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.
At the April meeting of the California Water Commission, as
part of their continuing work on examining the state’s role in
financing conveyance projects that could help meet needs in a
changing climate, the Commissioners heard from a panel of
speakers about state policy considerations for conveyance and
the cross-cutting issues of flood-managed aquifer recharge
(flood-MAR), green infrastructure, collaborative partnerships
and governance, and innovation. … Michael George, Delta
Watermaster, … pointed out that it’s physically,
ecologically, and economically impossible to squeeze water out
of the Delta for export.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a landmark water protection bill
Wednesday to ensure clean water in nearly 800 Arizona streams,
lakes and rivers that are critical for everyday use. The
legislation will preserve water quality, list protected Arizona
waters and develop management practices that will protect the
waterways.
A spectacular super bloom of lupine flowers has exploded in and
around Folsom Lake. Lupine flowers, which are native to
California and commonly found around the state, tend to crop up
every year. But this spring, experts say the super bloom that’s
sprouted in the Sierra foothills reservoir 25 miles east of
Sacramento is like nothing they’ve ever seen — and says a lot
about the dire state of California’s deepening drought.
…[B]right purple lupines that now blanket the reservoir in
areas that normally would be underwater but are now fertile
blooming ground because of historically low water levels.
California’s drought is impacting more than how you water your
lawn, but also the way your food is grown on hundreds of
thousands of acres in the Sacramento Valley. Growing rice is a
multi-billion dollar industry that supports 25,00 jobs.
… This year, a third of normal rainfall combined with
hot weather and drying winds have [rice farmers] pumping more
groundwater than usual and fallowing half his rice fields –
meaning Durst won’t plant, and he’s not
alone. … Industry leaders say this is the third
time in forty years this kind of surface water supply reduction
has happened – and it’s happened twice in just the last decade.
More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year,
and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t
realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond
the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking
water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the
blaze. … Since 2017, multiple fires have
impacted drinking water systems … including the CZU
Lightning Complex, Camp and Tubbs fires in California.
Thousands of private wells have been affected too.
California gubernatorial candidate John Cox swung through
Fresno on Thursday as part of his “Meet the Beast” campaign
tour, holding a press conference at Machado Farms.
… With the state once again in the midst of another
drought, Cox said he would do something that Newsom has so far
refused to: declare a state-wide emergency. Instead of a
state-wide declaration, Newsom enacted an emergency in
Mendocino and Sonoma Counties.
Residents in northern California rallied outside of Yreka City
Hall Thursday to protest the County’s new ordinance aimed at
curtailing illegal marijuana grow. On Tuesday, the Siskiyou
County Board of Supervisors amended Chapter 4 of Title 3 –
adding restrictions on water trucks using specific County
highways. The restrictions largely target streets in the
unincorporated communities of Butte Valley and Big Springs.
… Protesters of the affected areas voiced their
opposition to the bill – stating the Water Trucks are critical
for their survival.
Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA-03) introduced legislation
(H.R. 2979) making low interest federal financing available for
reservoir and drought resiliency projects, with Congressman Dan
Newhouse (R-WA-04) as the original cosponsor. This bipartisan
legislation (H.R. 2979) would amend the Water Infrastructure
Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) of 2014 to make public water
projects like the off-stream Sites Reservoir Project eligible
for low interest, longer term federal loans from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
San Diego takes droughts very seriously. That’s why the region
is well-positioned to weather an extended dry spell with enough
water. Local officials don’t shrug at the drought
conditions across the state that have triggered emergencies in
a couple of northern counties. For one thing, the wildfire
threat can be as dangerous here as anywhere. San Diego may
be more drought-tolerant than in the past when it comes to
water…
Arizona is gearing up for the first-ever “Tier 1” shortage on
the Colorado River in 2022, which will trigger significant cuts
to the state’s annual allocation from its most important water
resource. As daunting as it sounds, the vast majority of
citizens and businesses will not be affected, state water
leaders said during a Colorado River Preparedness briefing last
week. Arizona is also well prepared to weather expected
shortages the next few years, and is in the process of
developing the next steps to protect and augment the river’s
supplies as the drought persists, said the state’s top two
water leaders.
Water customers with the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency
can expect rate increases to kick in over the next five years,
after board members voted in late April to approve the fees.
The PVWMA serves coastal growers and farmers in south Santa
Cruz and north Monterey counties through 21 miles of water
pipelines running near Highway 1. The water, which is a blend
of recycled water, groundwater and Harkins Slough Recovery well
water, supplements farmer’s on-site agricultural wells.
At its next meeting Wednesday, the Ukiah City Council will
consider a recommendation to spend more than $175,000 on a
system to help control algae in its recycled water system, also
called the Purple Pipe. According to the staff report prepared
for the May 5 meeting, “due to high nutrient content and local
climate, the water quality of recycled water within the storage
reservoirs can become negatively impacted by algal blooms.
