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.
Marin Municipal Water District officials, continuing their
quest to boost supply, met this week for a detailed cost
assessment on expanding reservoirs and connecting to new
sources. District staff stressed to the board that — unlike
other options under review such as desalination and recycled
water expansion that can produce a continual flow of water —
enlarging reservoirs or building pipelines to outside suppliers
does not guarantee water will be available when needed.
Sacramentans can get paid up to $3,000 for saving water in the
form of replacing their grassy yards with drought-tolerant
landscaping. Summer weather in Sacramento exacerbates ongoing
drought conditions in the region, and the city has been
promoting a program that incentivizes residents to switch to a
“drought-tolerant landscape” in their yards. But what
exactly is xeriscaping and what can it look like in California?
People often have strange ideas about how water works.
Even simple water systems can be confusing. When water
systems become large complex socio-physical-ecological systems
serving many users and uses, opportunities for confusion become
extreme, surpassing comprehension by our ancient Homo sapien
brains. When confused by conflicting rhetoric, using numbers to
“follow the water” can be helpful. The California Water
Plan has developed some such numbers. This essay presents
their net water use numbers for 2018, by California’s
agricultural, urban, and environmental uses by hydrologic
region.
The ink is barely dry on the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act and here comes more legislation to redo what has been the
most significant change in California water law in over 100
years. The California Department of Water Resources has not
finished evaluating Groundwater Sustainability Plans submitted
by local agencies under SGMA, which established a cooperative
framework to protect California’s groundwater resources. But
already legislation—Assembly Bill 2201 by Steve Bennett,
D-Ventura—seeks to change SGMA in ways that would bring
unnecessary confusion and disruption into the
process. -Written by Danny Merkley, director of water
resources for the California Farm Bureau; and Jack
Gualco, president of The Gualco Group Inc.
As the California drought continues to impact agriculture as
well as the lives of residents, local government bodies have
requested regular updates on water resources. Once again, the
Butte County Board of Supervisors will hear the latest updates
regarding the drought, groundwater and water-related activities
within the county. In December, the board contracted Luhdorff
and Scalmanini Consulting Engineers to create an analysis of
drought impacts on the county in 2021.
Health and tribal officials are reporting that, due to
persistent drought and heat, they are finding unprecedented
levels of cyanotoxins in some areas of Clear Lake. For Lake
County residents with individual water systems that draw water
directly from the lake using a private intake, drinking water
may become unsafe when high levels of toxins are present, Lake
County Health Services reported. Of particular concern are
those with individual water systems who live around the Sulphur
Bank Mine, and along the shore of Clear Lake’s Lower and Oaks
Arms.
Arizona’s water leaders on July 13 laid out the path forward
for contending with the extraordinarily difficult choices
facing all of the Colorado River system’s water users over the
next several months. In a sobering presentation to the Arizona
Reconsultation Committee (the panel assembled to help develop
an Arizona perspective on new operational guidelines for the
river system by 2026), Arizona Department of Water Resources
Director Tom Buschatzke and Central Arizona Project General
Manager Ted Cooke described the unprecedented challenges facing
the system currently.
There we were, 19 of us on the stony shore of the Tuolumne
River, feeling a bit stranded like the crew of Gilligan’s
Island. Our “Finding Common Water” rafting excursion was
planned around “no water Wednesday,” when river releases are
held back for water conservation and infrastructure
maintenance. The trip’s goal: Get off our desk chairs and onto
rafts, out of the ordinary and into an extraordinary setting —
a hot, highly regulated, wild and scenic river — to push
us out of our comfort zone and get to work on addressing real
water problems.
I have lived in Las Vegas and have worked in the development
industry for 30 years. Since day one, water has been an
important issue. The current volume of Lake Mead compared to
years prior is clear evidence there is a serious water issue.
Residents, businesses and all those who depend on the Colorado
River should be paying close attention to the facts and
focusing on conservation policies that will help ensure we
utilize our water in the most responsible way possible to
preserve our future. -Written by Nat Hodgson, CEO of the Southern
Nevada Home Builders Association.
States in the Colorado River basin are scrambling to propose
steep cuts in the water they’ll use from the river next year,
in response to a call by the federal government for immediate,
drastic efforts to keep the river’s main storage reservoirs
from reaching critically low levels. The request comes with the
Southwest still in the grip of a severe two-decade drought that
shows no signs of letting up…. [E]xperts in Western water
issues writing Thursday in the journal Science say significant
policy changes could stabilize the river over the long term,
even if the drought continues. But concessions that “may be
unthinkable at the moment” must be implemented soon, they
wrote.
Water has always been recycled. The water molecules in your
shower or cup of coffee might just be the same molecules that
rained on dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago. With the
technological advancements in water recycling, however, the
water that went down your sink this morning might be back in
your tap sooner than you think. The city of Los Angeles and
agencies across Southern California are looking into what’s
known as “direct potable reuse,” which means putting purified
recycled water directly back into our drinking water systems.
…. Their efforts hinge on the State Water Resources Control
Board, which has been tasked by legislators to develop a set of
uniform regulations on direct potable reuse by Dec. 31, 2023.
[Aquafornia Editor's Note: The Los Angeles
Times story below wrongly states that Shasta Lake is part of
the State Water Project. It is part of the federal Central Valley Project.
We still believe this photo essay is worthy to share because of
the importance Shasta Lake plays in California.]
Shasta Lake, one of the state’s largest reservoirs, is
currently at 38% capacity, a startling number heading into the
hottest months of the year. Part of the State Water Project, a
roughly 700-mile lifeline that pumps and ferries water all the
way to Southern California, the reservoir is the driest it has
been at this time of year since record-keeping first began in
1976. California relies on storms and snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada to fill its reservoirs. The state received a hopeful
sign of a wet winter in late December when more than 17 feet of
snow fell in the Sierra Nevada. But the winter storms abruptly
ceased, ushering in the driest January, February and March ever
recorded.
Drought has drained the three reservoirs that provide about 60%
of the water for the [Monterrey, Mexico] region’s 5 million
residents. Most homes now receive water for only a few hours
each morning. And on the city’s periphery, many taps have run
completely dry. … “It should be a wake-up call,” said
Samuel Sandoval Solis, an expert in water management at UC
Davis who described the situation in Monterrey as a “crystal
ball” for Southern California. Both are densely packed
metropolitan centers that rely heavily on faraway water
sources. … Southern California cities, which import
about 55% of their water from the Colorado River and Northern
California, have already been forced to reduce water usage and
face the prospect of further cuts as drought persists …
It’s common to come away from the California State Fair with
stuffed animals, some sweets, sunburn, and the sticky,
sweat-soaked skin of someone who has spent too long in
California’s summer sun. It all comes part and parcel with the
event, just like the wine slushies or walking through the giant
misters outside exposition halls. But what if it didn’t have to
be this way? With climate change worsening summer heat waves,
the State Fair board of directors should consider moving the
fair to spring or fall. At the very least, it should move to
earlier in the summer, before Sacramento’s 100-degree-plus days
set in. -Written by columnist Robin Epley.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requires
groundwater users to bring their basins into balance over the
next two decades. In the San Joaquin Valley, this will mean
taking more than 500,000 acres of agricultural land out of
intensive irrigated production. Among other issues, this could
potentially lead to air quality impacts if the lands become new
sources of dust, especially windblown dust, which can have
numerous negative short- and long-term health and environmental
impacts. In addition, the changing climate may exacerbate risks
as warmer temperatures can dry out soils and increase dust
emissions.
The impacts of our western drought are hard to ignore. From
devastating wildfires which threatened Lake Tahoe last summer
to a shrinking shoreline at Lake Mead in Southern Nevada. And
the dry months are turning into years. “Since October of 2019
we’re seven inches of rain short over three years,” said UNR
Climatologist Stephanie McAfee. “It’s still a lot to be down.”
But our current drought pales in comparison to what researchers
discovered years ago in the dark depths of Fallen Leaf Lake,
just a few miles from South Lake Tahoe. Scott Cassell with the
Undersea Voyager Project came upon the sight from the driver’s
seat of his submersible exploration vehicle:
A lot has been said about the drought’s effect on water
supplies for cities and farms, but little is said about how
Delta fish are faring. Freshwater inflow to the Delta was
about half of normal in April through June 2022 because of the
State Water Board Order approving the Department of Water
Resources (DWR) and the Bureau of Reclamation’s Temporary
Urgency Change Petition (TUCP) for Delta
operations. With some of this limited Delta inflow going
to water users during April, May and June, little was going to
the fish. The State Water Board granted the TUCP because
Central Valley reservoir storage was so low at the end of
winter in this third year of drought.
With hundreds of full-time employees, the Department of
Conservation and Natural Resources is one of the state’s
largest agencies, responsible for a wide array of activities,
from overseeing state parks and wildland fire crews to
regulating industrial pollution and managing water rights.
Earlier this month, the agency got a new leader. Gov. Steve
Sisolak appointed Jim Lawrence, who has worked at the agency
since 1998, to serve as the acting director. … The leadership
change comes at a time when the state — and the region
— face a number of ongoing interconnected environmental
issues, including a prolonged drought that has strained water
supplies, pressures on public land, increasingly risky wildfire
behavior and extreme heat.
Citizens of the Klamath Tribes will host a two-day community
event, “Rally for the C’waam and Koptu”, highlighting the
importance of these endemic fish, also known as the Lost River
suckerfish and shortnose suckerfish. This free event will take
place this Friday July 22 and Saturday 23 in Chiloquin with a
caravan rally to nearby Klamath Falls on Saturday. … C’waam
and Koptu once inhabited the Upper Klamath Lake in the
millions, but today, only 4,000 Koptu and less than 20,000
C’waam remain.
Cities across California are tightening water restrictions as
the drought drags on. But those restrictions are not hitting
people equally. While some neighborhoods are turning brown and
dusty, others are as lush as they’ve ever been. Caleigh Wells
from member station KCRW reports.
A new policy brief from the Public Policy Institute of
California is recommending cost-effective water storage
investments as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is seeing less
inflow. It also offers a damning picture of the thirty-year
shift in how the Golden State divvied up water, largely pitting
fish species against millions of its residents. The institute –
a nonpartisan think tank – initially published the brief in
early spring, focuses on the Delta that supplies water to about
30 million residents and over six million acres of
farmland.
As water in the North Fork of the Kern River dwindles,
controversy over its diminished flows is ramping up. At least
some river watchers are accusing Southern California Edison of
misusing a portion of the flows by continuing to divert water,
ostensibly, for a state-owned fish hatchery that has been
closed since 2020. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife
(CDFW) even sent a letter to Edison in January 2022 directing
the utility to stop taking water out of the river for the
hatchery, saying the facility and its pipeline are
inoperable.
Limiting the size of new swimming pools in and around Las Vegas
might save a drop in the proverbial bucket amid historic
drought and climate change in the West. Officials are taking
the plunge anyway, capping the size of new swimming pools at
single-family residential homes to about the size of a
three-car garage. Citing worries about dwindling drinking water
allocations from the drying-up Lake Mead reservoir on the
depleted Colorado River, officials in Clark County voted this
week to limit the size of new swimming pools to 600 square feet
(56 square meters) of surface area.
