The San Joaquin River, which helps
drain California’s Central Valley, has been negatively impacted
by construction of dams, inadequate streamflows and poor water
quality. Efforts are now underway to restore the river and
continue providing agricultural lands with vital irrigation,
among other water demands.
After an 18-year lawsuit to restore water flows to a 60-mile dry
stretch of river and to boost the dwindling salmon populations,
the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement is underway.
Water releases are now used to restore the San Joaquin River and
to provide habitat for naturally-reproducing populations of
self-sustaining Chinook salmon and other fish in the San Joaquin
River. Long-term efforts also include measures to reduce or avoid
adverse water supply impacts from the restoration flows.
Water is like electricity. Most people don’t think about it
much until it’s gone. Now, as California and other Western
states find themselves heading into a severe and worsening
drought, a new interactive map is providing a breathtaking
journey that shows where America’s water comes from and ends
up. The project is called River Runner. It allows anyone to
click on any place where a raindrop would fall in the United
States, and then track its path through watersheds, into
creeks, rivers, lakes and ultimately the ocean.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has
hired Adel Hagekhalil as its next general manager, following a
bitter power struggle over the future of an agency that
delivers hundreds of billions of gallons each year from the
Colorado River and Northern California to a region that
otherwise wouldn’t have nearly enough water to support 19
million people.
When the Palo Alto City Council publicly backed the Bay-Delta
Plan in 2018, it was swimming against the political tide. The
plan, formally known as the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Estuary plan, sets limits on how much water
agencies can siphon from the three tributaries of the San
Joaquin River. While it aims to protect salmon, steelhead and
other river species, it has also attracted intense opposition
and litigation from water districts that claim that the new
restrictions will undermine the reliability of their water
supply.
A water war is under way in Sacramento right now that could
have far-reaching impacts on families in the Central Valley.
… Hearings got under way Wednesday, as Semitropic Water
Storage District in Kern County makes its administrative appeal
to the State Water Resources Control Board for water rights to
the Kings River. It filed its first petition in 2017, asking
for access to 1.6 million acre feet of floodwater from the
Kings River.
Flows into the San Joaquin River under a program to bring back
native salmon will be stopped now through early September to
try and protect fish already upstream. The flow reduction being
instituted by the San Joaquin Restoration Program is in
reaction to rapidly dwindling runoff coming out of the Sierra
Nevada mountains this year.
Lake Powell is within just a few feet of its low level ever
observed since it was first filled. Early season fires have
already torched over 400,000 acres in Colorado and California’s
reservoirs are 50 percent lower than they should be at this
time of year before summer has even officially begun. A year
after the skies over San Francisco glowed a hazy red as
wildfires choked the Bay Area, 2021 is shaping up to be the
year of real climate reckoning with drought in the western US
at historic levels.
Climate change has created new “seasons” that challenge
communities across the nation. California now has a “fire
season,” and sadly, we are embarking on harmful algal bloom
(HAB) season again. NRDC has updated its national map of
state-reported freshwater HABs, which tracks the HABs reported
by states from 2008-2020 and shows that these toxic outbreaks
are increasing across the country, making our rivers, lakes,
and beaches unsafe for swimming, boating, and drinking. Between
2008 and 2020, over 44,000 HAB events were recorded across 38
states.
Earlier this year, the State Water Resources Control Board
released a report, Recommendations for an Effective Water
Rights Response to Climate Change, that considered how the
State Wate Board could include climate change when considering
new water right applications. Since the report’s release,
it has been the subject of much discussion and has sparked
concerns amongst existing water right holders. At the
Kern County Water Summit, hosted by the Water Association of
Kern County, a panel addressed the topic.
With California’s rivers running low after two consecutive dry
winters, state officials and local water agencies have pumped
out a steady stream of drought declarations and calls for water
conservation in recent weeks. It’s clear the Golden State is in
a drought and it could escalate to a crisis, but, you may be
wondering, just how bad is it?
Nearly half of the country — from the Pacific coast to the
Great Plains and upper Midwest — is experiencing moderate to
exceptional drought conditions. That’s expected to get worse
throughout the summer. … UCLA climatologist Park Williams:
“This drought is far from over. 2021 is shaping up to
potentially be the driest of all of the drought years in the
last century, and definitely one of the driest of the last
millennium.”
