The San Joaquin Valley stretches from across mid-California
between coastal ranges in west and the Sierras on the east. The
region includes large cities such as Fresno and Bakersfield,
national parks such as Yosemite and Kings and fertile farmland
and multi-billion dollar agriculture industry.
The federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project (about
30 percent of SWP water is used for irrigation) helped
deliver water to the valley. Today, San Joaquin Valley crops
include grapes, tomatoes, hay, sugar beets, nuts, cotton and a
multitude of other fruits and vegetables. At the same time, water
used to grow these crops has led to the need for agricultural
drainage.
Despite opposition from an impressive who’s-who list of water
districts and agencies and the Kings County Farm Bureau, the
Kings County Board of Supervisors on a 3-2 vote adopted a
groundwater export ordinance that will require a permit to move
groundwater out of the county. Leading the charge was
Supervisor and farmer Doug Verboon, who says the passage came
after 12 years of battling to adopt an ordinance here to
protect local groundwater, an ordinance that most counties
already have. The county’s aim is to preserve groundwater for
local use, critical for both domestic, city, military and
agricultural users.
For almost four decades, water flowed faithfully from Fred and
Robin Imfeld’s private well here in rural Tehama County, a
region where thirsty orchards of walnuts, almonds, plums and
olives stretch across thousands of acres. But that
reliable supply of household water began to sputter last year,
and then ceased completely this summer amid
California’s driest three-year period on record.
… Across California, domestic wells are drying up in
record numbers due to severe drought and the overpumping
of underground aquifers. The crisis has hit rural farming
areas particularly hard and left some families to fend for
themselves or wait years for permanent solutions as nonprofits,
state water officials and well drillers struggle with a growing
backlog of assistance requests.
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein weighed complex water policy
decisions that stood to impact the livelihood of farmers and
fish, she often dialed Tom Birmingham. On visits to Washington,
the longtime head of the state’s most influential farmland
water agency would meet in her office over glasses of chilled
California chardonnay. Cultivating relationships with power is
a hallmark of Birmingham’s 36-year career at the Westlands
Water District, the nation’s largest farm water utility that
serves a few hundred Central Valley families and corporations
growing nearly $2 billion in nuts, fruit, and vegetables a
year. Birmingham spearheaded the agency’s quest to keep
water flowing as its longest serving general manager, largely
through attempts to loosen environmental regulations.
Saving the endangered Riparian brush rabbits could also protect
large swaths of rural south Manteca as well as part of Lathrop
from flooding. It is because efforts of the non-profit River
Partners at the 2,100-acre Dos Rios Preserve located at the
confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers to assist the
rabbit subspecies, five endangered birds, and three endangered
fish could also provide 10,000 acre feet of critical transient
floodwater storage to reduce flood stages as far north as
Stockton.
Fortunes are made and lost on the weather. In 1588 Spain went
to attack England and a storm wiped out its armada. The loss
was so devastating even with its New World holdings Spain never
again arose to its former place of prominence as the greatest
European power. From 1930 to 1936 a drought centered in the
Texas and Oklahoma panhandles caused 2.5 million people to
leave the center of the country for other parts. And while
bad weather can lead to major problems, what about the good
weather? California is blessed with a Mediterranean climate.
Hot summers, cool but not frozen winters, plenty of sunshine
and good soil. And due to the foresight of others since gone,
California’s fickle water supply has been harnessed for the
beneficial use of us all.
The state Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced Dec. 1
that it would provide 5% of contracted amounts across the board
for agricultural and municipal customers in 2023. That may
sound bad, but the initial allocation announced for 2022 was 0%
for ag and only enough water for municipal contractors to
protect health and safety. At this early stage of the water
year, it’s hard to get too excited one way or another about the
initial allocation, said Ted Page, Chair of the Kern County
Water Agency Board of Directors. … With a La Niña
winter predicted this year, the state is preparing for a fourth
dry year, according to the DWR announcement reprinted below.
A line of storms that ushered in a chilly, soggy start to
December should continue to move across Northern California
early this week, offering more chances for rain in the Bay Area
and a fresh coat of powder over the Sierra
Nevada. One-third to a half-inch of rain could still fall
over lower-lying portions of the Bay Area from Sunday through
Tuesday morning — further boosting already healthy rainfall
totals over the past several days. Three-quarters of an inch of
rain could fall in that same time span over the coastal
mountains, particularly in Sonoma County, said Brayden Murdock,
a National Weather Service meteorologist. To the east,
another 1 to 2 feet of snow was expected to fall Sunday and
Monday over parts of the Sierra Nevada …
The first of seven monthly Kern River Snow and Water reports
put out by water watcher Scott Williams arrived in email boxes
Dec. 1 and the news was, fairly, well – “eh.” The watershed is
below average in terms of precipitation but not that below
average, according to Williams’ report, which uses a
compilation of data from multiple public websites. He typically
publishes the monthly updates based on water data from Nov. 1
through May 31. The North Fork of the Kern has 3.71 inches of
precip, or 86% of average, and the South Fork has 1.82 inches,
or 73 percent of average, according to the report. With storms
arriving this week, there’s a glimmer of hope for more. But
Williams’ report also notes there’s a 76% chance of a La Niña
winter this year, which typically means drier weather.
