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.
La Niña is finally over after three years, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This winter
has not acted like a typical La Niña winter with
California getting drenched, especially in Southern California
where La Niña typically signals a drier than average
winter…. Climate models are nearly certain El Niño will
develop later this summer or fall. California is typically
wetter during El Niño conditions, although the signal becomes
murkier from Sacramento northward.
Fine-tuning certain sections of the federal farm bill
could help prevent the U.S. West from decaying into a Great
Depression-era Dust Bowl, according to Sen. Michael Bennet
(D-Colo.). The third-term senator is on a mission to
ensure that the region’s agricultural sector can continue to
thrive amid inhospitable climate conditions, as negotiations
begin on the 2023 federal package of food and farm
legislation. “How do we advance the real challenges that
producers and rural communities are facing in the context of a
1,200-year drought?” Bennet asked, in a recent interview with
The Hill. Bennet has been a prominent voice in
shaping the farm bill, having contributed to the past two
renditions. He’s now working on the upcoming
version.
A bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers are forming a
“Congressional Colorado River Caucus,” with the goal of
collaborating on ways to best address worsening drought
conditions across the seven-state basin. … [Rep. Joe]
Neguse, who serves as ranking member of the House Subcommittee
on Federal Lands, announced the creation of the caucus, which
will include members from six of the seven Colorado River
states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and
Utah. The lawmakers intend to discuss the critical issues
affecting the Colorado River, which provides water for 40
million people across the West. Members of the caucus will work
“together towards our shared goal to mitigate the impacts felt
by record-breaking levels of drought,” according to Neguse.
San Diegans are facing a tidal wave of rate increases in coming
years for so-called drought-proof water — driven in large part
by new sewage recycling projects coupled with the rising cost
of desalination and importing the Colorado River. While many
residents already struggle to pay their utility bills, the
situation now appears more dire than elected leaders may have
anticipated. The San Diego County Water Authority recently
announced that retail agencies should brace for a massive 14
percent spike on the cost of wholesale deliveries next year….
Officials on the wholesaler’s 36-member board are anxiously
exploring ways to temper such double-digit price hikes, even
contemplating the sale of costly desalinated water produced in
Carlsbad.
Nearly two-thirds of California is now out of drought,
according to a closely watched map released Thursday by a
consortium of federal and academic experts. The map, which is
updated weekly on Thursday mornings, shows that the entire
central part of the state is clear of drought….And the map
does not even take account of the latest atmospheric river to
soak the state…. Just 8% of the state remains in severe
drought, and none of it is in the extreme or exceptional
categories.
Parts of California are under water, the Rocky Mountains are
bracing for more snow, flood warnings are in place in Nevada,
and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to
make room for an expected bountiful spring runoff. All the
moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of
the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River
are trending in the right direction. But climate experts
caution that the favorable drought maps represent only a blip
on the radar as the long-term effects of a stubborn drought
persist. Groundwater and reservoir storage levels — which take
much longer to bounce back — remain at historic lows. It could
be more than a year before the extra moisture has an effect on
the shoreline at Lake Mead that straddles Arizona and Nevada.
Despite having a comprehensive system of natural reserves and
human ingenuity, conservationists estimated that nearly 95% of
the received rainfall in California was diverted to the Pacific
Ocean. The wanton runoff ignited bipartisan outrage …
Although the runoff can be interpreted as an egregious failure
of bureaucracy, water pumping restrictions are informed by
environmental regulations that preserve the Delta’s ecological
integrity. … In effect, the Delta Smelt’s ecological
significance impedes the amount of water that can be pulled
from the Delta for millions of Californians as well as for the
state’s agricultural complex. And herein lies the crux of
California’s water conservation: the increasing gap between a
substantiating ecological collapse and booming economic
infrastructure. -Written by Jun Park is a candidate for a master of
social work at the University of Southern California.
Despite its arid climate, California’s Imperial Valley produces
most of the U.S. winter vegetables, providing the lettuce,
celery, cilantro, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, carrots and other
crops that allow people from Seattle to Boston to eat salads
and cook fresh produce year-round. Unlike most agricultural
regions, the Imperial Valley—with little rain and no
groundwater—depends on a single source of water: the Colorado
River. … Now, that lifeblood may be threatened, as
competing interests battle over supplies from the depleted
river and federal officials threaten to intervene. Despite
holding senior water rights, which give them priority in times
of scarcity, [farmer Mark] Osterkamp and other Imperial Valley
growers face an uncertain future.
A Nestlé plant in the Valley has an issue: it wants to produce
a lot of “high-quality” creamer. But it might not have enough
water to do so. The company’s solution could allow factories to
drain Arizona’s groundwater and could threaten the quality of
city tap water, according to water experts. The massive food
and drink producer announced last year it would be building a
nearly $700 million plant in Glendale, but has since run into
issues with its water provider EPCOR. The amount of wastewater
Nestlé projected to need turned out to be too much for the
Canada-based utility.
President Joe Biden has given a dire warning that the Colorado
River will dry up if climate change efforts do not ramp up. He
made the comments while speaking to the Democratic National
Committee in Las Vegas, Nevada this week, Fox News reported.
“You’re not going to be able to drink out of the Colorado
River,” Biden said. The president added that climate change was
“serious stuff.” … But is this actually possible? Could
the Colorado River dry up and will it be as bad as Biden
says? Well, the Colorado River has already reached the
lowest water levels seen in a century. Experts believe this is
down to climate change-caused drought which will only get worse
in the coming years.
California’s 11th atmospheric river storm of the season
barreled through a beleaguered state this week, dropping more
rain and snow, sending thousands scrambling for higher ground
and leaving more than 300,000 without power. The rain was
expected to continue into Wednesday across Southern California,
which saw rainfall records Tuesday. … The storm arrives amid
near-record snowpack and one of California’s wettest winters in
recent memory. Nine back-to-back atmospheric river storms hit
the state in late December and early January, and a 10th
deluged the state last week. Though conditions are
expected to clear after the storm, the relief will be
short-lived as yet another atmospheric river has set its sights
on California next week, forecasters said — just in time for
the first day of spring.
Lawmakers in Nevada are considering new rules that would give
water managers the authority to cap how much water residents
could use in their homes, a step that reflects the dire
conditions on the Colorado River after more than two decades of
drought. Among the Western states that rely on the
Colorado River for sustenance, Nevada has long been a leader in
water conservation, establishing laws that limit the size of
swimming pools and ban decorative grass. Residents now consume
less water than they did 20 years ago.
It may be hard to believe after all the snow and rain that fell
― and keeps falling ― on the North State this winter, but Lake
Shasta water levels are still lower than normal for this time
of year. That could change with more storms on the way this
week. Predictions about the amount of water released through
Shasta Dam later in the year, as snow melts, could also change.
… So, could it be that Shasta Dam will make history
again? Will it open its gates at the top of the spillway to let
water flow? … There’s plenty of space for more rainwater and
snowmelt, said Donald Bader, area manager for the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam.
Mark Sigety has owned land in the Harquahala Valley near
Tonopah since 2003. Since then, he says several investors have
reached out to buy his half-acre plot along with other parcels
in western Maricopa County. … The Harquahala Groundwater
Basin is one of three in rural Arizona set aside specifically
to import water to the Valley once water gets scarce. It’s
known as an Irrigation Non-Expansion Area, or INA. It’s a
place where the state or political subdivisions that own land
eligible to be irrigated can pump groundwater and transport it
into areas where groundwater is regulated in Arizona, known as
AMAs, or Active Management Areas. The Phoenix AMA is one
of them and covers land from west of Buckeye to Superior.
Lake Powell is currently close to 180 feet below full pool and
coming off a summer last year where several boat ramps were
closed and owners were advised to retrieve their houseboats
from the docks. Releases from a couple of upstream reservoirs,
including Flaming Gorge, were made last summer to help the
nation’s second largest reservoir and its Glen Canyon Dam,
which provides power generation to Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New
Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska. A Monday briefing
from the drought integrated information center of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there is wet relief
on the way for Lake Powell, which typically gets its maximum
flows well into July.
Solano County supervisors are scheduled Tuesday to receive an
update on the latest Delta tunnel project. “The Delta
Conveyance Project is the latest iteration of an isolated
conveyance by the state Department of Water Resources to remove
freshwater flows from the Delta for use in central and Southern
California,” the staff report to the board states. “The (Delta
Conveyance Project) includes constructing a 45-mile long,
39-foot diameter tunnel under the Delta with new diversions in
the North Delta that have a capacity to divert up to 6,000
cubic feet (of water) per second and operating new conveyance
facilities that would add to the existing State Water Project
infrastructure.”
The Southern Sierra snowpack is now the biggest on record, at a
whopping 247% of average for April 1, according to charts from
the California Department of Water Resources. “There is a whole
hell of a lot of water up there right now, stored in the
snowpack,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and
the Nature Conservancy, during an online presentation on
Monday. … Late last week, California was on the
receiving end of a warm atmospheric river, a band of
tropical moisture originating from waters near Hawaii. The
event raised concerns of rain-on-snow events, when runoff
from rain combines with snowmelt to overwhelm
watersheds. Such flooding happened over the weekend on the Kern
and Tule rivers, triggering evacuations and badly damaging
homes. But at higher elevations, the precipitation only
added to the Sierra snowpack.
Even with winter’s remarkable rainfall, Mono Lake will not rise
enough to reduce unhealthy dust storms that billow off the
exposed lakebed and violate air quality standards. Nor will it
offset increasing salinity levels that threaten Mono Lake
Kutzadika’a tribe’s cultural resources and food for millions of
migratory birds. Any gain Mono Lake makes surely won’t last due
to the [Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's] ongoing
diversions….If DWP won’t voluntarily cooperate in finding a
way to protect Mono Lake, then the State Water Board needs to
step up and save Mono Lake – again. -Written by Martha Davis, a board member for the
Mono Lake Committee.
Water policy wonks like us at PPIC spend an extraordinary
amount of time analyzing information from the past, trying to
understand the present, and modeling or speculating about the
future. All this work goes toward identifying policy changes
that might help California better manage its water. But
for all our efforts, nothing improves our understanding of
water like a “stress test,” whether that test is severe drought
or extreme wet. And it is starting to look like we are
going to get one of those stress tests this spring in the San
Joaquin Valley. As news outlets have been reporting for some
time, there is an “epic” snowpack in the central and southern
Sierra Nevada… And while Californians have been laser focused
on managing drought over the past decade, it’s now time to
start thinking about what to do with too much water, at least
in the San Joaquin River and Tulare Lake basins.
As storms swell California’s reservoirs, state water officials
have rescinded a controversial order that allowed more water
storage in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while putting
salmon and other endangered fish at risk. Ten environmental
groups had petitioned the board to rescind its order, calling
it “arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law, and…not
supported by substantial evidence.” The reason for the
state’s reversal, according to the State Water Resources
Control Board, is that conditions in the Delta have changed as
storms boost the snowpack and runoff used to supply water to
cities and farms.
