California’s climate, characterized by warm, dry summers and mild
winters, makes the state’s water supply unpredictable. For
instance, runoff and precipitation in California can be quite
variable. The northwestern part of the state can receive more
than 140 inches per year while the inland deserts bordering
Mexico can receive less than 4 inches.
By the Numbers:
Precipitation averages about 193 million acre-feet per year.
In a normal precipitation year, about half of the state’s
available surface water – 35 million acre-feet – is collected in
local, state and federal reservoirs.
California is home to more than 1,300 reservoirs.
About two-thirds of annual runoff evaporates, percolates into
the ground or is absorbed by plants, leaving about 71 million
acre-feet in average annual runoff.
Last month, the United Nations announced that the
Earth’s population had reached 8 billion. … Most folks would
agree that the real worry here is not the sheer numbers, but
their collective impact on the environment. We — the planet’s
human inhabitants — are clearing land, leveling forests and
mountains, mining and drilling minerals and burning fossil
fuels in order to sustain ourselves and our lifestyles. That,
in turn, is diminishing biodiversity, driving species to
extinction and stretching the planet’s carrying capacity to a
snapping point, thereby imperiling our own species’ survival.
The problems are exacerbated as planet-warming greenhouse gas
emissions soar, further diminishing freshwater stores and
hurting food production.
Sonoma Ecology Center is working with the community to adapt to
historic drought conditions. Its latest project is rainwater
harvesting system at Flowery Elementary School that serves as a
demonstration project to explore the feasibility of replicating
this system at other schools. Steven Lee, Senior Scientist who,
together with his team, monitors the Sonoma Creek Watershed,
had implemented a 70,000 rainwater harvesting system on his
property. This year, he brought his experience and expertise to
carry out a rainwater catchment system at Flowery Elementary
School.
U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, and Mitt
Romney, a Utah Republican, led a bipartisan group of senators
in asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to give parity to
Western drought needs with existing programs and funding. In a
letter addressed to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack the
senators from across the Western states asked for continued
resources to support projects for ranchers and farmers to
conserve water, improve their infrastructure and efficiency,
and provide technical support. The senators want to see funds
for agriculture conservation equally allocated “to reflect the
contribution of every region, including the West.”
New predictions by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show that
Lake Powell’s water levels may fall below the level needed to
produce power as soon as July 2023. The Bureau of
Reclamation issues two-year predictions for the water levels in
Lake Powell and Lake Mead and revises those predictions every
few months. It uses multiple projections to come up with
expected, worst, and best probable outcomes. One of those
projections shows that water levels at Lake Powell could fall
below what’s called minimum power pool, the lowest level that
would still allow the power plant in the dam to produce power
in only seven months…. While Lake Mead’s water levels
should remain safely above the minimum power pool level, Lake
Powell’s dropping levels add an extra layer of concern for both
reservoirs.
Approximately 100 concerned Delta residents gathered at a
public forum in the community of Hood Tuesday to express
concern with the Delta Tunnel proposal. … The proposal
reduces the original two tunnel plan, proposed by former
Governor Jerry Brown, to a single tunnel by the Newsom
Administration and the Department of Water Resources. … The
new plan calls for a 40-foot wide concrete tunnel to draw
water from the Hood and Courtland areas approximately 45 miles
south to Bethany Reservoir. The current estimates are that it
would cost $16 billion dollars and take 13 years to
complete. The tunnel would draw 3,000 cubic feet of water
per second and would account for approximately 13% to 15% of
the overall water supply.
Arizona is preparing to enter for the first time into a Tier 2A
shortage for the lower Colorado River basin, with cuts
beginning at the start of the new year. For the state, this
means a reduction of 21% of Arizona’s Colorado river supply and
about 9% of the state’s total water use, according to the
Central Arizona Project. Cities that use the Colorado river
will see a 3% reduction while tribal supplies will be reduced
by 7%. And for the users of CAP water, there will no longer be
excess water and agriculture pools from the Colorado River.
According to the Agriculture & Water Council of Arizona, it
will have a big impact on farmers as they work out ways to
operate with less water.
The state of Colorado is projected to gain 1.8 million more
residents by the year 2050. While that can be a sign of
economic prosperity, a study by NumbersUSA indicates most
residents think that growth will have too many negative
impacts. … The study includes a scientific survey
of 1,024 Colorado residents conducted by the Rasmussen research
group. It focuses on several environmental issues, including
water. Citing increased traffic, the loss of open space,
and a strain on the water supply, 75% of Coloradans surveyed
said urban sprawl, which is the encroachment of cities into
natural space and agricultural space, is making Colorado a
worse place to live.
Citing Israel’s extraordinary success in meeting its
agricultural and household water needs, Marco Sermoneta told a
recent gathering of water industry professionals that his
country has much to offer other regions facing the dire problem
of water scarcity. … Sermoneta, who has been on the job
since August, was speaking at the Association of California
Water Agencies fall conference and exhibition, held Nov.
29-Dec. 1 in Indian Wells, near Palm Desert. The event
featured more than 40 programs, workshops and roundtable
conversations examining topics such as water management,
affordable drinking water and water supply. ACWA is a statewide
coalition of public water agencies.
Winter is off to a running start in California, after a pair of
December storms dropped several feet of mountain snow and
soaking low-elevation rains across much of the state. Parts of
the Sierra Nevada have recorded more than double the expected
snowpack for the time of year, and another significant storm
could be on the way this weekend. However, officials are urging
caution and conservation given the depth of the state’s water
supply challenges. Longer range outlooks still point to a
fourth consecutive drought year for the state. Statewide snow
water equivalent — or the amount of water contained in snowpack
— is currently 175 percent of normal for the date. The Central
Sierra Snow Lab, located at Donner Pass northwest of Lake
Tahoe, is now sitting at 253 percent of its average.
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein weighed complex water policy
decisions that stood to impact the livelihood of farmers and
fish, she often dialed Tom Birmingham. On visits to Washington,
the longtime head of the state’s most influential farmland
water agency would meet in her office over glasses of chilled
California chardonnay. Cultivating relationships with power is
a hallmark of Birmingham’s 36-year career at the Westlands
Water District, the nation’s largest farm water utility that
serves a few hundred Central Valley families and corporations
growing nearly $2 billion in nuts, fruit, and vegetables a
year. Birmingham spearheaded the agency’s quest to keep
water flowing as its longest serving general manager, largely
through attempts to loosen environmental regulations.
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On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’re
discussing the future of the Colorado River, one of the
country’s most important sources of fresh water. Forty million
people in seven states, 29 federally recognized tribes, and
northern Mexico depend on the Colorado River, but it’s drying
up fast. It could lose 50 percent of its flow by 2050 if
temperatures continue to rise. The River also irrigates 5.5
million agricultural acres of land, including 15% of American
agriculture and about 90% of the nation’s winter vegetables,
according to Utah Water Resources. How is climate change
affecting the flow of the Colorado River?
A one-inch-diameter pipe carrying drinking water has been
leaking under Highway 128 at 2960 Foothill Blvd. in Calistoga
for more than three months. The leak has caused water to puddle
on the highway. … After several complaints from
residents brought the issue to the city’s attention,
[councilmember Gary] Kraus pulled the issue from the
consent calendar at the Nov. 15 City Council meeting, prompting
a response from Public Works director Derek Raynor.
… When the customary bidding process began back in
August, Raynor estimated the broken pipe was losing 30 gallons
of water a day and continued to leak at that rate though
mid-October. Since then the leak has gotten worse. Since
mid-October, he estimates, the pipe has been leaking at a rate
of two gallons a minute.
Seems like most people are falling all over themselves
celebrating the “historic” deal between the Imperial Irrigation
District, Coachella Valley Water District, the U.S. Department
of Interior (Bureau of Reclamation), and the California Natural
Resources Agency that will supposedly bring up to a
quarter-billion dollars to the Salton Sea for restoration
projects. I certainly understand the need to conserve water and
help bolster the elevation at Lake Mead to try to restore some
kind of balance to the Colorado River, but at what cost to the
people of the Imperial Valley? The Imperial Valley is giving up
1 million acre-feet of water over four years for maybe $250
million and that just doesn’t seem like an even trade off; it
feels like a bad deal – like my friends over at Comite Civico
del Valle so aptly put it – “half-baked.” -Written by John Hernandez, a Brawley resident
and executive director of Our Roots Multicultural Center.
Fortunes are made and lost on the weather. In 1588 Spain went
to attack England and a storm wiped out its armada. The loss
was so devastating even with its New World holdings Spain never
again arose to its former place of prominence as the greatest
European power. From 1930 to 1936 a drought centered in the
Texas and Oklahoma panhandles caused 2.5 million people to
leave the center of the country for other parts. And while
bad weather can lead to major problems, what about the good
weather? California is blessed with a Mediterranean climate.
Hot summers, cool but not frozen winters, plenty of sunshine
and good soil. And due to the foresight of others since gone,
California’s fickle water supply has been harnessed for the
beneficial use of us all.
Zone 7 Water Agency staff are set to update the Pleasanton City
Council on Tuesday about its regional groundwater modeling and
PFAS contamination, which will serve as foundational
information in future council decision-making on water supply
issues. City staff will also seek approval from council to keep
the city’s wells 5 and 6 offline and to purchase replacement
water from Zone 7 until a water supply alternatives study is
completed and the council can decide what to do about the
city’s long-term water supply. According to the staff report,
“Zone 7 has indicated that it can provide the additional water,
initially through a short-term arrangement. This cost would be
funded by the Zone 7 pass-through to utility ratepayers.”
In the early hours of a cold fall morning, thousands of birds
would sit in the puddles of water in the empty rice fields just
outside the Sacramento Valley. At many of those fields
this year, there isn’t a single bird that can be seen. It’s
because there’s no water. There are no plants. The fields are
empty and bone dry. They’ve become fallowed. The streams of
water that once flowed to allow the beavers and deer feed and
drink are gone. The ground looks like slabs of cracked
concrete. Economists and farmers warn that there could be
severe environmental and economic consequences that stretch
beyond these dry fields that farmers are challenged
with. California is now experiencing the driest
three-year period since late 1800s.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas across the West,
and for the parched mega-drought region, the December snow is a
welcome gift. With back-to-back-to-back winter storms across
the West, the snowpack is thriving. Parts of the Sierra and the
Pacific Northwest are seeing above-average snowpack for this
time of year. In Central California, the Sierra stands at 200%
of normal for snowpack average to date…. The Colorado River
Basin is another area gaining a lot of attention for water
shortages. They are counting on a good snowpack. Right now,
most of the Colorado River Basin is running low…
The state Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced Dec. 1
that it would provide 5% of contracted amounts across the board
for agricultural and municipal customers in 2023. That may
sound bad, but the initial allocation announced for 2022 was 0%
for ag and only enough water for municipal contractors to
protect health and safety. At this early stage of the water
year, it’s hard to get too excited one way or another about the
initial allocation, said Ted Page, Chair of the Kern County
Water Agency Board of Directors. … With a La Niña
winter predicted this year, the state is preparing for a fourth
dry year, according to the DWR announcement reprinted below.
California’s water supply crisis has hit a tipping point, with
impacts spreading far and wide, reaching local communities and
critical industries, putting us once again in jeopardy. This is
a pivotal moment in the state’s future – one in which bold
political leadership will emerge, or future generations will
suffer. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent announcement on his new
water supply plan, is encouraging that leadership is
materializing, but the proof is in the pudding. The new
plan, California’s Water Supply Strategy: Adapting to a
Hotter, Drier Future, underscores the significant challenges we
face as a result of a changing climate, the need to transform
the current water system, and the importance of significantly
investing in California water systems to secure the future of
California’s water supply and reliability. -Written by Gary Arant, General Manager at Valley
Center Municipal Water District; and Kimberly
Thorner, the General Manager at Olivenhain Municipal Water
District.
A key state regulator on Thursday OK’d an agreement to have
California American Water Co. buy future water from the planned
Pure Water Monterey Expansion project. The agreement signals a
major new water supply for the Monterey Peninsula. Mike
McCullough, the director of external affairs for Monterey One
Water (M1W), said the authorization defines the terms and
conditions for the sale of water from the expansion project.
