California’s water history during the past two centuries is
fraught with conflicts as agricultural, recreational,
environmental and urban users have fought, and continue to fight,
to secure finite water supplies for their ever-growing needs.
A few years ago, filmmaker Emmett Brennan discovered that the
once-lush Owens Valley that sources water for Los Angeles is
now mostly a stark desert, and he had to do something. The
result is a meditative new feature-length documentary called
“Reflection: A Walk with Water” that traces a 200-mile trek by
foot along the entire length of the L.A. aqueduct to raise
awareness about the way we use and misuse water. The film, with
original music by Jacob Collier and Justin Kauflin, is
streaming through June 23 as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.
While water in the West becomes scarcer and droughts more
frequent and more severe — thanks in part to changing weather
patterns and rising temperatures triggered by carbon emissions
— Wall Street views water as an “asset class,” a commodity like
stocks, bonds, and real-estate that can generate enormous
returns for shareholders, even in severe droughts. Or maybe,
especially in water shortages. Institutional investors like One
Rock are snapping up water rights just like others are snapping
up rental properties to lease back to Americans at a profit…
Lucía Laguna carries her fate tattooed on her face — from the
corner of her mouth to her chin, black lines surf across her
coppery skin — the tribal art honoring her people will also
serve an important function later on. … But under the
merciless sun, Laguna, 51, worries about the fate of the river
and its impact on the Cucapá, her Indigenous people. A searing
drought is exacerbating the deadly heat in a region that long
ago saw its river flow diminished, after almost a century of
U.S. engineering projects, as well as a focus on water for
agriculture.
Lake Powell has drastically shriveled during 20 years of
drought, allowing dozens of miles of the Colorado River to
become a river again in world-famous Cataract Canyon. But why
have many of its legendary rapids failed to return? Three men
from Moab have made it their crusade to study that issue and to
document a stunning after-effect of Lake Powell: a river
struggling to cut its way through a monumental legacy of dried
mud.
In the final scene of “Chinatown,” the noir movie version of
Los Angeles’s original water grab, anti-hero Jack Nicholson
confronts the brutal triumph of the film’s “pillar of the
establishment” villain. The cops don’t want to hear his
story. They invoke the racist trope that the law of the
jungle rules in the ethnic enclave where the scene occurs:
“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” The real life water wars
continue, however, and it remains to be seen who will win the
current power struggle at the Metropolitan Water District. -Written by Rick Cole, former mayor of Pasadena, deputy
mayor of Los Angeles and city manager of Azusa, Ventura and
Santa Monica.
An El Dorado County company says it’s made a surprising
discovery at the bottom of Folsom Lake: an airplane. Company
Seafloor Systems was testing its underwater survey equipment
when it spotted what appeared to be a small aircraft 160 feet
underwater. … The plane crashed into the water
behind Folsom Dam after a mid-air collision on New Year’s Day
in 1965. The bodies of three people who were onboard the
aircraft were never recovered.
Water is increasingly scarce in the Western U.S. — where 72
percent of the region is in “severe” drought, 26 percent is in
exceptional drought, and populations are booming. Insufficient
monsoon rains last summer and low snowpacks over the winter
left states like Arizona, Utah and Nevada without the typical
amount of water they need, and forecasts for the rainy summer
season don’t show promise. … The past two decades have been
the driest or the second driest in the last 1,200 years in the
West, posing existential questions about how to secure a
livable future in the region.
Despite inspiring an Oscar-winning movie, the story of Hinkley,
California, did not have the Hollywood ending viewers may have
expected. Hinkley’s story shot Erin Brockovich to stardom and
she has continued to crusade for access to safe water. Hinkley
is a small southern California community in the Mojave Desert.
Since the 1950s, utility company Pacific Gas & Electric has
operated a natural gas pumping station. Until 1966, the company
used a chemical called chromium 6 to prevent rust. The toxic
chemical eventually seeped into Hinkley’s water supply.
Tricia Hill tears up when she talks about the emotional toll
the water shut-off in southern Oregon has had on her family.
Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal
government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper
Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native
fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and
other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from
water they have used for decades.
The reservoir created by Hoover Dam, an engineering marvel that
symbolized the American ascendance of the 20th Century, has
sunk to its lowest level ever, underscoring the gravity of the
extreme drought across the U.S. West. Lake Mead, formed in the
1930s from the damming of the Colorado River at the
Nevada-Arizona border about 30 miles (50 km) east of Las Vegas,
is the largest reservoir in the United States. It is crucial to
the water supply of 25 million people including in the cities
of Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas.
When a historic drought gripped California and the Bay Area,
water managers came together to keep drinkable water in the
homes of vulnerable areas in Marin and Contra Costa Counties.
Two veterans of those efforts describe the dramatic process,
and consider lessons it offers for today’s imminent drought.
A crippling drought in the western US is dropping the water
level at Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam to a historically low
level, putting pressure on the region’s drinking water supply
and the dam’s electric capacity. By Thursday, Lake Mead’s water
level is expected to sink to the lowest it’s been since it
began filling during construction of the Hoover Dam, according
to Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Patricia Aaron.
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.
Fears of a confrontation between law enforcement and rightwing
militia supporters over the control of water in the
drought-stricken American west have been sparked by protests at
Klamath Falls in Oregon. Protesters affiliated with rightwing
anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network
are threatening to break a deadlock over water management in
the area by unilaterally opening the headgates of a reservoir.