Algae can become problematic once it is in the distribution
system and lead to clogging of filters or irrigation
equipment.”
A new groundwater monitoring station is coming to Corning’s
public works yard on Gallagher Avenue just across from a
warehouse that stores various road signs and equipment. Public
Works Flood Control Manager Ryan Teubert presented the project
Tuesday to the Tehama County Board of Supervisors. It consists
of construction at the yard, which will be funded and performed
by the California Department of Water Resources.
Early May water supply volume forecasts are below to much below
normal throughout the Colorado River Basin and Great Basin.
Upper Colorado River Basin water supply forecasts range between
15-75% of the 1981-2010 historical April-July average. Great
Basin water supply forecasts are 10-70% of average. … Many
April-July volume forecasts fall in the bottom (driest) five on
record….The Lake Powell inflow forecast is 2.0 MAF (28% of
average), a 17% decrease from April….
Hear directly from a range of experts offering a variety of
perspectives on our May 20 virtual Lower Colorado River Tour as
they put into context the 20-plus year drought on what is the
most contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Among the experts featured are farmers, tribal
representatives, and managers from wildlife agencies, water
districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and others who will
discuss drought impacts, habitat projects, farming and
restoration efforts at the Salton Sea.
On Monday May 3rd, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations (PCFFA), the West Coast’s largest trade
organization of small-scale commercial fishermen and women,
signed on to a letter asking Representative Katie Porter (D –
Ca 45th) in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on
Government Operations and Chair of the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, to open an investigation into
Reclamation’s manipulation of government cost accounting
standards and its own longstanding criteria for allocating
costs owed by Central Valley Project water and power
contractors (Contractors).
Every year, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) relies on
data from monitoring stations strategically located across
California to provide information that will aid the
decision-making process regarding the flood control and water
supply operations of California’s State Water Project (SWP).
The Feather River watershed, located in Northern California’s
Sierra Nevada mountains south of Mt. Lassen, is a key location
for collecting data. It is the largest watershed in the Sierra
Nevada, covering 2.3 million acres or 3,200 square miles.
The drought situation in the Bay Area has officially gone from
bad to worse. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the entire
Bay Area is now in the “extreme” drought category, along with
nearly three-quarters of California. According to the latest
summary, precipitation in the state for the water year that
began Oct. 1 is well below normal, in the bottom 10th
percentile, and the greater Bay Area is “experiencing record or
near-record dryness.”
More than a decade of collaboration between public agencies
yields tremendous benefit to Orange County’s water supply
following approvals by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps)
associated with the Chief of Engineer’s Report for the Prado
Basin Ecosystem Restoration and Water Conservation Feasibility
Study. For the Orange County Water District, this critical
action increases water storage and habitat restoration behind
Prado Dam.
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this
year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to
Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but
impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go
far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming
region in southern Oregon began to release water from the
Klamath River into its irrigation canals. … [A]ccording to
the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could
further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species
and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries
in the region.
More than a month after announcing it was suspending water
deliveries to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley, the Bureau of Reclamation delivered equally bad news to
farmers north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Their water
supplies, tabbed at 5 percent of their contracted amount, were
not available for delivery via the Central Valley Project due
to limited supply.
The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors sent a letter
to the California Water Resources Control Board on May 4
formally opposing the Shandon-San Juan Water District’s (SSJWD)
two recent applications for water from Lake Nacimiento and
Santa Margarita Lake—a move that puts two partners on the Paso
Robles Groundwater Basin at odds with one another.
California’s drought is forcing hatcheries to truck young
salmon to the San Francisco Bay because the fish would
otherwise likely die trying to swim on their own
downstream to the Pacific Ocean. The Coleman National Fish
Hatchery along Battle Creek in Shasta County plans to drive
about 950,000 fall chinook salmon smolts in May to increase
their chances of survival.
A big change in drought conditions came out Thursday
morning for all of California. With an update from
the US Drought Monitor, 73% of California is now listed in
Extreme Drought, the second most severe classification the US
Drought Monitor utilizes. So far, 5% of California is
listed as being in Exceptional Drought, which is the US Drought
Monitor’s top-level drought designation. The increase to
73% is a significant jump from 53% in Extreme Drought from last
week. This news comes on the heels of other drought changes,
such as water restrictions for agriculture north of the
Delta.
Melting snow and flowing irrigation ditches mean spring has
finally arrived at the base of Grand Mesa in western
Colorado. Harts Basin Ranch, a 3,400-acre expanse of
hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge, in Delta County,
is coming back to life with the return of water. … The
ranch has the No. 1 priority water right — meaning the oldest,
which comes with the ability to use the creek’s water first —
dating to 1881. … [The ranch's owners] have been
accused of water speculation — which means buying up the ranch
just for its senior water rights and hoarding them for a future
profit.