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains has reached
record-breaking levels thanks to the deluge of snow smashing
California this week. According to data from the California
Department of Water Resources (CDWR), the Southern Sierras—from
San Joaquin and Mono counties to Kern county—currently have a
snowpack 257 percent greater than the average for this time of
year, and 247 percent larger than is average for the usual
snowpack peak on April 1. Central Sierra and Northern Sierra
also have hugely inflated snowpacks, at 218 percent and 168
percent of the average for early March, respectively…. “As of
this weekend, the Southern Sierra now appears to have largest
snowpack in recorded history…” tweeted Daniel Swain, a
climate scientist at UCLA and the Nature Conservancy.
Two Colorado Democrats this week are making a last ditch effort
to block a proposed 88-mile railway in Utah that they say would
drive up climate emissions and could lead to a catastrophic oil
spill in the upper Colorado River, contaminating a vital water
supply for nearly 40 million Americans that’s already
critically threatened by deepening drought. The Uinta Basin
Railway was approved by the Surface Transportation Board in
2021 and received provisional approval by the U.S. Forest
Service last summer to travel through a 12-mile roadless area
of the Ashley National Forest. It would connect the oil fields
of Utah’s Uinta Basin to the national rail network and
refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is finalizing $250 million in
water-saving deals that are expected to preserve up to 10 feet
of Lake Mead’s declining surface levels this year, agency
Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton announced Friday in Tempe.
The commissioner attended a discussion of Colorado River water
issues at Arizona State University, organized by Sen. Mark
Kelly, D-Arizona. The money will pay Lower Colorado River Basin
water users, especially farmers, to forego some of their
deliveries this year to help keep the reservoir from sinking
further toward the point where it no longer flows past Hoover
Dam. The initial funding is essentially an emergency measure
that pays people not to use water temporarily.
Residents in one western Arizona community worry that a clean
energy company, which plans to build nearby, could hog their
groundwater supply. Brenda is a small town located a few miles
north of Interstate 10 in La Paz County. Like nearby
Quartzsite, it caters to RV visitors who are looking for
sunshine and warmth during the winter months. At
Buckaroo’s Sandwich Shop, manager Lisa Lathrop said she has
lived in the area for 13 years because “it’s usually quiet out
here and nobody knows about us.” That’s about to
change. The addition of the Ten West Link, a
high-voltage transmission line currently being built to connect
Tonopah with Blythe, California, is expected to bring multiple
solar power companies to the area.
California’s severely depleted groundwater basins could get a
boost this spring, after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive
order waiving permits to recharge them. State water leaders
hope to encourage local agencies and agricultural districts to
capture water from newly engorged rivers and spread it onto
fields, letting it seep into aquifers after decades of heavy
agricultural pumping. … To pull water from the state’s
network of rivers and canals for groundwater recharge, state
law requires a permit from the State Water Resources Control
Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife. Many local agencies
lacked the permitting during January storms, but this month’s
atmospheric rivers and near record snowpack promises new
opportunities to put water underground.
In another sign that the drought is ending across much of
California, state water officials opened the floodgates at
Oroville Dam on Friday to let water out of the state’s
second-largest reservoir to reduce the risk of flooding to
downstream communities. … At noon, water began
cascading down the huge concrete spillway for the first time in
four years. On Friday, Oroville reservoir was 75% full —
or 115% of its historical average for early March. It has risen
180 feet since Dec. 1, and continued to expand steadily with
millions of gallons of water pouring in from recent storms.
Winter storms this year have created hope for many Californians
suffering from years of drought but for agriculture, it’s more
complicated. More water means crops will be well provided for,
but additional weather trends create new hazards for orchards,
especially during this year’s almond bloom which requires some
consistency in temperature and sunlight. Colleen Cecil,
executive director for the Butte County Farm Bureau, said
almonds have likely been impacted the most by the weather
events, especially since the trees are still in bloom.
The nation’s top Western water official visited the Coachella
Valley on Thursday to highlight federal funding for
infrastructure that carries Colorado River water to area farm
fields. The visit comes during a break in heavy winter storms
across the West that are buoying hopes among regional water
officials for a temporary reprieve on potentially huge cuts to
river supply. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille
Touton was mum on whether heavy snowpack in the Rockies and
elsewhere could push back massive reductions she told Congress
last spring were necessary to keep the river and its reservoirs
afloat. But California officials are cautiously optimistic that
major reductions could be averted this year. Noting that
overall river flows this year are now forecast to be 113% of
average thanks to “huge snowpack” in the Rockies and elsewhere
…
It’s officially the snowiest year to date in Lake Tahoe.
Following a nearly two-week series of storms that dropped more
than 15 feet of snow in parts of the Sierra Nevada, the
official numbers are in. Lake Tahoe has received more snowfall
as of March 6 than in any other season — or at least any season
since 1971-72, the earliest year for which the UC Berkeley
Central Sierra Snow Lab on Donner Summit has daily
measurements. As of March 6, the Snow Lab has measured 580
inches, or just over 48 feet, of snow since Oct. 1.
A particularly wet season has swept across the southwestern
U.S., a region that has suffered under a severe megadrought for
over two decades. But what has this meant for Colorado River
reservoir Lake Mead? Storms of rain and snow have hit
California particularly badly in recent months, and have spread
into neighboring states like Nevada. Reservoirs like Lake Mead
rely on seasonal snowmelt and rainfall. Because of the drought,
these weather patterns have been less frequent and harder to
predict in recent. This means water levels at the largest
man-made lake in the U.S., Lake Mead, are rapidly declining.
Neil McIsaac has something many other dairy farmers here don’t:
a storm-runoff capture system that can provide backup water for
his herd when local reservoirs go dry, as they did last year.
Already, he and others involved in the project say it has
proven its worth. It has captured 670,000 gallons so far this
winter, enough to slake the thirst of his 700 cows for a month,
Mr. McIsaac said.
States that use water from the Colorado River are caught in a
standoff about how to share shrinking supplies, and their
statements about recent negotiations send mixed messages.
California officials say they were not consulted as other
states in the region drew up a letter to the federal government
with what they called a “consensus-based” set of
recommendations for water conservation. Leaders in states that
drafted the letter disagree with that characterization. The
reality of what happened during negotiations may lie somewhere
in between, as comments from state leaders hint at possible
differences between their definitions of what counts as
“consultation.” The squabble is a microcosm of larger tensions
between states that use water from the Colorado River.
Yuma, Ariz. may be well known for its unforgiving summer heat,
but did you know that 90% of North America’s leafy greens and
vegetables available from November through April of each year
comes from here? Yuma’s climate, its rich soil birthed from
sediments deposited by the Colorado River for millennia, and
over 300 cloudless days per year coalesce to create one of the
best places in the world to grow such a diverse mix of crops.
… At the crux of this production is water. The Colorado
River ends its U.S. run at Morelos Dam, just a few hundred
yards from the University of Arizona’s Extension research farm
at Yuma. That water no longer makes it to the Sea of Cortez as
Mexico consumes it for urban and agricultural uses. -Written by Todd Fitchette, associate editor
with Western Farm Press.
Explore the epicenter of groundwater sustainability on
our Central Valley Tour
April 26-28 and engage directly with some of
the most important leaders and experts in water storage,
management and delivery, agriculture, habitat, land use policy
and water equity. The tour focuses on the San Joaquin Valley,
which has struggled with consistently little to no
surface water deliveries and increasing pressure to reduce
groundwater usage to sustainable levels while also facing water
quality and access challenges for disadvantaged
communities. Led by Foundation staff and
groundwater expert Thomas Harter, Chair for Water
Resources Management and Policy at the University of
California, Davis, the tour explores topics such as subsidence,
water supply and drought, flood management, groundwater
banking and recharge, surface water storage, agricultural
supply and drainage, wetlands and more. Register
here!
As still more storms dumped new snow onto California’s
burgeoning snowpack, water managers, farmers and
environmentalists gathered in Sacramento last week to discuss
long-term challenges to secure a more certain water future. The
fresh snowfall contrasted with challenging water realities
discussed at the 61st California Irrigation Institute Annual
Conference. With a theme of “One Water: Partnering for
Solutions,” the event focused on addressing impacts of climate
change, including warming conditions and frequent droughts that
severely diminish the snowpack and state water supplies. The
gathering emphasized solutions that some speakers said could be
aided through partnerships among different water interests.
On March 14, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 pm, Reclamation will
hold a quarterly meeting to provide an update on the
development of the Biological Assessment for the 2021
Reinitiation of Consultation on the Long-Term Operation of the
Central Valley Project and State Water Project, pursuant to the
Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act.
Development of the Biological Assessment is one of the first
steps in Reclamation’s required compliance with the federal
Endangered Species Act as part of the Reinitation of
Consultation on the Long-Term Operation of the CVP and SWP. The
assessment evaluates potential effects of operating the CVP and
SWP on federally listed species and proposed species, as well
as designated and proposed critical habitat. The meeting will
be held virtually on Microsoft Teams. For meeting materials,
including the link to the meeting, please see
www.usbr.gov/mp/bdo.
Starting Tuesday, the US Bureau of Reclamation will suspend
extra water releases from Utah’s Flaming Gorge reservoir –
emergency measures that had served to help stabilize the
plummeting water levels downstream at Lake Powell, the nation’s
second largest reservoir. Federal officials began releasing
extra water from Flaming Gorge in 2021 to boost Lake Powell’s
level and buy its surrounding communities more time to plan for
the likelihood the reservoir will eventually drop too low for
the Glen Canyon Dam to generate hydropower. Lake Powell in late
February sank to its lowest water level since the reservoir was
filled in the 1960s, and since 2000 has dropped more than 150
feet.
The Western United States is currently battling the most severe
drought in thousands of years. A mix of bad water management
policies and manmade climate change has created a situation
where water supplies in Western reservoirs are so low, states
are being forced to cut their water use. It’s not hard to
find media coverage that focuses on the excesses of residential
water use: long showers, swimming pools, lawn watering, at-home
car washes. Or in the business sector, like irrigating golf
courses or pumping water into hotel fountains in Las
Vegas. But when a team of researchers looked at water
use in the West, they uncovered a very different
story about where most Western water goes. Only 14 percent
of all water consumption in the Western US goes to residential,
commercial, and industrial water use.
After more than two months of atmospheric rivers and bomb
cyclones, amid a supersized Sierra snowcap, and with more
precipitation forecast for the rest of the month, isn’t
California’s drought over? The U.S. Drought Monitor reports
that yes, 17% of California is now out of drought. Most of the
rest of the state is quite wet as well, although it remains in
some level of “drought” as the term is defined by the Drought
Monitor. Only 17%? How is that possible? …. Drought was
never the right word to apply to this state’s dry streaks.
Californians need a term that describes not just how much water
is coming in, but how much we use every day and how much we
save for later.