California has seen its share of droughts, but the one
happening now is so severe that a longtime dairy farmer has
called it quits. … Bob McClure, a 60-year-old
fourth-generation rancher of McClure Dairy, which was founded
in 1889 and remains on the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin
County, … was already thinking about when he would wrap up
operations at the dairy, but his decision to close at the end
of May was “truly, truly driven by the threat of running out of
water,” he said.
According to U.S. Congressman Jay Obernolte’s (R-Hesperia)
office, last Tuesday, June 1, he introduced a bill, HR 3649,
titled the Mono Lake Kutadika’a Paiute Tribal Recognition Act
that would grant federal recognition to the Mono Lake
Kutzadika’a tribe as a distinct Native American Tribe. The
legislation was originally introduced by former Rep. Paul Cook.
The bill would address the tribe’s decades-long struggle for
indigenous sovereignty and would afford them the services,
benefits, and rights provided to federally recognized tribes,
says the communique.
Drought is taking a dramatic toll on the Colorado River
system that provides water to 40 million people in seven states
– and may force the federal government to make a drastic and
historic decision. For more than eight decades, the
iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s
Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it
finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam
is supposed to be holding back is gone.
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.
Hidden from view when driving by is the [Rise Gold]
mine that is filled with water contaminated with
byproducts of hard rock mining. The water now forms a murky
lake several hundred yards wide. Rise Gold plans to pump out
3.6 million gallons of water every single day for six months
and after that another 1.2 million gallons a day for up to 80
years from this site. Let that sink in. Get your mind
fully around this. This is real. They will dump this water
into the little creek alongside the site and send it on its way
down Wolf Creek to the Feather River to the Sacramento River to
San Francisco Bay … -Written by Billy Packard.
San Diego is launching a $10 million effort to complete risk
assessments of all nine of the city’s aging dams — only three
of which are considered in satisfactory condition. City
officials say the assessments are expected to reveal problems
that will require an estimated $1 billion in repairs and
upgrades in coming decades — and possibly some replacement dams
in extreme cases. San Diego’s dams are among the oldest in the
state and the nation.
It feels like California’s 2011-2016 drought, our worst on
record, had barely ended when the next one began. This is our
second dry year in a row and, according to the state Department
of Water Resources, the past winter tied for the third-driest
on record. … [UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain] calls this
our second major drought within a decade and, if you’re like
me, you’re wondering if we’ve done anything since the last one
to help keep water flowing from our taps. The answer is yes.
Back when it first happened, we covered the Oroville Dam
near-disaster. Heavier-than-expected rainfall in California
back in early 2017 led to running the dam’s primary spillway at
much higher-than-normal levels. February 17, 2017, the
operators noticed something odd about the water flow down the
spillway, and when they turned off water flowing down the
spillway, it was made obvious that they had a major problem on
their hands. Several chunks of concrete were missing, and the
water had begun gouging into the earth beneath the spillway.
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.”
The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an
early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to
spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with
a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the
region. In Nevada, water levels have dropped so
drastically in Lake Mead that officials are preparing for a
serious shortage that could prompt major reductions in Colorado
River water deliveries next year. In California, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of emergency.
Between Las Vegas and Arizona, Lake Mead, the body of water
that is fed by the Colorado River, dropped below 1,075 feet on
Tuesday. The low water marks are signaling what could be the
first-ever water shortage on the Colorado River, CNN reports.
The lake’s levels show a continuing decline, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), and any hope of recovery
won’t happen until at least the end of 2022.
The drought is taking a major toll on local lakes, most notably
Big Bear Lake, one of the most beautiful views in Southern
California. After another dry winter, water officials say the
lake could hit historically low levels by fall. Many of the
people who live and work in the area are concerned because they
say the lake is shrinking.
It has lost nearly 95% of its volume in the past two decades,
upending what was once a thriving resort economy, a healthy
brine shrimp population, crucial wildlife and bird habitat, and
critical mineral extraction industries. The miles of stark,
exposed lakebed threaten the millions of people who live nearby
due to wind-whipped dust settling in their lungs. It’s Lake
Urmia, nearly 6,900 miles away from the Great Salt Lake. But
the two are now connected as efforts to save this lake deliver
unique lessons as Utah grapples with a way to preserve and save
its salty landmark from a similar fate.
Who has the right to water in the Kern River? It has been the
subject of fierce legal battles throughout Bakersfield’s
history, and on Friday, the Ventura County Superior Court tried
to answer a part of that question. In a court ruling, Judge
Kevin DeNoce found the city of Bakersfield must supply the
North Kern Water Storage District with 20,000 acre feet of
water it owed the district in 2020 and pay the district $2.8
million to reimburse groundwater pumping costs the district
incurred last year. It’s the latest court decision in a
long-running dispute, and it threatens to limit the city’s
ability to use water from the Kern River.
With lake levels out at Lake Shasta getting lower, more
underwater gems will be visible for the community to explore.
As of Tuesday, May 25, Lake Shasta is 106 ft. below regular
lake levels. KRCR spoke with both the Bureau of Reclamation and
the Shasta Historical Society who each shared some must-see
sightings. Out at the Shasta Dam, people can check out
what is left of the historic 1940 Headtower that was used to
deliver 6.5 million cubic yards of concrete to make up the dam,
says the Bureau.
