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.
Concerning news about Utah’s extreme drought keeps coming. On
Wednesday, Utah’s Department of Natural Resources said the
drought continues to have “a stranglehold on the state,”
despite wild weather swings that dumped rain in some areas.
Washington Post Columnist David Von Drehle recently wrote an
opinion piece about the drought gripping the West. He spoke
with KUER’s Pamela McCall about the situation.
Low precipitation and heat continue to dry out the West. With
nine of the 11 Western states recording average water
year-to-date precipitations from 50%-to-80% of normal and
record-breaking high temperatures, drought is literally a hot
topic. When water is limited, the first thing to consider is
how to better conserve the water that you have. Then,
investigate alternative water sources.
After three weeks of round-the-clock work, the emergency
drought salinity barrier (EDSB) was completed in late June. The
barrier will help prevent saltwater contamination of water
supplies used by millions of Californians who rely on
Delta-based federal and state water projects for at least some
of their water supplies.
As drought conditions continue throughout Butte County, the
Department of Water Resources is currently projecting that the
surface water level of Lake Oroville could reach an all-time
low of 640 feet above sea level by October or November. As of
Thursday, Lake Oroville’s surface water level was 648.47 feet
above sea level. When full Lake Oroville’s surface water level
is 900 feet above sea level. Water operations manager for the
Department of Water Resources State Water Project Molly White
said precipitation events later this year will determine when
lake levels will begin to rise.
In Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast, city leaders are rushing
to install an emergency desalination system. In Healdsburg,
lawn watering is banned with fines of up to $1,000. In
Hornbrook, a small town in Siskiyou County, faucets have gone
completely dry, and the chairman of the water district is
driving 15 miles each way to take showers and wash
clothes. So far, California’s worsening drought has been
an inconvenience in big cities. But it’s already imperiling an
alarming number of communities, especially between the Bay Area
and the Oregon border, threatening the water supplies for more
than 130,000 people.
Confronting the rise of attacks on major American
infrastructure and industry, the White House released an
executive order Wednesday in which President Joe Biden will ask
companies to layer on more cybersecurity protections. The order
follows up on a series of cybersecurity directives prompted
this year when the nation suffered a series of fuel shortages
after Russian-tied cybercriminals launched a ransomware attack
on Colonial Pipeline.
Climate change projections show the Central Valley will see
more hot, dry years like 2021, but also some dangerously wet
years as well. This year has already seen high temperatures,
drought and high fire risk for Central Valley residents, and
Jordi Vasquez, environmental scientist for the California
Department of Water Resources, said climate models show the
Central Valley heating up 6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end
of the century. … The biggest impact for Central Valley
communities like Hanford will be water management, Vasquez
said.
Advocates for public water systems on Tuesday jumped quickly on
a request by a Monterey County supervisor to consider amending
a law that currently allows only public ownership and operation
of desalination facilities. The request came in the form of a
board referral, an instrument allowing members of the Board of
Supervisors to make requests to the county’s chief
administrative officer for work by staff or additional
information on a specific topic.
With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of
a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop
artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of
agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management,
climate change and integration of new technology into farming.
The new institute is one of 11 launched this year by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and among two funded by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and
Agriculture.
Regulatory pressures on California agriculture can have a
global impact on consumers. North American
Regional Head of RaboResearch Food and Agribusiness
for RaboBank, Roland Fumasi explained that the agriculture
industry ultimately exists to meet the global demand for food.
Restrictive policies enacted that put added pressure on
agricultural production can potentially have a negative impact
on billions of consumers that rely on California ag
products.
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer made a stop in Fresno on
Wednesday to plead his case on why he’s a key candidate in the
potential recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Faulconer’s
talking points during the visit consisted almost entirely of
the state’s water woes as he stood outside the Department of
Water Resources office in central Fresno, where he was
accompanied by Fresno County Supervisor Buddy
Mendes.
Throughout the nation and around the world, purple pipes pulse
with water that has gone down drains and been treated for reuse
in landscaping, agriculture and commerce. Irvine Ranch Water
District was the mastermind behind that color: leading the
charge in the early 1980s to certify a standard for pipes
carrying recycled water, to distinguish them from drinking
water systems. But how did it happen? It’s a colorful story of
IRWD leadership, creativity and humor — centered around an
engineer who sees much of the world in neutral tones.
Not a drop of new “moon shoot” water storage has been created
in California for more than 40 years. It’s a point that isn’t
lost on Congressman Josh Harder. Nor is the fact water issues
facing the heart of the Northern San Joaquin Valley are
interconnected with communities often hundreds of miles away
from the 10th District that he represents in Congress. It
is why the Turlock Democrat has pursued do-able water projects
— including those outside of his district that would reduce
efforts to try and commandeer water from the Stanislaus and
Tuolumne watersheds to address fish flow, urban, and irrigation
needs elsewhere — since taking office in 2019.
In Spanish, Sierra Nevada means “snowy mountain range.” While
the term “snowy” has generally been true for most of U.S.
history, those mountains have seen less snow accumulation in
recent years. This decline plays a role in water management and
response to drought in California and other western states.
Each spring and summer, meltwater runoff from Sierra Nevada
snowpack helps replenish rivers and reservoirs, while also
recharging the groundwater. In fact, snowpack accounts for
about 30 percent of California’s water supply in a typical
year, according to the California Department of Water
Resources.
California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) is currently
experiencing one of the driest years in recorded history.
The US Drought Monitor recently classified large portions of
the Delta Watershed as being in a state of “Exceptional
Drought,” while the remaining portions are in a state of
“Extreme Drought.” The California Nevada River Forecast
Center also provides information that the to-date flows in
nearly all streams in the watershed are between 20 and 40
percent of the annual average. As a result, the water
supplies for many users in the region are in jeopardy.
State work to improve wildlife habitat and tamp down dust at
California’s ailing Salton Sea is finally moving forward. Now
the sea may be on the verge of getting the vital ingredient
needed to supercharge those restoration efforts – money. The
shrinking desert lake has long been a trouble spot beset by
rising salinity and unhealthy, lung-irritating dust blowing
from its increasingly exposed bed. It shadows discussions of
how to address the Colorado River’s two-decade-long drought
because of its connection to the system.
It’s sometimes thought that worsening wildfires, droughts and
farming conditions — products of climate change — will lead to
more conflicts and extremism, including in the West. Imagine a
repeat of lawless mobs confronting and terrorizing federal land
managers, as occurred at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
in 2016, and could happen again amid the Klamath Basin water
crisis… -Written by Stuart Leavenworth, LA Times’ California
Enterprise Editor.
Jennifer Beretta has been working as a dairy farmer since she
was 6 and knows some of her family’s 700 cows by name. One of
her favorites, a Jersey named Harmony, has won top prizes at
the Sonoma County Fair. … But business is business, and right
now business is bad. California’s devastating drought has dried
up most of the Beretta Family Dairy’s pastures, driven up the
cost of feed and made milking cows unprofitable. The Beretta
family has sold off more than 40 of its cows this year, and
could sell more before too long.
After the two driest consecutive years in much of California in
nearly half a century, reservoir levels are dropping. Lawns are
brown. Water restrictions are increasing. And Californians are
getting worried. Asked to name the environmental issue they are
most concerned about, more California residents cited water
shortages and drought than any other, according to a new poll
released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of
California, a non-partisan research organization in San
Francisco.
The state’s severe drought is transforming the landscape of our
streams, lakes and reservoirs as the supply of water is
depleted day by day. The changes at Uvas Reservoir in the
hills above Morgan are readily apparent. The waterline has
receded significantly as the footprint of the reservoir
shrinks. … According to the Santa Clara County
Water District, Uvas is currently at roughly 20% of its total
capacity – basically 80% empty. And a district spokesperson
says the situation is bad at all of the county’s reservoirs.
It sounds like the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie: Water
thieves roaming scorched terrain in search of nature’s most
precious resource. But in California, water theft is a massive
reality with numbers that are hard to comprehend — and as
droughts increasingly afflict the state, so does the extent of
this illegal activity. Over 12 billion gallons of water have
likely been stolen in California since 2013, John Nores — the
former head of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Marijuana Enforcement Team — recently told CNN.
Wild beavers play a critical role in the fight against climate
change by creating wetlands that combat drought and wildfire.
The species is native to California — but unlike beavers in
Oregon and Washington, they aren’t protected from being trapped
and killed in the state. Beavers have existed in North America
for millions of years, with large populations in the American
west.
In another vivid example of California’s ongoing drought and
water crisis, the water level is so low at Folsom Lake that
Gold rush era relics that typically are submerged are now
visible on dry land. … For more than a century before
the Folsom Dam was built, the current lake floor in Northern
California was used for gold mining and farming. Settlements
were destroyed when the reservoir was filled in the mid-1950s,
but some old foundations and artifacts remain on the lakebed.
Tomato sauce is feeling the squeeze and ketchup can’t catch up.
California grows more than 90 percent of Americans’ canned
tomatoes and a third of the world’s. Ongoing drought in the
state has hurt the planting and harvesting of many summer
crops, but water-hungry “processing tomatoes” are caught up in
a particularly treacherous swirl (a “tormado”?) of problems
that experts say will spur prices to surge far more than they
already have. The drought threatens to imperil some of
Americans’ favorite ingredients — pizza sauce, marinara, tomato
paste, stewed tomatoes and ketchup all hang in the balance.
Drought-plagued California is poised to bar thousands of
farmers, landowners and others from pumping water from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, a move that irrigation
districts said exceeds the water board’s authority. The
emergency rules would be the first time state regulators have
taken such wide-reaching action during a drought to prevent
diversions from the massive Delta watershed stretching from
Fresno to the Oregon border.
