The Sacramento Valley, the northern part of the Central Valley,
spreads through 10 counties north of the Sacramento–San Joaquin
River Delta (Delta). Sacramento is an important agricultural
region, growing citrus, nuts and rice among many other crops.
Water flows from the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range to the region’s
two major rivers — the Sacramento and American – and west into
the Delta. Other rivers include the Cosumnes, which is the
largest free-flowing river in the Central Valley, the lower
Feather, Bear and Yuba.
The Sacramento Valley attracts more than 2 million ducks and
geese each winter to its seasonal marshes along the Pacific
Flyway. Species include northern pintails, snow geese, tundra
swans, sandhill cranes, mallards, grebes, peregrine falcons,
heron, egrets, and hawks.
At the April meeting of the California Water Commission, as
part of their continuing work on examining the state’s role in
financing conveyance projects that could help meet needs in a
changing climate, the Commissioners heard from a panel of
speakers about state policy considerations for conveyance and
the cross-cutting issues of flood-managed aquifer recharge
(flood-MAR), green infrastructure, collaborative partnerships
and governance, and innovation. … Michael George, Delta
Watermaster, … pointed out that it’s physically,
ecologically, and economically impossible to squeeze water out
of the Delta for export.
A spectacular super bloom of lupine flowers has exploded in and
around Folsom Lake. Lupine flowers, which are native to
California and commonly found around the state, tend to crop up
every year. But this spring, experts say the super bloom that’s
sprouted in the Sierra foothills reservoir 25 miles east of
Sacramento is like nothing they’ve ever seen — and says a lot
about the dire state of California’s deepening drought.
…[B]right purple lupines that now blanket the reservoir in
areas that normally would be underwater but are now fertile
blooming ground because of historically low water levels.
California’s drought is impacting more than how you water your
lawn, but also the way your food is grown on hundreds of
thousands of acres in the Sacramento Valley. Growing rice is a
multi-billion dollar industry that supports 25,00 jobs.
… This year, a third of normal rainfall combined with
hot weather and drying winds have [rice farmers] pumping more
groundwater than usual and fallowing half his rice fields –
meaning Durst won’t plant, and he’s not
alone. … Industry leaders say this is the third
time in forty years this kind of surface water supply reduction
has happened – and it’s happened twice in just the last decade.
California gubernatorial candidate John Cox swung through
Fresno on Thursday as part of his “Meet the Beast” campaign
tour, holding a press conference at Machado Farms.
… With the state once again in the midst of another
drought, Cox said he would do something that Newsom has so far
refused to: declare a state-wide emergency. Instead of a
state-wide declaration, Newsom enacted an emergency in
Mendocino and Sonoma Counties.
It’s that time of drought again. During one of the driest years
on record, once again curtailing water deliveries to local
farms, Fresno-area lawmakers wasted little time trotting out
one of their favorite falsehoods. That every year, including
the parched ones like 2021, California “wastes” millions of
gallons of water by “flushing it to the ocean.” Central San
Joaquin Valley residents have heard this declaration so often
and for so long, from the mouths of politicians and parroted on
talk radio, that many of us believe it’s true.
Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA-03) introduced legislation
(H.R. 2979) making low interest federal financing available for
reservoir and drought resiliency projects, with Congressman Dan
Newhouse (R-WA-04) as the original cosponsor. This bipartisan
legislation (H.R. 2979) would amend the Water Infrastructure
Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) of 2014 to make public water
projects like the off-stream Sites Reservoir Project eligible
for low interest, longer term federal loans from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
A new groundwater monitoring station is coming to Corning’s
public works yard on Gallagher Avenue just across from a
warehouse that stores various road signs and equipment. Public
Works Flood Control Manager Ryan Teubert presented the project
Tuesday to the Tehama County Board of Supervisors. It consists
of construction at the yard, which will be funded and performed
by the California Department of Water Resources.
On Monday May 3rd, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations (PCFFA), the West Coast’s largest trade
organization of small-scale commercial fishermen and women,
signed on to a letter asking Representative Katie Porter (D –
Ca 45th) in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on
Government Operations and Chair of the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, to open an investigation into
Reclamation’s manipulation of government cost accounting
standards and its own longstanding criteria for allocating
costs owed by Central Valley Project water and power
contractors (Contractors).
More than a month after announcing it was suspending water
deliveries to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley, the Bureau of Reclamation delivered equally bad news to
farmers north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Their water
supplies, tabbed at 5 percent of their contracted amount, were
not available for delivery via the Central Valley Project due
to limited supply.
Conservationists in California and across the West are deeply
skeptical of hydropower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s
a long history of government agencies damming spectacular
canyons, choking off rivers, obliterating fish populations and
cutting off access to Indigenous peoples. … But despite the
environmental damage they’ve done, many dams also generate
electricity that is free of planet-warming carbon emissions.
Tearing down dams can revitalize ecosystems, but it can also
contribute to a climate crisis that is making rivers around the
world drier in some cases, more prone to flooding in others,
and in many cases hotter and more polluted.
-Written by Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times staff
writer.
California’s drought is forcing hatcheries to truck young
salmon to the San Francisco Bay because the fish would
otherwise likely die trying to swim on their own
downstream to the Pacific Ocean. The Coleman National Fish
Hatchery along Battle Creek in Shasta County plans to drive
about 950,000 fall chinook salmon smolts in May to increase
their chances of survival.
A big change in drought conditions came out Thursday
morning for all of California. With an update from
the US Drought Monitor, 73% of California is now listed in
Extreme Drought, the second most severe classification the US
Drought Monitor utilizes. So far, 5% of California is
listed as being in Exceptional Drought, which is the US Drought
Monitor’s top-level drought designation. The increase to
73% is a significant jump from 53% in Extreme Drought from last
week. This news comes on the heels of other drought changes,
such as water restrictions for agriculture north of the
Delta.
If any doubt persisted over the first months of the year, it
has now become clear that this past winter’s dry conditions
will not be reversing anytime soon. With 88% of California
classified as experiencing severe drought and no less than 53%
classified as extreme, according to the California drought
monitor, there is no question that conditions have worsened,
confirming fears that another dangerously dry summer looms on
the horizon. In fact, so troubling is the situation that on
April 21, amid the barren backdrop of a greatly depleted Lake
Mendocino, Governor Newsom issued a state of emergency
declaration for Mendocino and Sonoma counties …
In our latest effort to ensure that our water management and
farming practices both protect and enhance environmental
benefits in our area, Garden Highway Mutual Water Company
(Garden Highway) recently completed a project to screen its
diversion on the Feather River. This project allows us to
protect Chinook salmon and other fish species from entrainment
while diverting water year-round to irrigate crops and to
provide Pacific Flyway habitat during the fall and winter
months. The project was a cooperative effort between Garden
Highway, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau
of Reclamation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Family
Water Alliance.
Phase 3C of the Lower Clear Creek Floodway Rehabilitation
Project has been completed, attracting fish and wildlife to new
habitats and people to new recreation opportunities. This phase
concludes the extensive and decades-long effort to restore more
than 2 miles of stream channel on Bureau of Land Management
property below Whiskeytown Dam. It was led by the Clear Creek
Technical Team, which includes BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Yurok Tribe and other federal,
tribal, state, local agencies and stakeholders.
At the Water Education Foundation, we focus on telling the
complex story of water in California and the West because of
its critical role in sustaining our lives, growing our food and
nourishing our environment. As a nonprofit we rely on the
generosity of people who value what we do – enhancing
public understanding of our most important natural
resource and catalyzing critical conversations to inform
collaborative decision-making.
Donate here to help us keep doing what we do, and
join us for a virtual open house at 4:30 p.m. today.
California’s current drought is already off to a strong start,
with some major challenges already looming just two years in.
Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter
Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder
than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this
poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having
statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water
to farms and cities further south.
The Fish and Wildlife Service said today it will deny federal
protections to three salamander species that environmentalists
fear could be put in danger by a proposed California dam
project. Pressed by a lawsuit to make a decision, the federal
agency concluded the Shasta salamander, Samwel Shasta
salamander and Wintu Shasta salamander don’t need to be listed
under the Endangered Species Act even if plans proceed to
expand the Shasta Dam by raising it.
One thing that’s been re-emphasized, time and again, during the
pandemic travails of the past 14 months: Farming is essential.
During the coming few months, as California struggles through
another drought, we’ll learn whether our elected and appointed
public officials feel the same way. [A]n overarching, long-term
problem needs to be solved to make sure farm employees can not
just work safely, but can have jobs, period: water supplies.
Experts say a statewide drought declaration … could bring
significant consequences for the regulatory structure governing
California’s complicated water-delivery system. Many farmers
believe an emergency order could loosen environmental
regulations and free up water supplies for them. Environmental
groups fear the very same thing – that more of California’s
dwindling water supply could be directed to farming at the
expense of fish and wildlife.
California Senators have unveiled a $3.4 billion drought relief
package to address the hardships created by ongoing dry
conditions. The Senate Budget Plan on Drought, Safe Drinking
Water, Water Supply Reliability, and Ratepayer Assistance would
be the single largest investment to address drought challenges
in California. During the Senate Budget & Fiscal Review
Subcommittee 2 on Resources, Environmental Protection and
Energy hearing, the proposal was passed by a 4-0 vote. The
proposal offers a comprehensive approach to drought relief,
with funding designated for water supply projects, research,
and water-use efficiency projects.
Regenerative farming practices integrate the entire ecosystem —
building upon the relationships of the natural world — to
simultaneously produce healthier, more abundant crops and
restore the Earth’s natural resources. … And
restoring soil health and fertility produces more abundant,
nutrient-dense crops that better resist pests and disease. It
increases soil’s ability to filter and store water, reduce
erosion and sequester carbon. And it builds a diversity and
abundance of microbes that drive every function of soil.
California is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,
and the San Diego region is one of the most diverse in
California, but we are losing our biodiversity at an alarming
rate. The coming summer months and dry conditions are going to
further hurt that richness of life here. Conserving our water
resources directly and indirectly benefits our wildlife and is
consistent with the overall conservation ethic in San Diego,
which is why we need to prepare in case drought conditions
worsen.