Arizona and other Western states just lived through the driest
year in more than a century, with no drought relief in sight in
the near future, experts told a House panel Tuesday. The period
from last April to this March was the driest in the last 126
years for Arizona and other Western states, witnesses said. It
caps a two-decade stretch that was the driest in more than 100
years that records have been kept – and one of the driest in
the past 1,200 years based on paleohydrology evidence, one
official said.
Twenty years after a shut-off of most irrigation water in the
parched Klamath Project brought the competing needs of farmers,
fishermen and tribes to a head, a new drought — and a fresh
federally-ordered water shut-off — is triggering a sense
of déjà vu. Now, two Klamath Project irrigators with
ties to radical activist Ammon Bundy have purchased private
property located next to the headgates of the “A” Canal in
Klamath Falls, which would normally deliver water to area
farms. And along with local members of the Oregon chapter of
People’s Rights, a group founded by Bundy in 2020, they’ve set
up an information center and gathering place to talk to the
public about the brewing water crisis in the Klamath Basin.
When you oversee the largest supplier of treated water in the
United States, you tend to think big. Jeff Kightlinger, general
manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California for the last 15 years, … discussed how his
agency is poised to handle drought, the roadmap for
sustainability on the Colorado River and why he believes
practicality and necessity will pave the way for the completion
of a Delta alternative conveyance facility for the State Water
Project.
Declining levels at the second-largest reservoir in the U.S.
have spurred officials in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New
Mexico to search for ways to prop it up. Lake Powell on the
Colorado River is dropping rapidly amid one of the southwestern
watershed’s driest years on record. It’s currently forecast to
be at 29% of capacity by the end of September — the lowest
level since the reservoir first started filling in 1963. Its
sister reservoir downstream on the Colorado River, Lake Mead,
is also approaching a record low this year.
Fossils dating back some five to ten million years have been
found in the Mokelumne River watershed in the Sierra Nevada
foothills in what’s being called one of the most significant
fossil discoveries in California history, researchers announced
Tuesday. California State University, Chico and the East Bay
Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) said the trove of fossils
was found in areas along the Mokelumne River near the town of
Valley Springs. The watershed provides drinking water to
EBMUD’s 1.4 million customers.
Last week, the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)
held their spring conference virtually. Keynote speakers
included Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources, and
Karla Nemeth, Director of the Department of Water
Resources. In his speech, [Crowfoot] discussed the Newsom
Administration’s priorities, calling this the ‘decade of
resilience’, and giving three principles for going
forward. He also discussed the Voluntary
Agreements. Director Karla Nemeth gave the Thursday
morning keynote speech, touching on the Department’s response
to drought, SGMA implementation, the Delta Conveyance Project,
and the water use efficiency regulations.
Lake Shasta this summer is facing possibly its lowest level in
at least 44 years, and that could be bad news for the people
who rely on it for drinking and irrigation water, as well as
endangered salmon that depend on it to survive. Dam
operators have to go all the way back to 1977 to compare how
bad this year’s water situation is shaping up to be, said Don
Bader, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which
manages the dam.
The seven members of the Delta Stewardship Council were seated
in 2010. The Council appointed ten prominent scientists to the
Delta ISB. Over the next decade, the Delta ISB produced over 30
scientific reviews, averaging over 3,000 hours of work per
year. But in 2020, the work of the Delta ISB stalled. The Delta
Stewardship Council reduced funding for the Delta ISB by over
90%.
Millions of people are betting on Arizona. They’re buying
homes, starting businesses, and families. The future of how we
use our water resources may dictate the future of their
success. … That question was addressed four decades earlier
with the Groundwater Management Act of 1980. The idea was the
law would ensure when water was taken out, just as much was put
back in, creating what they called a safe yield goal by
2025. Unfortunately, a new study released by ASU
researchers with the Kyl Center shows the law is not living up
to its promise as deep, thousands of years old aquifers
continue to be over-pumped.
A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown
Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car
caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions
to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis. A man walked by the
demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace
and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social
Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and
pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and
soul.” Sierra Club founding member John Muir penned those words
more than a century ago as he launched a decades-long battle to
advocate for preservation of the American West. … More than a
century later, Muir’s legacy of environmental awareness lives
on through his great-grandson, Reno attorney Ross de Lipkau,
one of the state’s leading water rights experts.
California — already in the clutches of another drought
emergency — is looking over its shoulder at what happened
last time, anticipating the worst and evaluating the strategies
that worked and those that failed. So is California in a
better position to weather this drought? Some things are
worse, some better: Groundwater is still being pumped with no
statewide limits, siphoning up drinking water that rural
communities rely on. In northern counties, residents are
reliving the last disaster as water restrictions kick in again,
but in the south, enough water is stored to avoid them for now.
… The upshot is California isn’t ready — again.
Nancy Smith remembered that children had called it “the sick
land” — the wedge of property alongside the 110 Freeway where a
dry cleaning facility had laundered aprons and uniforms for
decades across from a Lincoln Heights elementary school.
