California hosts a substantial, complicated water rights system
that allocates water across the state. In addition to a dual
system — riparian and appropriate rights — today state courts
are recognizing expanded public trust values in determining
how the state’s water resources should be best used.
Water rights are governed mostly by state law. Water quality
issues, which may affect allocation, are regulated separately by
both federal and state laws. Water rights can be quite
contentious.
A lawsuit seeking to stop the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from
releasing water from Oregon’s Lake Klamath for the benefit of
Native American tribes in California and protected coho salmon
can remain in federal court, a split Ninth Circuit panel said
Monday. In a 2-1 opinion, the three-judge panel rejected the
Klamath Irrigation District’s argument that an Oregon state
court has the exclusive right to decide the issue as part of
the Klamath Basin Adjudication that is pending before it. The
two-judge said the Bureau of Reclamation’s obligations under
the Endangered Species Act and the tribes’ senior rights had
not been part of the state court’s adjudication of water
rights.
Who gets California’s water, and how much, is a high-stakes
affair, and it’s based on a system of water rights born long
ago, when the West was wild — and often unfair. The
first-come, first-served pecking order established during
European settlement gave the new and dominant landowners first
dibs on pumping rivers and creeks. The beneficiaries, which
include the likes of San Francisco and its pristine supplies in
Yosemite, continue to enjoy tremendous advantage, consuming
water with little constraint while others sometimes go without.
Amid growing water shortages and focus on equity, the system
has begun drawing increased scrutiny. Last week the state
Legislature weighed in with the unusual step of advancing
measures that would help regulators rein in the most privileged
and profligate water users.
California’s complex system of water rights took shape starting
in the mid-1800s, when settlers saw the state’s water as
abundant and free for the taking — a time when a Gold Rush
prospector could stake claim to river flows simply by nailing a
notice to a tree. Today, California’s oldest and most senior
water rights — called riparian and pre-1914 rights — have been
passed along to thousands of agricultural landowners,
irrigation districts and urban water suppliers that claim
control of roughly one-third of the water that is diverted from
the state’s rivers and streams. … Legal experts say the
way the state manages this antiquated system is in dire need of
reform. … Three bills gaining momentum in the
Legislature are seeking to change that, even as they draw
heated opposition from water agencies and agricultural groups.
After nearly a year of gridlocked negotiations on the future of
the stressed Colorado River, Arizona, California, and Nevada
reached a breakthrough last week, uniting behind a voluntary
proposal to further curtail their water use. Some observers
call the proposal “historic.” But how significant is it? Since
the news broke, others have described the Lower Basin agreement
as overhyped. It’s still just a proposal, and only a short-term
one for managing critically low reservoirs, which threaten
hydropower and water supplies for millions of people.
The San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary
Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan) is currently
undergoing its periodic review of updates and amendments by the
State Water Resources Control Board. Tribal representatives
have requested the incorporation of recognized Tribal
Beneficial Use (TBU) definitions to the Bay-Delta Plan. If
these definitions are incorporated in the Bay-Delta Plan, the
State Water Board must also amend or establish water quality
objectives and implementation programs to achieve and maintain
water quality sufficient for these designated beneficial uses.
… The State Water Board is holding an informational
meeting on June 7, 2023, to discuss the potential addition of
TBUs to the Bay-Delta Plan.
The incredibly wet winter of 2023 has us anticipating an
exciting 5½-foot rise in Mono Lake’s level by fall. That gain
will boost the lake 30% of the way to the mandated healthy
level that will protect the lake, its ecosystem and wildlife,
air quality, cultural resources, and more. But this important
progress toward the long-overdue management level will be lost
if stream diversions by the Los Angeles Department of Water &
Power (DWP) continue unchanged.
Senior water rights holders have arguably the sweetest deal in
California water. They often have ironclad deals and some even
get access to substantial water during the worst of
drought. But three new bills in the state legislature are
taking aim at senior water rights in an attempt to level the
playing field. The bills propose expanding the authority
of the state Water Resources Control Board. Senior water rights
date back to before 1914, when there was no permitting or state
water authority yet. For years, advocacy groups have
decried the water rights system and demanded changes. Some of
those changes could become reality if legislators and the
governor approve the current bills.
Nancy Caywood worries about water constantly. Water – or the
uncertainty of it – has kept the 69-year-old Arizona farmer
awake at night since supplies began dwindling about two decades
ago due to chronic overuse and drought in the American west.
