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.
Water transfers, trades and sales doubled this year as drought
left San Joaquin Valley farmers scrambling for supplies. …
[Sam Boland-Brien, program manager at the State Water Resources
Control Board’s Division of Water Rights] said he’s seen
about twice the amount of transfers this year compared to an
average water year.
To expedite the delivery of much-needed drinking water to
coastal Mendocino County residents whose wells have gone dry,
the California State Water Resources Control Board has amended
its previous curtailment orders to allow the city of Ukiah to
draw water from the Russian River for emergency supplies.
The longer it takes for two new wells to be dug in Cantua Creek
and El Porvenir in western Fresno County, the deeper in debt
the towns are mired. Now, with the drought, those well projects
are in a race against dropping groundwater levels as farmers,
cut off from surface water supplies, are leaning more heavily
on the aquifer. The well projects started in 2018 and
aren’t scheduled to be completed until sometime next year.
Many rely on the Klamath River Basin on the California border,
especially with the historic drought in the West. Things got
heated this summer between the area’s tribes and ranchers.
… Over the past week, our colleagues over at The
Indicator have been reporting on the historic drought in the
West. They spent some time with ranchers on the front lines,
including the Klamath River Basin. Sally Herships and Ashley
Ahearn report.
With climate change-induced drought causing critical low flows
in the Scott and Shasta Rivers and threatening the survival of
multiple fish species, the State Water Resources Control Board
today approved an emergency curtailment regulation that
includes measures to help maintain minimum flows to protect
fish, ensure supplies for human health and livestock needs, and
encourage voluntary efforts that may be used in lieu of
curtailments.
The Oakdale and South San Joaquin Irrigation Districts have
joined in a lawsuit challenging the State Water Resources
Control Board’s authority to prevent the two water agencies
from diverting and storing Stanislaus River runoff in Donnells,
Beardsley, New Melones and Tulloch Reservoirs. The state water
board, in an emergency drought order issued Aug. 20, declared
that OID, SSJID and 4,500 other water rights holders in
California must immediately stop diverting water due to
unprecedented drought conditions.
For over a century, the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge
has been crucial habitat for birds on their grueling annual
migrations between destinations as distant as Alaska and
Mexico. … For years, the refuge has been last in line for
scarce water, after farmers and endangered fish. As the drought
deepened and wetlands dried out, the lack of water led to
massive outbreaks of avian botulism, killing tens of thousands
of ducks, geese swans and other migratory water birds.
… Last week, that water started flowing into the refuge.
Both the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers shrunk in 2021, another
bad water year in a two-decade megadrought brought on by a
warming Western United States. Demands on the rivers —
from growing cities, agriculture, wildlife and international
treaties — are hitting the reality of a reduced supply of water
in both rivers. In August, federal officials declared the
first-ever shortage on the Colorado River lower basin,
triggering a plan to reduce water usage in several states and
Mexico.
The state’s curtailment of river diversions has drawn lawsuits
from eight irrigation districts in and near Stanislaus County,
along with San Francisco. The three filings claim that
the State Water Resources Control Board exceeded its authority
with the Aug. 20 orders. The plaintiffs also said they did not
get enough chance beforehand to make their cases for continued
diversions.
Some San Joaquin Valley farmers could someday have a new “crop”
to sell — their groundwater. In the face of looming
groundwater pumping restrictions, some groundwater agencies are
looking at internal markets to give growers a way to save water
and still earn a profit.
The city of Ukiah has been relying primarily on groundwater,
recycled water and conservation to get through the drought and
hasn’t been exercising its right to water from the Russian
River, which is experiencing historic low flows. That’s about
to change now that the city has agreed to help the coast
through the drought.
A federal judge has blocked a Northern California county’s ban
on trucks delivering water to Hmong cannabis farmers, saying it
raises “serious questions” about racial discrimination and
leaves the growers without a source of water for basic
sanitation, vegetable gardens and livestock. On Friday, Chief
U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller issued a temporary
injunction against Siskiyou County’s prohibition on trucked-in
water deliveries to Hmong farmers growing marijuana in the
Mount Shasta Vista subdivision in the Big Springs area north of
Weed.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Northern
California county from enforcing water permit laws aimed at
cracking down on illegal marijuana farms, finding the
restrictions might be intended to drive a minority Asian
community out of their homes. … Siskiyou County passed two
ordinances in May 2021 requiring permits to extract and move
groundwater off site and to transport water by truck.
The Bureau of Reclamation began releasing water from the
Klamath River to Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge on
Friday afternoon. Advocates hope it will improve wetland
habitat on the refuge for migrating birds this fall. Last
week, California Waterfowl Association officially purchased
approximately 3,750 acre-feet of water from Agency Ranch in the
Wood River Valley, above Upper Klamath Lake, having announced
the purchase and fundraising effort this spring.
First came the asparagus field. Then came the melons. And now
Joe Del Bosque is considering the unthinkable: tearing out a
sprawling almond orchard bursting with healthy, nut-producing
trees. … Two decades of almost unrelenting growth
vaulted almonds into the upper ranks of California agriculture.
Now, though, the state’s $6 billion-a-year industry is
being humbled by a devastating drought. Farmers have
slowed the pace of new orchard plantings and, in a few cases,
have plowed up trees still capable of bearing almonds.
This morning’s operations missive from the federal-state-local
Middle Rio Grande operations group (by “Middle” here we mean
central New Mexico) notes a release of ~100 cubic feet per
second of imported San Juan-Chama Project water for
environmental flows, an effort to help the struggling Rio
Grande silvery minnow. SJC water is removed from the Colorado
River Basin in the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado,
through a series of tunnels beneath the continental divide, for
use in the Rio Grande Basin.
Record dry conditions once again in the West have led the
federal and state governments to declare water supply
shortages. California’s governor has declared that 50 counties,
in which approximately 41% of the state’s population exists,
are now under a drought state of emergency. This prompted the
adoption of emergency regulations ordering water rights holders
to curtail their water diversions on numerous northern
California rivers.
In January 1900, Nevada Congressman Francis Newlands sponsored
a measure for the federal government to provide water for
irrigation in arid regions throughout the western United
States. The bill ran into resistance from politicians concerned
about giving up state control of water to the federal
government, but ultimately the most contentious issues were
resolved and the law passed.
Last week, the State Water Board finally intervened in the
unincorporated area of Tooleville’s 20-year struggle to obtain
the basic human right to clean drinking water with a letter to
the city of Exeter and the Tooleville Mutual Nonprofit Water
Association, giving the two parties six months to hash out
terms for a voluntary consolidation of Tooleville to Exeter’s
water system or face a mandatory order with much less
cooperation.
Freshly cut off from their chief water supply, a group of
California water agencies in one of the state’s most fertile
farming areas sued on Wednesday to freeze the latest round of
emergency drought rules. In a lawsuit filed in Sacramento
County Superior Court, the suppliers argue they were denied due
process when state regulators ordered thousands of landowners
last month to cease diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta due to drought conditions.
As a headwaters state, Colorado has many interstate compacts
that set rules for how the state must share the rivers that
originate within its borders with downstream states. On several
of these rivers, water users have had to modify their water use
to meet compact requirements. That day may be coming for
the Colorado River. A new report explores what Colorado
River water users can learn from experiences with compact
administration on other rivers.
After the Ukiah City Council held a special meeting Monday,
City of Ukiah officials announced Tuesday that they are
preparing to deliver water to coastal communities such as the
village of Mendocino. In a press release, Deputy City Manger
said that the city staff are “working out planning, contracts
and logistics to begin delivering water supplies by truck to
coastal areas of Mendocino County.”
In California’s water market, buyers and sellers trade water
through short- and long-term leases as well as permanent sales
of their water rights. Trading enhances flexibility in water
management.
They all remember when the San Luis Valley brimmed with water.
South of San Luis, Ronda Lobato raced the rising floodwaters in
San Francisco Creek every spring to fill sandbags that
protected her grandparents’ farm. North of Center, potato
farmer Sheldon Rockey faced so much spring mud that he had to
learn to extract his stuck tractor. Outside Monte Vista,
Tyler Mitchell needed only a hand shovel on the family farm
near Monte Vista to reach shallow underground flows in the
Valley’s once-abundant water table.
The little-known federal Bureau of Reclamation just made
history by ordering some state governments to cut back their
usage of water on the Colorado River due to a historic drought
affecting the river basin. As a proud Coloradan, I was
alarmed to see this unprecedented announcement since it signals
the start of a new era of increased heavy-handedness in the
federal government’s management of state matters. -Written by Laura Williamson, political writer and a
contributor for Young Voices.
As Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge’s last remaining
wetland reduces to a mud puddle, California Waterfowl
Association’s efforts to secure a meager supply of water for
the refuge have cleared a regulatory hurdle. On Thursday, the
Oregon Water Resources Department accepted CWA’s application to
transfer several thousand acre-feet of water from a willing
Wood River Valley rancher to the refuge’s Unit 2.
Water is flowing once again to the Colorado River’s delta
in Mexico, a vast region that was once a natural splendor
before the iconic Western river was dammed and diverted at the
turn of the last century, essentially turning the delta into a
desert. In 2012, the idea emerged that water could be
intentionally sent down the river to inundate the delta
floodplain and regenerate native cottonwood and willow trees,
even in an overallocated river system. Ultimately, dedicated
flows of river water were brokered under cooperative efforts by
the U.S. and Mexican governments.