… Decades after the old Welch’s laundry was shuttered,
California regulators worked to clean up the soil and check the
groundwater for the chemicals used there — volatile
organic compounds such as tetrachloroethylene that could damage
the human liver and nervous system and have
been tied to an increased risk of cancer. The Department
of Toxic Substances Control oversaw a cleanup effort that
lasted for years and has continued to monitor groundwater at
the site.
Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power’s St. Francis Dam collapsed,
inundating the canyon below with some 12 billion gallons of
water. The floodwaters, which in the darkness registered first
as a mounting roar to those who were awake, tossed 10,000-ton
fragments of the dam thousands of feet downstream and scoured
the canyon walls to bare rock. More than 400 people in the
flood’s 53-mile path to the sea were drowned or battered to
death as the torrent sheared through orchards, pulverized
buildings, and crumpled bridges.
Last year, for the first time, it became possible to trade
water on Wall Street through futures contracts. Normally
reserved for commodities like oil or precious metals, water
became the latest asset to join the financial market. But how
could this practice impact the planet? The trading in the
future prices of highly-prized commodities, where buyers agree
to purchase an asset at a set date in the future for an agreed
price, began in Japan in the seventeenth century with the
trading in rice futures. The latest commodity to begin trading
in futures is water supplied in American’s most populous state,
California.
A federal appeals court has rebuked the U.S. government for
failing to properly consider the interest of Native American
nations in developing allocation guidelines for the Colorado
River Basin’s waters and ordered it to prioritize obligations
assumed when it signed a treaty with the Navajo Nation in 1868.
The April 28 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
may boost Native American negotiating clout as the basin’s
states ponder how to address impacts of ongoing drought in the
region.
Twenty years ago, in the 2001 Los Angeles mayoral race, a topic
usually seen as dull became the most lurid issue of the
campaign. The topic was water recycling, and we are still being
hurt by the rhetoric from that election today. Candidate Joel
Wachs, a longtime member of the City Council, didn’t even make
the runoff that year. But during the primary he alarmed voters
across the city by insisting that Los Angeles was furtively
planning to pipe recycled sewage to millions of unsuspecting
Angelenos — without, according to Wachs, adequate public input
or scientific research. The recycling idea became widely known
as “toilet to tap” … -Written by Marc Haefele, a Santa Monica freelance
writer.
It’s only May, and I’m already having to write about wildfires
forcing Californians to evacuate their homes. Around 1,000
people were displaced from their homes Sunday as the Palisades
Fire in Los Angeles County grew to more than 1,300 acres. The
blaze, which was 0% contained as of Sunday afternoon, carved a
path through dense, old-growth chaparral that hadn’t burned in
more than 50 years, the Los Angeles Times reports. As such, it
embodied both California’s worsening drought and the grim
reality that its fire season is starting earlier and earlier
even as its conflagrations get larger and larger.
Less than a week after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought
emergency for Northern California, Folsom Lake is standing at
one of its lowest levels ever. … Ryan Ojakian is
with the Regional Water Authority (RWA). Now, there’s a push
from the RWA for its 20 water providers that serve about 2
million people in the Sacramento region to shift to using more
groundwater than surface water to reduce reliance on Folsom
Lake and the Lower American River.
Rain has long signaled the end of a drought, but a new analysis
of Australia’s worst dry spell in a century reveals many water
reservoirs remained low nearly a decade after the rain
returned. Research published in the journal Science on Thursday
studies 15 years of data collected before, during and after the
Millennium Drought dried out Victoria, Australia, from 2001 to
2009 and reveals flaws in the long-held belief that reservoirs
naturally replenish after drought ends.
California’s water supply is critical to the state’s
agriculture industry. Up to 80% of table olives come from
California, and while olive trees are more drought-tolerant
than other crops, that isn’t stopping Northern California olive
growers from making significant changes to conserve our most
precious resource. Olives are a passion for Dennis Burreson,
who says he’s held just about every job with Musco Family Olive
Company since joining Musco 43 years ago.
The Salton Sea continues to be a big talker when it comes to
lithium, but a long problem remains in and around the sea when
it comes to toxic air. During our extensive coverage of the
Salton Sea, we learned that toxic air is not only coming from
dried-up parts of the sea, but other parts of the sea are now
contributing to the toxicity. “It is not just the toxic
elements that have been trapped by the water and now exposed as
the sea recedes,” explained Frank Ruiz, Salton Sea Director
with Audubon California. Ruiz has been working with researchers
who have been studying the toxic levels at the Salton Sea.
Although Indigenous people had, since prehistoric times,
modified the [Sierra Nevada] landscape and caused widespread
ecological change, the arrival of Europeans and Americans for
the gold rush brought a much more invasive level of alterations
with the construction of dams, permanent manipulation of
rivers, clear-cutting of old-growth trees and an ill-advised
practice of fire suppression that makes these forests ripe for
wildfires, especially when compounded by climate change, which
means more heat waves, decreased snowpack and drier conditions
among other impacts.
Ben Tobin has questions about the Grand Canyon’s caves. The
University of Kentucky geologist started learning about caves
as a young man, in part because his mother was a geologist, and
a childhood fascination grew over time. … When he was in
college, an internship in Arkansas doing cave tours got him
hooked, and eventually his work brought him out West, to Grand
Canyon National Park. Tobin specializes in what’s known as
karst hydrology. These are underground systems made up of
soluble rock such as limestone. To Tobin, caves are like
another world, with blind animals, fossils and archeological
finds.
