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.
In a Sacramento office building, university students carefully
scan pieces of paper that underpin California’s most
contentious and valuable water disputes. One by one, they’re
bringing pieces of history into the digital era, some a century
old and thin as onion skin. The student workers are beginning
to digitize the state’s water rights records, part of a project
launched by the state’s water regulator earlier this year. It
may seem simple, but scanning two million musty pages is part
of a $60 million project that could take years. The massive
undertaking will unmask the notoriously opaque world of
California water. Right now, it’s practically impossible to
know who has the right to use water, how much they’re taking
and from what river or stream at any given time in the state.
The states that use the Colorado River have put out their
latest proposals on how to manage the river’s shrinking amount
of water, and the two plans reveal that there are still big
differences in how upstream and downstream states want to divvy
up future cuts to their water consumption. While state water
negotiators say they’re committed to figuring out how they can
compromise in the age of climate change when there is less
water available to the 40 million people who rely on it, the
Southern Ute tribal government in southwestern Colorado doesn’t
believe either proposal addresses their concerns or helps them
secure their water future.
Can Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado agree to a new
apportionment of the Rio Grande’s waters without the U.S.
government’s approval? The Supreme Court of the United States
is set to hear a case next week that may affect access to water
for millions of Americans — and set a precedent that could
impact millions more, as increased usage and climate change
further strain supply of the precious resource. On March 20,
the Court will consider Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, a
tangled case involving water rights to the Rio Grande, a
1,896-mile river that begins at the base of the San Juan
Mountains and runs into the Gulf of Mexico. The case, which has
been in litigation for more than a decade, centers around a
1939 compact between the three states over how to apportion the
river’s waters.
The Gila River Indian Community says it does not support a
three-state proposal for managing the Colorado River’s
shrinking supply in the future. The community, which is located
in Arizona, is instead working with the federal government to
develop its own proposal for water sharing. The tribe is among
the most prominent of the 30 federally-recognized tribes that
use the Colorado River. In recent years, it has signed
high-profile deals with the federal government to receive big
payments in exchange for water conservation. Those deals were
celebrated by Arizona’s top water officials. But now, it is
diverging from states in the river’s Lower Basin — Arizona,
California and Nevada. Stephen Roe Lewis, The Gila River Indian
Community’s Governor, announced his tribe’s disapproval of the
Lower Basin proposal at a water conference in Tucson, Ariz.,
while speaking to a room of policy experts and water
scientists.
Across the parched West, there are signs the region’s
decades-long population and housing boom is confronting the
realities of dwindling water supplies. These have come in
recent months from court rulings and executive edicts alike, as
states crack down on the potential for new users to draw from
already oversubscribed aquifers and surface waters. The
skeleton of a would-be subdivision outside Las Vegas
illustrates the coming constraints, stymied by a lack of water
to support the new community. Water shortages also forced
difficult decisions in other places, such as new restrictions
in the Phoenix suburbs and a Utah town that halted all new
construction for more than two years until it could secure a
new well.
Monday marked a key cutoff time by which Colorado River states
had been tasked with proposing a consensus-based plant for
long-term water conservation in the overtaxed system. But
with the arrival of that deadline, set by the Department of the
Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, no such agreement was on the
table. Instead, the river system’s two main contingents — the
Upper and Lower basins — submitted their own competing
plans. The proposals pertained to an upcoming update of
the rules — known as the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower
Basin Shortages — that govern where, when and how much the
seven basin states must conserve water from the 1,450-mile
river.
With climate change compounding the strains on the Colorado
River, seven Western states are starting to consider long-term
plans for reducing water use to prevent the river’s reservoirs
from reaching critically low levels in the years to come. But
negotiations among representatives of the states have so far
failed to resolve disagreements. And now, two groups of states
are proposing competing plans for addressing the river’s
chronic gap between supply and demand. In one camp, the three
states in the river’s lower basin — California, Arizona and
Nevada — say their approach would share the largest-ever water
reductions throughout the Colorado River Basin to ensure
long-term sustainability.
The seven U.S. states that draw water from the Colorado
River basin are suggesting new ways to determine how the
increasingly scarce resource is divvied up when the river can’t
provide what it historically promised. The Upper Basin and
the Lower Basin states, as neighbors, don’t agree on the
approach. Under a proposal released Wednesday by Arizona,
California and Nevada, the water level at Lake Mead — one of
the two largest of the Colorado River reservoirs — no longer
would determine the extent of water cuts like it currently
does. The three Lower Basin states also want what they say is a
more equitable way of distributing cuts that would be a 50-50
split between the basins once a threshold is hit.
