For years, the politically-connected Westlands Water District
has fought to raise Shasta Dam. This debate has been renewed by
House Resolution 215, introduced by California Central Valley
Congressman David Valadao (R-Hanford), which would override a
California law that blocks the dam raise. That project would
harm salmon, California’s fishing economy and Indigenous
Americans. This is a big deal for the fishing community.
California’s salmon fishery is closed this year for only the
third time in history. … This closure was caused by the
mismanagement of Central Valley rivers during a drought. Low
spring flows, caused by storing too much water for summer
agricultural deliveries, is a major cause of the fishing
shutdown. Raising Shasta Dam would represent another blow to
the survival of salmon runs and fishing jobs. -Written by Scott Artis, executive director of the
Golden State Salmon Association.
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)
has announced approximately $2 million in funding for projects
to support tribal drought resilience as part of President
Biden’s Investing in America agenda. This investment will help
tribal nations address current and future drought risk on
tribal lands across the Western U.S. while informing
decision-making and strengthening tribal drought resilience in
a changing climate. Proposals may request funding of up
to $700,000 total to be disseminated in the first year and
expended over three years in the form of cooperative
agreements. A total of 3–5 projects may be funded depending on
the project budget requested.
The infusion of federal money for infrastructure projects is a
welcome first step toward fixing deep problems with water
systems on tribal lands, but it’s only a first step, an Arizona
official testified Wednesday [Sept. 25]. Brian Bennon, director
of the tribal water department at the Inter Tribal Council of
Arizona, said tribes need to make sure they have funding for
operation and maintenance of the systems to keep them
going … Bennon was joined by Ken Norton, director
of the Hoopa Valley Tribal Environmental Protection Agency, and
Jola WallowingBull, director of the Northern Arapaho Tribal
Engineering Department, to testify on the problems that come
with underfunding of Native water systems.
This time next year, a series of massive dams that block off
the Klamath River will no longer exist. The soil and rocks
originally dug and transported from a nearby mountain in the
1950s will be returned to their home and the river will run
freely again. The Iron Gate Dam, which opened in 1964 as
the last of four dams that, at nearly 200 feet tall each,
regulated the flow of the river and time releases for the local
water supply in Northern California, is now part of the world’s
largest dam removal and river restoration project. Iron Gate is
scheduled to be the final stop for decommissioning crews.
The collapse of two dams in Libya, unleashing torrential
floodwaters that left at least 3,000 people dead and over 4,200
still missing, was both predicted and preventable. And they
won’t be the last big dams to collapse … In the United
States, the second most prolific dam-builder after China, the
average age of dams is 65 years old and an estimated 2,200
structures are at high risk of collapse. … The fact
that it’s increasingly difficult to justify many dams’
existence is one reason there is a growing movement, often led
by Indigenous peoples and other marginalized populations, to
remove them. Most notably, the removal of four dams on
the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border,
set to be completed next year, will be the largest such effort
in history. -Written by Josh Klemm and Isabella
Winkler, co-directors of International Rivers, a group
that advocates for healthy rivers and the rights of river
communities.
Tribal members celebrated the return of more than 1,200 acres
of their ancestral lands in the jagged hills above Weldon on
Saturday in a ceremony marked with gratitude, emotion and
prayer. Chairman Robert Gomez opened the event by thanking a
large number of people who helped find, purchase and deed the
land back to the Tübatulabal tribe, which has called the Kern
River Valley home for more than 5,000 years. Western Rivers
Conservancy was chief among those Gomez called out for their
help in obtaining the land. Western Rivers, a non profit
dedicated to restoring rivers, helped secure funding through
the state Wildlife Conservation Board and Sierra
Nevada Conservancy and facilitated the handover of the land to
the tribe.
Jesus Campanero Jr. was a teenager when he noticed there was
something in the water. He once found a rash all over his body
after a swim in nearby Clear Lake, the largest freshwater lake
in California. During summertime, an unbearable smell would
waft through the air. Then, in 2017, came the headlines, after
hundreds of fish washed up dead on the shore. “That’s when it
really started to click in my head that there’s a real issue
here,” says Campanero, now a tribal council member for the
Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians of California, whose
ancestors have called the lake home for thousands of years. The
culprit? Harmful algal blooms (HABs).
Despite a record snowpack that has kept the South Fork of the
Tule River flowing at a steady clip, residents of the Tule
River Reservation – who get 60 percent of their supplies
directly from the river – were recently without water for eight
days. The problem, ironically, was too much water.