Only one week remains to register for our May 20 virtual
Lower
Colorado River Tour where you can hear directly
from experts offering a range of perspectives on the most
contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Practically every drop of water in the
Colorado River is already allocated, but pressure on the
hard-working river continues to grow from myriad sources —
increasing population, declining habitat and climate
change.
A riverbed that has been parched since the end of the
19th century — a portion of the historic lifeblood of the
Gila River Indian Community — is now coursing again with water,
luring things like cattails and birds back to its
shores. … The revival of this small segment of the
649-mile (1045-kilometer) Gila River, which has served the
tribes that make up the Gila River Indian Community — the
Akimel O’odham (Pima) and the Pee-Posh (Maricopa) — for roughly
2,000 years, was an added benefit of a grassroots
infrastructure overhaul, known as “managed aquifer recharge,”
or MAR, which aimed to restore the local groundwater
basin.
Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, along with prominent
North Coast water managers and politicians gathered at a
virtual summit yesterday morning to discuss the severe drought
facing the North Coast and the entire state. At the summit (a
recording of which is available on YouTube), State Senator Mike
McGuire stated that the state legislature is moving forward on
a several billion dollar drought relief package, which would
include $1 billion in grants to help ratepayers and utilities
pay off back bills and $500 million to help smaller low income
communities develop enhanced drinking water supplies, among
other things (read the full list below).
Amid drought conditions across the Sierra Nevada and
California, Lake Tahoe is 2.5 feet lower than it was at this
time last year, according to water data collected in Tahoe City
on May 11. … Lake Tahoe’s water typically gets a boost
from spring’s snowmelt. But as of May 11, the snowpack in the
Sierra Nevada has virtually melted, and Lake Tahoe’s water
levels are the lowest they’ve been in five
years, according to USGS data. Snow surveys on May 11
indicate California’s snowpack is just 6% of average for this
date. Barring significant precipitation this summer, Tahoe
is on track to reach a critical low point …
The state is facing major water impacts, but for those reliant
on water wells — in mobile home parks, rural communities, and
areas where water district access is limited — the concern is
growing. The Department of Water Resources has created
a website that can help those who rely on well water
to figure out just how much at-risk they are of a water
shortage. The site was created after the last drought, but
with California’s drought only recently worsening, it had not
been widely used or needed until now. The interactive map
allows users to explore their area and keep tabs on their well
water situation.
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is
signaling the way climate change could play out across the
western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring,
farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds
over water in Upper Klamath Lake. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,”
… Centuries ago, the area was wetlands; but in the early
20th century, the land was opened up to agriculture. Members of
the Klamath Tribes say tree removal and drainage hastened
drying as the climate warmed.
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.
Our Water 101 Workshop, one of our most popular events, offered attendees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of California’s water history, laws, geography and politics.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the state, the workshop was held as an engaging online event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday, April 23.
The Water Education Foundation’s Water 101 Workshop, one of our most popular events, offered attendees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of California’s water history, laws, geography and politics.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the state, the one-day workshop held on Feb. 20, 2020 covered the latest on the most compelling issues in California water.
McGeorge School of Law
3327 5th Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95817
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.
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 1992 election to the United
States Senate was famously coined the “Year of the Woman” for the
record number of women elected to the upper chamber.
In the water world, 2018 has been a similar banner year, with
noteworthy appointments of women to top leadership posts in
California — Karla Nemeth at the California Department of Water
Resources and Gloria Gray at the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California.
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
One of our most popular events, our annual Water 101 Workshop
details the history, geography, legal and political facets
of water in California as well as hot topics currently facing the
state.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the
state, the one-day workshop on Feb. 7 gave attendees a
deeper understanding of the state’s most precious natural
resources.
Optional Groundwater Tour
On Feb. 8, we jumped aboard a bus to explore groundwater, a key
resource in California. Led by Foundation staff and groundwater
experts Thomas
Harter and Carl Hauge, retired DWR chief hydrogeologist, the
tour visited cities and farms using groundwater, examined a
subsidence measuring station and provided the latest updates
on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
McGeorge School of Law
3327 5th Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95817
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
Lake
Tahoe, the iconic high Sierra water body that straddles
California and Nevada, has sat for more than 10,000 years at the
heart of the Washoe tribe’s territory. In fact, the name Tahoe
came from the tribal word dá’aw, meaning lake.
The lake’s English name was the source of debate for about 100
years after it was first “discovered” in 1844 by people of
European descent when Gen. John C. Fremont’s expedition made its
way into the region. Not long after, a man who carried mail on
snowshoes from Placerville to Nevada City named it Lake Bigler in
honor of John Bigler, who served as California’s third governor.
But because Bigler was an ardent secessionist, the federal
Interior Department during the Civil War introduced the name
Tahoe in 1862. Meanwhile, California kept it as Lake Bigler and
didn’t officially recognize the name as Lake Tahoe until 1945.
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
Along the banks of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Oakley, about 50 miles southwest
of Sacramento, is a park that harkens back to the days when the
Delta lured Native Americans, Spanish explorers, French fur
trappers, and later farmers to its abundant wildlife and rich
soil.
