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.
Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval acknowledged the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act’s (SGMA) importance to
the valley in his opening remarks. … As water supplies
decline, said Central Valley Community Foundation CEO Ashley
Swearengin, it is key to bring all the valley’s many players to
the table to hammer out coping strategies. The need for
coordination is paramount, given the magnitude of the
challenge. As PPIC research fellow Andrew Ayres explained,
reducing groundwater pumping ultimately will help the valley
maintain its robust agricultural industry and protect
communities. But even with new water supplies, our research
found that valley agriculture will need to occupy a smaller
footprint than it does now: at least 500,000 acres of farmland
will likely need to come out of intensively irrigated
production.
On a 107 degree morning in the mountains east of Phoenix, a
miner in a hard hat plunges down the nearly 7,000-foot shaft of
what may soon be the biggest underground copper mine in the
United States. But for now, the Resolution Copper mine isn’t
taking out copper. It’s taking out groundwater, at a rate of
around 600 gallons per minute. Because this copper is so deep
underground, in geologic formations dating back more than a
billion years, the mining takes place far below the water
table. The mine is removing that aquifer water so the
operations don’t flood. And the mine is giving away this water
for free to nearby farmers, about 6 billion gallons so far.
As March rolled into April, Ken Beck was keeping his eye on the
snowdrifts piled on slopes around Vallecito Reservoir in
Colorado’s southwestern mountains. Snow reports showed there
was about 300,000 acre-feet of water in that snow waiting to
flow into the reservoir, he said. … Beck, superintendent of
the Pine River Irrigation District, which manages the reservoir
located northeast of Durango … was in good company:
Reservoir managers around the state saw water levels rise this
year, a boon to downstream users who depend on stored water for
drinking, growing crops, supporting industries and managing
ecosystems. And as the year progressed, precipitation just kept
coming in the form of rain, hail and severe storms.
For years, the politically-connected Westlands Water District
has fought to raise Shasta Dam. This debate has been renewed by
House Resolution 215, introduced by California Central Valley
Congressman David Valadao (R-Hanford), which would override a
California law that blocks the dam raise. That project would
harm salmon, California’s fishing economy and Indigenous
Americans. This is a big deal for the fishing community.
California’s salmon fishery is closed this year for only the
third time in history. … This closure was caused by the
mismanagement of Central Valley rivers during a drought. Low
spring flows, caused by storing too much water for summer
agricultural deliveries, is a major cause of the fishing
shutdown. Raising Shasta Dam would represent another blow to
the survival of salmon runs and fishing jobs. -Written by Scott Artis, executive director of the
Golden State Salmon Association.
After a four-year decline in potato production nationwide, this
season’s crop appears poised to buck the trend, spurred by
strong demand and improved water supplies. While higher
processing contract prices are driving much of the increased
acreage, California’s mostly fresh-market growers may see
prices decline once harvest starts elsewhere, said Almuhanad
Melhim, a fruit and vegetable market analyst for Rabobank’s
RaboResearch division. … During the past few years,
processors have been short on russet potatoes that go into
french fries, so they snapped up fresh-market russet supplies,
driving up fresh prices. To encourage more processed potato
production this year, processors increased contract prices
substantially.
The Colorado River is in trouble, and farmers and ranchers are
on the front lines of the crisis. A new report surveyed more
than 1,020 irrigators across six of the seven states that use
the river’s water: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah, and Wyoming. About 70% said they are already responding
to water shortages but many identified a trust gap with state
and federal agencies that are trying to incentivize further
water savings. The report, from the Western Landowners Alliance
and the University of Wyoming’s Ruckelshaus Institute, sheds
light on attitudes in an industry that has an outsized role in
the fate of the Colorado River.
Last week, the U.N. hosted a summit on sustainable development,
including access to clean water. I have previously written
about declining water levels in the western U.S. and the use of
desalination to transform seawater into freshwater. Although
over 17,000 desalination plants are operating worldwide, there
are only about 325 in the U.S., with 45% in Florida, 14% in
California, and 9% in Texas. The reason they have not been more
widely adopted is traditionally, they are expensive to build
and use a lot of energy. Most of the desalination plants
operating today heat the salt water and pump it through
specialized membranes that separate the water from the
salts.
Some states in the arid West are looking to invest more money
in water conservation. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico
have agreed to re-up a water conservation program designed to
reduce strain on the Colorado River. Those states, which
represent the river’s Upper Basin, will use money from the
Inflation Reduction Act to pay farmers and ranchers to use less
water. The four states are re-implementing the program amid
talks with California, Arizona, Nevada and the federal
government to come up with more permanent water reductions by
2026.
Less than one week until California’s new water year begins,
experts say the state is nearly free of drought — but there is
no guarantee that another wet winter is soon to arrive.
The state, according to the Sept. 19 U.S. Drought Monitor, is
93% free of drought, a big improvement since measuring at 72%
drought-free three months ago. Only small regions of
drought remain along the state’s southeast corner bordering
Arizona and in the northernmost region at the Oregon border.
A nonprofit in Peru is gaining attention for its work in
developing a simple system that gathers moisture from fog and
channels it to storage containers for use in areas where water
is in short supply. The systems are dropping in price and
increasing in efficiency, experts say. The “fog catchers” have
been installed in several countries and were even considered
for possible use in the San Francisco area. … “It’s a
very intriguing idea,” says Jay Lund, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering and director of the Center for
Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis.
… Lund explored the idea of demisting
fogs over San Francisco in the aftermath of the droughts
in the Bay Area between 2012 and 2016, but concluded it would
likely not be economically viable.
Colorado River managers [last week] decided to continue a water
conservation program designed to protect critical elevations in
the nation’s two largest reservoirs. The Upper Colorado
River Commission decided unanimously to continue the federally
funded System Conservation Program in 2024 — but with a
narrower scope that explores demand management concepts and
supports innovation and local drought resiliency on a
longer-term basis. … The System Conservation Program is
paying water users in the four upper basin states — Colorado,
New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — to voluntarily cut back with
$125 million from the Inflation Reduction Act. According to
Upper Colorado River Commission officials, nearly $16.1 million
was spent on system conservation in 2023.
… In recent decades, California has experienced five
prolonged drought periods (1976-77, 1987-1992, 2007-09,
2011-16, 2020-22). Urban water agencies have responded with
investments in supply and demand management measures, which
have made California’s cities more resilient to drought
effects. What motivated these investments? Our current habits
of water use in California’s cities are shaped by past policies
and habits.
… To better prepare and plan for a future with climate
extremes, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR)
has released the Public Review Draft of California Water Plan
Update 2023. … [The plan] focuses on three intersecting
themes: addressing the urgency of climate change, strengthening
watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.
… public comments can be made through Oct. 19,
2023.
NASA scientists are testing a technology that could more
accurately measure water stored in snow as seen from a
satellite in orbit. Melting snow provides much of the
water that the western United States depend on for agriculture
and power. But warming winters due to climate
change led to decreased seasonal snowpacks high up in the
Rockies and Sierra Nevada mountains. That in turn affects the
volume of water that travels downriver to irrigate crops and
turn hydroelectric turbines.