Monterey One Water is the public wastewater agency operating
the Pure Water Monterey recycled water project and which will
operate the Pure Water Monterey Expansion … The three
involved parties – Cal Am, the Monterey Peninsula Water
Management District and Monterey One Water reached an agreement
on the language of what’s called a Water Purchase Agreement
more than a year ago.
The Bureau of Reclamation is for the first time legally
signaling its intent to make major cutbacks in water deliveries
from Lake Powell to Lake Mead and the Lower River Basin to
protect the reservoirs that are on the edge of collapse. In
online presentations last week, the bureau said it’s working
through a formal process that could lead to cutting deliveries
from Powell by 2 million to 3 million acre-feet annually and
possibly more. That could happen if states in the Lower River
Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — can’t reach agreement
by Jan. 31 on how to slice their take from the river, the
agency said. The bureau didn’t specify when cuts would begin or
how they would be divided among states, saying those questions
will be answered later. But “it means that we’re looking at
unprecedented reductions in supplies.”
A line of storms that ushered in a chilly, soggy start to
December should continue to move across Northern California
early this week, offering more chances for rain in the Bay Area
and a fresh coat of powder over the Sierra
Nevada. One-third to a half-inch of rain could still fall
over lower-lying portions of the Bay Area from Sunday through
Tuesday morning — further boosting already healthy rainfall
totals over the past several days. Three-quarters of an inch of
rain could fall in that same time span over the coastal
mountains, particularly in Sonoma County, said Brayden Murdock,
a National Weather Service meteorologist. To the east,
another 1 to 2 feet of snow was expected to fall Sunday and
Monday over parts of the Sierra Nevada …
There is less than a week left to
apply for our 2023 Water Leaders class
and be considered for the new cohort of California’s
preeminent water leadership program. Launched in 1997, the
Water Leaders program is aimed at providing a deeper
understanding of California water issues, building
leadership skills and preparing class members to take an
active, cooperative approach to decision-making about water
resources by studying a water-related topic in-depth
and crafting policy recommendations.
And, if you work for a member of the Association of California
Water Agencies, you can apply to have tuition and some
travel expenses covered under the
John P. Fraser Water Leaders Fellowship.
It’s hard to overstate how crucial this snow season is for the
western United States. Regions such as the West that receive a
great deal of their precipitation in the form of snow face a
number of challenges when snow droughts occur, including
shrinking water supplies. And western water supplies are truly
shrinking as some states are facing their second or third
drought year in a row and a large part of the region is stuck
in a 20+ year megadrought. Hanging over all of this is climate
change–influenced aridification in the Southwest that is
increasing evaporative demand, causing water supplies to
dwindle from rising temperatures even when there is adequate
precipitation.
As the nation learned that the midterm election led to a change
in the balance of power in the next U.S. Congress, a delegation
of California Farm Bureau leaders met with representatives
during an advocacy trip to Washington, D.C., to discuss
pressing issues affecting agriculture. … Farm Bureau
executives, the organization’s Leadership Farm Bureau class and
county leaders were joined by the organization’s federal policy
team and met face to face with lawmakers Nov. 14-17 in the
nation’s capital. Discussions focused on issues including
California’s ongoing drought, water, labor and trade, as well
as the next federal farm bill.
The Colorado River Compact is 100 years old. A University of
Arizona conference and the upcoming Colorado River Water Users
Association will mark the anniversary. But there’s no reason to
celebrate. Twenty-two years into a drought and with reservoirs
at all-time lows, the federal government may soon intervene in
the states’ management of the river. The Compact has failed.
Don’t blame the river. We need a new system that manages with
the river and provides all users with fair shares. In 1922, the
seven Colorado Basin states used an optimistic estimate of the
river’s annual flow to allocate the waters. The states chose
the biggest estimate because that made it easy to agree.
Everyone could pretend the river could satisfy all anticipated
demands. That was the first mistake. -Written by Karl Flessa, an Arizona resident since
1977 and an emeritus professor of geosciences at the
University of Arizona.
California water agencies that serve 27 million people will get
just 5% of what they requested from the state to start 2023,
water officials announced Thursday. The news of limited
water comes as California concludes its driest three-year
stretch on record and as water managers brace for a fourth
year with below-average precipitation. But if the winter is
wetter than expected, the state could boost how much supply it
plans to give out — as it did last year when allocations
started at 0% and ended the winter at 5%. Absent an end to
the drought, water-saving measures are poised to continue,
including calls for people to rip up decorative grass, limit
outdoor watering, take shorter showers and run dishwashers only
when full.
Policy researchers are hopeful the agricultural industry in
California will continue to thrive with continued adaptation.
But conditions are shaping up for another dry year and the
Colorado River shortage is creating challenges that will
require more changes for growers and landowners.
In a warming and drying California, water agencies across the
state are looking for new water sources and trying to better
utilize the ones they have. Pacifica has a potential source of
water not available to many communities: the drippy gray
moisture that blows ashore in the form of fog. Fog is composed
of tiny water droplets; together, a cubic mile of fog can carry
some 56,000 gallons of water. The North Coast County Water
District … installed experimental fog-catchers over the
summer at three district sites … The fog-catching
devices are simple: a 1-meter square of polyethylene mesh
stretched over a frame and installed facing into the prevailing
wind. When the fog blows in, the mesh collects droplets of
water like a giant spider web. The drops fall into a collecting
trough below and flow through a gauge that measures the amount
of water.
Several public interest groups sued the City of Bakersfield
Nov. 30 alleging the city has been derelict in its operation of
the Kern River by diverting most of its flows to agriculture
and other uses leaving a dry riverbed through the heart of
town. … Even though the city operates the river per a century
of agreements and judicial decrees, the lawsuit states, the
city still has an obligation to study the harm those diversions
may cause to the environment, fisheries and even the
recreational value of a flowing river. The case hinges on a
concept known as the “public trust,” under which the state
holds all natural resources, including water, in trust for the
most “beneficial use” for the public. That includes water
covered by 100-year-old rights, which includes most of the
rights to waters on the Kern.
Nearly 20% of California’s urban water agencies reported they
could see significant water shortages in the coming months as
the state braces for a potential fourth consecutive year of
drought. After surveying urban water agencies representing
roughly 90% of the state’s population, the California
Department of Water Resources early this week released its
first annual water supply and demand report that assesses how
the state is faring with water supply amid unrelenting drought
conditions. The assessment, which includes annual data through
July 1, found that while a vast majority – 82% – of urban water
suppliers who submitted reports say they have enough water to
meet projected demand in the coming year, around 18% – 73 out
of the 414 water suppliers – reported they will soon face
potential shortages.
Fort Bragg City Council unanimously approved a plan Monday
night to purchase a 582-acre parcel of land from Mendocino
Coast Recreation and Park District for $2,420,579, to build
three reservoirs on around 30 acres. The city hopes to
establish a community forest on the remaining 550 acres of
land, preserving the habitat there through a deed restriction
or conservation easement. This vision would ensure the property
is “utilized to every inch of its capacity,” councilmember
Marcia Rafanan said ahead of the approval. Fort Bragg hopes to
install three reservoirs to store a potential total of 44
million gallons of water, in a location that connects
conveniently to treatment plant infrastructure and high-power
PG&E transmission lines.
The first sign of serious trouble for the drought-stricken
American Southwest could be a whirlpool. It could happen if the
surface of Lake Powell, a man-made reservoir along the Colorado
River that’s already a quarter of its former size, drops
another 38 feet down the concrete face of the 710-foot Glen
Canyon Dam here. … The normally placid Lake Powell, the
nation’s second-largest reservoir, could suddenly transform
into something resembling a funnel, with water circling the
openings, the dam’s operators say. If that
happens, the massive turbines that generate electricity
for 4.5 million people would have to shut down — after nearly
60 years of use — or risk destruction from air bubbles.
… Such an outcome — known as a “minimum power pool” —
was once unfathomable here. Now, the federal government
projects that day could come as soon as July.
On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss the California
Coastal Commission’s recent approval of a controversial
desalination plant in Monterey County. The plan was approved 9
years after it was first proposed, following 13 hours of debate
at a public hearing. Proponents of the plan view desalination
as a critical source of drinking water in a drought-starved
region. Environmental justice advocates argue the plant could
raise costs for low income residents and harm marine life and
other wildlife habitats. What is the future for desalination in
the west, during an era of climate-induced mega-droughts?
Tucson Water is offering to leave “significant volumes” of its
annual Central Arizona Project water supply in the Colorado
River for the next three years in return for financial
compensation from the federal government.But its letter to the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation making that offer didn’t propose a
specific cut to the city’s annual CAP allocation. Supplying
144,191 acre-feet a year to Tucson Water, CAP provides
virtually all of the drinking water served to more than 730,000
utility customers. Tucson has enough left over from that supply
after serving those customers to recharge nearly one-third of
the water into the ground to store for future use.
Four small Bay Area drinking water systems will receive
millions of dollars as part of California’s effort to protect
water deliveries as the drought drags into its fourth year. On
Tuesday, the California Department of Water Resources announced
$44 million in statewide Small Community Drought Relief Program
grants about $6.5 million of which is earmarked for four water
systems in Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties. The
program is aimed at small systems with fewer than 3,000 service
connections that are most likely to suffer from aging
infrastructure and often rely on a single source of water.
“Small communities are the most vulnerable to the impacts of
our new hotter, drier climate and lack the resources to
immediately deal with these challenges,” DWR Director Karla
Nemeth said in a news release.
Boosting what has been a mediocre start so far to the winter
season, a storm from the Pacific Northwest is expected to bring
widespread rain to the Bay Area early Thursday and blanket the
Sierra Nevada with up to 3 feet of new snow. … The
storm system would be the first significant rain or snow in
Northern California in more than three weeks, and comes as the
state is entering its fourth year of drought. A hoped-for storm
fizzled last weekend, but this one is on track, forecasters
say….California desperately needs a sustained pattern of rain
and snow this winter. The last three years have been the driest
three-year period statewide since records began in the 1800s.
It’s not easy enforcing water regulations in the West. Just ask
the officials in California who have been trying for almost a
decade to penalize a man who took water from the river system
that feeds San Francisco and bottled it for sale to stores like
Starbucks. It sounds like a tall tale, but it’s
illustrative of just how hard it is to stop scofflaws from
using water the rest of the state needs during a water crisis.
In 2015, at the height of a severe drought, California’s state
water agency received a series of complaints about water theft
on a small tributary of the Tuolumne River, the source of the
Hetch Hetchy reservoir that supplies most of San Francisco’s
water. G. Scott Fahey, the owner of a water bottling
company called Sugar Pine Spring Water, was siphoning water
from the spring and loading it on trucks, the complainants
said.
Most of California’s urban water agencies believe they have
enough supplies to last through another seven months of
drought, but nearly 20% of them — including many in Southern
California — say they could be facing significant shortages,
according to a new state report. The California Department of
Water Resource’s first annual water supply and demand
assessment surveyed the state’s urban water agencies to see how
they are managing tight supplies through conservation efforts
and improved drought planning. … [Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California] spokeswoman Rebecca Kimitch added
that deteriorating conditions on the Colorado
River mean the rest of Southern California could also see
calls for increased conservation in the coming months.
The intersection of freshwater and climate is a frequently
ignored but critical element of the climate problem, according
to a new study from Sweden that explores the link and offers
solutions that will help lower emissions. Two years in
the making, the study, “The Essential Drop to Reach Net-Zero:
Unpacking Freshwater’s Role in Climate Change Mitigation,”
published by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, identifies
forests and freshwater wetlands as a crucial depository of
carbon. More than 30 percent of estimated global carbon
emissions are sequestered in wetlands. So the need to protect
and restore them is urgent.
America’s west is experiencing the worst drought in 1,200
years. The Colorado River is at record lows, threatening the
livelihoods of 40 million people who rely on the river
everyday. And though the government could impose additional
water supply cuts, some Arizona communities are already feeling
the effects. Arizona resident Karen Nabity has appreciated
living in Rio Verde Foothills, about an hour northeast of
Phoenix. That is, until her surroundings began to run dry.