The Biden administration on Friday said it would require states
to report on cybersecurity threats in their audits of public
water systems, a day after it released a broader plan to
protect critical infrastructure against cyberattacks. The
Environmental Protection Agency said public water systems are
increasingly at risk from cyberattacks that amount to a threat
to public health. … Fox said the EPA would assist states
and water systems in building out cybersecurity programs,
adding that states could begin using EPA’s guidance in their
audits right away. The agency did not respond immediately to
questions about enforcement deadlines. EPA said it would
help states and water systems with technical know-how. The
announcement made no mention of new financial assistance.
The last time the Colorado River Basin agreed to a set of
reductions to address drought conditions and dropping levels at
Lake Mead was in 2019. … Now, states are looking to cut far
more water than the 2019 agreement yielded, and on a much
shorter negotiation timeline. After the seven states that rely
on the Colorado River to provide water to roughly 40 million
Americans missed two deadlines from the federal government to
work out a consensus plan, there are two proposals from the
basin states on the table that offer different paths for how to
meet the target. The two proposals arrive at a similar number
of potential new cuts to water use across the basin, but draw a
clear line in the sand between California’s desire to protect
its senior water rights, much of which are tied up in the
agriculture sector, and the desire of the other six states to
have California, Nevada and Arizona share the cuts more
equitably.
In Washington County, there is a ban on growing grass outside
new businesses. Only 8% of a home’s landscaping can have a
grass lawn in this booming corner of Utah. And if any
developers want to add another country club to this golfing
mecca, “I don’t know where they would get the water from,” said
Zach Renstrom, general manager of the Washington County Water
Conservancy District. … Like lots of spots in the West, the
combination of more people and less water makes for an
uncertain future around St. George. While this winter’s
generous snowpack could buy precious time, the entire Colorado
River system remains in danger of crashing if water gets too
low at Lakes Powell and Mead. But that reality hasn’t stopped
St. George from booming into the fastest-growing metro area in
the U.S. two years running …
A remarkably wet winter has resulted in some of the deepest
snowpack California has ever recorded, providing considerable
drought relief and a glimmer of hope for the state’s strained
water supply. Statewide snowpack Friday measured 190% of
normal, hovering just below a record set in the winter of
1982-83, officials with the Department of Water Resources said
during the third snow survey of the season…. In the
Southern Sierra, snowpack reached 231% of average for the date,
nearing the region’s benchmark of 263% set in 1969 and trending
ahead of the winter of 1983. With just one month remaining in
the state’s traditional rainy season, officials are now voicing
cautious optimism over the state’s hydrologic prospects.
California water officials on Friday recorded the biggest
accumulation of statewide snow this century for the start of
March, a bounty that is likely to grow with coming storms – and
further ease the state’s drought-time water shortages. The
official March snow survey… tallied the snowpack in the
Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades at 190% of
average…. The March survey results top the big snow year
in 2017, when statewide total snowpack was 184% of average at
the start of the month. The numbers fall short, however, of the
record snow year in 1983, according to state officials….
The megadrought that’s plagued the US West for years has
impacted everything from the food Americans eat to their
electricity supply. And while extreme weather can sometimes
trigger wet winters like this one, in California and the rest
of the region, the long-term future remains a very dry one. In
this episode of Getting Warmer With Kal Penn, we
explore what the future of water in the West may look
like. In Nevada, Penn investigates the lasting impacts of the
Colorado River Compact, the 1922 agreement that doles out water
rights to the seven states along its path. Overly optimistic
from the start, the system is now on the verge of collapse as
water levels in key reservoirs approach dead pool-status.
The decision by an interstate agency representing the Upper
Basin states to press the federal government to postpone the
release of a portion of 500,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming
Gorge Reservoir in Utah to Lake Powell isn’t only about the
better snowpack the West is getting this winter. It’s more of a
game of chess between the upper states of the Colorado River
and the Lower Basin states, particularly California, said Gage
Zobell, a water law attorney at Dorsey & Whitney. Zobell
said it’s about “sending a message that [the Upper Basin
states] refuse to continue supplying Lower Basin’s limitless
demands for water.”
Leading environmental engineering and construction services
firm Brown and Caldwell has been hired by the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan) to study
alternative water conveyance options to provide supply
diversity to the region during severe droughts. Metropolitan’s
mission is to ensure a safe and reliable water supply for the
19 million people in Southern California in the face of climate
change and extended drought. In response to drought action
planning by Metropolitan in collaboration with its 26 member
agencies, the study will identify and evaluate potential
conveyance options to move primarily Colorado River water and
regional storage supplies from the eastern portion of
Metropolitan’s service area to the western portion.
The State Water Resources Control Board named Jay Ziegler,
former external affairs and policy director for the California
Office of The Nature Conservancy, as the new Delta Watermaster.
He succeeds Michael George, who held the position for two
four-year terms. The Watermaster administers water rights
within the legal boundaries of the Sacramento/San Joaquin River
Delta and Suisun Marsh and advises the State Water Board and
the Delta Stewardship Council on related water rights, water
quality and water operations involving the watershed.
… A resident of Davis, Ziegler brings a wealth of
experience to the position. During his 12 years at the
conservancy, he led the agency’s policy engagements on water,
climate and resilience strategies, biodiversity and
environmental and funding initiatives. Previously, he served in
multiple roles at state and federal natural resource
agencies…
Tremendous rains and snowfall since late last year have freed
half of California from drought, but low groundwater levels
remain a persistent problem, U.S. Drought Monitor data showed
Thursday. The latest survey found that moderate
or severe drought covers about 49% of the state, nearly 17% of
the state is free of drought or a condition described as
abnormally dry. The remainder is still abnormally
dry. “Clearly the amount of water that’s fallen this year
has greatly alleviated the drought,” said Daniel Swain, a
climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It has not ended the drought completely but we’re in a very
different place than we were a year ago.” California’s
latest drought began in 2020 and no relief appeared in sight
heading into this winter.
Crews with the El Dorado Irrigation District are working to
clear snow and debris from the flumes and canals that deliver
water to its customers throughout the latest round of winter
weather. Matt Heape, a hydro operations and maintenance
supervisor for the district, said the focus Tuesday was taking
care of a 22-mile canal system. … To do that, he
explained, crews used snowcats to get to remote, wooden
locations, sometimes having to snowshoe in further to reach the
canals and the surrounding walkways. Much of the day
included clearing walkways, plowing snow and keeping systems
clear, Heap said.
The gargantuan California snowpack, over twice the normal
size for this time of year in some parts of the Sierra, just
keeps growing. On Tuesday, yet another storm unloaded several
feet of snow in the Lake Tahoe area, completely burying
the Sugar Bowl Resort office. Ideally, the
snowpack gradually melts during the spring and summer,
releasing water when reservoirs aren’t capped by flood control
limitations and can maximize storage. All the snow right now is
fantastic news for the state’s enduring drought.
… But the overabundance also presents potential flood
risks. … A spring heat wave, for example, could drive an
early melt that results in flooding. A warm atmospheric river
aimed at snowcapped mountains could also rapidly melt snow and
overload watersheds.
The three states that comprise the Colorado River’s Lower Basin
– Arizona, California and Nevada – are weighing in on a
proposal to pause some water releases from Flaming Gorge
Reservoir in an effort to prop up Lake Powell. Those states
essentially agreed with the idea of suspending water releases,
but said water managers should wait a few months to see the
full effects of spring runoff, and leave the door open for
additional releases if warranted. They also stressed the need
for input from all of the states which use water from the
Colorado River. On Monday, the four states that make up the
Upper Basin – Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico – voted to
ask the federal government to stop releasing additional water
that would flow downstream as part of the 2019 Drought Response
Operations Agreement.
Winter storms that bolstered the Sierra Nevada snowpack and
added to California reservoirs prompted federal and state water
managers to announce increases in anticipated water allocations
for the 2023 growing season. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
last week announced an initial allocation of 35% of contracted
water supplies for agricultural customers south of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The announcement brought a
measure of certainty for farmers, ranchers and agricultural
water contractors, after officials provided zero water
allocations for agriculture from the federal Central Valley
Project in 2021 and 2022.
After another week of severe winter weather, levels in
California’s recovering water reservoirs have continued to
rise, signaling good news for the state’s summer water
supplies. This follows weeks of considerable rain and snowfall
in California since the start of 2023. … At the
beginning of this water year, which started on October 1, 2022,
the state’s largest water reservoir, Lake Shasta, was
a third full, at 33 percent. It was at 60 percent as of
March 1 and rising, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
That puts it at 84 percent of where it would usually be usually
at this time of year.
Despite the continued heavy winter rain and snow throughout
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently extended his executive
orders from 2022 that declared a drought emergency statewide.
He also asked the state water board to waive water flow
regulations intended to protect salmon and other endangered
fish species, as well as San Francisco Bay and Delta estuary
overall. Some viewed these moves as pragmatic steps to
avoid “wasting” the bounty of California’s rains out to
sea. Others saw them as a declaration of war against
the health of the bay. In fact, a war against the bay has
been going on for decades. Newsom’s order was merely the latest
skirmish. The war’s primary aggressors are agricultural
interests in the Central Valley. -Written by Howard V. Hendrix, the author of six
novels as well as many essays, poems and short
stories.
In communities across California, a Napa winery is implementing
a strategy to save water and fight against drought
conditions. Reid family winery uses mounds of rice straw
under their grapevines, which they said not only helped double
their yield from the year before, but also produced some of the
winery’s best quality grapes yet. … The owners said that
they were able to water significantly less last year compared
to years prior. Since laying the rice straw, they haven’t seen
rivulets or erosion in their sloping vineyard. They
predict that they will have to replace the rice straw every 4
to 5 years.
In a bright-red county in a state allergic to regulations,
there is a ban on growing grass outside new businesses. Only 8%
of a home’s landscaping can have a grass lawn in this booming
corner of Utah, about a hundred miles northeast of Las Vegas.
And if any developers want to add another country club to this
golfing mecca, … Like lots of spots in the West, the
combination of more people and less water makes for an
uncertain future around St. George, Utah. While this winter’s
generous snowpack could buy precious time, the entire Colorado
River system remains in danger of crashing if water gets too
low at Lakes Powell and Mead. But that reality hasn’t
stopped St. George from booming into the fastest growing metro
area in the US two years running, according to the US
Census Bureau, and Renstrom says that unless Utah builds a
long-promised pipeline to pump water 140 miles from Lake
Powell, their growth will turn to pain.
Clean water is California’s most vital need. Our lives and the
lives of future generations depend on it. Yet when it comes to
protecting the state’s supply, Gov. Gavin Newsom is failing
California. The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta provides
drinking water to 27 million Californians, or roughly 70% of
the state’s residents. On Feb. 15, the governor signed an
executive order allowing the State Water Resources Control
Board to ignore the state requirement of how much water needs
to flow through the Delta to protect its health. It’s an
outrageous move right out of Donald Trump’s playbook. Big Ag
and its wealthy landowners, including some of Newsom’s
political financial backers, will reap the benefits while the
Delta suffers.