A handful of small valley communities will be able to move more
rapidly on water projects thanks to millions in funding
recently allocated by the state Department of Water Resources
(DWR) as part of its water resilience program. DWR awarded $86
million throughout the state. About $44 million of that will go
to small communities facing water insecurity through the
department’s Small Community Drought Relief Program. The
announcement of DWR’s ninth, and final, round of funding under
this program comes as more than 1,400 wells have gone dry
throughout the state this year, 369 of those in the San Joaquin
Valley, according to the state’s dry well reporting system. The
recently announced funding will help support five projects in
the San Joaquin Valley.
Several public interest groups sued the City of Bakersfield
Nov. 30 alleging the city has been derelict in its operation of
the Kern River by diverting most of its flows to agriculture
and other uses leaving a dry riverbed through the heart of
town. … Even though the city operates the river per a century
of agreements and judicial decrees, the lawsuit states, the
city still has an obligation to study the harm those diversions
may cause to the environment, fisheries and even the
recreational value of a flowing river. The case hinges on a
concept known as the “public trust,” under which the state
holds all natural resources, including water, in trust for the
most “beneficial use” for the public. That includes water
covered by 100-year-old rights, which includes most of the
rights to waters on the Kern.
The use of smart meters to enforce water restrictions could
encourage widespread conservation — but not without local
backlash, a new study has found. Amid California’s
ongoing drought, researchers partnered with the city of Fresno
in summer 2018 to access and identify water violations via
household meter data. While a resulting surge in fines
brought a dramatic reduction in both water use and violations,
a barrage of complaints thwarted the program’s survival,
according to the study, released on Wednesday by the
University of Chicago’s Energy & Environment Lab.
Kings County Supervisors took a crack at a long-promised push
to restrict the ability of swashbuckling Kings County farming
giants to sell their groundwater to far-flung southern
California locales. Tuesday, the Kings County Board of
Supervisors approved the Groundwater Export Ordinance, which
was initially conceived to reign-in major water players in the
area, including water maven John Vidovich. Instead, based
on lingering commentary from local farmers, it may only create
additional red tape with the lack of teeth necessary to stop
outsiders from buying up water rights for the express purpose
of selling the resources to Southern California water agencies.
Drought, human-caused climate change, invasive species and a
“legacy” of environmental issues are permanently altering
California’s landscape and placing some communities and
ecosystems at increasing risk, a panel of experts told water
officials recently. Invasive species and decades of disruptions
from massive land and water developments are partly responsible
for a continuous decline in native California species, experts
told the California Water Commission on Nov. 16. Also, rural
communities, many of whom are lower income and rely on
privately owned wells, are disproportionately contending with
water contamination and scarcity amid recurring cycles of
drought, experts said.
As California prepares for a fourth consecutive year of drought
and farmland across the Golden State increasingly goes idle,
growers continue to face mounting economic challenges. In a new
report about the financial toll of the state’s extreme drought
conditions, researchers estimated that the state’s irrigated
farmland dropped by 752,000 acres, or nearly 10%, from 2019 to
2022. Fields meant to harvest rice, almonds and other crops are
instead going unplanted, causing the level of fallowed land
across California to surpass the prior peak seen during the
state’s last drought that ran from 2012 to 2016. As a result,
the researchers found, California crop revenues fell by $1.7
billion, or 4.6%, during that time …
Thomas Birmingham, general manager of the massive Westlands
Water District since 2000, Wednesday announced plans to step
down at the end of 2022. His announcement follows the election
of four new members to the Westlands Board of Directors on Nov.
8 who would give a so-called “change coalition” a solid
majority of six seats on the nine-member board. The top
priority for the coalition is “a change in leadership,”
according to Sarah Woolf, who along with Jon Reiter helped
coordinate a group of increasingly frustrated Westlands farmers
to run the slate of change candidates, SJV Water
reported.
In the fall, rice fields in the Sacramento Valley usually shine
golden brown as they await harvesting. This year, however, many
fields were left covered with bare dirt. “It’s a disaster,”
said rice farmer Don Bransford. “This has never happened.
Never. And I’ve been farming since 1980.” … California
has just gone through the state’s driest three-year period on
record, and this year the drought has pushed the fallowing of
farmland to a new high. In a new report on the
drought’s economic effects, researchers estimated that
California’s irrigated farmland shrank by 752,000 acres, or
nearly 10%, in 2022 compared with 2019 — the year prior to the
drought. That was up from an estimated 563,000 acres of
fallowed farmland last year.