In appreciation of the critical role the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta plays in California’s economy and environment,
Senator Bill Dodd, D-Napa, is recognizing the last week of
September as Delta Week. “The Delta is a cherished watershed
and the very lifeblood of California’s water system,” Dodd said
in a news release. … Dodd’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 119
established Delta Week, which this year kicks off Sunday. As
part of the annual tradition, it will be preceded on Saturday
by Coastal Cleanup Day, which offers Californians a chance to
participate in local waterway cleanup events.
Despite a megadrought, states in the West have been able to
avoid drastic cuts to their allocations of Colorado River water
this year not only because of surprising storms but also thanks
to generous financial incentives from all levels of government
that have encouraged people to conserve. The temporary Colorado
River water-sharing agreement that Arizona, California and
Nevada announced in May depends on an injection of $1.2 billion
from the federal government. Some of the 30 tribal nations in
the river basin also are getting federal dollars. The Gila
River Indian Community, for example, will receive $233 million
from the feds over the next three years, mostly to conserve
water. Fueled by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law, the feds will spend a total of $15.4
billion for drought resiliency programs …
Gov. Gavin Newsom has before him about a thousand bills
approved by the California Legislature that now await his fate
but some are far more explosive and politically consequential
than others. These bills in Newsom’s pile could reveal how the
governor is evolving as a leader, and now he has less than a
month to review them. … Here is an obscure bill that
will reveal a lot about how much Newsom listens to his inner
circle or his own common sense. Two water districts in Southern
California want to switch water suppliers and leave the San
Diego County Water Authority, the long-time primary provider
for the region. The county’s Local Agency Formation Commission
said yes, including an exit fee intended to address impacts to
the SDCWA budget.
[Editor's note: Scroll to fourth section of story
for water-related bills]A bill headed to
Newsom’s desk would ban the use of drinking water to irrigate
purely decorative grass that no one uses. Another bill approved
by lawmakers would allow cities to ban the installation of
artificial turf at homes, based on research showing that fake
grass can result in microplastics washing into streams and the
ocean. Assembly Bill 249 would tighten standards for lead
testing in schools’ drinking water. In the latest chapter
in San Diego County’s ongoing water drama, lawmakers approved a
bill that could make it harder for local water agencies to
withdraw from larger regional water authorities — but too late
to stop the contentious bureaucratic divorce already underway
in San Diego County due to high water costs. Assembly Bill
779 would tweak California’s work-in-progress groundwater rules
to “level the playing field for all groundwater users,
particularly small farmers and farmers of color,” according to
three UCLA law students who helped write the bill.
I’ve emerged from my cozy book writing cave (The new book’s
going well, thanks for asking!) to some stunningly optimistic
Lower Colorado River Basin water use data. Forecast use in
2023 (based on the Sept. 18 USBR forecast model) has
dropped below 6 million acre feet, currently just 79 percent of
the total baseline Lower Basin allocation of 7.5 million acre
feet. Californians are on track for their lowest take on the
river since 1949, according to my crazy stitched-together
dataset (USBR decree accounting reports plus pre-1964 numbers
assembled some time ago by some folks at MWD). Arizona and
Nevada’s use is the lowest its been since 1992. Relative
to their baseline allocations, Arizona (at 69 percent) and
Nevada (at 65 percent) are still doing the heaviest lifting,
but California (at 86 percent) is seriously pitching in too.
Nestled in the heart of California’s vast Central Valley lies a
shimmering oasis, a testament to human ingenuity and the
ongoing quest for water management: the San Luis Reservoir.
This magnificent reservoir, holding both natural beauty and
immense significance for the Golden State’s water system, is
much more than just a large lake. Here’s everything you need to
know about this impressive structure. The San Luis
Reservoir was constructed as a result of a collaboration
between the federal and state governments in the 1960s. It
stands as a primary off-stream storage facility and is a key
component of both the California State Water Project (SWP) and
the federal Central Valley Project (CVP). The aim was to cater
to the growing water demands of the state’s booming population
and agricultural sectors.
Last week, Lake Mead water levels started to even out after
experiencing a steep increase for the last five months, but it
isn’t expected to last for long. After years of drought, Lake
Mead, which is in Nevada and Arizona, reached drastically low
levels last summer, prompting fears that a dead pool—the point
where water levels are too low to flow downstream—would occur
much sooner than originally thought. Water levels started to
recover this year because of above-average precipitation and
snowpack that melted throughout the summer. The lake has since
recovered more than 20 feet, supplemented at times by excessive
rainfall such as that from storm Hilary in August. AccuWeather
meteorologist Alex DaSilva told Newsweek that he doesn’t expect
the lake to rise much more this water year, which ends
September 30.
Seizing a generational opportunity to leverage unprecedented
state funding to combat drought and climate change, the State
Water Resources Control Board provided an historic $3.3 billion
in financial assistance during the past fiscal year (July 1,
2021 – June 30, 2022) to water systems and communities for
projects that bolster water resilience, respond to drought
emergencies and expand access to safe drinking water. The State
Water Board’s funding to communities this past fiscal year
doubled compared to 2020-21, and it is four times the amount of
assistance provided just two years ago.
San Diego water bills would rise nearly 20 percent under a
rate-increase proposal the City Council is scheduled to
consider Tuesday. The increase, which city officials began
studying last fall, would be the first comprehensive rate hike
approved by the council in nearly eight years. It would include
a 10.2 increase this December and an 8.75 percent jump in
January 2025. City officials say they need additional revenue
increases to cover rising costs for imported water, upgrades to
thousands of aging pipes and a long list of short-term and
long-term capital projects. The capital projects include the
Pure Water sewage-recycling system, which has been under
construction since last year, and upgrades needed to several
aging city dams that state officials have deemed in poor
condition.
Las Vegas isn’t just a hot spot for revelers. Thousands of
businesses, particularly from California, have moved to the
region over the past few decades, and the population is booming
alongside other Southwestern cities. All of that growth in a
region plagued by extreme heat, drought, and a dwindling water
supply raises tough questions for city and state officials who
want to spur economic growth without draining the Colorado
River dry. In one example of that challenge, Arizona’s governor
in June halted construction in areas around Phoenix, citing a
lack of groundwater.
A bill requiring a countywide vote before individual water
districts can detach from an agency passed the Assembly on
Tuesday, but it won’t prevent residents of Fallbrook and
Rainbow from voting on Nov. 7. Assembly Bill 399 passed on a
vote of 47 to 8, with 25 members, including Assemblymember
Marie Waldron from North County, not voting. It now goes to
Gov. Gavin Newsom, but if he signs it into law, it won’t take
effect until Jan. 1. The two rural districts are seeking to
join the Eastern Municipal Water District in
Riverside County, which draws primarily from the Colorado River
and the State Water Project, to secure lower-cost
water for farmers.
Leveling off after steady increases since early April, Lake
Mead appears to have reached its peak for the year — more than
22 feet above last year. … Average daily levels computed by
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show the surface of Lake Mead at
1,066.32 feet above sea level on Thursday, Sept. 7. Since then,
it has hovered around the same level and come down slightly,
now at 1,066.25 feet as of midday Wednesday.
Residents in the area of Anderson Dam over the next few weeks
may hear loud warning horns and explosive sounds as crews
continue to excavate a tunnel under construction for the dam’s
seismic retrofit project, according to Valley Water.