The water level in Lake Powell has dropped to the lowest level
since the U.S. government started filling the enormous
reservoir on the Colorado River in the 1960s — another sign of
the ravages of the Western drought. … The water
level has plunged as the American West experiences what
scientists are calling a “megadrought.” Too little water
is coming into the lake, and too much is being sent downriver
to maintain levels in Lake Mead, which is also
at historically low levels.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon
state line and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust
devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty
irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three
generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and
hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted,
federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
… [T]his summer there is simply not enough, and the
farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed
for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.
The news reports about the California salmon wipeout got a good
chunk of the story right: Record-breaking heat waves made
Northern California rivers too warm to sustain migrating
Chinook salmon, and virtually all of the salmon in the
Sacramento River this summer have died, or will die, before
reproducing. Any eggs that were successfully laid, or the fry
hatched from those eggs, are also likely doomed. So a
generation of the rare and endangered winter-run Chinook, and
the spring-run as well, are virtually gone.
The House of Representatives approved a $715 billion
infrastructure plan, and if the Senate passes it, it will mean
$20 million for the Valley Link project to connect Bay Area
Rapid Transit to the Altamont Corridor Express commuter train.
… California would be a big winner under the proposed
law. The bill includes more than $900 million for projects
throughout the Golden State. They include bridges, bike lanes
and express lanes … wastewater and drinking water
projects and other infrastructure to prepare for rising sea
levels.
Creeks, rivers and lakes that are fed by melting snow across
the U.S. West are already running low as of mid-July 2021, much
to the worry of farmers, biologists and snow hydrologists like
me. This is not surprising in California, where snow levels
over the previous winter were well below normal. But it is also
true across Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, which in general
received a normal amount of snow. You’d think if there was
normal amount of snow you’d have plenty of water downstream,
right? … But another less studied way moisture can be lost is
by evaporating straight into the atmosphere.
After a very dry winter and spring, all of California is now in
some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
One year ago, just 58 percent of California was in drought. In
the East Bay, the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s
reservoirs total system capacity is currently at 61% full,
which is 73% of average. The district is in decent shape for
now, but is encouraging its customers to conserve water as much
as possible. … EBMUD has worked for decades to diversify
its water sources, and if the drought gets worse next year, the
district will look at purchasing water from other
entities.
The drought is taking its toll on dams and rivers throughout
California and there is no clearer example than at Lake
Oroville where water levels have been dropping all year.
… The Oroville Dam is the state water system’s tallest,
but boaters and fishermen have witnessed the water level fall
nearly 250 feet below average. State water regulators are
required to release water to protect fish downstream. They are
trying to preserve as much water as possible, but levels are
dropping a foot a day.
New research says extreme weather events like the recent surge
of summer heat waves across the U.S. are being spurred by the
planet’s ongoing battle with climate change. In recent decades,
many have become all too acquainted with record shattering heat
waves that have put serious — and often deadly — pressure on
communities around the world. … New research explores this
new reality that many experts have been warning about for
years.
With water levels falling rapidly at Lake Powell on the
Arizona-Utah border, federal officials are taking what could be
the first of several steps to prop it up. This month the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation started a six-month effort to raise the
lake around 3 feet by the end of 2021 by releasing 181,000 acre
feet of water from three upstream reservoirs. It comes as the
lake just Sunday fell below its lowest level on record.
The Palmdale Water District looks to take the next step in its
years-long project to remove sediment from the reservoir behind
the Littlerock Dam and increase its water storage capacity. On
Monday, the Board of Directors will consider a $1.6 million
contract with Aspen Environmental Group for work involved with
the design, permitting and construction of the project over the
next three years, with potentially two years after that. The
Littlerock Reservoir Sediment Removal Project has been in the
works for more than 25 years.
The Santa Barbara City Council will discuss negotiating a water
supply agreement with La Cumbre Mutual Water Company during
their regular meeting Tuesday. Due to water supply
shortages exacerbated by drought conditions, officials from La
Cumbre Mutual Water Company have asked the City to negotiate a
long-term supply agreement tied to the Charles E. Meyer
Desalination Plant. The Desal plant, which was
constructed by the City in 1991, acts as a regional water
supply for the City, the Goleta Water District and the
Montecito Water District.
How are we messaging to our summer guests about our Climate
Emergency? About our town’s precious, empty Russian River
watershed? Is this a teachable moment for these privileged
travelers who come from places of Water Security? We should all
be True Believers in Climate Change. Effective June 8, 2021,
Healdsburg’s Stage Three mandatory conservation seeks a 40%
reduction in water use citywide with additional, restrictive
rules: 74 gallons per resident per day; No
irrigation; Hand watering only; Planting is
prohibited; $1,000 fine per day…the city means business!
-Written by Brigette Mansell, former Healdsburg
mayor.
A study tracking regulatory compliance costs in California was
recently released, with striking findings. Researchers looked
at data from 22 different farms of various sizes in the San
Joaquin Valley between 2012 and 2018. During that timeframe,
regulatory costs increased by 265 percent. Professor of
Agribusiness at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and co-author
of the report, Lynn Hamilton said several factors
contributed to the significant increase.
The drought in California isn’t quite fathomable to all. In
efforts to showcase the harsh reality producers are
experiencing, Western Growers has a new campaign called “No
water= No Crops.” In a series of videos, the campaign focuses
on a few California producers who are struggling with the water
shortages. Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms is one of the
farmers in the campaign. He started out his planting year
thinking he’d have enough water but that quickly changed as the
dry water year encroached.
Today we launch Drought Week, a five-part series looking at how
water shortages across the West are profoundly changing life.
We’ll swoop around, from Oregon to the Sonoran Desert, from
cities to national parks, from Joshua trees to lawns. To start
Drought Week, it’s only natural — pardon the pun — that we take
the bigger view first with our Masters of Disasters, the L.A.
Times reporters who focus on natural calamities. So get your
five-gallon buckets and put them next to you when you shower,
’cause things are serious right now.
On July 2, 2021, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
issued an important decision regarding Section 401 of the Clean
Water Act, overturning an Order by the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC’s Order had found that
the state of North Carolina had unlawfully “coordinated” with
the license applicant to delay the state’s certification that a
new FERC license for the Bynum hydroelectric project complied
with state water quality laws. FERC found that North
Carolina’s participation in the delay meant that the state had
“waived” its authority under Section 401 to issue the
certification.
With rural wells running dry and reservoir levels dwindling
amid the Western drought, California senators are pressing
Congress for an infusion of cash to renovate the state’s
collapsing drinking water system. But instead of new dams or
desalination plants, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla
want … to boost stormwater capture, groundwater recharge
and water recycling efforts in the Golden State and throughout
the U.S.
Through fierce reporting and captivating prose, journalist Mark
Arax paints a vivid and complex portrait of California and its
water. Born into a family of farmers in Fresno, Arax has
witnessed firsthand the cyclical nature of droughts and floods
in the state. He delves into the history and future of
agriculture and water in his 2019 book “The Dreamt Land.” Arax
joins Evan Kleiman to talk about the lessons gleaned from the
state’s fraught water history, and what they might mean for its
present and future.
The small, rural community of Tooleville is on the brink of
going dry after one of its two wells went down Friday morning.
It’s the second community in Tulare County to suffer water
problems in the last two months as California struggles through
the grip of a devastating drought. The only well in the town of
Teviston, also in rural Tulare County, broke down June 9
leaving residents there dry until the pump was fixed July 16.
Helix Water District, which provides water for much of East
County, will reinstate late fees starting in August and renew
water shutoffs on Oct. 1. The utility’s governing board voted
4-1 on Wednesday to support staff’s decision to bring back late
fees and shutoffs for nonpayment. Customers suffering financial
hardship had been given a grace period during the pandemic. The
district currently has 546 accounts in arrears for a total of
more than $470,000. Helix officials say that 475 of those
accounts are residential.
American Canyon is requiring residents and businesses to up
their water conservation efforts from 10% to 20%, though it’s
not yet ready to impose penalties. … While all five Napa
County cities are taking water conservation measures, each is
in a different situation when it comes to water sources. The
south county city of American Canyon has no local reservoir and
relies on State Water Project supplies that have seen a drastic
cutback.
Earlier this year, the Nevada legislature made turf removal a
requirement in cases where grass exists for purely aesthetic
purposes. The legislation, pushed by the water authority and
signed by Governor Steve Sisolak, requires the removal of all
decorative, or “nonfunctional,” turf in Las Vegas by 2026.
Under this law, residents can keep their lawns, and parks can
keep their fields. But that turf decorating medians and
buildings must be converted to less water-intensive vegetation.
Irrigating grass in the desert heat demands a lot of
water.
Members of Siskiyou County’s Hmong community rallied outside
the county courthouse in Yreka on Tuesday over what they say is
racist treatment by police and racist enforcement of water
usage rights by the county. An ordinance passed in May
aimed at curtailing illegal marijuana grows prohibits water
trucks and other vehicles from carrying over 100 gallons of
water on certain county roads. Rally organizers say the roads
selected, primarily in the rural, unincorporated communities of
Butte Valley and Big Springs, unfairly target the Hmong
community who reside there.
The Klamath water rights issue dates back decades and is as
complex and nuanced as it is lengthy but when boiled down it
seems to come back to one primal animal instinct that all
living beings share: to ensure the survival of our spawn. For
the Lost River and Shortnose Suckerfish in the Klamath basin,
that continuum was disturbed somewhere along the line. The
adult fish are healthy but aging while their spawn has been
failing to thrive. Pending on their survival are the identity,
traditions, culture, and livelihood of the Klamath tribes.