During one particularly low point in late 2021, every field on
the 255-acre family farm was either fallow, shrivelled or
dormant. … [It] is now surrounded by fallow fields,
tumbleweed and solar farms. … About half the irrigated
farmland will be left unplanted in Pinal county this year, and
hundreds of rural jobs have already been lost. Farms are having
to rely almost exclusively on groundwater, further depleting
the aquifers. … The region’s water crisis isn’t new and
cuts were not entirely unexpected, yet most farmers have
continued to farm the same water-guzzling crops using the same
wasteful irrigation techniques …
For the first time in several decades, policy makers in
Sacramento seem poised to actually do something about
California’s dysfunctional water rights systems. There are
three promising policies winding their way through the
Legislature this session. All three bills just made it out of
the committee review process, and are slated to be voted on by
June 2. These incremental changes are a long-overdue start
toward addressing California’s outdated and unjust water rights
system.
The Biden Administration is finalizing agreements to pay an
estimated $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars to prop up the
Colorado River system that provides 40 million people with
water. California desert water districts who are entitled to
the most river water are vying for nearly $900 million of those
funds, according to interviews with key negotiators and funding
announcements to date. In exchange, they would leave nearly 1.4
million acre-feet of water in Lake Mead, one of two massive
reservoirs along the river. That’s almost half of the nearly
trillion gallons that California, Nevada and Arizona officials
on Monday told federal authorities they could collectively
conserve through 2026. That proposal and related
environmental reviews must still be approved by federal
officials.
Monday’s historic Colorado River agreement represents a big win
for California, which only months ago was embroiled in a bitter
feud with Arizona, Nevada and four other Western states over
how to dramatically reduce their use of water supplies in the
shrinking river. The proposition, which came after months of
tense negotiations, would see the three states in the
Colorado’s lower basin conserve about 3 million acre-feet of
water from the river by 2026 — a 14% reduction across the
Southwest that amounts to only about half of what could have
been imposed by the federal government had the states not come
to an accord. … Though some details have yet to be
disclosed, the plan would see the majority of the cuts, about
1.6 million acre-feet, come from California. The remainder
would be split between Arizona and Nevada, with the former
taking the lion’s share of those losses.
Friday, the Bureau of Reclamation announced a boost in water
supply for Klamath Project contractors, and confirmed
higher lake levels for endangered sucker fish as well as
larger releases from Upper Klamath
Lake to benefit salmon. Initial water supply
allocations for Klamath Project contractors along with a
total of $13 million for drought resiliency, ecosystem
enhancement, technical assistance to Tribal
Nations, and groundwater monitoring in the Klamath project
were announced on April 13. Based on improved
spring hydrology and updated forecasts, water supply
allocations from the Upper Klamath Lake increased from 215,000
acre-feet to 260,000 acre-feet. Allocations from Gerber
Reservoir and Clear Lake Reservoir remain at 35,000 acre-feet
from each reservoir.
Dangerous water rights policies are moving through the
California Legislature that put the interests of the few over
the interests of the many. Family farmers like me depend on our
long-held water rights to feed Californians but three bills
seek to upend more than a hundred years of California’s most
fundamental economic foundation over the next few weeks at our
expense. The Cienega Valley, near Hollister, has been a
wine-growing region since the 1850s. My family has deep roots
in the area – we bought our first piece of ground in the 1940s
and the land for Wirz Vineyards, which we still operate, in
1983. -Written by farmer Pat Wirz.
The question of who has the right to use Colorado River water
is determined by law. Allocations are determined according to
priority — but some users have rights to more water because
they have older rights or were awarded higher priority. A
1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision established what became known
as the Winters Doctrine, which recognized that tribes should
have the right to enough water to establish a permanent
homeland within their reservation boundaries. When interpreted
fairly, this means Native tribes have some of the most senior
rights to Colorado River water. In practice, however,
tribes have been granted a mere fraction of these rights.
If Los Angeles is a dream factory, then the High Desert is one
of its abandoned backlots, where old props are warehoused,
waiting to be reused. Five miles east of Pearblossom, in the
southeastern corner of the Antelope Valley, lie the ruins of a
town that wanted to change the world. Drive too fast and you
might miss them. As you slow to a crawl, a couple of chimney
stacks come into view, the final remnants of a large building a
few feet from the road’s shoulder. … Despite the earnest
enthusiasm, the reality is that many of Los Angeles’ utopian
experiments have failed over the years. And although it is
typically argued that communes often collapse due to
infighting, the majority of Californian utopian projects failed
for another reason altogether: disputes over water rights.