A package of 48 bills related to wildfire, forest management
and drought will reach the House floor in one giant measure
next week as Democrats try to push through their version of how
best to tackle the climate crisis on public lands. The bill,
called the “Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act,” H.R.
5118, would boost pay and benefits for wildland firefighters,
help the Forest Service fill gaps in fire management staff and
promote bigger forest management projects to reduce hazardous
fuels … Among the measures, the act would authorize up
to $500 million to the Interior Department through fiscal 2026
to prevent Lake Powell and Lake Mead from “declining to
critical low water elevations.”
As drought conditions persist and with the potential for
another dry winter due to La Niña, some good news: the
California State Water Resources Control Board learned
Wednesday reservoirs in the northern and central parts of the
state have more water than at this time last year. State Water
Project reservoirs across Northern and Central California
remain below historical averages after three consecutive years
of drought. But with a combination of people cutting water use,
curtailments, farmers fallowing fields and a focus on storage,
the reservoirs in the State Water Project are either above or
near where they were last year.
[Lake Powell's] water is receding because the Colorado
River is drying. Climatologists aren’t sure when, or if, Powell
will ever fill again. Rather, they expect conditions to
worsen. The chalky ring around Powell is just one sign of
many that the 40 million people who directly depend on the
Colorado River must fundamentally change their way of life,
experts agree. And it’s going to hurt, experts say. “This
is not a drought, this is aridification,” Rhett Larson, a water
law professor at Arizona State University, said. “This is not
something we can wait out. This is not something we can
survive. This is the new world we live in.”
It’s crunch time for the Colorado River. The river’s badly
depleted reservoirs keep dropping, and the federal government
has announced that major water cutbacks need to happen soon to
prevent supplies from reaching perilously low levels. The
future of the Southwest’s main water lifeline hinges on whether
the seven states of the Colorado River Basin will effectively
address the river’s chronic overuse and shrinking flows after
more than two decades of drought intensified by global warming.
… There are also 30 federally recognized
tribes in the Colorado River Basin, and I’ve been
interested in learning more about the roles they will play in
shaping how dwindling supplies water are apportioned and
conserved.
Across the country’s western drylands, a motley group of actors
is responding to the region’s intensifying water crisis by
reviving a well-worn but risky tactic: building water pipelines
to tap remote groundwater basins and reservoirs to feed
fast-growing metropolitan areas, or to supply rural towns that
lack a reliable source. Government agencies, wildcat
entrepreneurs, and city utilities are among those vying to pump
and pipe water across vast distances — potentially at great
economic and environmental cost. Even as critics question the
suitability of the water transfers in a new climate era,
supporters in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, the
federal government, Indian tribes, and other states are
prepared to spend billions on water-supply pipelines.
As models predict another La Niña for the coming winter, which
could lead to another dry year, leaders of water agencies and
other groups from across California and the western United
States met Tuesday to discuss how best to get commerce and
industry to use less water. While residential water use has
declined, commercial and industrial users need retrofits, new
equipment and new ways of doing business when it comes how much
liquid “gold” they consume. One thing meeting attendees agree
on is that it will take more than financial incentives to push
enterprises to make the switch. They will need to be convinced
that shifting to new systems will increase efficiency,
production and more.
The rollout of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act (SGMA) is altering the state’s agricultural landscape. As
groundwater sustainability measures are implemented and water
scarcity increases, at least half a million acres are projected
to come out of irrigated production in the San Joaquin Valley,
the state’s agricultural heartland. Rather than widespread land
idling—which comes with unintended consequences such as dust,
weeds, pests, and soil degradation—a switch from summer
irrigated crops to winter crops produced with limited water
(including winter cereals and forage crops, among others) might
keep some of this land in production.
Satellite imagery can show which households in Southern
California are likely following watering rules during the
drought — and which ones are failing to comply. Data from the
Sentinel-2 satellite isn’t coming from a local water agency,
but from a hobbyist. Ben Kuo likes using high-tech tools to
understand natural disasters. … The free, publicly
available data allows users to zoom in to view a specific house
and see how wet the yard is. A dry lawn might show up orange on
the satellite data. A household that’s flouting drought
restrictions with lots of damp grass will show up blue.
Utahns’ water consumption habits have drawn national scrutiny
in recent weeks, sometimes to an embarrassing degree. The Great
Salt Lake sank to a record low for the second time in less than
a year, with its plight grabbing the attention of The New York
Times and CBS. HBO’s John Oliver famously took Utah to task
this summer for its dwindling water resources and a video of
Gov. Spencer Cox calling on people to “pray for rain.” Cox has
been quick to defend his home state amid all the negative
press, pointing out in a Twitter thread earlier this month the
major steps taken to save the Great Salt Lake from further
decline.
The Clark County Commission approved a new measure to mitigate
the falling water level of Lake Mead on Tuesday, limiting
residential pool sizes in the Las Vegas area. The
commission Tuesday unanimously approved a new ordinance
prohibiting the Las Vegas Valley Water District from serving
residents with pools with a total surface area of over 600
square feet. The new code will only apply to single-family
residential customers who received a pool permit for their
“pool(s), spa(s), and/or water feature(s)” after Sept. 1, 2022.
The lake at the Park at River Walk is fast disappearing, as are
the Truxtun Lakes and some other city-owned water features.
Blame the drought. The City of Bakersfield Water Resources
Department has cut off flows to city-owned recreation and water
recharge facilities to hold on to what little surface water
it’s receiving from the dwindling Kern River for drinking
water, according to Daniel Maldonado, a water planner with the
department. … Local resident Calletano Guiterrez understood
the city has to contend with the drought but hoped at least
some water could be set aside for what he said he and his
family have come to love about Bakersfield.
The Board of Supervisors will consider new standards for well
permits at their meeting Aug. 9 in response to California case
law to protect rivers and other “public trust resources,”
according to a July 11 press release. The county will hold a
public hearing on the proposed amendment to the county’s well
ordinance, which would create new guidelines for Permit
Sonoma’s evaluation of environmental impact to drill new or
replacement groundwater wells. The ordinance may effect
approximately one-third of well permit applications sent to
Permit Sonoma and new wells may be subject to hundreds of
dollars in fees and new equipment based on the proposal.
Seizing a generational opportunity to leverage unprecedented
state funding to combat drought and climate change, the State
Water Resources Control Board provided an historic $3.3 billion
in financial assistance during the past fiscal year (July 1,
2021 – June 30, 2022) to water systems and communities for
projects that bolster water resilience, respond to drought
emergencies and expand access to safe drinking water. The
State Water Board’s funding to communities this past fiscal
year doubled compared to 2020-21, and it is four times the
amount of assistance provided just two years ago. The marked
increase also comes as a result of last year’s $5.2 billion
three-year investment in drought response and water resilience
…
The Ramona Municipal Water District board on July 12 adopted
the San Diego Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) Plan
as an avenue to $4.8 million in grants. The water district has
already applied for the funds available through IRWM grants.
The source of the funds is Proposition 1 — the Water Quality,
Supply and Infrastructure Improvement Act — which was approved
by California voters in 2014 and authorizes $510 million in
IRWM funding. Grants available to the Ramona water district are
nearly $2.43 million for The Acres safe drinking water project
and $2.43 million for the Ramona/Barona recycled water pipeline
project.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is urging
the public who visit the Russian River to be cautious of
potentially toxic algal. It was confirmed through testing that
toxic algal mats are growing on the bottom of the Russian
River. Algae or cyanobacteria can both grow on the bottom of
waterways and while floating in water. … Children and
dogs are the most at-risk to the health impacts caused by toxic
algal mats. Individuals should avoid touching or ingesting
algal material in the water.
Chief Caleen Sisk says she and her people, the Winnemem Wintu,
are following a prayer. To bring salmon back to their homelands
on a river above Shasta Dam. Overall, there was a prayer that
came down from Mt. Shasta, Bulium Puuyuuk about the Landata
Nur, which means the old time salmon,” says Chief Sisk. “The
old time salmon want to come back to their rivers. They want to
be upstream. They want to do the things they’re supposed to be
doing.” To support the prayer and draw attention to their
cause, the Winnemem Wintu started an annual ceremony called the
Run4Salmon.
Yesterday, Restore the Delta sent the following
scoping comment letter to the Army Corps of Engineers
in response to a “Dredge and Fill (404) Application from
California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to construct
North Delta Drought Salinity Barriers Project.” DWR proposes in
its application to add two more temporary rock fill barriers
along Steamboat and Miner sloughs in the North Delta intending
to prevent intrusion of high-salinity tidal waters into the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta should critical drought conditions
persist into 2023 and beyond.
The seven Colorado River basin states have until mid-August to
come up with a plan to drastically cut their water use. Federal
officials say the cuts are necessary to keep the river’s giant
reservoirs from declining to levels where water cannot be
released through their dams and hydropower production ceases.
If state leaders fail to devise a plan, they could face a
federal crackdown.
Blazes have burned thousands of acres, cued mandatory
evacuations and threatened some of the state’s oldest and most
impressive trees, but far fewer acres have burned in California
wildfires through the first few weeks of summer than at the
same point last year. The tides may turn in the coming weeks as
conditions stay hot and grow drier, but the numbers to date
suggest the state may have averted a particularly nasty start
to this wildfire season. …And while the Golden State is
immersed in its third straight year of severe drought, a few
storms in April and June helped to dampen fire fuels.
Groundwater levels are dropping and domestic wells throughout
the San Joaquin Valley are going dry as California’s third year
of drought grinds on. That includes entire towns, such as East
Orosi and Tooleville in Tulare County, which both went dry last
week. It’s bad. But it may get worse. Area water suppliers are
“locking down” and may not have enough to share, equipment is
in short supply and so are people to get the water to those in
need.
The day’s first gillnet haul of nonnative fish on lower Lake
Powell was already alarming: three striped bass, three
gizzard shad and a channel catfish. Any one of them or their
offspring would be unwelcome intruders were they to slip
through the massive concrete dam’s hydropower tubes and
turbines to swim a few dozen miles downstream into the heart of
Grand Canyon. Above Glen Canyon Dam, state fisheries managers
in decades past would introduce alien species to support
recreational angling on the lake. But below the dam, the
fish could drift downstream to eat or outcompete Grand
Canyon’s threatened humpback chub population, swelling the
ranks of nonnatives that biologists are already battling.
After a high profile, decades-long battle to build a
desalination plant in Huntington Beach ended in denial, all
eyes will be on the California Coastal Commission as it
considers whether or not to approve two smaller desalination
projects this fall. Commissioners are tentatively scheduled to
consider the Doheny Ocean Desalination project in October. The
project, based in Orange County, could produce up to 5 million
gallons of potable water per day, according to the
project’s environmental impact report. The project is
expected to cost $140 million, and $32.4 million in grants have
been secured thus far, Southern California Water District
Public Information Specialist Sheena Johnson told The Center
Square.
There’s a lot of big ideas for solving California’s perpetual
water shortages. Desalinate ocean water. Tow giant bags of
water or use a pipeline to pull water out of the mouth of
the Columbia River. But there are also less ambitious and
perhaps more practical ways too. The city of Santa Rosa is
looking to help, one drip at a time. Thomas Hare and Holly
Nadeau are water resource specialists from the Santa Rosa’s
water department, On a recent Wednesday, in the Oakmont
district, they were welcomed to the home of Leslie and Greg
Gossage…ready to get down to some detective work.