In the town of Happy Valley, residents are dealing with a
crisis. California is experiencing an extreme drought, and
Happy Valley says there is a meager amount of water left in the
community. Coleen Wogoman, a resident of Happy Valley said
their small farm, Wogoman’s Farm, is struggling to stay afloat
as the lack of water striking hard for her family and their
livestock. A mix of emotions is expressed from Wogoman as she
looks upon her farmland and home for over 15 years.
When the current drought began in 2000, the three Lower Basin
states that take water from the lake (Arizona, California
and Nevada) suddenly awakened to the problem. After several
years of difficult negotiations, they agreed on a Drought
Contingency Plan (DCP) that, with previously agreed cuts,
would bring the lake into balance. Hoping the drought
would lift before too long, the DCP negotiators agreed to
spread the cuts over coming years in response to changing lake
levels. However, as the drought continues and intensifies, the
Drought Contingency Plan is looking more like a Drought
Certainty Plan. -Written by former Secretary of the Interior Bruce
Babbitt.
Water could be one of the biggest investing themes over the
next several decades. An increasing global population is only
going to cause demand for water to rise in the future. And,
given the fact that water is a necessity of human life, demand
for water should hold up extremely well, even during the worst
recessions. Therefore, investors with a longer time horizon
should consider water stocks.
After some negotiation, the Friant Water Authority Board of
Directors will vote on a repayment contract with the Bureau of
Reclamation regarding the repair of a portion of the
Friant-Kern Canal. The Friant Water Authority and the
Bureau of Reclamation held its second round of negotiations
Thursday morning, which was a two-hour process hammering out
contract language in the repayment deal. … At the center
of the issue is a 33-mile stretch of the Friant-Kern Canal that
has lost over half of its original capacity to
subsidence.
Forced to reckon with a worsening drought, California’s water
regulators are preparing to forbid thousands of farmers from
tapping into the state’s major rivers and streams. It’s an
extraordinary step — and one that regulators didn’t take during
the last drought, which was considered one of the worst on
record. The State Water Resources Control Board on Friday
released an “emergency curtailment” order that would cut
thousands off from rivers and streams in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin river watersheds.
On the side of a dirt road in Gunnison County, a herd of cattle
is cooling off in the water of an irrigation ditch. Doug
Washburn, range manager for Spann Ranches in southwestern
Colorado, points at the hills surrounding the operation’s
northern headquarters. … Colorado’s Western Slope
is considered a climate hot spot where temperatures
are increasing faster than the global average. This warming has
contributed to more than 20 years of dryness,
which scientists are calling a megadrought.
Lake Powell will soon hit its lowest level since Glen Canyon
Dam started trapping the Colorado River’s water in 1963 — even
with emergency releases of water from reservoirs upstream. The
Bureau of Reclamation announced Thursday that the lake
elevation will soon drop below 3,555.1 feet above sea level,
the record set in 2005, back near the start of a 20-year dry
cycle plaguing the Colorado River Basin….The increasingly
dire situations at Lake Powell and its downstream partner Lake
Mead illustrate the stress on the Colorado River system….
New development projects in most of Marin won’t have new
landscaping irrigated with drinking water under drought
restrictions imposed by Marin Municipal Water District this
week. The Board of Directors voted Tuesday to approve the
ban aimed at preserving the district’s dwindling reservoir
supplies in the Mount Tamalpais watershed amid severe drought
conditions.
Manufacturing jobs in California have migrated overseas for
years in a race to the bottom on wages and regulations. But now
many industries face a new challenge: They depend on access to
cheap endless water, and California’s future looks increasingly
dry. Textile factory owners like [Sean] Zahedi are among the
first to ask: Will we adapt or call it quits? Eighty-five
percent of California is experiencing either extreme or
exceptional drought conditions, the highest level there is on
the U.S. Drought Monitor scale. Without water, Zahedi
says, there’s no fabric.
Lawmakers and experts on Wednesday warned of gaping
cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the nation’s critical water
sector amid escalating attacks against a number of U.S.
organizations. … [C]oncerns came during a committee
hearing on cybersecurity vulnerabilities in critical
infrastructure that zeroed in on concerns around water and
wastewater treatment facilities. Cyber threats have soared
in recent years, including recent ransomware attacks on
critical infrastructure such as Colonial Pipeline, and the
water sector has not been immune.
A windfall of state funding is coming to San Diego, including
money for Ocean Beach Pier repairs, an energy-storage project
at San Vicente Reservoir, and the city’s Pure Water
program. Money from California’s state budget, signed last
week, will fund the series of San Diego projects and programs.
A class action lawsuit was filed against San Diego and its
public utilities department on Wednesday, alleging that
residential and commercial customers were overcharged in fees
to make up for shortfalls from industrial wastewater
dischargers.
After two consecutive dry winters, Tahoe’s lake level is
sitting a little over 1.5 feet above its natural rim — a
threshold the alpine lake is forecasted to drop below in the
next three months. And while the rise and fall of Lake
Tahoe’s water level is cyclical in the short-term (with
evaporation and downstream flow offsetting spring runoff
filling the lake each year) and the long-term (the lake has
fallen below it’s natural rim over 20 times in the last century
since data collection began), experts are concerned by the
severity of the current drought and its impacts on water
supply, wildfires and wildlife.
A lot of the fruits, vegetables and nuts that you see in
grocery stores come from California. Growing them takes a huge
amount of water, which is a huge problem when the state is in
the middle of a drought. California’s farmers are pumping most
of that water from underground aquifers. They can’t keep doing
that, though, especially as the climate changes. NPR’s Dan
Charles has the story.
Confronting the historic drought that has a firm grip on the
American West requires a heavy federal infrastructure
investment to protect existing water supplies but also will
depend on efforts at all levels of government to reduce demand
by promoting water efficiency and recycling, Interior Secretary
Deb Haaland said Thursday.
U.S. Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) last week introduced three
amendments to the Energy and Water Development Appropriations
fiscal year 2022 bill that aimed to alleviate California’s
ongoing drought, but House Appropriations Committee Democrats
voted down all three of them during a July 16 markup. The
congressman’s first amendment would have extended California
water storage provisions of the Water Infrastructure
Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act for one year …
A major California hydroelectric power plant could soon stop
generating power amid worsening drought conditions. According
to state water officials, the Edward Hyatt Powerplant at Lake
Oroville could go offline as soon as August or September — a
time frame that would coincide with a feared power crunch this
summer. The plant, which opened in the late 1960s, has never
been forced offline by low lake levels before.
Join us as we guide you on a virtual journey through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Join us as we guide you on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Join us as we guide you 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.
The city of Lemoore said Wednesday afternoon that a water tank
explosion that killed one worker and injured another last month
was “preventable.” Officials have said the tank lifted
approximately 70 feet off the ground in the explosion, which
occurred when methane gas ignited as welding was being done as
part of a city project.
Much of the infrastructure talk in Washington these days
focuses on large, complicated projects involving tunnels,
bridges and highways. But there is a much more basic matter
involving infrastructure that also merits attention: the need
to provide clean water to the more than half a million Native
Americans who lack the sort of water and sanitation services
that other Americans take for granted.
– Written by Bidtah Becker, an associate
attorney for the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, and Anne
Castle, senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for
Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University
of Colorado and former assistant secretary for water and
science at the U.S. Interior Department.
Southern Arizona has been under the strongest category of
drought since early last year. With a strong start to monsoon,
the area should soon show a bit of recovery. It takes more than
just a handful of good rainfalls to recover from such a bad
drought. … The drought is one of the reasons why Pima County
has had so many flash flood warnings this year. Soil that has
not seen rain in a while is not as absorbent as regular soil,
so heavy rainfalls over dry ground lead to flash flooding more
often. This also causes problems on the roads.
A powerful Southern California water agency accused by some
employees of sexual harassment and other workplace violations
“generally provides a safe and respectful working environment”
for people of color, women and LGBTQ+ workers, a report on the
agency concludes. The review of the Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California found no systemic problems in how the
agency handles complaints of harassment, racism, retaliation
and other alleged discrimination.
Environmentalists say the San Joaquin watershed needs more
water. So do state officials, who in 2018 ordered water users
to give a large share of water back to the San Joaquin and its
tributaries, notably the Tuolumne. But the fight to restore
this ailing ecosystem has turned political, and
environmentalists leading the effort are facing an unlikely foe
the water service provider for one of the most liberal cities
in the country.
California Farm Bureau, as part of a national coalition
representing thousands of western farmers, ranchers, water
providers, businesses and communities, urged leaders of the
U.S. Senate to take action to address the shortcomings of aging
water infrastructure. Citing an “acute and critical need”
magnified by another all-too-familiar drought, the coalition
sent a letter last week to Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and
Ranking Member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., of the U.S. Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It called for
increased federal investment in water infrastructure.
The Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, will visit Denver
to address the worsening drought and wildfire
conditions. The biggest area of concern is the deep
drought on the western slope. Haaland will be in Grand
Junction Friday talking about wildland fire preparedness and
response. On Saturday, Haaland will be in Ridgeway discussing
Colorado’s outdoor recreation economy.
When it comes to the water year this summer, it could be
referred to as a season on the brink. Tule River Water Master
David De Groot announced on Monday water from the Tule River
began to be run off over this past weekend. … De Groot said
the water runoff will last 30 days through mid-August. He added
the Tule River’s flow was just at 15.6 percent of
normal … the lowest level the lake will be at
since the dire drought of 2014-2015.
With the North State’s drought reaching historically severe
levels, thousands of Shasta County residents from Happy Valley
and Redding to Palo Cedro could face water shortages by the end
of summer. The lack of rain and snowfall this past year
has left officials scrambling to find new sources of water to
get through the dry season. …”We will absolutely, completely
run out of water…. We will not have enough water to get
through the year,” [Bella Vista Water District General Manager
David] Coxey said.