South Bay reservoirs are handling the recent rain quite well
due in part to a delicate dance water managers have been doing
to make sure they catch as much water as possible. … To make
room for future storms, Valley Water has been strategically
releasing water from reservoirs, which is part of the reason
why the county average for reservoir capacity right now is only
50%. Valley Water said the winter rain so far still isn’t
enough to call off the drought emergency. … The Sierra
snowpack is also looking robust. Experts say the hope now is
that the Sierra stays cold for the next few weeks to keep the
snowpack intact. The goal is for the snowpack to begin melting
in mid-spring in time for the runoff to refill the reservoirs
again.
The Hoover Dam is one of the most impactful engineering feats
in American history. Completed on March 1, 1936, the dam spent
nearly a century harnessing the mighty Colorado River and
transforming parts of the arid Southwest into fertile farmlands
and bustling city centers. Here’s a look at the dam’s history
and how it shaped the region. The history of Hoover
Dam began in 1921, when a young Secretary of Commerce,
Herbert Hoover, proposed the construction of a dam on the
Colorado River. At the time, the Colorado River, which ran
uninterrupted from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf
of California, was considered dangerous and unreliable.
According to the National Park Service, the river would
often flood, particularly in late spring and early summer,
when snow melted from the Rocky Mountains would surge
into the river.
Soggy, snow-capped California faces the likelihood of yet
another month of wet weather, but what remains uncertain is
whether this late winter precipitation will augment weeks of
record-setting snowpack, or cause it to vanish should warmer
rains arrive. Last week, a frigid storm transformed portions of
the state into a white landscape while toppling trees,
prompting power outages, spurring water rescues and leaving
some residents trapped by heavy snow. Now, with forecasts
calling for more rain and snow in March — including the
potential for at least one more atmospheric river system —
California is girding for what comes next. … Typically,
California’s snowpack provides about one-third of the state’s
water supply and has long been relied upon for its steady, slow
melting during the hot, dry months of summer. A deluge of warm
rain, however, could cause melting snow to fill rivers too
quickly and trigger widespread flooding.
Once hailed as the “American Nile,” the Colorado River spans
1,450 miles and supplies nearly 40 million people across seven
states plus northern Mexico with drinking water, irrigation for
farmland and hydroelectric power. But after decades of drought
and overuse, major reservoirs along the river are drying
up. As the Colorado River levels drop to historic lows,
tensions are rising between the seven states that depend on its
flow — Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah
and Wyoming. Their original agreement for distributing the
river water lacked foresight and failed to account for dire
circumstances like long-term drought. The American
Southwest now faces a crisis it knew was coming.
As drought-weary Californians watched trillions of gallons of
runoff wash into the Pacific Ocean during recent storms, it
underscored a nagging question: Why can’t we save more of that
water for not-so-rainy days to come? But even the rare
opportunity to stock up on the precious resource isn’t proving
enough to unite a state divided on a contentious idea to siphon
water from the north and tunnel it southward, an attempt to
combat the Southwest’s worst drought in more than a millennium.
The California Department of Water Resources said such a tunnel
could have captured a year’s supply of water for more than 2
million people. The proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
administration — one that would cost $16 billion to help 27
million water customers in central and southern California — is
spurring fresh outrage from communities that have fended off
similar plans over four decades, including suggestions to build
other tunnels or a massive canal.
The climate shifts that California is experiencing—with warmer
temperatures, less reliable snowpack, and more intense
droughts—have exposed critical weaknesses in the administration
of our water rights system under conditions of scarcity. In
particular, there are challenges curtailing diversions when
supplies are inadequate. And on the flip side, this system also
needs the capacity to better facilitate the management of
abundance, by permitting the capture of more water from large
storms to recharge groundwater basins. In our remarks today we
recap some of the key challenges the changing climate is posing
for California’s water rights system in both dry and wet times,
illustrate how these issues are playing out in the state’s
largest watershed, and offer some recommendations for how the
legislature could help strengthen the water rights system to
better respond to water scarcity and abundance.
The immediate question before the seven states that use rapidly
vanishing Colorado River water is not how to renegotiate the
century-old agreement and accompanying laws that divvy up the
supply. California and other states will have to grapple with
that problem soon enough, and it won’t be easy. Those accords
were hammered out in an era when the Western U.S. was lightly
populated, farmland was not yet fully developed and the climate
— although few realized it at the time — was unusually wet.
Now, when the thirst is greatest and still growing, the region
is reverting to its former aridity, exacerbated by higher
temperatures caused by global industrialization. But the
deadline for that reckoning is still nearly four years off.
Four states that use water from the Colorado River are asking
the federal government to pause some water releases from
Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New
Mexico, which make up the river’s Upper Basin, voted to suspend
additional releases starting March 1. Delegates from those
states say the federal government should let heavy winter
precipitation boost water levels in Flaming Gorge. The
reservoir, which straddles the border of Wyoming and Utah, is
the third largest in the Colorado River system, behind only
Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The Bureau of Reclamation, the
federal agency which manages dams and reservoirs in the arid
West, has turned to Flaming Gorge to help prop up Lake Powell,
where record low levels are threatening hydropower production
inside the Glen Canyon Dam.
A judge has extended a temporary settlement of a long-running
dispute over California water rights and how the Central Valley
Project and State Water Project manage the Sacramento River
flows. … The opinions address how the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and California Department of Water Resources’ plan
for operating the Central Valley and State Water Projects
affects fish species. The opinions make it possible to send
more water to 20 million farms, businesses and homes in
Southern and Central California via the massive federal and
state water diversion projects, and eliminate requirements such
as mandating extra flows to keep water temperatures from rising
high enough to damage salmon eggs. … A federal
judge approved plans to allow the biological opinions
to remain in effect over the next three years with added
safeguards.
After weeks of record-breaking rainfall have seen freeways
flood, hillsides collapse and the dry concrete gutter of the
Los Angeles River transform into a raging torrent, you may have
assumed that California’s water-shortage woes were beginning to
ease. With many areas receiving their usual annual rainfall in
just three weeks, surely the multiyear megadrought is finally
abating. Sadly, no. Decades of building concrete gutters –
driven by the mindset that stormwater is a threat to be
banished, not an asset to be stored – have meant that the vast
majority of that rain was simply flushed out into the ocean. Of
the billions of gallons that have fallen on the LA area, only a
tiny fraction were absorbed into the ground.
If there’s concern about California’s wet winter turning dry,
consider it shushed. The heaps of snow over the past
week on top of the parade of deluges in early January have been
extraordinary and left much of the state with
well-above-average precipitation for the season. The winter
storms, which account for the bulk of the state’s rain and
snow, are forecast to continue into next month, virtually
ensuring a good water year for California. But just how
far one year will go to relieving what has been one of the
West’s most excruciating droughts is less clear.
While many parts of the state are benefiting from brimming
rivers and reservoirs, the three previous years, which saw
record low precipitation, as well as several painfully dry
years over the past two decades, have burdened the state with a
gaping water deficit.
Despite the storms that have deluged California this winter,
the state remains dogged by drought. And one of the simplest
solutions — collecting and storing rainfall — is far more
complicated than it seems. Much of California’s water
infrastructure hinges on storing precipitation during the late
fall and winter for use during the dry spring and summer. The
state’s groundwater aquifers can hold vast quantities of water
— far more than its major reservoirs. But those aquifers have
been significantly depleted in recent decades, especially in
the Central Valley, where farmers have increasingly pumped out
water for their crops. And as Raymond Zhong, a New York Times
climate journalist, recently reported, the state’s strict
regulations surrounding water rights limit the diversion of
floodwaters for storage as groundwater, even during fierce
storms …
Last century, California built dozens of large dams, creating
the elaborate reservoir system that supplies the bulk of the
state’s drinking and irrigation water. Now state officials and
supporters are ready to build the next one. The Sites Reservoir
— planned in a remote corner of the western Sacramento Valley
for at least 40 years — has been gaining steam and support
since 2014, when voters approved Prop. 1, a water bond that
authorized $2.7 billion for new storage projects. Still,
Sites Reservoir remains almost a decade away: Acquisition of
water rights, permitting and environmental review are still in
the works. Kickoff of construction, which includes two large
dams, had been scheduled for 2024, but likely will be delayed
another year. Completion is expected in 2030 or 2031.
As Californians braced for record-breaking rain and snowstorms
on Feb. 22, the Department of Water Resources announced what it
called a modest increase in forecast State Water Project
deliveries this year. The SWP now expects to deliver 35 percent
of requested water supplies, up from 30 percent forecast in
January, to the 29 public water agencies that serve 27 million
Californians including residents of Tehachapi-Cummings County
Water District. The district’s general manager, Tom Neisler,
stopped short of calling the increase stingy, but noted that
many water-watchers believe the allocation could be much higher
— particularly since Gov. Gavin Newsom just a week earlier
issued an executive order to suspend environmental laws to
allow state officials to hold more water in reservoirs.
Residents across the Southland woke up to an icy wonderland
Sunday morning, the result of an frigid winter storm that broke
rainfall records and scattered fresh powder at elevations as
low as 1,000 feet across the normally warm, sun-drenched
region. Mountain communities were slammed by intense snowfall,
with Mountain High ski resort clocking an impressive 93 inches
of snow… Climatologists say the storms will probably be
beneficial for drought recovery after years of prolonged
dryness. … The storms have also helped bolster the
state’s snowpack, a vital component of the state’s water
supply. As of Friday, the Sierra snowpack was 173% of normal
for the date. It may get another boost this week.
Alongside farmers, ranchers and sprawling urban cities, Mother
Nature has long sipped her share of the Colorado River —
draining away enough water through evaporation and seepage to
support nearly 6 million families each year. But as
decades of drought strain major reservoirs in the Mountain
West, threatening future water supplies and hydropower, states
are divided over who should be picking up nature’s tab for the
huge amount of water lost on the 1,500-mile-long
waterway. The Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah and Wyoming — already account for some 468,000 acre-feet
of water that evaporates from its reservoirs each
year.
For Patrick Sing, a water manager with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, the deluge was an opportunity to try something that
would be dangerous anywhere else in the country. Sing sits at
the controls of Lake Mendocino, a reservoir on the Russian
River near Ukiah, in northern California. … Researchers
working on the approach in the U.S. say they aren’t aware of
any similar projects in other countries,
but studies suggest that integrating forecasts
has the potential to improve reservoir operations anywhere
weather predictions are sufficiently reliable. The approach
could also help aging dams respond to more variable
precipitation seen with climate change.
After the first flush of the year saw as much as 95 percent of
daily incoming water to the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta sent
into the San Francisco Bay, a new decision by the state’s water
board this week will reverse course and allow for more water to
be stored throughout the state’s reservoirs. The State
Water Resources Control Board has temporarily waived rules that
required a certain amount of water to be flushed out to the
bay, a decision that comes after the heavy rains California
experienced to start the year. The backstory: On Feb. 13
the California Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of
Reclamation jointly filed a Temporary Urgency Change Petition.