Recently, historic record-low water volume in Lake Mead and
Lake Powell has been headline news. While the trend of dropping
water levels at two of the nation’s largest water reservoirs
has been widely recognized for years (perhaps decades), a
discussion about what it truly means for those who rely on its
source for water and electricity downstream is rarely heard.
Lake Mead’s water level continues to fall to historic lows,
bringing the reservoir less than 150 feet away from “dead pool”
— so low that water cannot flow downstream from the dam. The
loss of water entirely from this source would be
catastrophic. -Written by Richard Thomas, a retired business owner
and author in La Mesa.
Environmental agencies on the local, state and federal levels
are commending the efforts of two tidal habitat restoration
projects in Solano County. The California Department of Water
Resources is aiming to preserve smelt and other fish
populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by improving
food sources and habitat conditions in the Suisun Marsh,
specifically by restoring Bradmoor Island and Arnold Slough.
The 161-acre restoration project in Arnold Slough, located in
eastern Suisun Marsh, was recently completed in the fall of
2021.
Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more and
more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the
Northern Hemisphere by later this century, according to a
comprehensive new climate change study led by the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The research team found
that, even in regions that keep receiving about the same amount
of precipitation, streamflow will become more variable and
unpredictable. As snowpack recedes in a warmer future and fails
to provide reliable runoff, the amount and timing of water
resources will become increasingly reliant on periodic episodes
of rain.
The water news in California has been grim. As PPIC Water
Policy Center senior fellow Jeff Mount says, “we’re in year
three of a miserable drought”—with “miserable” being the
operative word. We sat down with Mount, senior fellow Alvar
Escriva-Bou, and center director Ellen Hanak to discuss recent
water news. We’re in year three of a serious drought. How
different is it from last year? Jeff Mount: One difference is
that the State Water Board has been very proactive. They
announced curtailments earlier and they are moving much more
quickly than last year. They have the right authorities to deal
with the drought.
Firefighters and air quality experts are cautiously optimistic
that a plan to flood the stubborn Marsh Fire with 10 million to
20 million gallons of water could finally end a two-month
nightmare for several eastern Contra Costa County cities
perpetually shrouded in a fog of acrid smoke from the
long-simmering blaze. ConFire crews flipped on three additional
water pumps Wednesday, bringing to five the number of pumps
pulling water from nearby Mallard Slough onto the 200-acre
property outside Pittsburg, which has been burning since late
May.
Pittsburg water customers will soon see a 5% increase in their
water rates for each of the next five years as a result of
council action this week. Paul Rodrigues, city finance
director, cited increases in the cost of energy and raw water,
and the need to make capital improvements – at a $76.5 million
price tag – in the water treatment plant as reasons for the
increases. Both commercial and residential customers will be
affected, but seniors will pay less, seeing only a 2% increase
each year.
More extreme water cuts are all but certain in the Southwest
starting next year – including new water cuts for California –
according to the latest government forecast for the Colorado
River and Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir. Lake
Mead, which provides water to roughly 25 million people in
Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico, is losing water at an
alarming rate amid an extraordinary, multi-year drought made
worse by the climate crisis.
The town of Tooleville in Tulare County is once again without
water. The town, which has struggled for years with dropping
groundwater levels and contamination issues, saw its wells dry
up over the weekend. On July 15, residents called
nonprofit Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
reporting very low water pressure and some with no water at
all, said Elvia Olea, policy advocate for Leadership
Counsel. This is the second town in Tulare County to lose
water this summer. East Orosi, about 30 miles north of
Tooleville, was without water for 24 hours when one of its two
wells went down July 12, according to news reports. A pump was
installed and restored water to East Orosi.
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a 15-year plan for
several drought-stricken wildlife refuges along the Oregon and
California border against challenges by agribusiness and
conservation groups alike. The three decisions by the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals mark a stalemate in a century-old
water war in the Klamath Basin, where a federal irrigation
project to support farming began in 1906 and the nation’s first
wildlife refuge was established in 1908. The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service’s 2017 Comprehensive Conservation Plan drew
fire from agribusiness for regulating farming practices in the
Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, while
conservationists argued the restrictions did not go far enough.
More than 40 million people are under heat alerts across the
Plains and Central California today and Tuesday
as temperatures surge 10 to 15 degrees above
normal. “Dangerous heat will continue to impact much of
the central and parts of southwestern US today,” the Weather
Prediction Center said. Temperatures will warm up into the
90s and 100s today, breaking dozens of high temperature records
across the central US. … Excessive heat warnings
have also been issued for the San Joaquin Valley, where high
temperatures could reach 108 degrees.
Water levels have fallen so low on the Colorado River that they
are threatening a dam relied upon by millions of Americans. In
Texas, it was so hot last week the state’s grid operator had to
twice ask people to conserve electricity. And in western
Kansas, it is so dry that barely any wheat sprouted this year,
further straining global agricultural markets upended by the
war in Ukraine. Such events are a sign of how climate change is
altering life in the United States. Yet they have yet to
provoke a serious response in Washington, where Sen. Joe
Manchin of West Virginia told his Democratic counterparts last
week he could not support climate provisions in a wider budget
bill …
When it comes to slaking Southern California’s colossal thirst
for water, more and more local governments are searching their
own sewer lines for a solution. In the face of dire drought,
cities and water agencies are now investing heavily in
large-scale wastewater recycling facilities — systems that will
purify the billions of gallons of treated sewage that are
currently flushed out to sea. Among the massive water recycling
initiatives now under development in Los Angeles County are a
$3.4-billion plant at the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant
in Carson and Operation Next — a roughly $16-billion plan from
the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to purify up to
100% of the wastewater processed by the Hyperion Water
Reclamation Plant and put it to good use.
California’s forests are in rapid retreat, which bodes ill for
the future. Using satellite data, researchers from the
University of California, Irvine found that trees in the
state’s mountainous regions declined 6.7 percent between 1985
and 2021 thanks to wildfires, drought and other climate-related
sources of stress. The drop was even steeper in the Sierra
Nevada, which suffered 8.8% tree cover loss during that time
period. … ”We’re a little worried that relying on these
forests as a means for protecting water quality or erosion
protection or carbon sequestration (is) becoming more and more
at risk as a result of these increasing fires,” said Jon Wang,
a postdoctoral researcher at UC Irvine and lead author of the
study.
The city of American Canyon has filed a lawsuit asking a court
to force the city of Vallejo to provide drinking water to
certain areas of American Canyon under a 1996 service agreement
that Vallejo has sought to limit because of severe drought.
American Canyon filed its lawsuit last week in Napa County
Superior Court, which alleges that Vallejo breached the water
service agreement between the two cities by failing to provide
water to the Canyon Estates development, a new water delivery
location for Vallejo that American Canyon said was “designed
and constructed with Vallejo’s oversight and approval.”
Solvang commercial, industrial and institutional water system
customers will face steep financial penalties if they don’t
immediately cut back their water usage at least 20%. City
Council members on July 11 unanimously adopted a drought
ordinance update that clarifies rate tier penalties in relation
to declared drought stages. The city has been in a Stage 2
drought stage since August 2021.
Southern California is experiencing a drought of historic
proportions. In fact, some scientists are now referring to this
uber-drought as “aridification.” While droughts
are thought of as somewhat temporary, aridification signals a
whole new condition, one that Matthew Kirby, a
paleoclimatologist and professor at California State University
Fullerton, says, could mean living “under a permanent state
of water conservation.” Meanwhile, while the
summer months can mean mosquitos, a drought doesn’t necessarily
mean that their threat is diminished.
A new nonprofit is emerging along the Central Coast with its
sights set on ensuring clean, safe drinking water and access to
waterways for all, particularly those in disadvantaged
communities. The fledgling nonprofit is called Waterkeeper
Monterey, formerly known as Monterey Coastkeeper. Monterey
Waterkeeper’s Executive Director Chelsea Tu … told the Herald
this week that Waterkeeper will be working with the State Water
Resources Control Boards, often just called Water Boards, to
limit levels of contaminants in drinking water, mostly in well
water that doesn’t have the benefit of municipal treatment
facilities that urban areas of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties
have.
[R]ather than planning for dry conditions that, because of
climate change, are likely to become far more frequent and
deadly, Americans seem incapable of even remembering them.
Around the world, the landscape itself records our long history
of floods. Recent inundation is easy to see in high-water
marks, which trace the edges of the tide with soil and seed
deposits. Sometimes people memorialize these marks, carving
into stone and labeling the lines with dates, like a child’s
growth chart drawn on a door frame. … As John Steinbeck wrote
in the opening pages of East of Eden, “It never failed
that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich
years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry
years. It was always that way.”
California’s historic drought may leave the state with the
largest amount of empty farmland in recent memory as farmers
face unprecedented cuts to crucial water supplies. The size of
fields intended for almonds, rice, wine grapes and other crops
left unworked could be around 800,000 acres, double the size of
last year and the most in at least several decades, said Josue
Medellin-Azuara, an associate professor at University of
California Merced.
Firefighters in Yosemite National Park have been celebrated for
preventing this month’s Washburn Fire from destroying the
nearly 3,000-year-old giant sequoias at Mariposa Grove. But it
wasn’t just hand tools and hose lines that kept the fire at
bay. Past forestry projects, which slashed the amount of brush
and trees fueling the flames, made the job much easier, park
officials say. And yet, the topic of forest management remains
a fraught one in California, especially in Yosemite.
[A] very prolonged (2-3+ weeks in some areas) period of very
hot conditions can be expected from the Plains states to the
interior West. This, in combination with the subsequent
suppression of monsoon precipitation, will probably push fire
season into high gear across the interior Western forests that
have already been suffering from extreme to unprecedented
drought. It is also, decidedly, not great news for the Colorado
River Basin–where the water crisis is now rapidly worsening. At
the moment, I do not expect California to be at the epicenter
of this heatwave–while record high temperatures are likely in
some other parts of the U.S. with this event, they are somewhat
less likely during this event in California.
A small fish called the Delta Smelt has been a big topic for
farmers in California, as the state cites its 2016 Delta Smelt
Resiliency Strategy for limiting the amount of water from the
Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta, earmarked for agriculture. Wade
Crowfoot, California Natural Resources Agency Secretary, spoke
during the Western Food and Ag Issues Summit hosted by
Agri-Pulse. He says although the state of California is bound
by the federal Endangered Species Act to protect the fish, the
agency is working towards a more encompassing solution.
Damon Ayala patrols the streets of drought-stricken Los Angeles
every day, inspecting the sidewalks. Each time he sees a
puddle, he stops. He is part of the city’s Department of Water
and Power team, which looks into hundreds of community
complaints filed by neighbors each week about water waste.
… Ayala’s patrol comes as California and the western
United States are in the grip of a severe, years-long drought.
… With reservoirs and rivers at historic lows, Los
Angeles authorities have brought in water restrictions,
such as limiting lawn irrigation to as little as eight minutes,
twice per week.
The Marin Municipal Water District took a deeper look at some
of the more complex and expensive options on the table for new
supply: desalination plants and recycled water. The district
board and consultants with the Jacobs Engineering firm held
discussion Tuesday on the preliminary cost estimates, water
yields and challenges of building desalination plants and
expanding the district’s recycled water system.