The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) Fall
Conference & Exhibition Nov. 29-Dec. 1 will draw local water
agency leaders from throughout California to Indian Wells for
three days of updates, analyses and perspectives on multiple
issues affecting the state’s water community. The event will
also feature an international perspective on water management
and connect attendees with a leader behind a movement to change
policy priorities in addressing catastrophic wildfires.
Delivering the Opening Breakfast keynote on Nov. 30, Ambassador
Marco Sermoneta, Consul General of Israel to the Pacific
Northwest, will share his insights about how Israel has
addressed water management challenges.
Recently, researchers from Stanford flew California skies on a
kind of airborne treasure hunt. Probing hundreds of feet into
the ground with electromagnetic signals, they were in search of
liquid gold – water, or more precisely a place to capture and
store it. … [Rosemary Knight, Ph.D., a researcher with
the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability] just released
a new study, confirming the airborne technology’s ability to
locate what is now popularly called “paleo valleys.” They’re
long, buried riverbed pathways created thousands of years ago
by the movement of glaciers that once covered the Sierra.
Filled with porous material, experts believe they could act
like a high-speed express lane to carry diverted flood water
deep into the aquifer.
A controversial proposed dam seems to have a new pathway
forward. But how far will it get through California’s byzantine
world of water rights? Nobody seems to agree on an
answer. The Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir is a joint
project between the Del Puerto Water District and the San
Joaquin River Exchange Contractor Authority on the west side of
the San Joaquin Valley. A Stanislaus County Superior Court
judge on Oct. 31 dismissed a host of environmental
challenges against the project as well as all concerns brought
by another group of irrigators, the Friant Water Supply
Protection Association.
Plans are advancing for importing water into the Indian Wells
Valley. At its Nov. 9 board meeting, the Indian Wells Valley
Groundwater Authority heard a presentation on three proposed
pipeline paths to get that water into IWV. The presentation was
given by Provost & Pritchard, a consulting group IWVGA
contracted to perform this imported water pipeline alignment
study. Jeff Davis–principal engineer with Provost &
Pritchard–presented the study to the IWVGA board. Davis told
the board that while there were many paths they investigated
for the pipeline, they’ve narrowed it down to three proposed
paths which each carry their own positive and negative aspects.
These three paths cross different regions of IWV, and are
therefore titled the West Alignment, the Central Alignment, and
the East Alignment.
The Tule River Tribe Chairman presented his case in Washington
D.C. on Wednesday, continuing the decades long effort to enact
federal legislation to provide water rights for the Tule River
Reservation that would address a dire need. Tule River Tribe
Chairman Neil Peyron testified in front of the Senate Committee
on Indian Affairs concerning the proposed Tule River Tribe
Reserved Water Rights Settlement Act of 2022. On September 15,
California’s two Democratic U.S. Senators, Alex Padilla and
Dianne Feinstein introduced the Tule River Tribe Reserved
Rights Settlement Act. The legislation is a product of an
effort that has lasted more than 50 years made by the Tule
River Tribe to obtain recognition of their federal reserved
Indian water rights.
Noemi Barrera has spent four months without running water for
herself and her four children, and is among many people in
California living without it as wells across the state run
dry. … Tooleville sits on a well that is now
nearly unusable due to contamination from groundwater
overdrilling. The state stepped in last year after the
neighboring town Exeter refused to connect municipal water to
the community’s residents. … Barrera grew up in the
citrus-covered community but never faced this lack of running
water until she brought Ruby home from the hospital and could
not take a shower. And she is aware that many communities
across the state’s vital Central Valley are staring down the
same daily life, as their basins are depleted by
unprecedented drought and ongoing groundwater pumping.
A lawsuit over groundwater plans in the northern end of the San
Joaquin Valley is being closely watched as it could have
implications for how the state’s groundwater mandate moves
forward, according to a recent briefing on the issue at the
Kern Groundwater Authority. At the Nov. 16 meeting, authority
attorney Valerie Kincaid explained that the lawsuit, filed in
2020, seeks to have a court invalidate six groundwater plans in
the Delta-Mendota Subbasin, which runs along the western edge
of the valley from west of Fresno north to west of Modesto. The
Department of Water Resources filed an amicus brief in the
suit, which was bought by the California Sportfishing
Protection Alliance, Kincaid explained. An amicus, or friend of
the court brief, can be filed by a group that has a strong
interest in a case.
Remember a couple weeks ago when it rained half an inch in
Fresno and snowed in the Sierra? Sure was nice while it lasted.
But with nothing but sunny skies in the short-term forecast and
La Niña ocean conditions expected once again this winter, all
signs point to a fourth consecutive year of California drought.