According to reports, Maricopa County, which includes the Rio
Verde Foothills, is the fastest-growing in the nation.
The California Coastal Commission recently approved the
construction of two more desalination plants, one near
Monterey, and one by Dana Point. This adds to the four already
providing drinking water in the state. But in 2020, this same
commission advised not to build the Monterey plant. What
changed? The state has faced its driest three years on
record, and it needs more potable water for its almost 40
million residents, especially the ones living on the coast.
… Many countries in the Middle East, and even parts of
the United States, rely almost exclusively on desalinated
water, which is ocean water with the salt and other impurities
removed. Nevertheless, there are significant costs in terms of
energy needed for the desalination process and environmental
damage. In the case of the plant near Monterey, local residents
complained about other factors too.
The Colorado River has long been regarded as the “lifeline of
the Southwest.” It supplies water to 40 million people in
seven states, 29 Native American tribes and parts of
Mexico. Farmers use it to irrigate nearly 5.5 million acres of
agricultural land. One hundred years ago this month, the
signing of the Colorado River Compact laid the foundation for
how water from the river is used today. But the signers of the
1922 agreement had no way of knowing what the future would
bring. Decades of overuse because of faulty science and
population growth—along with climate change—have all reduced
the river’s flow and the water levels in the nation’s largest
reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Now, the basin is facing
a crisis.
California’s newest infrastructure project will hit two
proverbial climate birds with one stone. And Los Angeles city
officials just decided last week to try one of its own. The
plan is to cover some of California’s exposed water canals with
solar panels. It will prevent evaporation amidst the state’s
historic drought. It will also create renewable energy as the
state attempts to meet lofty decarbonization goals. The idea
gained traction in California after researchers at UC Merced
studied the possibility on the state’s canals last year.
“If we put solar panels over all 4000 miles of California’s
open canals, we estimated we could save 65 billion gallons of
water annually,” says Brandi McKuin, who led the study. “That’s
enough for the residential water needs of 2 million people –
enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland.”
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As directed by 2018 legislation, the Department of Water
Resources (DWR) today submitted a first report to the State
Water Resources Control Board summarizing how urban water
districts assess the adequacy of their supplies over the next
seven months. Broadly, the assessments show the
importance of conservation by individual Californians to help
suppliers meet demands through June 30, 2023. In this
year’s assessments, urban water suppliers indicate that they
will rely on either continued conservation or more aggressive
actions to meet demand through June 30, 2023, if dry conditions
persist. They report that they can ensure adequate water
supplies through water-saving strategies, such as requiring
customers to limit outdoor water and providing leak detection
and repair services.
After three years of virtual events, the PPIC Water Policy
Center’s annual fall conference made a welcome return to an
in-person format in Sacramento on Friday, November 18. The
half-day event began with a welcome from PPIC Water Policy
Center assistant director Caity Peterson and a presentation by
senior fellow Jeffrey Mount. “The elephant in the room is that
conditions have changed,” said Mount. “We’re no longer talking
about some future existential threat….we have now moved into
the era of the hot drought.” Hotter droughts, he said, coupled
with a thirstier atmosphere, are testing California’s water
system as never before.
The West uses too much water. For such a simple problem, the
obvious solution — use less — lies frustratingly out of reach.
That inability to change may seem hard to understand, but the
root of the problem becomes clearer if we consider the role of
the West in the historical development of the United States:
The purpose of our system of “free water” — heavily subsidized
water for irrigation — was to provide opportunities to
settlers. … With the New Deal, the Bureau of Reclamation
came into its own: Hoover Dam, completed in 1935 as the world’s
largest dam, served as a symbol for the country’s ability to
conquer nature. Progressives championed desert reclamation at
the turn of the century, but the federal government’s
willingness to build infrastructure and give water away on
extravagantly lenient terms was just as appealing for
conservatives after World War II. -Written by Revelator contributor Nate Housley.
Federal water managers on Monday warned California cities and
industrial users receiving water from the Central Valley
Project to prepare for a fourth year of drought and possibly
“extremely limited water supply” during 2023. The U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation, an agency of the Interior
Department that oversees water resource management, said
drought conditions in California have persisted despite early
storms this month, and warned of looming water conservation
actions. … The agency said water storage is near
historic lows in the reservoirs it oversees in the state, which
irrigate more than 3 million acres of land in central
California and supply major urban centers in the Greater
Sacramento and San Francisco Bay areas. The project’s water
provides supplies for approximately 2.5 million people per
year.
Without any regard to impacts on wildlife, fire danger, rural
residents or recreational users at Loveland Reservoir near
Alpine in San Diego’s East County, the Sweetwater Water
Authority (SWA) on November 16 began draining down the lake
with an intent to reduce it to “dead pool” level – less than
one-half of one percent of the reservoir’s capacity, once
draining is completed over the next couple of weeks or so. The
water is being piped to Sweetwater Reservoir in Otay Mesa. From
there, it will be used to provide drinking water and other
water needs to residents in the South Bay communities of Chula
Vista, National City and Bonita. -Written by Miriam Raftery.
The entire Mississippi River basin is experiencing drought
conditions that are being compared to the Dust Bowl days of the
1930s. The scenes — from exposed shipwrecks to sand dunes
cropping up where the river used to flow — are surreal, and
people from New Orleans to the Upper Midwest are getting
nervous. I’m increasingly being asked: Is this the future of
the Mississippi? And what would that mean for the world’s food
supply — 92% of all U.S. agricultural exports are produced in
the Mississippi River basin? Underpinning these questions is
the same fear: Will the Mississippi turn into a new Colorado
River—which is so oversubscribed it never reaches its historic
delta anymore? -Written by John Sabo, director of ByWater Institute at
Tulane University, avid fly fisherman.
Millions of Houston residents were told Sunday night to boil
their water before drinking it after a power outage at a water
purification plant caused water pressure to dip and triggered a
mandatory boil-water notice, officials said. The order prompted
officials in Texas’s largest city to close public schools for
at least one day. Officials said the orders were issued out of
an abundance of caution and that they had not received any
reports of customers getting sick from drinking contaminated
water. … Erin Jones, a spokeswoman for Houston Public
Works, said that the agency, which serves about 2.3 million
customers, is following state protocols and testing water
samples. The boil order is likely to remain in effect until at
least Tuesday morning, she said.
A lot has changed for California’s reservoirs over the last
five years. In April 2017, then-Governor Jerry Brown issued an
executive order that declared California’s drought state of
emergency over in most counties (Fresno, Kings, Tulare and
Tuolumne counties were initially excluded). The emergency order
had been in place since 2014 following several years of
historic drought conditions. … Shasta is currently
at 31% capacity, down from its historical capacity of 57%
this time of year. Storage level graphs from the
California Department of Water Resources show today’s water
level hovering above 2014’s historically low levels.
As California prepares for a fourth consecutive year of drought
and farmland across the Golden State increasingly goes idle,
growers continue to face mounting economic challenges. In a new
report about the financial toll of the state’s extreme drought
conditions, researchers estimated that the state’s irrigated
farmland dropped by 752,000 acres, or nearly 10%, from 2019 to
2022. Fields meant to harvest rice, almonds and other crops are
instead going unplanted, causing the level of fallowed land
across California to surpass the prior peak seen during the
state’s last drought that ran from 2012 to 2016. As a result,
the researchers found, California crop revenues fell by $1.7
billion, or 4.6%, during that time …
California already has one of the most variable climates in the
United States, and it’s getting more extreme. Our “weather
whiplash,” as it’s becoming known, is increasingly marked by
long periods of warm, dry conditions punctuated by stronger and
wetter atmospheric river storms. … Recognizing the
influence of atmospheric rivers on California’s changing
climate, Yuba Water is working with the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at
UC San Diego, the California Department of Water Resources, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others to
implement Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations in the
Yuba and Feather river watersheds. FIRO is a flexible water
management strategy that uses improved weather and water
forecasts …
Thomas Birmingham, general manager of the massive Westlands
Water District since 2000, Wednesday announced plans to step
down at the end of 2022. His announcement follows the election
of four new members to the Westlands Board of Directors on Nov.
8 who would give a so-called “change coalition” a solid
majority of six seats on the nine-member board. The top
priority for the coalition is “a change in leadership,”
according to Sarah Woolf, who along with Jon Reiter helped
coordinate a group of increasingly frustrated Westlands farmers
to run the slate of change candidates, SJV Water
reported.
As Colorado River water users prepare to meet in Las Vegas next
month, the reality they face is one of growing uncertainty with
few simple options left on the negotiating table. The math is
well understood: There are more demands for the river than
there is water coming into its reservoirs. But cutting
back at the scale necessary — and on a voluntary basis — has
proven painstakingly difficult this year as top officials from
across the Colorado River watershed have failed to reach a
settlement. If the cuts are inevitable based on physical
realities, questions remain about what form they will take.
Will they be voluntary? Mandatory? Both? And how would they be
enforced?
The promise of job security and work-life balance drew Fernando
Gonzalez to become a water operator. Now that he’s worked as
one for a few years, he sees his job as much more than fining
people for using too much water. On a given day, he’s
patrolling neighborhoods spanning from farmland to Malibu
mansions, looking for evidence that residents are wasting
water. He hands out notices of leaky sprinklers or when
residents run sprinklers right after a rainstorm, sure, but the
most rewarding part of his job is interacting with customers
about how they can save water, and why it’s so
important. … Here’s how Gonzalez earns $70,000 a
year, or nearly $100,000 with overtime, as a water operator in
Calabasas, Calif.
On November 24, 1922, representatives of the seven Colorado
River basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico,
Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming—gathered in Santa Fe, N.M., to sign
the Colorado River Compact, cementing into law a regime for
dividing the river’s water. Without exception, these men were
newcomers to a region inhabited since time immemorial by Native
American Tribes. Two of them represented states just a decade
old, none represented states more than 75-years-old, and their
purpose was to enable colonial settlers to establish a foothold
through irrigation-driven economic development.
Ever since European settlers crossed the Rockies, access to
water has defined the development of the American West. Water
irrigates farms, hydrates households, powers
machinery. But a prolonged drought that began in 2000 has
become the Southwest’s driest 22-year period in 12
centuries, according to analyses of tree-ring
records. This cycle of dryness comes amid a population
boom in drought-prone states like Utah. Its residents grew by
18% to 3.25 million from 2010 to 2020, faster than any
other state, even before the work-from-home trend took
hold. That migration has pushed up the price of real
estate and, as elsewhere, sparked debate in Utah over housing
availability and affordability for average families. But the
debate is increasingly laced with other concerns: Will there be
enough water for everyone? And who gets priority?
A research team has found that the Andean region of Chile could
face noticeable snow loss and roughly 10% less mountain water
runoff with a global warming of approximately 2.5 degrees
Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels over the next three
decades. The study also shows that what happens in the Andes
could be a harbinger of what is to come for the California
Sierra Nevada mountain range, and highlights the importance of
carbon-mitigation strategies to prevent this from occurring.
… Last year, a study co-led by Alan Rhoades and Erica
Siirila-Woodburn, research scientists in the Earth and
Environmental Sciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), found that if global warming
continues along the high-emissions scenario, low-to-no-snow
winters will become a regular occurrence in the mountain ranges
of the western U.S. in 35 to 60 years.
In the fall, rice fields in the Sacramento Valley usually shine
golden brown as they await harvesting. This year, however, many
fields were left covered with bare dirt. “It’s a disaster,”
said rice farmer Don Bransford. “This has never happened.
Never. And I’ve been farming since 1980.” … California
has just gone through the state’s driest three-year period on
record, and this year the drought has pushed the fallowing of
farmland to a new high. In a new report on the
drought’s economic effects, researchers estimated that
California’s irrigated farmland shrank by 752,000 acres, or
nearly 10%, in 2022 compared with 2019 — the year prior to the
drought. That was up from an estimated 563,000 acres of
fallowed farmland last year.
Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District board of directors and
staff were saddened by the death of Board Director Phil
Williams. Director Phil Williams served on EVMWD’s board of
director since 2001, representing EVMWD’s Division 4, which
includes areas of Corona and western Lake Elsinore, as well as
the unincorporated communities of Horsethief Canyon and
Alberhill. “We have lost an admired and respected member of the
EVMWD family” said Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District
General Manager Greg Thomas. … Williams, a local real estate
broker and licensed general contractor, was a lifelong resident
of Lake Elsinore. As a board member for EVMWD, Williams served
as board president seven times over his 21 year tenure on the
board.