Most cities across metro Phoenix have enacted the first stages
of their drought preparedness plans. It’s a smart move. Because
even if those first stages don’t mandate action, they place
more emphasis on saving water. Which is a message we all
need to hear. … It’s true. We could completely cut off
taps across metro Phoenix and still not change the trajectory
of shortages on the Colorado River. … Cities don’t use enough
water to make up that difference. But saving water is
still in our best interest … -Written by Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
columnist.
The Colorado River is facing a catastrophic drought. But will a
shrinking water supply mean higher utility bills for
Arizonans? The short answer is, yes. Arizonans are likely
to see their water bills increase in coming years. But
water experts say the long answer is a lot more complicated.
… [Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyl
Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University
and former director for Phoenix and Mesa’s water
departments] said the Colorado River is facing severe
shortages, but not everyone in Arizona is relying on Colorado
River water to the same degree.
Growing up in Dinuba, my family and I worried about whether the
water coming out of our tap was safe to drink. We knew that our
groundwater was likely contaminated by nitrates and other toxic
chemicals from agriculture. Like many other immigrant families,
we would fill up three 5-gallon containers of water at a
vending machine station on a weekly basis. To this day, we
still don’t trust that the water in our home is safe to
drink. -Written by Emmanuel Agraz Torres, an ambassador
with California Environmental Voters Education Fund and a
student at California State University, Fresno.
As local gardeners and farmers look for ways to keep their
fruit trees alive while meeting water conservation goals, they
can consider the water savings gained by applying organic
mulch, as documented in an influential 1999 University of
California study. The study’s findings and recommendations have
gained relevance today as water supplies tighten and watering
restrictions take effect during the severe drought.
… Rather than promoting growth, the main purposes of
mulch are to reduce erosion, suppress weed growth, moderate
soil temperature, and save water by retaining soil
moisture. -Written by David Goldstein, an environmental resource
analyst with the Ventura County Public Works Agency
Thousands of new apartments will be built in Irvine, and this
create cognitive dissonance for Stan Jones. The planned 24-acre
lagoon at “Cotino, Storyliving by Disney” in Rancho Mirage, and
the 17-acre Wavegarden Cove Pool and Resort in Palm Desert, do
much the same for Paul Burt of San Pedro. Larry Anderson
shakes his head, too. He tracks construction within a 40-mile
radius of Hemet and counts more than 7,000 new units planned or
already rising, even as the governor implores Californians to
dramatically cut water use to deal with historic drought and
officials scold us for falling short. -Written by columnist Teri Sforza.
All Californians play a role in preserving and enhancing our
water supplies for a drought-resilient future. California again
is in a familiar state of drought, although not all communities
are affected equally. Some regions are in extreme water
shortage; others are not. We must address these differences.
That starts with all Californians understanding where their
water comes from and what they can do to use it wisely. -Written by Steve Welch, general manager of the
Contra Costa Water District; and Sandy Kerl, the
general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority.
Nearly 50 Woodland residents and stakeholders took part in the
city’s Sustainability Advisory Committee community input forum
on the environment last week at the Leake Center, located
inside the Woodland Public Library, located at 250 First St.
… The range of topics discussed varied from water
conservation to waste management to alternate modes of
transportation and air quality, but they also frequently tied
back into concerns over climate change.
Yesterday Max Gomberg had his last day at the State Water
Resources Control Board. He sent this on his last day, and
cc’ed me. With his permission: Hello everyone: I am
sharing my parting thoughts because I believe in facing hard
truths and difficult decisions. These are dark and uncertain
times, both because fascists are regaining power and because
climate change is rapidly decreasing the habitability of many
places. Sadly, this state is not on a path towards steep cuts
in greenhouse gas emissions reductions, massive construction to
alleviate the housing crisis, quickly and permanently reducing
agriculture to manage the loss of water to aridification, and
reducing law enforcement and carceral budgets and reallocating
resources to programs that actually increase public health and
safety.
Climate scientists with the National Weather Service delivered
disappointing news Thursday for anyone hoping for drought
relief this fall or early winter. According to the weather
service’s Climate Prediction Center, there’s a 62% to 66%
chance that La Niña conditions will prevail in the Northern
hemisphere until at least the end of 2022, marking the third
straight year of the weather pattern. La Niña conditions,
measured by surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean,
typically mean that there will be drier conditions in
California, especially in the southern part of the state,
though no one knows for certain.
The Colorado River is approaching a breaking point, its
reservoirs depleted and western states under pressure to
drastically cut water use. It’s a crisis that scientists have
long warned was coming. Years before the current shortage,
scientists repeatedly alerted public officials who manage water
supplies that the chronic overuse of the river combined with
the effects of climate change would likely drain the Colorado’s
reservoirs to dangerously low levels. But these warnings by
various researchers — though discussed and considered by water
managers — went largely unheeded.
The avalanche seems to starts off slow, like whipped cream
melting off a sundae. But the icy flow picks up speed as it
heads downhill, crests an embankment and finally explodes into
a huge cloud of ice particles that engulfs the hapless
videographer — who miraculously survives — in seconds. The
extraordinary footage was from a massive glacier collapse in
Kyrgystan on July 8, and it was actually the second major
avalanche caused by a glacier collapse in a single week. The
first, which occurred in Italy’s Dolomites on July 3, killed
11. Could something similar happen in California, home to
seven glaciers on Mount Shasta and many more along the crest of
the Sierra Nevada?
Picture the ocean shore, but underground, there’s a line where
the freshwater and the seawater meet, called the salt line.
This salt line moves with the tides. But rising sea levels and
an increase of people living by the shore tapping into
freshwater underground can also pull more saltwater from the
ocean toward the land. … [P]laces all around the U.S. and the
world are now starting to study this problem. … California is
going through drought conditions. Aridification refers to the
climate getting drier in the long term, not just in seasonal
drought cycles.
Three San Joaquin Valley water agencies are gearing up to spend
$10 million each in grant funding from the state Department of
Conservation to retire or repurpose farmland. Valley agencies
that received grants so far include the Kaweah Delta Water
Conservation District, Pixley Irrigation District Groundwater
Sustainbility Agency (GSA) and Madera County. SJV Water will
look at how each agency plans to use its $10 million in
separate articles.
A year after receiving funding from the Budget Act of 2021, the
Department of Water Resources (DWR) has successfully awarded
more than $440 million to date in drought relief assistance to
small and urban communities to address water supply challenges
and help build local resilience. The Budget Act of 2021
allocated $500 million in total drought-relief funds to DWR
following extreme dry conditions and Governor Newsom’s
statewide drought emergency declaration.
Preston Brown knows the risk of wildfire that comes with living
in the rural, chaparral-lined hills of San Diego County. He’s
lived there for 21 years and evacuated twice. That’s why he
fiercely opposed a plan to build more than 1,100 homes in a
fire-prone area he said would be difficult to evacuate safely.
Brown sits on the local planning commission, and he said the
additional people would clog the road out. … Opponents
like Brown, a member of the Sierra Club and
California Native Plant Society, scored a win last year.
California as a whole continues to be in its third year of
drought, but earlier in the water year, it had a strong chance
to see a normal water year. After a strong atmospheric river
arrived in October, the first month of the 2021-2022 water
year. Forecast models from the Center for Western Weather and
Water Extremes, showed the Sacramento region as having about an
80% chance of meeting an average water year.
In California’s fields, farmers are already facing the impacts
of climate change every day. They are heading into yet another
potentially devastating fire year, and the third year in a row
of drought.
For the first time since the construction of the Shasta Dam in
the 1940s, endangered winter-run Chinook salmon have returned
to the McCloud River upstream of Shasta Reservoir by way of egg
release from a cohort of partners … Two-way trap
and haul programs are a controversial recovery strategy with
few, if any, programs exhibiting unambiguous success. Research
… found that two-way trap and haul strategies have a number
of uncertainties associated with them. The scientists
recommend using extreme caution when employing such methods and
clearly defining measureable success criteria.
1795 had been a drought year, as were the years between 1807
and 1809. Drought returned in 1822-1823, followed by floods in
1825, and three years of little rain from 1827 to 1829 and
again in 1844-1846. Travel writer Emma Adams described the
“annual panic” in Los Angeles when winter rains were overdue
and “all classes of businessmen are at a white heat of
anxiety.”
It was once called the Salton Riviera and a miracle in the
desert. The Salton Sea is different now; dead fish, decaying
area, foul odor , and dangerous toxic fumes. It’s a
wasteland. Once California’s largest lake, now it’s on the
verge of extinction, many claiming it is beyond
repair. Rodney Smith PhD., Managing Partner of the Sea To
Sea Bi-National Canal Co., joined KUSI’s Logan Byrnes on “Good
Evening San Diego” to discuss how he will save the dying Salton
Sea.
It may seem counterintuitive in this very dry year to be
thinking and talking about floodplains; yet, these years
highlight the importance of the floodplain in the Sacramento
Valley and the opportunities we have in all years–including
critically dry years–to reactivate our floodplains as part of
ridgetop to river mouth water management. To learn more about
these opportunities, we encourage you to grab some popcorn and
watch several award-winning films that explore how reconnecting
our landscape with our vital rivers can have a profound impact
on recovery of endangered fish and wildlife populations in
harmony with our cities, rural communities and farms.
Starting Thursday, Southern Californians will see triple-digit
temperatures as a heat wave sweeps into the weekend. The high
temperatures will peak Saturday, and no one could be blamed for
wanting to cool off in a pool or swish down a water slide.
Earlier this month, Wild Rivers water park in Irvine reopened
after an 11-year hiatus. The newly constructed 20-acre water
park is nearly twice the size of its earlier iteration, but
Wild Rivers reemerges in a drier California, at a time when the
state’s largest reservoirs are at historic lows and water
restrictions are in effect across the Golden State.
As part of a long-term effort to return winter-run chinook
salmon to the McCloud River, 20,000 salmon eggs were placed in
the river for the first time since Shasta Dam was built in the
early 1940s. The fertilized eggs were placed in a special
incubator to keep them safe until the eggs hatch, according to
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. After they
hatch, the young fish will later be trapped in the river and
then released downstream of the dam so they can migrate out to
the ocean.
There is a state mandate to consolidate [small] water
systems with larger nearby communities by 2024. But that wasn’t
soon enough for East Orosi, an unincorporated Tulare County
hamlet southeast of Fresno. The water went off Tuesday
afternoon. A temporary fix allowed the water to run
sporadically on Wednesday. By then, a family had lost their
home to a fire they had no water to fight. Children had spent a
day scrambling to keep pets and livestock from dying. And in
this community that already depends on bottled water for
drinking, everyone knew the taps could soon go dry again.
Visitors to Hearst Castle can expect to see some changes as
California combats its worst drought in years. California State
Parks is implementing stage 3 of its drought contingency plan
in an effort to cut back on water use at the former San Simeon
estate of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. It’s the
highest stage in State Parks’ drought contingency plan for the
Castle. The agency’s efforts mirror how the entire state of
California has worked to reduce water consumption during the
driest megadrought in the West in 1,200 years.