Water district staff say the impact to residents and passing
traffic should be minimal. Starting on Sept. 12,
construction crews will begin the controlled blasting of hard
rock for the Anderson Dam Tunnel Project. Scheduled detonations
over the next few weeks will take place Monday through Friday,
and possibly on Saturdays, from 8am-7pm, Valley Water
spokesperson Matt Keller said.
Reservoirs across the state of California remain
elevated as another wet season approaches. Following
the record wet winter, lakes and reservoirs were nearly full to
the brim as the melting snowpack made its way into them.
Following the melt-off period, Lake Shasta — the keystone of
the Central Valley Project — was at 98% capacity,
Oroville was at 100% capacity, and Folsom Lake was nearly full
as well at 95% capacity. These bodies of water were quite
parched heading into the winter due to the three years of
drought preceding the past winter’s deluge and ranged from
25-32% capacity before the atmospheric river events rolled in.
California will spend about $300 million to prepare a vast
groundwater and farming infrastructure system for the growing
impacts of climate change. California Department of Water
Resources announced Tuesday that it has awarded $187
million to 32 groundwater sub-basins, which store water for
future use that mainly flows from valuable snowmelt, through
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Grant
Program. Governor Gavin Newsom also announced
Tuesday that California’s Department of Food and
Agriculture will award more than $106 million in grants to 23
organizations, which will design and implement new carbon
sequestration and irrigation efficiency projects.
Community leaders along the Mississippi River worried that dry
southwestern states will someday try to take the river’s water
may soon take their first step toward blocking such a
diversion. Mayors from cities along the river are expected to
vote on whether to support a new compact among the river’s 10
states at this week’s annual meeting of the Mississippi River
Cities and Towns Initiative, according to its executive
director Colin Wellenkamp. Supporters of a compact hope it will
strengthen the region’s collective power around shared goals
like stopping water from leaving the corridor.
Napa County civic leaders want to keep exploring whether the
dozens of local agencies that deliver water to tens of
thousands of residents and businesses should be working
together more closely. County agencies involved with water
range from the city of Napa serving 80,000 residents to rural
districts serving a few hundred customers. They have various
water sources and make their own water decisions. A study three
years ago by the Local Agency Formation Commission of Napa
County suggested they form some type of county water agency or
district to better work together. The idea hasn’t been
forgotten.
Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S., with
an economy that offers many opportunities for workers and
businesses. But it faces a daunting challenge: a water crisis
that could seriously constrain its economic growth and
vitality. … Israel’s approach to desalination offers
insights that Arizona would do well to consider.
Himanshu Gupta knows full well the heavy toll climate change is
taking on agriculture. Growing up in India and eventually
working in public policy, he saw how the unpredictably late
monsoon season was damaging crops and worsening farmers’ lives.
… That eventually led him to co-found ClimateAi, a Bay
Area-based startup that aims to help farms and other businesses
prepare for a hotter, more disruptive climate using the power
of artificial intelligence. By harnessing machine learning
models, the company says its customers can anticipate and
prepare for climate risks to their supply chains and operations
over periods ranging from weeks to seasons.
The hottest summer on record for many Texas cities has brought
millions of dollars in damage to municipal plumbing and the
loss of huge volumes of water during a severe drought.
Authorities across the state are struggling to keep up with
widespread leakage even as they plead for water conservation
and have restricted outdoor water use. The impact on Texas’s
water systems highlights both the vulnerability of basic
infrastructure to a warming climate and the high costs of
adaptation.
A historic cattle ranch in California’s Solano County has been
a target of a secretive billionaire-backed group that’s been
buying up large swaths of land to create a new city northeast
of San Francisco. The latest offer of $17 million,
made in mid-July, by Flannery Associates LLC was for about 950
acres at a property known as Petersen Ranch, according to term
sheets, proposals and emails obtained by Bloomberg News through
the California Public Records Act. It was turned down by
the local water agency, which owns the land.
Dirt roads neatly bisect acres and acres of vibrant green
plants here: short, dense alfalfa plants fed by the waters of
the Colorado River, flowing by as a light brown stream through
miles of narrow concrete ditches. But on a nearby field, farmer
Ronnie Leimgruber is abandoning those ditches, part of a system
that has served farmers well for decades. Instead, he’s
overseeing the installation of new irrigation technology, at a
cost of more than $400,000, and with no guarantee it will be as
dependable as the open concrete channels and gravity-fed
systems that have long watered these lands. … What
Leimgruber is pursuing on his acreage is part business savvy
and part guarding against a drier future. Like many farmers in
this region, he’s figuring out how to keep growing his crops
with less water. Two decades of drought have shrunk the
Colorado River, which feeds farms in the Imperial Valley, an
agricultural oasis fed solely by the 82-mile All-American
Canal, which delivers river water to this arid Southern
California region.
With the nation beginning to transition from fossil fuels to
clean energy like solar and wind power, oil and gas companies
are beginning to plug their wells here. So local leaders are
looking for the next economic development opportunity. And they
may have found their solution—divert more Colorado River water
with a new dam and reservoir that will generate more
hydropower, irrigate more agriculture and store more water for
emergencies. They’re not alone in that
quest. Wyoming ranchers are pushing for a new
dam to be used for irrigation. Colorado has
some diversions already under construction, with more
proposed across the state, to help fuel growth. Across the
states of the Upper Basin of the Colorado River—Wyoming,
Colorado, Utah and New Mexico—new dams are rising and new
reservoirs are filling …
As the final days of summer near, California’s reservoirs are
in a position they have not been in for some time, they still
have a significant amount of water in them. As of Thursday, all
but Trinity Reservoir near Redding and Casitas near Ventura are
at or above their historic average levels, according to the
California Department of Water data exchange. … Most
reservoirs are also still well above 70 percent of their total
capacity, with Lake Cachuma having the highest total capacity
percentage of 95 percent. The Department of Water Resource told
FOX40.com that not since 2019 has California seen most of the
major state reservoirs above their average level for the given
time of year. Just a year ago, California’s two largest
reservoirs Shasta and Oroville were at 34 percent and 36
percent of their total capacity respectively.
The drought that gripped Minnesota in the summer of 2021 was
one of the worst on record. Day after day a blazing sun
shriveled leaves, dried up waterfalls and turned ponds to
puddles. In a state known for its 10,000 lakes, many people
could do little except hope for rain. But big farmers had
another option. They cranked up their powerful irrigation
wells, drenching their fields with so much water that they
collectively pumped at least 6.1 billion gallons more
groundwater than allowed under state permits. Nearly a third of
the overuse happened on land affiliated with one company, R.D.
Offutt Farms.
This summer’s unprecedented floods across the U.S. highlight
how a massive piece of infrastructure — the nation’s
90,000-plus dams — can play the role of hero or villain in
these climate-enhanced calamities. … [I]n 2017, 200,000
people were evacuated downstream of California’s massive
Oroville Dam when flood waters, combined with design and
construction weaknesses, resulted in a $1 billion repair bill.