-Written by Chuck Bonham, director of the CA Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
California could get 600,000 new acres of federally protected
wilderness under legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate
recently. The designation would ensure the lands remain free of
development, vehicles and commercial activity. … It
would also designate more than 583 miles of river — including
45 miles of San Gabriel River tributaries, as well as Little
Rock Creek — as “wild and scenic rivers,” a protection that
prohibits dams or new mining.
Climate change and water scarcity are front and center in the
western U.S. The region’s climate is warming, a severe
multi-year drought is underway and groundwater supplies are
being overpumped in many locations. … About 4,000
miles of canals transport water to some 35 million
Californians and 5.7 million acres of farmland across the
state. Covering these canals with solar panels would reduce
evaporation of precious water – one of California’s most
critical resources – and help meet the state’s renewable energy
goals, while also saving money.
California is grappling with drought again, facing many of the
same conditions and challenges that were features of the
2012–16 drought—including stressed ecosystems, depleted
reservoirs, hard-hit farms and rural communities, threats to
urban water supplies, and the potential for extensive
wildfires. Knowing what’s different and what’s similar to our
last major drought can help us better prepare the most
vulnerable sectors for ongoing dry times. To put this drought
in context, this is only its second year. Historically,
droughts have lasted up to six years. Our most recent one
lasted five.
On the way out the door, the Trump administration committed
many environmental and financial scandals. One can cost
low-income water users while lining the pockets of one of
California’s largest and most powerful water districts. The
focus of one scandal was the failure of the Trump
administration to collect required fish and wildlife mitigation
costs set out in the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
Passed by Congress in 1992, it established new financing
rules. -Written by Caty Wagner, the Southern California
Water Organizer for Sierra Club California, and Brandon
Dawson, the acting director of Sierra Club California.
As we rapidly enter another drought, long-standing questions on
ecological impacts of increased temperatures, reduced water
levels and flows re-emerge. This reality recently reminded me
of some of my own previous work looking at growth rate
variations of largemouth bass in response to droughts in the
southeastern USA (Rypel et al. 2009). Results from this work
may be useful/interesting for biologists and managers in
California considering similar questions.
Roseville is the recipient of $33 million in low-interest
financing from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)
Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA)
program. This funding will accelerate water supply planning and
implementation under Roseville’s Water Future Initiative. …
WIFIA program funding and utility operation funds will advance
two critical efforts under Water Future. We will increase the
number of groundwater wells and examine how we can expand water
recycling over time.
Water talk will be a big part of Tuesday’s Tehama County Board
of Supervisors meeting as plans for a new groundwater
monitoring site in Corning are coming to fruition. Tehama
County Public Works plans to sign a Permit to Use Land
Agreement for a groundwater station in the Corning Public Works
yard on Gallagher Avenue, should the board approve the request.
Creating and maintaining the station will be a combined effort
of Tehama County Public Works, the Flood Control and Water
Conservation District and the California Department of Water
Resources. According to the related agenda report, the station
is expected to be in use for a minimum of 20 years.
President Joe Biden nominated Jenny Lester Moffitt to serve as
undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs under
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Moffit currently serves
as undersecretary at the California Department of Food and
Agriculture, where she previously served as deputy secretary
from 2015-18. Prior, Moffitt spent 10 years as managing
director at Dixon Ridge Farms, her family’s organic walnut farm
and processing operation.
Gold Rush communities celebrate their mining past but are
largely unaware of the lasting impacts of that era. For more
than 100 years public and private investors have purchased and
developed land for public uses seemingly unaware of the
presence and implications of the physical and chemical hazards
found on abandoned mine lands (AMLs). As a result, residents of
the Sierra Nevada’s Gold Country – the state’s headwaters – are
living on top of and surrounded by abandoned mines. The toxic
metals discharged by legacy mines continue to flow down river
and deposit into the San Francisco Bay Delta …
More than a dozen Central Valley lawmakers and elected
officials met on Friday to declare a regional drought emergency
and urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to do the same statewide. Three
state senators and three Assembly members joined the chairs of
the boards of supervisors from Fresno, Madera, Tulare and Kings
counties in a bipartisan news conference at Harlan Ranch in
Clovis to call for action that the group said is necessary to
divert a crisis.
The Senate approved a $35 billion water infrastructure bill
after defeating controversial amendments — marking the
advancement of the first piece of a larger infrastructure
package.
California officials will again truck millions of young salmon
raised at fish hatcheries in the Central Valley agricultural
region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions
show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will
be historically low and warm due to increasing drought.
Officials said the massive trucking operation is aimed at
ensuring “the highest level of survival for the young salmon on
their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean.”
This weekend’s rain in Northern California, while welcome, did
little to address the dry conditions across our state. As the
state’s recent dismal snow survey showed, we are in for tough
times ahead. Less snow means lower reservoirs, less water in
our rivers and streams, and more groundwater pumping. And that
spells trouble, particularly for disadvantaged communities and
sensitive ecosystems, which have historically borne the brunt
of California drought in consequences like dry wells and salmon
die-offs.
Millions of people across our nation, and countless millions
throughout the world depend on California’s farms and ranches
for the food they eat every single day. California leads the
nation as the country’s largest agricultural producer and
exporter and serves as a vital link in the world’s food supply
chain. However, a resilient and reliable water supply is
essential to ensure that California farmers and ranchers can
continue to provide a safe and reliable food supply to our
nation and the world. The state’s water infrastructure is
getting older and stressed beyond its capabilities …
With the dry year facing California, there is increased
awareness about water quality issues and particularly harmful
algal blooms. The Natural Resources Agency in its Report To The
Legislature on The 2012–2016 Drought provided that “the
drought’s most visible water quality impact was harmful algal
blooms (HABs), which were reported more frequently during the
2012–2016 drought than during prior droughts.”
The West Coast’s most important estuary is dying, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom has hastened its demise. As he took office two
years ago, Newsom promised to generate voluntary agreements
among farmers, environmentalists and government officials on
the rules for allocating water that flows through the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … [C]onditions in the delta
have grown so dire that in March the National Marine Fisheries
Service estimated that high water temperatures could kill 90%
of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River
this year.
-Written by Jacques Leslie.
Federal dollars are on the table to help farmers and ranchers
during the drought. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared
a drought disaster in 50 California counties last month.
Advertisement Grants are now available to help with costs
associated with the dry conditions. After a winter with little
rain and snow, California is dry. … Nicole Montna Van Vleck
walked between two rice fields on Wednesday. One was newly
planted and covered in water. The other was bone-dry.
California is once again in a drought, just four years after
the last dry spell decimated ecosystems, fueled megafires and
left many rural communities without well water. Droughts are a
natural part of the landscape in the American west, and the
region has in many ways been shaped by its history of drought.
But the climate scientist Peter Gleick argues that the droughts
California is facing now are different than the ones that have
historically cycled through the Golden State.
Millions of young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the
Central Valley will be trucked to San Francisco Bay and other
coastal sites for release, because the rivers they’d normally
travel to get to the ocean are drying up, state and federal
officials said Wednesday. The ambitious trucking program, a
response to the state’s escalating drought, is intended to
maximize survival of the hatchery fish that prop up
California’s fall-run of chinook — the mainstay of the state’s
commercial and recreational salmon industries. Officials in
charge of the five major inland hatcheries that rear the fish
say convoys of tanker trucks are the only way to ensure the
3-inch smolts make it to sea.
Today’s commentary breaks my heart. Why? Because
Restore the Delta is focused on water quality issues, flood
control issues, future planning, and training the next
generation of local water experts – for that is where hope
exists. We are focused on the future because in some ways
we have become very cynical about any positive meaningful
change to Delta management presently — from the lack of care at
the highest levels of government, to local pockets of Delta
communities that will not acknowledge the deterioration of the
estuary before their eyes.
-Written by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, who serves on
the Executive Committee at Large for Restore the
Delta.
No one will forget the intense challenges that 2020 brought us,
from record-breaking hurricanes and wildfires to a global
pandemic that devastated our economy and public health. As
Congress and the Biden administration look to help our country
rebuild and recover from these compounding crises, investing in
nature presents an opportunity to deliver multiple benefits for
communities, birds, and other wildlife. Audubon presents a new
suite of policy recommendations for making our communities and
wildlife more resilient to climate change, by putting our
wetlands, barrier islands, and other ecosystems to work.
In what may become an iconic image for drought-stricken
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on the parched bed of Lake
Mendocino on April 21 to announce an emergency declaration for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties. … [T]he reservoir was at a
historically low 43% of capacity, the harbinger of what could
be a devastating drought cycle not only for the Northern
California counties that fell within his drought declaration,
but for most of the state — indeed, the American
West. -Written by Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
The Bureau of Reclamation, NOAA Fisheries, and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service announced their plan today for pulse flow
releases from Whiskeytown Dam into Clear Creek in May. Pulse
flows are rapid increases and decreases in dam-released flows
occurring over a short time. The release of water aims to
advance recovery of threatened Central Valley spring-run
Chinook salmon by attracting adult salmon to move upstream to
take advantage of cooler summer water temperatures and improved
habitat. Flow releases for the pulse will begin on May 7 and
reach a peak of 900 cubic feet per second May 8 to 11.
California’s continuing failure to adopt a comprehensive water
strategy is exacerbating its looming drought crisis. For nearly
two decades, the state has put its focus on dam projects and
the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta tunnel fiasco. The
primary aim is creating new ways of diverting additional water
to Central Valley farmers at the expense of the fragile,
over-tapped Delta, which supplies about one-third of the Bay
Area’s fresh water supply. There’s a better approach. President
Biden’s infrastructure plan calls for $50 billion to ease the
West’s drought crisis by heavily investing in water efficiency
and recycling programs.
The Marin Municipal Water District on April 20 enacted a series
of water conservation rules, including banning home car washes,
no watering of outdoor lawns between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., and no
refilling decorative pools or fountains. A day later,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for
the Russian River watershed in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
Marin County borders Sonoma. Newsom chose to make the
declaration in those two counties only, rather than statewide,
as some officials and farmers in the agricultural-rich Central
Valley had hoped. But Newsom said a broader drought declaration
could come as conditions change.