State and federal water managers announced Wednesday increased
deliveries for millions of Californians in response to hopeful
hydrologic conditions that materialized over the past several
weeks. After a series of powerful storms brought rain and snow
to much of California in December and January, increased
reservoir levels led the state’s Department of Water Resources
to set its delivery forecast at 30 percent of requested water
supplies for the 29 public water agencies that draw from the
State Water Project to serve 27 million people and 750,000
acres of farmland.
California’s water authorities will spend $15 million in three
crucial water management zones within the drought-ravaged
southern Central Valley. The hub of agricultural
production in the Golden State, the Central Valley has also
faced the most dire impacts from another historic drought, as
thousands of wells went dry last year and many communities
faced a total lack of safe drinking water. The state’s
authorities say they are releasing funds to begin projects to
prevent such hardship in future droughts. The Department of
Water Resources along with California Natural Resources
Secretary Wade Crowfoot came to the small city of Parlier on
Thursday to announce three grants totaling $15 million to
improve water infrastructure in the region.
Come drought or deluge, how can we develop a lasting water
agreement for the greater Sacramento area? That’s the
challenging task before the Water Forum, a unique consortium of
business and agricultural leaders, citizen groups,
environmentalists, water managers and local governments,
including the City of Roseville. With eyes particularly on
Folsom Lake and the Lower American River, as well as weather,
Water Forum members work on water issues both near- and
long-term. Recent winter storms, following years of drought,
added extra complexity to that job.
With the Colorado River teetering on the brink of disaster,
farmers who rely on its life-giving water are preparing to make
significant cuts to their operations. Near the U.S.-Mexico
border, fourth-generation farmer Amanda Brooks grows broccoli,
lettuce, dates, citrus and alfalfa on 6,000 acres. Her family’s
farm in Yuma, Arizona, nearly touches the banks of the troubled
river. … Last year, a top government official warned
Congress the river was running dangerously low. Speaking before
a Senate committee, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille
Touton said the seven Colorado River Basin would need to make
drastic cuts to their water use to keep the reservoirs stable.
California’s reservoirs may be as full as they’ve been in years
thanks to recent rainfall, but it’s still not enough water to
meet the state’s demands — and it will never be if the state
doesn’t invest in new ways to capture all that precious water.
Not enough of the state’s heavy rainfall is draining into
California’s underground reservoirs to keep us sated, even
through the next summer. January saw torrential downpours.
February has been dry. This week, California will see a blanket
of snow across much of the state, and some forecasters predict
it will even reach coastal communities such as Eureka. -Written by Robin Epley, opinion writer for The
Sacramento Bee.
If the Colorado River continues to dwindle from the same arid
trend of the last two decades, it could take as little as two
bad drought years to drive the reservoir here on the
Arizona-Nevada border to “dead pool.” That’s the term for
levels so low that water can barely flow out of Hoover Dam.
Mead is already just 29 percent full, its lowest level since it
began filling in the 1930s. But dead pool would be a true
disaster for farms, towns and cities from San Diego to Denver
that depend on water from Mead and other reservoirs in the
Colorado River Basin. Lake Powell, upstream on the Arizona-Utah
border, is 23 percent full, the lowest since it filled in the
1960s. -Written by John Fleck, co-author of “Science Be
Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado
River.”
Life in the southwestern U.S. as we know it exists thanks to
the water of the Colorado River, which flows for approximately
1,450 miles from the Rockies to the Gulf of California. The
river gets its water from the Colorado River drainage basin,
which spreads some 246,000 square miles. A drainage basin is an
area where all precipitation flows to the same river, or set of
streams. The Colorado River basin is made up of all of
Arizona, parts of California, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah,
Nevada, and Wyoming, and two Mexican states—Baja California and
Sonora—although the final two states contribute little runoff
to the river.
Two huge dam projects are being planned in Santa Clara County
at a price tag in the billions. The Biden administration has
decided to help fund one of them but — at least for now — not
the other. At a news conference scheduled for Thursday, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to announce it has
approved $727 million in low-interest loans to the Santa Clara
Valley Water District to help fund the rebuilding of Anderson
Dam near Morgan Hill. The largest reservoir in Santa Clara
County, Anderson has been drained for earthquake repairs since
2020, exacerbating Silicon Valley’s water shortages. Federal
dam safety officials were concerned that its 240-foot earthen
dam, built in 1950, could fail in an earthquake. But the water
district also asked the EPA for twice as much in other
low-interest loans — $1.45 billion — to help fund construction
of a huge new dam near Pacheco Pass and Henry W. Coe State
Park.
California farms and cities that get their water from the
Central Valley Project are due to receive a large increase in
water allocations this year after snowpack and reservoirs were
replenished in winter storms, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
announced Wednesday. Most recipients of the Central Valley
Projects are irrigation districts that supply farms, and some
are cities, including those served by the East Bay Municipal
Utility District and Contra Costa Water District in the Bay
Area. Farms that received zero initial water allocations last
year, in the third year of the state’s historic drought, are
due to receive 35% of their allocation this year, the most
they’ve gotten since 2019. Others, including the
Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, large shareholders
with senior water rights, will receive 100% of their contracted
water supply.
After another big storm this week we will see much of the
rainwater flowing out to the ocean instead of being captured
for use. Los Angeles County officials say saving more of this
water will be key for dealing with drought. … Wednesday, the
county broke ground on a new project at Adventure Park in
Whittier. It is building a 6-million gallon underground storage
system that will capture stormwater. … The county has
been working for decades to capture stormwater. The San Gabriel
River has a series of rubber dams that can be inflated when
needed to hold the water. The water is then released slowly
where it seeps into the ground. With projects like this
one the county says in the next five years it will capture 18
billion gallons of water. That’s enough for 500,000 people for
a year.
California’s water board decided Tuesday to temporarily allow
more storage in Central Valley reservoirs, waiving state rules
that require water to be released to protect salmon and other
endangered fish. The waiver means more water can be sent to the
cities and growers that receive supplies from the San
Joaquin-Sacramento Delta through the State Water Project and
the federal Central Valley Project. The state aqueduct delivers
water to 27 million people, mostly in Southern California, and
750,000 acres of farmland, while the Central Valley Project
mostly serves farms. The flow rules will remain suspended until
March 31. Environmentalists reacted with frustration and
concern that the move will jeopardize chinook salmon and other
native fish in the Delta that are already struggling to
survive…. But water suppliers applauded the decision,
saying the water is needed to help provide enough water to
cities and farms.
Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times article, “LA’s new water war:
Keeping supply from Mono Lake flowing as critics want it cut
off,” on the State Water Board’s Mono Lake workshop left
readers and workshop attendees, well … wondering. Print
space and attention spans are always tight, but the article
missed information key to understanding the issue at Mono
Lake, the diversity of voices calling Mono Lake protection, and
the water supply solutions that are right at hand for Los
Angeles. The State Water Board’s five-hour
workshop was attended by 365 people, and 49 of the 53
public commenters spoke in support of raising Mono Lake.
You see them all over the San Joaquin Valley: Sparkling new
housing developments promising luxury living outside the big
cities. But a recent investigation from our non-profit
reporting partners shows the risks of building communities in
areas with unreliable access to drinking water. Back in the
1980s, county officials knew the risks of building homes in the
Mira Bella development near Millerton Lake in the foothills of
Fresno County, but they greenlit the project anyway—and now
residents and taxpayers are paying the price. In this
interview, KVPR’s Kerry Klein talks with the reporters who
produced this story, Jesse Vad of SJV Water and Gregory Weaver
of Fresnoland, about the lengths Mira Bella residents are going
to to solve their water problems, and what it demonstrates
about who does and does not have access to drinking water in
California.
Only weeks after a series of atmospheric rivers deluged
California, the state is once again bracing for powerful winter
weather that could deliver heaps of rain and snow, including
fresh powder at elevations as low as 1,500 feet. But as
worsening climate extremes and water supply challenges continue
to bedevil the state, officials cautioned residents Tuesday not
to assume that the recent moisture signaled an end to the
drought. The entire state remains under a drought emergency
declaration that Gov. Gavin Newsom issued in 2021, with
millions of residents still under strict watering restrictions.
From leaving some farmland fallow, to pressuring cities to
conserve more water, Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, a
Democrat, says everything should be on the table to use
Colorado River water more efficiently and help it sustain life
in the southwestern U.S. for years to come. Hickenlooper
is helping convene a group of senators to try to broker a
compromise to conserve Colorado River water. The Colorado River
Compact was signed in 1922 and established how much water seven
states, dozens of tribes, and Mexico can use. But between
overuse and a mega drought that has lasted longer than 20
years, the southwest is dangerously close to not being able to
get water where it needs to go.
Downpours or drought, California’s farm belt will need to
tighten up in the next two decades and grow fewer crops. There
simply won’t be enough water to sustain present irrigation in
the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater is dangerously depleted.
Wells are drying up and the land is sinking in many places,
cracking canals. Surface water supplies have been cut back
because of drought, and future deliveries are uncertain due to
climate change and environmental
regulations. … Agriculture is water intensive. And
water is becoming increasingly worrisome in the West,
particularly with overuse of the Colorado River. There’s plenty
of water off our coast, but we’ve only begun to dip our toe
into desalination. -Written by columnist George Skelton.
When Bay Area residents wake up later this week and get a look
outside, they might wonder if they’ve been transported many
degrees north, with snow from an unusually cold and windy
winter storm possibly carpeting the region’s major peaks and
even reaching hills as low as 1,000 feet. “Nearly (the)
entire population of CA will be able to see snow from some
vantage point later this week if they look in the right
direction,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the
University of California, tweeted Monday. “While snow remains
very unlikely in California’s major cities, it’ll fall quite
nearby.”
After three of the driest years in California history, recent
storms brought some of the wettest and snowiest weeks on record
to parts of the state. Snowpack accumulated during winter is
vital to the state’s water system because the natural form of
water storage melts during the spring and fills reservoirs that
can then distribute water downstream where needed. The
Sierra Nevada snowpack supplies about 30% of California’s water
needs when it melts. How fast that happens can greatly impact
the state’s water supply system.
Winter storms have filled California’s reservoirs and built up
a colossal Sierra snowpack that’s nearly twice its normal size
for this time of year. But years of dry conditions have created
problems far beneath the Earth’s surface that aren’t as easily
addressed. Groundwater — found in underground layers containing
sand, soil and rock — is crucial for drinking water and
sustaining farms. During drought years, 60% of California’s
annual water supply comes from groundwater. … The chart
below shows how water on the surface and underground have
changed over the years in California’s Central Valley — an
agricultural hub that has seen some of the state’s most
pressing issues related to groundwater. Compared with 2004, the
amount of water on and below the ground in 2022 has dropped by
nearly 55 cubic kilometers.
Maybe cooler heads will prevail in Rio Verde Foothills, after
all. For weeks, Arizona has taken a beating in the national
press over about 500 homes in this unincorporated community
that had lost access to hauled water from neighboring
Scottsdale. Those headlines turned Rio Verde Foothills into a
political football as elected officials publicly blamed each
other for some residents’ dry taps. But behind the scenes, work
was happening on middle ground to help these homeowners without
tying up any of Scottsdale’s existing water resources. -Written by columnist Joanna Allhands.