After twenty years at or above the current level, the San
Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District Board of Directors
voted to lower its property tax rate. Valley District, a
wholesale water provider and State Water Contractor, is
required to set a property tax rate each fiscal year for the
debt service fund on its State Water Contract.
We cannot solve our most pressing environmental and natural
resource management challenges with a better understanding of
the biophysical environment of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
alone – we need social science. To address our natural resource
management challenges, we must build cooperation and
collaboration among stakeholders, find a compromise between
conflicting interests and values, and face tradeoffs that
require hard decisions about whose needs we prioritize.
As discussed in our July 28, 2021, Policy Alert, the State
Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) recently adopted the
Draft Emergency Reporting and Curtailment Regulation
(Regulation), to authorize curtailments of water diversions in
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta). The Regulation
was approved by the Office of Administrative Law and became
effective on August 19, 2021.
A state drought curtailment regulation, adopted last week for
the Klamath River watershed, calls for minimum instream flows
but also incorporates potential voluntary actions to achieve
water savings to help fish and keep farmers farming. Montague
rancher Ryan Walker, president of the Siskiyou County Farm
Bureau, said the State Water Resources Control Board took a
balanced approach in making its decision.
A proposal for a new Butte County water district is wending its
way through the approval process, and not everyone is happy
about that. The Tuscan Water District would cover most of the
northwestern county, excluding Chico. The area is dependent on
well water. Under a recently approved state law, the amount of
groundwater currently being pumped in the area will have to be
reduced. Each well owner is currently on their own. No entity
speaks for them as a group.
The Colorado River Basin covers more than 246,000 square miles
in seven U.S. states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico,
Arizona, Nevada, and California) and Mexico. Pursuant to
federal law, the Bureau of Reclamation (part of the Department
of the Interior) manages much of the basin’s water supplies.
Colorado River water is used primarily for agricultural
irrigation and municipal and industrial (M&I) uses; it is
also important for hydropower production, fish and wildlife,
and recreational uses.
California’s ecosystems play an essential role in protecting
the state’s water supply, minimizing unwanted flooding, and
sequestering carbon—among many other benefits. But the
unintended consequences of more than a century of water and
land development—compounded by the impacts of a changing
climate—are pushing many of these ecosystems to the breaking
point.
Water cuts aimed at farmers amid the West’s megadrought have
set the stage for bitter legal and political fights over one of
the most overlooked water uses—the right of water to remain in
streams to sustain fish and endangered species, lawyers say.
The drought is poised to call that right into question, pitting
drinking water providers and food growers against
conservationists who want to keep streams wet so that fish can
survive. … The Interior Department’s Bureau of
Reclamation this week announced a first-ever water
shortage in the Colorado River Basin …
California regulators began cracking down on water use in the
sprawling Sacramento River and San Joaquin River watersheds on
Friday, ordering 4,500 farmers, water districts and other
landowners, including the city of San Francisco, to stop
drawing water in the basins — or face penalties of up to
$10,000 a day. The move comes as the state slides deeper
into an extraordinary two-year drought. Lakes, streams and
rivers no longer have enough water for everyone who is taking
it, and dwindling supplies must be rationed, state regulators
say.
As if I’m a thirsty person craving my next drink, I keep
thinking about water. I hear the stories. A 20-acre family farm
sits fallow. Down the road, another piece of land has the same
barren look. Is the problem reasonable crop values or access to
water? Likely, a bucket of both. Fresno averages 11.5
inches of rain per year. Total precipitation from Oct. 1, 2020
to date is 6.59 inches, or 60% of normal — a larger percentage
than most parts of the state. In the canal I floated down
as a kid, not a drop of water has flowed all season.
-Written by Danielle R. Shapazian, a nurse and writer who
lives in Fresno.
California policymakers are now able to model reported water
use easily and quickly in any basin in the state thanks to a
new SEI tool. The tool, developed for the California State
Water Resources Control Board, captures data from the
Electronic Water Rights Information Management System (eWRIMS).
It then analyses the data to provide users with a monthly water
use estimate for every water right in any given watershed. The
tool, known as the eWRIMS Analyzer, also flags missing and
erroneous data.
Water regulators on Friday formally ordered thousands of
farmers across California to cut back their water use this
summer or face fines of up to $10,000 a day. The State Water
Resources Control Board began sending formal “curtailment
notices” to the holders of 4,500 water rights permits that
allow them to pull water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers and their tributaries.
Another dry year is the last thing the suckers need. Two
species of the bottom-feeding sucker fish that inhabit the
Upper Klamath Lake and nearby rivers are struggling to survive
after a century of water management in the Klamath Basin has
all but drained the wetlands ecosystem where these fish once
thrived. … Now, the suckers are on the brink of
extinction. During the past century, wetlands surrounding
Upper Klamath Lake were converted to farmland, while waters
from the basin were allocated to irrigators.
Millions of people visit the Tahoe Sierra each year to enjoy
and recreate on Lake Tahoe, Donner and Independence lakes, as
well as the satellite reservoir system of Boca, Prosser and
Stampede. All these storage basins are in California, but since
the Truckee River system is part of Great Basin hydrology, none
of the streamflow reaches the Pacific Ocean. I frequently
get queries, especially during a drought, regarding our
regional water management. It seems that few people realize
that these reservoirs, including Lake Tahoe, are regulated
primarily for Nevada interests. -Written by Mark McLaughlin, freelance
contributor.
It’s very important to lead with your values. That’s exactly
what is happening at the California Water Quality Control Board
regarding racial equity and environmental justice. … Water is
life, and here in the Central Valley, water access is as big an
issue here as almost anywhere else on Earth. In California we
have a “human right to water” approach that was built into our
system when the Legislature passed the Human Right to Water
Act. -Written by Lourin Hubbard, operations manager for the
Central Valley Water Quality Control Board.
It was clear during the first hearing on the Kern River Tuesday
that the public has a seat at the table as never before.
Tuesday’s hearing was mostly procedural — setting out which
issues would be sorted first and how. Permeating the discussion
at nearly every turn, however, was the public trust doctrine,
which gives the public a right to natural resources, such as a
river with actual water in it.
A two-decade-long megadrought along the Colorado River is
pushing seven Western states and parts of Mexico into a formal
shortage declaration, forcing water delivery cuts to the
Southwest that are just the beginning of the pain climate
change promises to bring to the region. Climate scientists and
water managers have long seen this declaration coming, but
what’s alarming them is the speed with which the hot and dry
conditions over the past four years have shrunk the river’s two
main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, to levels not seen
since they were first filled.
The State Water Resources Control Board (“State Water Board”)
issued emergency regulations on August 3, 2021, authorizing
Board staff to curtail diversions and require informational
reporting from water users in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
watershed (“Delta Emergency Regulations”). The regulations,
which are expected to be finalized by the Office of
Administrative Law in the coming days, set parameters for
information gathering and determination of supply and demand in
the watershed as well as the issuance of curtailment orders
upon determination of water unavailability.
The federal government on Monday declared a first-ever water
shortage on the Colorado River, announcing
mandatory cutbacks next year that will bring major
challenges for Arizona farmers and reduce the water
allotments of Nevada and Mexico. The declaration of a shortage
by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been anticipated for
months and was triggered by the spiraling decline of Lake Mead,
which stores water used by Arizona, Nevada, California and
Mexico.
Anti-government activists seemed primed for a violent clash
with federal authorities this summer in the Klamath Basin along
the California-Oregon border. The federal Bureau of Reclamation
had shut off water for most of the region’s 1,400 farms,
denying access to the same irrigation canal in Klamath Falls,
Ore., where during a drought two decades earlier, activists
tried to pry open its headgates and clashed with U.S.
marshals.
If you’ve eaten sushi anywhere in the U.S., chances are the
rice came from California’s Sacramento Valley. Fritz
Durst, a sixth-generation farmer, has grown the grain and other
crops there for more than four decades. But this year, amid a
historic drought, Durst is planting only half as many acres of
rice as usual. … Farmers like Durst would be having an
even worse year if it weren’t for water siphoned from the
Sacramento River to irrigate fields. Those diversions, though,
have dire consequences for another part of the sushi supply
chain: The salmon industry.
Organic farmer Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood
walks through rows of his aromatic stone fruit orchard, showing
off sweet nectarines that thrive in the microclimate and rich
soils in his corner of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Weighing on his mind is the drought … Courchesne
is among several thousand water rights holders in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta watershed who could have
supplies shut off in response to drought emergency curtailment
regulations adopted last week by the State Water Resources
Control Board.
Amid extreme drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking for statewide
conservation of 15%, farmers are facing cutbacks in water
deliveries, and a mass die-off of salmon is expected. Drought
affects us all, so our response must improve the natural
systems that make our water, air and food — our existence —
possible. The State Water Resources Control Board has taken the
rare drastic step of adopting emergency regulations to curtail
diversions of water rights holders when water is not
available. -Written by Sandi Matsumoto, director of The
Nature Conservancy’s California Water Program, and Julie
Zimmerman, the lead freshwater scientist at The Nature
Conservancy in California.