Living in California means living with droughts – there’s no
getting around it. The devastating 2014-15 drought
resulted in water shortages for our communities, farms and the
environment, prompting California’s water leaders and
decision-makers to implement early planning, improved
collaboration, added conservation measures and new local supply
projects to help balance the water needs of people and fish in
preparing for the drought that is currently before us.
… Let’s improve storage and conveyance so we can better
manage our fluctuating and unpredictable climate. -Written by Chandra Chilmakuri, assistant general
manager of the State Water Contractors.
California is in the second year of a drought. Governor Newsom
this week made his first drought declaration. Just how dry is
this drought, so far? What are some likely
implications? And what might State and local governments
do about it?
A storm system is bringing rain to the Valley and snow to the
High Sierra. Several inches of snow accumulation are expected
by the time the storm is through. There was light snowfall in
Shaver Lake Sunday evening, but not much was sticking.
… The National Weather Service in Hanford said even
though this storm is bringing in snow in the High Sierra, it
will not make a dent in the precipitation deficit we’ve been
seeing.
As yet another season of drought returns to California, the
mood has grown increasingly grim across the vast and fertile
San Joaquin Valley. Renowned for its bounty of dairies, row
crops, grapes, almonds, pistachios and fruit trees, this
agricultural heartland is still reeling from the effects of the
last punishing drought, which left the region geologically
depressed and mentally traumatized. Now, as the valley braces
for another dry spell of undetermined duration, some are openly
questioning the future of farming here, even as legislative
representatives call on Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a drought
emergency.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has approved
approximately $33.5 million in grants to help enhance flows in
streams throughout California. A total of 30 stream flow
enhancement projects were approved for funding at its April 22
meeting. The approved projects will provide or lead to a direct
and measurable enhancement of the amount, timing and/or quality
of water in streams for anadromous fish or special status,
threatened, endangered or at-risk species, or to provide
resilience to climate change.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today awarded $26
million in grant funding for capital project investments to
improve water supply security, water quality and the
reliability of domestic wells – advancing access to safe,
affordable drinking water. This funding provides
important assistance for successful local implementation of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which
establishes a framework for managing the state’s groundwater
resources and will help California be better prepared for
longer, more severe droughts.
California Governor Gavin Newsom declared drought in two
counties Wednesday and predicted others would soon join. He
bemoaned the prospect of another period of drought only a few
years removed from a five-year drought that strained the
state’s water resources. A study published this week in
Science Advances revealed one solution to the drought-like
conditions and their increased frequency due to a changing
climate is a counterintuitive one — floodwaters.
An unseasonably dry March and lack of sufficient water supplies
have foiled a proposed water release by the Oakdale and South
San Joaquin Irrigation Districts that would have boosted
Stanislaus River flows beginning this past week for the benefit
of out-migrating salmon, and also supplied water to farms and
communities in the San Joaquin Valley most vulnerable to
extreme drought conditions. The plan would have sent up to
100,000 acre-feet of water down the river between April 15 and
May 15 in what are known as “pulse flows” to help young salmon
navigate their way toward the Delta and, eventually, out to
sea.
The Placer County Water Agency (PCWA) has acquired five new
miles of canal and associated facilities from South Sutter
Water District (SSWD) after an agreement between the two
agencies was approved by the PCWA Board of
Directors. Located in the Auburn Ravine, the newly
acquired Moore and Pleasant Grove canals have long served
PCWA’s agricultural customers west of the City of Lincoln, who
primarily grow rice and provide habitat for waterfowl and other
species.
As extreme drought conditions continue to expand across the San
Francisco Bay Area, a leading climate researcher issued a new
warning Thursday of another sign that a water supply crisis is
developing across the region. Dan McEvoy, a researcher
with the Western Region Climate Center, told KPIX 5 he was
startled to discover that several locations in Sierra had seen
the biggest decline in snowpack’s water content on record for
the time span covering the first three weeks of April…. [T]he
snowpack in the central Sierra has declined significantly to
just 37% of average. … Much of Northern California
experienced temperatures 4-degrees above average for the
period.
A burst of rain is expected to drench the Bay Area this
weekend, bringing much-needed moisture to a parched region. The
rains will likely be intense — but short-lived, tapering off to
another stretch of warm, dry conditions by the middle of next
week, meteorologists said. Showers were expected to start in
the North Bay as early as Saturday evening, with steady
rainfall pounding much of the Bay Area Sunday. Lingering
showers were expected in the central coast through Sunday
night, according to the National Weather Service.
Work resumed on the lower Yuba River earlier this month on a
$12 million project designed to enhance the river’s ecosystem
by increasing available juvenile salmon habitat to improve the
natural production of Chinook salmon and Central Valley
steelhead — both of which are listed as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act.
Install photovoltaic panels atop canals, and avoid the land-use
battles over habitat protection and rural community character
that are a growing roadblock for the solar industry. Save water
in a drought-prone state that can use every last drop. …But
when I’d heard these ideas floated in the past, I’d also heard
skepticism from the people who run California’s water
systems…. Then a surprising thing happened…. -Written by Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times staff
writer.
The nearly 12,000-acre Oroville Wildlife Area (OWA) in Butte
County is a popular stopping place on the Pacific Flyway for
migrating and native birds. After the Oroville Dam was
completed in 1968, the Department of Water Resources (DWR)
contracted with the then California Department of Fish and Game
to operate the Oroville Wildlife Area for the preservation of
fish and wildlife habitat. The OWA also includes DWR’s
Thermalito Afterbay reservoir, a prime habitat for migrating
waterfowl as well as several different Endangered Species.
A new report is highlighting the gaps in California’s water
infrastructure — and how much money the state will need to fix
it. The report, published by the state’s Water Resources
Control Board, found that 620 public water systems and 80,000
domestic wells are at risk of failing to provide affordable and
uncontaminated water, a problem that California will need
$4.7 billion of extra funding to solve. The report includes the
first-ever analysis of the state’s domestic wells — a common
water source for rural communities. Threats to these systems
are often poorly understood due to lack of good data.
The dry year and reduced flows in the Sacramento River System
are challenging the ability for water resources managers to
serve water for cities and rural communities, farms, wildlife
refuges, fish and recreation. Part of the challenge has been
the inordinate focus on temperature management in the upper
part of the river below Shasta Lake. As we have all seen
countless times before, a focus on one species or in this case
one aspect (temperature) of water management is not a path
forward for the long-term, successful recovery of salmon…
Floodwaters are not what most people consider a blessing. But
they could help remedy California’s increasingly parched
groundwater systems, according to a new Stanford-led study.
The research, published in Science Advances, develops
a framework to calculate future floodwater volumes under a
changing climate and identifies areas where investments in
California’s aging water infrastructure could amplify
groundwater recharge.
The Water Association of Kern County’s annual Water Summit is
virtual this year but will still pack a punch of who’s who in
the water world. The day kicks off with an update on water
brought to the San Joaquin Valley via the federal Central
Valley Project. The speaker will be Deputy Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton. Next will be an update
on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and where the
process is at this point. The speaker will be Steven
Springhorn, Acting Deputy Director Groundwater Management
Department of Water Resources.
The state and federal agencies tasked with protecting our fish,
wildlife, and natural resources are once again scrambling to
avoid wiping out this year’s cohort of chinook salmon that
spawn below Shasta Dam. If this sounds familiar, it is because
this scenario is a repeat of attempts to “manage” Shasta
operations in 2014 and 2015, which resulted in over 75% of the
eggs and fry of endangered winter run chinook salmon being
destroyed in both of those years, solely from the lack of
sufficient cold water being released from Shasta Dam …
Large areas of California farmland, particularly in the San
Joaquin Valley, face future restrictions on groundwater pumping
to meet the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act. We talked to Caity Peterson—an adjunct fellow
at the PPIC Water Policy Center and a consulting
agroecologist—about a joint research project* on the potential
for dryland farming to reduce the amount of land needed to be
retired from production to balance water budgets.
As drought conditions worsen across Northern California, the
Marin Municipal Water District is about to become the Bay
Area’s first major water agency to make the leap to mandatory
water restrictions. The utility is expected to adopt a plan
Tuesday that would require nearly 200,000 residents of southern
and central Marin County to limit outdoor watering to one day a
week as well as to stop washing their cars, refilling their
swimming pools and power-washing their homes, among other
things. Offenders could face fines of up to $250…
The Yolo County Farm Bureau as well as two former Farm Bureau
presidents have filed a lawsuit against the City of Woodland
and the Woodland City Council over the Woodland Flood Risk
Management Project. The suit — which was filed on March 25
— is a Verified Petition for a Writ of Mandate and
Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, or a way to
get the judicial branch to reaffirm previous contracts.
Last Tuesday, American Rivers released its annual America’s
Most Endangered Rivers list for 2021. Because of a Trump-era
proposal to raise Shasta Dam, the group named northern
California’s McCloud River as the nation’s 7th most threatened
river. Over the past century, California has engineered the
structure of water capture and distribution in the state.
… During the Trump administration, then Secretary of the
Interior David Bernhardt advanced plans to increase the height
of Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet and to expand Shasta Lake by more
than 200 billion gallons.
The Klamath River Basin is in a dire situation this
year. The plan curtails irrigation diversions to less than
10% of demand while failing to meet the biological needs of
salmon and other fisheries downstream. … Reclamation also
announced $15 million in immediate aid to the Klamath Project
through the Klamath Project Drought Relief Agency, an
additional $3 million in technical assistance to Tribes for
ecosystem activities in the basin, as well as funding for
groundwater monitoring in the basin.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will begin releasing warmer
water from the upper layers of the Shasta Reservoir directly
into the Sacramento River to maintain flows, while saving
colder water for the winter-run Chinook salmon migration.