Los Angeles received less than half its average rainfall last
year, most of the state is in a drought emergency, and Governor
Gavin Newsom has asked all residents to reduce their water
usage by 15%. But a stroll through any well-watered
neighborhood in Southern California would suggest otherwise.
… So far in Southern California, the golf courses are
almost as green as they were when it rained a lot a couple
years ago. Some Northern California communities have
already issued mandates to cut back water use, and some
homeowners have seen their wells run dry.
A 500 MW pumped energy storage project proposed jointly by the
City of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority
received $18 million in the California state budget. The
support will help fund the San Vicente Energy Storage
Facility through initial design, environmental reviews,
and the federal licensing process. The project … could
generate revenue to help offset the cost of water purchases,
storage, and treatment.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced the selection
of Michael Norris as the Area Manager of its Lower
Colorado Basin Region Yuma Area Office. He has served as the
Deputy Area Manager for seven years. In his new capacity,
Norris is responsible for delivery of Colorado River water to
the Yuma area and Mexico, groundwater and salinity management,
resource management, engineering and construction.
A new report issued today by seven environmental non-profit
organizations examines ten strategies to bolster climate
resilience and mitigate the impact of climate change in the
Colorado River Basin, which is currently grappling with a
historic megadrought. A crucial source of water for over 40
million people, the Colorado River is facing severe declines in
stream flows and a looming federal shortage declaration as a
result of a decades-long drought and increasing temperatures.
It doesn’t look like much now, a dry and dusty valley
surrounded by the modest mountains of California’s Coast Range.
These barren, brown hills an hour northwest of Sacramento will
be the future home of Sites Reservoir, one of the few major
water projects to be built in California since the 1970s.
California taxpayers are helping pay for Sites, which would
hold more water than Folsom Lake, through a $7.1 billion bond
they approved during the 2014 election.
California may only be one year into the drought, but its toll
feels much bigger to San Joaquin Valley livestock operators.
… Andrée Soares, president of Star Creek Land Stewards,
Inc [is] based in Los Banos on the west side of the valley but
her animals are often spread up and down the state doing
targeted grazing for fire prevention. Soares doesn’t know where
her animals will be in the next few months or how they will
eat.
San Francisco set new, more ambitious climate change goals
Tuesday, including getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions
produced in the city by 2040, as wildfires, drought and heat
waves worsened by climate change plague California and floods
in Europe grab headlines. The Board of Supervisors unanimously
approved an update to the environment code that pledges the
city will cut its greenhouse gas emissions to at least 61%
below 1990 levels by 2030.
Water is part of nearly every aspect of the farm-to-table
supply chain. So how can people eat food that takes less water
to grow, clean and prepare? Florencia Ramirez, author of
“Eat Less Water,” found that one way to cut water consumption
is by buying organic and seasonal food, whether at farmer’s
markets or your local grocery stores. But even before
making those trips, Ramirez says that the main priority should
be cutting down on food waste because food that ends up in a
landfill wastes a lot of water.
To grow up in the American West in the 20th century was to
swing between inferiority and hubris. Our history books
taught us that all great and elevated events happened back
east. We should go there someday and study the monuments. At
the same time, there was a sense — an understanding, as it
turned out — that the East might be the past but the West was
the future. … The Achilles’ heel, the hard ceiling
on Western ambitions, was water, and everyone knew
it. -Written by David von Drehle, Washington Post
columnist.
Officials with the Monterey Peninsula water district
begrudgingly agreed Monday to pay for a feasibility study
requested by an intergovernmental body that has control over
the future of the district’s plan to take over California
American Water Co. The board of directors of the Monterey
Peninsula Water Management District during its regular meeting
Monday approved up to $70,000 to pay for a study that was in
effect ordered by the Local Agency Formation Commission…
The mountain spring that pioneers used to water their hayfields
and now fills people’s taps flowed reliably into the old cowboy
town of Oakley for decades. So when it dwindled to a trickle in
this year’s scorching drought, officials took drastic action to
preserve their water: They stopped building. During the
coronavirus pandemic, the real estate market in their
1,750-person city boomed as remote workers flocked in from the
West Coast and second homeowners staked weekend ranches. But
those newcomers need water — water that is vanishing as a
megadrought dries up reservoirs and rivers across the
West.
Racial equity may soon become a guiding principle at a powerful
state agency that helps mediate water disputes and directs
taxpayer investments in troubled Central Valley water systems.
A draft resolution pending before the State Water Resources
Control Board would condemn systemic racism, xenophobia and
white supremacy while committing the agency to making racial
equity, diversity, inclusion and environmental justice central
to its work.
Jet Martin wanted to stop service to a water meter to save
money for the homeowners in his Mira Mesa HOA. It turns out the
city said doing that will cost thousands of dollars. …
Martin’s HOA consists of 15 homes. There used to be sprinklers
that watered a once-grassy area that sits between two houses.
It was a space where residents in the HOA could sit, eat, and
enjoy the outdoors. They stopped watering the grass a couple of
years ago, but still pay a base fee to the city of nearly $30
per month.
A new futures contract based on the Nasdaq Veles California
Water Index provides longer-term visibility into the price of
water, according to Roland Fumasi of RaboResearch. California
is facing another dry summer in 2021, and for agricultural
producers, that means a difficult growing season. … The
situation has put a strain on the state’s traditionally fragile
water resources, resulting in water price spikes for producers
looking to sustain their crops.
A historic drought has desiccated much of the American West,
bringing reservoir levels to record lows and stoking fears of
catastrophic wildfires across the region. We spoke with two
members of the Water Policy Center research network and experts
on the Colorado River: Dr. Bonnie Colby of the University of
Arizona (she’s also a member of the Colorado River Research
Group) and John Fleck of the University of New Mexico. Prepare
to be surprised: we encountered some delightful optimism in
this wide-ranging conversation.
Desalination is the process of converting seawater into potable
water by removing salt and other minerals. Although rudimentary
forms of desalination have been used since antiquity, only in
the mid-20th century did industrial-scale desalination methods
become widely available for water-insecure coastal communities
around the world. Today, about 300 million people in more than
150 countries get water every day from some 16,000 desalination
plants.
After over a month of transporting water from nearby towns and
delivering bottled water to residents, the rural Tulare County
community of Teviston had running water again Monday.
Teviston’s only well broke down in early June, leaving hundreds
of residents without running water. Teviston Community Services
District board member, Frank Galaviz, said that the well is
“back online” in an interview on Monday with The Bee. … In
total, Teviston residents went without running water for two to
three weeks, said board President Martin Correa.
I recently wrote about how the U.S. Drought Monitor increased
the severity of the drought throughout the Central Coast from
an Abnormally Dry (D0) classification in late February to an
Extreme Drought (D3) level in June. On May 4, the entire
Central Coast reached a D2 (Severe Drought) classification. I
assumed that San Luis Obispo County would remain at this level
through the summer since we had moved into our historically dry
season of May through September. -Written by John Lindsey, a meteorologist and a media
relations representative for PG&E.
Whether the Kern River truly has spare water and, if so, how
much, has been left up in the air for more than a decade. Now,
11 years after the State Water Resources Control Board ruled
the Kern River was not fully appropriated, it will finally
start the process of getting at those two key questions: Is
water available? How much? A status conference hearing has been
scheduled by the board’s Administrative Hearing Office for Aug.
17 at 9 a.m., the board announced on Monday.
Rick Daniels lies awake at night worrying about a rusty
contraption in a forlorn field, littered with discarded pipes
and fire hydrants. It is the only water pump in Needles that
meets state water quality standards, running 23 hours a day to
keep up with demand, according to Daniels, the city manager.
That’s a thin margin in one of America’s hottest cities, an
urban speck in the desert near California’s border with
Arizona. If this lone pump fails, 5,000 residents face the
ultimate risk of taps running dry, as temperatures soar past
120 degrees …
One day last spring, water pressure in pipelines suddenly
crashed In the Antelope Valley, setting off alarms. Demand had
inexplicably spiked, swelling to three and half times normal.
Water mains broke open, and storage tanks were drawn down to
dangerous levels. … It took a while for officials
to figure out where all that water was going: Water thieves —
likely working for illicit marijuana operations — had pulled
water from remote filling stations and tapped into fire
hydrants, improperly shutting off valves and triggering a chain
reaction that threatened the water supply of nearly
300 homes.
Marin water managers’ strategy to suspend most new water
service hookups during the historic drought is drawing
criticism from some who say little water will be saved with a
policy that comes at the expense of the county’s poorest
residents. Such a tradeoff would impact everyone from service
workers to businesses to the elderly on fixed incomes, critics
say. … Proponents of the hookup moratoriums say the
county must live within its means with regards to water supply
especially given the uncertainty of how long this drought could
last.
The growing crisis on the Colorado River came into sharper
focus last week when the Bureau of Reclamation began emergency
releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to shore up
Lake Powell’s declining levels, now at historic lows. The
move will bolster Powell’s level by 3 feet in hopes of
preventing it from dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam
would not be able to generate electrical power, according to
the agency’s Upper Colorado regional director Wayne Pullan.
Today, as a water economist, my job is to help customers
stretch their limited water resources. This means managing
supplies wisely and getting a handle on collective demands.
Fortunately, one of our available tools is an old one: water
markets that can help reallocate the resource to the places
it’s needed most. I’ve learned a lot more about water and water
markets since I was a second-grader determined to help fish in
the San Francisco Bay. One lesson is that even well-intentioned
water markets can have bad outcomes if poorly designed or
executed, as was my first water transfer.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the Friant Water Authority
scheduled a teleconference contract repayment negotiation
session for costs of extraordinary operation and maintenance
work on the Friant-Kern Canal Middle Reach Capacity Correction
Project. The date and time of
the teleconference-only negotiation session are: July
22, 2021, from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. PDT Call
1-202-640-1187 and, when prompted, type in participant
passcode 523 487 550# The public is welcome to listen during
the session and comment after the negotiations close.