As two major new water storage projects designed to capture the
flows of the drought-strapped Colorado River are rising on
Colorado’s urban Front Range, observers say they represent the
end of an era on the river. The projects, Northern Water’s
Chimney Hollow Reservoir west of Berthoud, and Denver Water’s
Gross Reservoir Expansion, in Western Boulder County, both more
than 20 years in the making, will store an additional 167,000
acre-feet of water, the majority from the Colorado River.
That’s enough water for more than 320,000 new homes.
American agriculture is going to have to do without three
things that it has long taken for granted, according to a
recent article by Chloe Sorvino, who leads food and agriculture
coverage for Forbes. Those things are cheap energy, free water,
and a reliable climate…. Permanent crops are obviously
more vulnerable than annual ones. If the latter are plowed
under or the land for them is fallowed, there is always next
year. But trees and vines take a certain number of years to
mature and produce. To say that water in California is
free is simply not true.
Orange County needs a unified approach to water conservation
and drought as California faces the driest 22-year period in
over a thousand years, the Orange County Grand Jury recommended
in a new report published late last month. The June 22 Grand
Jury report stated that Orange County water providers need to
“consolidate their resources and establish a unified voice to
lead the County more efficiently in its water policies and
planning.” Orange County has two water supply agencies:
Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) and Orange
County Water District (OCWD).
Extreme precipitation from hurricanes and atmospheric rivers
can lead to increased flooding in the world’s coastal zones,
where more than 630 million people reside. Tidal marshes act as
important buffers in these areas, absorbing the initial impact
of storm surges and strong winds. In addition, tidal marsh
ecosystems rely on storm events to deposit sediments that help
with marsh accretion. In a new study, Thorne et al. focused on
tidal marsh accretion and elevation change in the San Francisco
Bay after an atmospheric river event in 2016-2017.
Just days after ordering the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District
(BBID) to shut off its pumps and halt water deliveries at the
height of the growing season, the State Water Resources Control
Board (Board) lifted the curtailments of BBID’s water rights.
At 4:07 on Tuesday, the Board issued a Drought Update advising
that the pre-1914 water right serving much of BBID’s service
area, and the post-1914 water right serving the District’s West
Side Service Area, are no longer curtailed.
Every day, Arizonans dump a small flood of drinking water down
the drain, whether by running the shower or washing their
clothes. It seems like an untapped reservoir for water
conservation: Unlike “black water” — from sewage, kitchen sinks
and dishwashers — much of the “gray water” from clothes
washers, bathtubs, showers or sinks remains clean enough for
other household uses. … Although the state has some
loose guidelines for gray water systems, homeowners can install
them with little or no oversight …
It was late 2020, less than a year into the pandemic, but Luis
Sinco wasn’t thinking about COVID-19. He was overwhelmed by
catastrophe. Fires were burning, glaciers were melting, and the
West was again in drought. But from talking to his kids and
friends and people around him, the award-winning Times
photographer sensed little dire urgency, little connection
between the climate crisis and the routines of everyday life.
… [Sinco] set off on his own. In between assignments, he
traveled roughly 1,500 miles, from the river’s headwaters in
the Rocky Mountains down to where the Colorado once regularly
reached its terminus, in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
In California, climate change is already a reality. Annual
devastating wildfires, years long droughts and over-pumped
groundwater systems are symptoms of the onset of a global
environmental catastrophe. Researchers worldwide are
desperately looking for ways to avert the worst case scenario
and, should it already be too late, deal with the new
environmental challenges in the most effective way possible.
The Solar Canal Project, a kilometer-long network of irrigation
canals in California which will be used to generate renewable
energy, is emerging as one promising solution to these
challenges.
After a long back-and-forth on Tuesday afternoon, all but one
Mendocino County supervisor approved a draft of a water hauling
ordinance created by concerned community members. The
ordinance draft will move on to the planning commission for
review, despite lingering questions around how to fund it.
Board Chair Ted Williams voted against the ordinance because of
those concerns. The ordinance’s purpose is to protect the
county’s groundwater resources by regulating the sale and
transport of groundwater from private wells.
A wildfire that threatened a grove of California’s giant
sequoias in Yosemite National Park was burning eastward into
the Sierra National Forest on Wednesday. The Washburn Fire is
one of dozens of blazes chewing through drought-parched terrain
in the Western U.S. It has increased in size to more than 5.8
square miles, pushing containment from 22% down to 17%.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Southern California
Edison’s (SCE) first desalination plant on Catalina Island. The
desalination process strips salt out of ocean water from two
underground saltwater beach wells to make it drinkable. The
desalination plant was considered a developing technology in
1992. It was the first ocean water to drinking water plant on
the West Coast and one of the first prototypes in the country.
SCE built the first desalination plant in response to the
development of the nearby Hamilton Cove condominiums and the
drought in the late 1980s.
As students at Kelly Elementary School in Compton finish up
their P.E. class, they race over to their new Skywell Water
Dispenser to fill up with cold, clean water. But it’s also
water that doesn’t come from a pipe. Instead, quite literally
from thin air! … Fresh drinking water made from thin
air. … So, how does it work? ”It basically draws the
ambient air in, and runs it across a cold surface,” said
Dorfman. “When air gets to a certain temperature, it can no
longer hold onto the moisture in it, and it basically drops
into a lower tank. We clean it, we pump it, and it’s ready to
be dispensed.”
Damon Ayala … is a member of the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power’s water conservation response unit, and he
spends his days patrolling the streets of L.A. looking for
homes and businesses in violation of the new drought rules. The
restrictions went into effect June 1 and include the city’s
strictest-ever outdoor watering limitations…. During a board
meeting Tuesday, DWP officials announced that demand for water
from city residents plummeted 9% in June compared with the same
month last year. It was the lowest water use for any June on
record.
David Schmalz here, thinking about the Seaside Basin, which,
along with the Carmel River and recycled water from Pure Water
Monterey, is one of three major water sources serving residents
in the Monterey Peninsula. Water is a highly complex
topic on the Peninsula and in the county at large, and
what follows is no exception. Still, it’s important: water
facilitates life, and its availability, or lack thereof,
changes the world we live in. It’s one fundamental reason we
can, or cannot, build much-needed housing. I’m thinking
about the Seaside Basin for this reason: recent decisions made
by the Seaside City Council, as it relates to that water
supply, will have an impact on housing in the city in a major
way.
Dwindling water levels at Lake Powell, which is now at 28%
of its 24m acre-feet capacity, have put the Glen Canyon dam at
risk. In March, water levels fell below 3,525 feet –
considered a critical buffer to protect hydropower – for the
first time. If the lake drops just another 32ft, the dam will
no longer be able to generate power for the millions who rely
on it…. The Bureau of Reclamation… forecasts that
even with significant proposed cuts to water allowances there
is a 23% chance power production could halt at dam in
2024 due to low water levels and that it is within the realm of
possibility that it will happen as soon as July 2023.
Extreme heat is fueling more than 1,500 excess emergency room
visits per “heat day” in Los Angeles County, with some
neighborhoods facing far more danger than others, according to
a new UCLA mapping tool. The heat map tracks the number and
rate of excess emergency room visits on heat days down to the
community level and highlights a stark disparity between
wealthier, leafier neighborhoods and those that are home to
fewer trees, more concrete and higher occurrences of underlying
health issues.
Beyond all the gadgets, Novva offers one innovation that should
at least pique the curiosity of Utah’s drought-stricken
communities: Compared to most massive data centers around the
state and the world, Novva uses a fraction of the water. There
are those who might shrug off the center’s technology, like
security drones so finely tuned they can detect vibrations that
aren’t due to wind. Or those who turn up their nose at more
data centers along the Wasatch Front, given the amount of land
they consume and other environmental concerns. But with the
rise of the internet, the surge of streaming, an influx of
smart devices and a future of autonomous vehicles, big server
farms are increasingly a mainstay of life.
The fire in California’s Yosemite National Park may
benefit some of the world’s oldest giant sequoias by helping
release seeds and clear debris from the forest floor,
preventing more severe blazes that could wipe out many of the
massive trees, an official said on Tuesday. The fire
started on Thursday in the park’s Mariposa Grove, home to more
than 500 mature giant sequoias, the largest tree species by
mass. The trees have survived thousands of years despite
regular fires touched off by lightning.
As much of the Western United States suffers from drought and
cities turn to water restrictions to help conserve water,
farmers in California are becoming increasingly worried about
how it will impact consumers around the country. Fresno County
Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen’s farmers in California’s Central
Valley are preparing to harvest almonds in an area that
produces about 80 percent of the state’s supply.
… Jacobsen is a fourth-generation farmer on both sides
of his family, meaning he and his ancestors have seen many good
and bad years for harvesting.
Months after crying foul over a diversion of water resources,
it appears that water agencies reliant on Friant Dam will see a
boost in water supplies, Federal water officials announced on
Friday. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation raised allocation to
Class 1 contractors within the Friant Division of the Central
Valley Project from 15 to 20 percent. Class 2 Friant
contractors have not received an allocation for two straight
years. The trend, Federal officials announced, will continue
for the time being.
The San Diego City Council unanimously approved the city’s
second water rate hike in two years on Tuesday. In May, the San
Diego County Water Authority proposed increasing its rates by
about 5% for treated water and nearly 4% for untreated water,
citing inflation, increased energy costs and rate hikes set by
the Southern California Metropolitan Water District The city
has said it would not pass on more than 3% of cost increases to
customers.
On June 27, 2022, the legislature authorized the Acting State
Auditor to perform an audit of the reasons for major errors
Department of Water Resource’s snow runoff forecasts in 2021.
The Department of Water Resources’ Director, Karla Nemeth, told
the legislature that “the forecasting work is undertaken
exclusively by the Department of Water Resources. The State
Water Board is not responsible for this action and as such
should not be a party to the audit.” The State Water
Resource’s Control Board’s Executive Director, Eileen Sobeck,
agreed.
There have been two developments in the ongoing saga of the
Potter Valley hydropower project this week. The 20-year license
has expired, but PG&E still owns and operates the project
on an annual license. On Monday, PG&E submitted a rough
schedule to surrender the license to the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC). In a separate filing, PG&E
argued that it should be allowed to continue operating the
project under the biological protections that were attached to
the license when it was issued in 2002.
This May, the California Coastal Commission unanimously
rejected the proposed $1.4 billion dollar Huntington Beach
Desalination Plant for environmental reasons. Set on a
low-lying coastal site, the Commission was concerned that the
facility’s location exposed it to rising sea levels, and that
its process for converting 50 million gallons of drinking water
per day would harm marine life in 100 billion gallons of
seawater each year. … Gov. Newsom supported the plant,
calling desal “more tools in the tool kit,” … So who do
you believe?
At the San Francisco Fed, we are students of the economy. We
monitor ongoing and future risks to the economy, including
climate risk. The economic impacts of a changing
climate—including the frequency and magnitude of severe weather
events—affect each of our three core responsibilities:
conducting monetary policy, regulating, and supervising the
banking system, and ensuring a safe and sound payment system.
… Of course, it’s not just California and Utah grappling
with a record drought—impacts are being felt across the Twelfth
District. According to the journal Nature Climate Change, the
megadrought in the Western United States has produced
the region’s driest two decades in at least 1,200 years
To survive this climate-changed future, the state needs to
capture those torrents—and the tools to do so are right beneath
our feet. In California, hidden under the ground are aquifers
that have the capacity to store an estimated 1.3 billion
acre-feet of water—26 times all of the state’s reservoirs
combined. All California needs to do is guide the floods caused
by torrential rainfall into the ground, instead of out to sea.