Suisun Marsh is central to the health of the San Francisco
Estuary. Not only is it a huge (470 km2) tidal marsh in
the center the northern estuary (Figure 1), but it is an
extremely important nursery area for species such as splittail,
striped bass, longfin smelt, and, formerly, delta smelt. Since
January 1980, a team from The University of California, Davis,
in partnership with the California Department of Water
Resources (DWR), has systematically monitored the marsh’s fish
populations. The team had been sampling the fish and
invertebrates every month with trawls and beach seines, with a
nearly unbroken record. Then Covid-19 restrictions settled
in…
Reclamation announced today that spring-time operations at
Shasta Dam will adjust to benefit endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon in the Sacramento River during this critically dry water
year. … No additional water from Shasta Reservoir will be
released during this temporary adjustment—only the withdrawal
elevation and timing of water releases will change.
After a year hiatus because of COVID-19, the H2O Hackathon
returned to San Joaquin County on Saturday
with middle school, high school and college students
tackling a virtual challenge to help solve California’s water
problems. … The challenge for this year’s event was to
protect the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary from harmful algal
blooms, bacteria that live in freshwater, estuarine and marine
environments that grow out of control and
produce toxic or harmful effects on people,
fish, shellfish, marine mammals and birds.
California has entered another drought. But depending on who
you ask, the last one may have never really ended. Some
researchers believe the region is actually more than two
decades into an emerging “megadrought” — a hydrological event
that is on par with the worst dry spells of the past
millennium. Except this time, they say, human-caused climate
change is driving its severity — and will make it that much
harder to climb back out of.
General Waste Discharge Requirements for Discharges
from Irrigated Lands, simply known as Ag Order 4.0, will
officially begin to be implemented. Just prior to the deadline,
the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board approved
the measure Thursday evening. There has been unease among
farmers throughout the lengthy development process as to how
the rule will affect production.
A proposed $3.3 billion bond that proponents argue will
“accelerate California’s economic recovery and build a
healthier, more equitable and resilient food and farm system,”
cleared the Assembly Agriculture Committee …. $75
million is earmarked for groundwater protection, $50 million of
which would go to the Department of Conservation for grants to
groundwater sustainability agencies, counties and others “for
development or implementation of local programs supporting or
facilitating reduced use of groundwater and multi-benefit land
repurposing at the basin scale.”…The bill would go before
voters in the fall of 2022 if it clears the Legislature.
For the past four years, a Canadian mining company has been in
Nevada County, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento,
collecting samples of what it suspects is one of the world’s
highest-grade underground gold deposits, potentially worth
billions. … The legacy of gold, while widely celebrated, is
not something that many in this area, now home to more retirees
and Bay Area transplants than men in hard hats and overalls,
want to revisit. … [T]he scars it left on the landscape
remain visible, and unwanted. Creeks still get mucked up
with iron and sulfuric acid from old mines. Soils contain
arsenic left over from drilling. …
The Yuba Water Agency manages water storage and deliveries to
downstream customers while having a hand in preserving fish
habitats and recreational areas. Currently, the agency has
already begun doubling its reservoir releases at a time when
visitors to the river are also expected to go up. Due to
the time of year, those releases from upstream reservoirs are
dictated by irrigation needs of downstream growers.
The California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) today
launched California Nature to engage
Californians in advancing the State’s commitment to conserving
30 percent of lands and coastal waters by 2030 (30×30) and
enlisting nature-based solutions to combat climate change. The
website and a new online questionnaire are aimed at gathering
input from a broad cross-section of Californians.
Shasta Dam, which rises over 600 feet, flooded much of our
tribe’s homeland and inundated dozens of our sacred sites. It
stopped our salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. And by
holding back water when it is needed by the river, Shasta Dam
has driven our salmon to the brink of extinction. That threat
continues in the proposal to raise Shasta Dam. That project
would flood more of our sacred sites and further harm salmon.
The Trump administration made that project their top priority
water infrastructure project in the nation.
-Written by Caleen Sisk, the spiritual leader of the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
Residents across San Jose can expect to see their water bills
increase in the coming months no matter what company they get
their water from — a trend that could continue year after year
for the next decade. Santa Clara Valley Water District,
the region’s wholesale water provider, plans to raise its rates
by up to 9.6% each year for the next eight years, followed by
an 8.7% jump the following two years. The monthly rate
increases would equate to an approximate $4.50 to $5.10
increase per month for customers, according to the water
district.
Water is one of the world’s most vital resources. So is there
reason to freak out now that profit-hungry hedge funds and
other investors can trade it like a barrel of oil or shares of
Apple? That’s exactly what CME Group recently did in California
when it launched the world’s first futures market for water in
December 2020. Put simply, a futures market lets people place
bets on the future price of water.
-Written by Ellen Bruno, of University of
California, Berkeley and Heidi Schweizer, of North
Carolina State University.
Harmful algal blooms (or HABs) occur when colonies of algae,
under the right conditions, grow out of control and produce
toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine
mammals, and birds. Every U.S. coastal and Great Lakes state
experiences harmful algal blooms. In California, reports
of harmful algal blooms have increased from 91 in 2016 to 241
in 2019. In 2020, Stockton experienced a severe harmful
algal bloom; it marked the first year that algal blooms spread
into the San Joaquin and Calaveras Rivers so early in the
summer and fall months. Drought and heat are factors that
increase harmful algal blooms …
On Wednesday, March 3rd, the Northern California Water
Association (NCWA) Board of Directors officially adopted our
2021 Priorities. The water leaders in this region look forward
to working with our many partners in 2021 to cultivate a shared
vision for a vibrant way of life in the Sacramento River Basin.
We will continue to re-imagine our water system in the
Sacramento River Basin as we also work to harmonize our water
priorities with state, federal, and other regions’ priorities
to advance our collective goal of ensuring greater water and
climate resilience throughout California for our communities,
the economy, and the environment.
There’s just one week left to register for our Water 101
Workshop, which offers a primer on the things you need to know
to understand California water. One of our most popular events,
this once-a-year workshop will be held as an engaging online
event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday,
April 23.
How many salmon populate the Lower Putah Creek? What are the
demographics of these fish? In what ways can their habitat be
preserved so the lower creek remains healthy? Researchers at
the University of California, Davis are researching these
questions, and the Solano County Water Agency (SCWA) has given
them another year of funding to continue their research as part
of the Lower Putah Creek Salmon Study through the rest of the
2021-22 fiscal year.
While the federal government sees the prospect of raising the
height of Shasta Dam as a way to increase water storage for a
thirsty California, the Winnemem Wintu of Shasta County see it
as a threat to their culture. It was a theme picked up
this week by American Rivers, a conservation group that named
the McCloud River one of America’s 10 most endangered rivers
because of the proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam.
… Raising the height of the dam would raise the level of
the lake about 20 feet when full. It would also further
inundate about a third of a mile of the McCloud River …
It’s that time of year, when we find out it’s that kind of
year. We appear at the doorstep of a “critically dry
year,” and most reservoir levels are significantly below
average. Those conditions bring painfully to mind the awful
drought years of 2014 and 2015, and threaten water supplies for
California farms and cities, and for the protected fish species
that must also get by in these lean years. -Written by Danny Merkley, director of water resources, and
Chris Scheuring, senior counsel for the California Farm
Bureau.
With California in the throes of a second year of drought
conditions, the mega-water agency of Southern California served
notice Tuesday that it’s prepared to spend up to $44 million to
buy water from Northern California to shore up its supplies.
The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, which serves 19 million urban residents, authorized
its staff to begin negotiating deals with water agencies north
of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where supplies are
generally more plentiful.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack designated 50 California
counties as natural disaster areas last month because of the
drought. And, over the weekend, Fresno Congressman Jim Costa
said on KSEE-24’s Sunday Morning Matters program that Gov.
Newsom should declare a statewide emergency because of the
dangerously dry conditions. …Yet, Newsom… last week
rejected a request from a bipartisan coalition of state
lawmakers from the Valley to declare a statewide drought
emergency.
Today at breakfast, you have most likely eaten something
brought to you by two of America’s hardest workers –
pollinators and California farmers. That apple juice,
fresh cream cheese, sesame seed bagel or almond croissant came
to you by way of a partnership nearly invisible to most folks.
But that partnership stepped into the spotlight last week with
the announcement of a profoundly important coalition formed to
promote sustainability for native and managed pollinators as
well as California farms and ranches.
-Written by Laurie Davies Adams, President and CEO of
the Pollinator Partnership, and Josette Lewis, Ph.D., Chief
Scientific Officer with the Almond Board of California.
The little-known Joint Powers Authority charged with getting
the embattled Delta tunnel across its finish line recently
changed executive directors, marking an exit for Kathryn
Mallon, who had stirred controversy for her exorbitant pay and
alleged pressuring of a citizens advisory committee to work
through the most dangerous part of the
pandemic. Meanwhile, as California Governor Gavin Newsom
begins campaigning against the effort to remove him from
office, he’s soliciting huge donations from the same
south-state barons of agriculture who have promoted the
environmentally fraught tunnel concept for years.
Here’s a look at the nation’s top 10 cities with the most
properties at risk of flooding, according to 2020 data from the
First Street Foundation’s First National Flood Risk
Assessment. Flooding is a huge problem in America and is
only getting worse as global warming increases the frequency
and strength of tropical storms and hurricanes, and the warmer
atmosphere holds more water, leading to more rainfall. Warmer
temperatures also trigger winter snow to melt faster and
earlier. Flooding in the United States is likely to cause
some $20 billion in damages this year and cost as much as $32
billion by 2051, according to research from First
Street. Sundae took a look at the nation’s top 10
cities with the most properties at risk of flooding… #10. San
Jose … #5. Fresno … #3. Sacramento…
ACWA staff testified with a support-if-amended position on AB
1500 (E.Garcia) during an Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife
Committee hearing on April 8. The bill is one of two climate
resilience bond proposals that are currently advancing through
the state Legislature and could be headed for the June 2022
ballot. AB 1500 would create a $6.7 billion bond measure. ACWA,
with input from the State Legislative Committee’s Bond Working
Group, is requesting amendments to the bills to add funding for
water-related climate resilience projects that help provide a
reliable water supply during drought and flood. The amendments
propose the bill include funding for conveyance, dam safety,
groundwater protection and sustainable groundwater management,
flood management, integrated regional water management and safe
drinking water for disadvantaged communities, as well as water
quality and water reuse and recycling.