In just a few weeks, California’s water conditions have gone
from bad to terrible. Sacramento residents have been asked to
cut water usage 10%. Their counterparts on the Russian River
are being told to reduce their consumption 20%. Farmers across
the Central Valley are letting fields lie fallow and
dismantling their orchards. Government agencies are warning of
massive fish kills on the Sacramento River. After
a warm spring dried up practically the entire Sierra
Nevada snowpack — and robbed California of enough water to fill
most of Folsom Lake — state and federal officials have been
forced to dramatically ramp up their drought response plans.
Who has the right to water in the Kern River? It has been the
subject of fierce legal battles throughout Bakersfield’s
history, and on Friday, the Ventura County Superior Court tried
to answer a part of that question. In a court ruling, Judge
Kevin DeNoce found the city of Bakersfield must supply the
North Kern Water Storage District with 20,000 acre feet of
water it owed the district in 2020 and pay the district $2.8
million to reimburse groundwater pumping costs the district
incurred last year. It’s the latest court decision in a
long-running dispute, and it threatens to limit the city’s
ability to use water from the Kern River.
California is dry. Bay Area counties have declared drought
emergencies and imposed restrictions. State and federal
officials are trucking baby salmon to the ocean. But San
Franciscans are still using their primary water source, the
Tuolumne River, which feeds the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in
Yosemite National Park. Last week, City Attorney Dennis Herrera
— who Mayor London Breed recently tapped to head San
Francisco’s water agency — filed a lawsuit challenging the
state’s efforts to protect salmon and the overall health of the
river. -Written by Robyn Purchia, an environmental
attorney, environmental blogger and environmental
activist.
As more of California sinks into extreme drought, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has asked the Legislature to appropriate billions of
dollars to address critical water needs. In the “May revise”—an
update to the budget proposal he initially submitted to the
Legislature in January—Newsom proposes to spend nearly $3.5
billion on water supply and resilience projects, with total
investment reaching $5.1 billion over multiple years.
With the driest year in memory, the water resources managers
and landowners in the Sacramento Valley are working hard to
serve multiple benefits throughout the region with limited
water supplies. This has required all hands-on deck and
creative management within the region as all surface water
supplies have been significantly reduced, with hundreds of
thousands of farmland acres idled throughout the region, urban
suppliers working with their citizens to implement various
conservation measures to reduce water use and there will
undoubtedly be challenges for domestic groundwater wells.
In the latest chapter of California’s unfolding drought, state
officials are planning to build a giant rock wall across a
river in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to save the
vital freshwater estuary from San Francisco Bay’s saltwater.
The emergency measure is a page from last decade’s drought when
the delta, a maze of sloughs and man-made channels east of the
Bay Area, was at risk of becoming too salty to provide water to
the nearly 30 million Californians who depend on it. As in
2015, the freshwater rivers that feed the 1,100-square-mile
delta have gotten so low that they no longer counter the
brackish flows that push in from the bay.
A growing number of drought stricken California farmers are
making the painful decision not to plant as much or anything at
all for fear of losing it all. It costs a lot of money to put
seeds or seedlings into the ground. But if a farmer cannot be
reasonably sure of a crop, why do it?
Even as California moves toward a full reopening from pandemic
restrictions next month, many counties are still in danger.
From drought. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended
emergency drought orders to 41 counties across the state. …
All eyes are on a critical resource that can help fight
the effects of another dry summer: water.
Last week, the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)
held their spring conference virtually. Keynote speakers
included Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources, and
Karla Nemeth, Director of the Department of Water
Resources. In his speech, [Crowfoot] discussed the Newsom
Administration’s priorities, calling this the ‘decade of
resilience’, and giving three principles for going
forward. He also discussed the Voluntary
Agreements. Director Karla Nemeth gave the Thursday
morning keynote speech, touching on the Department’s response
to drought, SGMA implementation, the Delta Conveyance Project,
and the water use efficiency regulations.
More wildfires. Hotter days. Drought. Sea-level rise. Those
conditions are an increasing reality in California, which is
steadily becoming an altered state. But if the grimmest
predictions of experts about our state and climate change
become true, the conditions will become far worse.