Gov. Doug Ducey has asked the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
to address groundwater contamination near military
installations in Arizona. In an Apr. 27 letter to Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin, Gov. Ducey requested DOD to identify and
treat water in Arizona contaminated in the areas surrounding
four DOD installations and to prevent additional human exposure
to per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from other DOD
facilities in Arizona, which impact the groundwater. … These
bases are located in the two most populous metropolitan areas
in Arizona and each is surrounded by thousands of Arizonans who
rely on clean groundwater for drinking water purposes.
The fate of Searles Valley Minerals may hinge on a special
virtual meeting of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater
Authority later this week, at least according to SVM’s Camille
Anderson. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday. At it,
the IWVGA will discuss how to respond to SVM’s non-payment of
the authority’s groundwater replenishment fee. … The
groundwater authority was formed in response to the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014, which requires all
California basins to eventually achieve
sustainability. The replenishment fee is part of the
IWVGA’s long-term plan to reach sustainability, but has proven
wildly controversial for some.
If any doubt persisted over the first months of the year, it
has now become clear that this past winter’s dry conditions
will not be reversing anytime soon. With 88% of California
classified as experiencing severe drought and no less than 53%
classified as extreme, according to the California drought
monitor, there is no question that conditions have worsened,
confirming fears that another dangerously dry summer looms on
the horizon. In fact, so troubling is the situation that on
April 21, amid the barren backdrop of a greatly depleted Lake
Mendocino, Governor Newsom issued a state of emergency
declaration for Mendocino and Sonoma counties …
When Ramona Hernandez turns on her kitchen faucet in El Adobe,
an unincorporated town just a few miles southeast of
Bakersfield, the water that splashes out looks clean and
inviting. But she doesn’t dare drink it. … Drinking the
tap water in this tiny community of dusty ranches and unpaved
roads could expose Hernandez to arsenic. So, for years, she and
her husband, Gerardo, have shuttled twice a week to the nearby
town of Lamont to load up on bottled water. At a cost of about
$80 a month, it’s enough for drinking and cooking.
In our latest effort to ensure that our water management and
farming practices both protect and enhance environmental
benefits in our area, Garden Highway Mutual Water Company
(Garden Highway) recently completed a project to screen its
diversion on the Feather River. This project allows us to
protect Chinook salmon and other fish species from entrainment
while diverting water year-round to irrigate crops and to
provide Pacific Flyway habitat during the fall and winter
months. The project was a cooperative effort between Garden
Highway, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau
of Reclamation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Family
Water Alliance.
At the Water Education Foundation, we focus on telling the
complex story of water in California and the West because of
its critical role in sustaining our lives, growing our food and
nourishing our environment. As a nonprofit we rely on the
generosity of people who value what we do – enhancing
public understanding of our most important natural
resource and catalyzing critical conversations to inform
collaborative decision-making.
Donate here to help us keep doing what we do, and
join us for a virtual open house at 4:30 p.m. today.
California’s current drought is already off to a strong start,
with some major challenges already looming just two years in.
Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter
Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder
than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this
poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having
statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water
to farms and cities further south.
A familiar scene has returned to California: drought. Two
counties are currently under emergency declarations, and the
rest of the state could follow. It was only four years ago when
a winter of torrential rain finally wrestled the state out of
its last major drought, which had dragged on for five years and
left thousands of domestic wells coughing up dust. That
drinking-water crisis made national headlines and helped shine
a light on another long-simmering water crisis in California:
More than 300 communities have chronically unsafe drinking
water containing contaminants that can come with serious health
consequences, including cancer.
In 2021, access to running water and clean drinking water is a
given for most Americans. The Census Bureau has even considered
dropping a question on plumbing access from the U.S. census
questionnaire. But many of the nation’s tribes still lack
running water, access to clean water, and even flushing
toilets. Native American households are 19 times more likely
than white households to lack indoor plumbing, according to the
U.S. Water Alliance, and more likely to lack piped water
services than any other racial group. That problem is at an
inflection point for the Navajo Nation and 29 other tribes in
the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from the Rocky
Mountains to Mexico.
One thing that’s been re-emphasized, time and again, during the
pandemic travails of the past 14 months: Farming is essential.
During the coming few months, as California struggles through
another drought, we’ll learn whether our elected and appointed
public officials feel the same way. [A]n overarching, long-term
problem needs to be solved to make sure farm employees can not
just work safely, but can have jobs, period: water supplies.
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a
resolution proclaiming a local drought emergency. The vote on
the resolution during Tuesday’s special meeting was unanimous.