A new player has entered the legal fray over the Kern River —
the public. Actually, it’s a consortium of Bakersfield and
other nonprofit, public interest groups that hope to sway the
state Water Resources Control Board to, ultimately, re-water
the mostly dry Kern River through town. The Flowing Kern
Coalition made its debut Tuesday when it filed a notice of
intent to appear at an upcoming proceeding on the Kern River.
Buried in an hours-long State Water Resources Control Board
hearing recently was the admission that California experts
overestimated the spring inflow by 800,000-acre feet. Put
another way, the state banked on water that never came. That
admission, coupled with public policy that favors environmental
uses of water over human needs, led to California’s recent
curtailment of the most senior of water rights – a private
property right that once had value in California and threatens
to ripple far and wide.
As we lumber toward a renegotiation of the operating rules on
the Colorado River, one of the challenges folks in basin
management face is the differing understandings of the Law of
the River. There’s stuff we all know, or think we know, or
stuff Lower Basin folks think they know that Upper Basin people
may disagree with, and stuff Upper Basin folks think they know
that Lower Basin people may disagree with.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of
Water Resources announced a public negotiation session with
seven Cross Valley contractors on a long-term conveyance
contract for delivery of federal Central Valley Project water
through state-owned facilities. Reclamation, DWR, and the
contractors have previously entered into successive, short-term
interim renewal contracts pursuant to the Central Valley
Project Improvement Act, which included both federal water
service and state conveyance terms and conditions.
In the hopes of having at least 20,000 acre-feet of water
remaining in Lake Mendocino by Oct. 1, the California State
Water Resources Board this week ordered about 1,500 water
rights holders to stop diverting water from the Russian River.
However, if the current rate of outflow from the reservoir
continues, the lake could reach 20,000 acre-feet by Aug. 23,
said Elizabeth Salomone, general manager of the Russian River
Flood Control & Water Conservation Improvement District.
California doesn’t have enough water to meet all demands even
in wet years, and when drought strikes the competition becomes,
to put it mildly, intense. State and federal officials who must
ration the restricted supply are beset with pleas from farmers,
municipal water systems and advocates for the environment.
However, water managers must also contend with a bewildering
array of water rights, some of which date to the 19th century,
as well as long-standing contractual obligations and laws, both
statutes and judicial decrees, on maintaining flows for
spawning salmon and other wildlife. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters columnist.
They are land rich and resource poor. Most have hundreds of
acres of fertile soil, some thousands, but little money in the
bank and – most importantly – no water. Now the young farmers
of the Klamath Basin, an agricultural community on the border
of Oregon and California, fear they might be the last
generation of their kind. … The area has struggled with
water scarcity for years – but this year has been unlike any
other. Amid a historic drought, in May the federal government
cut off all irrigation to farmers for the first time in more
than a century…
The biggest sip of the straw from the Bay Area’s water supply
comes from people living in just three water districts: They
consume nearly three to four times the amount of water as
residents in 23 other municipalities and districts, according
to data from the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency,
whose member agencies receive most of their potable water from
the Hetch Hetchy system.
Known for its starry skies, Joshua Trees and 100-plus-degree
heat, California’s vast desert has recently become a hotbed of
something else: thieves stealing California’s water. So who’s
on the receiving end of all this theft? Local investigators say
it’s often illegal pot farms. And with the parched state in a
withering drought, water managers are doubling as amateur
detectives.
A federal judge has denied a request by environmental groups to
require the Biden administration to immediately provide food
and water for the largest herd of tule elk in the Point Reyes
National Seashore. The groups, represented by Harvard Law
School’s Animal Law and Policy Clinic, allege the National Park
Service failed to provide adequate resources at the Tomales
Point Tule Elk Preserve, which lost 152 elk between the winters
of 2019-2020 and 2020-21. The herd is now below 300 animals.
The Redding City Council approved the 2021 Water Transfer
Agreement with the city of Shasta Lake. The approval, given at
the council’s meeting on Tuesday night, paves the way for the
sale of up to 120 acre-feet of Redding’s water to Shasta Lake
at a cost of $328 per acre-foot.
In the western United States, water law developed around two
main principles: (l) the goal of full beneficial use of
water, and (2) the need to afford vested water right holders
certainty as to their rights. At the time western water codes
developed, these goals were seemingly in harmony—rewarding
those who needed the water and invested in infrastructure for
water use with rights that were enforceable against subsequent
appropriators.
A deeply troubled group of high-ranking state officials, tribal
leaders, environmentalists and fishermen met July 27 to discuss
the triple whammy that is threatening some species of Pacific
salmon with extinction — a combination of record-breaking heat,
drought and disastrous federal water policies — particularly
those of the Trump administration, which drained mountain
reservoirs of cold water, sending it to the Central Valley.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stressed innovation
and collaboration Thursday as he visited a Fresno County farm
dealing with California’s drought. … Vilsack’s visit
comes the same week the State Water Resources Control Board
imposed an “emergency curtailment” order covering the
rivers of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed —
essentially the entire Central Valley.
Unprecedented drought conditions have forced state water
regulators to take the drastic step of officially suspending
water rights along the Russian River. Sam Boland-Brien
with the state water board said conditions have continued to
worsen in the Russian River watershed and the orders formally
direct those who have longtime permission to divert water from
the Russian River to stop, because there is no longer enough
water to support their water right.
State regulators are suspending the ability of about 1,500
water right holders to draw from the upper Russian River
watershed, in an unprecedented bid to try to preserve as much
storage in Lake Mendocino as possible in the event of a third
successive dry winter. The order handed down Monday will affect
hundreds of grape growers, ranchers, small water districts,
towns and rural property owners. It takes effect Tuesday under
emergency regulations adopted in June by the State Water
Resources Control Board.
The future of Utah’s relationship with the Colorado River began
to take shape in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday, as the
newly created Colorado River Authority of Utah held its first
meeting. The organization, created by the Utah Legislature
during the 2021 session, was formed “to protect, conserve, and
develop Utah’s Colorado River system interests,” according to
the agency’s website. The agency, which is officially under
Gov. Spencer Cox’s office, consists of six appointed members
representing water interests from around the state.
California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) is currently
experiencing one of the driest years in recorded history.
The US Drought Monitor recently classified large portions of
the Delta Watershed as being in a state of “Exceptional
Drought,” while the remaining portions are in a state of
“Extreme Drought.” The California Nevada River Forecast
Center also provides information that the to-date flows in
nearly all streams in the watershed are between 20 and 40
percent of the annual average. As a result, the water
supplies for many users in the region are in jeopardy.
Drought-plagued California is poised to bar thousands of
farmers, landowners and others from pumping water from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, a move that irrigation
districts said exceeds the water board’s authority. The
emergency rules would be the first time state regulators have
taken such wide-reaching action during a drought to prevent
diversions from the massive Delta watershed stretching from
Fresno to the Oregon border.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon
state line and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust
devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty
irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three
generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and
hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted,
federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
… [T]his summer there is simply not enough, and the
farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed
for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.
The drought in California isn’t quite fathomable to all. In
efforts to showcase the harsh reality producers are
experiencing, Western Growers has a new campaign called “No
water= No Crops.” In a series of videos, the campaign focuses
on a few California producers who are struggling with the water
shortages. Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms is one of the
farmers in the campaign. He started out his planting year
thinking he’d have enough water but that quickly changed as the
dry water year encroached.
Extreme and prolonged drought in the American west is prompting
water thieves to tap into other people’s scarce supplies. More
than 12bn gallons of water have been stolen in California in
the past eight years, according to state officials, but the
issue has been further exacerbated by the ongoing drought and
recent searing early summer heatwaves. A significant
amount of recent water theft has been blamed by the authorities
on illegal cannabis cultivation in some parts of the state.
Members of Siskiyou County’s Hmong community rallied outside
the county courthouse in Yreka on Tuesday over what they say is
racist treatment by police and racist enforcement of water
usage rights by the county. An ordinance passed in May
aimed at curtailing illegal marijuana grows prohibits water
trucks and other vehicles from carrying over 100 gallons of
water on certain county roads. Rally organizers say the roads
selected, primarily in the rural, unincorporated communities of
Butte Valley and Big Springs, unfairly target the Hmong
community who reside there.
The Klamath water rights issue dates back decades and is as
complex and nuanced as it is lengthy but when boiled down it
seems to come back to one primal animal instinct that all
living beings share: to ensure the survival of our spawn. For
the Lost River and Shortnose Suckerfish in the Klamath basin,
that continuum was disturbed somewhere along the line. The
adult fish are healthy but aging while their spawn has been
failing to thrive. Pending on their survival are the identity,
traditions, culture, and livelihood of the Klamath tribes.
In the town of Happy Valley, residents are dealing with a
crisis. California is experiencing an extreme drought, and
Happy Valley says there is a meager amount of water left in the
community. Coleen Wogoman, a resident of Happy Valley said
their small farm, Wogoman’s Farm, is struggling to stay afloat
as the lack of water striking hard for her family and their
livestock. A mix of emotions is expressed from Wogoman as she
looks upon her farmland and home for over 15 years.