In June 2017, the California Regional Water Quality Control
Board and the Central Valley Region adopted a Basin Plan
Amendment for the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River Basins
for the control of pyrethroid pesticide discharges. The
amendment establishes controls for pyrethroid discharges,
including prohibition of discharges of pyrethroid pesticides
above certain concentrations, total maximum daily loads (TMDLs)
for pyrethroid pesticides, recommendations for agency
regulation of pyrethroids and potential monitoring
requirements. Synthetic pyrethroids are the most common forms
of commercially available urban pesticides for ants, termites
and flying insects…
Our Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project has just
been updated to reflect the latest developments affecting
California’s largest surface water delivery system. The 24-page
guide explores the history of the Central Valley Project, from
its roots as a state water project that stalled amid the Great
Depression to its development as a federal project that
stretches from Shasta Dam in far Northern California to
Bakersfield in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Despite market unknowns created by the pandemic and lower
commodity prices, California agricultural land values remained
largely stable, an indication buyers have confidence in the
long-term land market in the state: This was a key takeaway
from a virtual business conference held by the California
Chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural
Appraisers. The conference also discussed impacts of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act on California land
values. Even though record supplies of the state’s
highest-value crops led to lower prices for farmers last year,
appraisers said the softer prices also helped move those
products.
California’s hottest commodity could become even more scarce as
state and federal officials announce water cutbacks on the
brink of another drought. Now, state legislators are banding
together to ask Governor Newsom to declare a state of emergency
amid what they call a water crisis. … [State Senator Andreas]
Borgeas authored a letter alongside the Assembly agriculture
committee chair and several other state lawmakers to send to
the governor. This comes after the California Department of
Water Resources announced a 5% allocation to farmers and
growers in late March.
In the first episode in the Delta Conveyance Team Spotlight
video series, [DWR] spoke with the project’s Executive
Director Tony Meyers about his long and eventful career in
engineering, including work on some of DWR’s most ambitious and
significant infrastructure projects. In this excerpt, he
reflects on the appeal of large-scale engineering projects and
speaks about the importance of the Delta Conveyance Project in
protecting the security of California’s water supply.
As we begin spring in the Sacramento Valley, the region
illuminates – we see the brown landscape turn verdant, and the
Valley bustles with activity as people share the hope of a new
year and collectively cultivate a shared vision in the region
for a vibrant way of life. With the dry year in Northern
California, the water resource managers are working overtime to
carefully manage our precious water systems including rivers,
streams, reservoirs and diversions to serve multiple benefits.
To effectively do this, water resources must be managed in an
efficient manner, with the same block of water often used to
achieve several beneficial uses as it moves through the
region’s waterways.
The slide gates at the bottom of the Temperature Control Device
(TCD) on the inside face of Shasta Dam (Figure 1) allow deeper,
colder water in the reservoir to be drawn into the power plant
intake penstocks and released to the river below. Use of the
slide gates allows more colder water to be released for salmon
in the river below in summer and fall in years when reservoir
levels are low and the cold-water-pool is limited. In 2014 and
2015, NMFS and the Bureau of Reclamation learned that when the
reservoir level is low and the slide gates are opened to access
cold water, some warmer surface water is also drawn downward
into the slide gate openings.
The dams that are built in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River
Watershed protect thousands of people and billions of dollar’s
worth of agriculture but they are far too old and far too many
of them need repair. Some unnecessary dams are drying rivers
and putting business in front of the environment.
For seven days in mid-March 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation
substantially increased Folsom Lake storage releases. Roughly,
the releases tripled in volume (Figure 1). The release of over
20,000 acre-feet of water is significant for a year in which
Folsom storage is not much better than it was in the worst year
on record – 1977 (Figure 2).1 With the release in mid-March,
the lake level dropped 3 feet. Yes, there was rain in the
forecast and a decent snowpack, but certainly no flood
concerns. So why? The reason was to meet state water quality
requirements for Delta outflow. Delta outflow increased from
7,000 cfs to 12,000 cfs for a few days (Figure 3).
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has marked
2021 as the third-driest water year, a period marked from
October to March, on record for the Golden State, potentially
setting up another deadly wildfire season after last year’s
record setting blazes. The department’s annual snow survey
released this month recorded precipitation levels at 50 percent
the annual average for the water year. The dry conditions
can also be seen in the state’s water supply, with the
department reporting that California’s major reservoirs are at
just 50 percent of overall capacity.
Tractors are working ground in the Sacramento Valley, as the
2021 rice season is underway. Whether it’s farmers, those in
cities or for the environment, this year will pose challenges
due to less than ideal rain and snowfall during the fall and
winter. Jon Munger At Montna Farms near Yuba City, Vice
President of Operations Jon Munger said they expect to plant
about one-third less rice this year, based on water cutbacks.
As water is always a precious resource in this state, rice
growers work hard to be as efficient as they can. Fields are
precisely leveled and will be flooded with just five-inches of
water during the growing season. Rice is grown in heavy clay
soils, which act like a bathtub to hold water in place.
High-tech planting and harvest equipment also help California
rice farms and mills operate at peak efficiency.
One of the California Water Commission’s statutory
responsibilities is to conduct an annual review of the
construction and operation of the State Water Project and make
a report on its findings to the Department of Water Resources
and the Legislature, with any recommendations it may
have. Having just finished the 2020 State Water Project
review, the Commission has launched its 2021 State Water
Project review with a theme focused on creating a resilient
State Water Project by addressing climate change and aging
infrastructure to provide multiple benefits for
California.
In anticipation of this week’s Bay-Delta Science Conference, I
thought it would be useful to consider some of what it takes to
understand a complex ecosystem like an estuary and to encourage
everyone working in the San Francisco Estuary – scientists,
policymakers, and local stakeholders – to continue shifting our
ecosystem management focus from the simple to the complex. I’ll
explain why in a moment. Here are four suggestions for
improving ecosystem management in the San Francisco Bay-Delta:
California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a
few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history
left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered
major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle
their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating
megafires. … Just four years since the state’s last
drought emergency, experts and advocates say the state isn’t
ready to cope with what could be months and possibly years of
drought to come.
Nearly five years ago we brought you the story of a little town
an hour south of the Oregon border that was doing battle with a
big timber company over who owned the rights to a pristine
spring that gurgles in the shadows of Mount Shasta, the
majestic snow-capped dormant volcano. After $1.5 million in
legal fees and countless hours of argument and activism, the
City Council of that town, Weed, Calif., recently approved a
deal securing use of the water in perpetuity. It was a
David-over-Goliath victory for Weed, population 2,700.
Perhaps more than any other part of the country, California
stands to benefit from the $2.2 trillion proposal introduced
last week by President Biden…. the sweeping plan would inject
huge sums of money into wider roads, faster internet,
high-speed trains, charging stations for electric cars, airport
terminals, upgraded water pipes and much more. … The
infusion is being seen not only as the path to a long-overdue
upgrade of the freeways, dams and aqueducts that have long been
California’s hallmark but also as a way to scale up and export
the state’s ambitious climate policies.
It was in 2016 that the state of California declared a
four-year drought had finally come to an end. Now, in 2021, it
could be entering another very dry season. It is in the winter
season that folks on the West Coast welcome dreary days packed
with cloud and rain. California usually sees the most rain and
snow in the month of February. This year, however, was
different: It was quite dry all of the winter season, and we
can blame La Niña for this pattern. … Thirty per cent of
California’s water supply comes from the snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada mountain ranges and only 57 per cent of normal
precipitation has fallen this season. This, coupled with lower
than average snowpack for 2020 as well, could spell trouble
down the road when it comes to water supply.
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) filed comments with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) regarding Sunset
Exploration’s proposal to drill for natural gas in the Suisun
Marsh. Located in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, this 88,000-acre
wetland is home to a number of endangered and threatened
species, including California Ridgway’s rail, black rail, and
Chinook salmon – and is just a few short miles from
environmental justice communities in Solano County…. DOJ
urges the Army Corps to fully consider the proposal’s
significant environmental impacts, including harm to these
communities and protected species, as well as increased
greenhouse gas emissions, before deciding whether to grant the
requested permit.
As California emerged from a historically tough five-year
drought in 2017, then-governor Jerry Brown signed two new laws
that required local water agencies to limit water use to 55
gallons per person per day, with water-use allotments dropping
to 50 gallons by 2030. Despite some misreporting to the
contrary, these limits on individuals were not
enforceable. Instead, the state imposed fines on districts
that failed to meet the new targets. It was pretty clear what
direction the state was taking: Since then, California has gone
all in for extreme conservation measures that could eventually
lead to rationing as water-use allotments drop. Unless
something changes, it may be only a matter of time before such
policies lead to personal restrictions on lawn-watering,
car-washing, and even showering.
-Written by Steven Greenhut, the western-region
director for the R Street Institute and a columnist for the
Southern California News Group.
Drought is returning to California as a second, consecutive
parched winter draws to a close in the usually wet north,
leaving the state’s major reservoirs half empty. But this
latest period of prolonged dryness will probably play out very
differently across this vast state. In Northern
California, areas dependent on local supplies, such as Sonoma
County, could be the hardest-hit. Central Valley growers have
been told of steep cuts to upcoming water deliveries.
Environmentalists too are warning of grave harm to native
fish. Yet, hundreds of miles to the south, the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California reports
record amounts of reserves — enough to carry the state’s most
populous region through this year and even next.
Rain is scarce in much of California, and most of California’s
people live in water-starved regions. And yet the state is, by
some measures, the fifth largest economy in the world. How?
Because during the last century, California has built a complex
network of dams, pumps and canals to transport water from where
it falls naturally to where people live. But climate change
threatens to upend the delicate system that keeps farm fields
green and household taps flowing. In this episode of the UCI
Podcast, Nicola Ulibarri, an assistant professor of urban
planning and public policy who is an expert on water resource
management, discusses how droughts and floods have shaped
California’s approach to water…
California’s wet season is coming to a close without a
much-sought “March miracle” storm, setting the stage for a
painful escalation of drought in the coming months. The April 1
snow survey, which measures the peak accumulation of snow in
the Sierra and southern Cascades just before it melts, will
show only about 60% of average snowpack. … The grim survey
results expected Thursday, which mark a second straight year of
significantly dry conditions, reinforce concerns about a
difficult fire season ahead and bolster the expanding calls for
water conservation.