… Because the San Joaquin Valley is experiencing
California’s worst drought conditions as well as our economic
dependence on agriculture, those of us living here should be
extra diligent about conserving water. Especially when
instructed to do so by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in July 2021
called for a 15% voluntary reduction in water use rather than
impose mandatory restrictions similar to those implemented in
2015 by former Gov. Jerry Brown. -Written by Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski.
There’s no healthcare screener for water insecurity. The issue
is not even on most public health professionals’ radar… Most
estimates put U.S. water insecurity at 2.2 million
residents….Accurate data are essential to closing the water
gap because food insecurity increases the probability of water
insecurity…. You might think access to ample potable water is
a basic human right. Legally, in the U.S., it isn’t (although
California has taken a stab at making it so). Still, many
Americans spend more than 12 percent of their income for water
and sewer service.
Thousands of years ago during the last Ice Age, rivers flowed
from giant glaciers in the Sierra Nevada down to the Central
Valley, carving into rock and gouging channels at a time when
the sea level was about 400 feet lower. When the glaciers
retreated, meltwater coursed down and buried the river channels
in sediment. These channels left by ancient rivers lie hidden
beneath California’s Central Valley. Scientists call them
paleovalleys, or incised valley fill deposits. As much as 100
feet deep and more than a mile wide in places, they are filled
with coarse-grained sand, gravel and cobbles. Because these
paleovalleys are highly permeable, scientists have pointed to
them as ideal pathways for water to quickly percolate down and
recharge groundwater.
Some residents in Planada are calling on county officials to
block a proposed expansion of a dairy. Merced County is
currently in the process of deciding whether to allow the
Hillcrest Dairy just north of the town to expand its herd from
8,050 cows to 9,750 cows. Some residents are saying that the
expansion would make current problems with bad smells and flies
worse, as well as threaten the community’s supply of
groundwater. … The matter is still in the process of review,
and has yet to come before the Board of Supervisors. But it
will ultimately be their call as to whether or not the
expansion with the dairy moves forward.
Starting around November 17, 2022 and lasting up to a month, a
helicopter towing a large hoop from a cable will make low-level
flights over areas of the western San Joaquin Valley in Fresno,
Kings, and Kern Counties near Coalinga and the Pyramid Hills,
with limited surveying near Lost Hills. Residents of these
areas may see a low-flying helicopter towing a large hoop
hanging from a cable. USGS scientists will use the data to
improve understanding of groundwater salinity and below-ground
geology to better understand groundwater conditions near
California’s oil fields. The helicopter will tow a sensor
that resembles a large hula-hoop about 100-200 feet above the
ground to measure small electromagnetic signals.
Already grappling with drought, lower commodity prices and
higher production costs, more farmers are feeling the added
pinch of groundwater regulations as local agencies implement
plans that include pumping limits and new fees to balance
long-term groundwater resources as required by the
state. … Regulations and fees by local agencies as
part of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA,
affect farmers more directly this year, including farmers in
Madera County. Madera County farmer Jay Mahil said
groundwater sustainability agency fees that are part of his
county property tax bill are “coming at a time when growers are
receiving all-time low returns on commodity prices, and farm
input costs have doubled.”
A slate of candidates aiming to reform the powerful Westlands
Water District swept into victory on Monday night, cementing a
new board majority and likely spelling the end of the line for
the district’s general manager. The four candidates –
Justin Diener, Ernie Costamagna, Jeremy Hughes, and Ross
Franson – captured the four available seats in preliminary
results. In the process, they are primed to boot the lone
incumbent running for re-election from his seat – current
Westlands board president Ryan Ferguson.
In the last decade, California—along with the rest of the
world—has entered a new phase of climate change. The changes
that scientists predicted have started to arrive. California’s
already variable climate is growing increasingly volatile and
unpredictable: The dry periods are hotter and drier, and the
wet periods—lately too few and far between—are warmer and often
more intense. … The snowpack—that once-reliable annual source
of water—is diminishing as temperatures rise. Water withdrawals
during multiyear droughts are depleting the state’s reservoirs
and groundwater basins. … This report considers the
state of water in California: What changes are we seeing now,
and what should we expect in the near future?
The latest drought monitor, released Thursday, showed some
minor improvements in drought status. Most of these
improvements came along California’s northern coast but the
areas experiencing the worst of the drought, like the San
Joaquin Valley, saw no improvement. The monitor stops
collecting data for its weekly updates at 4 a.m. Pacific time,
so much of the rain that fell from the early week storm was not
accounted for on this week’s update. This means the state may
be in a bit better shape on next week’s monitor, but still has
a long way to go to escape drought.