After a mostly dry February, California may see a return of
stormy weather over the next week — a welcome addition to a
snowpack that will bring some relief to the historic
drought. The Western Regional Climate Center reported
Thursday that despite a relatively slow February for snowfall,
a deep snowpack that began accumulating during three weeks of
relentless storms last month has grown stronger in California
and the Great Basin. … The updated
report shows that most of California’s snowpack sites are
now measuring above 150% of the 1991-2020 median for snowpack
levels. This follows a trend the California Department of Water
Resources reported two weeks ago — that statewide snowpack is
at 205% of average, thanks to a winter that is outpacing the
wettest year on record going back to 1982 and boosting
reservoir levels to 9 million acre-feet statewide.
As January’s drenching storms have given way to an unseasonably
dry February, Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking to waive
environmental rules in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
in an effort to store more water in reservoirs — a move that is
drawing heated criticism from environmental advocates who say
the action will imperil struggling fish populations. …The
agencies are requesting an easing of requirements that would
otherwise mandate larger flows through the estuary. The aim is
to hold back more water in Lake Oroville while also continuing
to pump water to reservoirs south of the delta that supply
farmlands as well as Southern California cities that are
dealing with the ongoing shortage of supplies from the
shrinking Colorado River.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
Climate change has contributed to dramatic weather events. With
severe flooding and drought happening across the nation, the
U.S. needs a national water strategy to manage outdated
infrastructure and technology, according to a presentation at
the most recent MIT Water Summit. … In his presentation
at the summit, [Aaron Mandell, founder and CEO of Wacomet
Water] detailed three areas of concern a Department of
Water could coordinate at the federal level. Mandell is an
advocate for desalination, a technological process that removes
minerals from saline water to make it drinkable. The
ability to generate potable water on a large scale through this
process would represent “an incredible domestic resource” that
could help create economic stability.
Affordability and water are the most pressing concerns in the
Mountain West, according to the annual Conservation in the West
poll released Wednesday. By the numbers: 78% of residents in
eight Mountain West states rank cost of living and gas prices
as the most serious concerns, the Colorado College survey
found. Drought, river levels and water supplies rounded out the
top five issues among the 14 polled. All counted as top
concerns for at least 60% of registered voters. Why it matters:
The elevated worries — an important benchmark for policymakers
— show the Western way of life is at risk as inflation and
climate change erode dreams of finding new lives in wide-open
spaces.
To walk on to the Great Salt Lake, the largest salt lake in the
western hemisphere which faces the astounding prospect of
disappearing just five years from now, is to trudge across
expanses of sand and mud, streaked with ice and desiccated
aquatic life, where just a short time ago you would be wading
in waist-deep water. … The terror comes from toxins laced in
the vast exposed lake bed, such as arsenic, mercury and lead,
being picked up by the wind to form poisonous clouds of dust
that would swamp the lungs of people in nearby Salt Lake City,
where air pollution is often already worse than that of Los
Angeles, potentially provoking a myriad of respiratory and
cancer-related problems. … [T]he Great Salt Lake is
being parched by an antediluvian network of water rights for
agriculture rather than thirsty newcomers. About three-quarters
of the diverted water goes to growing crops, with the growing
of alfalfa …
California authorities face renewed pressure to preserve the
valuable salty waters of the Mono Lake — as despite recent
rainfall, a historic drought and demands from the Los Angeles
area have depleted it. In a workshop Wednesday, the state Water
Resources Control Board discussed Mono Lake’s current
conditions amid the impacts of severe drought and ongoing
diversions. Mono Lake is an ancient, naturally saline lake at
the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada, with a surface area of
70 square miles. It is fed by several rivers and hosts a unique
ecosystem and critical habitat for millions of migratory birds.
That includes California gulls, whose nesting population on
lake islands has steadily declined for the last 40 years due to
low water levels, increasing coyote populations and human
interference.
Ever since the late December and January deluge, California has
been pretty dry. Since the beginning of February,
Sacramento Executive Airport has recorded 0.56″ of rain. The
relatively dry weather since mid-January allowed the state to
dry out and lowered flood risk, but another storm cycle heading
into the dry season would be incredibly beneficial in terms of
breaking out of drought. …There are some signals that a
negative Pacific North American (PNA) pattern may set up
towards the end of the month and into March. This would set the
stage for potentially more rain and heavy snow producing storms
but it’s still too far out to tell specific impacts.
Water levels in Lake Powell dropped to a new record low on
Tuesday. The nation’s second-largest reservoir is under
pressure from climate change and steady demand, and is now the
lowest it’s been since it was first filled in the 1960s. Water
levels fell to 3,522.16 feet above sea level, just below the
previous record set in April 2022. The reservoir is currently
about 22% full, and is expected to keep declining until around
May, when mountain snowmelt will rush into the streams that
flow downstream to Powell. Powell, which straddles the
border of Utah and Arizona, is fed by the Colorado River.
Warming temperatures and abnormally dry conditions have cut
into the river’s supplies, and the seven states that use its
water have struggled to reduce demand.
South Coast Water District plans to decrease its reliance on
imported water by creating a local, reliable, drought-proof
supply through the Doheny Ocean Desalination Project. The
project would also provide emergency water should the delivery
of imported water be disrupted by earthquakes or other natural
disasters. … The project has been approved by the
California Coastal Commission and the State Lands Commission.
The desalination plant will use subsurface slant wells to draw
seawater in from beneath the ocean floor and pump it to the
treatment facility, where it will undergo reverse osmosis and
disinfection to produce clean drinking water.
Weeks after powerful storms dumped 32 trillion gallons of rain
and snow on California, state officials and environmental
groups in the drought-ravaged state are grappling with what to
do with all of that water. State rules say when it rains and
snows a lot in California, much of that water must stay in the
rivers to act as a conveyer belt to carry tens of thousands of
endangered baby salmon into the Pacific Ocean. But this week,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked state regulators to
temporarily change those rules. He says the drought has been so
severe it would be foolish to let all of that water flow into
the ocean and that there’s plenty of water for the state to
take more than the rules allow while still protecting
threatened fish species.
As climate whiplash grips California and much of the West,
water challenges intensify. Our Water
101 Workshop on Feb. 23 in Sacramento is
your once-a-year opportunity to gain a foundational
understanding of water in the state and learn more about the
impacts of changing hydrology. Registration closes this
Friday.
Also, registration is now open for our two spring water
tours, the Central Valley Tour April 26-28 and
Bay-Delta Tour May 17-19.
With a much improved rainfall season and snowpack — at least
for one year — the water allocation outlook for the area
appears to be looking much better than in past years. The
federal Bureau of Reclamation has stated it’s requesting a 100
percent water allocation locally for Class 1 Friant
contractors. In addition is stated it plans to request a 20
percent allocation for Class 2 contractors. That’s much higher
than in recent years. Last year Class I contractors ended up
with a water allocation of 30 percent of normally after
originally receiving a water allocation of 15 percent. And that
30 percent was higher than in years before as the state
continued to go through a drought. The 20 percent for Class 2
contractors is also new as 0 percent allocation has been the
norm for Class 2 contractors in recent years.
There’s likely to be a change in the cost of beef at the
grocery store. That’s because historic drought and other
factors are pressuring producers across the country to reduce
their cattle counts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture
reported a 3% drop in the country’s cattle and calves inventory
as of Jan. 1. The number of beef cows –which amounts to about a
third of all cattle and calves in the U.S. – was down 4%, the
smallest count in more than 60 years. Most states in the
Mountain West saw declines that were slightly less than the
national average. Except for Utah, that is, which had a 6.3%
drop in its total number of cattle and calves compared to 2021.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent the day in his Central
California home district speaking to farmers, police
departments and leaders from Valley cities. It’s the first time
he’s been back in Fresno County for a formal visit since being
elected to represent the area in the new 22nd district.
… Later in the afternoon, the Speaker traveled to
Clovis. Among the issues discussed when meeting with leaders
and agencies from Fresno County and the cities of Fresno and
Clovis–California’s water Crisis. The Speaker pointed to
bi-partisan legislation in past years intended to store water
when big storms hit. He blamed Governor Gavin Newsom for the
water that slipped away after the big storms earlier this year.
Patrick O’Toole, whose family operates a sheep and cattle ranch
on the Wyoming-Colorado border, was interviewed last month in
Las Vegas, where he expressed the concerns that many farmers
and ranchers have regarding unchecked urban growth in cities
that rely on Colorado River water. … A recent Rasmussen
Reports poll confirms that over 1,000 residents polled in
Colorado also don’t want sprawl, and don’t think ag water
should be transported to support that sprawl. Notably, 76%
believe it is “very important” to protect U.S. farmland from
development, so the United States is able to produce enough
food to feed its own human population in the future.
… Still, some urban water agencies and their supporters
want to limit agricultural deliveries in the Colorado River
Basin. -Written by Dan Keppen, executive director of
Family Farm Alliance.
Senators from the seven Western states that use water from the
Colorado River have been convening to discuss its future. John
Hickenlooper, a Democrat from Colorado, spearheaded the caucus
and said the group has been meeting for “about a year,” though
news of its existence only recently became public. The caucus
meets as a growing supply-demand imbalance threatens the water
supply for 40 million people in the Southwest and a
multibillion-dollar agricultural industry. Climate change has
shrunk the amount of water in the Colorado River’s largest
reservoirs, and states have struggled to agree on plans to
reduce demand. The federal government has historically left
water management decisions to the states, but has expanded its
role in recent years.
Facing an onslaught of criticism that water was “wasted” during
January storms, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday suspended
environmental laws to give the go-ahead to state officials to
hold more water in reservoirs. The governor’s executive order
authorized the State Water Resources Control Board to “consider
modifying” state requirements that dictate how much water in
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is allowed to flow into San
Francisco Bay. In January, after floodwaters surged into
the bay, farm groups, Central Valley legislators and urban
water providers complained that people and farms were being
short-changed to protect fish. … Environmental activists say
Newsom’s order is another sign that California is shifting
priorities in how it manages water supply for humans and
ecosystems.
Upper Colorado River Basin states have a new $125 million pot
to rent and dry agricultural land and keep more water in the
drought-plagued waterway, in a major expansion of a previous
conservation pilot announced by the Biden administration’s
Bureau of Reclamation. Colorado politicians called the new
funding key to the state’s ability to make its share of
emergency water use cuts ordered by federal officials who are
scrambling to keep enough water in the major basin reservoirs,
Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and meet minimum allocations to
Lower Basin states. About 40 million people rely on Colorado
River water. The system pilot pays farmers, ranchers
and other river users, potentially including municipal or
industrial consumers, for temporary and voluntary use of their
valuable water rights.