Sweetwater Authority has begun transferring water between its
two reservoirs in response to drought conditions, the agency
announced. The move has paused access to fishing at Loveland
Reservoir and local anglers fear that continued draining will
result in a permanent end to one of the few, free options to
fish in the region. Tuesday marked the beginning of a water
transfer from Loveland, which is near Alpine, to the Sweetwater
Reservoir south of Spring Valley, where it will be treated by
the agency and then supplied to its 200,000 customers in
Bonita, Chula Vista and National City.
The final regular meeting for two members of the Board of
Directors of Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District was a
quick one, with little business conducted. Director James Pack
served eight years on the board and Director Kathy Cassil
served four years. Both opted not to run for reelection. At the
Nov. 16 meeting, board President Robert Schultz and the
district’s General Manager Tom Neisler both thanked the two for
their service on the board. Neisler said he hopes they will
attend the December meeting at which the district will
transition to a new board.
In other areas of the country, electricity grids are organized
under operators that coordinate and control the market across
state lines. But in the Western Interconnection, which serves
most of the western U.S. and parts of Canada, there are 38
different authorities responsible for balancing their own
grids. … That could be especially valuable as the West deals
with a decades-long drought that threatens hydropower, and as
states and utilities close large coal plants. A regional
market, experts say, would allow ample wind generation in more
central states to flow west, while solar production from states
like California and Arizona could be sent elsewhere.
The fierce struggle for water in a drought-stricken West
continues to roil politics — and embroil a host of tribal water
claims. The decades-long drought has dried up reservoirs and
forced federal water cutbacks for the 40 million people in
seven states who rely on the Colorado River for water. But it
has also dramatically increased the stakes for the region in
decades-old water claims by a host of tribes — including the
Navajo and the White Mountain Apache. The Tonto Apache Tribe
also has a decades-old claim to water from the Colorado River.
Efforts to settle that claim with water from the C.C. Cragin
Reservoir with a payment from the federal government to buy
into Payson’s pipeline have been stalled for years — and missed
out on a gush of federal pandemic and infrastructure aid to
tribes. -Written by contributor Peter Aleshire.
Arizona State University and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced
Nov. 16 that the university will lead a multi-year Arizona
Water Innovation Initiative to provide immediate, actionable
and evidence-based solutions to ensure that Arizona will
continue to thrive with a secure future water supply, according
to a news release. Ducey has committed resources and has
asked ASU to work with industrial, municipal, agricultural,
tribal and international partners to rapidly accelerate and
deploy new approaches and technology for water conversation,
augmentation, desalination, efficiency, infrastructure, and
reuse.
A controversial proposed dam seems to have a new pathway
forward. But how far will it get through California’s byzantine
world of water rights? Nobody seems to agree on an
answer. The Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir is a joint
project between the Del Puerto Water District and the San
Joaquin River Exchange Contractor Authority on the west side of
the San Joaquin Valley. A Stanislaus County Superior Court
judge on Oct. 31 dismissed a host of environmental
challenges against the project as well as all concerns brought
by another group of irrigators, the Friant Water Supply
Protection Association.
California water policy is often discussed and depicted as
being impossibly complex. In its essentials, it can be
seen much more simply, as in the flow chart below.
Without extreme events (such as floods and droughts), the
policy process would be simpler, but ironically less effective,
and less well funded. … California’s remarkable water
history shows that frequent extreme events have activated
enough innovation and preparations over 170 years such that
floods, droughts, and earthquakes are now much less threatening
to California’s population and economy. However, frequent
failures have not yet motivated adequate preparation and
management for ecosystems and rural water supplies.
States that use water from the Colorado River have been unable
to reach a realistic agreement on how to reduce consumption
enough to keep the river a viable source — especially since the
last drought has dropped reservoirs to record lows. So agencies
that provide water directly in six of those states have joined
together in a Memorandum of Understanding, saying they will
take the initiative to further reduce water use and find other
ways to stop taking so much from the Colorado River, according
to a recent press release. The Metropolitan Water District,
which supplies imported water to most of Southern California,
has signed the agreement, as has Long Beach Water and San Diego
County.
The Tule River Tribe Chairman presented his case in Washington
D.C. on Wednesday, continuing the decades long effort to enact
federal legislation to provide water rights for the Tule River
Reservation that would address a dire need. Tule River Tribe
Chairman Neil Peyron testified in front of the Senate Committee
on Indian Affairs concerning the proposed Tule River Tribe
Reserved Water Rights Settlement Act of 2022. On September 15,
California’s two Democratic U.S. Senators, Alex Padilla and
Dianne Feinstein introduced the Tule River Tribe Reserved
Rights Settlement Act. The legislation is a product of an
effort that has lasted more than 50 years made by the Tule
River Tribe to obtain recognition of their federal reserved
Indian water rights.
Remember a couple weeks ago when it rained half an inch in
Fresno and snowed in the Sierra? Sure was nice while it lasted.
But with nothing but sunny skies in the short-term forecast and
La Niña ocean conditions expected once again this winter, all
signs point to a fourth consecutive year of California drought.
… Because the San Joaquin Valley is experiencing
California’s worst drought conditions as well as our economic
dependence on agriculture, those of us living here should be
extra diligent about conserving water. Especially when
instructed to do so by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in July 2021
called for a 15% voluntary reduction in water use rather than
impose mandatory restrictions similar to those implemented in
2015 by former Gov. Jerry Brown. -Written by Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski.
100 years ago, Wyoming signed onto a deal to divide the water
that flows through the Colorado River basin among seven
states. It’s based on a formula — one likely based on
mistaken beliefs about the river itself — that did not award
extra credit for living in the mountains where the snow piles
up. Instead, the states signed a compact allocating the
water where it would readily be put to work. It meant the
more populated states of California, Colorado and
Arizona would get the biggest shares.
… But more than two decades into a punishing
drought that climate scientists say will likely intensify with
more warming, the system can no longer supply everything
that some 40 million people in a warming and drying region
desire from it, or that grocers nationwide sell from its
verdant fields.
As the Marin Municipal Water District nears the end of a nearly
yearlong study of potential new water supplies, some district
leaders say more information is needed on the costs and
benefits of bolstering water conservation investments.
… The district has been studying new water supplies
since March after facing the prospect of depleting local
reservoir storage following two years of severe drought. Rains
in late 2021 helped to nearly refill the district’s seven
reservoirs, giving it time to review new sources of
water. The district hired the Jacobs Engineering firm to
conduct the water supply study. The study seeks to compare
estimated costs and water yields for several options, including
desalination, recycled water, enlarging reservoirs and new
connections to outside water agencies.
A Claremont friend of ours recently confessed, she is depressed
if she sees a brown lawn, and she is depressed if she sees a
green lawn. We think of our friend as reasonably well-adjusted,
so lawns do seem to be the culprits here. Indeed, out for one
of our walks on a Thursday evening — not a permissible
sprinkler day — my wife and I see homes in our neighborhood
with the sprinklers going full blast, with a steady flow of
water running into the street. The L.A. Times recently
interviewed Max Gomberg, who resigned as a senior manager with
the California State Water Board out of his frustration over
inaction in Sacramento on water. He described participants in
the water market as playing a game of chicken, waiting to see
who would blink first, taking us down an unsustainable
path. -Written by Stephen Marks, the Elden Smith
Professor of Economics at Pomona College.
According to the National Center for Environmental Information,
about 51 percent of the continental United States has been
experiencing drought conditions in the summer of 2022. More
than 70 percent of the western U.S. faces severe drought. The
Colorado River basin supply is rapidly declining, and Lake Mead
and Lake Powell are at critically low levels. Because of this,
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has declared a Tier 2 water
shortage on the Colorado River impacting seven western states
that depend on water from the river. … In the U.S., more
than 40 percent of the population relies on groundwater for its
drinking water. Groundwater is also used for irrigation,
domestic use, public use, and industrial and mining activities.
The California Coastal Commission [Thursday night] approved
another desalination plant, despite citing its high costs,
risks to Monterey Bay’s environment and “the most significant
environmental justice issues” the commission has faced in
recent years. The commission’s divided, 8-to-2 vote came
after 13 hours of debate at a Salinas public hearing packed
with several hundred people, plus more crammed into overflow
space. Many of the 375 who signed up to speak opposed the
project — some in tears. Much of the debate focused on the
fairness of locating a for-profit company’s facility in the
Monterey County city of Marina — which does not need the water
and is home to designated disadvantaged neighborhoods. The
expensive supply will flow to other communities, including the
whiter, wealthy enclaves of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Pacific Grove
and Pebble Beach.
California has long been a hub of innovation. But managing the
increasing variability of our weather in an era of climate
change will challenge even the best and brightest water and
land managers. Conditions are changing fast—and they will keep
changing. And the warmer, drier conditions are revealing some
profound weaknesses in our water supply systems. As we argue in
our new report, Priorities for California’s Water: Thriving
with Less, even if we do everything right, water supplies are
likely to decline. The grand challenge for 21st-century water
management in California is learning to thrive with less.
Maricopa County’s population has more than doubled over the
past 30 years, making it one of the fastest growing regions in
the country. But meanwhile, Arizona’s water supply has become
more and more depleted. So as growth continues, can the state
sustain even more residents? In most areas of central
Arizona, a developer can’t build a new home without first
proving that there’s enough water to last that property 100
years. But there are loopholes for larger lots in rural areas,
like many homes in Rio Verde Foothills. And as water becomes
scarcer, some worry even properties with those 100-year plans
might not all be sustainable.
In an outcome that could change whether Silicon Valley’s
largest water district moves forward with a $2.5 billion plan
to build a new dam at Pacheco Pass, voters have shaken up the
Santa Clara Valley Water District Board. Gary Kremen, a tech
investor who co-founded Match.com and once owned domain names
like sex.com, jobs.com and housing.com, has been defeated in
his effort to seek re-election to a third term by Rebecca
Eisenberg, a Palo Alto attorney. Kremen conceded Wednesday
after county elections officials updated the count and reported
he was trailing 54.8% to 45.2% — or by 7,765 votes with roughly
8,000 ballots left to count.
With drought conditions continuing to blanket the Western U.S.,
and farmers struggling to find adequate water supplies,
competing interests are pressuring the federal government to
cut the water supply farmers are using to grow our food,
including alfalfa, which is a foundational food chain crop. In
response, the Family Farm Alliance and California Farm Water
Coalition have produced a White Paper titled, “Our Food Supply
at Risk; The Importance of Alfalfa Production in the American
West,” detailing the valuable role alfalfa plays as a principal
feed source for the nation’s livestock and diary industries,
its environmental benefits, and contribution to effective
drought management.
John Wesley Powell offered a poignant message for Western U.S.
communities when he was the featured speaker in a room full of
developers and government leaders at a major irrigation
conference held in Los Angeles in October 1893. Powell, then
director of the U.S. Geological Survey, started off strong,
receiving applause from those listening to him, noted Greg
Smoak, a professor of history and director of the American West
Center at the University of Utah. … “There is not enough
water to irrigate all the lands … There is but a small portion
of the irrigable land which can be irrigated when all the
water, every drop of water, is utilized,” Powell warned the
crowd, adding that he foresaw a future filled with battles over
water rights.
As drought extends its grip on California and the West, the
important work of educating about water becomes even more
important. Since 1977, the Water Education Foundation has been
a trusted source of water news and programming, putting water
resource issues in California and the West into context. You
can support the important work of our nonprofit by making a tax-deductible gift via a one-time payroll
deduction or a set amount per pay period through
your employer, whether you work for a federal or state agency
or a private employer.