San Francisco Bay’s life support systems are unravelling
quickly, and a wealth of science indicates that unsustainable
water diversions are driving this estuary’s demise. Yet,
with another drought looming, federal and state water managers
still plan to divert large amounts of water to their
contractors and drain upstream reservoirs this summer.
Meanwhile, the state’s most powerful water districts are
preparing yet another proposal to maintain excessive water
diversions for the long-term. By delaying reforms that the
law requires and that science indicates are necessary, Gov.
Gavin Newsom encourages wasteful water practices that
jeopardize the Bay and make the state’s water future
precarious. -Written by Jon Rosenfield, a senior scientist for SF
Baykeeper.
The Delta Stewardship Council (Council) announced the hiring of
Ryan Stanbra, the Council’s legislative and policy advisor, to
the key post of chief deputy executive officer. … Appointed
by Governor Brown in 2015, Ryan joined the Council in the role
of legislative and policy advisor. He has played a pivotal role
in advising on critical Council initiatives like implementation
of reduced reliance on the Delta, interagency coordination and
outreach for the Delta Levees Investment Strategy, increasing
funding for critical science investments, and more. He has
served in the acting chief deputy executive officer role since
January.
The Federal government is beginning a program for the
unemployed to retrain as much-needed Delta Smelt.
Following a two-day course, candidates will learn to: Seek out
turbid waters; Spawn in sand at secret locations; Surf the
tides; Make themselves present for counting in mid-water
trawls. Major California water projects and water users
are preparing to hire successful graduates for 1-2 year
non-renewable contracts.
Updated water supply allocations announced last week would
still drain upstream reservoirs in order to deliver 4.5 million
acre feet of water to the contractors of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP), devastating
fish and wildlife. This week, the fisheries biologists at the
National Marine Fisheries Service projected that these planned
operations are likely to result in lethal water temperatures
that will kill 89% of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon
below Shasta Dam this year. This mortality estimate is even
worse than what was observed in 2014 and 2015, when salmon
populations were devastated by warm water in their spawning
grounds.
As the rain season comes to a close across Northern California,
water districts are keeping a close eye on rain totals that are
below average, and water managers are explaining what another
“dry water year” means for our region. According to
California’s Department of Water Resources, or DWR, the state
is well into its second consecutive dry year. That causes
concern among water managers. However, it comes as no surprise.
… With the memory of drought years between 2012 and 2016 not
too distant, [DWR information officer Chris] Orrock explained
how lessons learned from that time period are still being
implemented.
As California’s seasons become warmer and drier, state
officials are pondering whether the water rights permitting
system needs revising to better reflect the reality of climate
change’s effect on the timing and volume of the state’s water
supply. A report by the State Water Resources Control Board
recommends that new water rights permits be tailored to
California’s increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable
enough to ensure water exists to meet an applicant’s
demand.
When the first European explorers arrived in California’s
Central Valley, they found a vast mosaic of seasonal and
permanent wetlands, as well as oak woodlands and riparian
forests. What remains of those wetlands are still the backbone
of the Pacific Flyway; along with flooded agricultural fields,
they support millions of migrating waterbirds each
year. According to a just-released study from Audubon,
tens of millions of land birds rely on the Central Valley as
well… But today, the situation is dire. More than 90% of
wetlands in the Central Valley – and throughout California –
have disappeared beneath tractors and bulldozers.
-Written by Samantha Arthur, the Working Lands Program
Director at Audubon California and a member of the
California Water Commission.
The lack of rain and snow during what is usually California’s
wet season has shrunk the state’s water supply. The Sierra
Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water as it melts over the
spring and summer, is currently at 65 percent of normal. Major
reservoirs are also low. Two state agencies warned last week
that the dry winter is very likely to lead to cuts in the
supply of water to homes, businesses and farmers. The federal
Bureau of Reclamation also told its agricultural water
customers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to
expect no water this year.
Many of the wetlands in the western United States have
disappeared since the 1700s. California has lost an astonishing
90 percent of its wetlands, which includes streamsides, wet
meadows and ponds. In Nevada, Idaho and Colorado, more than 50
percent of wetlands have vanished. Precious wet habitats now
make up just 2 percent of the arid West — and those remaining
wet places are struggling. Nearly half of U.S. streams are in
poor condition, unable to fully sustain wildlife and people,
says Jeremy Maestas, a sagebrush ecosystem specialist with the
NRCS who organized that workshop on Wilde’s ranch in 2016. As
communities in the American West face increasing water
shortages, more frequent and larger wildfires and unpredictable
floods, restoring ailing waterways is becoming a necessity.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has
announced a series of workshops intended to solicit public
input on the development of a community benefit program
associated with the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP). According
to DWR, community benefit programs go beyond traditional
concepts of mitigation. They attempt to provide greater
flexibility in addressing possible community impacts associated
with the major construction projects.
The second consecutive dry winter has prompted state water
managers to reduce allocations to the state water project that
supplies millions of Californians and 750,000 acres of
farmland. The state Department of Water Resources
announced this week that it will only be able to deliver
5% of the requested allocations following below-average
precipitation across the state. That figure is down from the
initial allocation of 10% announced in December. Many of
the state’s major reservoirs are recording just 50% of average
water storage for this time of year, and won’t see a major
increase due to a snowpack that is averaging just 65% of
normal, according to state statistics..
[F]or those who live in the legal Delta zone – some 630,000
people – the braided weave of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Rivers and their maze of associated wetlands and levees
provides a place of home, community, and recreation. And, as a
recent study by the Delta Stewardship Council shows, climate
change is tugging on the watery thread holding it all together.
… The council’s overview reveals a grim outlook for the
millions of people that are tethered to the region’s water:
drought similar to that experienced in 2012-2016 will be five
to seven times more likely by 2050. This will result in more
severe and frequent water shortages and, as the report bluntly
states, “lower reliability of Delta water exports.”
The rivalry between farms and wildlife for water and land was
long seen as a zero-sum game, especially in California where
water is such a precious commodity that the state’s water
futures are traded on the stock exchange. That competition has
been particularly sharp in the Central Valley: 95% of the
region’s historic wetlands have transformed into farmland, and
the region’s increasingly scarce water supply has been
prioritized for farming. As a result, some of the migratory
birds that rely on the Central Valley for habitat, food, and
water sources have seen steep declines in the past
century.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) took another step in
its ambitious efforts to reduce climate change impacts by
replacing an old electricity-generating turbine with a new,
energy efficient model at the Ronald B. Robie Thermalito
Pumping-Generating Powerplant in Butte County that will help
the Department achieve its goal of using 100 percent
zero-emission resources by 2045.
California’s drought conditions might normally prompt calls for
shorter showers and shutting off sprinklers. But Californians
are in no mood to hear it after a year of pandemic deprivation.
Especially from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is facing an almost
certain recall election after imposing multiple rounds of
business closures and constantly telling residents to stay
home. … California is particularly parched because 2020
was not only dry, but extremely hot. Experts think the state is
about where it was in 2014, when former Gov. Jerry Brown asked
Californians to reduce their water use by 20 percent.
Most Californians rely on groundwater in some way, through the
kitchen faucet, when buying food, or at a green local park to
relax and recreate. Those underground aquifers are even more
important during droughts. In California’s Southern San Joaquin
Valley, groundwater pumping more than tripled in the 2012-2016
drought to make up for lost rain. But that over-pumping comes
at a cost, causing land to sink as much as two feet a year,
damaging bridges, roads, and houses, and drying up drinking
water wells and rivers. The people and places most hurt are the
ones without the money to drill down to find diminishing
groundwater.
As California stares down the barrel of yet another dry year,
alarm bells are already ringing over conditions in the Delta.
Environmental groups, fishermen, tribes, and a host of others
are calling on the State Water Resources Control Board to
complete and implement a long-delayed update to the Water
Quality Control Plan for the Bay and Delta (Bay-Delta Plan), to
protect the imperiled ecosystem. At the same time, plans for a
structure with the potential to divert more water than ever to
southern cities and farms are creeping ahead.
With World Water Day this week and the dry year emerging
throughout the Sacramento Valley, we take this moment to
reflect on the value of water as we cultivate a shared vision
in the region for a vibrant way of life. We encourage you to
watch and read the following vignettes that all showcase the
value of water.
In 2020 wildfires ravaged more than 10 million acres of land
across California, Oregon and Washington, making it the largest
fire season in modern history. Across the country, hurricanes
over Atlantic waters yielded a record-breaking number of
storms. While two very different kinds of natural disasters,
scientists say they were spurred by a common catalyst – climate
change – and that both also threaten drinking water supplies.
As the nation already wrestles with water shortages,
contamination and aging infrastructure, experts warn more
frequent supercharged climate-induced events will exacerbate
the pressing issue of safe drinking water.
While a supermajority of Americans finally believe we are
warming the world, a 2020 Yale Climate Opinion survey shows
that most people still aren’t very worried about it.
… But Californians do. Reeling from a decade of
record-shattering drought, heat waves, and wildfires, people in
the Golden State overwhelmingly tell Public Policy Institute of
California pollsters that the effects of global warming have
already begun. Indeed … researchers can now link climate
change with some of today’s extreme events [including the
wild swings in precipitation that cause intense rainstorms at
one end and severe droughts at the other] beyond a
reasonable doubt.
California’s water use varies dramatically across regions and
sectors, and between wet and dry years. With the possibility of
another drought looming, knowing how water is allocated across
the state can make it easier to understand the difficult
tradeoffs the state’s water managers must make in times of
scarcity. The good news is that we’ve been using less over
time, both in cities and on farms. While there are still ways
to cut use further to manage droughts, it won’t always be easy
or cheap to do so. California’s freshwater ecosystems are at
particular risk of drought, when environmental water use often
sees large cuts. Watch the video to learn how Californians use
water.