In the arid western states, drought rather than floods often
causes dams to make the news. Colorado River reservoirs supply
drinking water to 40 million people in seven states but face
increasing challenges — and decreasing water levels — with a
multi-year drought across the region. And dams serve other
roles — navigation, irrigation, recreation and, of course,
electricity generation. -Written by Dan Reicher, a Senior Scholar at
Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability; and Tom
Kiernan, CEO of American Rivers; and Malcolm Woolf,
CEO of the National Hydropower Association.
Folsom Lake has plenty of water heading into the fall. As of
Wednesday morning, the reservoir is at 73% of capacity. That is
the highest the water level has been in early September since
2019. … At this point in the year, the reservoir is
drawn down as managers send water to local customers and
provide for environmental needs. At the same time, a notable
amount of water is lost to the dry air sitting just above it
through evaporation. … Last month, evaporation accounted
for 6,500 acre-feet of water loss at the lake, a rate of about
100 cubic feet per second. Lessard said that compared to the
size of Folsom, which can hold more than 900,000 acre-feet,
that loss is relatively small.
Over the weekend, Burning Man attendees were forced to shelter
in place when the usually-parched Black Rock Desert got roughly
3 months’ worth of rain in 24 hours. … In the U.S.,
there’s strikingly little mainstream discussion of scaling
what’s arguably the simplest, cheapest and most sustainable
solution for harvesting water: catching it from the sky.
The time is ripe for a national policy agenda to dramatically
scale up rainwater harvesting. Around the world, humans
have been systematically gathering rainwater since ancient
times. The technologies are simple: Collect rainwater from
rooftops—on homes, warehouses, factories—and send it down
gutters into tanks, where it can be filtered and used for
domestic purposes, landscaping, or industrial processes. For
farms, harvesting rainwater typically means configuring land
with slopes and basins that maximize natural irrigation. -Written by Justin Talbot Zorn, senior adviser to the
Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Israel Mirsky is a
New York-based writer and technologist.
A new but little-known change in
California law designating aquifers as “natural infrastructure”
promises to unleash a flood of public funding for projects that
increase the state’s supply of groundwater.
The change is buried in a sweeping state budget-related law,
enacted in July, that also makes it easier for property owners
and water managers to divert floodwater for storage underground.
Remember this time last year, when water stores depleted by
several years of drought left water managers and consumers
alike hoping desperately for a wet winter ahead? Well, Sonoma
Water says the region’s main reservoirs — Lakes Sonoma and
Mendocino — ended this August with the highest combined storage
level since 1985, the first full year the newly constructed
Lake Sonoma was filled. This, less than nine months after the
reservoir on Dry Creek reached its lowest level in history on
Dec. 9 — 96,310 acre feet, just more than a third full. Lake
Sonoma now has nearly 240,000 acre feet in it, while Lake
Mendocino, which is smaller, has nearly 84,000 acre feet, for a
combined total of more than 322,000 acre feet. (An acre foot of
water equals 325,851 gallons, or about the amount of water
needed to flood most of a football field one foot deep.)
Most statewide California candidates blow off the Central
Valley. There are more votes and media — and donors, of
course — on the coast. But not this year. The Central
Valley is up for grabs for Senate candidates vying to replace
Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The top three Democrats — who
represent coastal districts in Los Angeles, Orange County and
the Bay Area and aren’t well known in almond country —
made a beeline last Saturday from a major union endorsement
interview in Los Angeles to a $25-a-head fundraiser hosted by
Rep. Josh Harder along the Stockton waterfront. … But while
they’re all showing up to campaign in the Valley, none has
crafted a position on a crucial aspect of the issue in
America’s breadbasket that could give them an advantage over
their rivals: water. Specifically, the Delta tunnel, the
proposed 45-mile conveyance tunnel through the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta.
For years, environmentalists have argued that the Colorado
River should be allowed to flow freely across the Utah-Arizona
border, saying that letting water pass around Glen Canyon Dam —
and draining the giant Lake Powell reservoir — would improve
the shrinking river’s health. Now, as climate change increases
the strains on the river, this controversial proposal is
receiving support from some surprising new allies: influential
farmers in California’s Imperial Valley. In a letter to the
federal Bureau of Reclamation, growers Mike and James Abatti,
who run some of the biggest farming operations in the Imperial
Valley, urged the government to consider sacrificing the
Colorado’s second-largest reservoir and storing the water
farther downstream in Lake Mead — the river’s largest
reservoir.
State Senator Melissa Hurtado and Congressman John Garamendi
are sounding the alarm on the dangers of when billionaire
investors gobble up ag land. On Aug. 29, Senator Hurtado, 16th
District and chair of the State Agriculture Committee, hosted
an informational hearing at the State Capitol to discuss the
unprecedented land purchases in Solano County by Flannery
Associates LLC; and to explore possible remedies to prevent
private entities and foreign governments from acquiring
California agricultural land. … “I don’t think it’s
about building a city,” Hurtado said. “I think it’s about water
and energy.” She mentioned the state’s futures water market. In
2020, California became the first state to create a futures
market for water. With water in the futures market, this means
investors are able to trade water the same way they have things
like gold, or oil.
The North San Joaquin Water Conservation District recently
received some help from the federal government to ensure its
ratepayers continue to receive water. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture announced Tuesday that the district has been
awarded a $1 million grant to make repairs and upgrades to its
irrigation system. The investment will help make critical
improvements to upstream level control, gates, and flow meters
to meet delivery needs and support effective, safe groundwater
management, the agency said. Jennifer Spaletta, the district’s
attorney, said the grant money will be used to build a lateral
off the south distribution system located near Handel Road.
Nevada and the other Colorado River basin states are laying out
their goals for the future of the river that supplies water to
some 40 million Americans in the Southwest. States, cities,
farmers, tribes, environmental groups and more submitted
comments this month to the Bureau of Reclamation as part of the
lengthy process for rewriting the rules that govern how the
river and its major dams and reservoirs will be managed in the
coming decades. The ideas run the gamut: from California
farmers with the oldest and most senior rights calling for the
new rules to follow the longstanding priority system, to calls
for the federal government to evaluate retrofitting — or even
decommissioning — Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell in order to
protect water levels at Lake Mead.
There’s a saying used in Washington to describe the woes of
conserving large sums of Colorado River water amid one of the
worst droughts in the history of the Western United States. It
was supposedly coined by the man who oversees Nevada’s largest
water agency. “Here’s the fundamental problem: We have a
19th-century law and 20th-century infrastructure in a
21st-century climate,” says John Entsminger, the general
manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority. It’s a phrase
he and others began to use throughout negotiations between the
seven states dependent on the Colorado River for its water
before they reached a tentative deal in May to conserve roughly
3 million acre-feet of water through 2026.
The increasingly unpredictable climate is making growing grapes
an increasingly risky and costly business. France recently lost
an estimated $2 billion in wine sales after extreme weather
decimated the harvest. In 2022, California farmers lost an
estimated $1.7 billion to the drought alone, according to a
study conducted by researchers at the University of California.
And despite California’s abnormally wet winter in 2023, which
helped replenish reservoirs and groundwater aquifers, experts
warn that the wet weather won’t make up for decades of
diminished rain and extended periods of drought. How much water
a vineyard needs to produce great wine varies considerably, and
while there is an increasing effort to dry farm, the vast
majority of California vineyards are irrigated.