Despite recent rain storms across the state, California’s
historic drought shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
With the lack of meaningful regular precipitation, capacity at
California’s reservoirs continue to decline, putting stress on
the state’s water supply. Across the board, nearly all of
California’s major water supply reservoirs managed by the
California Department of Water Resources are well below
historic averages. … Shasta, the largest state reservoir
with a capacity of 4,552,000 acre-feet of water, is currently
at 31% capacity. Historically, capacity at Shasta Lake is
usually around 57% this time of year. Lake Oroville, which
has a capacity of about 3,537,000 acre-feet of water, is in
even more dire straits. As of Nov. 14, Oroville is at 29%
capacity, almost half of the historic average of 58%.
Alfalfa is often the target of critics of irrigated agriculture
who frequently rely upon simplistic explanations to heap scorn
upon growing a forage crop in the West during times of drought.
Two Democratic congressmen from Arizona — Ruben Gallego and
Raúl Grijalva — last month introduced the “Domestic Water
Protection Act of 2022” (H.R. 9194), which would impose an
excise tax on the sale of a “water-intensive” crop. The tax is
300% of the price for which the crop is sold and is paid by the
manufacturer, producer, or importer of the crop. The bill
defines water-intensive crop as a crop grown in an area
experiencing prolonged drought at the time such crop is grown,
and by a manufacturer, producer, or importer that is a foreign
corporation or foreign government. -Written by Dan Keppen, executive director of Family
Farm Alliance.
Colorado River Commission Chairman Herbert Hoover gathered the
seven states’ representatives at opened at 11:00 a.m. Nov. 15,
1922, for the 17th meeting in their efforts to forge an
agreement to share the Colorado River. They had been holed up
at Bishop’s Lodge outside Santa Fe for five days, wrestling
with how to divide the river. By that point in the negotiations
they had settled on a general framework, dividing the river
into an “upper” and “lower” basin, but were stuck on the
question of how much water the upper states would be required
to send each year to the lower states. Hoover intentionally set
a later starting time that day to give the upper river states
plenty of time to caucus among themselves to consider his
proposal from the previous day that the Upper Basin deliver 82
million acre-feet every ten years plus a 4 and ½ million acre
foot minimum annual flow.
On Dec. 12, NASA will launch the Surface Water and Ocean
Topography (SWOT) satellite into Earth orbit from Vandenberg
Space Force Base in California atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The
mission is a collaborative effort between NASA and the French
space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) – with
contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK
Space Agency – that will survey water on more than 90% of the
planet’s surface. The satellite will measure the height of
water in Earth’s freshwater bodies and the ocean, providing
insights into how the ocean influences climate change; how a
warming world affects lakes, rivers, and reservoirs; and how
communities can better prepare for disasters, like floods.
Modesto Irrigation District, Turlock Irrigation District and
the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission have signed a
memorandum of understanding with the state to advance a
voluntary agreement for the Tuolumne River. MID and TID, which
jointly operate the Don Pedro Reservoir on the Tuolumne River,
joined dozens of other California water agencies in committing
to collaborate with the state to finalize agreements that will
provide water supply reliability to communities, while
enhancing river ecosystems. Contra Costa Water District signed
onto the agreement in September. … The action by the
districts signals momentum towards an alternative to
regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board
in 2018, as part of the first phase of the state’s Bay-Delta
water quality control plan.
On November 10, 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta
announced that he had filed a lawsuit against 3M, DuPont, and
sixteen other companies for their roles in manufacturing per-
and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The lawsuit seeks money
damages, which could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, for
damages, penalties, and restitution, as well as injunctive
relief and abatement. Some consider the lawsuit the broadest of
its kind brought by any state. PFAS is an umbrella term
that covers dozens of types of man-made chemicals. PFAS were
used for a variety of purposes, including in nonstick cookware
and firefighting foam, although their usage has been phased out
voluntarily by companies in the United States over the past
20-25 years.
A slate of candidates aiming to reform the powerful Westlands
Water District swept into victory on Monday night, cementing a
new board majority and likely spelling the end of the line for
the district’s general manager. The four candidates –
Justin Diener, Ernie Costamagna, Jeremy Hughes, and Ross
Franson – captured the four available seats in preliminary
results. In the process, they are primed to boot the lone
incumbent running for re-election from his seat – current
Westlands board president Ryan Ferguson.
In the last decade, California—along with the rest of the
world—has entered a new phase of climate change. The changes
that scientists predicted have started to arrive. California’s
already variable climate is growing increasingly volatile and
unpredictable: The dry periods are hotter and drier, and the
wet periods—lately too few and far between—are warmer and often
more intense. … The snowpack—that once-reliable annual source
of water—is diminishing as temperatures rise. Water withdrawals
during multiyear droughts are depleting the state’s reservoirs
and groundwater basins. … This report considers the
state of water in California: What changes are we seeing now,
and what should we expect in the near future?
The federal government is expected to restrict Arizona’s water
supply even more in the coming months due to the megadrought,
heading into the new year. However, no one knows exactly what
that will mean, but we do know the three-decade drought is
shrinking the Colorado River with no end in sight.
… Buckeye’s population is currently at about 75,000 but
sits on 600 square miles of open land with plans to develop
about every last inch, but satisfying thirsty mouths is a drop
in the bucket compared to watering thirsty crops.
.. Buckeye does a leg up, thanks to an underground aquifer
up to a thousand feet deep. Every drop is closely monitored and
replenished by law.
Consider California’s Stanislaus River. In the 1970s, people of
all ages and abilities reveled in running its 13 miles of
rapids bearing scary names like Widowmaker and Devil’s
Staircase. Not far from Sacramento and San Francisco, the
limestone canyon offered renewal and adventure to people nearly
year-round. But back in 1944, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
authorized 625-foot-high New Melones Dam for the Stan, though
filling it would drown the beloved canyon…. Now, with
New Melones logging its fourth decade of broken promises in
water delivery, flood control and energy production, hundreds
of river advocates from the old campaign hope to reclaim the
Stan. In their teens and 20s back then, and today in their 60s
and 70s, they believe the timing has never been better.
For the second time since the Delta Stewardship Council’s
establishment in 2010, its regulatory authority has been upheld
by California’s judicial branch, clearing the way for the
Council to continue to apply its expertise and exercise its
broad authority in determining how to accomplish the goals and
objectives of the Delta Reform Act. On November 4, the Superior
Court of California ruled in favor of the Council regarding
lawsuits filed by 17 parties challenging two amendments to the
Delta Plan and the Programmatic Environmental Impact Report
(PEIR) prepared pursuant to the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA).
To the Ute Mountain Ute, grappling with its water supply is an
ongoing challenge. Despite having senior water rights dating
back to 1868, when the Kit Carson Treaty created the
reservation, the tribe received none of its rightful water for
decades as non-Native settlers dammed rivers and diverted
flows. And like many tribes across the Southwest, it still
struggles to properly quantify and settle some of the water
claims already validated by a long stream of court decisions.
Even when tribes have been able to secure their water rights,
they have often lacked the expensive infrastructure for getting
it to their reservations, which means their water gets used,
without payment, by non-native groups.
When the Colorado River Compact Commission’s members returned
to negotiations on the morning of Nov. 14 , 1922, they were
presented with three important questions – one which survived
as language in the final compact and two which did not, but all
three of which remain important to the river’s management
today. As they convened that morning at Bishop’s Lodge, outside
Santa Fe, Commission Chairman Herbert Hoover laid out what he
called “our three main propositions” – a division of the use of
the water between an upper and lower basin the term of a
multi-year upstream-to-downstrom flow commitment (flow at Lee’s
Ferry)and a minimum delivery for any one year the question of
whether the compact should be made contingent on construction
of large storage reservoirs on the river.
Expansion of sustainable irrigation (i.e., using sustainable
water resources to irrigate water-limited croplands) can
increase food production, while neither depleting water stocks
nor encroaching upon nature. Yet, there is a mismatch in timing
of water availability and of irrigation needs in many
geographies, necessitating temporary water storage. We quantify
global volumes of water that requires temporary storage to be
leveraged for an expansion of sustainable irrigation and
discuss options to provide that storage. While dammed
reservoirs are crucial for today’s irrigation, dams alone will
not suffice to fully leverage sustainable water resources in
the future and while creating major impacts on nature and
people. This highlights the urgent need for alternative
solutions to water storage and demand side approaches to food
security.
A new film about the transfer of water from the high desert to
Los Angeles – called “Without Water” – has just been released
on the internet. The film highlights the struggle between the
community around Long Valley, which is between Mammoth and
Bishop California – and the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power. The D-W-P has court permission to terminate longstanding
water leases and limit irrigation water in Long and Little
Round valleys. Matt McClain, campaign manager the Keep Long
Valley Green Coalition, said that would endanger wildlife,
fish, cattle grazing, tourism and Native American cultural
sites. So advocates are asking for at least 2.8 acre feet of
water per year going forward.
Gov. Spencer Cox announced this month that all new water rights
in the Great Salt Lake Basin are on pause, given the lake’s
crisis situation. The move sounds big, sweeping and dramatic —
it applies to the lake’s main tributaries that drain nearly
10,000 square miles in Utah. Still, it’s hard to say how much
of a difference it will make for the Great Salt Lake, which has
continued to shrink after hitting another record low over the
summer, almost entirely due to Utah’s water diversions. The
governor’s current suspension only applies to new water right
applications and does not interfere with existing ones. New
water rights would be the most junior with the lowest priority
anyway. And in periods of drought, junior water right holders
sometimes don’t get to divert any water at all.
When the government declared an official “shortage” on the
river last year, an unprecedented step, it triggered major
water cuts in the central Arizona county. And those cuts have
caused some farmers in Pinal County to look for more
water-efficient crops, including Will Thelander, a third
generation farmer in Arizona, who is testing a crop called
guayule. Guayule, a desert-adapted shrub pronounced
“wy-oo-lee,” could be used for several products, most notably
as a natural rubber for tires. And it requires only about half
the water of cotton, alfalfa, and corn—the more water-intensive
crops Thelander typically grows. … Native to the
Chihuahuan Desert, it requires less water than many other
crops, for one. And after it’s established, it doesn’t require
any insecticides or tilling, limiting use of the chemicals and
supporting carbon storage.
Two decades of the Southwest megadrought have marked Arizona’s
driest period in 1,200 years. With climate change in full
swing, greenhouse emissions well above pledged targets and the
state facing cutbacks to its share of dwindling Colorado River
water, many wonder: Is drought the new normal? In an ideal
world, drought would be as simple as the settings on a hair
dryer: more heat, more evaporation. But it’s not an ideal
world, and less so every day, thanks to climate change, rising
water demand — and changing land use.
The question addressed in this blog comes from a new PPIC
report that calls for reforms in management of environmental
water stored behind dams in California. The report shows it is
possible to manage water in ways that are compatible with
maintaining a natural ecosystem in streams below and above dams
(Null et al. 2022). An appendix to this report focuses on
fishes (Moyle et al. 2022). It provides information on how dams
and reservoirs affect native fish populations and supports the
need for improved water management to avoid future extinctions.
Three of California’s biggest water suppliers, including the
city of San Francisco, have reached a deal with the state that
calls for reducing their immense consumption of river water but
not as much as the state had initially demanded. The
compromise, announced Thursday, is the latest breakthrough in a
years-long effort by state regulators to protect flows in
California’s once-grand but increasingly overdrawn rivers. The
toll on the waterways, where as much as 90% of the water is
pumped to cities and farms, has been exacerbated by drought,
leaving fabled runs of salmon and other plants and animals at
risk of perishing. … But whether Thursday’s deal, known
as “voluntary agreements,” will meaningfully increase river
flows — and protect fish and wildlife — remains uncertain.
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Vice Chair
Cynthia Kurtz told a City committee she predicted the
implementation of more mandatory water reductions by next year
as the region faces the challenges of climate change
and extended drought. Kurtz knows Pasadena’s water
situation well. She served as Pasadena City Manager twice, most
recently stepping down as Interim City
Manager in August. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the first three months of 2022 have seen record dry
weather, and pushed nearly 94% of California into
severe drought conditions.
Lake Mead relies on inflow – mostly, water released from the
upstream Lake Powell. Until recently, Lake Mead typically
would get at least 8.23 million acre-feet of water annually
from Lake Powell – enough to cover the state of Maryland
in more than a foot of water. We began this year expecting
to get a lower 7.48 million acre-feet release from Lake Powell.
