycled water, replenish our groundwater aquifers and increase
our flexibility in crop and municipal uses.
The brown hills of Northern California are peppered with
cattle. They spend their days slowly meandering under the sun,
munching drought-withered grass. Cattle are California’s
fourth-biggest agricultural commodity, valued at $2.74 billion
in 2020, according to the state’s agricultural department. But
increasingly dry conditions are making the land less and less
suitable for feeding and watering them. In March 2021, every
pond on Scott Stone’s ranch was dry for the first time in the
46 years his family has owned it.
A billboard in St. George urges residents to use less water —
“Utah is in a drought.” … Lake Powell and Lake Mead (as
well as crucial upstream feeder dams) have reached record lows.
Our aquifers are simultaneously being depleted. Snowpack is, on
average, lower than historic levels, and even in a good snow
year, it is melting too fast. Less water is available than ever
before, as documented by The Denver Post’s Conrad
Swanson’s Colorado River crisis story in July.
960,000 acres of land in California are used to produce
alfalfa, using 2 million gallons of water per acre, per year,
all of which goes to feed livestock. What kind of livestock?
Mostly dairy cows, of which there are 2.5 million in California
alone. … It turns out, states [author Richard] Oppenlander,
“60 to 70 percent of California water goes to livestock and
crops to feed them.” …Once I learned that it takes 1,000
gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk, (raising the
cow, growing grain for the cow, cleaning the cow) buying
non-dairy milk sounds like a much wiser choice. Once I learned
that it takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of
meat, giving up meat altogether seems like the only choice.
-Written by Patsy Ouellette, a longtime
environmental advocate.
As California’s prolonged drought continues, the State is at a
crossroads. Recent headlines have been dominated
by devastating wildfires and a growing number of the
State’s poorest communities without water. These
catastrophic conditions demand answers and solutions from our
leaders. … With the cost of living continuing to climb,
the San Joaquin Valley’s most vibrant sector – agriculture –
cannot continue to feed our communities, state, nation, or the
world, if we do not have the most basic resource necessary to
grow food, water. -Written by William Bourdeau, executive vice
president of Harris Farms, director of the Westlands Water
District, and chairman of the Valley Future
Foundation.
The White House is making more than $1 billion available to
states to address flooding and extreme heat exacerbated by
climate change. Vice President Kamala Harris is set to announce
the grant programs Monday at an event in Miami with the head of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other officials.
The competitive grants will help communities across the nation
prepare for and respond to climate-related disasters.
… she is expected to address extreme weather events
across the country, including the flooding in Kentucky and
Missouri and the wildfires in California.
Governor Gavin Newsom convened local water leaders this past
Friday, for the second time in recent months, to call for their
continued action to drive down urban water use and help
Californians make permanent changes to adapt to a hotter and
drier future. Preliminary numbers that reflect 95 percent of
the population show that Californians cut back on water use by
7.5 percent overall in June this year compared to June 2020.
The increase in conservation comes a month after Governor
Newsom directly called on local water leaders to step
up their work to ensure all Californians are doing their
part to save water.
New Melones Reservoir, the Golden State’s fourth-largest
capacity reservoir, was 70% empty Wednesday — its lowest level
in five years — due to the drought described by officials at
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as “unprecedented.” Federal
authorities closed the lower boat ramp at Tuttletown Recreation
Area in Tuolumne County earlier this month because of the
lowering water levels. … On Wednesday, the reservoir was
holding 722,889 acre-feet of water, three-tenths of its 2.4
million acre-foot capacity, and it was 70% empty, according to
state Department of Water Resources data.
Colorado River basin water has transformed Nancy Caywood’s
fields in the desert southwest of Phoenix into carpets of green
cotton and alfalfa for generations. But in June, the alfalfa
was expected to dry up, and a vast majority of the cotton
wasn’t even planted. The irrigation canal that serves her
property was shut down amid a 22-year megadrought that has hurt
growers across the seven states that comprise the
basin. Vultures gathered in the muddy pools of her canal,
feasting on the dying fish, a week after her hay was cut in
early June, likely for the last time this year.