… Here’s the problem: We don’t know where to build this
infrastructure. Because we can’t see groundwater, our
understanding of it—where it is, which direction it flows, and
how it connects to the surface—is limited.
The Bay Area’s largest water agencies on Tuesday were expected
to assess their current drought situations and possibly discuss
further restrictions on water use. Valley Water in the South
Bay, which supplies water for thousands in the Santa Clara
Valley, will report that between June 2021 and May 2022,
customers used 3% less water compared to 2019. That’s far short
of the 15% reduction goal set by the district’s board.
He walked to and fro, holding the rods parallel to the ground
and several inches apart. Every once in a while, the rods
crossed. In each spot where they did, he bent down and planted
a little blue flag and said that’s where I’d likely find my bad
pipe. “I thought that was voodoo,” I said politely. … Well,
this piqued my interest, and I began to do a little digging of
my own. Is there anything to dowsing, and if so, might a
battalion of dowsers help get us through the drought by
identifying underground aquifers and streams? -Written by Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times
columnist.
2022 is California’s driest first half of any year on record,
according to a just released government summary. In data
released on Monday, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental
Information found that over the period from January through
June precipitation in the state was the lowest on record dating
to 1895. Elsewhere, Nevada had its second lowest precipitation
tally, Utah its third least and Arizona its ninth lowest over
the same period. Drought conditions had improved significantly
at the end of 2021 as California received record snowfall in
the Sierra. After a dry start to the year and now the dry
season in place, drought conditions have worsened yet again.
On Monday, California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR)
released a draft Environmental Impacts Report, which looked
into the benefits and potential negative impacts of repeated
use of a temporary drought salinity barrier in the delta. This
drought barrier is in the West False River. It is a wall of
earth that helps to keep salt water from the Bay Area from
infiltrating into the freshwater delta system during times of
severe drought…. If the delta were to become
contaminated with saltwater, millions would lose access to
fresh drinking water, including farmers, who rely on the delta
for irrigation.
In a 6-3 decision last week, the Supreme Court restricted the
Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb climate
pollution from power plants. … The decision leaves intact the
EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and even
allows it to regulate power plants on a case-by-case basis. The
greater significance of the case, rather, may be the new inroad
it creates for challenges to environment and water
protections…. Hesitancy on the part of federal agencies
could be damaging for U.S. water issues, many of which cut
across state boundaries. James Eklund, an environmental lawyer
and architect of the Colorado Water Plan, said that ambitious
action by the Bureau of Reclamation has been central to
averting the worst water shortages in the American West.
California firefighters gained ground Monday in the battle
against a wildfire that poses a threat to a grove of giant
sequoias and a small community in Yosemite National Park. The
Washburn Fire on the western flank of the Sierra Nevada had
scorched about 4.2 square miles (10.9 square kilometers) but
was 22% contained as of Monday night, according to an incident
update. The fire was a threat to more than 500 mature sequoias
in the park’s Mariposa Grove and the nearby community of
Wawona, which has been evacuated.
If the effects of climate change continue unchecked, Sacramento
could exceed 90 degrees for about one-third of the calendar
year beginning in 2035, and reach triple digits nearly 50 days
a year by the middle of the century. That’s according to a new
online tool created by the Public Health Institute, released
Monday in collaboration with UCLA researchers. … Extreme
heat indicators for those locations include projections of days
above 100 degrees and above 90 degrees, for the periods of 2035
to 2064 and 2070 to 2099. The map shows Sacramento County is
projected to average 49 days above 100 degrees and 122 days
above 90 degrees for the period from 2035 to 2064.
As state officials and experts continue to push for more
housing to address the state’s worsening affordability crisis,
people often bring up another issue gripping California:
drought. How is it that California Gov. Gavin Newsom can
call for the creation of millions of new housing units while
demanding that people cut back on long showers and watering
their lawns? In fact, new research shows
there’s plenty of water to accommodate the growing
population as long as the decades-long trend of
diminishing water use per capita continues.
When Shasta Reservoir levels drop 90 feet down from the top of
the dam remnants of the “head tower,” a structure used during
the dam’s construction in the early 1940s, becomes visible. To
locals and water wonks alike, it’s a reminder that it’s going
to be another dry year. … The lake’s historic lowest
level was in the summer of 1977 when it was down 230 feet below
the dam’s crest. Last year’s lake level was the second lowest
on record, and yes, the head tower was exposed — along with
roads, train tunnels, and car bridges.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed B1740 yesterday, investing
$1.2 billion over three years to fund projects that will bring
additional water to the state to secure Arizona’s water future,
improve existing water infrastructure and implement
effective conservation tools. The projects will help ensure
that Arizona families, businesses and agriculture continue to
have adequate long-term water supplies.
After a decade of immense effort, the New River Project
received $28 million in funding to begin the first phase of
restoration said to bring public health safety and
environmental justice to Calexico, Mexicali, and Baja
California, at a press conference at the Women’s Improvement
Club in Calexico July 7. Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia and
Senator Ben Hueso, along with California Secretary for
Environmental Protection Jared Blumenfeld and his team, were
welcomed to The City of Calexico by the Mayor of Calexico,
Javier Moreno.
Ten people from California — including a Placer County water
manager, a North Coast tribal representative, and experts in
fire science, prescribed fire and the health impacts of air
pollution from wildfire – have been named as
primary or alternate representatives to a new federal
Wildland Fire Mitigation and
Management Commission. They are among 36 non-federal
members, 11 federal members and three co-chairs on the
commission, which will play a key role in recommending ways
that federal agencies can better prevent, mitigate, suppress
and manage wildland fires. It will also recommend policies and
strategies on how to restore the lands affected
by wildfire.
Cities and agricultural operations across the West put intense
pressure on groundwater supplies. In some rural regions, few
rules govern how, when and how much water can be pumped. That’s
true in rural southern Arizona, where wells are drying up as
cities grow, large farms move in and the megadrought continues.
… [Tara] Morrow and her neighbors are seeing the water
wells they use for their basic needs – cooking, cleaning and
showering – dry up as large farming operations move in and have
to drill deeper for groundwater.
Even here, in the scorching summer heat of Altadena, Seriina
Covarrubias’ front yard feels cool and inviting under the
dappled shade of a magnificent elm tree. … More than
thirsty birds have flocked to her garden since she tore
out her lawn and replaced it with mostly drought-tolerant
plants native to Southern California. Other wildlife has
returned, including lizards, ladybugs, praying mantises, bees
and caterpillars. … Two years before the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California declared a water shortage
emergency and ordered outdoor watering limited to two days
a week, the couple knew they wanted to install plants that
could endure the heat with little watering.
Where does your drinking water come from? Berkeley native and
self-described “water warrior” Nina Gordon-Kirsch wants you to
know. This month, Gordon-Kirsch, 33, is walking roughly 200
miles from her home in Oakland to the headwaters of the
Mokelumne River, the source of drinking water for most of the
East Bay. She aims to call attention to the knowledge gap
between urban residents and their water, a resource she says is
taken for granted.
The Southwest’s ongoing drought has put the spotlight on water
conservation. Experts agree it’s an important part of the
solution. But what does conservation mean to the average
Arizonan? Shorter showers? No more grass lawns? What really
matters might surprise you. Let’s say you’re standing at the
kitchen sink with an empty peanut butter jar. You want to put
it in the recycling bin, but you’re going to rinse it out
first. Is it worth the water? In our daily lives, there are
many ways to save water …
In a rural Bay Area valley framed by redwood- and oak-covered
hills, hawks circle above a meadow of native grasses where golf
carts once trundled over acres of manicured, well-watered turf.
Fairways are nothing but flowers now, and the remnant of a sand
trap is a pop-up playground. Here and there, small stone
obelisks inscribed with the words “San Geronimo Par 5” poke
through a riot of yellow-and-white petals like signposts from a
lost civilization. … The San Geronimo Golf Course
in Marin County, California, though, isn’t
being developed so much as devolved to a state of
nature to build resilience to climate change and revive
endangered salmon while creating a new public park.
Los Angeles County has 25 state parks, recreation areas,
historical sites and beaches. There are 24 more in Orange and
San Diego counties. But in the eight counties of the San
Joaquin Valley, which stretches from the Tehachapis to the
northern edge of San Joaquin County, there are only 15 state
sites, and only five of those are state parks. That is
about to change. In the budget just signed by Gov. Gavin
Newsom, enough money has been dedicated to start creating
California’s first new state park since Fort Ord Dunes in
Monterey County joined the system more than a decade ago. -Written by Julie Rentner, president of River
Partners, a nonprofit conservation organization; and
Assemblymember Adam Gray, a
Democrat representing Merced County and part of
Stanislaus County, including Dos Rios Ranch.
Californians are starting to save water, but not enough to meet
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for conservation in the face of one of
the worst droughts in recorded history. Urban water use fell
3.1% in May compared to the 2020 baseline set by the governor,
according to figures released Friday by the State Water
Resources Control Board. While that’s well short of the 15%
call issued by Newsom last July, it does show that Californians
are beginning to heed the governor’s call for reduced
consumption. Water use actually rose in March and April
… preliminary results for June show that water usage
fell by nearly 8% compared with two years ago.
Farmers along the Lower Colorado River in Southern Arizona and
Southern California are bracing for severe reductions next year
in their river water supplies — cuts they say could lead to
widespread crop production cutbacks, major economic dislocation
and, possibly, food shortages. “Mass fallowing” is a prime
concern among representatives of several big irrigation
districts along the river. The concern is growing as farm,
city, state and federal officials seek to negotiate a
compromise solution to carry out cuts in water use across the
entire Colorado River Basin that were ordered last month by the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
With a megadrought draining water reserves in the West, states
are looking for alternatives to handle water rights, many of
which were set more than 100 years ago when water supplies were
far more abundant. Back then, just posting a sign next to a
water diversion was enough to be considered a right, one which
could still be honored now. But the climate crisis is now
straining those rights. There just isn’t enough water in
California to satisfy what’s been allotted on paper.
A fire threatening hundreds of ancient sequoias in Yosemite
National Park continued to spread Sunday as firefighters braced
for more difficult conditions this week with warmer and drier
weather approaching. The Washburn fire had grown to at
least 2,044 acres by Sunday evening and was burning on the
southern end of the park near the historic Mariposa Grove, home
to about 500 giant sequoias, officials said. The blaze is also
threatening the community of Wawona and prompted officials to
close Highway 41 near the south entrance to Henness Ridge Road.
Ask and ye shall receive — at least partially. And the Friant
Water Authority is hopeful there’s more to come. FWA announced
on Friday the Bureau of Reclamation has increased its 2022
water allocation for Friant Division Class 1 contractors from
15 to 20 percent. FWA added as in the past two years, Friant
Division Class 2 contractors continued to received 0 percent,
“which continues to reflect the hydrology for the 2022 water
year is very dry.”
The Bureau of Reclamation last week revised its data on the
amount of water stored in Lake Powell, with a new, lower tally
taking into account a 4% drop in the reservoir’s total
available capacity between 1986 and 2018 due to sedimentation.