The resolution comes after Fresno leaders joined officials from
three other Central Valley counties on Friday to declare a
regional drought emergency and urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to do the
same statewide. Fresno County Chairman Steve Brandau said the
drought “is a crisis that we are putting upon ourselves.” He
said he’s not a water expert, but it has been “painful” for him
to watch “as water flows out into the ocean unused for human
resources.”
Experts say a statewide drought declaration … could bring
significant consequences for the regulatory structure governing
California’s complicated water-delivery system. Many farmers
believe an emergency order could loosen environmental
regulations and free up water supplies for them. Environmental
groups fear the very same thing – that more of California’s
dwindling water supply could be directed to farming at the
expense of fish and wildlife.
On Thursday the U.S. Senate voted to pass S. 914, the
Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act
(DWWIA). It is the first infrastructure bill approved by
the Senate this Congress. The bipartisan, comprehensive clean
water and drinking water infrastructure legislation will
authorize strong annual water infrastructure investment to help
boost total federal investment. In full, the legislation
authorizes more than $35 billion for drinking water and
wastewater resource development projects across the country …
In today’s Home Grown, a local lawsuit over ownership of the
Colorado River water might be taken higher to the U.S. Supreme
Court. The Michael Abatti versus the Imperial Irrigation
District (IID) lawsuit has been ongoing in the valley,
disputing over whether water rights belong to the landowners or
if they are controlled by the IID. … Abatti won the lawsuit
in Imperial County Superior Court, but Katie Turner, attorney
with Sutherland and Gerber says it didn’t make it to the
California Supreme Court.
Now that Democrats have full control of Washington for the
first time in a decade, Bay Area lawmakers want to make sure
they don’t walk away empty-handed. For many of them, that means
seeing green. After several years of historically severe
wildfires, heat waves and recurring drought conditions, bills
related to climate change are at the top of the agenda for many
lawmakers with local ties. Some of the legislative proposals
… would address the threats of extreme weather by allocating
more money to reduce wildfire risks, strengthen water
infrastructure and upgrade the electric grid.
California Senators have unveiled a $3.4 billion drought relief
package to address the hardships created by ongoing dry
conditions. The Senate Budget Plan on Drought, Safe Drinking
Water, Water Supply Reliability, and Ratepayer Assistance would
be the single largest investment to address drought challenges
in California. During the Senate Budget & Fiscal Review
Subcommittee 2 on Resources, Environmental Protection and
Energy hearing, the proposal was passed by a 4-0 vote. The
proposal offers a comprehensive approach to drought relief,
with funding designated for water supply projects, research,
and water-use efficiency projects.
A federal judge’s decision rebuffed environmental groups’
effort to increase water flow from California’s Twitchell Dam,
stating that wildlife conservation was not among the dam’s
authorized purposes and that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
(Bureau) had no authority to modify the water releases for
conservation purposes. U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr.
sided with defendants in San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper v.
Santa Maria Valley Water Conservation District, rejecting
plaintiffs’ claim that by failing to release enough water to
benefit protected steelhead trout, the Bureau and local water
district were in violation of the ESA.
With drought conditions returning to California, the Department
of Water Resources (DWR) has finalized a tool and
recommendations to support those communities most at risk
during drought. Historically, small water systems and rural
communities that rely on private domestic wells have
been hit the hardest by prolonged periods of dry
conditions. To provide increased state support, DWR led a
two-year process learning from stakeholder experiences about
what puts small water systems and rural communities at higher
risk of water shortages and what is needed to build their
resilience to drought.
Increasingly ominous signs suggest that we are entering another
multiyear drought in California. The State Water Project
recently reduced projected water deliveries for 2021 from 10
percent of requested supplies to 5 percent, and on April 21,
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a regional drought emergency in the
Russian River watershed in Northern California. But it’s a
different story in San Diego County.
-Written by Gary Croucher, chair of the San Diego County
Water Authority’s Board of Directors.
The US Bureau of Reclamation last week warned water users to
brace for a 500,000 acre-foot cut in water from the Colorado
River as a historic drought continues to tighten its grip on
the Southwest. The cutback comes on top of a 200,000 acre-foot
reduction Arizona water users agreed to last year in an effort
to put off this day of reckoning. The Central Arizona Project
provides more than a third of the state’s water. The reductions
will mostly impact farmers. The sparse snowpack this winter
soaked into the ground during the hot, dry spring — producing
little runoff.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
Irrigation curbs, car washing restrictions and the shutoff of
fountains may return in the city of Napa amid shrinking water
supplies on the tail of a dry California winter. Tuesday night,
the City Council is scheduled to vote on a “moderate water
shortage” declaration intended to cut consumption by 15%.
Approval would mark the return of water-use restrictions last
rolled out in the mid-2010s when a six-year drought led
California to mandate across-the-board cutbacks statewide.
Napa’s actions would follow mandatory cutbacks imposed upvalley
by the cities of St. Helena and Calistoga.