While the historic June 15 low for Lake Mead has drawn
headlines – “its lowest level on record since the reservoir was
filled in the 1930” – we’re about to hit a similar milestone
upstream at Lake Powell that has received less attention, but
may in fact be more important. It was co-author Eric Kuhn who
drew this to my attention – I hadn’t noticed. He notes that
sometime around July 24 give or take our eyeballing of the
Colorado Basin River Forecasting Center graph, Powell will
cross elevation 3,555 feet above sea level. That was the
previous post-filling low, on April 8, 2005.
I can see my future: It’s dry, thirsty and bleak. On our farm,
we live with drought daily, working with limited groundwater
and learning to adjust and adapt, or to fail and abandon our
fields. Water will determine a farmer’s survival. I farm
organically outside Fresno, part of one of the world’s richest
and most productive agricultural oases, providing, of course,
that we have water. … A severe two-year drought is
drying out the West and Southwest from Washington to
California, Montana to Texas. Agriculture feels the impact with
crops withering and production limited. -Written by David Mas Masumoto, a farmer in Del
Rey, California.
Local water districts are suing Santa Barbara County, claiming
that they should not be subject to restrictions over certain
water sales and purchases. The districts claim that the
county doesn’t deliver or pay for any water and therefore
shouldn’t be able to dictate terms to them. The districts argue
that the county’s imposition of restrictions ultimately hurts
consumers. In response, the county claims that the
oversight is needed to maximize the entire water supply for all
consumers.
California’s 2021 water outlook became grimmer this spring as
the state did not get fabulous February or miracle March
precipitation. Unsurprisingly, spring streamflow forecasts from
snowfed basins in the Sierra were far below average. For
example, early April forecasts from California DWR called for
April-July runoff to be between 59-70% of normal. Bad, but not
terrible. Then came April, bringing little additional
precipitation. To compound matters, April brought very warm
temperatures for much of the state that led to rapid ablation
(evaporation) of the Sierra snowpack.
Whether you’re a kayaker or an angler or a hard-core gardener
in Colorado, we get that this water thing is
confusing. … The drought and the overarching
impacts of climate change have already generated multiple
stories in 2021 and will be a big part of news coverage from
here on out. We get reader questions along the way about the
severity of the drought and what it means for Colorado
residents — here are a few of those questions, and some answers
from some key experts.
Marin Municipal Water District announced Friday that it has
found a potential vendor for temporary desalination plants and
four Central Valley water suppliers that could transfer water
to the county through a pipeline across the Richmond-San Rafael
Bridge. The emergency water projects are being explored based
on forecasts that the majority of Marin residents could run out
of water by July 2022 if the upcoming winter is as dry as last
year’s. The district serves about two-thirds of the county
including 191,000 residents in central and southern
Marin.
The American West was once seen as a place of endless
possibilities: grand vistas, bountiful resources and cities
that somehow grew out of deserts. Now, manifest destiny has
become a manifest emergency. A scorching drought made worse by
climate change is draining reservoirs at an alarming pace,
fueling massive wildfires and deadly heat waves and withering
one of the most important agricultural economies in the
country.
On the surface, the city of Folsom would seem to be water rich.
Perched at the foot of Folsom Lake, where snowmelt funnels into
the Sacramento Valley, the city taps into large intake pipes
plumbed deep into Folsom Dam’s inner face to send cool water to
nearby homes and businesses. That easy access is turning
into a mirage. After two dry winters, the reservoir has
shriveled to its second-lowest level for July in nearly 50
years. It’s lower than it was in July 2014 and July 2015, when
the last drought was raging, California ordered mandatory water
cutbacks, and Folsom residents had to swallow a 32% reduction
in usage.
Millions of waterfowl and other birds are going to have a tough
year due to the ongoing drought in the West. Not only is there
less water for ducks and geese, but the agriculture fields
these migrating birds depend on for food will be significantly
smaller, which means less waste grain. … That
potentially can negatively impact Pacific Flyway waterfowl
flights and hunting this year. Farmers report only 25
percent of the fields usually flooded in autumn will have
water. With reduced water, ducks and geese are impacted. They
concentrate more and diseases and bacteria can spread more
readily, including bird botulism.
After two consecutive dry winters and a series of early summer
heat waves, the vast majority of California is gripped by
drought. Water levels in reservoirs like Lake Oroville, Shasta
Lake and Lake Mendocino are dangerously low. Wells in parts of
the San Joaquin Valley and along the Russian River are drying
up, and local water officials have mandated water restrictions
up to 40% in some areas. Already, more
than 85% of California is experiencing extreme
drought conditions … and experts forewarn a third year
of drought could be on the horizon if the state doesn’t see
significant winter rain storms.
Several of the state’s key canals will get a sprinkle of state
money this year and next toward fixing more than $2 billion in
damage caused by sinking land from excessive groundwater
pumping. On July 12, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a massive budget
“trailer” bill, which authorizes actual funding for programs
and services outlined in the state budget that was passed June
15. The trailer bill included $200 million for the Department
of Water Resources to spend over the next two years on the
California Aqueduct, Delta-Mendota Canal and Friant-Kern Canal.
Together, repairs for those canals are estimated at $2.35
billion.
Alex Padilla made his first official visit to the Central
Valley as U.S. Senator, holding several discussions about
water. Padilla, along with other elected officials, held a
media availability at his only public event of the day — a tour
of the Dos Palos water treatment plant. There, he spoke about
the need to upgrade infrastructure for drinking water, as well
as water for farmers. Padilla says the infrastructure bill
being debated in the Senate will help with water, especially in
underserved areas.
In June 2021, the Department of Water Resources released the
first groundwater sustainability plan decisions ahead of the
statutory deadline identified in the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act – commonly called SGMA. The long-term
planning required for SGMA will provide a buffer against
drought and climate change and over time will contribute to
reliable water supplies regardless of weather patterns in the
State.
Super Bowl weekend was the headline event last winter in Tampa,
Florida, where the mood was giddier than usual, given that the
hometown Bucs had advanced to the championship. But two days
before the big game, an incident just a few miles west of
Raymond James Stadium temporarily stole the show. A hacker
gained remote access to a water treatment plant in the town of
Oldsmar. The intrusion on February 5 lasted only a few minutes
— just long enough for the hacker to raise the concentration of
lye in the water by a factor of 1,000.
Emergency water releases from reservoirs upstream of Lake
Powell are underway to preserve the nation’s second-largest
reservoir’s ability to generate hydroelectric power. The Bureau
of Reclamation started releasing additional water Thursday from
Flaming Gorge reservoir in Wyoming. Additional water releases
from Blue Mesa reservoir in Colorado and Navajo reservoir in
New Mexico are planned to commence later this year. Emergency
releases could last until at least December, and could extend
into 2022. Lake Powell is projected to hit a record low in
July. It’s situated on the Colorado River, a drinking and
irrigation water source for more than 40 million people in the
Southwest.
The punishing drought conditions afflicting most of California
are expected to endure for months, climate experts with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said Thursday.
There is a 60% chance, NOAA experts said, of a La Niña event
this winter — conditions that would likely bring about a cool
and very dry winter. NOAA climatologists presented a stark
portrait of the fiercely dry conditions gripping a huge portion
of the country: 46% of the contiguous U.S. is in a state of
drought, they said.
With California descending deeper into drought, Santa Rosa is
getting serious about water use. So are other communities that
are increasingly urging residents to conserve, sometimes asking
for water reductions, sometimes mandating them. Gov. Gavin
Newsom joined the cause last week, issuing a statewide plea for
voluntary savings. Still, amid the growing calls for
conservation, the Bay Area’s initial response has been slow.
Nearly a dozen of the region’s largest water suppliers that
have sought cutbacks recently have come up short of their
water-savings goals, according to water agency data reviewed by
The Chronicle.
Temperatures are up, and Stanford researchers are worried the
record highs don’t bode well for the future of wildfire and
drought in California. Though mitigating the effects of climate
change is the only long-term solution, the researchers said
there are short-term adaptations communities can make to stay
safe. This June, Stanford reached a high of 103 degrees
Fahrenheit, with the Pacific Northwest recording widespread
average highs over 100 degrees in the recent, record-breaking
heatwave that enveloped the West.
California is back in a drought. You’ve heard it on the news,
you’ve heard it from scientists, and they’re
right — 100% of the state is in at least
moderate drought. Yet, California Governor Gavin Newsom has yet
to declare a statewide drought emergency, instead opting
for county-level declarations — 50 of 58
counties have been declared so far this
year. And if you look closer at what impacts different
regions are facing, and how they are responding, you
see important differences in water
shortage conditions across the state.
The North American monsoon has returned to Colorado, and the
rain has brought some much-needed relief to some of the driest
parts of the state — after multiple back-to-back years of
almost no summer rain. … Gov. Jared Polis has recently
declared a drought emergency for the region and the rest of
western Colorado. … The seasonal moisture from the
tropics creates afternoon cloud cover that protects …
drought-stricken creeks from baking in the sun. The rain helps
lower the risk for wildfires. The timing of the monsoon is
vital to Colorado’s ecosystem, which evolved on its schedule.