Bureau data on the reservoir’s water-storage volume showed a
loss of 443,000 acre-feet between June 30 and July 1 — a 6%
drop in storage from 6.87 million acre-feet (which is 28.28% of
live storage based on 1986 data) to 6.43 million (26.46% of
full).
Historically, the relationship between the North San Joaquin
Water Conservation District and the East Bay Municipal
Utilities District has been tense at times, hindering the
opportunity to collaborate on regional projects. The tension,
NSJWCD attorney Jennifer Spaletta said, was over EBMUD building
the Camanche and Pardee reservoirs and ending up with senior
water rights along the Mokelumne River. But over the last two
decades, the two agencies have worked to resolve their issues,
and ultimately came to the mutual understanding that they
needed to work together in order to solve future water supply
challenges.
At just seven years old, Hoopa activist and water protector
Danielle Rey Frank attended her first protest on the Hoopa
Valley Reservation in Northern California where she grew up. “I
went to my first in-person water dam protest with my father,”
says Frank, now 18. “It’s been an intergenerational fight to
get these dams taken down. My great uncle was the one who
actually proposed it—and the fight is still happening right
now.” Since that first rally, Frank has been heavily involved
in the fight to restore water levels in her community. “If
these rivers dry up, the salmon will die, and we’re not going
to be able to make baskets or do our traditional boat dances,”
she says.
News coverage of wildfires tends to focus on the acute events:
A blaze erupts, people are evacuated, homes burn down,
sometimes lives are lost. And rightfully so—it’s important to
know what’s happening as it’s happening. As a result though,
there are lots of articles and images out that describe and
show flames engulfing forests and communities, and wildlands
firefighters battling active burns. But what’s left when the
smoke clears? At minimum, it takes years for ecosystems to
recover from the worst wildfires. Often, years means decades.
One 2011 study found that desert environments need more than 65
years to fully re-establish after the flames …
Olive oil production in California is expected to drop
significantly in the 2022/23 crop year compared with the
previous harvest. According to the Olive Oil Commission of
California (OOCC), which represents 90 percent of the Golden
state’s production, its members will produce 1.8 million
gallons (8.2 million liters) in the current crop year.
Previously, OOCC members combined to produce three million
gallons (13.6 million liters) in 2021/22 … [P]roducers
faced a range of challenges, from high winds damaging
trees during blossoming to the state’s unrelenting
drought.
The climate in California’s Ojai Valley has been ideal for
citrus, but that climate is changing—getting windier, drier,
and hotter. A recent study showed that Ventura County’s
temperature has warmed more in the last 125 years than any
other county in the lower 48 states …
For about three months every year, the Desert Southwest turns
into a magical landscape of pastel hues, arcing bolts of
electricity and oases of life in an otherwise sandy,
cactus-studded chaparral. Some communities pick up half of
their annual rainfall in a few short afternoons, while others
flood as dry arroyos transform into gushing rapids. The
culprit? The Southwest monsoon — a seasonal wind shift that
pumps both Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean moisture northward
to New Mexico, Arizona and parts of Southern California,
Nevada, Utah and Colorado.
You can almost hear it: the crunch of crisping lawns all over
L.A., thanks to the ongoing drought and recent restrictions on
outdoor watering. It’s no surprise, then, that many Angelenos
are thinking seriously about ripping out their lawns in
exchange for less thirsty landscapes and a $2-a-square-foot
rebate from the Metropolitan Water District ($3 a square foot
in Orange County). Hiring a landscape contractor can make the
project much easier but far more expensive, even with MWD’s
rebate (and potentially more in some jurisdictions), so some
people, especially those with smaller yards, are considering
the DIY approach.
It is unlikely the Sacramento area will receive a substantial
amount of rain anytime soon, according to the National Weather
Service. Forecasts for this weekend show temperatures climbing
above the average for this time of year which is around 94
degrees, weather service spokesman Craig Shoemaker said. And
it’s expected to remain dry in the area for awhile.
… This interactive map depicts drought status levels in
Sacramento and throughout the country, using data from the U.S.
Drought Monitor.
Ute Mountain Ute irrigation manager Michael Vicenti looked out
from his reservation — toward the Navajos’ sacred “winged rock”
and across the arid Southwest — then focused in front of his
feet on three-foot-high stalks of blue corn. They stood
straight. But these growing stalks, established on one inch of
water per week, now would require twice that much. And Vicenti
winced, confiding doubts about whether Ute farming can endure
in a hotter, drier world. Each evening he calls operators of
McPhee Reservoir to set the flow into a 39-mile clay canal —
the Utes’ only source of water — and makes a difficult choice.
Either he saves scarce water or he saves corn.
The governor of our state and the state legislature are getting
into the act of exercising never-before-seen public control of
privately owned groundwater wells. Assemblyman Steve Bennett
(D-Ventura) and representatives from Community Water Center
(CWC) are sponsoring legislation that would change the way new
and expanded water wells are approved in California, and
focusing on areas that are experiencing rapid decline in
groundwater reserves. … Bennett’s bill, AB 2201, took a step
forward last week as it survived a fight in a California state
Senate committee. -Written by Jim Shields, editor and publisher of the
Mendocino County Observer and district manager of the
Laytonville County Water District.
California regulators have begun curtailing the water rights of
many farms and irrigation districts along the Sacramento River,
forcing growers to stop diverting water from the river and its
tributaries. The order, which took effect Thursday, puts a hold
on about 5,800 water rights across the Sacramento and San
Joaquin rivers’ watersheds, reflecting the severity of
California’s extreme drought. Together with a similar order in
June, the State Water Resources Control Board has now curtailed
9,842 water rights this year in the Sacramento and San Joaquin
watersheds, more than half of the nearly 16,700 existing
rights.
Colorado has no plans to make additional cuts to water use next
year to meet the Bureau of Reclamation’s demand to conserve
millions of acre-feet of water, a step needed to preserve power
production in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Instead, Colorado
officials insist that other states should do the cutting. …
[Amy Ostdiek, a section chief with the Colorado Water
Conservation Board,] told The Gazette the Upper Basin
states — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah —
dramatically reduced their water use in 2021 because
of drought conditions. …But, at the same time, total water
use in the Lower Basin has not been cut enough to preserve
levels in the lakes, said Ostdiek.
A state appellate court has reversed a judge’s ruling that
would have required the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power to conduct an environmental review before making annual
decisions about deliveries of water on pastureland it owns east
of Yosemite. The city agency on Thursday said the previous
ruling had “set an impossible standard” as it faces the complex
challenges of servicing ratepayers and meeting environmental
requirements in a time of drought, dwindling snowpack and
changing water availability.
A wildfire has led to the closure of Yosemite National Park’s
Mariposa Grove in California, home to over 500 towering
sequoias, park officials announced Thursday. The Washburn
Fire, which is burning near the lower part of Mariposa Grove,
spans 60 to 70 acres, the park said on social media.
… California has been ravaged by decimating wildfire
seasons that last year burned more than 2.5 million acres in
over 8,800 incidents and killed three people, according
to Cal Fire’s 2021 data.
In the middle of 300 acres of picturesque hay meadows just
north of Kremmling, not far from the headwaters of the Colorado
River, a metal pillar surrounded by fencing rises 10 feet from
the ground. It looks something like a miniature cellphone tower
with various technical instruments and antennas jutting out at
the top. … It is providing farmers and researchers
with critical information about how much water Colorado
agriculture could potentially conserve in the drought-stricken
West.
With the City Council passing an ordinance declaring a stage II
moderate water shortage Tuesday night, Red Bluff residents will
be asked to cut back on their water usage. City water customers
must refrain from landscape watering except between 9 p.m. and
8 a.m., equip any hose with a shutoff nozzle and promptly
repair all leaks in plumbing fixtures, water lines and
sprinkler systems. Residents will be prohibited from hosing off
sidewalks, driveways and other hardscapes, washing vehicles
with hoses not equipped with a shutoff nozzle …
Too many San Diegans smelled something funky last week when
they turned on their water faucets. Turns out there was
something funky growing in nearby Lake Murray Reservoir.
Biologist Peter Vroom, Ph.D. with the city’s Public Utilities
Department said an algal bloom formed in the lake after the
weather turned warm for a sustained period of time. … MIB is
one of the hardest things to remove during the water treatment
process before it is piped to homes and businesses, according
to Dr. Vroom. Vroom said the city tests its reservoirs for
these issues every week, and said the naturally-forming MIB is
not going to hurt anyone.
California’s newest member of Congress will be serving on the
House Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Connie Conway, a
Republican who represents the 22nd District in the
agriculture-heavy Central Valley, got assigned to Natural
Resources by House GOP leadership, Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) the
ranking member of the committee, announced today. In a
statement, Conway said that she understood “the diverse water
and energy challenges impacting the livelihoods of Central
Valley residents and farmers.” She added that she looked
forward to “working with my colleagues to address the drought
and rising energy costs by modernizing outdated environmental
laws and improving water storage infrastructure.”
Sonoma County health officials posted warnings at a lower
Russian River beach on Thursday after finding cyanobacteria, or
blue-green algae, in the water off shore. Test results from
samples collected by the North Coast Regional Water Quality
Control Board were not available Thursday evening, so it was
unclear if any toxins were associated with the substance found
off Patterson Point in Villa Grande. But anyone visiting the
beach was advised to be alert to any slimy mats and practice
care in recreating.
A virulent and voracious species of invasive fish has
penetrated the ecologically delicate waterways of the lower
Colorado River, The Associated Press reported. The
presence of smallmouth bass below the critical
barrier of the Glen Canyon dam means an existential threat
to chub, an ancient native fish, according to the AP.
Wildlife biologists have long dreaded the day when the bass — a
sport fish introduced into the freshwater lakes of the West
— would make it through the dam to attack the
threatened chub, as we reported in June.
Despite being completely landlocked, Laguna Beach’s nonprofit
Pacific Marine Mammal Center — which coordinates the rescue,
rehabilitation and release of ill or injured seals and sea
lions — is the second largest consumer of water in the city
after the municipality itself. The smallish Laguna Canyon Road
facility uses up to 17,000 gallons of water each day in the
maintenance of seven onsite pools, not to mention furnishing
the needs of the many recuperating pinnipeds in residence
there. But an ambitious new expansion plan, key portions
of which were unanimously approved Wednesday by members of the
Laguna Beach Planning Commission, aims to cut that consumption
by up to 90% with the installation of a new water reclamation
facility.
In the 1960s, Hollywood flocked to its shores. Frank Sinatra,
Jerry Lewis and the Beach Boys partied at the lake. But by
1985, the tourist industry was over and the heyday of Old
Hollywood was gone. Just a short drive south of Palm
Springs, you’ll find California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea.
Back in its heyday, hundreds of thousands of people visited the
area, attracting more visitors than Yosemite Park at the time.
Fishing, water-skiing and boat-racing reigned on high, earning
the lake the nickname “the fastest body of water.”
Farmers in southern Tulare County on June 30 soundly rejected a
proposed land fee that would have helped pay a lump sum
settlement of $125 million toward fixing the Friant-Kern
Canal, which has sunk because of excessive groundwater pumping.
The Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency agreed in
2020 to pay a portion of the cost to repair the canal to Friant
Water Authority. … The settlement agreement between
Eastern Tule and Friant laid out two payment options. The GSA
would either pay a lump sum of $125 million by the end of 2022,
or $200 million over the next decade through pumping fees
charged to its farmers.