Nitrogen pollution is one of agriculture’s biggest and most
intractable problems. Crops can’t grow without the critical
nutrient, and because sources of nitrogen are easy to come
by—synthetic fertilizer is cheap and manure from large animal
agriculture operations is plentiful—farmers often apply too
much, to try to ensure the highest yields. Because plants can’t
use it all, the excess makes its way into groundwater and
washes into waterways where it contaminates drinking water and
creates vast dead zones in oceans and lakes.
… California’s largest hotspot unsurprisingly includes
21 counties that cover the Central Valley, America’s produce
capital.
California farmers relying on State Water Project water were
warned Monday to prepare for potential shortages by reducing
water use and adopting practical conservation measures.
When Ann Hayden first joined EDF in 2002, shortly after
finishing her own stint in the Peace Corps in Belize and
graduate school where she studied environmental science and
management, she was immediately thrown into one of California’s
thorniest water debates: the restoration of the Sacramento and
San Joaquin Bay-Delta, the hub of the state’s water supply. She
hit the jackpot when she was hired by Tom Graff, founder of
EDF’s California office and a renowned water lawyer, and Spreck
Rosekrans, who garnered the respect of the water community for
his ability to understand the state’s hypercomplex water
operations.
As of 2021, California is home to 31 distinct kinds of native
salmon, steelhead and trout species, 20 of which are found only
in our state. These fish are prized for their economic and
cultural significance by local communities, and for their
recreational attributes by anglers from around the world. But
these fish face an alarming threat that can’t be ignored. If
current trends continue, nearly half of these fish will be
extinct within the next 50 years. How do we know this? And
perhaps an even better question: what can be done about
it?
The Peter B. Moyle and California Trout Endowed Professorship
was established by a group of donors concerned with the
conservation and management of coldwater fishes in California.
The endowed chair honors Peter Moyle and the historical and
productive working relationship between CalTrout and UC Davis,
with an endowment fund resting at over $2 million. Dr. Andrew
L. Rypel was appointed to this professorship as the inaugural
holder in 2017, therefore this report reflects year-3 work on
behalf of the chair. A total of 13 peer-reviewed scientific
publications were produced by the Rypel Lab at UC Davis in
2019-2020.
It’s not too hard to find salmon on a menu in the United
States, but that seeming abundance — much of it fueled by
overseas fish farms — overshadows a grim reality on the ground.
Many of our wild salmon, outside Alaska, are on the ropes — and
have been for decades. Twenty years ago Pacific salmon were
found to have disappeared from 40% of their native rivers and
streams across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California.
… In California a groundbreaking project to
allow rivers to flood fallow farm fields in winter has helped
provide both food and rearing habitat for salmon — and has
helped prove that water managers don’t have to choose between
fish and farmers.
California has recently established a water futures market that
has brought with it some criticism as well as confusion. As the
first of its kind in the country, it will function similarly to
futures markets for other commodities. The market will allow
water users to lock in a particular price they are willing to
pay for water. This new futures market is entirely different
from water markets that allow the purchasing of water
allocations.
Placer County leaders are supporting the removal of a bridge
that collapsed 60 years ago near the confluence of the North
Fork and Middle Fork American River in the Auburn State
Recreation Area. … [Gary Estes, a board member for
Protect American River Canyons,] said the debris poses threats
to swimmers and kayakers. A sign posted on the State Route 49
bridge, where the collapsed bridge used to stand, warns people
to use extreme caution around the steel and concrete debris.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering whether
the spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon that occupy the
rivers of Northern California and southern Oregon are
genetically distinct. The decision … would almost
certainly result in a listing under the Endangered Species Act
if seen as a separate species. … [T]he dams and
reservoirs that have been installed at various points
throughout the rivers of the West Coast create problems for
spring-run Chinook that are unique and separate from their
closely related cousins. It also allows the fall-run
species to outcompete the spring run since they both are able
to reach the same spots in the river to reproduce.
We’re facing another very dry year, which follows one of the
driest on record for Northern California and one of the hottest
on record statewide. The 2012-16 drought caused
unprecedented stress to California’s ecosystems and pushed many
native species to the brink of extinction, disrupting water
management throughout the state. Are we ready to manage
our freshwater ecosystems through another drought? -Written by Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow,
and Caitrin Chappelle, associate director, at
the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy
Center.
As March begins to drag on with little precipitation in the
forecast and few weeks left in California’s traditional wet
season, we are in another dry year. This is California’s second
dry year in a row since the 2012-2016 drought.
Statistically, California has the most drought and flood years
per average year than anywhere in the US. This
statistical fact seems to becoming increasingly extreme, as
predicted by many climate change models.
Dwindling Chinook salmon runs have forced the Pacific Fishery
Management Council to shorten the commercial salmon fishing
season. The Sacramento Valley fall-run Chinook salmon runs are
projected to be half as abundant as the 2020 season while the
Klamath River fall Chinook abundance forecast is slightly
higher than the 2020 but is still significantly lower than the
long-term average. During a press briefing on Friday morning,
John McManus President of the Golden State Salmon Association
said the added restrictions will deal a blow to commercial
fishermen.
In the Capital Region, water determines destinies. The
10-county area is both plagued by drought and one of the
country’s most at-risk regions for catastrophic flooding. The
physical existence of Sacramento and surrounding cities and the
viability of the region’s heavily irrigated agriculture depend
on water resources engineers like Mary Paasch.
Many people in Grass Valley, Calif., live and work over the
Idaho-Maryland Mine without realizing it. A lot of information
about the location of the two surface sites and the project
features has been circulated, but not much has been shared
about the sheer size of the project underground and how that
may affect us. … Wells are of even greater concern. Due
to dewatering of the mine, there will be lowering of the ground
water levels in the area.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) released the draft
California’s Groundwater – Update 2020, containing information
on the condition of the state’s groundwater, which is
especially important as California faces a critically dry water
year. DWR encourages community members and water managers to
review the publication and provide input.
At the February meeting of the Delta Stewardship Council, Delta
Watermaster Michael George updated the councilmembers on the
efforts underway at the State Water Board to prepare for the
increasing possibility of 2021 being critically dry. He
also gave an update on the efforts to address the deteriorating
conditions in the south Delta.
The California commercial salmon season, due to start May 1,
will be only about half as long as last year’s season, after
the Pacific Fisheries Management Council settled on three
proposals for the dates and months fishing can take place this
season. The main reason for the shorter season is
the smaller number of adult Sacramento River
salmon expected to be in the ocean this spring and summer.
While commercial fishing boats were permitted to go out for 167
days total last year, the three proposals for the 2021 season
would only allow fishing for a total of 78 days, 94 days or 104
days.
For many Californians, water bills are piling up at
unprecedented rates during the pandemic, exacerbating water
affordability issues that disproportionately impact low-income
residents and communities of color. A recent
survey by the California State Water Resources Board,
which was supported by research from the UCLA Luskin
Center for Innovation, shows the extent of water bill debt
accumulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Households owe a
combined $1 billion in unpaid bills, which has increased
substantially since the pandemic. The report finds that roughly
12% of Californians have overdue payments on their water
bills.
Thunderstorms dumped anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters
of an inch of rain in the Sacramento area Wednesday as the
region was pelted by dime-sized hail that filled streets and
front lawns. A cold weather system moved north along the
California coast before it combined with warm temperatures near
the ground and created the right conditions to form scattered
thunderstorms throughout Northern California, said Eric Kurth,
a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in
Sacramento.
The climate change cabal in Sacramento is ignoring some
extremely low hanging fruit in their bid to protect us from
ourselves. The reason they don’t see it is simple. It doesn’t
involve raising taxes, rewarding corporations or disruptor
greenies they align with, nor does it destroy jobs. The
California Legislature needs to ban grass lawns for front yards
as well as general commercial development for all new building
projects. -Written by Dennis Wyatt, editor of the Manteca
Bulletin.
As we celebrate National Groundwater Awareness Week, the
Northern California Water Association (NCWA) convened its
groundwater management task force this week to help coordinate
the various Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) in the
Sacramento Valley and to advance groundwater sustainability
throughout the region.
Learn from top water experts at our annual Water 101
Workshop about the history, hydrology and law behind
California water as well as hot topics such as water equity,
the Delta and flows, new federal administration and
more. This year’s workshop, set for April 22-23, will be held
virtually and feature a presentation devoted
solely to groundwater.
There’s one type of oyster that’s indigenous to the San
Francisco Bay, and that’s the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida).
It’s named after Olympia, Washington, though these small, tangy
oysters can be found up and down the west coast from Alaska all
the way down into central Mexico. Olympias — or Olys for short
— can still be found in the San Francisco Bay today. But
scientists say pollution from agricultural runoff is too high
for commercial fishing.
In California’s Water Futures Market: Explained, Cora
Kammeyer describes how futures markets
operate generally and the particulars of California’s
version. This new water futures market has attracted
considerable attention and hyperbole. Here we explore the
potential implications of this novel financial tool
through the lens of California water supply
reliability. The water futures market opened on
December 7, 2020, intended to improve the transparency of
water trade prices and to enable participants to hedge
their financial risk.
A Pacific storm brought more much-needed rain and snow to
California on Wednesday at the tail-end of a largely dry
winter. Winter storm warnings were in effect in the southern
Cascades, down the length of the Sierra Nevada and the
mountains of Southern California, the National Weather Service
said….The Sierra snowpack is an important contributor to
California‘s water supply, but at the start of March its water
content was about half the average normally recorded on April
1, when it is typically at its most robust.
On the tail end of the second dry winter in a row, with water
almost certain to be in short supply this summer, California
water officials are apparently planning to largely drain the
equivalent of the state’s two largest reservoirs to satisfy the
thirst of water-wasting farmers. Gov. Gavin Newsom must stop
this irresponsible plan, which threatens the environmental
health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the water supply
for about one-third of the Bay Area residents. We should be
saving water, not wasting it.