Climate change and water scarcity are front and center in the
western U.S. The region’s climate is warming, a severe
multi-year drought is underway and groundwater supplies are
being overpumped in many locations. … About 4,000
miles of canals transport water to some 35 million
Californians and 5.7 million acres of farmland across the
state. Covering these canals with solar panels would reduce
evaporation of precious water – one of California’s most
critical resources – and help meet the state’s renewable energy
goals, while also saving money.
On March 24, 2021, the Groundwater Resources Association of
California and California Groundwater Coalition hosted the
virtual 2021 Groundwater Law & Legislation Forum, featuring a
keynote address from California’s Natural Resources Secretary
Wade Crowfoot and updates on pending groundwater legislation,
DWR’s SGMA implementation, and ACWA’s position on potential
bond measures. One panel focused on the intersection of
environmental justice, groundwater management and the role the
legislative process can play…
California is grappling with drought again, facing many of the
same conditions and challenges that were features of the
2012–16 drought—including stressed ecosystems, depleted
reservoirs, hard-hit farms and rural communities, threats to
urban water supplies, and the potential for extensive
wildfires. Knowing what’s different and what’s similar to our
last major drought can help us better prepare the most
vulnerable sectors for ongoing dry times. To put this drought
in context, this is only its second year. Historically,
droughts have lasted up to six years. Our most recent one
lasted five.
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.
Stop eating meat. Build interstate pipelines. Turn sea water
into drinking water. When our letter writers start making these
suggestions in earnest, that’s how I know we’re beginning to
feel the effects of another drought in California.
-Written and compiled by Paul Thornton, the Los Angeles
Times’ letters editor.
It’s been a week since Mayor London Breed tapped City Attorney
Dennis Herrera to lead the Public Utilities Commission, a
massive, billion-dollar entity providing San Franciscans — and,
in fact, millions of nearby locals — with water and/or
power. It’s been a week, and nobody seems to be saying it,
so we’ll say it: This is weird. It would be weird if the
mayor transferred a hypothetical general manager of the Public
Utilities Commission — with a background touching on
engineering and water and wastewater and sewage treatment and
hydroelectric power generation and distribution — into leading
the City Attorney’s office. The reverse is weird, too.
Following a winter with extremely low levels of rain, the
area’s main sources of irrigation water, Lake Mendocino and
Lake Sonoma, are in short supply. Drought conditions are not
new for local growers, unfortunately. Many continue to adjust
their viticultural practices to adapt to the ever-changing
climate. … New plantings will have more spacing between rows
to facilitate wider cross-arms, which will help promote shading
… drought-tolerant rootstocks that are more capable
of establishing deeper root systems quicker …
Rarely has a routine water resources bill generated so much
political buzz, but as senators hoisted the measure to passage
Thursday the bipartisan infrastructure legislation served as a
potential template for building consensus around President Joe
Biden’s ambitious American Jobs Plan. The Drinking Water and
Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021 authorizes about $35
billion over five years to improve leaky pipes and upgrade
facilities, and is widely supported by lawmakers and their
states back home. This time, though, it could be so much more —
a building block in Biden’s broader $2.3 trillion proposal to
invest in roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
Ever since I started working on Colorado River issues, I have
wanted to travel through the iconic landscape of the Grand
Canyon by boat. I was skeptical of my chances given the highly
coveted and limited number of permits, but this spring I was
lucky enough to be invited on a private trip. For 21 days, we
traveled through this remote stretch where the canyon walls
tower up to 4,000 feet above the river in some places. We
celebrated on the downstream side of big rapids and scrambled
up forgotten side canyons. We spied great blue herons and
merganser ducks on the river’s edge. We saw very few other
people.
With the Colorado River’s largest reservoir just 38% full and
declining toward the threshold of a first-ever shortage,
Arizona water officials convened an online meeting this week to
outline how the state will deal with water cutbacks, saying the
reductions will be “painful” but plans are in place to lessen
the blow for affected farmers next year. Lake Mead’s decline is
expected to trigger substantial reductions in water deliveries
in 2022 for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The largest of those
cuts will affect Arizona, slashing its Colorado River supplies
by 512,000 acre-feet, about a fifth of its total entitlement.
Roseville is the recipient of $33 million in low-interest
financing from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)
Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA)
program. This funding will accelerate water supply planning and
implementation under Roseville’s Water Future Initiative. …
WIFIA program funding and utility operation funds will advance
two critical efforts under Water Future. We will increase the
number of groundwater wells and examine how we can expand water
recycling over time.
Little is said about the role of Lake Pillsbury in our
regional water system or the critical water it provides
to fill Lake Mendocino. If anything, its importance
to understated or not referenced at all in most media
articles. Without Lake Pillsbury at the Eel River
headwaters to control downstream flows, both the Eel and
Russian Rivers and surrounding aquifers will intermittently dry
up. … A strong movement is afoot to remove Scott Dam and
eliminate Lake Pillsbury… -Written by Frank Lynch & Carol Cinquini, Directors of
the Lake Pillsbury Alliance.