… On Monday, the Upper Colorado River Commission — an
interstate agency composed of one federal representative and
commissioners from the Upper Colorado River Basin states of
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — took a step toward
greater collaboration between the states and the
tribes. The commission unanimously approved
a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with six Colorado
River tribes: the Jicarilla Apache Nation, Navajo Nation, Ute
Mountain Ute Indian Tribe, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Ute
Indian Tribe and the Shivwits Band of Paiutes. The
agreement states that the Upper Colorado River Commission and
the six tribes will meet about every two months to discuss
shared interests on the Colorado River. Other tribes are
welcome to join the agreement. The MOU does not give the
tribes a permanent seat on the Upper Colorado River Commission,
like the states and federal government.
One the most closely watched water bills in the Wyoming
Legislature this session moved decisively through committee
this week in a sign of hope for some of the state’s
water-dependent industries. The bill, SF 66, seeks to address
heightened anxiety around the Colorado River, whose diminishing
flows have set off a scramble by its seven user states to draft
new rules and contingency plans ahead of a 2026 deadline from
the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency charged with overseeing
water management in the west. In the meantime, the amendments
aim to provide a sense of security to junior water rights
entities who depend on water transfers, including
municipalities, trona mine operators and oil refineries in the
Green River Basin.
The Navajo Nation is nearing completion of a settlement of
water rights claims in Arizona, ending decades of negotiations
and giving hope for thousands of people who have long gone
without running water. For the past 60 years, Navajo leaders
have worked to settle water claims in Arizona. The aim of the
Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement
is to affirm and quantify the nation’s rights to water in the
state and to secure funding to build much needed water delivery
infrastructure to homes on the Navajo Nation, according to a
summary of the agreement. … The U.S. Supreme Court held
last summer that the United States did not have an
affirmative treaty or trust obligation to identify and
account for Navajo Nation water rights on the Colorado River.
Curley said that ruling was a pivotal moment that led the
Navajo Nation and its water rights negotiation team to focus on
completing on the settlement.
A Native American tribe with one of the largest outstanding
claims to water in the Colorado River basin is closing in on a
settlement with more than a dozen parties, putting it on a path
to piping water to tens of thousands of tribal members in
Arizona who still live without it. Negotiating terms outlined
late Wednesday include water rights not only for the Navajo
Nation but the neighboring Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute
tribes in the northeastern corner of the state. The water would
come from a mix of sources: the Colorado River that serves
seven western states, the Little Colorado River, and aquifers
and washes on tribal lands. The agreement is decades in the
making and would allow the tribes to avoid further litigation
and court proceedings, which have been costly.
Negotiations among the seven states that share the
drought-stricken Colorado River have stalled ahead of a March
target date to propose new operating plans for the waterway, as
officials split over which states should absorb the brunt of
cuts triggered by the region’s ongoing drought. The states —
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the Upper Basin and
Arizona, California and Nevada in the Lower Basin — are now
expected to submit separate plans to the Biden administration
early next month, rather than a single cohesive plan, according
to representatives of states from both regions. “If there
is interest in getting to a seven-state consensus compromise,
all seven states have to actually compromise and recognize this
is a massive problem that needs solving, not a party primary or
campaign rally,” J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board
of California, told E&E News.
California and Chile share a history of water allocation with
little regard for instream uses of water, especially
environmental uses. In California, for example, many water
rights were obtained with no consideration of the environmental
impacts of the water use, often because few environmental laws
existed or were enforced when users obtained the rights.
Similarly, in Chile, environmental considerations in the
granting and exercise of water rights weren’t expressly
included in the Water Code until 2005. More broadly, both
places traditionally required diversion and use as key elements
of water rights, making it difficult or impossible to use water
rights to keep water instream. As a result, both Chile and
California struggle to protect the minimum instream flows
needed for ecosystems and other instream uses.
Quechan tribal members Elan and Donald Medart were excited for
the opportunity to see some of their tribe’s most significant
lands along Haquita — known to the greater world as the
Colorado River — from the air. The day was especially
noteworthy for Elan, who’s 14, because it was his first-ever
flight over the rugged peaks and washes of Indian Pass, about
30 miles north of here. The six-passenger Cessna took load
after load of tribal members and other interested people over
the Colorado River Valley in Imperial County, California, to
see Indian Pass, Picacho Peak and the nearby Picacho Peak
Wilderness, the Colorado, and glimpses of trails, sleeping and
prayer circles and an occasional geoglyph that hasn’t yet been
ground to death under the wheels of ATVs and RVs.