Farmers and cities on the east side of the Valley may get more
water than they originally thought. Friant Water
Authority, which operates the Friant-Kern Canal, said in a
recent memo on its website it is confident its contractors will
not only get the 15% allocation of surface water deliveries
announced in February but that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
will likely increase the amount to 20%, possibly as early as
this week. … Better snow and rainfall in the
Sacramento area late in the spring has allowed the Bureau of
Reclamation to budget more water to be delivered to the San
Joaquin Exchange Contractors …
The snowpack on the far reaches of the Stanislaus River
watershed in late June was as anemic as it gets in mid-August.
Atop the 11,404-foot summit of Sonora Peak — the highest and
eastern most point where water from melting snow makes its way
into the middle fork of the Stanislaus River — the view was
reminiscent of a typical precipitation year leading up to Labor
Day and not the Fourth of July weekend. Small splotches and not
wide swaths of snow were on the horizon looking south toward
Yosemite. … This is the result of 60 percent of
California being in an exceptional drought — as in
exceptionally bad.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Wednesday that will
provide $1.2 billion over three years to boost long-term water
supplies for the desert state and implement conservation
efforts that will see more immediate effects. The legislation
that was hammered out over months during the just-completed
legislative session is viewed as the most significant since the
state implemented a groundwater protection plan in
1980. Climate change and a nearly 30-year drought forced
the move, which comes as Arizona faces cutbacks in its Colorado
River water supply and more loom.
Colorado’s water leaders have released an updated blueprint
detailing how the state will manage and conserve water supplies
as climate change and population growth strain the system in
unprecedented ways. The first Colorado Water Plan was released
in 2015 after back-to-back years of historic drought and sought
to address the possibility that the state might not have enough
water in the next few decades…. The reservoirs on the
Colorado River, which starts in the mountains of Colorado and
supplies more than 40 million people in the West with water,
have hit critically low levels in the last year.
Californians and others in the Western United States need to
save water. This is true now amidst a historic megadrought, and
it will continue to be true when this drought ends. But
many water conservation and efficiency programs aren’t
accessible to low-income households. … Making such programs
more widely accessible would both help those struggling to
afford their utility bills and save water. Notably, these water
savings would occur immediately and into the future, helping
provide immediate relief for households, as well as building
long-term water resilience and contributing to system-wide
affordability.
Summer is here, and water resource managers around the state
are gearing up for another dry season. In Santa Cruz County,
unique geology and three distinct basins make protecting the
water supply a complicated and fractured process involving
multiple water agencies. From the Pajaro Valley to the Santa
Cruz Mountains, here’s what they’re doing.
A coalition led by Indigenous leaders from the Pit River, Hoopa
Valley, Winnemem Wintu, Yurok, Karuk, Pomo, and Miwok Tribes,
along with Indigenous scientists, and water protectors say that
the Sites Reservoir is a continuation of the state’s original
racist water policies, which prioritized dispossessing land
from its Native stewards to fuel the economic interests of
farmers and ranchers. Rather than manage water levels to
prepare for climate impacts, the reservoir’s construction will
likely exacerbate the very conditions of climate change that
state officials argue it will protect against, like flooding,
parched river beds, algal blooms, and other types of
pollution.
Petaluma residents neighboring a planned groundwater well
project in the Oak Hill Park area are asking city leaders for
more transparency and review before approving its construction,
following concerns that the area’s foundation may be too
fragile. The Oak Hill Municipal Well Project would install a
well on a 5.58-acre, city-owned property at 35 Park Avenue, as
city officials look to offset the need for purchased water and
increase the reliability and diversity of local water supplies
during the ongoing drought. But neighbors are concerned the
well will have a negative impact on the environment and make
way for sinkholes.
California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced
financial support to four urgent drought relief projects in
Humboldt, Los Angeles, Modoc, Shasta, and Siskiyou counties
through the Small Community Drought Relief Program. In
coordination with the State Water Resources Control Board, DWR
awarded $2 million in funding to support four projects that
will improve drought resilience and address local water needs.
Trees are a very essential part of California’s infrastructure,
with some of them taking 20 to 30 years to mature. Despite the
drought, watering these important resources remains vital.
… Trees in a drought should still be hand watered about
twice a month at a minimum. During the hottest parts of the
summer, and especially in hotter and dryer areas of California,
trees need watering twice a week. … A mandatory two-day
outdoor watering restriction took effect across Los Angeles on
June 1 …
There are two schools of thought on how to navigate the West’s
historic drought: Use less water or find new ways to make more
of it usable. A few cities are trying to do both, and so far,
it’s spared them from some of the most stringent drought
restrictions. In the last drought, Santa Monica used to rely
heavily on water imported from Northern California. But now
less than half of Santa Monica’s water is imported, which
spared them from the mandatory outdoor water restrictions that
began at the beginning of June.
California’s water issues may be complicated. But the rainfall
shortage driving the state’s current drought comes down to
basic math. … Over the three-year period that ended June
30, most Northern California cities received only about half to
two-thirds of their historical average rainfall, according to
data that [Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather
Services in Half Moon Bay] compiled. And each passing year
without soaking winter rains has been steadily drying the state
out a little more — further dropping reservoirs, parching soils
and forests and depleting groundwater.
California and six other Western states have less than 60 days
to pull off a seemingly impossible feat: Cut a multi-way deal
to dramatically reduce their consumption of water from the
dangerously low Colorado River. If they don’t, the federal
government will do it for them. A federal Bureau of Reclamation
ultimatum last month, prompted by an extreme
climate-change-induced drop in water levels at the nation’s
largest reservoirs, reopens years of complicated agreements and
political feuds among the communities whose livelihoods depend
on the river. The deadline represents a crucial moment for the
arid Southwest, which must now swiftly reckon with a problem
that has been decades in the making.
In March the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency invited the
backers of Sites Reservoir — a mammoth water storage project in
the Sacramento Valley that’s being personally led by [Fritz
Durst, a farmer in Yolo County] — to apply for a $2.2 billion
construction loan. … But the reservoir, planned for
a spot straddling the Glenn-Colusa county line, 10 miles west
of the Sacramento River, won’t dig California out of its
current mega-drought. Even if all goes according to plan — a
pretty big if — Sites wouldn’t finish construction until 2030.
… The only way out of this, for the time being, is
conservation, forcing farmers and homeowners alike to make do
with less water.
East County officials fear a $950 million sewage recycling
project could get flushed down the drain because of a pipeline
deal gone awry. Leaders spearheading the endeavor blame San
Diego Mayor Todd Gloria — who signed off on building an
eight-mile “brine line” as recently as last year but has since
reneged on that commitment. The pipeline would prevent
concentrated waste generated by the East County project’s
reverse osmosis filtration system from entering into the city’s
own $5 billion Pure Water sewage recycling project now under
construction.
A fast-growing wildfire burning along the border of Amador and
Calaveras counties was poised to become one of the biggest of
the season as it approached 4,000 acres Tuesday, prompting
evacuations and contributing to widespread power outages across
the region. The Electra fire ignited Monday afternoon near
the North Fork of the Mokelumne River and spread quickly amid
dry brush and steep terrain, according to the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Rhonda Nyseth’s well dried up on Sept. 15, 2021, nine months
after she bought her house in Klamath Falls. … Last
summer, she helped oversee the distribution of more than 100
water tanks, each holding 500-gallons, to residents in Klamath
County with empty wells. Neighbors saw their wells dry up, but
she thought if hers still had water by Sept. 1, after the heavy
agricultural irrigation season, she wouldn’t be personally
affected by the ongoing drought. Just a few weeks later, she
was on the free water delivery list. She is among hundreds
of people relying on weekly water deliveries through a state
and county water program established to deal with the county’s
third year of drought.
After more than 20 years, a June letter to Southern California
water officials might spell the end for the Poseidon Water
company’s desalinated dreams in Huntington Beach, once and for
all. The fatal blow came in May, from within the Hilton
in Costa Mesa, where California Coastal Commissioners
unanimously rejected Poseidon’s bid to build a desalting plant
by the AES generating station in the city’s south end. In
striking the project down, commissioners cited what would be
higher water rates, marine life loss, and impacts to poor
households already living near industrial areas, from a project
that would have taken 100 million daily gallons of seawater,
desalted half of it, and discharged the other half back as
saltier brine.
On a sunny morning in southern Arizona this spring, members of
the Arizona Water Defenders gathered at a park in the small
town of Douglas to answer residents’ questions about water —
and to collect signatures for a citizen-led ballot initiative
that would, for the first time, regulate the region’s aquifer.
…The Arizona Water Defenders, a grassroots group, was formed
in March 2021 by southeastern Arizona residents who were
concerned about local wells going dry and increasingly visible
ground fissures and land subsidence. … [I]n recent years, as
large-scale dairy and nut producers have bought land in the
area and drilled deep new wells, water table drawdown has
become more noticeable and worrisome.
The Great Salt Lake has hit a new historic low for the second
time in less than a year, a dire milestone as the US west
continues to weather a historic mega-drought. The Utah
department of natural resources said in a news release on
Monday that the Great Salt Lake dipped over the weekend to
4,190.1ft (1,277.1 meters). … The giant lake near Salt
Lake City is the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi.
Its dwindling water levels have put millions of migrating birds
at risk and threaten a lake-based economy that is worth an
estimated $1.3bn in mineral extraction, brine shrimp and
recreation.
Laser technology is being used to more accurately measure
mountain snowpack — crucial information for farmers and water
managers in drought-stricken areas like the Colorado River
Basin. … Let’s escape now to Colorado, where some
mountains are still covered with snow. Scientists there have
been using lasers aimed from airplanes to assess how much water
is in that snow. It’s crucial information for the
drought-stricken Colorado River Basin. Stephanie Maltarich
reports from high in the rocky mountains.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has
completed its 2022 waterfowl breeding population survey. The
resulting data indicate the overall number of breeding ducks
has decreased by 19 percent, including mallards that are the
most abundant duck in the survey. … The full Breeding
Population Survey Report, which can be found on the CDFW
website, indicates the total number of ducks … is 30 percent
below the long-term average. The estimated breeding population
of mallards decreased from 239,830 in 2019 to 179,390 this
year, which is below their long-term average. The decline is
attributed to the ongoing drought and the loss of upland
nesting habitat for ducks.
The next six weeks, California pistachios will be on close
watch around how much–if any, the current drought in the state
is affecting its growth or “nut fill.” … So while some
growers are located in areas with good groundwater and/or are
receiving some supply of surface water, others have zero
surface water and also limited sources of groundwater.
… At the same time, the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) is starting to be implemented. This
legislation, which passed in 2014, requires that all
groundwater basins in California be sustainable and agencies
were formed to ensure compliance with the act.
Monterey Peninsula water officials are reporting that not only
did they meet the obligation to provide the agreed-upon amount
of water from the Pure Water Monterey water recycling project,
they were able to bank more than 100 acre-feet in groundwater
reserve. Pure Water Monterey — a project of Monterey One Water,
the area’s wastewater service provider — takes recycled water
that has been treated to a potable level and in a joint effort
with the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District injects
it into the Seaside Groundwater Basin for later
extraction.