Lake Oroville is down 40 feet from the start of the summer when
the water level was at capacity thanks to a string of heavy
winter storms. The storms also boosted the snowpack, allowing
for consistent and often substantial runoff into the lake.
Earlier this year, the California Department of Water
Resources, which oversees the lake as well as the Oroville Dam,
began releasing water from the reservoir’s main spillway in an
effort to keep up with the inflows.
[Jan] Sramek is leading a group of Silicon Valley moguls
in an audacious plan to build a new city on a rolling patch of
farms and windmills in Northern California was the unofficial
beginning of what promises to become a protracted and expensive
political campaign. … After that comes a gantlet of
environmental rules, inevitable lawsuits and potential tussles
with the state’s Air Resources Board, the Water Resources
Control Board, Public Utilities Commission and Department of
Transportation — not to mention the local planning commission
and board of supervisors who oversee land use in Solano County.
California is at yet another critical point in its struggle
toward a sustainable water future, and yet we’re still talking
about the wrong solutions. On Wednesday, the water rights
protest period for Sites Reservoir will come to a close. Sites
Reservoir is the latest in a long line of proposed dams
promising to end our cycle of water insecurity. However, Sites
won’t add much to California’s water portfolio, and its harm to
the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem and communities that rely
on them could be irreversible and ongoing. -Written by Keiko Mertz, the Policy Director for
Friends of the River.
The saga surrounding a group of mysterious investors who have
spent more than $800 million to buy up thousands of acres of
farmland in rural Solano County has gripped Bay Area residents,
local politicians and federal government agencies. Last week,
the Chronicle reported that the investors were revealed to be a
group of Silicon Valley notables who seem to be gearing up to
build a new city. Here is what is known about the effort,
according to Chronicle reporting … And a myriad of
questions surround the project, including where its water will
come from, how developers would address the area’s risk for
flooding and extreme heat due to climate change, the impacts to
the state’s agriculture distribution chain, and transportation
concerns in an area currently serviced by a two-lane highway.
For most of the state, the drought is over. The Central Valley
is receiving their full state water supply allocation and
farmers don’t need to pull water from the ground to keep their
crops from dying of thirst. But that doesn’t mean the
signs along Interstate 5 and Highway 99 grumbling about the
“Politicians Created Water Crisis” and the Valley’s man-made
dust bowl, and asking if “Growing Food Is Wasting Water?”
should be taken down. The abundance won’t last forever, and the
farmers eventually will be back where they were before record
rain and snow provided them with a bounty of life-giving water.
That could be avoided, though, if policymakers got busy
building needed water infrastructure. -Written by Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the
Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research
Institute.
Almost all of California is finally drought-free, after
Tropical Storm Hilary’s rare summer drenching added to this
winter’s record-setting rainfall totals. But despite all that
drought-busting precipitation, California continues to capture
only a percentage of that water. Much of the abundance in rain
from Hilary ended up running off into the ocean — not captured
or stored for future use, when California will inevitably face
its next drought. … Following the torrent of winter
storms from a parade of atmospheric rivers, much of California
pulled out of drought conditions after three of the
state’s driest years on record. And Hilary continued to build
on that trend — pulling one of the state’s driest regions out
of such dire conditions.
Water users in the Klamath Project may lose their remaining
water allocations following a warning from the Bureau of
Reclamation sent out last Friday. The letter tells irrigators
“… there is projected to be a shortfall in the Sept. 30 Upper
Klamath Lake elevation of 4139.2 feet that was identified in
the May 18, 2023, update to the 2023 Annual Operation Plan.
This situation is likely to require a reduction in project
water supply in order to minimize or eliminate the shortfall.”
The letter from Reclamation said the department will continue
to explore actions to mitigate any reductions, but encourages
contract holders to conserve their supplies.
The San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors August
24 voted unanimously to appoint Dan Denham as general manager.
The appointment follows the June retirement of former General
Manager Sandra L. Kerl. Denham has served in several leadership
capacities with the Water Authority for the past 17 years,
including his most recent post as deputy general manager. In
that role, he oversaw the MWD and Colorado River programs,
along with the Engineering, Water Resources, and Operations &
Maintenance departments. Denham also continues to oversee the
implementation of long-term agricultural-to-urban conserved
water transfers that are among the largest in the United
States. As a commissioner on the Quantification Settlement
Agreement Joint Powers Authority, he leads the Water
Authority’s fulfillment of environmental mitigation obligations
and legislative advocacy efforts at the Salton Sea.
Six years after unveiling plans to build a 320-foot high dam
and reservoir at Pacheco Pass in southern Santa Clara County,
the largest water district in Silicon Valley still hasn’t found
any other water agencies willing to help fund the project. But
this week, an unusual potential partner came to light: China.
The revelation of interest from one of the United States’ most
contentious rivals is the latest twist in the project’s shaky
history: The price tag has tripled to $2.8 billion since 2018
due to unstable geology found in the area. The Santa Clara
Valley Water District, which is pursuing the plan, has delayed
groundbreaking by at least three years, to 2027, instead of
2024 as announced five years ago. And environmentalists won a
lawsuit this summer that will require more study of how ongoing
geological work will affect endangered plants and
animals.
The state has assigned an engineering company to take control
of, and improve, the water system in the small Tulare County
town of Teviston. Teviston, a rural community of about 460
people, has been hard hit by water problems for years. The town
well broke down in the drought of 2021, leaving families
without water and many without any way to cool themselves in
soaring summer temperatures. Its water is also contaminated by
1,2,3, TCP, a dangerous carcinogen. The state Water
Resources Control Board gained the authority to appoint
administrators to water systems in 2018. Appointed
administrators take over struggling systems that can’t deal
with issues ranging from water quality to technical and
managerial challenges.
Turlock Irrigation District’s newly completed $10 million Ceres
Main Regulating Reservoir west of Keyes was unveiled Tuesday,
with the district’s board of directors touring the new
facility. Operational for nearly two weeks, the reservoir is
capable of holding 220 acre feet of water (about 220 football
fields each submerged in 1 foot of water) and is expected to
save some 10,000 acre feet of water each year. … The
reservoir will capture fluctuations in water flow from the
Ceres Main Canal and pump the stored excess water back into the
Ceres Main Canal to improve customer service downstream, lessen
the need for groundwater pumping, and reduce water loss from
the canal system.
A panel of state lawmakers who lead in the water and
agriculture space said any water conservation program Colorado
conceives of shouldn’t go into place until after California and
Arizona first take action. The bipartisan panel spoke
Wednesday at Colorado Water Congress about the water policies
passed in the last legislative session, and where they see
Colorado water policy headed in the next year.
As most Californians know all too well, the rain that drenched
the state this week was extreme and often record-breaking. As
Tropical Storm Hilary passed through California, more rain fell
in San Diego and Los Angeles on Sunday than on any other August
day on record. The same was true in the desert city of Palm
Springs, which received about 70 percent of its annual average
precipitation in a 24-hour period, according to Mark Moede, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s San Diego
office. “You look at those numbers, and you have to look
at it twice to say, ‘Is this really real?’” Moede told
me. Hilary arrived during what is usually California’s
driest time of year, and the peak of the state’s fire season.