The land along the Arroyo Pasajero Creek, halfway between
Sacramento and Los Angeles, is too dry to farm some years and
dangerously flooded in others. Amid the cycles of wet and dry —
both phenomena exacerbated by climate change — a coalition of
local farmers and the nearby city of Huron are trying to turn
former hemp and tomato fields into massive receptacles that can
hold water as it percolates into the ground during wet
years. This project and others like it across California’s
Central Valley breadbasket aim to capture floodwaters that
would otherwise rush out to the sea, or damage towns, cities
and crops. … The project near Huron is one of about 340
recharge systems that have been proposed by water agencies in
California – enough to store 2.2 million acre-feet by 2030 if
they all are built …
For some in Pixley, the needs for a place to worship and for
reliable water are both affecting everyday life, and they hold
nearly equal value among some. … California is in a
prolonged drought, which only adds to Pixley’s problems.
The community is one of nearly 400 in California whose
water systems rated as “failing”. State emergency grants
and water-focused legislation offer solutions, but communities
face a long road ahead as California enters a fourth year of
drought and running water becomes harder to guarantee in some
places.
If challenger Eric Averett maintains his lead over incumbent
Phil Cerro for a seat on the powerful Kern County Water Agency
board, it may prove just how effective a campaign statement can
be. Averett said he tried to withdraw his name from the ballot
after belatedly learning Cerro would run. But he missed the
deadline to have his name removed, Averett told SJV Water in
September. He vowed not to campaign – dropping out of the race
in spirit – and said he would support Cerro. But when Averett
filed his paperwork to run, he did one thing Cerro didn’t, he
submitted a campaign statement.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland
may come out of irrigated production in the coming decades to
help balance overdrafted groundwater basins under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. At the same time,
California needs to ramp up clean energy development to meet
the goals of SB 100—and the valley has high solar potential. At
a virtual event last week, PPIC Water Policy Center research
fellow Andrew Ayres moderated a panel of experts and local
stakeholders; they explored how solar development could help
California meet multiple objectives while overcoming some
challenges and delivering lasting benefits to the region.
In California, the historically unmonitored and unregulated
practice of groundwater pumping has led to declining
groundwater levels in many basins across the state. These
declining levels have also created pockets of displacement —
some greater than 25 feet. … [I]nterferometric synthetic
aperture radar (InSAR), a satellite-based data analysis
technique that measures changes in the earth’s surface over
time with millimeter precision, … has not only enabled the
DWR to develop its first-ever statewide subsidence monitoring
system but it’s also bringing undetected subsidence to the
surface, giving water managers a consistent source of
ground-movement intelligence to help them improve groundwater
management and bring stability to unstable ground.
The state awarded $300,000 to the Allensworth Progressive
Association, a local nonprofit, to “implement
neighborhood-level projects that reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, improve public health and the environment and expand
economic opportunity for residents,” according to a press
release from the Governor’s office. The money will be
used, in part, for planning flood control and infrastructure
for wastewater management. … Funding comes from the
state’s Transformative Climate Communities program, which
awarded $96 million to 10 disadvantaged communities throughout
the state last month. The projects aim to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 64,000 metric tons, according to the press
release.
Successfully coping with severe droughts in California and the
Southwest requires tough choices, all of them expensive and
none of them perfect. But taking millions of acres out of
cultivation and replacing them with solar farms is not the
answer. California produces over one-third of America’s
vegetables and three quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts
– more than half of which is grown in the San Joaquin Valley.
According to the California Farmland Trust, the San Joaquin
Basin contains the world’s largest patch of Class 1 soil, which
is the best there is. -Written by Edward Ring, co-founder of the California
Policy Center and author of the book “The Abundance
Choice – Our Fight for More Water in
California.”
Water on the Kern River works hard from start to finish. In
this Law of the River video, we continue our journey down the
river starting at Truxtun Avenue and Coffee Road in the heart
of Bakersfield.
Both sides of a controversial proposed Central Valley dam
hailed a Nov. 3 court ruling kicking back the project’s
environmental documents as a success. A Stanislaus County
Superior Court Judge ruled there was insufficient information
about a road relocation that is part of the proposed Del Puerto
Canyon Reservoir project, which would sit just above the town
of Patterson in the Diablo Range on the west side of the San
Joaquin Valley. More definitive information on the
proposed realignment of Del Puerto Canyon Road will have to be
provided in the Environmental Impact Report by project
proponents, the Del Puerto Water District and the San Joaquin
River Exchange Contractor Authority.
A proposal to place solar panels over the 370-mile Los Angeles
Aqueduct in an attempt to reduce evaporation and add capacity
for renewable energy for residents was approved by a council
committee this week. Around one-tenth of the water in the
aqueduct is lost from evaporation each year due to the length
of travel for water to make it through the aqueduct, according
to the office of Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who introduced the
motion. O’Farrell is the chair of the council’s Energy, Climate
Change, Environmental Justice, and River committee.