Forced to reckon with a worsening drought, California’s water
regulators are preparing to forbid thousands of farmers from
tapping into the state’s major rivers and streams. It’s an
extraordinary step — and one that regulators didn’t take during
the last drought, which was considered one of the worst on
record. The State Water Resources Control Board on Friday
released an “emergency curtailment” order that would cut
thousands off from rivers and streams in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin river watersheds.
As California has imposed severe water cutbacks throughout the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta’s vast watershed, most
growers in the Delta region itself are still getting enough
water to bring their crops to harvest. With a majority of
landowners in the region holding pre-1914 riparian water
rights, the state has not curtailed their ability to pump water
from the Delta’s labyrinth of canals and waterways – at least
yet. In fact, growers whose land is on islands below sea
level have been pumping water off, San Joaquin County
Agricultural Commissioner Tim Pelican said.
Join us as we guide you on a virtual journey 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.
Join us as we guide you 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.
Environmentalists say the San Joaquin watershed needs more
water. So do state officials, who in 2018 ordered water users
to give a large share of water back to the San Joaquin and its
tributaries, notably the Tuolumne. But the fight to restore
this ailing ecosystem has turned political, and
environmentalists leading the effort are facing an unlikely foe
the water service provider for one of the most liberal cities
in the country.
Whether the Kern River truly has spare water and, if so, how
much, has been left up in the air for more than a decade. Now,
11 years after the State Water Resources Control Board ruled
the Kern River was not fully appropriated, it will finally
start the process of getting at those two key questions: Is
water available? How much? A status conference hearing has been
scheduled by the board’s Administrative Hearing Office for Aug.
17 at 9 a.m., the board announced on Monday.
I can see my future: It’s dry, thirsty and bleak. On our farm,
we live with drought daily, working with limited groundwater
and learning to adjust and adapt, or to fail and abandon our
fields. Water will determine a farmer’s survival. I farm
organically outside Fresno, part of one of the world’s richest
and most productive agricultural oases, providing, of course,
that we have water. … A severe two-year drought is
drying out the West and Southwest from Washington to
California, Montana to Texas. Agriculture feels the impact with
crops withering and production limited. -Written by David Mas Masumoto, a farmer in Del
Rey, California.
Local water districts are suing Santa Barbara County, claiming
that they should not be subject to restrictions over certain
water sales and purchases. The districts claim that the
county doesn’t deliver or pay for any water and therefore
shouldn’t be able to dictate terms to them. The districts argue
that the county’s imposition of restrictions ultimately hurts
consumers. In response, the county claims that the
oversight is needed to maximize the entire water supply for all
consumers.
Whether you’re a kayaker or an angler or a hard-core gardener
in Colorado, we get that this water thing is
confusing. … The drought and the overarching
impacts of climate change have already generated multiple
stories in 2021 and will be a big part of news coverage from
here on out. We get reader questions along the way about the
severity of the drought and what it means for Colorado
residents — here are a few of those questions, and some answers
from some key experts.
California’s complex water management challenges are growing
and intensifying. Systemic stressors like the more frequent and
severe droughts and floods driven by climate change are only
making it harder to respond. Accordingly, California needs to
dramatically improve the ability of local, regional, and State
entities to make agile and effective water management
decisions. We believe doing so will require enhanced
understanding of our water resources and how they align with
the needs of a range of agencies and stakeholders.
Joey Gentry hesitates before she drives through the fields of
alfalfa and wheat that line the roads in the Klamath
Basin. ”It’s not safe for Natives to be out in farmland
during a drought year,” [Gentry said.] Like much of the
American West, this dry, hilly, high-elevation landscape
straddling the California-Oregon border is experiencing a
summer of extreme drought. But when the federal government
announced in May that, for the first time ever, it would cut
irrigation water to about 180,000 acres of agriculture in the
basin, tensions ignited between farmers and the Klamath tribes.
Southern San Joaquin Valley Rivers are running at near historic
lows — again. In fact, the Bakersfield City Council passed a
resolution Wednesday officially declaring the Kern River as
running at only 17% of normal, it’s second driest year since
record keeping began in 1893. The driest year on record was
2015, the worst year of the 2012-2016 drought. The resolution
notes the river is so low this year, the city won’t have any
“excess” water to sell to local agricultural irrigation
districts. This is the first time the City Water Resources
Department has made such a resolution.
As we careen deeper into drought, California will face
increasing impacts to urban and agricultural economies, rivers
and forests, and wildlife. In response, government agencies
will need to determine how to allocate water among competing
needs. Water users will scramble to buy and sell water — if
they can — or reduce their use. But the current lack of
information hobbles the ability to make difficult decisions
about water management. For California to cope with persistent
shortages, water rights data need to be accessible to
decision-makers and the public. -Written by Michael Kiparsky, director of the
Wheeler Water Institute in the Center for Law, Energy and the
Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law.
City of Santa Cruz water rights — that were established more
than 50 years ago — are up for revision and will be discussed
at two forthcoming public meetings. The rights, allocated by
the California State Water Resources Control Board, dictate
where and how water suppliers can use and move water.
… The revision to the rights, could open up doors for
the city to store winter water in aquifers such as the Mid
County Groundwater Basin, by which Soquel Creek and Central
Water Districts both pull water from.
Farmers are facing a water shortage right as we head into peak
growing season…. Solano County farmer Spencer Bei shows us
one of the wells his family uses to farm 15,000 acres. He says
he is losing pressure now as he is pumping because he is
pulling more from the aquifer due to a lack of surface water
and no rain in sight. He is one of many farmers feeling
the heat after the State Water Resources Board sent out letters
to 4,300 water-right holders saying there was no longer enough
water for them and that the remaining 2,300 with pre-1914
riparian rights could see even more restrictions soon.
Groundwater, a subject of growing concern, will be discussed
Tuesday during the Tehama County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Clay Parker, the groundwater commissioner and Red Bluff
councilman, will be delivering a report to the board with an
update on the Groundwater Sustainability Plan and the Domestic
and Agricultural Well Ad Hoc Committee. … The committee is
still in early development, although the agenda report said an
ordinance is expected to be brought before the board by the end
of the year.
Late at night beneath a star-studded sky, surrounded by the
Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains, circles of mourners sang
and stamped their feet in the dust. The cry dance honored Harry
Williams, Nüümü (Bishop Paiute) elder and internationally
recognized expert in the ancestral water systems of Payahuunadü
— Owens Valley. In his lifetime, Williams was responsible for
recovering knowledge of his tribe’s traditional irrigation
networks and water practices, strengthening the Paiute’s claims
for water rights in Owens Valley.
An environmental group dedicated to promoting healthy waterways
around California is taking Sonoma County to court over
permitting policies it says too liberally allow people to drill
groundwater wells, potentially endangering Russian River stream
flows. California Coastkeeper, an affiliate of the locally
based Russian Riverkeeper and a dozen or so other organizations
around the state, filed the first-of-its-kind lawsuit late last
month amid the intensifying drought and a surge in well
drilling around the region.
Today the Karuk Tribe filed a formal petition with the
California State Water Resources Control Board demanding that
it use its emergency powers to curtail water use in the Scott
River to prevent the extinction of the Southern Oregon-
Northern California Coho Salmon (Coho). … The Scott
River is home to most of the native Coho salmon left
in the Klamath Basin. Coho were added to the endangered species
list in 1997. While federal agencies have forced water users on
the federal Klamath Irrigation Project along the
California/Oregon border to allow downstream flows to protect
the fish, other water users’ impacts have been ignored.
As the western United States continues to face a months-long
bout with extreme drought, American farmers are feeling
catastrophic effects to their livelihoods. … John Moore,
a fourth-generation crop farmer from Kern County, California,
highlighted the misunderstanding lawmakers have toward the
agricultural community. In his mind, heeding to some Trump-era
water policies would’ve changed the entire landscape of how
farmers face droughts like these.
Except for a brief stint in the military, Paul Crawford has
spent his entire life farming in southern Oregon. First,
as a boy, chasing his dad through hayfields and now, growing
alfalfa on his own farm with his wife and two kids, who want to
grow up to be farmers. … The American west is drying out
as the region faces an unprecedented drought. Few places
are as devastated as the Klamath Basin, where Crawford’s farm
sits. Straddling the border between California and Oregon, the
watershed spans 12,000sq miles – from agricultural lands fed by
Upper Klamath Lake to tribal communities surrounding the
Klamath River.
The United States and Mexico are tussling over their dwindling
shared water supplies after years of unprecedented heat and
insufficient rainfall. Sustained drought on the middle-lower
Rio Grande since the mid-1990s means less Mexican water flows
to the U.S. The Colorado River Basin, which supplies seven U.S.
states and two Mexican states, is also at record low levels. A
1944 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico governs water relations
between the two neighbors.
For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado
River’s natural flooding patterns to farm….Now, gravity sends
the river water from the north end of the Colorado River Indian
Tribes reservation through 19th century canals to sustain
alfalfa, cotton, wheat, onions and potatoes, mainly by flooding
the fields. Some of those fields haven’t been producing lately
as the tribe contributes water to prop up Lake Mead to help
weather a historic drought in the American West…. As
Arizona faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River
supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the
future of water.
You’d think that spending $200 million to help shore up
our shrinking water supply would be a monumentally good thing.