A private equity farming giant with more than 1,500 acres of
land in Fresno and Tulare counties and 8,600 acres statewide
declared bankruptcy Monday. Even with “extremely favorable
water rights and competitive water costs,” Redwood City-based
Trinitas Partners could not keep up with high borrowing costs
and consistently low almond prices, according to bankruptcy
filings. The firm owes $190 million in secured and unsecured
debt. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the
Northern District of California. … Trinitas Partners
began buying land in the Central Valley in 2015. It focused on
land with superior water rights and young almonds, making the
orchards more valuable for long-term growth, according to court
filings.
According to a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as the
Winters Doctrine, Native American reservations are entitled to
enough water to meet their tribe’s needs. That doctrine was
recently invoked during a push by tribes to restore the Klamath
River, which flows through Oregon and California. The goal, in
part, is to restore the spawning grounds for fish for the first
time in more than 100 years. Indigenous Affairs Reporter Debra
Krol from the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network,
joins The Excerpt to discuss the ongoing battle over Indigenous
water rights.
The State Water Resources Control Board handed environmental
and fishing groups a surprise loss Friday when it denied their
petition for permanent instream flow restrictions on the
drought-stricken Shasta River in Northern California. The
denial came as a surprise because both the water agency and
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom have said they want to prioritize
making some emergency drought rules for rivers permanent this
year in order to better insulate the state from recurring
drought. The board already extended the emergency limits it put
on the Scott and Shasta rivers during the drought in a December
decision, but the temporary rules run out in February 2025.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently awarded $20.9
million for six projects along the Colorado River aimed at
reducing the costly amount of salt in its water. Five of the
projects are in Colorado. In a Feb. 12 press release, the BLM
estimated economic damages currently caused by excess salinity
in the Colorado River water at about $332 million per year.
That economic damage mostly comes from the inability to plant
certain types of crops which need the river’s water for
irrigation, as well as costs associated with treating the
river’s water for residential and commercial usage, according
to a BLM report released six years ago. ”This funding will
prevent approximately 11,661 tons of salt each year from
entering the Colorado River,” the BLM announced in its press
release.
The seven Colorado River states face a quickly approaching
deadline to present a unified plan for how to manage the
drying river that provides water for 40 million people
across the West. But major disagreements remain ahead of next
month’s target — and the Upper Basin states, including
Colorado, say they may submit their own proposal to the federal
government instead. … The Upper Basin states are
creating their own proposal to present to federal officials in
case a seven-state consensus is not reached in time, according
to the basin’s statement.
In Colorado, the water that comes from our taps and keeps our
fields growing can be in limited supply. That means heated
debates over water – who gets to use it and how money should be
spent to keep it flowing – are constant. That is evident right
now, after a Colorado water agency announced plans to buy
nearly $100 million of water from the Colorado River, even
without plans to change how that water is used. “The purchase
represents the culmination of a decades-long effort to keep
Shoshone’s water on the west side of Colorado’s mountains,
settling the region’s long-held anxieties over competition with
the water needs of the Front Range, where fast-growing cities
and suburbs around Denver need more water to keep pace with
development,” explained KUNC reporter Alex Hager. He joined In
The NoCo host Erin O’Toole to tell us more.
A water bill that its sponsor says is “generational” is
beginning to advance on Utah’s Capitol Hill. Senate Bill 211,
being run by Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, had
its first hearing before the Senate Natural Resources Committee
on Monday. … The bill proposes to create a special water
commission and appoint a water commissioner to engage in
creative ways to bring more water into the state. It may not be
a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Salt Lake (as
lawmakers considered in the past) but other alternatives, like
exchanges for water rights. … “Israel gets about 80% of their
water from desalination,” Sen. Adams said. “The idea was not to
bring a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean, but help California
build a desalination plant but we can take some of their water
rights and use it in Utah.”
Will seven Western states be able to rapidly craft a voluntary
plan to keep the Colorado River afloat for decades to come?
It’s increasingly unclear, as negotiations have foundered
between two sides, according to key players. There are
sharp differences between northern and southern states’
proposals. … For now, negotiations between the two sides
have ground to a halt, even as a deadline looms to produce a
draft agreement by next month. The last time representatives
from all seven states met face to face was in early January.