That historical Delta was an enormous marsh linked to the two
freshwater rivers entering from the north and south, and tidal
flows coming from the San Francisco Bay. After the Gold Rush,
settlers began building levees and farms, changing the landscape
and altering the habitat.
One of our most popular events, Water 101 details the history,
geography, legal and political facets of water in California
as well as hot topics currently facing the state.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the
state, the one-day workshop gives attendees a deeper
understanding of the state’s most precious natural resource.
McGeorge School of Law
3285 5th Ave, Classroom C
Sacramento, CA 95817
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.
A written transcript of a 1992 interview with six major figures
in the early development of California water whose work ranged
from Shasta Dam to the Imperial Valley as they shaped the state’s
water story beginning in the 1920s.
The Reclamation Act of 1902, which could arguably be described as
a progression of the credo, Manifest Destiny, transformed the
West. This issue of Western Water provides a glimpse of the past
100 years of the Reclamation Act, from the early visionaries who
sought to turn the arid West into productive farmland, to the
modern day task of providing a limited amount of water to homes,
farms and the environment. Included are discussions of various
Bureau projects and what the next century may bring in terms of
challenges and success.
This issue of Western Water examines the presence of mercury in
the environment and the challenge of limiting the threat posed to
human health and wildlife. In addition to outlining the extent of
the problem and its resistance to conventional pollution
remedies, the article presents a glimpse of some possible courses
of action for what promises to be a long-term problem.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the area
of origin laws, what they mean to those who claim their
protections and the possible implications of the Tehama Colusa
Canal Authority’s lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation.
This printed issue of Western Water discusses several
flood-related issues, including the proposed Central Valley Flood
Protection Plan, the FEMA remapping process and the dispute
between the state and the Corps regarding the levee vegetation
policy.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This issue updates progress on crafting and implementing
California’s 4.4 plan to reduce its use of Colorado River water
by 800,000 acre-feet. The state has used as much as 5.2 million
acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, but under pressure
from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and the other six states
that share this resource, California’s Colorado River parties
have been trying to close the gap between demand and supply.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies.
In 1997, the Foundation sponsored a three-day, invitation-only
symposium at Bishop’s Lodge, New Mexico, site of the 1922
Colorado River Compact signing, to discuss the historical
implications of that agreement, current Colorado River issues and
future challenges. The 204-page proceedings features the panel
discussions and presentations on such issues as the Law of the
River, water marketing and environmental restoration.
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 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.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
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.
A 30-minute version of the 2005 PBS documentary Water on the
Edge. This video is ideal for showing at community forums and
speaking engagements to help the public understand the complex
issues surrounding the New River.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
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.
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.
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this 24×36
inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson River, and
its link to the Truckee River. The map includes Lahontan Dam and
Reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming areas in the basin.
Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and geography, the
Newlands Project, land and water use within the basin and
wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan Basin
Area Office.
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.
As the state’s population continues to grow and traditional water
supplies grow tighter, there is increased interest in reusing
treated wastewater for a variety of activities, including
irrigation of crops, parks and golf courses, groundwater recharge
and industrial uses.
The 20-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Marketing provides
background information on water rights, types of transfers and
critical policy issues surrounding this topic. First published in
1996, the 2005 version offers expanded information on
groundwater banking and conjunctive use, Colorado River
transfers and the role of private companies in California’s
developing water market.
Order in bulk (25 or more copies of the same guide) for a reduced
fee. Contact the Foundation, 916-444-6240, for details.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Nevada Water provides an
overview of the history of water development and use in Nevada.
It includes sections on Nevada’s water rights laws, the history
of the Truckee and Carson rivers, water supplies for the Las
Vegas area, groundwater, water quality, environmental issues and
today’s water supply challenges.
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 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 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.
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).
In the Northern California community of Redding, he was a justice
of peace, a renowned water rights attorney in the law firm of
Carr and Kennedy and helped form the Anderson-Cottonwood
Irrigation District. He was often in the nation’s Capitol in
Washington, D.C., advocating for funds from Congress to get this
visionary project built for the benefit of all of California. In
his honor, the Judge Francis Carr Powerplant was named after him.
William R. “Bill” Gianelli
(1919-2020) was a civil engineer who served not only as
director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR)
from 1967-1973 during Gov. Ronald Reagan’s administration, but
worked as a civil servant under Govs. Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight
and Edmund G. “Pat”
Brown during all phases of the California State Water Project (SWP):
its design, planning and construction.
William Hammond Hall (1846-1934) is credited with the first
proposal of an integrated flood control system with levees, weirs
and bypass channels for the Sacramento Valley after his
appointment as the first California state engineer.
William Mulholland (1855-1935), an immigrant from Ireland, is
infamous in the history of California water and the state’s water
wars for both his far-sightedness and no-holds-barred approach to
delivering a controversial water supply to Southern California.
He is a love-hate character with a story that has many tellings,
including in the 1974 fictional movie, Chinatown.
William E. “Bill” Warne (1905-1996) had a career for the record
books that prominently featured water issues at state, federal
and international levels.
He served under Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown as the second
director of the state Department of Water Resources (DWR) from
1961-1967 along with also being the first Resources Agency
secretary from 1961-1963 at the beginning of the construction of
the California State
Water Project.