And it could have been, if there weren’t so many stipulations
on how that cash must be spent. Lawmakers plopped $160
million into a newly created drought mitigation fund – a hefty
chunk of change that some have called “unprecedented.”
They set up the fund, according to the budget bill,
because “many regions in this state lack access to
sustainable water supplies to meet their long-term water
demands and need financial assistance to develop water supply
and conservation projects.” -Written by Arizona Republic columnist Joanna
Allhands.
A coalition of Delta-based groups has sent a
formal Petition for Reconsideration to the State
Water Board opposing the Board’s June 1 order to relax water
quality standards for Delta operations of the Central Valley
Project and the State Water Project. The Temporary Urgency
Change Order (TUCO) was issued by the Water Board on June 1,
2021 … The coalition’s petition shows that 4.5
million acre-feet of water will be delivered to state and
federal water contractors (including about 10 percent for
Central Valley wildlife refuges), based on Water Board
information.
In the drought-stricken Klamath Basin along the
California-Oregon border, water is precious. This year, Native
American tribes and farmers are competing for this shrinking
resource. It’s an indicator of future water wars in the West.
Jefferson Public Radio’s Erik Neumann explains.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously declined a
petition by Imperial Valley farmer Michael Abatti claiming he
and a handful of other agricultural landowners, not the
Imperial Irrigation District, held senior rights to Colorado
River water that nearly 40 million people across the West
depend on. The decision likely is the last stop for a
torturous legal battle that dates back to 2013. As the law
stands, farmers have a guaranteed right to water delivery but
not a special claim above other users like homes and geothermal
plants.
Housing advocates and developers are warily watching
California’s intensifying drought and what it may mean in a
state that needs millions of new homes to house its residents.
Eighty-five percent of the state is in extreme drought. And in
coastal Marin County, north of San Francisco, rainfall is at
its lowest levels since records began 140 years ago. It’s here
where the state’s twin issues of housing stock and water
availability are colliding. But it could be a harbinger of
things to come for the rest of the state. Additional housing
puts more stress on water supplies.
For the first time ever, an official Colorado River Tier 1
Shortage is expected to be declared starting January 1, 2022.
The announcement comes from the Bureau of Reclamation in August
based on projections for Lake Mead water levels for the
following January. The shortage declaration means reduced water
for some stakeholders who receive water from the Central
Arizona Project (CAP); those stakeholders who receive a portion
of their water from CAP include municipalities, agriculture,
tribes, and others.
As Santa Barbara County and the rest of the state enter another
major drought crisis, a consortium of eight county water
districts just sued the County of Santa Barbara Board of
Supervisors, alleging the board is illegally interfering with
the water agencies’ ability to use the State Water pipeline
system to buy and sell water on the open market.
Colorado River water managers could be pulled back to the
negotiating table as soon as next year to keep its biggest
reservoirs from declining further. The 2019 Drought Contingency
Plan was meant to give the U.S. and Mexican states that depend
on the river a roadmap to manage water shortages. That plan
requires the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead, to drop to
unprecedented levels before conservation among all the lower
basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California — becomes
mandatory. California isn’t required to conserve water in the
reservoir until it drops to an elevation of 1,045 feet above
sea level.
Drought may be the sneakiest of natural disasters. Although
human history teems with people engulfed by abrupt aridity —
the Akkadians of four millenniums ago, the Maya in the ninth
and 10th centuries A.D., the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s
— even today drought is a poorly appreciated phenomenon. …
The American West is once again facing drought, one of the
worst on record. Across a vast region encompassing nine states
and home to nearly 60 million people, the earth is being wrung
dry. -Written by Farhad Manjoo, NY Times opinion columnist.
The California priority water rights system is being put to the
test, as state regulators impose emergency regulations and send
notices of water unavailability to farmers who are trying to
negotiate their crops through another drought year. Reacting to
worsening dry conditions, the State Water Resources Control
Board adopted emergency regulations last week to curtail water
diversions in the Russian River watershed in Mendocino and
Sonoma counties.
For decades, an agonizing war over [water] has divided
indigenous people and the descendants of settlers of [the
Klamath basin], which like much of the American West, is now
plagued by drought. Family farmers often describe the conflict
as one that pits them against federal bureaucrats who protect
the suckerfish, imperiled as the lake grows more inhospitable.
That portrayal, say members of the tribes, dismisses a tougher
truth … about race, equity and generational trauma to a
people whose history includes slaughter, forced removal of
children, federal termination of their tribal status and loss
of land …
The Central Coast Water Authority (CCWA) and its eight member
cities and water districts has filed a significant and
unprecedented lawsuit in Santa Barbara Superior Court against
the County of Santa Barbara regarding management of the State
Water Project. CCWA manages, operates and finances the
portion of the State Water Project in Santa Barbara
County.
Three conservation groups aiming to keep more water in rivers
for recreation are working on a revision to a state law.
American Whitewater, Conservation Colorado and Western Resource
Advocates are proposing an amendment to legislation that would
allow natural river features such as waves and rapids to get a
water right. Under the state’s current statute, in order to get
what is known as a recreational in-channel diversion water
right, it must be tied to a man-made structure in the river,
such as a design feature that creates the waves in many kayak
parks.
Rich with promise and potential, the grapes that create the
Russian River Valley’s famed wines are ripening in the intense
midday heat. But soon they’ll face the fight of their lives,
deprived of water as the state diverts scarce supplies from
agriculture to the region’s thirsty cities and
subdivisions. … [Last] week, in a contentious step, the
State Water Resources Control Board unanimously approved an
emergency regulation to halt agricultural diversions for up to
2,400 of the region’s water rights holders. Citing state law,
the regulation prioritizes “health and safety,” saying
agricultural use is “an unreasonable use of water and is
prohibited.”
The Central Coast Water Authority, along with a number of its
customers — namely eight nearby California cities and water
districts — filed a lawsuit Friday claiming the Santa Barbara
County Flood Control and Water Conservation District
overstepped its authority by passing a new resolution that
imposes an undue burden on their water rights. The lawsuit,
filed in Santa Barbara County Superior Court, accuses the
district of meddling in its affairs by improperly imposing
restrictions on its right to transfer and exchange water with
other entities.
Lake Powell’s water level is the lowest it’s been in decades,
and the latest 24-month projections from the Arizona and Utah
reservoir show that it’s likely to drop even further — below a
critical threshold of 3,525 feet by next
year. A 20-year megadrought and a hotter climate
has contributed to shrinking water supplies in the
Colorado River. If Lake Powell’s levels continue to dwindle, it
could set off litigation between the seven states and the 40
million people that all rely on the Colorado River.
Central Valley cattle ranchers are gearing up for a fight
against what they see as groundwater rustling. Their fear is
that newly formed groundwater agencies in some areas could
devalue their land by not giving them a fair share of their own
groundwater. Ranchers believe those fears were realized on June
8 when the Madera County Board of Supervisors approved a
groundwater allocation that will partially exclude rangeland.
Ranchers who own rangeland that has never been irrigated won’t
receive a share of the county’s “transitional water” allotment.
Nichole S. Morgan has been appointed to the State Water
Resources Control Board, where she has been Assistant Deputy
Director of Financial Assistance since 2019 and served in
several positions from 2009 to 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office
announced.
Severe drought highlights the need for greater investment to
improve aging California water facilities, and increases calls
for allocation of federal and state resources to tackle the
problem. A national coalition that includes the California Farm
Bureau urged U.S. Senate leaders last week to take action to
address the shortcomings of aging water infrastructure, and to
include “a broad range of water uses” in any federal
infrastructure legislation.
The seriousness of California’s drought is being driven home to
thousands of farmers in the Central Valley. State regulators
warned 6,600 farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
watershed on Tuesday that they’re about to lose the right to
pull water from the estuary’s rivers at some point this summer.
The watershed covers a major swath of the Central Valley.
While water in the West becomes scarcer and droughts more
frequent and more severe — thanks in part to changing weather
patterns and rising temperatures triggered by carbon emissions
— Wall Street views water as an “asset class,” a commodity like
stocks, bonds, and real-estate that can generate enormous
returns for shareholders, even in severe droughts. Or maybe,
especially in water shortages. Institutional investors like One
Rock are snapping up water rights just like others are snapping
up rental properties to lease back to Americans at a profit…
California never has enough water to meet all demands and even
when supplies are relatively robust there’s a triangular
competition over their allocation. Farmers, municipal users and
environmental advocates vie for shares of water that has been
captured by California’s extensive network of dams and
reservoirs. … When California experiences one of its
periodic droughts and reservoirs shrink from scant rain and
snowfall, its perpetual conflict becomes even sharper. -Written by Dan Walters, a CalMatters columnist
Tricia Hill tears up when she talks about the emotional toll
the water shut-off in southern Oregon has had on her family.
Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal
government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper
Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native
fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and
other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from
water they have used for decades.
With the harshest dry year in recent memory, the Sacramento
River Settlement Contractors (Settlement Contractors) are
working closely with federal and state agencies, as well as our
conservation partners, to continually improve our operations
and serve water for multiple benefits, including water for
cities and rural communities, farms, birds, fish, and
recreation.