A Valley legislator has reworked a bill to stop foreign powers
from owning ag land and having rights to water and food
production. But concessions made to the bill could have little
impact on what lawmakers hope to solve. Senate Bill 224 from
state Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Bakersfield) will ban foreign
governments and state-backed enterprises from owning
agricultural land in California and create an inventory account
of who has water rights on what land. … Saudi
Arabian companies have leased land from the Arizona State Land
Department to grow alfalfa and ship it back home to feed
cattle. In 2016, drought-stricken Saudi Arabia banned alfalfa
farming.
The Colorado River has shaped life as we know it in the
southwestern United States. Its water has allowed for explosive
population growth and agricultural development in some of the
driest parts of the country. But due to overallocation and
climate change, the river is drying up. What that means
for the future of life in the southwestern U.S. depends, in
large part, on how the seven states that rely on the river
renegotiate the 1922 Colorado River Compact, and whether they
finally allow tribal nations a seat at the bargaining table.
… Over the past year, CPR news worked on “Parched,” a podcast
about the Colorado River and some of the brightest and boldest
ideas to save it. We looked at the history of the river, the
1922 compact, and how the river has allowed millions of people
to live in the West.
The land near Yosemite National Park had been tended by Irene
Vasquez’s family for decades. They took care of their seven
acres by setting small fires to thin vegetation and help some
plants to grow. But the steep, chaparral-studded slopes
surrounding the property hadn’t seen fire since Vasquez and
fellow members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation were barred
from practicing cultural burning on a wider scale some 100
years before. When a wildfire swept through in July, the dense
vegetation stoked flames that destroyed Vasquez’s home and
transformed the land into a scarred moonscape. With that, she
became one of many Indigenous residents to watch her ancestral
territory burn in recent years, despite knowing the outcome
could have been different.
With the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake
Mead, drawn down to historic lows, the seven states that use
water from the Colorado River have failed to agree on how to
adapt to its dwindling flow. The impasse pits California
against everyone else. If California’s political leaders had
the political will, they could solve the problem for every
member of the Colorado River Compact by developing
infrastructure to use untapped sources of water. But to do
that, the state Legislature would have to stand up to a
powerful environmentalist lobby that views humans as parasites
and demands rationing as the only acceptable policy. -Written by Edward Ring, founder and president of the
California Policy Center.
Known around the world as an oasis of overindulgence, the
desert city of Las Vegas has emerged as a surprising model of
austerity and prudence when it comes to water. Some 2.3
million people live in the arid Las Vegas Valley, and 40
million tourists are drawn each year to its giant casinos and
hotels. Yet because Nevada is allowed to use less than two
percent of the drought-hit Colorado River’s total water,
it has taken drastic action, from banning lawns to capping the
size of swimming pools. Even as the region’s population
has exploded by more than half in the past two decades, use of
the mighty but dwindling river—by far Las Vegas’s main water
source—has declined by almost a third.
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced
proposed federal baseline water quality standards for
waterbodies on Indian reservations that do not have Clean Water
Act standards, ensuring protections for over half a million
people living on Indian reservations as well as critical
aquatic ecosystems. Fifty years ago, Congress established a
goal in the Clean Water Act (CWA) that waters should support
fishing and swimming wherever attainable. All states and 47
Tribes have established standards consistent with that goal.
However, the majority of U.S. Tribes with Indian reservations
lack such water quality standards. This proposal would extend
the same framework of water quality protection that currently
exists for most other waters of the United States to waters of
over 250 Tribes and is the result of decades of coordination
and partnership with Tribes.
Nevada is the nation’s driest state, and it’s hard not to argue
water is one of its most valuable resources. Water supports
communities and ecosystems in countless ways — every day.
Yet the state agency most responsible for managing water rights
is underfunded. At a meeting Tuesday morning, a bipartisan
group of lawmakers agreed to do something about it. During
the Tuesday hearing on the agency’s budget, Assemblyman Howard
Watts (D-Las Vegas) made a motion to increase the governor’s
recommended budget for the Division of Water Resources by
about $3.1 million over the next two years to address backlogs
and gaps in staffing. The motion was unanimously approved by
the budget committee.