A court ruling on the proposed Del Puerto Reservoir is a minor
setback, a leader on the project said. The ruling involved
only the environmental effects of relocating Del Puerto Canyon
Road from the reservoir site, said Anthea Hansen, general
manager of the Del Puerto Water District. The plaintiffs also
had cited concerns about wildlife, recreation and excessive
pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta…. Del Puerto is
partnering on the new reservoir with the four irrigation
districts that make up the San Joaquin River Exchange
Contractors Authority. They farm about 250,000 acres in a
stretch from Crows Landing to Mendota.
Keyes is getting $20.4 million of the $609 million announced
Wednesday for clean-water projects in California. The money
comes from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill signed nearly
a year ago by President Joe Biden. It will go to projects that
remove pollutants from water, many of them in largely
low-income places like Keyes. Officials gathered at a plant
that already filters arsenic from wells supplying the 1,500 or
so customers of the Keyes Community Services District. The new
funding includes a $10.4 million grant that pays off a state
loan that had funded the project, completed in 2019.
While the water year began with one of the lowest storage
amounts ever, the Friant Water Authority believes low water
allocations will leave them largely unaffected. The
Friant Water Authority contended with several factors when it
came to water allocation last year. Chief among them was “water
debt” owed to the State Water Project. This year, despite a
deepening drought, the authority will no longer have that
burden. … After the one month mark of the 2023
water year, numbers are where they are expected to be, as far
as October is concerned according to [Friant Water Authority's
Ian] Buck-Mcleod. As the forecast predicts rain in the upcoming
weeks for the majority of the state, he said this is a positive
look for the waterways.
The latest drought in California has been costly to
agriculture. Twelve-thousand people have lost their jobs and
economic losses total three billion dollars. Josue
Medellin-Azuara is one of four educators from U.C. Merced who
sized up California’s drought on agriculture for the past two
years. … California agriculture generates 50-billion
dollars in revenue and employs more than 420,000
people. The 2020-21 water years account for the second
driest two year period since records began in 1895. Little
or no water cost growers $1.3 billion in 2021 and $1.7 billion
in 2022. 752-thousand acres of farmland was fallowed and 12,000
people lost their jobs.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today awarded $1.2
million to the City of Coalinga for an emergency water transfer
to supply the community through the winter months. Though rain
is in the forecast for some parts of the state, California
remains in extreme drought. The City of Coalinga, located in
Fresno County, had previously notified the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation that it could run out of water by December without
additional supplies. In coordination with Reclamation, which
supplies water to the city via the Central Valley Project,
Coalinga was able to purchase 600 acre-feet of water for
approximately $1.1 million from the Patterson Irrigation
District. To support the city, DWR is providing $1.2 million to
cover the cost of the water purchase plus additional expenses
through its Urban Community Drought Relief grant program.
Amador County, Calif., has standing to sue a state prison for
allegedly violating the Clean Water Act by discharging
pollutants from prison labor operations into the local water
supply, a federal trial court said. The Mule Creek State Prison
uses inmate labor to conduct meat packing, coffee roasting and
packing, and textile manufacturing operations. The CWA
prohibits the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters
unless the discharge complies with delineated standards. The
county’s suit was consolidated with a suit by the California
Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and the US District Court for
the Eastern District of California previously ruled that the
…
Stewart and Lynda Resnick donated $50 million to fund a new
center for sustainable agriculture practices at UC Davis, but
environmentalists reacted with suspicion to the school’s
mid-October announcement of their gift. … $10 million of the
Resnicks’ gift is earmarked for research grants that are
focused on identifying value-added properties in pistachio,
almond and pomegranate byproducts. These crops are all part of
the billionaire couple’s portfolio. … As California
faces a continuing record drought, the Resnicks’ companies are
the state’s biggest single water users — an estimated 150
billion gallons a year for their crops, Forbes Magazine
estimated in 2021. The annual amount of water they use to grow
more than 120,000 thousand acres of their produce in the
southern San Joaquin Valley …
The City of Ripon’s new watering schedule went into effect on
Tuesday. The winter schedule calls for a once-a-week schedule,
from Nov. 1 to Feb. 28. Manteca, by contrast, still allows
watering twice a week in the winter as California enters its
fourth year of drought. Places within city limits with
addresses ending in odd numbers may water on Sundays while
those with even addresses may do so on Saturdays.
California’s San Joaquin Valley will become increasingly
difficult to farm as climate change intensifies. But with the
right regulations and policies, the state’s multi-billion
dollar agricultural belt could become something else — a clean
energy powerhouse that the state desperately needs. At a panel
event on Tuesday, energy professionals and community leaders
gave a glimpse of the valley’s potential future — one where
alfalfa fields give way to solar farms and carbon is
sequestered beneath fallowed orchards. They also acknowledged
how daunting an economic transition it would be.