A study from UNLV shows some interesting results about how much
water people used during Governor Steve Sisolak’s stay at home
order in March 2020. Researchers at UNLV wanted to know the
impact staying at home had on water use. Researchers looked at
water bills from Henderson before the stay at home order and
several months after the order was in place. The study found
usage at home soared, outpacing pre-pandemic usage at homes,
businesses and schools.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a state bill on July 9 that
will allow Valley Water to use a method known as “best value”
to select a contractor for the Anderson Dam Seismic Retrofit
Project. Under current California law, Valley Water must select
the contractor with the lowest bid, regardless of their
experience. But Assembly Bill 271, signed by Gov. Newsom and
overwhelmingly passed by the California Legislature, authorizes
Valley Water to use a method known as “best value” to select a
contractor for the Anderson Dam Seismic Retrofit Project.
The Great Basin Unified Air Polution Control District‘s letter
emphasizes how: The historical water diversions by the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) from Mono Lake
have lowered the lake level and caused the persistent and
continuing violations of law regarding the PM10 standards. The
only feasible solution is to allow the lake level to rise to
inundate the emissive areas of the lake bed. Water savings from
Owens Lake dust mitigation efforts would completely offset
exports from Mono Lake.
As he set goals last Thursday for the Bay Area to conserve
water, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the lack of metering
provides no sense of how much water is used by California
agriculture. Growers in the Watsonville area in Santa Cruz
County, however, are metered, and the meters have resulted in
significant water conservation.
Mountain snow is like a bank account for water across the
western United States. Snow that falls on the Sierra Nevada,
the Rocky Mountains, and other ranges becomes a natural
reservoir that slowly melts each spring and summer and flows
down into the river valleys. The resource managers of western
states count on this allowance from nature to fill reservoirs
with sufficient water for the typically dry months of summer
and autumn. In 2021, those meltwater accounts have been turning
up “insufficient funds.”
Colorado’s high altitude hay meadows, a significant water user
in the state, could be re-operated to yield more than 40
percent in water savings, according to a new report. The report
is based on a major high tech research initiative to see if
ranch-scale water conservation techniques, in which farmers are
paid to voluntarily stop irrigating their fields temporarily,
could produce enough saved water to help protect the Colorado
River from unplanned shortages due to drought and climate
change.
Dear Friends and Supporters of the Water Education Foundation
… we are busy preparing to move to a new office near the
confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers,
planning a blend of virtual and in-person programming for
the fall and offering a sale on our beautiful water maps
and guides so we don’t have to move them. We’re also looking to
hire a programs
and communications manager who is passionate
about all things water in California and across the
West. Resumes are due July 23.
Southern San Joaquin Valley Rivers are running at near historic
lows — again. In fact, the Bakersfield City Council passed a
resolution Wednesday officially declaring the Kern River as
running at only 17% of normal, it’s second driest year since
record keeping began in 1893. The driest year on record was
2015, the worst year of the 2012-2016 drought. The resolution
notes the river is so low this year, the city won’t have any
“excess” water to sell to local agricultural irrigation
districts. This is the first time the City Water Resources
Department has made such a resolution.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said water infrastructure and
transit investments in Arizona were two key items discussed
during a meeting with President Joe Biden on
Wednesday. Gallego was part of a bipartisan group of three
governors and four other mayors who met with Biden at the White
House to build support for a proposed $1.2 trillion
infrastructure package under consideration in the U.S.
Senate…. The group also talked about… the state’s long-term
drought and its effects on the Colorado River…
The American West is baking, burning and drying in intertwined
extreme weather. Four sets of numbers explain how bad it is
now, while several others explain why it got this bad. The West
is going through “the trifecta of an epically dry year followed
by incredible heat the last two months and now we have fires,”
said University of California Merced climate and fire scientist
John Abatzoglou. “It is a story of cascading impacts.” And one
of climate change, the data shows.
As we careen deeper into drought, California will face
increasing impacts to urban and agricultural economies, rivers
and forests, and wildlife. In response, government agencies
will need to determine how to allocate water among competing
needs. Water users will scramble to buy and sell water — if
they can — or reduce their use. But the current lack of
information hobbles the ability to make difficult decisions
about water management. For California to cope with persistent
shortages, water rights data need to be accessible to
decision-makers and the public. -Written by Michael Kiparsky, director of the
Wheeler Water Institute in the Center for Law, Energy and the
Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) went on record today
during Imperial Irrigation District’s (IID) Board of Directors
meeting to oppose IID’s proposed fee to be charged to IID’s
Coachella Valley rate payers. CVWD is IID’s largest
single power customer. IID and CVWD are party to the 1934
Compromise Agreement, and under that agreement, IID is
obligated to charge Coachella Valley rate payers (including
CVWD) the same rates as IID charges to rate payers within its
district in the Imperial Valley.
It started with a warning from state officials more than a
decade ago that a major earthquake could cause the crest of
Anderson Dam to slump, allowing water to cascade over the top
and leave Morgan Hill underwater in mere minutes. Last week,
the Santa Clara Valley Water District finally broke ground on
the first phase of what has become a 10-year, $648 million
project to retrofit the dam. The district first started
its planning process in 2012.
Kings River Conservation District (KRCD) Board announced on
July 13, 2021, the appointment of David M. Merritt as KRCD’s
new general manager. … Mr. Merritt started his tenure with
KRCD in 2010 as the Deputy General Manager of Power Resources.
Through his leadership, KRCD successfully divested its gas
turbine power generation facility, the Malaga Peaking Plant, in
2015. Mr. Merritt has further improved the long-term
reliability of its Jeff L. Taylor Pine Flat Power Plant, which
is a key KRCD asset.
On July 8, Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded two earlier drought
emergency declarations to cover 50 of the state’s 58 counties.
In May, he directed state agencies to consider easing
requirements for reservoir releases to conserve water upstream,
and to make water transfers easier. Both are needed. Notably,
the governor’s emergency proclamation did not impose water
conservation mandates. Instead, Gov. Newsom is leaving water
conservation to each region — a smart and necessary approach
that incentivizes regional investments in water supply. -Written by Sean Bigley, chair of
the Sacramento Regional Water Authority
Board, and Gary Croucher, chair of the San Diego
County Water Authority Board.
The punishing heat wave continues in much of the West. However,
for some in places in the Southwest including Arizona, the
long-awaited monsoon will bring milder temperatures and
rainfall. It may just arrive a little bit too fast, raising
flash flooding concerns in the area. … Rainfall amounts of
anywhere from a half inch to 1 inch are possible, said the
National Weather Service in Phoenix. Upper-end amounts of 2 to
4 inches aren’t out of the question.
As concerns flare over record-low water levels at Lake Mead, a
new UNLV study shows that COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders
— and a subsequent societal shift to remote work — may be
exacerbating the problem. The study, recently published in the
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, found that
Las Vegas Valley residential water use soared during the
pandemic, outpacing even combined pre-pandemic usage across
Southern Nevada’s three main property types (residential,
commercial, and schools).
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in conjunction
with their state and county partners, are preparing for the
2021 cannabis enforcement season. As authorized by Fish & Game
Code section 12029, CDFW, in coordination with the State Water
Resources Control Board, or SWRCB, and the state licensing
authority, established a watershed enforcement program to
address environmental violations associated with unlicensed
cannabis cultivation. The environmental impacts associated with
illegal cannabis cultivation can have a detrimental effect on
fish and wildlife and their habitats…
Climate change is exacerbating droughts and accelerating the
transformation and decline of California’s native forest and
aquatic ecosystems. As a state, we are poorly organized to
manage these effects, which need extensive focused
preparation. We need to adapt (and we will make mistakes
in doing so). Our human, economic and environmental losses
will be much greater, however, if we manage poorly because of
delay, complacency or panic. -Written by Jay Lund, professor of civil and
environmental engineering at the University of California at
Davis.
Farmers are facing a water shortage right as we head into peak
growing season…. Solano County farmer Spencer Bei shows us
one of the wells his family uses to farm 15,000 acres. He says
he is losing pressure now as he is pumping because he is
pulling more from the aquifer due to a lack of surface water
and no rain in sight. He is one of many farmers feeling
the heat after the State Water Resources Board sent out letters
to 4,300 water-right holders saying there was no longer enough
water for them and that the remaining 2,300 with pre-1914
riparian rights could see even more restrictions soon.
With drought on everyone’s mind, city leaders from Palo Alto
and Mountain View held a brief summit on June 18 at the
Regional Water Quality Control Plant to highlight a project
that both cities hope will help make water consumption more
sustainable for decades to come. Mayors Tom DuBois and Ellen
Kamei met with Valley Water board member Gary Kremen at the
Palo Alto facility to accept a $16 million check from the water
district.
This could be a good time to downsize the lawn. Thanks to your
water provider, you may get more cash for your grass. The
reason? We’re in a drought – again. But this may be no ordinary
dry spell. … Sacramento’s new rebates, which went
into effect July 1, double the amount available for River
Friendly Landscape conversions. Customers can receive up to $3
per square foot of turfgrass removed. That adds up quickly; a
10- by 10-foot block of gone lawn equals $300.
As the waters of Folsom Lake recede to levels rarely seen, the
remnants of a long-ago abandoned, flooded Gold Rush village are
reemerging. Visitors can now see building foundations, bricks,
broken pottery and rusty nails that were all once part of
Mormon Island. The town was settled in the late 1840s by
prospectors. By 1853, it had a population of more than
2,500 settlers, according to California archives. What was left
of the town got flooded in 1955 when Folsom Dam was built.
The worsening drought forced a 13% cut in the projected almond
crop in California. The U.S. Department of Agriculture now
expects about 2.8 billion pounds from the August-October
harvest. The initial estimate in May was for a record 3.2
billion pounds. Some growers have opted to strip nuts from
branches so their trees can get by with less irrigation this
summer, Monday’s report said. Water is especially short in
parts of the western and southern San Joaquin Valley.