The Imperial Valley has been a senior water rights holder on
the Colorado River for more than 100 years. Since our founding,
our farmers, and the local Imperial Irrigation District, have
long viewed our water seniority as both a property right and a
responsibility. As much as we believe in upholding the rule of
law, we are equally committed to being responsible water users
and doing our part to keep the river healthy enough to meet the
needs of all seven states. Imperial Valley farms and regional
water agencies have implemented a host of conservation measures
throughout the past twenty years, allowing farmers to conserve
large amounts of water while still producing the food our
country depends on. -Written by Stephen Benson, a farmer in
California’s Imperial Valley.
On April 7, 2023, the Third District Court of Appeal filed a
lengthy published opinion – the latest installment in one of
the longer ongoing CEQA battles in recent memory – affirming a
judgment finding an EIR for the Federal relicensing of Oroville
Dam and related hydropower facilities legally adequate.
County of Butte and County of Plumas, et al v. Dept. of Water
Resources (2023) ___ Cal.App.5th ___. … This
case’s remarkably extensive litigation history has resulted in
no fewer than four published decisions, three from the Third
District and one from the California Supreme Court (aka
“SCOCA”). (Of the three Third District opinions, only
this case (Butte IV) is good authority, the other two having
been abrogated by SCOCA’s grants of review.)
Bloomberg recently published a story (“Groundwater Gold Rush”)
reporting on how Wall Street banks, pension funds, and insurers
have been plowing money into buying land in California, reaping
enormous corporate profits by converting rangeland into almonds
and other permanent crops while draining California’s
groundwater and drying up community drinking water wells.
I’d like to tell the rest of the story about how Wall Street
interests formed the Triangle T Water District, because to my
mind the Triangle T Water District highlights the absurdities
and inequities of California water policy – including the fact
that instead of paying to fix the damage they caused through
unsustainable groundwater pumping, state and federal agencies
have provided millions of dollars of taxpayers monies to
subsidize corporate profits.
Vidler Water Company, a tiny outfit…in Carson City…is an
unusual company. It doesn’t actually deliver water to people,
nor does it own any facilities for water treatment or
desalination. Instead, the company functions as a broker for
water rights, finding untapped water in rural communities and
marketing it to developers and corporations in fast-growing
cities and suburbs. For 20 years, the company has bought up
remote farmland and drilled wells in bone-dry valleys to amass
an enormous private water portfolio, then made tens of millions
of dollars by selling that portfolio one piece at a time…The
company was the first in the West to make a business model out
of finding and flipping water.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Arizona
v. Navajo Nation, No. 21-1484, a case consolidated with a
separate petition for certiorari filed by the U.S. Department
of the Interior (DOI), No. 21-51. The consolidated cases
involve a water rights case initially brought by the Navajo
Nation against DOI. The states of Arizona, Nevada, and
Colorado, along with six major municipal and agricultural water
providers with adjudicated rights to the Colorado River in the
Lower Basin, intervened in the case. Those states and public
water providers (Intervenors) filed the petition for certiorari
seeking review of the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit.
The law of the River– the Colorado River, that is – says the
farmers come first. That’s how they see it in California, in
the Imperial Valley, where farming is big business. Take Andrew
Leimgruber of Holtville, Calif. … a fourth-generation
farmer who believes the water rights bestowed unto the farmers
in the 1922 accord between California, and the other six states
– including Nevada – that rely on Colorado River water to live.
That water right established a system putting the farmers at
the top of the list. … Since the 1922 agreement expired
earlier this year, California has refused to sign an agreement
with the six other so-called “basin states.” In fact, the
Bureau of Reclamation has proposed an emergency plan for
dividing Colorado River water unless the states are able to ink
a new deal with each other.
Changes in land use in the Tehachapi Valley are reflected in
water rights ownership as the city of Tehachapi increased its
share of rights as agriculture diminished in importance to the
local economy. Over the course of nearly 50 years, the city
increased its share of Base Water Rights ownership in the
Tehachapi Basin from only 9 percent to about 36 percent. That’s
just one of the stories told by data from the 49th Annual
Watermaster Report. The report — required by the court
adjudication of the Tehachapi Basin in the early 1970s — was
presented to members of the Board of Directors of
Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District at their meeting on
April 19. The board accepted the report with no discussion.