California’s water police struggle to track where water is
flowing and whether someone is taking more than they’re
supposed to. A criminal case unfolding in the San Joaquin
Valley underscores how the federal government seems to have
similar problems. Prosecutors say they uncovered a massive
water theft that went on for 23 years without anyone noticing.
… According to prosecutors, Falaschi engineered a brazen
scheme to steal $25 million worth of water from the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation, operator of the Central Valley Project. More
specifically, Falaschi stands accused of having his underlings
siphon water from the Delta-Mendota Canal, the main conduit for
delivering federal water to farms along the west side of the
San Joaquin Valley and part of Silicon Valley. He then billed
Panoche customers for this stolen water …
Coalinga usually gets its water through an aqueduct which runs
from the San Luis Reservoir, about 70 miles northwest of the
city. But as the West’s megadrought pushes reservoir
levels to precarious new lows, the US Bureau of Reclamation
this year reduced the amount of water Coalinga could take from
the reservoir by 80%, city officials told CNN. The
restriction left Coalinga short about 600-acre feet of water
through March 2023 … With the city on track to run out
of water by mid- to late November, officials turned to the
increasingly expensive open market to make up the difference.
They finalized a purchase from a California public irrigation
district last week. The city’s price tag for life’s most
basic necessity was roughly $1.1 million dollars. … [T]he
same amount of water used to cost $114,000.
The makeup of the Westlands Water District board will change
this election – shifting power to a coalition of growers with a
list of new actions, at the top of which appears to be ousting
longtime General Manager Tom Birmingham. “There needs to be a
change of leadership, that’s a foundational issue,” said Sarah
Woolf, a member of a Westlands farming family, who helped
organize the coalition. … Woolf applauded the district’s
recharge efforts, but noted the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act, which requires subbasins to bring aquifers into
balance by 2040, was passed eight years ago and recharge
efforts at Westlands have languished behind other
districts.
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
The whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers are the two major Central Valley waterways that feed the
Delta, the hub of California’s water supply
network. Our last water tours of
2018 will look in-depth at how these rivers are managed and
used for agriculture, cities and the environment. You’ll see
infrastructure, learn about efforts to restore salmon runs and
talk to people with expertise on these rivers.
More than a decade in the making, an
ambitious plan to deal with the vexing problem of salt and
nitrates in the soils that seep into key groundwater basins of
the Central Valley is moving toward implementation. But its
authors are not who you might expect.
An unusual collaboration of agricultural interests, cities, water
agencies and environmental justice advocates collaborated for
years to find common ground to address a set of problems that
have rendered family wells undrinkable and some soil virtually
unusable for farming.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Get a unique view of the San Joaquin Valley’s key dams and
reservoirs that store and transport water on our March Central
Valley Tour.
Our Central Valley
Tour, March 14-16, offers a broad view of water issues
in the San Joaquin Valley. In addition to the farms, orchards,
critical habitat for threatened bird populations, flood bypasses
and a national wildlife refuge, we visit some of California’s
major water infrastructure projects.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
The 2-day, 1-night tour traveled along the river from Friant
Dam near Fresno to the confluence of the Merced River. As it
weaved across an historic farming region, participants learn
about the status of the river’s restoration and how the
challenges of the plan are being worked out.
A few tickets are still available for our Nov. 1-2 San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour, a once-a-year educational opportunity to
see the program’s progress first-hand. The tour begins and ends
in Fresno with an overnight stay in Los Banos.
Explore more than 100 miles of Central California’s longest river
while learning about one of the nation’s largest and costliest
river restorations. Our San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour on Nov. 1-2 will feature speakers from key
governmental agencies and stakeholder groups who will explain the
restoration program’s goals and progress.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin are the two major rivers in the
Central Valley that feed the Delta, the hub of
California’s water supply network.
Our last two water tours of 2017 will take in-depth looks at how
these rivers are managed and used for agriculture, cities and the
environment. You’ll see infrastructure, learn about efforts to
restore salmon runs and talk to people with expertise on these
rivers.
Protecting and restoring California’s populations of threatened
and endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead trout have been a big
part of the state’s water management picture for more than 20
years. Significant resources have been dedicated to helping the
various runs of the iconic fish, with successes and setbacks. In
a landscape dramatically altered from its natural setting,
finding a balance between the competing demands for water is
challenging.
Our water tours give a behind-the-scenes look at major water
issues in California. On our Central Valley Tour, March
8-10, you will visit wildlife habitat areas – some of which are
closed to the public – and learn directly from the experts who
manage them, in addition to seeing farms, large dams and other
infrastructure.