Imperial Valley grower, landowner and former elected official
Michael Abatti has responded to the Imperial Irrigation
District’s official filing in his U.S. Supreme Court
petition. The official response was filed sometime Monday,
June 7. In March, Abatti filed for a “writ of certiorari” with
the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the California Court
of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District’s decision in Abatti v.
Imperial Irrigation District, to which the district was ordered
by the High Court to provide a formal response last month.
Those watching the level of Lake Tahoe know it is dropping
quickly, and it’s not just because of a lack of snowfall this
year and another year of drought. Understanding why the lake
drops, and who causes it to drop (yes, there is a person – the
watermaster), is key to knowing why the lake should be at its
natural rim of 6,223 feet above sea level by the beginning of
August. As of June 8 the lake is two feet above that rim.
The Klamath Basin is suffering the worst drought in the state.
Competing need for the water by local tribes seeking to sustain
endangered fish populations, farmers and ranchers, and
commercial and tribal fisheries has been a persistent issue,
and has led to conflicts in the past. The Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement, which took 10 years to plan, was a
turning point and a compromise for the parties needing access
to the water.
When the Palo Alto City Council publicly backed the Bay-Delta
Plan in 2018, it was swimming against the political tide. The
plan, formally known as the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Estuary plan, sets limits on how much water
agencies can siphon from the three tributaries of the San
Joaquin River. While it aims to protect salmon, steelhead and
other river species, it has also attracted intense opposition
and litigation from water districts that claim that the new
restrictions will undermine the reliability of their water
supply.
Fears of a confrontation between law enforcement and rightwing
militia supporters over the control of water in the
drought-stricken American west have been sparked by protests at
Klamath Falls in Oregon. Protesters affiliated with rightwing
anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network
are threatening to break a deadlock over water management in
the area by unilaterally opening the headgates of a reservoir.
Tribes and environmental advocates fear flows along the Klamath
River could be reduced to a trickle if the State Water
Resources Control Board doesn’t take action on water use
upstream on the Scott and Shasta rivers. Andy Marx, board
president of Friends of the Shasta River, said the river
“virtually dried up” over Memorial Day weekend as a result of
excessive irrigation diversions.
California’s water wars are legendary, complex and
ongoing. To avoid getting too far in the weeds, media often
boil it down to a dispute over who should have priority to a
limited supply of water — people or fish. The real beauty
of aerial snow surveys is that it’s one thing that farmers and
environmentalists can agree on. -Written by Garth Stapley, The Modesto Bee’s Opinions Page
editor.
A water war is under way in Sacramento right now that could
have far-reaching impacts on families in the Central Valley.
… Hearings got under way Wednesday, as Semitropic Water
Storage District in Kern County makes its administrative appeal
to the State Water Resources Control Board for water rights to
the Kings River. It filed its first petition in 2017, asking
for access to 1.6 million acre feet of floodwater from the
Kings River.
This May, while collecting live fish for their annual aquatic
pathogen assessment on the Klamath River in Northern
California, Yurok Tribe biologists made a shocking discovery:
over 70 percent of the young, ocean-bound Chinook salmon
captured in their traps were dead. Almost all of the fish
tested upstream were infected with Ceratonova shasta, a
parasite that relies on both fish and annelid worms as hosts.
Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe,
expects most of the infected fish to die.
The Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors adopted a
resolution Tuesday, June 1, to better serve IID’s
Coachella Valley energy customers and better protect Imperial
Valley’s water rights, according to a press release. The
Board’s resolution seeks to provide a local alternative to AB
1021 by Assemblyman Chad Mayes (I-Yucca Valley) that would
create a number of adverse consequences for the region, if
passed into law, including giving Coachella Valley energy
ratepayers a say over IID’s water rights and policy in Imperial
Valley.
Earlier this year, the State Water Resources Control Board
released a report, Recommendations for an Effective Water
Rights Response to Climate Change, that considered how the
State Wate Board could include climate change when considering
new water right applications. Since the report’s release,
it has been the subject of much discussion and has sparked
concerns amongst existing water right holders. At the
Kern County Water Summit, hosted by the Water Association of
Kern County, a panel addressed the topic.
Rising tensions in the Klamath Basin could come to a boil soon,
as two Klamath Project farmers plan to breach the fenced
headgates of the federal irrigation project’s main canal and
try to release water, likely triggering a standoff with the
federal government. Farmers Grant Knoll and Dan Nielsen bought
property next to the headgates in April for $30,000 and have
set up camp on the site. They are staffing a large canvas tent
with volunteers from the local branch of People’s Rights, a
national organization formed in 2020 by militant activist Ammon
Bundy, and they’re trying to rally support.
Cynthia Beltran moved to Sunizona with her seven-year-old son
last autumn even though the area lacks functional drinking
water wells, because it was all she could afford. She cannot
afford the $15,000 cost of deepening her well, which dried
up last year, and had been paying for a local firm to deliver
water in a tanker. But at $100 a week it became too expensive,
so now she will be relying on a friend to help her fetch water
from her mother’s well. … Nearly 20 wells in Sunizona
alone were deepened between 2015 and 2019, after they dried
up.
Can California regions regulate groundwater without destroying
their businesses and communities? That’s the question being
posed as regions and localities implement the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the historic 2014 state law
that brought regulation to California’s diminishing groundwater
supplies. –Written by columnist Joe Matthews
The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an
early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to
spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with
a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the
region. In Nevada, water levels have dropped so
drastically in Lake Mead that officials are preparing for a
serious shortage that could prompt major reductions in Colorado
River water deliveries next year. In California, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of emergency.
The Imperial Irrigation District has filed its initial response
to Imperial Valley grower, landowner and former elected
official Michael Abatti’s U.S. Supreme Court case.
… Abatti is seeking to overturn a previous appellate
court ruling that asserts Imperial Irrigation District is the
“sole owner” of water rights in the Valley, and farmers do “not
(have) an appurtenant water right” but rather are entitled
merely to “water service” that is subject to modification by
the district at its discretion.
Can California regulate groundwater without destroying its own
communities? That’s the question being posed as regions
implement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA),
the historic 2014 state law regulating California’s diminishing
groundwater supplies. Groundwater is buried in aquifers,
underground spaces between rocks, soils, and sand. Layers of
aquifers are called groundwater basins. California has hundreds
of them. Eight-five percent of Californians depend on
groundwater …
-Written by Joe Mathews, who writes the Connecting
California column for Zócalo Public Square.
Two farmers with ties to anti-government activist Ammon Bundy
have purchased land by a shut-off irrigation canal in Oregon
that would normally deliver water to a massive federal
irrigation project along the California-Oregon border and have
set up a protest encampment there, Jefferson Public Radio
reports. The move comes after federal regulators shut off all
water deliveries from the project’s main “A Canal” due to
extreme drought and the need to balance the water demands of
farmers with threatened and endangered fish species …
In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed
with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and
opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland
in Oregon and far Northern California. Local farmer Grant Knoll
was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced
the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S.
marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago
— and with farmers’ water again cut off — he’s prepared to
fight again.
Who has the right to water in the Kern River? It has been the
subject of fierce legal battles throughout Bakersfield’s
history, and on Friday, the Ventura County Superior Court tried
to answer a part of that question. In a court ruling, Judge
Kevin DeNoce found the city of Bakersfield must supply the
North Kern Water Storage District with 20,000 acre feet of
water it owed the district in 2020 and pay the district $2.8
million to reimburse groundwater pumping costs the district
incurred last year. It’s the latest court decision in a
long-running dispute, and it threatens to limit the city’s
ability to use water from the Kern River.
The [Colorado] state water board is encouraging all nine basin
roundtables to adopt a code of conduct requiring members to
communicate in a professional, respectful, truthful and
courteous way. But some Western Slope roundtables are pushing
back. Over roughly the last month, Colorado Water Conservation
Board Director Rebecca Mitchell has been visiting the remote
roundtable meetings on Zoom, answering questions about the code
of conduct and urging the roundtables to adopt it. The goal of
the document is to make sure everyone feels comfortable
speaking up in meetings.
With the driest year in memory, the water resources managers
and landowners in the Sacramento Valley are working hard to
serve multiple benefits throughout the region with limited
water supplies. This has required all hands-on deck and
creative management within the region as all surface water
supplies have been significantly reduced, with hundreds of
thousands of farmland acres idled throughout the region, urban
suppliers working with their citizens to implement various
conservation measures to reduce water use and there will
undoubtedly be challenges for domestic groundwater wells.
Crystal Geyser bought the nearly 145,000 square foot bottling
plant in 2013. Since then, it’s been the target of protests by
local activists and members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
Opponents say if it ever started operating, it would draw down
too much water, and cause air and noise pollution. … They are
in the midst of suing the beverage company in an effort to get
a new environmental impact report.
The Shasta-Klamath Region organizes work around protecting
California source water and volcanic aquifers, working with
family farms to improve water management, and protecting legacy
fly-fishing waters like the McCloud River, Hat Creek, and Fall
River. In 2021, we are heavily invested in conservation
projects in the Shasta and Scott watersheds. These key Klamath
tributaries will be critical for recovering salmon populations
in the Mid-Klamath Basin after dam removal.