But the federal Bureau of Reclamation, for the first
time, trimmed that mid-year to 7 million acre-feet
because of how dangerously close Powell was to something called
“minimum power pool.” -Written by Arizona Republic columnist Joanna
Allhands.
As a society, what do we do when too little water has been
promised to too many people? What should we be doing
differently? In the United States, there is perhaps no
better to place to turn for answers to these questions than the
Klamath Basin. The Klamath Basin watershed is considered one of
the most complicated areas for water governance in the United
States owing to its transboundary location (the basin crosses
the Oregon-California border), its history of complex
litigation and persistent inter-institutional (and
interpersonal) conflict, and more than 60 different groups of
people who have an interest in the basin’s water
allocation.
Farmers and other ratepayers in Fallbrook and Rainbow could see
an average savings on their water bills of more than $20 a
month by joining the Eastern Municipal Water District in
Riverside County, according to a new report. However, the move
may increase the cost of water for other San Diegans by more
than $2 a month on average, according to the findings from the
Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO. The San Diego
County Water Authority has been hostile to the idea of losing
two of its 24 member agencies. The wholesaler has seen its
water sales plummet by more than 40 percent since 2007, largely
as a result of unanticipated drought conservation.
If challenger Eric Averett maintains his lead over incumbent
Phil Cerro for a seat on the powerful Kern County Water Agency
board, it may prove just how effective a campaign statement can
be. Averett said he tried to withdraw his name from the ballot
after belatedly learning Cerro would run. But he missed the
deadline to have his name removed, Averett told SJV Water in
September. He vowed not to campaign – dropping out of the race
in spirit – and said he would support Cerro. But when Averett
filed his paperwork to run, he did one thing Cerro didn’t, he
submitted a campaign statement.
Earthquakes are a fact of life in California, and at the B.F.
Sisk Dam and San Luis Reservoir work is underway to ensure the
continued viability and durability of the key resources, even
when Mother Nature decides to shake things up. A major seismic
upgrade, the largest project of that scale that has occurred at
the site since its construction in 1967, received a $100
million investment earlier this year from the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law. It is Reclamation’s largest dam safety
project under the 1978 Safety of Dams Act.
After two years of drought crises at the Marin Municipal Water
District, voters might have ousted two longtime board members
and replaced them with advocates for expanding local supplies.
Election night results on Tuesday showed 28-year incumbent Jack
Gibson and eight-year incumbent Larry Bragman potentially
losing their seats. Both were trailing their challengers by
more than 1,000 votes each. Ranjiv Khush of San Anselmo had a
strong lead over Bragman for the Division 3 seat after securing
nearly 60% of the vote. Bragman had 31% of the vote while a
second challenger, nonprofit director Jack Kenney, had 9%. In
Division 1, firefighter Matthew Samson of San Rafael secured
61% of the vote over Gibson.
It’s been more than two years since Cambria applied to turn its
emergency water system into a more permanent fixture, but
there’s been little progress since then. According to Cambria
Community Services District (CCSD) board member Harry Farmer,
the permit application was submitted to the county in July
2020. … Cambria’s water issues have been ongoing for
more than a decade, but the problems with the now-proposed
water reclamation facility started in 2014, after the district
declared a water supply emergency. Due to a dire water shortage
situation, SLO County proceeded to grant the CCSD an emergency
permit to build a water supply project, bypassing the typical
requirements needed to obtain an operating permit.
Thursday, Nov. 17 is shaping up to be a momentous day for the
future of the Monterey Peninsula’s water supply, as two major
state boards – the California Coastal Commission and the
California Public Utilities Commission – are set to weigh in on
two separate projects that aim to add supply to the local
portfolio. Arguably, the more weighty of the two hearings is
the Coastal Commission’s, which is meeting for three days in
the Board of Supervisors chambers in Salinas. In those chambers
on Nov. 17, the commissioners will consider whether to grant a
coastal development permit to California American Water for its
proposed desalination project in Marina, which has been a
lightning rod for controversy since first being proposed nearly
a decade ago.
In California, the historically unmonitored and unregulated
practice of groundwater pumping has led to declining
groundwater levels in many basins across the state. These
declining levels have also created pockets of displacement —
some greater than 25 feet. … [I]nterferometric synthetic
aperture radar (InSAR), a satellite-based data analysis
technique that measures changes in the earth’s surface over
time with millimeter precision, … has not only enabled the
DWR to develop its first-ever statewide subsidence monitoring
system but it’s also bringing undetected subsidence to the
surface, giving water managers a consistent source of
ground-movement intelligence to help them improve groundwater
management and bring stability to unstable ground.
The Coachella Valley Water District’s board of directors voted
Tuesday to cut back on groundwater replenishment over the next
few years to reduce the district’s Colorado River water use
amid historic drought conditions. Groundwater
replenishment adds water to the local aquifer, which provides
nearly all of the drinking water and domestic water sources in
the Coachella Valley. Earlier this year, the Bureau of
Reclamation called for the seven states that rely on the
Colorado River — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to use at least 15% less water
next year from the drought-stricken river system, or between 2
million and 4 million acre-feet less. An acre-foot, about
326,000 gallons of water, is enough to supply about two
households for a year.
Register to join us Thursday, Dec. 8, for our Winter
Outlook Workshop in Irvine. The past
three-year span, 2019 to 2022, has officially been the driest
ever statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into
this winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for
California or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new
reality of climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our
reliance on historical patterns to forecast California’s water
supply? The event is ideal for anyone involved in managing
water resources or simply interested in the
topic … Register here!
Balancing the state’s groundwater supplies for a sustainable
future may not be easy due to severe drought and ongoing
economic challenges facing farmers. “We’ve got the lowest
prices and highest production costs and the least-reliable
water supply that we’ve had since I’ve been farming,” said Bill
Diedrich of Firebaugh, who farms row crops and permanent crops
on the west side in Madera and Fresno counties…. Diedrich,
who relies on groundwater for irrigating farmland in Madera
County and surface water for ground in Fresno County, said
farming at this time “is very difficult.” He said the 2014
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which tasks local
agencies to balance groundwater supplies in affected basins by
2040 and 2042, means farmland must come out of production.
With a harsh desert climate fed only by a river over 80 miles
away, water conservation is always on the minds of our Imperial
Valley farmers, who demonstrate on a daily basis how to
maximize water-use efficiencies while increasing their yields.
Since 2003, IID has implemented and managed large-scale
conservation programs that have yielded over 7.2 million
acre-feet of conserved water to fulfill the obligations of the
nation’s largest agriculture-to-urban water conservation and
transfer program…. IID believes that the key to
accomplishing Reclamation’s call for 2 million to 4 million
acre-feet of Colorado River reductions to protect critical
reservoir elevations is to develop cooperative solutions that
respect the Law of the River, existing agreements and the
water-rights priority system. -Written by Tina Shields, water department manager for
the Imperial Irrigation District, which supplies Imperial
Valley agriculture.
PG&E has begun relinquishing its control of the Potter
Valley Project. Concerned that this will reduce water supplies,
Santa Rosa is exploring options. Mendocino County’s
century old Potter Valley Project consists of two Eel River
dams, a tunnel diverting some of the Eel into the East Fork of
the Russian River, and an inoperable powerhouse in need of
expensive repairs. … PG&E, which operates the
project, abruptly withdrew its re-licensing application three
years ago. It’s looking to surrender it in 2025. In response to
the 2019 notice, Representative Jared Huffman formed an ad-hoc
group that spawned the “two basin partnership” – a collection
of fisheries advocates, local governments, and tribal
authorities seeking to wrestle control of the Potter Valley
Project.
Productive agriculture is essential to civilization, but water
privateering – the seizure of public trust water for exorbitant
private profit – is not. California’s water privateers often
present themselves as farmers. But while they may use the water
they’ve commandeered from state and federal water conveyance
projects for industrial-scale agribusiness initiatives, they’re
not farmers. They’re water brokers. If there’s money to be made
in irrigating almonds or pistachios, they’ll do that. If
there’s more money to be made by selling their allocated water
to cities or other agribusiness operations, they’ll choose that
option instead. It’s not about a devotion to agriculture – and
certainly not about food security or land stewardship.
Operations at one of Spain’s largest hydropower plants have
been halted due to drought-like conditions, foreshadowing the
future of the rapidly receding Lake Mead. Electric utility
company Endesa SA has shut down its facility in Mequinenza,
Zaragoza, Spain after its water levels receded below 23 percent
capacity, Bloomberg reported. This is below the minimum
required to produce electricity. The plant first opened in
1966, and until now, has never been shut down. Spain is
suffering one of the most severe droughts seen in more than a
decade, with around 32 percent of the country affected due to
rising temperatures and lack of rainfall.
City officials recently met with the Bureau of Reclamation
about the current and forecasted conditions of the Colorado
River Basin. Needles City Manager Rick Daniels, at the Nov. 1
Public Utilities Board meeting, said that as of Oct. 16 Lake
Powell is 25% full and Lake Mead is at 28% — for a total system
storage capacity of 33%. … BOR, he said, is forecasting that
by the end of the year the Lower Colorado River Basin will be
in a Level 1 shortage with a high possibility of being in a
Level 2 shortage, which would mean “further cutbacks
particularly in the more junior water rights states.”
With a multi-year drought bearing down on California and the
West, there’s an intense focus on nearly every drop of water.
But in a few weeks, we may begin to get a history making look
at where that water is and where it’s going. Not just here, but
around the entire planet. … Using technology, including a
sophisticated form of radar, the satellite will survey and
measure nearly all the water on the Earth’s surface, including
lakes, rivers, reservoirs and the ocean itself.
… Experts believe understanding flood patterns could
help us recover and store valuable water that’s currently being
lost. Perhaps diverting it into underground aquifers or
reservoirs.
Incumbent John Allen is leading two challengers in his quest
for a third term representing Long Beach on the Water
Replenishment District Board of Directors. With mail-in ballots
counted, Allen had 52% of the vote, while challengers Mike
Murchison has 23% and Gerrie Schipske has 25% in the race for
the Area 3 board seat. The Area 3 seat represents 800,000
residents in seven cities: Long Beach, Signal Hill, San Pedro,
Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens, Artesia and Cerritos.
The effects of climate change are already “far-reaching and
worsening” throughout all regions in the United States
… The draft of the National Climate Assessment, the
government’s premier contribution to climate knowledge,
provides the most detailed look yet at the consequences of
global warming for the United States… As greenhouse gas
emissions rise and the planet heats up, the authors write, the
United States could face major disruptions to farms and
fisheries that drive up food prices, while millions of
Americans could be displaced by disasters such as severe
wildfires in California, sea-level rise in Florida or frequent
flooding in Texas.
As the summer of 2022 began, 90 percent of New Mexico was in a
severe drought. The largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history
raged in the northern part of the state. Snowpack melted weeks
early, leaving reservoirs throughout the Southwest running low.
In late May, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District
(MRGCD), the authority that manages water for agriculture in
the Albuquerque Basin, announced that it would not be able to
guarantee farmers any water past June. The outlook for farmers
was dire. The conservation district had, over the previous two
years, piloted programs to pay some farmers and landowners to
stop farming and fallow their fields.
A move is afoot in Congress to increase the annual “rent” the
City of San Francisco pays for the privilege of flooding Hetch
Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park from $30,000 to at
least $2 million. The bill by Rep. Connie Conway, who
represents much of the southern San Joaquin Valley, is designed
to require the City of San Francisco to not only pay fair
market for renting the only land ever flooded for a reservoir
in a national park, but also to force the city to comply to
terms they agreed to in the 1913 Raker Act.
Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democratic senator from Arizona, is
facing a strong reelection challenge from far-right Republican
nominee Blake Masters, in a race that could be key for control
of the Senate. Last month, during a televised debate between
the two candidates, Masters went on the attack, criticizing
Kelly’s positions on several issues. Toward the end of
the debate, after skewering Kelly on inflation and the border,
Masters hit him on a more niche issue: federal water cuts on
the Colorado River. … it is no surprise that drought has
emerged as a key issue in the region ahead of this week’s
midterm elections. Senators and representatives in close races
have talked about drought in debates and campaign ads …
Water in California is complicated…and governing water use is
arguably even more complicated. Local water agencies are as
diverse as the communities and landscapes of California. There
are thousands of agencies across the state, both public and
private, that provide water. They range from a system serving a
single mobile home park to huge agencies serving millions of
people and businesses and thousands of acres of farmland. Some
water agencies’ governing boards are appointed by a county
board of supervisors or city council. The five-member board
that oversees the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is
appointed by the L.A. mayor and serve for five-year terms, for
example. Others are directly elected by voters. Those are the
ones you’ll see on your ballot.