Ships once sailed the broad and wide Ravi. Hindu and Muslim
saints lived by the banks and people still worship at shrines
built in their honor. But the river flowing past Madhu is not
the Ravi of history. It is now a stinking, dirty ribbon flowing
between dusty banks, a dump for industry, agriculture and
sewage, one of the world’s most polluted bodies of water.
Environmentalists and activists alike say a treaty is partly to
blame for killing the Ravi: the Indus Waters Treaty between
Pakistan and India, signed in 1960….one water expert
suggested that a new river water treaty could be negotiated “in
line with emerging trends of sustainability and environmental
protection and restoration of degraded ecosystems.”
A conversation with Dr. Sharon Megdal, University of Arizona,
about water governance in Arizona and California, recharge,
transboundary aquifers, and science diplomacy. Released
April 28, 2023.
With Western water challenges in mind, Lorelei Cloud has a
message for policymakers: There should be room for partnerships
— not fear — when Native American tribes join the negotiating
table. In March, Cloud became one of the newest members of the
state’s top water agency, the Colorado Water Conservation
Board, when Gov. Jared Polis appointed her to represent the San
Miguel-Dolores-San Juan drainage basin in southwestern
Colorado. She’s also the first known tribal member to hold a
seat on the board since its creation in 1937. … Her
appointment comes at a time when tensions over water in the
West are high. The Colorado River Basin, which spans seven
states in the Southwest and portions of northern Mexico, is two
decades into a severe, prolonged drought.
Don’t miss your opportunity to put your feet on the ground
this spring in regions critical to California’s water story.
Plus, you can meet our team in person at our annual open
house to learn more about how we educate and
foster understanding of California’s most precious natural
resource — water! And check out our latest Western Water
news article that explores how states in the upper watershed of
the Colorado River are trying to strengthen their negotiating
position as severe water cuts loom amid shrinking reservoirs
and persistent drought.
California and Arizona are currently fighting each other over
water from the Colorado River. But this isn’t new – it’s
actually been going on for over 100 years. … To some extent,
the crisis can be blamed on climate change. … But that’s
only part of the story: The United States has also been
overusing the Colorado for more than a century thanks to a
byzantine set of flawed laws and lawsuits known as “the law of
the river.” This legal tangle not only has been over-allocating
the river, it also has been driving conflict in the region,
especially between the two biggest users, California and
Arizona, both trying to secure as much water as they can.
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.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
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.
Explore the Sacramento River and its
tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about
the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water
supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
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.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
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
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
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
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
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
Dates are now set for two key
Foundation events to kick off 2020 — our popular Water 101
Workshop, scheduled for Feb. 20 at McGeorge School of Law in
Sacramento, and our Lower Colorado River Tour, which will run
from March 11-13.
In addition, applications will be available by the first week of
October for our 2020 class of Water Leaders, our competitive
yearlong program for early to mid-career up-and-coming water
professionals. To learn more about the program, check out our
Water Leaders program
page.
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
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
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.
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.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
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
For decades, cannabis has been grown
in California – hidden away in forested groves or surreptitiously
harvested under the glare of high-intensity indoor lamps in
suburban tract homes.
In the past 20 years, however, cannabis — known more widely as
marijuana – has been moving from being a criminal activity to
gaining legitimacy as one of the hundreds of cash crops in the
state’s $46 billion-dollar agriculture industry, first legalized
for medicinal purposes and this year for recreational use.
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
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
Does California need to revamp the way in which water is dedicated to the environment to better protect fish and the ecosystem at large? In the hypersensitive world of California water, where differences over who gets what can result in epic legislative and legal battles, the idea sparks a combination of fear, uncertainty and promise.
Saying that the way California manages water for the environment “isn’t working for anyone,” the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shook things up late last year by proposing a redesigned regulatory system featuring what they described as water ecosystem plans and water budgets with allocations set aside for the environment.
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
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Flowing into the heart of the Mojave Desert, the Mojave River
exists mostly underground. Surface channels are usually dry
absent occasional groundwater surfacing and flooding
from extreme weather events like El Niño.
This issue looks at how California’s severe drought has put its
water rights system under scrutiny, raising the question whether
a complete overhaul is necessary to better allocate water use.
California’s severe drought has put its water rights system under
scrutiny, raising the question whether a complete overhaul is
necessary to better allocate water use.
(Read the excerpt below from the July/August 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here
to subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
Introduction
California’s severe drought has put its water rights system under
scrutiny, raising the question whether a complete overhaul is
necessary to better allocate water use.