Water talk will be a big part of Tuesday’s Tehama County Board
of Supervisors meeting as plans for a new groundwater
monitoring site in Corning are coming to fruition. Tehama
County Public Works plans to sign a Permit to Use Land
Agreement for a groundwater station in the Corning Public Works
yard on Gallagher Avenue, should the board approve the request.
Creating and maintaining the station will be a combined effort
of Tehama County Public Works, the Flood Control and Water
Conservation District and the California Department of Water
Resources. According to the related agenda report, the station
is expected to be in use for a minimum of 20 years.
President Biden’s pick this week to oversee the Army’s vast
natural resources operation would bring to the job decades of
water experience at the Interior Department and on Capitol
Hill. The president tapped Michael Connor to be the Department
of Defense’s assistant secretary of the Army for civil works,
which oversees the Army Corps of Engineers and its huge network
of dams and other projects. Connor would play a major role in
some of the most controversial projects facing the Biden
administration in the environmental arena, including the
Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, as well as Clean Water
Act permitting.
Swap this year and the period of Marin County’s worst-ever
drought in 1976-77 and it might be hard to tell the difference.
Water suppliers restricting use to conserve reservoirs.
Ranchers preparing to truck in water as creeks and wells dry
up. Talks of a potential water pipeline. And questions about
the resiliency of the county’s water supply. During the 1976-77
drought, the Marin Municipal Water District was within 120 days
of running out of water. The county’s savior was a 6-mile
pipeline over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to pump in water
from the East Bay.
More than a dozen Central Valley lawmakers and elected
officials met on Friday to declare a regional drought emergency
and urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to do the same statewide. Three
state senators and three Assembly members joined the chairs of
the boards of supervisors from Fresno, Madera, Tulare and Kings
counties in a bipartisan news conference at Harlan Ranch in
Clovis to call for action that the group said is necessary to
divert a crisis.
Join us May 6 for our annual open
house where you can test your water trivia knowledge, win
prizes and meet the people behind our programs that foster a
deeper understanding of California’s most precious natural
resource – water. The Foundation’s open house will be held next
Thursday via Zoom from 4:30–5:30 p.m.
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.
San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District supported
construction of Seven Oaks Dam because the district believed it
would not only provide flood control, but would capture
precious drinking water for the benefit of Inland Empire water
agencies. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which completed
construction of the dam in 2000, has never been officially
authorized to use the 550-foot-tall structure for anything
other than flood control purposes. This project, which cost the
tax payers $450 million in the late 1990s, has the capacity to
hold at least 115,000 acre-feet in its reservoir, yet it is
only authorized to provide “incidental water conservation.”
In a note of consolation for the pain some Arizona water users
will feel if Central Arizona Project supplies are cut next
year, state water leaders said Thursday: It will be planned
pain. Federal officials have said it’s likely Lake Mead at the
Nevada border will be low enough at the end of 2021 to trigger
the first major cutback in CAP deliveries to the Arizona’s
parched midsection. Arizona will lose 512,000 acre-feet of its
CAP supply — almost one-third of the $4 billion project’s total
supply, according to a 2019 drought contingency plan.
The Senate approved a $35 billion water infrastructure bill
after defeating controversial amendments — marking the
advancement of the first piece of a larger infrastructure
package.
After another dry winter that threatens to worsen water
shortages across California, state officials have accused a
water bottling company of diverting too much water from forests
in the San Bernardino area. The officials issued a draft
cease-and-desist letter to the company last week – the latest
development in a battle that has dragged on for years.
Poseidon Water won a key approval Thursday in its long quest to
build a seawater desalination plant on the Orange County
coastline. But the permit from the Santa Ana Regional Quality
Control Board does not ensure that the $1-billion ocean
desalter will rise on the grounds of an old power plant in
Huntington Beach. Poseidon still needs a construction permit
from the California Coastal Commission and, most critically, a
binding deal with a public agency to buy 50 million gallons a
day of purified seawater.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) is awarding funding
support for six projects to address the impact of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). A total of $26
million in grant funding is being made available for the SGMA
projects. The funding support comes from the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Grant Program. Sixteen individual
construction projects within Critically Overdrafted Basins will
take place through the six grant awards.
The Nevada Assembly voted Thursday to approve a non-residential
turf removal proposal brought by Southern Nevada water
regulators, who say it will save the water-shy Las Vegas Valley
12 billion gallons of water per year. With little debate from
lawmakers, the Assembly voted 30-12 on Assembly Bill 356,
sending the proposal to the Senate. Four Republicans — Glen
Leavitt, R-Boulder City, Heidi Kasama, R-Las Vegas, Melissa
Hardy, R-Henderson, and Jill Tolles, R-Reno — crossed party
lines to vote with the 26 Democrats.