For decades, Californians have depended on the reliable
appearance of spring and summer snowmelt to provide nearly a
third of the state’s supply of water. But as the state gets
drier, and as wildfires climb to ever-higher elevations, that
precious snow is melting faster and earlier than in years past
— even in the middle of winter. That’s posing a threat to the
timing and availability of water in California, according to
authors of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research
Letters, which found that the effects of climate change are
compounding to accelerate snowpack decline. … There
are several systems at work to create this unwanted effect,
including climate change, forest management practices and
worsening drought and wildfires. In 2020 and 2021, the state
saw a nearly tenfold increase in wildfire activity in snowy
places compared with the years 2001-19, according to the study.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order on
Monday to safeguard his state’s water supplies from the effects
of extreme weather. The order will help expand
California’s capacity to capture storm runoff during
wet years by accelerating groundwater recharge projects,
according to the governor’s office. While a string of
storms earlier this winter resulted in California’s wettest
three weeks on record, the Golden State is already experiencing
an unseasonably dry February, according to Newsom’s
order…. In addition, the order directs state agencies to
provide recommendations on California’s drought response by the
end of April — including provisions that may no longer be
necessary.
It may not be the most pleasant thought, but the wastewater
that flows through the Tapia Water Reclamation Facility in
Agoura Hills could one day come out of your faucet. “We’re
taking the water that we would normally discharge into Malibu
Creek and we’re going to create a local drinking supply out of
this,” said Michael McNutt with the Las Virgenes Municipal
Water District. It’s called the Pure Water Project and in a
race against climate change, McNutt says the region must create
additional sources for a clean water supply, one that is more
resilient to drought. Currently, the district says it solely
relies on the State Water Project. … To showcase the
technology, the district has set up a $4 million demo facility
on its campus to pilot the process and educate the
public.
Agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley may be able to blunt a
sharp decline in the years ahead if policymakers and the
industry can come together on a series of strategies for
reducing demand for irrigation while also increasing
water supply, according to a new assessment from a
prominent policy organization. The report this month from the
Public Policy Institute of California examined the biggest
challenge confronting the state’s ag industry — a
one-fifth decline in annual water supply expected by 2040
because of groundwater sustainability measures and climate
change — then recommended softening the impact by
loosening water-trading rules, incentivizing farmland reuse and
investing in storage, including groundwater recharge.
It may feel like California is flush with water at the moment,
after a winter of historic storms that replenished
drought-starved lakes and left the Sierra Nevada
snowpack at the deepest it’s been in 28 years. But follow
the Colorado River, which supplies 15% of
California’s water, back to bottomed-out reservoirs like
Nevada’s Lake Mead, and it becomes clear the future of water in
the Golden State is still very much in flux. After decades
of drought and overuse, the Colorado River system is on the
verge of collapse. To prevent that, every state that draws
water from the river must significantly cut back on what it
takes in the coming years. How much that affects California,
which receives by far the largest portion of any state, will
depend on how we fare in a battle now being waged between
states, Native American tribes, agricultural giants and the
federal government.
In the wake of the deluge of rain that battered California at
the start of the year, many of the state’s most important
reservoirs and lakes have seen water levels rise. The increase
in water levels between last fall and now at two key California
reservoirs—Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta—can be seen clearly in
photographs taken from space by NASA’s Operational Land Imager
(OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite and by the OLI-2 sensor on
Landsat 9. … As of January 29, 2023, when the most
recent picture was taken, Lake Shasta’s water levels stood
at 986.93 feet above sea level, according to the California
Department of Water Resources, amounting to around 56 percent
of its capacity, and 87 percent of the average water levels for
this time of year. On November 18, when the first picture was
taken, the lake’s water levels were measured at 917.95 feet
above sea level, around 31 percent of the lake’s capacity.
Deep underneath the sodden soils and the berms of snow that now
coat California, fuels for fire are waiting to sprout. Grasses
and other quick-growing vegetation, spurred by the downpours
that saturated the state at the start of the year, quickly turn
to kindling as the weather warms. … While experts say it’s
still too early to predict what’s in store for the months ahead
and if weather conditions will align to help infernos ignite,
it’s clear the rains that hammered California this winter came
as a mixed blessing, delivering badly-needed relief while
posing new risks. Along with seeding the tinder of tomorrow,
the inclement weather hampered efforts to perform essential
landscape treatments needed to mitigate the risks of
catastrophic fire. … The cold, rainy conditions also
helped forests recover from the drought, which will make them
more burn-resistant. Water tables are looking far better and
bug species that wreak havoc on vulnerable trees are being
better kept at bay.
Representative Josh Harder (CA-9) on Thursday, Feb. 9
reintroduced his Stop the Delta Tunnel Act which prohibits the
Army Corps of Engineers from issuing a federal permit necessary
for the State of California to build the Delta Conveyance
Project, commonly known as the Delta Tunnel. The Delta Tunnel
would ship water from the Central Valley south and would cost
taxpayers $16 billion. The project was first proposed more than
60 years ago. Rep. Harder is a longtime opponent of the Delta
Tunnel project, first voicing his opposition in 2018. The bill
is cosponsored by Reps. Garamendi, DeSaulnier, and Thompson.
California is well acquainted with transformative construction:
think Oroville Dam, the Bay Bridge and the Arroyo Seco Parkway
(also known as the Pasadena Freeway). The state is once
again in charge of the nation’s biggest public works project, a
171-mile high-speed rail line between Bakersfield and Merced –
the “starter” portion of the long-sought bullet train linking
Los Angeles and San Francisco. … Instead of spending an
additional $100 billion or more to drill rail tunnels through
seismically active mountains and disrupt communities, the state
should embark on a massive public works effort to meet its
water needs. Advances in stormwater capture and recycling hold
great promise. Los Angeles could meet 70% of its water
needs locally by 2035 if enough investment is made in
recycling and cleaning up its groundwater basins. -Written by Dana Goldman, dean of the Sol Price
School of Public Policy at USC; and Alain Enthoven, an
economics professor emeritus at Stanford
University.
The first week of February brought only modest amounts of rain
and snow but despite that, California’s snowpack and many of
the state’s largest reservoirs are in good shape. According to
data tracked by California’s Department of Water Resources, the
statewide snowpack is at 135% of the average peak. Typically
the snowpack peaks in late March to early April. … As of
midday Thursday, Lake Shasta is at 58% of capacity, which is
86% of the average for this date. Lake Oroville is at 67% of
capacity. That is 113% of the average for today’s date. Shasta
and Oroville are the two largest surface water storage
facilities in the state. Water storage will gradually increase
at both sites in the coming weeks and months as the Sierra
snowpack melts off.
“Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting” is an
aphorism attributed, albeit erroneously, to Mark Twain.
Whatever its source, it accurately describes California’s
decades-long conflicts over this existential liquid. From
19th-century battles between farmers and hydraulic gold miners
over debris polluting rivers to 21st-century political duels
over spawning salmon, Californians have squabbled incessantly
over how water should be captured, allocated, conveyed and
priced. The battles are growing more intense as climate change
widens the gap between supply and demand. Thus, the search for
a grand compromise that would satisfy the three major water
interest blocs — farmers, municipal users and advocates for
fish and other wildlife — has become increasingly
difficult. -Written by columnist Dan Walters.
The Klamath National Forest says today the snowpack across the
Forest is more than the normal average for its February 1 snow
survey results. The Klamath National Forest (KNF) says today it
has completed its February 1 snow surveys as part of
California’s Cooperative Snow Survey program, which helps the
State forecast the quantity of water available for agriculture,
power generation, recreation, and stream flow releases later in
the year. … KNF says measurements for the February 1
survey show the Forest’s snowpack is at 125% of the historic
average snow height (snow depth) and at 129% of the historic
average Snow Water Equivalent (SWE, a measure of water content)
across all survey points (see result table). Historically,
snowpack reaches its annual maximum by late-March/early-April.
A grinning fisherman often needs two hands to hold a massive
lake trout on a sunny day at the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which
straddles the Wyoming-Utah border. Jim Williams has been a
guide here for more than 30 years, and said some of the best
trophy fish in the Rockies call these waters home. … But
this habitat has seen some drastic changes in a short amount of
time. In the past two years, the reservoir has dropped to
its lowest level since the 1980s. Marinas and river
channels are running dry. … One of Flaming Gorge’s
primary uses is storage for the rest of the Colorado River
Basin. The Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees federal water
management, released an extra 500,000 acre feet of
water from the reservoir last year.
The mega-quakes in Turkey this week showcase how a magnitude
7.8 quake could trigger a magnitude 7.5 aftershock on a
different fault, with 60 miles of distance between the
epicenters. A similar seismic scenario could occur in
California. … In a U.S. Geological
Survey report published in 2008 detailing a
hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California,
scientists said a plausible aftershock scenario included a
magnitude 6.95 quake that would shake Sacramento and Modesto
three days after the mainshock, endangering the stability of
the levees, which are crucial for maintaining flood control and
water movement from the northern Sierra Nevada to cities across
the state.
The Delta Tunnel — a $16 billion 45-mile long, 40-foot tall
“straw” designed to siphon off water for Southern California
urban areas before it enters the Delta — is winding down its
environmental document comment period. The tunnel would
directly impact the water security of almost 2 million Northern
San Joaquin Valley residents, countless farmers and imperil
Delta ecological systems.
The San Joaquin Valley produces more than half of the state’s
agricultural output, and it is an important contributor to the
nation’s food supply. In terms of revenues, Fresno, Kern, and
Tulare Counties are the nation’s top three agricultural
counties. In 2018, about 4.5 million acres of cropland were
irrigated in the region, using 16.1 million acre-feet (maf) of
water. The valley is also home to significant dairy and beef
industries. Farming and related industries play an outsized
role in the San Joaquin Valley’s economy, accounting for 14
percent of GDP, 17 percent of employment, and 19 percent of
revenues. Valley agriculture employs around 340,000 people; its
crops produce more than $24 billion in revenues … Ensuring
the economic and environmental sustainability of San Joaquin
Valley agriculture is key for the region’s wellbeing, but this
sector faces a future with less water for irrigation—an
essential input.
Much of the Colorado River’s water is diverted from reservoirs
and transported in canals to the farmlands and cities of the
desert Southwest. But some of the water also ends up going
elsewhere — vanishing into thin air. Water lost to evaporation
has become a central point of contention in the disagreement
between California and six other states over how to divide
reductions in water use. A proposal submitted by Arizona,
Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming calls for
relying heavily on counting evaporation and other water losses
from reservoirs and along the river in the Lower Basin — the
portion of the watershed that begins near the Grand Canyon and
stretches to northern Mexico.
A high-end housing development in the foothills above Fresno
that was approved despite unreliable groundwater supplies is
now getting a $4.2 million taxpayer bailout to bring in surface
water that may, or may not, materialize. The gated Mira Bella
community, with its $800,000 Mediterranean-style homes near the
shimmering waters of Millerton Lake, lives up to its name – it
looks beautiful. Its beauty faded quickly for homeowners,
however, after they learned they were responsible for fixing
failing wells and a dilapidated distribution system. The
situation went from bad to worse as it became clear drilling
deeper, or new wells, into the rocky formation beneath Mira
Bella wasn’t an option. Then drought hit and one of the
community’s wells collapsed.