Here we are, living 25 miles, five miles, even a scant hundred
feet from that splendid dunk known as the Pacific Ocean, and
what are we known for the world over? Swimming pools. By one
calculation from five years ago, there are a quarter-million
private swimming pools in Los Angeles County. … Our stories
wouldn’t be our stories without swimming pools as image and
metaphor. In “The Graduate,” Benjamin Braddock bastes in his
parents’ pool in Pasadena, worrying about his future. … The
crowded, chlorinated deep-end water in “Boogie Nights”
memorializes porn, pools, and the 1970s San Fernando Valley,
the suburban birthplace of a pool paradise … -Written by Patt Morrison, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
[S]ince 2000, scientists say the river’s flow has dwindled
by 20% compared to the previous century’s average. This year is
the second driest on record, with the flow into Lake Mead just
a quarter of what would be considered normal. … In June,
the level of Lake Mead plunged below 1,075ft, a point that will
trigger, for the first time, federally mandated cuts in water
allocations next year. The Bureau of Reclamation expects this
historic low to spiral further …
For the past few weeks, the American West has been confronting
a hellish climate nightmare of scorching heat waves, a severe
drought, and raging wildfires. And it’s not just the
West—or even the United States. In
typically chilly Siberia, ground temperatures reached
a blistering 118 degrees Fahrenheit. The Middle
East has been gripped by a searing heat wave and a drought
that has especially hammered Syria. In late June, a
small Canadian village was almost completely consumed
by wildfire. China is also bracing for another year
of extreme weather…
Thanks to our ever increasing reliance on the Internet, the
amount of data online is skyrocketing. The global data volume
is expected to grow sixfold from 2018 to 2025. It might seem
like that information is swirling in the cloudy sky, but it’s
stored in physical data centers. Landon Marston, an
assistant professor at Virginia Tech, recently noticed news
articles addressing the growing energy requirements of the data
center industry. As an expert in water resources engineering,
he wondered how those energy requirements translated into water
consumption.
[The] hot, dry, unforgiving climate [of the Mojave Desert] has
attracted more than a thousand marijuana plantations that fill
the arid expanse between the Antelope Valley and the Colorado
River. It’s an unprecedented siege that has upended life in the
remote desert communities and vast tract developments that
overlook Joshua trees and scrub. Authorities say the boom has
led to forced labor, violence, water theft and the destruction
of fragile desert habitat and wildlife. Longtime residents say
they feel less safe, claiming black-market growers act with
impunity by carrying weapons, trading gunfire with rivals and
threatening those who wander too close to their farms.
The California Endangered Species Act (CESA) is one of the most
impor- tant legal tools available to the Fish and Game
Commission and Department of Fish and Wildlife to protect the
State’s wildlife resources. … Listing decisions can be the
difference between persistence and extinction of a species.
They can also cause severe economic disruption and, for this
reason, should in our view be made with due deliberation and
based on the best available scientific information.
Water resource problems and management are complex, confusing,
and controversial for participants in technical, policy, and
public water deliberations. A thoughtful planning approach can
reduce confusion and structure controversies. This paper
attempts to summarize and organize various technical approaches
to water resources planning. This paper summarizes the basic
approach of rational planning, followed by brief reviews of
requirements-based, benefit-cost-based, multiobjective,
conflict resolution, market-based, and muddling through
approaches to planning.
A key message emerged when California water leaders gathered in
Modesto: Stop grumbling about drought, and get cracking on real
fixes. Rep. Josh Harder, R-Turlock, convened the Thursday
afternoon summit at the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau.
Several speakers called for new reservoirs and groundwater
recharge to hold wet-year surpluses for use in dry times
like 2021. The manager of a West Side irrigation district
invited others to follow her lead in using water recycled from
city sewage plants.
As California enters another period of drought, experts say the
dry spell could make an already difficult housing market even
worse. … Some housing experts say about 20,000 homes
need to be built in San Diego every year. Building more
houses requires more water. … [Dr. Norm Miller, a Real Estate
Professor at USD] believes San Diego already has
enough water to build that many new homes. But he thinks the
State and Federal Governments need to make housing a priority
over other water users, like agriculture.
A California water myth which becomes especially pernicious in
droughts is that California is “running out of water”. Viewing
California’s supply and demand pressures in terms of fixed
water requirements perpetuates this myth and invariably places
undue attention on building additional supply infrastructure.
Instead, managing water as a scarce resource suggests a
balanced portfolio of water trading, investments in conveyance,
smart groundwater replenishment, and demand management.
Lawmakers in Congress on Friday introduced a bill that would
pump tens of billions of dollars into fixing and upgrading the
country’s dams. The Twenty-First Century Dams Act, introduced
by Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, proposes
to spend nearly $26 billion to make the repairs that would
enhance safety and increase the power generation capacity of
the country’s 90,000 dams. It also calls for removing any dams
that have outlived their usefulness.
Southern California’s largest reservoir is filled to more than
80% of its total capacity, despite the fact the state as a
whole is in the second year of a severe drought. And Diamond
Valley Lake near Hemet is proving to be a key asset in making
up for the shortfall in water from other sources after another
year of below-normal precipitation.
In Cantua, a small town deep within California’s farming
heartland, the heat had always been a part of life. “We can do
nothing against it,” said Julia Mendoza, who’s lived in this
town for 27 years. But lately, she says, the searing
temperatures are almost unlivable. … Global heating is
driving stronger, longer heatwaves in the region, said Jose
Pablo Ortiz Partida, a climate scientist for the Union of
Concerned Scientists, a non-profit advocacy
group. Researchers have been warning of such extreme
heatwaves for decades, he said, but the barrage of heat surges
that California and the western US have been alarming, he said.
While much of California’s earthquake risk has been
historically focused on the San Andreas fault and places like
Los Angeles and San Francisco, quakes are capable of causing
significant destruction in the state’s Sierra Nevada and
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta … UCLA experts warned
in 2014 that a major earthquake sending destructive shaking to
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta could potentially destroy
aging levees, causing flooding and drawing in saline water from
San Francisco Bay — which would contaminate one of the state’s
key water supply systems.
In the face of rapidly worsening drought conditions this week,
Gov. Gavin Newsom urged all Californians to voluntarily cut
their water usage by 15% — but what exactly does that mean for
the average California household? The governor made his plea
Thursday as he extended a regional state of drought emergency
to 50 counties, comprising about 42% of the state’s population.
For many, the talk of water reductions reminded them of the
shriveled lawns, attenuated showers and water-bucket toilet
flushing of the last devastating drought. -Written by Julia Wick and Chris Kuo, of the Los Angeles
Times.
[A]fter years of an unrelenting drought that has quickly
accelerated amid record temperatures and lower snowpack melt,
[Lake Mead] is set to mark another, more dire turning
point. Next month, the federal government expects to declare
its first-ever shortage on the lake, triggering cuts
to water delivered to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico on Jan.
1. If the lake, currently at 1,068 feet, drops 28 more
feet by next year, the spigot of water to California will start
to tighten in 2023.
Slowly but surely, the San Lorenzo Valley community is
rebuilding itself after the CZU Lightning Complex fire. Its
water district is no exception. The San Lorenzo Valley Water
District lost all of its water intake infrastructure at the
Lyon Water Treatment Plant in Boulder Creek, built in 1994 with
the purpose of treating surface water coming from many streams
on the Empire Grade mountain. About 50% of the water stored at
the plant was lost as well. All of the 1,600 acres of the
watershed were affected by the wildfire.
The Contra Costa Water District is asking customers to reduce
their water use by 10% amid worsening drought conditions in
California. The district’s Board of Directors on Wednesday
voted unanimously to declare a Stage 1 water shortage level,
which includes calling for 10% voluntary
conservation … The district provides water to about
500,000 people in central and eastern Contra Costa County, from
the city of Martinez to Brentwood. Its main source of water is
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which conveys water allocated
from the Central Valley Project through a contract with the
federal government.
Although 41 of California’s 58 counties are in drought
conditions, legislators are debating bills, such as Senate Bill
9 and Senate Bill 10, that address the construction of housing
to meet the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Between
2023 and 2031, the state mandate for the nine-county Bay Area
is 441,000 units, representing an expected population increase
of 1,102,500. The allocation for Los Angeles County is
1,327,000 housing units to accommodate an expected population
increase of 3,317,500. The state’s propensity to accept the
RHNA numbers ignores our drought conditions. -Written by Rick Johnson, a retired 40-year
veteran of the San Francisco water department.
Imperial Irrigation District officials are making a last-ditch
effort to amend or kill proposed legislation that could
fundamentally transform the governing board of the agency,
Assembly Bill 1021. At the heart of the issue is how the bill
could force the district — which provides water and power to
virtually all of Imperial County, and electricity to part of
the Coachella Valley — to add a seat representing energy
ratepayers from a small section of southeastern Riverside
County to the IID Board of Directors.
As part of the ongoing initiatives to advance diversity and
equity, Monique Earl has been named to lead the newly-created
Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power. Earl will become part of
the senior management team reporting to General Manager Martin
Adams, and will be responsible for the oversight of policies,
practices and programs designed to improve diversity and
opportunities throughout LADWP and position the agency to
better serve communities with the highest needs.
How can Marin County effectively address the severe drought
we’re in? Right now, many are reasonably urging the Marin
Municipal Water District to explore desalination and a water
supply line on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Apparently our
water district is proceeding expediently with this
exploration, so they can implement those measures as
quickly as possible if needed. However, we should recognize
that with urgent competition for water throughout the
southwestern U.S., these measures have uncertainties, will take
time and require very large expense and energy use. -Written by Tom Flynn, team lead at
GreenChange.net.