Seven of the 20 largest wildfires in California
history started in August.
Colorado River Basin states don’t agree on very much when it
comes to the future operations of the basin’s largest water
savings banks. One thing they do agree on: The current rules
aren’t working. The seven states with land in the Colorado
River Basin and other stakeholders submitted comment letters
Aug. 15 to the federal government for consideration as part of
ongoing discussions over future operations at Lake Mead and
Lake Powell, which together comprise 92% of the basin’s entire
storage capacity. The federal long-term planning process
launched in June, a year after a storage crisis left water
users reeling. From 2000 to 2022, Mead and Powell dropped from
nearly full to less than 32% capacity, as of March 20. Water
experts attribute the crisis to prolonged drought, an
increasingly warm climate and overuse.
When Adel Hagekhalil speaks about the future of water in
Southern California, he often starts by mentioning the three
conduits the region depends on to bring water from hundreds of
miles away: the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado River
Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct. As general manager of the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Hagekhalil
is responsible for ensuring water for 19 million people,
leading the nation’s largest wholesale supplier of drinking
water. He says that with climate change upending the water
cycle, the three existing aqueducts will no longer be
sufficient. … For Southern California to adapt,
Hagekhalil said, it will need to recycle more wastewater,
capture stormwater, clean up contaminated groundwater, and
design new infrastructure …
The historic snowstorms that buffeted California this year
fundamentally changed a state gripped by years of drought. From
reducing fire risk to shoring up salmon runs to satisfying the
thirst of faraway cities and farms, the state’s white-topped
mountains have unleashed a torrent of melting snow that has
touched nearly every aspect of life in California. From the
peaks to the Pacific, it has been branded “The Big Melt,” and
it continues to deliver well into summer. Water is the fuel of
California, and decisions about who gets to use it and how it
is used are a source of eternal conflict. What we can learn in
a year of abundance will extend to the feared dry years ahead.
One way to take stock of the melt is to travel 250 miles
northeast of San Francisco to the headwaters of the Feather
River, then follow the river back.
Strange times create strange bedfellows, as long-term water
supply for farms and cities in the Lower Basin aligns with the
best environmental alternative. The best solution for
California, Arizona, and Nevada to achieve water supply
security is to have the Colorado River bypass Glen Canyon Dam,
drain Lake Powell’s water into Lake Mead, and let the Colorado
River flow freely through Grand Canyon. As the comments are
made public in the Post-2026 Colorado River Scoping EIS
(Environmental Impact Statement) process, one thing is for
certain: an alternative examining bypassing water around or
through Glen Canyon Dam must be developed by the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation. The usual suspects — mostly environmental groups —
are calling for either completely decommissioning Glen Canyon
Dam or bypassing the Dam to support the “Fill Mead First”
alternative. -Written by Gary Wockner, a scientist and conservationist
based in Colorado.
The Marin Municipal Water District is preparing to launch more
in-depth studies of new water supply projects, beginning with
assembling consulting teams. The district board is set to vote
on contracts with new consulting teams next month to begin
preliminary technical, environmental and engineering studies of
larger, more complex projects. The projects include expanding
local reservoir storage, constructing a brackish Petaluma River
desalination plant and installing new pipelines to transfer
Russian River water directly into local reservoirs. Unlike the
broader study completed earlier this year that identified which
of the supply options the district could pursue, the more
in-depth analyses are needed to provide details on how and
whether they can be built, as well as the costs and
environmental impacts.
Phoenix officials said this week the city will remain in a
stage 1 water alert even though the United States Bureau of
Reclamation announced a return to a tier 1 shortage on the
Colorado River in 2024 as a result of a wet winter that
elevated levels at lakes Powell and Mead. “While this
favorable winter provides temporary relief to the Colorado
River system, Phoenix, which receives 40% of its water from the
river, is asking residents to continue conserving water due to
the unpredictability of the river, prolonged drought and
climate change,” city officials said in a release. Under the
city’s drought management plan, a stage 1 water alert is
declared when an insufficient supply of water appears likely
due to water system or supply limitations, triggering an
intensive public education and information program.
The Colorado River is healthier and Lake Mead is rising. That
news is welcome but brings little joy in San Diego’s water
world at the moment. A lawsuit between agencies has been
authorized. Legislation that could block two small
districts from getting cheaper water elsewhere hit a bump in
the road in Sacramento. And a controversial hire by a
water district that supplies San Diego County with water is
being eyed warily by some officials. First, the good news.
The massive snowpack from the winter storms has nourished the
ailing Colorado River, a major source of water for San Diego
and much of the Southwest. -Written by columnist Michael Smolens.
OceanWell and Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD)
announced today their partnership to pilot California’s
first-ever Blue Water farm. LVMWD Board of Directors
unanimously approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that
paves the way for the public/private partnership to research an
environment-first approach that addresses the increasing
concern of water scarcity and reliability. Blue Water is fresh
water harvested from the deep ocean or other raw water sources.
This, first-of-its-kind project, will test OceanWell’s
proprietary water purification technology to produce safe,
clean drinking water without the environmental impacts of
traditional coastal desalination methods.
Decades of land subsidence caused by unregulated and continued
groundwater overdraft have caused the Friant-Kern Canal, which
is a 152-mile gravity fed canal, to sink as much as 14 feet in
the area between Porterville and Delano. This damage has
resulted in a 60% loss of carrying capacity along the canal.
This water supply impact has caused harm, not only to the farms
that make the economic engine in the San Joaquin Valley run,
but also to cities and communities, whose primary source of
drinking water is from the underground aquifer. Now a fix is
underway and progress is being made, says Friant Water CEO
Jason Phillips.
Cleanup crews for East Bay Municipal Utility District were
busy Wednesday extracting four vehicles from near the San
Leandro Reservoir, a key water source for Bay Area residents.
The extraction comes just a day after the agency cleaned up 10
tons of material from a similar location on Tuesday and a month
after extracting eight other abandoned cars in
July. There’s been an epidemic of abandoned cars
in the Bay Area for years, especially in the East Bay,
but EBMUD spokesperson Andrea Pook says the problem was
exacerbated by the pandemic.
Federal researchers reported Wednesday that despite
last fall’s eradication efforts the number of
invasive smallmouth bass more than doubled in the Colorado
River below Glen Canyon Dam since last year, imperiling the
already threatened native humpback chub.
The Colorado River Basin supplies water to 40 million people.
For seven U.S. states, including the headwater state of
Colorado, it is an essential resource that sustains agriculture
as well as local municipalities. Since 2000, the amount
of water consumed from the basin has exceeded its natural flow.
This has led to historic lows in the nation’s two largest
surface water reservoirs: Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This
overuse puts 40 million of those water users at risk of water
scarcity, which has led to renegotiations of water rights
detailed in the Colorado River Compact within the past several
years as well as local negotiations and agreements.
A research effort tracking water scarcity around the world
shows California, Arizona and other Western states are
experiencing water stress at high levels similar to arid
countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The analysis by
researchers with the World Resources Institute found that all
seven states that rely on the Colorado River face high or
extremely high water stress. Arizona ranked first for the most
severe water stress in the country, followed by New Mexico and
Colorado, while California ranked fifth.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
Much of California’s water supply
originates in the Sierra Nevada, making it dependent on the
health of forests. But those forests are suffering from
widespread tree mortality and other ecosystem degradation
resulting mostly from the growing frequency and severity
of droughts and wildfires.