Before attorneys wrangled in courtrooms over questions of water
rights, people typically took matters into their own hands. If
your neighbor up river was damming water that affected your
supply, it wasn’t unheard of that you would simply sneak up in
the middle of the night and blow up the dam.
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.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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 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 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 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. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
California’s growth has closely paralleled an evolving and
complex system of water rights.
After California became a state in 1850, it followed the practice
of Eastern states and adopted riparian rights – water rights
laws based on ownership of land bordering a waterway. The
riparian property owner—one who lives next to the river—
possesses the right to use that water, a right that cannot be
transferred apart from the land.
Water marketing is the transfer or sale of water or water rights
from one user to another, typically from an agricultural to an
urban water agency, often without investing in new infrastructure
Most exchanges involve a transfer of the resource itself, not a
transfer of the right to use the water.
Reallocating the available water on a supply-and-demand basis is
viewed by proponents as the best financial, political and
environmental means of accommodating an increase in population.
Surface water is water
found in rivers, lakes, streams, and ponds. There are a limited
number of instances in which water in a defined underground
channel is classified as surface water. There are several types
of water rights that apply to surface water.
A landowner whose property borders a river has a right to use
water from that river on his land. This is called riparian
rights.
In addition to riparian
and appropriative
water rights, there are two other types of surface water rights
in California: pueblo rights and federal reserved rights.
Prescriptive Rights are water use rights gained illicitly that
evolve into a title. Typically this occurs with rights to
chronically overdraftedgroundwater basins gained
through trespass or unauthorized use.
In California, the California Supreme Court developed the
doctrine of prescriptive rights in 1949.
Henry J. Vaux Jr. is the professor of resource economics,
emeritus, of the University of California, Berkeley, and the
University of California, Riverside.
Adjudicate -To determine rights by a
lawsuit in court.
Appropriative Right – A right based on physical
control of water and since 1914 in relation to surface water, a state-issued
permit or license for its beneficial use. Appropriative
water rights in California are divided into pre-1914 and
post-1914 rights, depending on whether they were initiated after
the December 19, 1914 effective date of the Water Commission Act
of 1913. Post-1914 rights can only be initiated by filing an
application and obtaining a permit from the state. The program is
now administered by the State Water Resources Control
Board.
Groundwater banking is a process of diverting floodwaters or
other surface water into
an aquifer where it can be
stored until it is needed later. In a twist of fate, the space
made available by emptying some aquifers opened the door for the
banking activities used so extensively today.
When multiple parties withdraw water from the same aquifer,
groundwater pumpers can ask the court to adjudicate, or hear
arguments for and against, to better define the rights that
various entities have to use groundwater resources. This is known
as groundwater adjudication. [See also California
water rights and Groundwater Law.]
Federal reserved rights were created when the United States
reserved land from the public domain for uses such as Indian
reservations, military bases and national parks, forests and
monuments. [See also Pueblo Rights].
This printed issue of Western Water looks at California
groundwater and whether its sustainability can be assured by
local, regional and state management. For more background
information on groundwater please refer to the Foundation’s
Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
groundwater banking, a water management strategy with appreciable
benefits but not without challenges and controversy.
“Let me state, clearly and finally, the Interior Department is
fully and completely committed to the policy that no water which
is needed in the Sacramento Valley will be sent out of it. There
is no intent on the part of the Bureau of Reclamation ever to
divert from the Sacramento Valley a single acre-foot of water
which might be used in the valley now or later.” – J.A. Krug,
Secretary of the Interior, Oct. 12, 1948, speech at Oroville, CA
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 copy of Western Water examines the native salmon and
trout dilemma – the extent of the crisis, its potential impact on
water deliveries and the lengths to which combined efforts can
help restore threatened and endangered species.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Delta through the
many ongoing activities focusing on it, most notably the Delta
Vision process. Many hours of testimony, research, legal
proceedings, public hearings and discussion have occurred and
will continue as the state seeks the ultimate solution to the
problems tied to the Delta.
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.
Priority: the right to precedence over others in obtaining,
buying, or doing something – Webster’s New World College
Dictionary
First in time, first in right has long served as one guiding
principle of water law in California. Simply put, this priority
system generally holds that the first person to claim water and
use it has a right superior to subsequent claims. In times of
shortage, it is the most junior of water rights holders who must
cut back use first.
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.