One of the Colorado River’s two major reservoirs is expected to
collect better than average runoff this year, thanks to an
unusually wet La Niña pattern that dropped a deluge of snow up
and down the basin. Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest
reservoir that sits on the border of Utah and Arizona, is
expected to receive 117 percent of its average inflows as the
heavy snowpack melts in the western Rockies during the
all-important April through July time frame, said Cody Mosier,
a hydrologist with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
Snowfall in recent months has brought snowpack levels across
much of the Upper Colorado River Basin to roughly 139 percent
of the region’s 30-year-average … Part of the rosier outlook
for the river is an improvement in soil moisture conditions,
Mosier said. Lower soil moisture conditions across the basin
have made runoff far less efficient over the last two years.
A multistate quest to protect a dwindling Colorado River has
devolved into a high-stakes battle pitting California against
its neighbors. At odds are two dueling proposals as to how
seven states should apportion critical consumption cuts that
could help save the lifeblood of the Western United
States. Despite engaging in months of negotiations, the
states failed to produce a unified agreement by the Jan. 31
deadline stipulated by the Federal Bureau of
Reclamation. Instead, they offered two competing
proposals: one from California and one from the six other basin
states. “There need to be some long-term solutions here to
reduce water supply, and there’s a lot of money to do it,”
David Hayes, a former climate policy adviser to President
Biden, told The Hill.
While it is touted as a crucial ‘clean energy’ source, a major
expansion of hydrogen production would significantly exacerbate
water shortages – a particular concern in states grappling with
long-term droughts. New research from Food & Water Watch
projects that the Department of Energy’s vision for producing
50 million metric tons (MMT) of hydrogen annually by 2050 could
require up to one trillion gallons of freshwater every
year. As of 2020, about 10 MMT of hydrogen was being
produced – the vast majority of it using natural gas (‘gray’
hydrogen). The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
projects that by 2050 more than two-thirds will come from
renewable energy sources.
The city of Ukiah has received a $53.7 million grant to expand
its water recycling project across multiple schools and parks,
enabling the city to offset 50% of its average water use with
treated wastewater by fall of 2024. Ukiah’s program falls under
an overall goal by the State Water Resources Control Board to
increase California’s use of recycled water, which according to
the Volumetric Annual Report of Wastewater and Recycled Water
stood at 731,586 acre-feet per year (afy) in 2021. Ukiah’s
multimillion dollar grant and others like it aim to support
dramatic capacity increases, with a goal of reaching 2.5
million afy of recycled water by 2030. … Elsewhere in
California, cities are taking on unprecedented water recycling
infrastructure …
California’s mountain snowpack is the largest it’s been in
decades, thanks to a barrage of atmospheric rivers in late
December into January. The snow is a boon for the state’s water
supply but could also pose a flood risk as the season
progresses. Measurements completed last week show that Sierra
Nevada snow water content is rivaling or outpacing the 1982-83
season, the biggest snow year in the past 40 years. Up to two
feet of additional snow fell on the region this weekend.
… Statewide snowpack is double the norm for the time of
year. Some locations with longer records are ranking in the top
3 for early February snow since the 1940s and ’50s, according
to [Desert Research Institute's
Benjamin] Hatchett. Most important, at least a full
season’s worth of snow has fallen so far across the Sierra, and
more storms could arrive in February and March.
As of Saturday, seven months into the 2022-23 rain season, San
Francisco had received a full season’s worth of rainfall,
according to meteorologists. A quarter of an inch that fell in
the morning and early afternoon on Saturday put San Francisco
over the top by 2 p.m.: It brought the total precipitation
during the current rainfall season — July 1 to June 30 — up to
22.89 inches, according to meteorologist Jan Null of Golden
Gate Weather Services. “This equals their full season
(July-June) normal,” he tweeted. For comparison, downtown
San Francisco normally gets 12.87 inches of precipitation from
July 1 to Jan. 30, Null tweeted.
Santa Barbara’s available water supplies are sufficient to meet
demands for at least the next three years, according to city
officials. That conclusion is part of an analysis included in
an overview of the city’s water supplies to be presented by
staff to the City Council today. After the water supply update,
council members will be asked to approve and adopt the city’s
Water Supply Management Report for the 2022 Water Year, finding
that Santa Barbara’s water supplies are in long-term balance
with the city’s Enhanced Urban Water Management Plan.
Deep below the Mojave Desert is liquid gold — trillions of
gallons of water in an underground aquifer stretching hundreds
of square miles on either side of Interstate 40. It’s been
there for thousands of years, but only a tiny bit of it is
actually tapped and harvested. So it could be a way to ease
some of California’s water woes. Private companies are trying
to do just that, but they’re running into obstacles from
conservationists who question the ethics of it, and Native
tribes who have a spiritual connection to water in this region.
… Cadiz, Inc. is leading the effort to tap the aquifer, and
they’re creating one pipeline that will connect to the Colorado
River, and another that will go through central valley
communities that don’t currently have access to
water. Meanwhile, they’re emphasizing that they’re a water
storage company.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
The three-year span, 2019 to 2022, was officially the driest ever
statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. But that most recent period of overall drought
also saw big swings from very wet to very dry stretches such
as the 2021-2022 water year that went from a relatively
wet Oct.-Dec. beginning to the driest Jan.-March period in the
state’s history.
With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into the
winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for California
or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new reality of
climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our reliance on
historical patterns to forecast California’s water supply?
Participants found out what efforts are being made to
improve sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) precipitation
forecasting for California and the Colorado River Basin at our
one-day Winter Outlook Workshop December
8 in Irvine, CA.
Beckman Center
Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Managers of California’s most
overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s
landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable,
detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered
basins into balance. It was a task that required more than 250
newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the
drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather
data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on
multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a
groundwater basin.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
As California slowly emerges from
the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, one remnant left behind by
the statewide lockdown offers a sobering reminder of the economic
challenges still ahead for millions of the state’s residents and
the water agencies that serve them – a mountain of water debt.
Water affordability concerns, long an issue in a state where
millions of people struggle to make ends meet, jumped into
overdrive last year as the pandemic wrenched the economy. Jobs
were lost and household finances were upended. Even with federal
stimulus aid and unemployment checks, bills fell by the wayside.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
This beautifully illustrated 24×36-inch poster, suitable for
framing and display in any office or classroom, highlights the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, its place as a center of
farming, its importance as an ecological resource and its
vital role in California’s water supply system.
The text, photos and graphics explain issues related to land
subsidence, levees and flooding, urbanization, farming, fish and
wildlife protection. An inset map illustrates the tidal action
that increases the salinity of the Delta’s waterways.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water
supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the
numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another
drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most
of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project
will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low
number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more
rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather
forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing. The National
Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and
windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.
Members of the 2020 Water Leaders class examined how
to adapt water management to climate change. Read their
policy recommendations in the class report, Adapting
California Water Management to Climate Change: Charting a Path
Forward, to learn more.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Radically transformed from its ancient origin as a vast tidal-influenced freshwater marsh, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem is in constant flux, influenced by factors within the estuary itself and the massive watersheds that drain though it into the Pacific Ocean.
Lately, however, scientists say the rate of change has kicked into overdrive, fueled in part by climate change, and is limiting the ability of science and Delta water managers to keep up. The rapid pace of upheaval demands a new way of conducting science and managing water in the troubled estuary.
Colorado is home to the headwaters
of the Colorado River and the water policy decisions made in the
Centennial State reverberate throughout the river’s sprawling
basin that stretches south to Mexico. The stakes are huge in a
basin that serves 40 million people, and responding to the water
needs of the economy, productive agriculture, a robust
recreational industry and environmental protection takes
expertise, leadership and a steady hand.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Our Water 101 Workshop, one of our most popular events, offered attendees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of California’s water history, laws, geography and politics.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the state, the workshop was held as an engaging online event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday, April 23.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
Members of the 2019 Water Leaders class examined the
emerging issue of wildfire impacts on California’s water
supply and quality. Read their policy recommendations in the
class report, Fire and Water: An Emerging Nexus in
California, to learn more.
Many of California’s watersheds are
notoriously flashy – swerving from below-average flows to jarring
flood conditions in quick order. The state needs all the water it
can get from storms, but current flood management guidelines are
strict and unyielding, requiring reservoirs to dump water each
winter to make space for flood flows that may not come.
However, new tools and operating methods are emerging that could
lead the way to a redefined system that improves both water
supply and flood protection capabilities.
It’s been a year since two devastating wildfires on opposite ends
of California underscored the harsh new realities facing water
districts and cities serving communities in or adjacent to the
state’s fire-prone wildlands. Fire doesn’t just level homes, it
can contaminate water, scorch watersheds, damage delivery systems
and upend an agency’s finances.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
The Water Education Foundation’s Water 101 Workshop, one of our most popular events, offered attendees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of California’s water history, laws, geography and politics.
Taught by some of the leading policy and legal experts in the state, the one-day workshop held on Feb. 20, 2020 covered the latest on the most compelling issues in California water.
McGeorge School of Law
3327 5th Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95817
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
The majestic beauty of the Sierra
Nevada forest is awe-inspiring, but beneath the dazzling blue
sky, there is a problem: A century of fire suppression and
logging practices have left trees too close together. Millions of
trees have died, stricken by drought and beetle infestation.
Combined with a forest floor cluttered with dry brush and debris,
it’s a wildfire waiting to happen.
Fires devastate the Sierra watersheds upon which millions of
Californians depend — scorching the ground, unleashing a
battering ram of debris and turning hillsides into gelatinous,
stream-choking mudflows.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
Registration opens today for the
Water Education Foundation’s 36th annual Water
Summit, set for Oct. 30 in Sacramento. This year’s
theme, Water Year 2020: A Year of Reckoning,
reflects fast-approaching deadlines for the State Groundwater
Management Act as well as the pressing need for new approaches to
water management as California and the West weather intensified
flooding, fire and drought. To register for this can’t-miss
event, visit our Water Summit
event page.
Registration includes a full day of discussions by leading
stakeholders and policymakers on key issues, as well as coffee,
materials, gourmet lunch and an outdoor reception by the
Sacramento River that will offer the opportunity to network with
speakers and other attendees. The summit also features a silent
auction to benefit our Water Leaders program featuring
items up for bid such as kayaking trips, hotel stays and lunches
with key people in the water world.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Our 36th annual
Water Summit,
happening Oct. 30 in Sacramento, will feature the theme “Water
Year 2020: A Year of Reckoning,” reflecting upcoming regulatory
deadlines and efforts to improve water management and policy in
the face of natural disasters.
The Summit will feature top policymakers and leading stakeholders
providing the latest information and a variety of viewpoints on
issues affecting water across California and the West.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
Sixty percent of California’s
developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada,
making the state’s water supply largely dependent on the health
of Sierra forests. But those forests are suffering from ecosystem
degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
On our Headwaters Tour
June 27-28, we will visit Eldorado and Tahoe national forests to
learn about new forest management practices, including efforts to
both prevent wildfires and recover from them.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