Specifically, from Hurricane Hilary. When the late summer storm
drenched dry, burn-scarred mountainsides, the runoff brought a
torrent of muck with it and fouled the reservation’s intake and
treatment system. But Hilary was just the tribe’s most recent
go-round with water problems from an outdated system built to
serve a fraction of the homes now on the reservation.
A magistrate judge in Oregon sided with the Klamath Tribes on
Monday in finding that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation violated
the Endangered Species Act by misallocating limited water
supplies from the Upper Klamath Lake, harming endangered sucker
fish and other aquatic wildlife. In the 52-page findings and
recommendation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke found the
central question is whether the federal government broke the
law by allocating water for irrigation when it knew it could
not comply with its Endangered Species Act obligations to
endangered sucker fish in the Upper Klamath Lake, a freshwater
reservoir in the southern Oregon portion of the Klamath Basin.
Friends of the River (FOR) and the California Sportfishing
Protection Alliance (CSPA), along with a coalition of tribes
and environmental organizations, on August 31 submitted a
protest against the water rights application and petitions of
the Sites Project Authority for the proposed Sites Reservoir.
FOR and CSPA, two of California’s oldest and most
respected water conservation organizations, said this protest
is part of a legally required process to ensure public concerns
are addressed when granting water rights in California.
Melodie Meyer is associate general counsel for the Yurok Tribe
in Northern California—one of the few California tribes whose
members still reside on a portion of their ancestral lands. The
Yurok reservation borders a 44-mile stretch of the Klamath
River; we asked Ms. Meyer to tell us more about efforts to
protect the watershed. The Tribe’s water programs center
around managing water quality—ensuring that the tributaries
that drain into the Klamath are healthy and not polluted. The
environmental department’s water division has staff dedicated
to dealing with permitting for the water programs, as well as a
water quality control plan and a water pollution control
ordinance.
The Hualapai Tribe has secured thousands of acre-feet of water
a year with an act signed by President Joe Biden in 2022.
Hualapai tribe members celebrated Wednesday, at Grand Canyon
West, decades’ worth of work to get federally protected water
rights for their tribe. President Biden signed the Hualapai
Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act last year, which was
introduced by Arizona’s Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Sen. Mark
Kelly. The settlement allocates a little over one billion
gallons of water per year to the tribe. … They now need more
money to help build a pipeline to get the water from their 108
acres of the Colorado River to where the tribe needs it. This
will not only help families but also help the tribe grow
economically.
Oshun O’Rourke waded into the dark green water, splashing
toward a net that her colleagues gently closed around a cluster
of finger-length fish. The Klamath River is wide and still
here, making its final turn north to the coast as it winds
through the Yurok reservation in Humboldt County. About 150
baby chinook salmon, on their long journey to the Pacific, were
resting in cool waters that poured down from the forest.
… For more than a hundred years, dams
have stilled the Klamath’s flows, jeopardizing the salmon
and other fish, and creating ideal conditions for the
parasite to spread. But now these vestiges of an
early 20th-century approach to water and power are
being dismantled: The world’s largest dam removal
project is now underway on the Klamath River.
JoAnne Yazzie-Pioche calls the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo
Nation near Page home. She’s also the president of the chapter.
Throughout the years, she’s seen many changes. “I remember when
there was hardly anything here in Page,” she says. “There was
no Highway 98. It was all dirt roads.” There’s even running
water in some parts of LeChee that they get from Page and the
Colorado River. Throughout much of the Navajo Nation, however,
hauling water is still a way of life.
The Tule River Tribe has declared a water shortage emergency.
The tribe has been facing a clean water shortage for almost a
week. Tule River leaders say a lighting strike knocked the
power out and impacted this water plant last week leaving
hundreds of locals without clean water. In an already stressed
system. The murky river water is making it impossible for
locals to use 60% of their water supply. A little higher at
about 1,400 feet in elevation, the water at Painted Rock dam is
also dirty.
Working with federal partners, the State Water Resources
Control Board has committed more than $152,000 from
California’s Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and
Resilience (SAFER) drinking water program to support
operational assistance and an interim solution for the Utu Utu
Gwaitu Paiute Tribe in Mono County to address elevated arsenic
in wells on the Benton Reservation. The SAFER funding will
ensure the Tribe has access to safe and affordable drinking
water while a long-term solution is developed through a
well-drilling and treatment project lead by the Indian Health
Service (IHS) with possible additional funding from federal
partners.