State residents have been struggling to keep up with their
water bills during the COVID-19 pandemic, but government
officials say help is on the way. Survey results from the State
Water Resources Control Board released in late January estimate
about 1.6 million or 12% of households across the state have
not paid their water bills resulting in an estimated $1 billion
in statewide household water debt. The average household debt
is $500.
California’s large reservoirs are currently operated using
historical hydrology and outdated assumptions about the state’s
climate. Many experts are calling for changing how reservoirs
are managed to reflect advances in weather forecasting, which
can help the state adapt to a warmer, more volatile climate. We
talked to Martin Ralph—director of the Center for Western
Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography—about advances in this field.
Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the Delta flows
issue has been decades in the making and “it’s going to
take some time to figure this out.”
Zebra mussels — fingernail-sized mollusks named for their
striped shells — are benign in their native Black Sea and
Caspian Sea ecosystems. But they are disastrous almost
everywhere else. Since they were first discovered in the
Great Lakes in 1986, these rapid-spawning animals have
infested every watershed in the Lower 48 except the
Columbia River Basin….The mussel found in [a pet store in]
Seattle came from the California distributor….
In times of drought, California’s Central Valley is full of
farmers hindered by the lack of water. And this region, where
the bulk of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are cultivated,
is driving up the demand for water. Although many farmers
without easy access to water often buy and pump it in from
their neighbors, droughts often fuel massive price increases.
And this often makes water so cost-prohibitive that it can
discourage farmers from even planting crops. This predicament
led a firm to recently list water as the newest commodity on
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Now, water futures are traded
daily. This helps farmers lock in a price for water, so they
have a cushion if a drought threatens their crop revenues.
[A] new 18-chapter book, written by agricultural economists at
UC Davis, UC Berkeley and UC Riverside, addresses issues such
as labor, water, climate and trade that affect all of
California agriculture. … Water, climate and trade pose
challenges and opportunities for California agriculture. In the
last decade, water scarcity and decreased water quality, along
with regulations to address these issues like the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act, have prompted farmers to use scarce
water to irrigate more valuable crops, as with the switch from
cotton to almonds.
The U.S. levee system — once considered the second largest
piece of the country’s infrastructure ”rivaled only by the
highway system” — is now nearly a century old and failing
inspections far more often than it passes them. Only one in 25
federal levees are rated Acceptable. … Those systems can
be found nationwide, from the Sacramento region in California
to the south Florida seaboard; from Appalachia to North Dakota
to the Mississippi River Valley. And the people who
maintain those vulnerable levees say their problems are
remarkably similar: systems that are too old and far too
expensive for locals to fix, much less replace.
Native fish, including smelt and salmon, in the southern Yolo
Bypass in Yolo County have new sources of food and shelter
thanks to a project that successfully restored more than 1,600
acres of former cattle pasture. The Lower Yolo Ranch Tidal
Restoration Project is a collaboration between multiple
agencies including the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and
Westlands Water District (Westlands) which serves western
Fresno and Kings counties. The agencies are working together to
meet a portion of state and federal requirements to restore
8,000 acres of tidal wetland habitat in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta.
California, and Southern California in particular, is bone dry.
The calendar says spring officially begins with the equinox
March 20, but the meteorological winter — consisting of
December, January and February — is already in the record
books. In other words, the wettest months are over. Let’s take
a look at where the Golden State stands.
Water levels in the world’s ponds, lakes and human-managed
reservoirs rise and fall from season to season. But until now,
it has been difficult to parse out exactly how much of that
variation is caused by humans as opposed to natural cycles.
Analysis of new satellite data published March 3 in Nature
shows fully 57 percent of the seasonal variability in Earth’s
surface water storage now occurs in dammed reservoirs and other
water bodies managed by people. … The western United
States, southern Africa and the Middle East rank among regions
with the highest reservoir variability, averaging 6.5 feet to
12.4 feet.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors today approved an
agreement that adds the Cordua Irrigation District to the
historic Lower Yuba River Accord, a model water management
agreement that supports endangered salmon and steelhead,
ensures water supplies for cities and farms and reduces
conflict over water use.
Much of the western U.S. continues to endure a long-term
drought, one that threatens the region’s water supplies
and agriculture and could worsen wildfires this year. In fact,
some scientists are calling the dryness in the West a
“megadrought,” defined as an intense drought that lasts
for decades or longer. Overall, about 90% of the West is
now either abnormally dry or in a drought, which is among the
highest percentages in the past 20 years, according to this
week’s U.S. Drought Monitor.
The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Sacramento District
selected Kleinfelder and Stantec to provide engineering
services for levee improvements on the Sacramento River in
Northern California. The design project consists of
seepage/stability improvements along the Sacramento River East
Levee (SREL) downstream of the American River confluence in
Sacramento. The project is part of the ongoing modernization of
Sacramento’s aging flood infrastructure system.
Congressman Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, introduced a bill
Wednesday that would extend “critical water supply provisions”
in the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN)
Act for the next seven years in an effort to improve
California’s access to water. On Wednesday, Garcia introduced a
bill that would enact a seven-year extension for “critical
water supply provisions” in the WIIN Act, which became law at
the end of 2016.
Sacramento is typically ranked first or second in the country
for the risk of flooding….This year, the California-Nevada
River Forecast Center is forecasting a low potential for
flooding due to spring snowmelt.
A recent global assessment, released by 16 conservation
organizations, of the world’s freshwater fish species found
that nearly a third are at risk of extinction. Overfishing and
climate change are the most significant and pervasive drivers
of the global decline in freshwater biodiversity, but the
blockages created by dams and the introduction of non-native
species have also played significant roles. The news is
distressing, yet CalTrout sees this as a call to action. Our
organization works diligently to ensure resilient wild fish
thrive in healthy waters.
Despite taking two years off from Congress, David Valadao
(R—Hanford) is getting back to work by introducing new
legislation to help keep water flowing in the Central Valley.
Early this month, Valadao introduced the Responsible, No-Cost
Extension of Western Water Infrastructure Improvements, or
RENEW WIIN, Act, a no-cost, clean extension of operations and
storage provisions of the WIIN Act. The RENEW WIIN Act would
extend the general and operations provisions of Subtitle J of
the WIIN Act and extend the provision requiring consultation on
coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State
Water Project.
A part of the natural water cycle, groundwater is an important
element of California’s water supply, especially in the Central
Valley, where one in four people rely on it entirely. It is an
especially important resource in the Solano Subbasin, a
geographic area that includes Dixon, parts of Vacaville,
Elmira, Rio Vista, unincorporated Winters, Davis, the Montezuma
Hills, Isleton, Sherman Island and Walnut Grove. And every
quarter, the Solano Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Agency
Collaborative, aka the Solano Collaborative, hosts a Community
Advisory Committee meeting and will so again from 3 to 5 p.m.
Wednesday.
A forecast of relatively low numbers of Sacramento and Klamath
River fall Chinook salmon now swimming in the ocean off
the California coast points to restricted ocean and
river salmon fishing seasons in 2021. State and
federal fishery managers during the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife’s salmon fishery information on-line meeting
on February 25 forecast an ocean abundance this year of 271,000
adult Sacramento Valley fall Chinook salmon, about 200,000 fish
lower than the 2020 estimate.
The winter storms that dumped heavy snow and rain
across California early in 2021 are likely not enough to negate
what will be a critically dry year, state water officials
believe. California’s Department of Water Resources on
Tuesday recorded a snow depth of 56 inches and water content of
21 inches at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. The water
content of the overall snowpack was 61% of the average for
March 2 and 54% of the average for April 1, when it is
historically at its maximum.
California’s rivers, wetlands, and other freshwater ecosystems
are in poor health. Water management practices, pollution,
habitat change, invasive species, and a changing climate have
all taken a toll, leaving many native species in dire straits.
And the current approach for managing freshwater ecosystems is
not working. In this video Jeff Mount, senior fellow at the
PPIC Water Policy Center, discusses the many benefits these
ecosystems bring to California, and outlines a path for
improving their condition to secure these benefits for future
generations.
The Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources
plan to allocate approximately 5 million acre feet of water
this year – as long as California allows them to effectively
drain the two largest reservoirs in the state, potentially
killing most or nearly all the endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon this year, threatening the state’s resilience to
continued dry conditions, and maybe even violating water
quality standards in the Delta.
Approximately 62 acres of land in Rio Vista, including the
former Army Reserve Center, have been incorporated into
legislation by Rep. John Garamendi, D-Solano, to increase the
boundaries of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National
Heritage Area. This bill, known as House Resolution 1230,
passed in the U.S. House of Representatives Friday and will
move on to the Senate. The bill is an expansion of bicameral
legislation by Garamendi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
that was signed into law in 2019 to provide $10 million for
community-based efforts to preserve the Delta’s cultural
heritage as well as its historical landmarks.
How do you factor in climate change? It can be a worrisome
question, yet, it’s one that rightfully so demands an answer. A
question that seems to loom over us, especially those who work
within and on behalf of the environment. Yet, it might be
difficult to notice the effects of climate change on Putah
Creek. A walk along the creek exposes you to native riparian
habitat and birds aplenty. Surely, the Chinook salmon return to
their historic spawning habitat along Putah Creek could only
signal a more healthy and stabilized habitat. -Written by Alli Permann, Putah Creek Council Education
Program Assistant.
Michael Preston grew up in the old village site of the Winnemem
Wintu tribe, along the McCloud River in Northern California
where the Shasta Dam has flooded spiritual and cultural lands.
Since the 1940s, the creation of the dam has also blocked the
usual migration of winter-run salmon, effectively endangering
the species. Now, there are proposals to raise the dam by an
additional 18.5 feet, which will cause further destruction.
“Our tribal goal is to bring the salmon back … ” he said,
adding that it’s more than just the fish. With the lack of
salmon, which is a keystone species, other animals, such as
bears, eagles and mountain lions are being starved.
The organization River Partners teamed up with California State
Parks and Butte County Resource Conservation District on
Thursday to host a flood plain restoration and
reforestation event. The event was called the
Bidwell-Sacramento River State Park Riparian Restoration
Project and was held near the Pine Creek Access point of the
Sacramento River in Chico.