What was already forecasted to be a historically bleak water
year in the Klamath Project has quickly become a living
nightmare for farms and ranches fighting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut
down the Project’s A Canal for the entire irrigation season May
12 in response to worsening conditions — allotting zero surface
water from Upper Klamath Lake for thirsty crops and livestock.
It is the first time in more than a century the A Canal will
deliver no water. Meanwhile, irrigators are left to wonder how
they will pay the bills as fields turn to dust.
San Francisco has sued a state agency over proposed Tuolumne
River flows that it claims would be “devastating” to Bay Area
water users. The Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts
joined in the lawsuit as “real parties in interest,” due to
similar concerns about their customers not getting enough
water. The suit is one more twist in the decades-long battle
over how much water to provide for salmon and other fish
downstream from Don Pedro Reservoir.
Millions of people are betting on Arizona. They’re buying
homes, starting businesses, and families. The future of how we
use our water resources may dictate the future of their
success. … That question was addressed four decades earlier
with the Groundwater Management Act of 1980. The idea was the
law would ensure when water was taken out, just as much was put
back in, creating what they called a safe yield goal by
2025. Unfortunately, a new study released by ASU
researchers with the Kyl Center shows the law is not living up
to its promise as deep, thousands of years old aquifers
continue to be over-pumped.
A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown
Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car
caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions
to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis. A man walked by the
demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace
and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social
Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and
pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and
soul.” Sierra Club founding member John Muir penned those words
more than a century ago as he launched a decades-long battle to
advocate for preservation of the American West. … More than a
century later, Muir’s legacy of environmental awareness lives
on through his great-grandson, Reno attorney Ross de Lipkau,
one of the state’s leading water rights experts.
The drought has some members of the Arizona Legislature
wondering if the state should look for a new source of water:
the Mississippi River. Conservationists wonder if lawmakers
should try a different approach. As Arizona braces for a
drought contingency plan to kick in, the Legislature has
floated the idea of damming the Mississippi and piping the
water here. The idea received overwhelming support among
lawmakers, though it is unclear if the project is viable. Sandy
Bahr, with the Sierra Club, told KJZZ’s The Show last month the
state needs to adjust its thinking about water, especially in
times of drought.
After seven years of controversy, Crystal Geyser Water Company
announced last week that it has given up on opening its Mount
Shasta facility. A representative for the company said Crystal
Geyser was “challenged every step of the way” since it
purchased the nearly 145,000 square foot facility in 2013.
Last year, for the first time, it became possible to trade
water on Wall Street through futures contracts. Normally
reserved for commodities like oil or precious metals, water
became the latest asset to join the financial market. But how
could this practice impact the planet? The trading in the
future prices of highly-prized commodities, where buyers agree
to purchase an asset at a set date in the future for an agreed
price, began in Japan in the seventeenth century with the
trading in rice futures. The latest commodity to begin trading
in futures is water supplied in American’s most populous state,
California.
As California descends deeper into drought, state regulators
are planning to do something they’ve done few times in modern
history: order thousands of people, farms, and even cities and
towns that hold historic water rights to stop drawing water
from the rivers, lakes and ponds they rely on. The move is
intended to make sure the dwindling flows in California’s
waterways are reserved for those with the most senior water
rights, as well as for fish and other wildlife. Many of those
with lesser rights would have to turn to storage, groundwater
or another source, if they have it.
The city of San Francisco is reviving a long-simmering feud
with the state over water, filing a lawsuit Friday that charges
state regulators with trying to take away the city’s coveted
Sierra Nevada water supplies. The suit claims the state water
board is demanding the city forfeit too much water from the
Tuolumne River as part of a licensing deal for two dams in the
faraway basin. State regulators have said the water is needed
to maintain proper river flows and support struggling salmon,
but city officials contend the demands would leave Bay Area
residents and businesses vulnerable to water shortages.
El Dorado Irrigation District’s territory extends across the
county line to a small piece of Folsom — a total of 190 acres.
A developer is planning to turn that acreage into a
subdivision. Currently the property is all range land and there
is no request for water service. The earliest that water
service could be requested may not be until 2023. El Dorado
Irrigation District has been a multi-county agency since the
early 1980s, according to Jesse Saich, EID communications
manager.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic as federal regulators shut off irrigation
water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would
not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a
half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating
birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the worst water
crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it
will not release water this season into the main canal that
feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project,
marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system.
Rural, low-income Latino communities across California were
hardest hit by the last drought and could see drinking water
shortages again this year as extreme drought spreads across the
state, according to a report released Thursday by non-partisan
advisors to California’s lawmakers. The report from the
Legislative Analyst’s Office warns state officials to prepare
by ramping up monitoring of wells in vulnerable communities and
lining up emergency drinking water supplies to send
there.
In 1980, Arizona began regulating groundwater in the state’s
largest cities and suburbs under a landmark law that
called for most of these areas to achieve an overarching
goal by 2025: a long-term balance between the amount of
water pumped from the ground and the amount seeping back
underground to replenish aquifers. Forty-one years
later … [g]roundwater is still overpumped in most of the
state’s “active-management areas,” or AMAs. And in many places,
aquifer levels continue to decline.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that
more than 1,000 farmers in the Klamath Basin will not receive
any reserved water from Upper Klamath Lake — a devastating
prospect for farmers who have already planted fields, hired
crews and made plans for the growing season ahead. … Farmers
in Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc counties were already reeling
over the prospect of receiving less than 10% of their
allotment, or a total of 33,000 acre-feet of water. The
latest announcement feels “like a punch to the gut,” farmers
said …
On its surface, the idea of banking water to bridge the
certainty of future rain-deficient periods seems like an
innovative and non-controversial planning procedure. In the
end, however, it all depends on who holds the keys to the bank.
The notion of water banking has grabbed local attention lately
following a controversial and divided 3-2 vote March 3 by San
Luis Obispo County supervisors, a vote which numerous North
County entities view as opening the door to selling and
exporting county water resources to the highest outside bidder.
Ben Tobin has questions about the Grand Canyon’s caves. The
University of Kentucky geologist started learning about caves
as a young man, in part because his mother was a geologist, and
a childhood fascination grew over time. … When he was in
college, an internship in Arkansas doing cave tours got him
hooked, and eventually his work brought him out West, to Grand
Canyon National Park. Tobin specializes in what’s known as
karst hydrology. These are underground systems made up of
soluble rock such as limestone. To Tobin, caves are like
another world, with blind animals, fossils and archeological
finds.
When Sandra Chavez’ mother discovered she had stage four cancer
last year, one of Sandra’s first thoughts was about their
water. Her family’s private well is contaminated with nitrates
and Chavez wondered if years of drinking the water could have
caused her mother’s sickness. Chavez and her family have relied
on bottled water since they found out their well water was
unsafe in 2015. But sometimes they don’t have enough and are
forced to drink the contaminated water. So when Chavez
found out about a new program providing free bottled water
delivery for families with nitrate-contaminated wells, she was
frustrated she hadn’t been contacted.
Only one week remains to register for our May 20 virtual
Lower
Colorado River Tour where you can hear directly
from experts offering a range of perspectives on the most
contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Practically every drop of water in the
Colorado River is already allocated, but pressure on the
hard-working river continues to grow from myriad sources —
increasing population, declining habitat and climate
change.
A riverbed that has been parched since the end of the
19th century — a portion of the historic lifeblood of the
Gila River Indian Community — is now coursing again with water,
luring things like cattails and birds back to its
shores. … The revival of this small segment of the
649-mile (1045-kilometer) Gila River, which has served the
tribes that make up the Gila River Indian Community — the
Akimel O’odham (Pima) and the Pee-Posh (Maricopa) — for roughly
2,000 years, was an added benefit of a grassroots
infrastructure overhaul, known as “managed aquifer recharge,”
or MAR, which aimed to restore the local groundwater
basin.
Well owners in Santa Rosa Plain, Petaluma Valley and Sonoma
Valley are invited to join community meetings on groundwater
conditions and sustainable management of this critical water
source. The Santa Rosa Plain, Petaluma Valley and Sonoma
Valley groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) are nearing
completion of major plans that identify issues with current and
future groundwater resources and that describe how these
challenges will be addressed.
Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, along with prominent
North Coast water managers and politicians gathered at a
virtual summit yesterday morning to discuss the severe drought
facing the North Coast and the entire state. At the summit (a
recording of which is available on YouTube), State Senator Mike
McGuire stated that the state legislature is moving forward on
a several billion dollar drought relief package, which would
include $1 billion in grants to help ratepayers and utilities
pay off back bills and $500 million to help smaller low income
communities develop enhanced drinking water supplies, among
other things (read the full list below).
With the uncertainty of water, some Central Valley farmers are
destroying their crops ahead of the summer season in order to
survive. It’s impacting jobs and soon possibly the grocery
shelves. Every crop at Del Bosque Farms is planted
meticulously, and every drop of water is a precious commodity.
Joe Del Bosque started the family farm in 1985. He grows
melons, asparagus, cherries, almonds, and corn, but the drought
brings a flood of concern.