Thomas J. “Tom” Graff (1944-2009) opened up the California office
of the Environmental Defense Fund in 1971 and was its regional
director for more than 35 years.
Throughout his life, he was committed to the environment and the
mentorship of environmental leaders. He was revered as an
influential environmental lawyer on the state and federal water
circuits and public forums and used strategic acumen to build
partnerships to solve water problems with long-lasting solutions.
Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt (1858-1919) was the 26th president of
the United States who established the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
and created the U.S. Forest Service.
During his term of office from 1901-1909, he is credited for his
efforts on conservation, increasing the number of national
forests, protecting land for the public and promoting irrigation
projects. For Roosevelt, water was instrumental to developing the
Western states.
Stephen K. Hall (1951-2010) led the Association of California
Water Agencies (ACWA) as its executive director from 1993 until
retiring in 2007 from the effects of Amyotrophic Lateral
Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Hall continued to stay
current on water issues and to advocate for legislation on ALS at
the state Capitol until he died.
His motto became “As much as I can for as long as I can.”
Ron Stork, the award-winning policy director of the Friends of
the River, joined the statewide California river conservation
group in 1987 as its associate conservation director. Previously
he was executive director of the Merced Canyon Committee, where
he directed the successful effort to obtain the National Wild and
Scenic River designation for the Merced River.
Robert “Bob” M. Hagan, Ph.D. (1917-2002), internationally
renowned for his expertise in the relationships between plants,
water, soil and water use efficiency — specifically in the area
of agricultural water use — was a professor of water science, an
irrigationist in the California Agricultural Experiment Station
and a statewide extension specialist in the California
Agricultural Extension Service during a 50-year career with the
University of California, Davis.
Ronald B. Robie, an associate justice on the California Court of
Appeal, Third Appellate District, has made his mark on state
water issues during a career in public service that has spanned
all three branches of government.
Robert A. Skinner (1895-1986) was the Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California general manager from 1962-1967. An
engineer, he was instrumental in negotiating the district’s
contract with the California Department of Water Resources for
delivery of water from Northern California. Both Lake Skinner and
a treatment plant in southwestern Riverside County were named in
his honor.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) authored Silent Spring, a book
published in 1962 about the impacts of pesticides on
the ecosystem and credited with beginning the modern
environmental movement.
Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked at the U.S. Bureau
of Fisheries, renamed the Fish and Wildlife Service, from
1935-1952 as a biologist and then editor-in-chief of
publications.
Marc Reisner (1948-2000), an environmental writer who became a
celebrity in the water world, was the author of Cadillac Desert:
The American West and Its Disappearing Water (1986), a
best-seller about Western water history and politics and a
full-blown critique of 20th century water development, especially
in California and the West. “Based on 10 years of research,
Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, provocative
history of the creation of an Eden — an Eden that may be only a
mirage,” according to the book’s back flap.
Lester A. Snow, the mastermind behind
countless water resources management projects, has been involved
in water issues in two states, both the public and private
sectors and on regional, state and federal levels of government.
In a timeline of his career, Snow served from 1988-1995 as the
general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority after
leaving the Arizona Department of Water Resources. From
1995-1999, he was the executive director of the CALFED Bay-Delta
Program, which included a team of both federal and state
agencies.
Julian B. Hinds (1881-1977) was Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California’s general manager and chief engineer from
1941-1951, but began work on the Colorado River Aqueduct in 1929
soon after the district was organized.
John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was historic and heroic for being
first to lead an expedition down the Colorado River in 1869. A major
who lost an arm in the Civil War Battle of Shiloh, he was an
explorer, geologist, geographer and ethnologist.
John R. Teerink (1921-1992) was the director of the California
Department of Water Resources (DWR) from 1973-1975 during
Governor Ronald Reagan’s administration.He had various lead roles
in the implementation of the State Water Project during his
29-year career at DWR. He progressed through the ranks as junior
engineer, assistant chief engineer and then deputy director until
his appointment to head the department.
John Muir (1838-1914) was a famous
and influential naturalist and conservationist who founded the
Sierra Club in 1892 and was its president until he died.
Throughout his life, this man from Scotland was also a farmer,
inventor, sheepherder, explorer and writer.
Joan Didion is a native California author and playwright whose
famous writings have featured California water issues.
Born and reared in Sacramento, she’s written extensively and
personally about her feelings on the subject of water. In her
memoir, Where I Was From, she tells not only the story about her
pioneering family’s roots in the Sacramento area but also of the
seasonal flooding, the water politics and controversies, and the
California State Water Project (SWP) and federal Central Valley
Project (CVP).
Jean Auer (1937-2005) was the first woman to serve on the
California State Water Resources Control Board and a pioneer for
women aspiring to be leaders in the water world.
She is described as a “woman of great spirit who made large
contributions to improve the waters of California.” She was
appointed as the State Water Board’s public member by
then-Governor Ronald Reagan and served from 1972-1977 during a
time period that included the passage of the federal Clean Water
Act. She became part of the growing movement for water quality
regulations to stop water pollution.
Ira J. “Jack” Chrisman (1910-1988) became a well-known force in
California’s water history beginning back in 1955 after his
family home was flooded in the San Joaquin Valley town of
Visalia.