There are many wonderful attributes in the Sacramento Valley
with a central ingredient being the talented water resources
managers who work in this region and are devoted to ridgetop to
river mouth water management that serves water for multiple
benefits. To get a better glimpse into the region and see the
talented managers and the multi-disciplinary approach they
pursue every day to continually improve water management, we
encourage you to read this series, which starts below with
Kristin Sicke’s personal story, or you can listen to
the various personal stories on podcast at Stories You Haven’t Heard.
Both sides of a controversial proposed Central Valley dam
hailed a Nov. 3 court ruling kicking back the project’s
environmental documents as a success. A Stanislaus County
Superior Court Judge ruled there was insufficient information
about a road relocation that is part of the proposed Del Puerto
Canyon Reservoir project, which would sit just above the town
of Patterson in the Diablo Range on the west side of the San
Joaquin Valley. More definitive information on the
proposed realignment of Del Puerto Canyon Road will have to be
provided in the Environmental Impact Report by project
proponents, the Del Puerto Water District and the San Joaquin
River Exchange Contractor Authority.
For decades, environmentalists have decried ocean desalination
as an ecological disaster, while cost-savvy water managers have
thumbed their noses at desal’s lofty price tag. But as the
American Southwest barrels into a new era of extreme heat,
drought and aridification, officials and conservationists are
giving new consideration to the process of converting saltwater
into drinking water, and the role it may play in California’s
future. Although desalination requires significant energy,
California’s current extended drought has revived interest in
the technology. Experts are already experimenting with new
concepts such as mobile desalination units and floating buoys,
and at least four major plants will soon be operational along
the state’s coastline.
The general manager of the West Slope’s Colorado River District
is calling out California for its meager water conservation
plan, and he is right on. Andy Mueller made his comments in a
memo to his district’s board of directors and during the
board’s meeting earlier this month, according to reporting by
The Daily Sentinel’s Dennis Webb. This was in response to an
Oct. 5 letter by officials with California water entities using
Colorado River water, which proposed conserving up to an
additional 400,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead
annually.
With California and the Southwest facing a historic drought,
the Supreme Court agreed Friday to review a 9th Circuit Court
decision that held the Navajo Nation has a right to take more
water from the Colorado River. The appeals court had pointed to
the 1868 treaty in which the U.S. government agreed the Navajos
would have a “permanent home” on their reservation, ruling the
treaty “necessarily implied rights” to an adequate amount of
water to live and farm. … The 3-0 ruling did not say how
much extra water the Navajos were entitled to. The sprawling
reservation previously used water from the San Juan River in
Utah, a tributary of the Colorado, but the 9th Circuit panel
said the Navajos were entitled to bring a claim for more water
from the lower part of the main river.
A court ruling on the proposed Del Puerto Reservoir is a minor
setback, a leader on the project said. The ruling involved
only the environmental effects of relocating Del Puerto Canyon
Road from the reservoir site, said Anthea Hansen, general
manager of the Del Puerto Water District. The plaintiffs also
had cited concerns about wildlife, recreation and excessive
pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta…. Del Puerto is
partnering on the new reservoir with the four irrigation
districts that make up the San Joaquin River Exchange
Contractors Authority. They farm about 250,000 acres in a
stretch from Crows Landing to Mendota.
While the water year began with one of the lowest storage
amounts ever, the Friant Water Authority believes low water
allocations will leave them largely unaffected. The
Friant Water Authority contended with several factors when it
came to water allocation last year. Chief among them was “water
debt” owed to the State Water Project. This year, despite a
deepening drought, the authority will no longer have that
burden. … After the one month mark of the 2023
water year, numbers are where they are expected to be, as far
as October is concerned according to [Friant Water Authority's
Ian] Buck-Mcleod. As the forecast predicts rain in the upcoming
weeks for the majority of the state, he said this is a positive
look for the waterways.
Former U.S. Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman will take
over as general manager of the Central Arizona Project in the
new year, one that promises to include pivotal interstate
negotiations over conserving the Colorado River water that
supplies the CAP canal. Burman led the Bureau of Reclamation
during the Trump administration, a period in which the agency
managing Colorado River water and dams helped broker a Drought
Contingency Plan. In that plan, Arizona agreed to take
less water from the system to prevent catastrophic losses
later. Continued poor weather and overuse have since set off
new talks about conserving more in an attempt to halt Lake
Mead’s slide toward the point that the river no longer flows
past it.
For years, scientists and State officials have warned of the
need to prepare for a hotter, drier future as a result of
climate change. Earlier this year, Governor Newsom
released his water supply strategy for the State needs to adapt
to a hotter, drier future with climate change, explaining that
“DWR estimates a 10% reduction in water supply by 2040 …
consider[ing] increased temperatures and decreased runoff due
to a thirstier atmosphere, plants, and soil.” Despite
these public statements, the California Department of Water
Resources’ publicly available modeling predicts that by 2040,
climate change will increase runoff and make
California wetter.
The latest drought in California has been costly to
agriculture. Twelve-thousand people have lost their jobs and
economic losses total three billion dollars. Josue
Medellin-Azuara is one of four educators from U.C. Merced who
sized up California’s drought on agriculture for the past two
years. … California agriculture generates 50-billion
dollars in revenue and employs more than 420,000
people. The 2020-21 water years account for the second
driest two year period since records began in 1895. Little
or no water cost growers $1.3 billion in 2021 and $1.7 billion
in 2022. 752-thousand acres of farmland was fallowed and 12,000
people lost their jobs.
As California trudges through its second year of intense
drought, forcing local communities to raid contingency funds to
pay sky-high retail prices for water supplies, Federal
lawmakers are revisiting a deal with the City of San Francisco
deemed to be “too-good-to-be-true.” A new bill, introduced by
Rep. Connie Conway (R-Tulare), seeks to bring some equity back
to one of California’s oldest and biggest water storage deals
between the Federal government and the state’s historic big
city. For a century, Hetch Hetchy, a dammed up valley deep in
Yosemite National Park, has served as a singular lifeline for
San Francisco’s water and energy supplies. … The
law set San Francisco’s rent for the sprawling
valley-turned-dam at $30,000 … Despite decades of
inflation, the cost for renting the space has never inched
beyond that $30,000 sum.
Too much climate change resource planning is rooted in the
present — which means it’s not adaptive to the threats and
(dare I say it?) opportunities of a future under climate
change’s increasing extremes. But now California actually has a
water supply plan that prepares for that future. California
Governor Gavin Newsom’s recently released California Water
Supply Strategy reflects an adaptive approach that takes the
state much closer to securing water in an age of climate
extremes — not by managing for increasing water scarcity, but
by exploiting the opportunities climate change gives us to
create water abundance. -Written by John Sabo, Director of ByWater
Institute at Tulane University.
Raymond Naranjo sings for rain, his voice rising and falling as
he softly strikes his rawhide-covered drum. The 99-year-old
invites the cloud spirits, rain children, mist, thunder and
lightning to join him at Santa Clara Pueblo, where Tewa people
have lived for thousands of years on land they call Kha’p’o
Owingeh, the Valley of the Wild Roses. “Without water, you
don’t live,” says Naranjo’s son Gilbert … With unsettling
speed, climate change has taken a toll on the the pueblo’s 89
square miles (230 square kilometers) that climb from the gently
rolling Rio Grande Valley to Santa Clara Canyon in the rugged
Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico.
Climate change is contributing to severe droughts in the
southwest United States and elsewhere, increasing the afflicted
areas’ dependence on groundwater. In California, for instance,
groundwater contributes up to 60% of the state’s total water
supply in dry years. Monitoring subterranean aquifers is
crucial to using their water efficiently—and ensuring the
supply doesn’t run dry. But monitoring groundwater isn’t easy.
Traditionally, an aquifer’s water levels are measured using
wells: Hydrologists drill into the ground and measure the pore
pressure at depth, a measurement from which they infer the
amount of water trapped in sediments.
As California enters a possible fourth dry year, the Department
of Water Resources (DWR) has released its biennial report to
help water managers better understand how key factors, like
climate change and regulatory and operational considerations,
affect the operation of the State Water Project (SWP) under
historical and future scenarios. The State Water Project
provides water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of
farmland throughout the state. In the State Water Project Final
Delivery Capability Report 2021, there are estimates on the
SWP’s water delivery capability for current and future
conditions based on three major factors: The effects of
population growth on … water supply and demand; State
legislation intended to help maintain a reliable water supply;
Impact of potential climate change-driven shifts in hydrologic
conditions.
Jim Scala needed the water. So he took it. As the third
devastating summer of drought dragged on, the Siskiyou County
rancher knew his irrigation district could be fined up to
$10,000 a day if he and his neighbors defied a state cutback
order and pumped water from the Shasta River onto their lands
east of Yreka. … While the Shasta River rebellion might have
been the most brazen, a Sacramento Bee investigation reveals
that farmers and other water users frequently ignore state
drought regulations…. The Bee’s findings reveal a state
regulatory system dramatically unprepared to address chronic
water shortages and an ecosystem collapse.
Today’s Why Guy question comes from Tricia Towne: “Why hasn’t a
dam been built in over 50 years?” This is a popular question to
the Why Guy. The short answer is all the best sites to build
dams already have dams on them. Most were built in the 40s, 50s
and 60s to prevent catastrophic local flooding. The last
regional dam built, the New Melones Reservoir north of Sonora
was completed in 1980, about 42 years ago. Now, with
extreme drought, we need dams to store water. Well, guess
what? Looks like we’re getting a new dam at the Sites
Reservoir just west of Maxwell in Colusa
County. President Joe Biden just dedicated $30 million to
the project, which is targeted for a 2024 groundbreaking.
Remnants of an atmospheric river brought Northern
California its first solid storm of the year – rain splattered
across the Bay Area and Central Coast, while some parts of
Tahoe saw snowfall boosted to above average levels for this
time of year. Despite a historic heat wave in September,
weather unexpectedly turned colder and wetter. … Weather
forecasts signal this is the beginning of a larger pattern of
more rain and snow to come throughout November….If the
pattern continues, the fast-moving, hot-burning, severe
wildfires emblematic of California’s fire season, will go
dormant.
In front of Val Little’s one-story, adobe home near downtown
Tucson, in southern Arizona, a small but proud sign stands in
the lawn. It reads: “This house harvests the rain.” Every
couple of months, 68-year-old Little climbs up a short ladder
to clear the leaves from her home’s gutters. … The downspout
funnels the rainwater that falls on her rooftop into a
1,300-gallon (4,900-litre) plastic cistern in her backyard. She
has two of them, and in late September both were almost full,
fed by the abundant summer monsoon rains. Little is not
alone. Over the past 15 years or so thousands of residents
across Tucson, a mostly parched desert city where barely
12 inches (30cm) of rain falls in an average year, have turned
to rainwater harvesting to meet some of their household
needs.
Defenders of Wildlife applauded a decision by the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation to request a renegotiation of a decades-old use
contract for the San Joaquin River that could spark stronger
protection for wildlife and drought management. Defenders and
the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) urged the Bureau
of Reclamation to reform its water supply contract with the San
Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority before the
conclusion of the renegotiation period. On Oct. 14, the Bureau
sent a letter to the Exchange Contractors, four days before the
deadline, with its intent to renegotiate. Though the contract
may be reviewed every five years, it has not been reviewed
since 1968.
Congressman Raul Ruiz is calling on the U.S. Department of the
Interior to uphold its commitments to the Salton Sea, including
millions in federal funds from the Inflation Reduction Act.