A lack of wet weather is taking a toll on the state’s water
supply. Chris Orrock, a spokesperson for the California
Department of Water Resources … said while drought-like
conditions are very common for the state, this year is worse
than normal, especially considering back-to-back dry winters
with little snow and rain. It is so dry, in fact, that DWR
canceled Thursday’s snow survey at Phillips Station because
there was not enough snow on the ground.
A North County water district representing irrigated
agriculture near Shandon is asking the state for allocations of
Lake Nacimiento and Santa Margarita Lake water, which it
proposes to pipe into the nearby Paso Robles Groundwater Basin.
While pitched as a potential solution to the Paso basin’s
overdraft, the proposal is already getting blowback from two
county supervisors.
While most irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin are enduring a
spring without surface water, canals in Klamath Drainage
District have been flowing since the middle of April. And KDD
says no laws were broken to make deliveries to its customers.
KDD opened the Ady and North canals on April 15, diverting
water from the Klamath River to serve its patrons. The Bureau
of Reclamation, whose operations plan for 2021 emphasized that
no water deliveries be made to the Klamath Project prior to May
15, sent a letter to KDD asking them to immediately cease the
diversions.
This weekend’s rain in Northern California, while welcome, did
little to address the dry conditions across our state. As the
state’s recent dismal snow survey showed, we are in for tough
times ahead. Less snow means lower reservoirs, less water in
our rivers and streams, and more groundwater pumping. And that
spells trouble, particularly for disadvantaged communities and
sensitive ecosystems, which have historically borne the brunt
of California drought in consequences like dry wells and salmon
die-offs.
Attorneys for the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District
filed a complaint with state regulators Tuesday asking that
California American Water Co. be forced to purchase water from
the expansion of a recycling project because Cal Am is failing
to meet a deadline for its part in increasing the local water
supply, according to language in the complaint. Any decision by
regulators is important because it will affect the ability of
the Monterey Peninsula to generate an alternative water source.
Cal Am in 2009 was hit with a state cease-and-desist order to
stop over-pumping from the Carmel River basin.
Millions of people across our nation, and countless millions
throughout the world depend on California’s farms and ranches
for the food they eat every single day. California leads the
nation as the country’s largest agricultural producer and
exporter and serves as a vital link in the world’s food supply
chain. However, a resilient and reliable water supply is
essential to ensure that California farmers and ranchers can
continue to provide a safe and reliable food supply to our
nation and the world. The state’s water infrastructure is
getting older and stressed beyond its capabilities …
The Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Board of Directors is
pleased to announce it has unanimously appointed Jennifer
Hanson as its new General Manager during today’s Board of
Directors’ meeting. … Hanson will be NID’s 15th General
Manager and its first female in the District’s 100-year
history. Hanson comes to NID from the City of Lincoln, located
in South Placer County, where she served as its City
Manager. During her tenure as City Manager, Jennifer was
responsible for the daily operations of the full-service City
and for implementing the City Council’s strategic priorities.
When President Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress
tonight a common thread will likely run through much of his
narrative: resilience. Beyond touting his administration’s
accomplishments, Biden is expected to use the spotlight to
pitch his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, a wide-ranging
infrastructure initiative that promises “every dollar” spent on
rebuilding highways, airports, water systems and more will be
used to “prevent, reduce and withstand the impacts of the
climate crisis.”
The West Coast’s most important estuary is dying, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom has hastened its demise. As he took office two
years ago, Newsom promised to generate voluntary agreements
among farmers, environmentalists and government officials on
the rules for allocating water that flows through the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … [C]onditions in the delta
have grown so dire that in March the National Marine Fisheries
Service estimated that high water temperatures could kill 90%
of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River
this year.
-Written by Jacques Leslie.
The Navajo Nation can pursue its lawsuit seeking to force the
federal government to secure water from the Colorado River for
the reservation, the Ninth Circuit said Wednesday, reversing a
lower court’s dismissal of the tribe’s breach of trust claim.
The tribe doesn’t seek a judge’s determination of its rights to
the river, which the Interior Department says would fall under
the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, according to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Instead, the tribe
seeks an order for Interior to determine the extent to which it
needs water, to develop a plan to secure…
Water officials in Arizona say they are prepared to lose about
one-fifth of the water the state gets from the Colorado River
in what could be the first federally declared shortage in the
river that supplies millions of people in the U.S. West and
Mexico. Arizona stands to lose more than any other state in the
Colorado River basin that also takes in parts of Wyoming, New
Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nevada and California. That’s because
Arizona agreed long ago to be the first in line for cuts in
exchange for federal funding for a canal system to deliver the
water to Arizona’s major metropolitan areas.