Last week, the state Water Board heard a petition to retain
minimum water flows for the Scott River, a key Klamath
tributary. The petition was brought by the Karuk Tribe, the
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the
Environmental Law Foundation. The board eventually directed
staff to reinstate the emergency regulations for both the Scott
and Shasta rivers, a major win for the petitioners who say
flows must be maintained to protect endangered salmon. The
board also directed staff to begin work on permanent regulation
for flows in the Shasta and Scott rivers. … The petition
was filed in May and centered around an expected end to
emergency drought minimums. The lapse began on Aug. 1, with
water levels in both rivers dropping below these minimums
since.
The Yurok Tribe’s annual salmon festival in Klamath,
California, is a little different this year. Yes, there’s a
noisy parade, yes there are dozens of stalls selling T-shirts
and jewelry, yes there are kids wrestling it out in a
traditional stick game and yes there is plenty of
food. But for only the second time in the 59-year history
of the celebration, salmon is not being served. … Salmon
are central to the Yurok, whose territory stretches 40 miles or
so up the Klamath River from this beautiful, rugged coast.
… The Yurok have stopped fishing for salmon, hoping it
will help the devastated population bounce back. Hence, the
lack of salmon to eat at the festival.
California’s top water agency is under federal investigation
after a coalition of California tribal nations and
environmental justice groups filed a civil rights complaint
accusing it of discriminating against several Native tribes and
communities of color. The complaint, filed in December, says
the California Water Resources Control Board has failed to
protect the water quality of one of the nation’s largest
estuaries — the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — and has
intentionally blocked tribal members and residents of color in
some cities from giving input on major decisions.
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
Rising temperatures from climate change are having a noticeable
effect on how much water is flowing down the Colorado River. Read
the latest River Report to learn more about what’s
happening, and how water managers are responding.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
The American River, with headwaters
in the Tahoe and Eldorado national forests of the Sierra Nevada,
is the birthplace of the California Gold Rush. It currently
serves as a major water supply, recreational destination and
habitat for hundreds of species. The geologically diverse
North, Middle and South forks comprise the American
River or the Río de los Americanos, as it was called during
California’s Mexican rule.
This 109-page publication details the importance of protecting
source water – surface water and groundwater – on reservations
from pollution and includes a step-by-step work plan for tribes
interested in developing a protection plan for their drinking
water. The workbook is designed to serve as a template for such
programs, with forms and tables for photocopying. It also offers
a simplified approach for assessment and protection that focuses
on identifying and managing immediate contamination threats.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 30-minute DVD explains the importance of developing a source
water assessment program (SWAP) for tribal lands and by profiling
three tribes that have created SWAPs. Funded by a grant from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the video complements the
Foundation’s 109-page workbook, Protecting Drinking Water: A
Workbook for Tribes, which includes a step-by-step work plan for
Tribes interested in developing a protection plan for their
drinking water.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and the country of Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch
map, which is suitable for framing, explains the river’s
apportionment, history and the need to adapt its management for
urban growth and expected climate change impacts.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
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 Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and 4
million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000
square miles in the southwestern United States. The 32-page
Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River covers the history of the
river’s development; negotiations over division of its water; the
items that comprise the Law of the River; and a chronology of
significant Colorado River events.
The Coachella Valley in Southern California’s Inland Empire is
one of several valleys throughout the state with a water district
established to support agriculture.
Like the others, the Coachella Valley Water District in Riverside
County delivers water to arid agricultural lands and constructs,
operates and maintains a regional agricultural drainage system.
These systems collect drainage water from individual farm drain
outlets and convey the water to a point of reuse, disposal or
dilution.
Every five years the California Department of Water Resources
updates its strategic plan for managing the state’s water
resources, as required by state law.
The California Water Plan, or Bulletin 160, projects the
status and trends of the state’s water supplies and demands
under a range of future scenarios.
This printed issue of Western Water explores the
historic nature of some of the key agreements in recent years,
future challenges, and what leading state representatives
identify as potential “worst-case scenarios.” Much of the content
for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the Colorado River Symposium. The Foundation
will publish the full proceedings of the Symposium in 2012.
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
This issue of Western Water examines the challenges facing state,
federal and tribal officials and other stakeholders as they work
to manage terminal lakes. It includes background information on
the formation of these lakes, and overviews of the water quality,
habitat and political issues surrounding these distinctive bodies
of water. Much of the information in this article originated at
the September 2004 StateManagement Issues at Terminal Water
Bodies/Closed Basins conference.