According to Ruiz’s office, the Inflation Reduction Act
includes $4 billion in funding specifically for water
management and conservation efforts in the Colorado River Basin
and other areas experiencing similar levels of drought. The
funding includes $12.5 million to mitigate the effect of
drought on Tribes. Last week, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly,
an Arizona Democrat, wrote a letter calling for the federal
government to withhold money for environmental cleanup at the
Salton Sea until California agrees to use less of its
share of the Colorado River.
For the first time since the water year began on Oct. 1,
measurable rain and snow fell across Northern California on
Tuesday. Of course, this isn’t the first time the region has
seen rain this fall season. Between Sept. 18 and 21, downtown
Sacramento picked up nearly half an inch of rain. Some spots in
the Foothills saw over an inch of rainfall during that same
stretch. … September’s rain was a very short break in an
otherwise relentless period of unusually warm weather. The
month was officially downtown Sacramento’s warmest September on
record with data going back to 1877. October got off to a
blazing fast start as well until a long-awaited cool-down last
week. … But as November begins, it appears as though the
overall atmospheric pattern will shift to favor cooler and
damper conditions in much of the U.S. West.
Stewart and Lynda Resnick donated $50 million to fund a new
center for sustainable agriculture practices at UC Davis, but
environmentalists reacted with suspicion to the school’s
mid-October announcement of their gift. … $10 million of the
Resnicks’ gift is earmarked for research grants that are
focused on identifying value-added properties in pistachio,
almond and pomegranate byproducts. These crops are all part of
the billionaire couple’s portfolio. … As California
faces a continuing record drought, the Resnicks’ companies are
the state’s biggest single water users — an estimated 150
billion gallons a year for their crops, Forbes Magazine
estimated in 2021. The annual amount of water they use to grow
more than 120,000 thousand acres of their produce in the
southern San Joaquin Valley …
Running out of time and options to save water along the drying
Colorado River, federal officials said they’re considering
whether to release less water from the country’s two largest
reservoirs downstream to Arizona, California and Nevada.
Without enough snow this winter, the water level at Lake Powell
— the country’s second-largest reservoir — will drop below a
critical level by next November, according to a new report from
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Below that point, the Glen
Canyon Dam will no longer be able to generate electricity and
… no longer be able to send water downstream at all.
Conditions on the Colorado River are worsening quicker than
expected. … Colorado is heading into its third La Niña winter
in a row, likely indicating below-average snowpack.
The City of Ripon’s new watering schedule went into effect on
Tuesday. The winter schedule calls for a once-a-week schedule,
from Nov. 1 to Feb. 28. Manteca, by contrast, still allows
watering twice a week in the winter as California enters its
fourth year of drought. Places within city limits with
addresses ending in odd numbers may water on Sundays while
those with even addresses may do so on Saturdays.
California’s water police struggle to track where water is
flowing and whether someone is taking more than they’re
supposed to. A criminal case unfolding in the San Joaquin
Valley underscores how the federal government seems to have
similar problems. Prosecutors say they uncovered a massive
water theft that went on for 23 years without anyone noticing.
… According to prosecutors, Falaschi engineered a brazen
scheme to steal $25 million worth of water from the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation, operator of the Central Valley Project. More
specifically, Falaschi stands accused of having his underlings
siphon water from the Delta-Mendota Canal, the main conduit for
delivering federal water to farms along the west side of the
San Joaquin Valley and part of Silicon Valley. He then billed
Panoche customers for this stolen water …
Surface-water availability, defined as precipitation minus
evapotranspiration, can be affected by changes in vegetation.
These impacts can be local, due to the modification of
evapotranspiration and precipitation, or non-local, due to
changes in atmospheric moisture transport. However, the
teleconnections of vegetation changes on water availability in
downwind regions remain poorly constrained by observations. By
linking measurements of local precipitation to a new
hydrologically weighted leaf area index that accounts for both
local and upwind vegetation contributions, we demonstrate that
vegetation changes have increased global water availability at
a rate of 0.26 mm yr−2 for the 2001–2018 period.
Voters in Maricopa, Pima and Pinal counties on Nov. 8 will
select new board members for the Central Arizona Water
Conservation District, which oversees how Colorado River water
is delivered through the Central Arizona Project. … The
Southwest is experiencing its worst drought in 1,200 years. On
top of that, Lake Mead sits at 1,046 feet above sea level, only
150 feet above the “dead zone” – the level where the Hoover Dam
doesn’t have enough water to produce electricity. Central
Arizona farmers already have endured steep cuts in water
deliveries, and more pain is coming. The Central Arizona Water
Conservation District election features 14 candidates competing
for five seats on the CAWCD board.
Whether its groundwater or river water in danger of running dry
first, the biggest potential impact from Arizona’s continuing
water issues is it will stall growth. Developers in Arizona,
whose land is not connected to a designated municipal water
system, must furnish certificates to show a 100 years of
assured water supply, sufficient for the number of homes or
types of businesses planned. With federal restrictions recently
imposed cutting the amount of Colorado River water that Arizona
can use, that will likely turn up the pressure on groundwater
supplies and the developments dependent on them.
The streaks of white on the rock ringing the nation’s largest
reservoir show how far its water levels have dropped since it
was last full. Lake Mead and nearby Lake Powell, which send
water to 40 million people in the Southwest, are at their
lowest levels since they were filled in the 1930s as part of
the Hoover Dam’s construction on the Colorado River. The
lake actually overflowed in 1983 and nearly hit capacity in
1999. Now, it’s at only 26% of its capacity — and losing
altitude monthly as a decades-long drought brought on by a
changing climate keeps it from replenishing the
supply. Yet in a crucial U.S. Senate campaign primarily
being waged a short drive away that could sway control of the
chamber, the candidates are barely mentioning the disappearing
water levels and the drought that’s causing it.
With longer and more frequent droughts happening around the
globe, technologies are advancing to help ease the effects of
drought and bring fresh water to dry climates. Fog
catching, desalination and atmospheric water harvesting are
three techniques used to help mitigate water shortages around
the globe.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants other western water
districts to conserve resources in the face of the region’s
20-year drought, saying it’s wasteful to grow certain
water-intensive crops in parched desert landscapes. But records
show the agency is not heeding its own advice. … The
Imperial Irrigation District gets more Colorado River water
than the entirety of Nevada and Arizona combined. This is why
Nevada water officials have urged changes in how water from the
troubled river is used. … The Great Basin Ranch, as it’s
known, is owned and operated by a public agency — the Southern
Nevada Water Authority. And the only crop that is grown on that
land? Alfalfa. 8,600 tons of it last year alone.
With the nation’s two largest reservoirs continuing to
decline, federal officials announced plans Friday to revise
their current rules for dealing with Colorado River shortages
and pursue a new agreement to achieve larger reductions in
water use throughout the Southwest. The Biden
administration announcement represents a renewed push to scale
back water use along a river that has shrunk significantly in
the face of a 23-year megadrought worsened by global
warming. With water levels dropping at Lake Powell, the
Interior Department said operators of Glen Canyon Dam may need
to release less water, which would affect flows in the Grand
Canyon and accelerate the decline of Lake Mead.
The Interior Department announced Friday that it will consider
revising a set of guidelines for operating two major dams on
the Colorado River in the first sign of what could lead to
federal action to protect the once-massive but shrinking
reservoirs behind them…. One of the options would allow
the Interior Department’s U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to
take unilateral action, as it threatened this summer when it
asked states to come up with ways to significantly reduce their
use beyond what they’ve already volunteered and were mandated
to cut.
The makeup of the Westlands Water District board will change
this election – shifting power to a coalition of growers with a
list of new actions, at the top of which appears to be ousting
longtime General Manager Tom Birmingham. “There needs to be a
change of leadership, that’s a foundational issue,” said Sarah
Woolf, a member of a Westlands farming family, who helped
organize the coalition. … Woolf applauded the district’s
recharge efforts, but noted the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act, which requires subbasins to bring aquifers into
balance by 2040, was passed eight years ago and recharge
efforts at Westlands have languished behind other
districts.
Footprints, human and animal, dot stretches of the Mississippi
River that have been underwater for as long as people remember,
and eight barges have run aground this year. Rain has been
scarce, with little prospect for more. Drought’s deadly fingers
have moved east, from the dried-up wells of California’s
Central Valley and into the American Midwest, where much of
America’s food is grown, and even farther, into the Southeast.
Its tentacles have parched parts of America’s most important
river and now threaten a majority of the country — 52.7% by the
U.S. Drought Monitor’s count, and 146 million people, 12
million more than a mere week ago. It’s the deepest national
drought since 2012, and if nothing changes it’ll outpace that
benchmark soon.
A Berkeley Hills homeowner with a job related to environmental
sustainability has been fined for using too much water during
California’s current severe drought. The East Bay
Municipal Utility District voted in April to mandate a 10%
water use reduction from 2020 and instate “excessive use”
penalties for households using more than 1,646 gallons of water
per day — the strictest policy around water conservation in the
Bay Area. The Berkeley homeowner’s name was included in a list
of hundreds of violators across the East Bay that was released
by the district Tuesday in response to a public records request
by Berkeleyside.
John Wesley Powell offered a poignant message for Western U.S.
communities when he was the featured speaker in a room full of
developers and government leaders at a major irrigation
conference held in Los Angeles in October 1893. … Powell
began to caution his audience about the water limitations in
the West … ”There is not enough water to irrigate all
the lands. … There is but a small portion of the irrigable
land which can be irrigated when all the water, every drop of
water, is utilized,” Powell warned the crowd, adding that he
foresaw a future filled with battles over water rights.
… This context can be very important when coming up with
solutions to any situation, such as helping the struggling
Great Salt Lake, adds Jennifer Ortiz, executive director at
the Utah Division of State History.
A San Diego committee has approved a series of agreements
between the city and a planned water recycling project in East
County, potentially heading off a court fight over a plant that
could help hundreds of thousands of people. The documents pave
the way for San Diego to hand over a pump station to the
Advanced Water Purification Project, and for the construction
of a pipeline so waste generated by East County can be diverted
from the city. The agreements were accepted Thursday in a 4-0
vote by the San Diego City Council’s environment
committee.
The past three-year span, 2019 to 2022, has officially been the
driest ever statewide going back to 1895 when modern records
began in California. But this most recent period of overall
drought has also seen big swings from very wet to very dry
stretches such as the 2021-2022 water year
that went from a relatively wet Oct.-Dec. beginning to
the driest Jan.-March period in the state’s history.
With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into this
winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for California
or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new reality of
climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our reliance on
historical patterns to forecast California’s water supply?
Find out what efforts are being made to improve sub-seasonal
to seasonal (S2S) precipitation forecasting for California and
the Colorado River Basin at our one-day Winter Outlook
Workshop December 8 in Irvine, CA.
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Managers of California’s most
overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s
landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable,
detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered
basins into balance. It was a task that required more than 250
newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the
drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather
data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on
multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a
groundwater basin.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
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.
Water affordability concerns, long an issue in a state where
millions of people struggle to make ends meet, jumped into
overdrive last year as the pandemic wrenched the economy. Jobs
were lost and household finances were upended. Even with federal
stimulus aid and unemployment checks, bills fell by the wayside.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
This beautifully illustrated 24×36-inch poster, suitable for
framing and display in any office or classroom, highlights the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, its place as a center of
farming, its importance as an ecological resource and its
vital role in California’s water supply system.
The text, photos and graphics explain issues related to land
subsidence, levees and flooding, urbanization, farming, fish and
wildlife protection. An inset map illustrates the tidal action
that increases the salinity of the Delta’s waterways.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water
supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the
numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another
drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most
of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project
will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low
number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more
rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather
forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing. The National
Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and
windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.
Members of the 2020 Water Leaders class examined how
to adapt water management to climate change. Read their
policy recommendations in the class report, Adapting
California Water Management to Climate Change: Charting a Path
Forward, to learn more.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Radically transformed from its ancient origin as a vast tidal-influenced freshwater marsh, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem is in constant flux, influenced by factors within the estuary itself and the massive watersheds that drain though it into the Pacific Ocean.
Lately, however, scientists say the rate of change has kicked into overdrive, fueled in part by climate change, and is limiting the ability of science and Delta water managers to keep up. The rapid pace of upheaval demands a new way of conducting science and managing water in the troubled estuary.