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
Explore the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
The three-year span, 2019 to 2022, was officially the driest ever
statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. But that most recent period of overall drought
also saw 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 the
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?
Participants found 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.
Beckman Center
Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
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 explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
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.
Rare photos show the transformation of Hetch Hetchy Valley from
untouched paradise to home of the O’Shaughnessy Dam, which
supplies some of the country’s cleanest water to 2 million
people in San Francisco and beyond.
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.
On average, more than 60 percent of
California’s developed water supply originates in the Sierra
Nevada and the southern spur of the Cascade Range. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This tour ventured into the Sierra to examine water issues
that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state.
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.
Colorado is home to the headwaters
of the Colorado River and the water policy decisions made in the
Centennial State reverberate throughout the river’s sprawling
basin that stretches south to Mexico. The stakes are huge in a
basin that serves 40 million people, and responding to the water
needs of the economy, productive agriculture, a robust
recreational industry and environmental protection takes
expertise, leadership and a steady hand.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Our Water 101 Workshop, one of our most popular events, offered attendees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of California’s water history, laws, geography and politics.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the state, the workshop was held as an engaging online event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday, April 23.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
Members of the 2019 Water Leaders class examined the
emerging issue of wildfire impacts on California’s water
supply and quality. Read their policy recommendations in the
class report, Fire and Water: An Emerging Nexus in
California, to learn more.
Many of California’s watersheds are
notoriously flashy – swerving from below-average flows to jarring
flood conditions in quick order. The state needs all the water it
can get from storms, but current flood management guidelines are
strict and unyielding, requiring reservoirs to dump water each
winter to make space for flood flows that may not come.
However, new tools and operating methods are emerging that could
lead the way to a redefined system that improves both water
supply and flood protection capabilities.
It’s been a year since two devastating wildfires on opposite ends
of California underscored the harsh new realities facing water
districts and cities serving communities in or adjacent to the
state’s fire-prone wildlands. Fire doesn’t just level homes, it
can contaminate water, scorch watersheds, damage delivery systems
and upend an agency’s finances.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
The Water Education Foundation’s Water 101 Workshop, one of our most popular events, offered attendees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of California’s water history, laws, geography and politics.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the state, the one-day workshop held on Feb. 20, 2020 covered the latest on the most compelling issues in California water.
McGeorge School of Law
3327 5th Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95817
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
The majestic beauty of the Sierra
Nevada forest is awe-inspiring, but beneath the dazzling blue
sky, there is a problem: A century of fire suppression and
logging practices have left trees too close together. Millions of
trees have died, stricken by drought and beetle infestation.
Combined with a forest floor cluttered with dry brush and debris,
it’s a wildfire waiting to happen.
Fires devastate the Sierra watersheds upon which millions of
Californians depend — scorching the ground, unleashing a
battering ram of debris and turning hillsides into gelatinous,
stream-choking mudflows.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
Registration opens today for the
Water Education Foundation’s 36th annual Water
Summit, set for Oct. 30 in Sacramento. This year’s
theme, Water Year 2020: A Year of Reckoning,
reflects fast-approaching deadlines for the State Groundwater
Management Act as well as the pressing need for new approaches to
water management as California and the West weather intensified
flooding, fire and drought. To register for this can’t-miss
event, visit our Water Summit
event page.
Registration includes a full day of discussions by leading
stakeholders and policymakers on key issues, as well as coffee,
materials, gourmet lunch and an outdoor reception by the
Sacramento River that will offer the opportunity to network with
speakers and other attendees. The summit also features a silent
auction to benefit our Water Leaders program featuring
items up for bid such as kayaking trips, hotel stays and lunches
with key people in the water world.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Our 36th annual
Water Summit,
happening Oct. 30 in Sacramento, will feature the theme “Water
Year 2020: A Year of Reckoning,” reflecting upcoming regulatory
deadlines and efforts to improve water management and policy in
the face of natural disasters.
The Summit will feature top policymakers and leading stakeholders
providing the latest information and a variety of viewpoints on
issues affecting water across California and the West.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
Sixty percent of California’s
developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada,
making the state’s water supply largely dependent on the health
of Sierra forests. But those forests are suffering from ecosystem
degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
On our Headwaters Tour
June 27-28, we will visit Eldorado and Tahoe national forests to
learn about new forest management practices, including efforts to
both prevent wildfires and recover from them.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As stakeholders labor to nail down
effective and durable drought contingency plans for the Colorado
River Basin, they face a stark reality: Scientific research is
increasingly pointing to even drier, more challenging times
ahead.
The latest sobering assessment landed the day after Thanksgiving,
when U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate
Assessment concluded that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly
compared to the pace of natural variations that have occurred
throughout its history, with greenhouse gas emissions largely the
cause.
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
The 1992 election to the United
States Senate was famously coined the “Year of the Woman” for the
record number of women elected to the upper chamber.
In the water world, 2018 has been a similar banner year, with
noteworthy appointments of women to top leadership posts in
California — Karla Nemeth at the California Department of Water
Resources and Gloria Gray at the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California.
The 2018 Water Leaders class examined ways to improve water
management through data. Read their recommendations in the class
report, Catch the Data Wave: Improving Water Management
through Data.
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
Just because El Niño may be lurking
off in the tropical Pacific, does that really offer much of a
clue about what kind of rainy season California can expect in
Water Year 2019?
Will a river of storms pound the state, swelling streams and
packing the mountains with deep layers of heavy snow much like
the exceptionally wet 2017 Water Year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30,
2017)? Or will this winter sputter along like last winter,
leaving California with a second dry year and the possibility of
another potential drought? What can reliably be said about the
prospects for Water Year 2019?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine?, a one-day event on Dec. 5 in Irvine,
water managers and anyone else interested in this topic will
learn about what is and isn’t known about forecasting
California’s winter precipitation weeks to months ahead, the
skill of present forecasts and ongoing research to develop
predictive ability.
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
“Dry, hot and on fire” is how the
California Department of Water Resources described Water Year
2018 in a recent report.
Water Year 2018 – from Oct. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2018 -
marked a return to dry conditions statewide following an
exceptionally wet 2017, according to DWR’s Water
Year 2018 report. But 2017 was exceptional as all but two of
the water years in the past decade experienced drought.
Was Water Year 2018 simply a single dry year or does it
signal the beginning of another drought? And what can
reliably be said about the prospects for Water Year 2019? Does El
Niño really mean anything for California or is it all washed up
as a predictor?
Attendees found out at this one-day event Dec. 5 in
Irvine, Water Year 2019: Feast or
Famine?
Beckman Center
Auditorium - Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
One of our most popular events, our annual Water 101 Workshop
details the history, geography, legal and political facets
of water in California as well as hot topics currently facing the
state.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the
state, the one-day workshop on Feb. 7 gave attendees a
deeper understanding of the state’s most precious natural
resources.