The recent deluge has led to changes in drought conditions in
some areas of California and even public scrutiny of the
possibility that the drought is over. Many eyes are focused on
the San Joaquin Valley, one of the areas hardest hit by reduced
surface water supplies. On our Central Valley Tour, March
8-10, we will visit key water delivery and storage sites in the
San Joaquin Valley, including Friant Dam and Millerton Lake
on the San Joaquin River.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
Contaminants exist in water supplies from both natural and
manmade sources. Even those chemicals present without human
intervention can be mobilized from introduction of certain
pollutants from both
point and nonpoint sources.
Both the drought and high nitrate levels in shallow groundwater have necessitated deeper
drilling of new wells in the San Joaquin Valley, only to expose
water with heightened
arsenic levels. Arsenic usually exists in water as arsenate
or arsenite, the latter of which is more frequent in deep lake
sediments or groundwater with little oxygen and is both
more harmful and difficult to remove.
Whiskeytown Lake, a major reservoir in the foothills of the
Klamath Mountains nine miles west of Redding, was
built at the site of one of Shasta County’s first Gold Rush
communities. Whiskeytown, originally called
Whiskey Creek Diggings, was founded in 1849 and named in
reference to a whiskey barrel rolling off a citizen’s pack mule;
it may also refer to miners drinking a barrel per day.
A new era of groundwater management
began in 2014 with the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA), which aims for local and regional agencies
to develop and implement sustainable groundwater management
plans with the state as the backstop.
SGMA defines “sustainable groundwater management” as the
“management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be
maintained during the planning and implementation horizon without
causing undesirable results.”
This issue examines the impacts of California’s epic
drought, especially related to water supplies for San Joaquin
Valley rural communities and farmland.
This handbook provides crucial
background information on the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act, signed into law in 2014 by Gov. Jerry Brown. The handbook
also includes a section on options for new governance.
This 3-day, 2-night tour, which we do every spring,
travels the length of the San Joaquin Valley, giving participants
a clear understanding of the State Water Project and Central
Valley Project.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Salt. In a small amount, it’s a gift from nature. But any doctor
will tell you, if you take in too much salt, you’ll start to have
health problems. The same negative effect is happening to land in
the Central Valley. The problem scientists call “salinity” poses
a growing threat to our food supply, our drinking water quality
and our way of life. The problem of salt buildup and potential –
but costly – solutions are highlighted in this 2008 public
television documentary narrated by comedian Paul Rodriguez.
A 20-minute version of the 2008 public television documentary
Salt of the Earth: Salinity in California’s Central Valley. This
DVD is ideal for showing at community forums and speaking
engagements to help the public understand the complex issues
surrounding the problem of salt build up in the Central Valley
potential – but costly – solutions. Narrated by comedian Paul
Rodriquez.
This 3-day, 2-night tour travels the length of the San Joaquin
Valley, giving participants a clear understanding of the State
Water Project and Central Valley Project.
15-minute DVD that graphically portrays the potential disaster
should a major earthquake hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Delta Warning” depicts what would happen in the event of an
earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale: 30 levee breaks,
16 flooded islands and a 300 billion gallon intrusion of salt
water from the Bay – the “big gulp” – which would shut down the
State Water Project and Central Valley Project pumping plants.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
Fashioned after the popular California Water Map, this 24×36 inch
poster was extensively re-designed in 2017 to better illustrate
the value and use of groundwater in California, the main types of
aquifers, and the connection between groundwater and surface
water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to
Flood Management explains the physical flood control system,
including levees; discusses previous flood events (including the
1997 flooding); explores issues of floodplain management and
development; provides an overview of flood forecasting; and
outlines ongoing flood control projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
Located in the middle of California, the San Joaquin Valley is
bracketed on both sides by mountain ranges. Long and flat, the
valley’s hot, dry summers are followed by cool, foggy winters
that make it one of the most productive agricultural regions in
the world.
The valley stretches from across mid-California between coastal
ranges in west and the Sierras on the east. The region includes
large cities such as Fresno and Bakersfield, national parks such
as Yosemite and Kings, millions of people, and fertile farmland.
Flowing 366 miles from the Sierra
Nevada to Suisun Bay, the San Joaquin River provides irrigation
water to thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farms and
drinking water to some of the valley’s cities. It also is the
focal point for one of the nation’s most ambitious river
restoration projects to revive salmon populations.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and South America. Each year, birds follow
ancestral patterns as they travel the flyway on their annual
north-south migration. Along the way, they need stopover sites
such as wetlands with suitable habitat and food supplies. In
California, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
groundwater banking, a water management strategy with appreciable
benefits but not without challenges and controversy.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the challenges facing
small water systems, including drought preparedness, limited
operating expenses and the hurdles of complying with costlier
regulations. Much of the article is based on presentations at the
November 2007 Small Systems Conference sponsored by the Water
Education Foundation and the California Department of Water
Resources.
This Western Water looks at proposed new measures to deal with
the century-old problem of salinity with a special focus on San
Joaquin Valley farms and cities.