Nevada state courts have long grappled with settling water
conflicts and defining the terms upon which water is managed in
the nation’s driest state. Who gets priority to water when
there is a conflict or in times of scarcity? What is the
public’s interest in water? What is the state’s responsibility
in protecting water for the public alongside those with water
rights? These are all questions the court has had to grapple
with. … In January, the Supreme Court’s water commission
began a three-year pilot program that requires district
court judges, certified as specialty water law judges, to
hear water cases.
… Keeping [Lake] Powell full enough to generate hydropower is
a strategy the U.S. Department of Interior signaled it will
prioritize — even if it comes at the expense of other natural,
recreational and cultural assets on the Colorado River — until
at least the end of 2026. That’s when the federal government
and seven states that rely on the river will have to re-imagine
what to do in a drier, hotter and less water-secure future. The
river remains overallocated and has lost about a third of its
flow in recent years. For now, motorized boaters who love
Lake Powell are breathing a sigh of relief that the federal
government intends to keep the reservoir full enough that at
least some of the marinas remain open.
On a party-line vote, an Arizona Senate Committee approved a
bill Wednesday to establish a rural groundwater management
setup that’s favored by many farming interest groups but
opposed by many environmentalists and some rural community
leaders. The bill, introduced by Buckeye Republican Sen. Sine
Kerr, would establish a complex legal and governmental process
to designate groundwater basin management areas with the goal
of reducing groundwater depletion while maintaining the area’s
economy and agricultural base. The Republican-led Senate
Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee voted 4-3 to
support the measure. It would allow some mandatory conservation
measures while still protecting existing farmers’ groundwater
rights, as certified by the Arizona Department of Water
Resources. It would also appropriate $40 million to ADWR to pay
for unspecified measures for farmers to achieve better water
conservation.
While the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) is working hard to
ensure the reliability of our water supply, the district is
facing potential state regulations that would have dire
negative impacts for agriculture, our community, fire
protection, wildlife and aquatic habitat. State recommended
regulations would affect NID operations and service, decreasing
water supply and raising the cost of water to all customers if
implemented. The California State Water Resources Control Board
(State Water Board) is working to update an action plan to
improve water quality and save imperiled fish populations,
including salmon and delta smelt, in the San Francisco
Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Bay-Delta). … If
adopted, this alternative would effectively negate NID’s
long-standing water rights to the Yuba and Bear River systems.
A cascading effect would ensure a significant decrease in the
amount of water NID has available for its customers while
negatively impacting all aspects of the district’s operational
and financial viability.
-Written by Rich Johansen, president of the
Nevada Irrigation District.
… In California, just figuring out who holds a water right
requires a trip to a downtown Sacramento storage room crammed
with millions of paper and microfilmed records dating to the
mid-1800s. Even the state’s water rights enforcers struggle to
determine who is using what. … Come next year, however,
the board expects to have all records electronically accessible
to the public. Officials recently started scanning records tied
to an estimated 45,000 water rights into an online database.
They’re also designing a system that will give real-time data
on how much water is being diverted from rivers and streams
across the state. … Proponents say the information
technology upgrade will help the state and water users better
manage droughts, establish robust water trading markets and
ensure water for fish and the environment.
For a state that prides itself on
technological innovation, California is surprisingly antiquated
when it comes to accessing fundamental facts about its most
critical natural resource – water.
Most anywhere else in the West, basic water rights information
such as who is using how much water, for what purpose, when, and
where can be pulled up on a laptop or smartphone.
The climate-driven shrinking of the
Colorado River is expanding the influence of Native American
tribes over how the river’s flows are divided among cities, farms
and reservations across the Southwest.
The tribes are seeing the value of their largely unused river
water entitlements rise as the Colorado dwindles, and they are
gaining seats they’ve never had at the water bargaining table as
government agencies try to redress a legacy of exclusion.
Below-average precipitation and snowpack during 2020-22 and
depleted surface and groundwater supplies pushed California
into a drought emergency that brought curtailment orders and
calls for modernizing water rights. At the Water Education
Foundation annual water summit last week in Sacramento,
Eric Oppenheimer, chief deputy director of the California State
Water Resources Control Board, discussed what he described as
the state’s “antiquated” water rights system. He spoke before
some 150 water managers, government officials, farmers,
environmentalists and others as part of the event where
interests come together to collaborate on some of the state’s
most challenging water issues.
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
This 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.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
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.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
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
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.
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.
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
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 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
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 Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
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 based on
ownership of land bordering a waterway. The riparian
property owner has 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.