Optional Groundwater Tour
On Feb. 8, we jumped aboard a bus to explore groundwater, a key
resource in California. Led by Foundation staff and groundwater
experts Thomas
Harter and Carl Hauge, retired DWR chief hydrogeologist, the
tour visited cities and farms using groundwater, examined a
subsidence measuring station and provided the latest updates
on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
McGeorge School of Law
3327 5th Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95817
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
People in California and the
Southwest are getting stingier with water, a story that’s told by
the acre-foot.
For years, water use has generally been described in terms of
acre-foot per a certain number of households, keying off the
image of an acre-foot as a football field a foot deep in water.
The long-time rule of thumb: One acre-foot of water would supply
the indoor and outdoor needs of two typical urban households for
a year.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
We headed into the foothills and the mountains to examine
water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts
downstream and throughout the state.
GEI (Tour Starting Point)
2868 Prospect Park Dr.
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
As California embarks on its unprecedented mission to harness groundwater pumping, the Arizona desert may provide one guide that local managers can look to as they seek to arrest years of overdraft.
Groundwater is stressed by a demand that often outpaces natural and artificial recharge. In California, awareness of groundwater’s importance resulted in the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 that aims to have the most severely depleted basins in a state of balance in about 20 years.
Spurred by drought and a major
policy shift, groundwater management has assumed an unprecedented
mantle of importance in California. Local agencies in the
hardest-hit areas of groundwater depletion are drawing plans to
halt overdraft and bring stressed aquifers to the road of
recovery.
Along the way, an army of experts has been enlisted to help
characterize the extent of the problem and how the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014 is implemented in a manner
that reflects its original intent.
For decades, cannabis has been grown
in California – hidden away in forested groves or surreptitiously
harvested under the glare of high-intensity indoor lamps in
suburban tract homes.
In the past 20 years, however, cannabis — known more widely as
marijuana – has been moving from being a criminal activity to
gaining legitimacy as one of the hundreds of cash crops in the
state’s $46 billion-dollar agriculture industry, first legalized
for medicinal purposes and this year for recreational use.
As we continue forging ahead in 2018
with our online version of Western Water after 40 years
as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also
got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.
State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing
up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and
combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish
and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps
unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved
Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if
anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that
marijuana was legal.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
Learn what new tree-ring studies in
Southern California watersheds reveal about drought, hear about
efforts to improve subseasonal to seasonal weather forecasting
and get the latest on climate change impacts that will alter
drought vulnerability in the future.
At our Paleo
Drought Workshop on April 19th in San Pedro, you will hear
from experts at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of
Arizona and California Department of Water Resources.
Joaquin Esquivel learned that life is
what happens when you make plans. Esquivel, who holds the public
member slot at the State Water Resources Control Board in
Sacramento, had just closed purchase on a house in Washington
D.C. with his partner when he was tapped by Gov. Jerry Brown a
year ago to fill the Board vacancy.
Esquivel, 35, had spent a decade in Washington, first in several
capacities with then Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and then as
assistant secretary for federal water policy at the California
Natural Resources Agency. As a member of the State Water Board,
he shares with four other members the difficult task of
ensuring balance to all the uses of California’s water.
One of our most popular events, Water 101 details the history,
geography, legal and political facets of water in California
as well as hot topics currently facing the state.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the
state, the one-day workshop gives attendees a deeper
understanding of the state’s most precious natural resource.
McGeorge School of Law
3285 5th Ave, Classroom C
Sacramento, CA 95817
Does California need to revamp the way in which water is dedicated to the environment to better protect fish and the ecosystem at large? In the hypersensitive world of California water, where differences over who gets what can result in epic legislative and legal battles, the idea sparks a combination of fear, uncertainty and promise.
Saying that the way California manages water for the environment “isn’t working for anyone,” the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shook things up late last year by proposing a redesigned regulatory system featuring what they described as water ecosystem plans and water budgets with allocations set aside for the environment.
Every day, people flock to Daniel
Swain’s social media platforms to find out the latest news and
insight about California’s notoriously unpredictable weather.
Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the
Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, famously coined the
term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 to describe
the large, formidable high-pressure mass that was parked over the
West Coast during winter and diverted storms away from
California, intensifying the drought.
Swain’s research focuses on atmospheric processes that cause
droughts and floods, along with the changing character of extreme
weather events in a warming world. A lifelong Californian and
alumnus of University of California, Davis, and Stanford
University, Swain is best known for the widely read Weather West blog, which provides
unique perspectives on weather and climate in California and the
western United States. In a recent interview with Western
Water, he talked about the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, its
potential long-term impact on California weather, and what may
lie ahead for the state’s water supply.
The 2017 Water Leaders class
organized by the Water Education Foundation completed its year
with a report outlining policy recommendations for the
future of water storage in California.
The class of 20 from
various stakeholder groups and backgrounds that hailed from
cities and towns across the state had full editorial control to
chose recommendations. While they did not endorse a specific
storage proposal, they recommended that California:
Deepen your knowledge of California water issues at our popular
Water
101 Workshop and jump aboard the bus the next day to
visit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a 720,000-acre
network of islands and canals that supports the state’s water
system and is California’s most crucial water and ecological
resource.
Atmospheric rivers are relatively
narrow bands of moisture that ferry precipitation across the
Pacific Ocean to the West Coast and are key to California’s
water
supply.
For decades, no matter the weather, the message has been preached
to Californians: use water wisely, especially outdoors, which
accounts for most urban water use.
Enforcement of that message filters to the local level, where
water agencies routinely target the notorious “gutter flooder”
with gentle reminders and, if necessary, financial penalties.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
For as long as agriculture has existed in the Central Valley,
farmers have pumped water from the ground to sustain their
livelihood and grow food consumed by much of the nation. This has
caused the ground in certain places to sink, sometimes
dramatically, eliminating valuable aquifer storage space that can
never be restored.
One of the wettest years in California history that ended a
record five-year drought has rejuvenated the call for new storage
to be built above and below ground.
In a state that depends on large surface water reservoirs to help
store water before moving it hundreds of miles to where it is
used, a wet year after a long drought has some people yearning
for a place to sock away some of those flood flows for when they
are needed.
A critical aspect of California’s drive to create new water
storage is in place after the California Water Commission
approved regulations governing how those potential storage
projects could receive public funding under Prop. 1.
The Dec. 14 decision potentially paves the way for new surface
water projects, such as Sites Reservoir, and expansion of Los
Vaqueros reservoir in Contra Costa County.
This 24-page booklet details the conflict between
environmentalists, fish organizations and the Yuba County Water
Agency and how it was resolved through the Lower Yuba River
Accord – a unique agreement supported by 18 agencies and
non-governmental organizations. The publication details
the history and hydrology of the Yuba River, past and present
environmental concerns, and conflicts over dam operations and
protecting endangered fish is included.
This 30-minute documentary, produced in 2011, explores the past,
present and future of flood management in California’s Central
Valley. It features stories from residents who have experienced
the devastating effects of a California flood firsthand.
Interviews with long-time Central Valley water experts from
California Department of Water Resources (FloodSAFE), U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Central Valley Flood
Management Program and environmental groups are featured as they
discuss current efforts to improve the state’s 150-year old flood
protection system and develop a sustainable, integrated, holistic
flood management plan for the Central Valley.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.