Hiram W. Wadsworth (1862-1939) is known as the father of
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. As the mayor
of Pasadena, he called for a regional partnership of
municipalities to bring water to Southern California. After
initiating the Colorado River Aqueduct Association and being
elected its president, he directed the campaign from 1924-1929
that led to the establishment of the district. The pumping plant
at Diamond Valley Lake, located 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles
in Riverside County, was named the Hiram W. Wadsworth
Pumping/Hydro-generating Facility in his honor.
Harvey O. Banks (1910-1996), a lifelong civil engineer, played an
integral role in the development of water projects in California.
He became the first director of the state Department of Water
Resources, appointed by Governor Goodwin J. Knight on July 5,
1956 — the date the department was officially established. He
continued as director under Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.
During Banks’ tenure as director from 1956-1961, he was key in
the planning and the initial construction of the California State
Water Project (SWP).
Gordon Cologne served for 10 years in the California Legislature
during the 1960s and early 1970s while the California State Water
Project was being built.
His interest in water issues began from his early life in the
Coachella Valley desert. An attorney, he worked in both the
public sector in Washington, D.C, and then in private practice in
California. He also served his local community as a member of the
city of Indio City Council, including as mayor, before his
decision to run for election to fill an open seat in the
Assembly.
Elwood Mead (1858-1936) was the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation during the era of the development of Hoover Dam on
the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada, Grand Coulee Dam
in Washington and Owyhee Dam in Oregon, among other large water
projects.
Edward Hyatt Jr. (1888-1954) was the state engineer of California
from 1927-1950. In a 1928 report he wrote titled “Water is the
Life Blood of California — The Division of Engineering and
Irrigation of the State Department of Public Works; What it Does
and How it Operates,” he called the department the “building
organization of California’s state government” and described
successes, challenges and responsibilities of his position.
Don McCrea was one of the founding members of the Water Education
Foundation and signed its original Articles of Incorporation in
1977.
His background was in power and energy issues, including
hydrology and the state’s hydrologic system, from a career at the
Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco. He was involved
in the development of the State Water Project as a proponent of
the value of hydroelectricity.
David N. Kennedy (1936-2007) was at the helm as the director of
the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) for 15 years,
the longest serving director to date, and a champion of the State
Water Project (SWP).
David A. Gaines (1947-1988) is known for founding the Mono Lake
Committee in 1978 with the goal of preserving its ecosystem and
leading a grassroots effort to “Save Mono Lake.” The result would
be an environmental cause célèbre. As a synopsis of the Mono Lake
litigation, in 1979 a lawsuit was filed against the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power (DWP) to stop diversions to
Southern California — citing the public trust values at Mono
Lake.
Clair A. Hill (1909-1998), a self-made engineer nicknamed
“California’s Mr. Water,” built from the ground up an engineering
firm that would merge to form the global consulting firm of CH2M
HILL.
In 1938 in his hometown of Redding along the Upper Sacramento
River in Northern California, he founded Clair A. Hill &
Associates. Before merging with CH2M in 1971, the two firms had
collaborated on many projects together, including the Lake Tahoe
Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility — the first of its kind in
the world.
Carley V. Porter (1906-1972) was the
longtime chairman of the California Legislature’s Assembly
Committee on Water who has two historical and important water
laws named after him. He was a Democrat from Compton in Los
Angeles County and a teacher before being elected to the
Assembly.
C.W. “Bill” Jones (1918-2003) was an historical water figure
known for his pioneering efforts in bringing water deliveries to
the agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley.
Bernice Frederic “B.F.” “Bernie” Sisk (1910-1995) represented the
San Joaquin Valley in the U.S. Congress for nearly a quarter of a
century from 1955-1978.
Arthur D. Edmonston directed the early planning
of the Central Valley Project, State Water Project and State
Water Plan.
He served as California state engineer and chief of the Division
of Water Resources (predecessor to the Department of Water
Resources) from 1950-1955, a time of rapid population,
agricultural and industry growth California. Water shortages were
common, and groundwater supplies were being overdrafted.
Anne J. Schneider (1947-2010) is
acknowledged as one of the first women to become well-known and
well-respected in the field of California and Western water law.
“Anne was an amazing person — an accomplished college athlete,
mountain climber, skier, marathon runner, velodrome and
long-distance cyclist; a devoted mother; a dedicated
conservationist,” said Justice Ronald B. Robie in the Inaugural
Anne J. Schneider Memorial Lecture in May 2012.
Alex Hildebrand (1913-2012) had an understanding and knowledge of
California’s South Delta and San Joaquin River bar none. After
retiring early from a career as an engineer for Standard Oil of
California, he moved his family to the San Joaquin Valley where
he farmed for nearly 50 years while active in water issues and as
an advocate for the area.
Adolph Moskovitz (1923-1996) is remembered as one of the leading
water resources attorneys in the country and has been described
as “brilliant” by his many peers in the legal profession.
We were pleased to receive the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s
highest award in the area of water conservation recently. The
Foundation was recognized for being a long-term industry leader
for conservation in California and the West. With receipt of this
award and the contents of this latest Western Water, I’ve been
reflecting on the more than 17 years I have spent at the
Foundation. As Sue McClurg chronicles in her article, a series of
talented people have worked both as staff and volunteers through
our 20 years. Certainly the Foundation owes much of its success
to these people.