The Colorado River is tapped out. Another dry year has left the
waterway that supplies 40 million people in the Southwest
parched. A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is
pushing the nation’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. For
the first time this summer, the federal government will declare
a shortage. Climate change is exacerbating the current drought.
Warming temperatures are upending how the water cycle functions
in the Southwest. The 1,450-mile long river acts as a drinking
water supply, a hydroelectric power generator, and an irrigator
of crop fields across seven Western states and two in Mexico.
As a heat wave exacerbates California’s drought, Gov. Gavin
Newsom asked residents Thursday to voluntarily cut their water
use by 15% and extended an emergency drought declaration to
nearly every Bay Area county. Those measures were the latest in
a series of modest steps Newsom has taken to encourage
Californians to conserve and to make it easier for state
regulators to curtail use for farmers and water agencies.
Newsom said urgent action is needed because conditions in the
state “continue to devolve,” with sparse rainfall and
higher-than-normal temperatures — and a heat dome forecast to
scorch the West Coast this weekend.
Job alert: The Shafter-Wasco Irrigation District, which serves
nearly 30,000 acres of farms in Kern County, is hiring a new
general manager. But what exactly does the general manager of
an irrigation district do? It’s a question that isn’t easily
answered, even by water executives themselves…. [Dale] Brogan
managed the Delano-Earlimart Irrigation District in Tulare and
Kern counties for 28 years. He’s helping to fill the role at
Shafter-Wasco until someone is hired on permanently.
Last summer’s catastrophic Creek Fire burned about 380,000
acres in the upper San Joaquin watershed, the largest fire in
the Sierra Nevada’s history. The fire literally exploded, fed
by strong gusty winds and 150 million dead trees the fire
scorched 43% of the burned area “with high severity” said the
Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state agency. Altogether, about
36% of the upper San Joaquin watershed was burned—the same
watershed that supplies nine dams and impounds water that feeds
a million acres of farmland below, along the Madera and Friant
Kern Canals.
With a federal water shortage declaration looming for the
Southwest, Denver Water is trying to help. Normally nearly 20%
of the city’s water comes from Grand County, which is filled
with streams that make up the headwaters of the Colorado River.
In a normal year, 60% of the water in Grand County is diverted
from streams high above Grand Lake and captured near Winter
Park and sent to the other side of the Continental Divide for
agricultural and municipal water supply, mostly on the Front
Range.
The city of Sacramento, invoking its water shortage contingency
plan, asked residents Wednesday to reduce consumption by 10% as
California’s drought intensifies. City Manager Howard Chan
moved the city into Stage 1 of its contingency plan, which
mandates a 10% cut by city government and a voluntary call to
residents and businesses to do the same, according to spokesman
Carlos Eliason. If additional measures need to be taken, they
would require action by the City Council.
The possible return of La Nina threatens to give the
drought-ravaged U.S. West another winter without much rain or
snow. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center issued a watch for La
Nina on Thursday, saying there’s a 66% chance the phenomenon
will return for a second straight year some time in the
November-January period. La Nina occurs when the equatorial
Pacific Ocean cools, triggering an atmospheric chain reaction
that can cause droughts across the western U.S. and roil
weather systems globally.
Amid California’s ongoing drought, drug cartels have been
stealing 2-3 million gallons of water a day to feed illegal
marijuana grows in the Antelope Valley, officials said. Asked
where the water was being stolen from, Rep. Mike Garcia, who
represents the state’s 25th District, said: “Right here from
our local aqueduct system. The California Aqueduct flows right
through the Antelope Valley. They’re taking it out of wells.
They’re stealing it from fire hydrants.”
As the western United States continues to face a months-long
bout with extreme drought, American farmers are feeling
catastrophic effects to their livelihoods. … John Moore,
a fourth-generation crop farmer from Kern County, California,
highlighted the misunderstanding lawmakers have toward the
agricultural community. In his mind, heeding to some Trump-era
water policies would’ve changed the entire landscape of how
farmers face droughts like these.
Two Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) projects have
received preliminary federal funding allocations in
appropriations legislation, thanks to the diligence of
Representatives Ken Calvert and Mark Takano. In the House
Appropriations Committee’s FY2022 Interior, Environment, and
Related Agencies legislation, EMWD’s Quail Valley Septic to
Sewer program is slated to receive $2.5 million from
Congressman Ken Calvert’s (CA-42nd) request, and its Mead
Valley Booster Station project received $1 million from
Congressman Mark Takano’s (CA-41st) request.
The Bureau of Reclamation Tuesday announced the selection of
Tonya Hart as the Regional Engineer of the Lower Colorado Basin
Region. In this capacity, she oversees and provides direction
for the Region’s engineering activities in Arizona, Southern
Nevada and Southern California. Additionally, she oversees the
operations and maintenance of Reclamation’s Boulder City
campus. Hart most recently served as a Supervisory Civil
Engineer in the Geotechnical Services Division of Reclamation’s
Technical Service Center (TSC) located in Denver,
Colorado.
Driving through the Sacramento valley an hour north of
California’s capital, most travelers notice nothing but a few
cows grazing on grass scorched brown by the heat. But Jerry
Brown, the executive director of the Sites Reservoir Project,
sees the future of California’s water system….Sites is just
one of hundreds of new projects being urgently pushed by
districts, whose officials see that climate change is
irrevocably changing their water equation.
The expected water cuts from the Colorado River as a result of
the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) will likely mean higher
water utility rates, according to Fitch Ratings. The U.S.
Congress passed the DCP in 2019 to protect water levels in Lake
Powell and Lake Mead which provide water to Colorado River
basin states. Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New
Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, and Mexico entered into the DCP,
which mandates how water cuts will occur when the lakes drop to
certain levels, called tiers.
If you’re a Sacramento homeowner, the city is now offering
twice as much money for you to conserve water. According
to a press release, the city’s Department of Utilities
announced it is doubling its River Friendly Landscape
rebates while funding is available. The program
includes: Turf conversion, which doubled from $1.50 to $3
per square foot of grass replaced. Irrigation upgrades of up to
$800 for new sprinklers or smart irrigation
controllers. Installing a smart controller in the
home.
A pair of governors on Sunday called on the federal government
for help and pushed for solutions as their states grapple with
recording-breaking temperatures, drought and wildfires that
officials have said is being driven by climate change.
… The bipartisan plea follows a meeting last
week between President Joe Biden and other Western governors
during which he announced new federal response plans to help
address the wildfire threats and extreme heat being driven by
climate change. They include extending seasonal hiring, adding
“surge capacity” by training and equipping additional
personnel, and adding fire detection resources.
Massive buildings are sprouting from our desert landscapes,
their footprints normally more than a million square feet. The
structures are filled with computer servers processing and
storing huge amounts of data. … Duff is the only city
council member to vote no on a recently approved $800 million
data center – rumored to be for Facebook – after discovering
the facility would eventually use 1.75 million gallons of water
every day for cooling their rows of servers once fully
operational. This as state reservoirs like Lake Mead and rivers
like the Colorado are so low that federal restrictions are
likely to be triggered on Arizona’s water allocation as early
as next year.
The United States and Mexico are tussling over their dwindling
shared water supplies after years of unprecedented heat and
insufficient rainfall. Sustained drought on the middle-lower
Rio Grande since the mid-1990s means less Mexican water flows
to the U.S. The Colorado River Basin, which supplies seven U.S.
states and two Mexican states, is also at record low levels. A
1944 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico governs water relations
between the two neighbors.
For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado
River’s natural flooding patterns to farm….Now, gravity sends
the river water from the north end of the Colorado River Indian
Tribes reservation through 19th century canals to sustain
alfalfa, cotton, wheat, onions and potatoes, mainly by flooding
the fields. Some of those fields haven’t been producing lately
as the tribe contributes water to prop up Lake Mead to help
weather a historic drought in the American West…. As
Arizona faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River
supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the
future of water.
Gov. Jared Polis formally declared a drought emergency Friday
for almost two dozen western Colorado counties. Colorado’s
Drought Task Force, Agriculture Impact Task Force and Municipal
Water Task Force will remain active and responsive to local
needs, a release from the Colorado Water Conservation Board
states Friday.
With drought conditions and a pair of record-setting heat waves
already in the rearview mirror, saving water is key during high
demand. In the face of record temperatures and the worst
drought in decades, the South Tahoe Public Utilities District
is offering three tips to save water as demand increases.
The powerful interests who vie for shares of the state’s
ever-changing water supply — dubbed “water buffaloes” — are
adept at fending off political and legal assaults by their
rivals and the outcomes of their clashes are often stalemates.
That’s why it was surprising in June to see two game-changing
decrees out of Washington, one from the new Biden
administration and another from the Supreme Court, affecting
two of the state’s most prominent water interests, Southern
California’s Imperial Irrigation District and the San Joaquin
Valley’s Westlands Water District. -Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
You’d think that spending $200 million to help shore up
our shrinking water supply would be a monumentally good thing.
And it could have been, if there weren’t so many stipulations
on how that cash must be spent. Lawmakers plopped $160
million into a newly created drought mitigation fund – a hefty
chunk of change that some have called “unprecedented.”
They set up the fund, according to the budget bill,
because “many regions in this state lack access to
sustainable water supplies to meet their long-term water
demands and need financial assistance to develop water supply
and conservation projects.” -Written by Arizona Republic columnist Joanna
Allhands.
To understand a sharp-elbows squabble that’s developing behind
the scenes in the state Capitol, one must first understand
“pumped-storage hydro,” a way for electrical energy to be
stored. In its simplest form, water stored in a reservoir is
released to generate power as it flows into a second reservoir
at a lower elevation. Later, when the electrical grid’s need
for power diminishes, the water is pumped back into the upper
reservoir so the cycle can be repeated when demand
increases. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters columnist.
