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.
While typically the water flow in the Stanislaus River slows
during the summer, that’s not likely to happen this year, so
recreational users of the river are urged to observe safety
precautions to avoid tragedy. Why is the river running so high?
… In a nutshell, it means New Melones is being
called upon to backfill a good portion of water that Shasta,
Folsom and Oroville should be releasing during this summer to
the delta…
Mayor London Breed could announce a new city attorney within
weeks, following the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s
Wednesday decision to formally recommend the city’s top lawyer,
Dennis Herrera, as the agency’s next general manager. Breed
nominated Herrera to the position in April, months after the
FBI charged the previous general manager, Harlan Kelly, with
allegedly accepting bribes from a city contractor and permit
consultant. Kelly resigned in November.
A heat dome is baking Arizona and Nevada, … At Lake Mead,
which supplies water for 25 million people in three
southwestern states and Mexico, water levels have plunged to
their lowest point since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s.
In California, farmers are abandoning their thirstiest crops to
save others, and communities are debating whether to ration tap
water….And it’s not even summer yet.
The seriousness of California’s drought is being driven home to
thousands of farmers in the Central Valley. State regulators
warned 6,600 farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
watershed on Tuesday that they’re about to lose the right to
pull water from the estuary’s rivers at some point this summer.
The watershed covers a major swath of the Central Valley.
The intensive engineering of the river exacted a huge toll on
its native ecosystems. No species suffered more than the
Chinook salmon, whose epic migration from the Pacific Ocean to
its spawning grounds in the High Sierra was cut short by
numerous choke points, not the least of which was Friant’s
impenetrable barrier of concrete. … Rife with
compromises, [a 1988] settlement mandated that a mere half of
the San Joaquin’s original flow be restored. The river’s many
dams would remain, but alternative passages would be built and
new spawning areas added in the lower river.
In Executive Officer Jessica R. Pearson’s December blog on the
Delta Adapts Initiative, she wrote that “anticipating and
preparing for the climate crisis has always been integral to
pursuing our agency’s mission” and recognized that, due to
socio-economic inequities, not all communities will be impacted
equally by the climate crisis. In phase one of our Delta Adapts
Initiative, the Vulnerability Assessment, we sought to
understand the factors driving increased climate change
vulnerability and to identify the most vulnerable
communities.
California is rolling out a fresh strategy to keep its economy
afloat — releasing 17 million salmon into the San Francisco
Bay. Millions of Chinook salmon raised in hatcheries will
bypass California’s drought-stricken riverbanks to be released
directly into colder, downstream sites in the San Francisco
Bay, in an attempt to maximize their survival rate amid some of
the most extreme environmental conditions the state has ever
faced.
The Bureau of Reclamation is continuing increased flow releases
from New Melones Reservoir to assist with Delta outflow
requirements. Additional flow
releases began on the
lower Stanislaus River on June 10. The
increased flow of 1,500 cubic feet per
second will occur for an extended
duration. Increased river flow can create hazardous
conditions including higher water levels, faster currents,
colder water, and potential entrapment. … Recreationists and
visitors should take safety precautions when near or
on the lower Stanislaus River during
these increased flows.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
Adel Hagekhalil, a national water and infrastructure leader,
will take the helm of the nation’s largest drinking water
provider – the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California – following a vote Tuesday evening by the agency’s
board of directors. The 38-member board approved
Hagekhalil’s contract, making him the 14th general manager
in the district’s 93-year history.
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.”