An entire run of endangered winter-run chinook salmon, as well
as the fall-run salmon that make up the core of the California
fishery, are in danger of being wiped out this year if the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation keeps diverting water to farmers at its
current rate. With state water resources constrained by the
extreme drought, that’s the alarm that environmental, fishing
and tribal groups are sounding after reports show the
Sacramento River will reach dangerous temperatures during
spawning season, based on federal scientific scenarios that
analyze the bureau’s planned water releases.
A San Bernardino Superior Court judge has made a ruling against
the Town of Apple Valley in its attempt to take over its
largest supplier of water. In a tentative decision issued
Friday, Judge Donald Alvarez found that Liberty Utilities had
“disproved” the town’s arguments that its acquisition of the
company’s water system would be in the public’s interest and a
necessity. … The town filed its eminent domain lawsuit
in January 2016 when the system was owned by Ranchos Water
Company in response to what they said was a public outcry over
rising water rates.
Don’t be fooled. Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to
declare drought in most of California, including here, is no
reason for most farmers in Stanislaus County to break out the
party hats. They know full well that words on a declaration
will not generate an extra drop of water for their orchards and
row crops. They also know that a drought declaration could take
some power over the water we do have from our locally elected
irrigation leaders — who represent institutions guiding us
through periodic droughts for more than 100 years — and hand it
to nonelected Sacramento bureaucrats.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced an expansion of the drought
emergency to 41 of the state’s 58 counties, dedicating $5.1
billion to boost water infrastructure and an additional $1
billion to paying off nearly the entirety of Californian
household water debt. Yet, while the governor’s plan includes
$150 million for groundwater cleanup and water recycling
measures, it does nothing to speed up the process to bring
overdrafted water basins into full and sustainable operation.
The deadline is currently 2040 for critically overdrafted
basins and 2042 for remaining high and medium priority basins.
Spring is generally a time of renewal for the watersheds of the
western United States. Warmed by the lengthening days, the
region’s towering mountain ranges shed their mantle of snow,
releasing freshets of water into welcoming streams and
reservoirs. This year, though, the cycle is in disarray.
Outside of the Olympic and Cascade ranges of Washington state,
winter snows were subpar. The spring melt has been a dud. From
the Klamath to the Colorado and Rio Grande, watersheds are
under stress once again, and water managers face difficult
tradeoffs between farms, fisheries, and at-home uses.
Arizona legislators are looking eastward to ease the impact of
a two-decade drought in the Colorado River Basin. According to
Arizona Rep. Tim Dunn, who represents the area of Yuma, the
Legislature is asking Congress to fund a technological and
feasibility study for diverting floodwater from the Mississippi
River to replenish the Colorado River. Whether that comes in
the form of a diversion dam or pipeline, Dunn says the plan
would benefit both the Midwestern and Southwestern United
States.
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is
signaling the way climate change could play out across the
western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring,
farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds
over water in Upper Klamath Lake. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,”
… Centuries ago, the area was wetlands; but in the early
20th century, the land was opened up to agriculture. Members of
the Klamath Tribes say tree removal and drainage hastened
drying as the climate warmed.
Newly released emails reveal that lawyers and lobbyists for
mining companies, developers and the agriculture industry had a
hand behind the scenes in shaping Arizona’s newly adopted law
on clean-water rules for rivers and streams. The emails
show the involvement of these influential groups went beyond
their public endorsements of the legislation. Their lawyers and
lobbyists were given access to offer input while the final
legislation was being drafted, and the emails show they
suggested specific language, offered “wordsmithing” tweaks and
requested significant changes that state officials incorporated
into the bill.
Today, the Bureau of Reclamation announced a plan to increase
flow releases from New Melones Reservoir to assist with meeting
Delta salinity and outflow requirements. Additional flow
releases will begin on the
lower Stanislaus River
on May 10 and will reach a total
flow of 1,000 cubic feet per second and again
on May 11 to reach 1,500 cfs. This
increased flow of 1,500 cfs will likely
occur for an extended duration. During the increased
releases, water levels will be higher and currents
faster. Visitors should use caution when near or
on the Stanislaus River during these increased
flows.
California is now in its second year of drought, hard on the
heels of the last one in 2012-16. But drought is not an
equal-opportunity crisis; it can be more or less disruptive
depending on geography, storage, how water supplies are
managed—and, of course, precipitation. And some sectors—notably
rural water water systems and the environment—are more
vulnerable.
Arizona cities, towns, farmers and ranchers are preparing for
the first-ever cuts to the state’s allotment of Colorado River
water. The cuts are the result of a drought that’s lasted 26
years and will likely take effect in 2022. The so-called “Tier
1″ water shortage will affect some water users more severely
than others. … Farmers and ranchers in Pinal County are
already preparing, but it’s going to be a costly process.
A water district locked in a long-running legal battle over
residential rates with the city of Ventura recently agreed
to pay $1 million, but the fight does not appear to
be over. City Attorney Gregory Diaz said Friday he
expected the United Water Conservation District to
exercise its option to appeal. Ventura has filed lawsuits every
year against the water district since the agency implemented
increased charges in 2011-12. This settlement is for fiscal
year 2019-20. The district charged residential customers
three times more than agricultural customers for groundwater,
and the city challenged its methodology.
As California slowly emerges from the depths of the COVID-19
pandemic, one remnant left behind by the statewide lockdown
offers a sobering reminder of the economic challenges still
ahead for millions of the state’s residents and the water
agencies that serve them – a mountain of water debt.
… Our latest article in Western Water explores the
hurdles to helping consumers, how some water agencies have
devised workarounds and how far more lasting solutions remain
out of reach.Western Water is just one of the publications
produced by our journalism team…
The North Marin Water District failed to adequately study
whether there will be enough water for endangered fish in
Lagunitas Creek if it builds a new well in West Marin, an
environmental group alleges. The well is intended to address
worsening saltwater contamination in the water supply. Save Our
Seashore, a nonprofit in Inverness, filed an appeal against the
project with the Marin County Planning Commission. … The
commission is expected to hold a hearing on the issue on May
24.
In scale and ambition, California’s Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) has few parallels. And the work becomes
increasingly urgent as the climate crisis makes water shortages
increasingly severe. … This emphasis on local expertise
points to SGMA’s possibilities — and its potential pitfalls —
especially when it comes to deciding what “sustainable” water
management means. Each management body has wide discretion to
define “sustainability” — and the path to
sustainability by 2040 — for its particular basin.
The Colorado River Basin appears to be out of miracles this
spring. Five years after a “Miracle May” of record rainfall
staved off what had appeared to be the river’s first imminent
shortage in water deliveries, the hope for another in 2021 “is
fading quickly,” says the Colorado Basin River Forecast
Center’s latest report, released Thursday. That’s one more
piece of bad news for the Central Arizona Project. A first-time
shortage is now likely to slash deliveries of river water to
Central Arizona farmers starting in 2022 but won’t affect
drinking water supplies for Tucson, Phoenix and other cities,
or for tribes and industries that get CAP water.
The dispute between Imperial Valley farmer Mike Abatti and the
Imperial Irrigation District over water rights entered a new
chapter last month. Mr. Abatti filed a petition for certiorari
to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the court to review last
year’s California appellate court’s ruling in the IID’s favor.
Our local Imperial County Farm Bureau and the California Farm
Bureau, along with some individual valley farmers, then filed
amicus briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Mr. Abatti’s
petition for review. Mr.
At a rare joint meeting between all three of their leadership
boards, Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc Counties discussed ways to
support agricultural communities during the Klamath Basin’s
historic drought this year. Farmers and ranchers in the Klamath
Project will receive 33,000 acre-feet of water, less than 10%
of their normal allocation, more than a month later than
normal. Irrigators on tributaries to the Lower Klamath River,
like the Scott River, are also expecting water deliveries to be
curtailed during the summer.
It’s that time of drought again. During one of the driest years
on record, once again curtailing water deliveries to local
farms, Fresno-area lawmakers wasted little time trotting out
one of their favorite falsehoods. That every year, including
the parched ones like 2021, California “wastes” millions of
gallons of water by “flushing it to the ocean.” Central San
Joaquin Valley residents have heard this declaration so often
and for so long, from the mouths of politicians and parroted on
talk radio, that many of us believe it’s true.
Water customers with the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency
can expect rate increases to kick in over the next five years,
after board members voted in late April to approve the fees.
The PVWMA serves coastal growers and farmers in south Santa
Cruz and north Monterey counties through 21 miles of water
pipelines running near Highway 1. The water, which is a blend
of recycled water, groundwater and Harkins Slough Recovery well
water, supplements farmer’s on-site agricultural wells.
A new groundwater monitoring station is coming to Corning’s
public works yard on Gallagher Avenue just across from a
warehouse that stores various road signs and equipment. Public
Works Flood Control Manager Ryan Teubert presented the project
Tuesday to the Tehama County Board of Supervisors. It consists
of construction at the yard, which will be funded and performed
by the California Department of Water Resources.
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this
year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to
Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but
impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go
far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming
region in southern Oregon began to release water from the
Klamath River into its irrigation canals. … [A]ccording to
the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could
further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species
and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries
in the region.
More than a month after announcing it was suspending water
deliveries to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley, the Bureau of Reclamation delivered equally bad news to
farmers north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Their water
supplies, tabbed at 5 percent of their contracted amount, were
not available for delivery via the Central Valley Project due
to limited supply.