Federal dollars are on the table to help farmers and ranchers
during the drought. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared
a drought disaster in 50 California counties last month.
Advertisement Grants are now available to help with costs
associated with the dry conditions. After a winter with little
rain and snow, California is dry. … Nicole Montna Van Vleck
walked between two rice fields on Wednesday. One was newly
planted and covered in water. The other was bone-dry.
California is once again in a drought, just four years after
the last dry spell decimated ecosystems, fueled megafires and
left many rural communities without well water. Droughts are a
natural part of the landscape in the American west, and the
region has in many ways been shaped by its history of drought.
But the climate scientist Peter Gleick argues that the droughts
California is facing now are different than the ones that have
historically cycled through the Golden State.
Climate change and drought will impact San Diego County’s
climate future, but regional water supply planning and
adaptation measures will ensure a safe, reliable supply for the
region. Water supply strategy was one of the key points
participants learned about during a Monday panel discussion,
“San Diego County’s Climate Future,” hosted online by the San
Diego County Water Authority, Citizens Water Academy, Leaders
20/20 and San Diego Green Drinks.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday instructed the Imperial
Irrigation District to submit a response to California farmer
Michael Abatti’s request that their longstanding legal battle
be taken up by the nation’s highest court. Scott Harris, clerk
of the Supreme Court, wrote to Jennifer Meeker, an
attorney for the water and power district, to say that even
though IID didn’t feel the need to answer Abatti’s
petition, ”the Court nevertheless has directed this office
to request that a response be filed.” This comes two weeks
after Frank Oswalt, IID’s general counsel, said the district
didn’t need to submit a response …
Stunning drone photographs of Lake Oroville help illustrate the
drought emergency declared by Gov. Gavin Newsom in two Northern
California counties. Water levels at Lake Oroville [the
keystone reservoir of the State Water Project, which supplies
water to 27 million Californians] have dropped to 42% of its
3,537,577 acre foot capacity. Conditions are particularly acute
in Mendocino and Sonoma counties because the local water supply
depends on rainfall in the Russian River watershed.
In mid-April, a farming region in southern Oregon began to
release water from the Klamath River into its irrigation
canals. According to the local water authority, this was a
standard move to jumpstart the farming season during one of the
driest seasons in recent memory. But according to the federal
government, it was an illegal maneuver that could further
jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species and food
sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries in the
region.
As water allocations are slashed due to low supplies, what
options do farmers have? California Farm Water Coalition
executive director Mike Wade says thousands of acres are likely
to go fallow, but better solutions are needed. One tool that
has just been created this past year is the Nasdaq Veles
California Water Index. But Wade says it’s still too early to
tell if this is truly going to be effective in helping growers
manage their risk.
Monterey One Water officials on Monday moved closer to its goal
of providing additional water for the Monterey Peninsula when
it unanimously approved a key environmental report for its
expansion project. The 10 members of the board of Monterey One
Water all voted to approve an environmental document called a
supplemental environmental impact report, or SEIR, that
advances closer to the expansion of its regional treatment
plant. … Monday’s action allows Monterey One to move
closer to expanding its treatment facility — Pure Water
Monterey — to increase the amount of treated water reintroduced
to groundwater and consequently dramatically increase the
Peninsula’s supply.
In what may become an iconic image for drought-stricken
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on the parched bed of Lake
Mendocino on April 21 to announce an emergency declaration for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties. … [T]he reservoir was at a
historically low 43% of capacity, the harbinger of what could
be a devastating drought cycle not only for the Northern
California counties that fell within his drought declaration,
but for most of the state — indeed, the American
West. -Written by Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
Millions of drinking wells around the world may soon be at risk
of running dry. Overpumping, drought and the steady influence
of climate change are depleting groundwater resources all over
the globe, according to new research. As much as 20% of the
world’s groundwater wells may be facing imminent failure,
potentially depriving billions of people of fresh water.
… Residents of California’s Central Valley are preparing
for another arid summer and the rising risk of dry
wells, The Fresno Bee reported yesterday. It’s a
recurring pattern there.
After 21 vintages of making wine from far-coastal Marin County,
Pey-Marin Vineyards is coming to an end. Wineries rarely close
down entirely; more often, when an owner wants out, they sell.
But Jonathan Pey, who founded Pey-Marin Vineyards with his late
wife, Susan, in 1999, said that the extreme conditions of west
Marin farming have simply gotten too punishing, in part due to
climate change.
It’s been years since the Bay Area has had to deal with drought
conditions. While some counties look to instituting water-use
restrictions, some communities look to creative ways to reuse
water. When Ashley Shannon does a load of laundry, her garden
and fruit trees get a super soaking. … Shannon is a Santa
Clara Valley Water District employee who recently installed a
gray water system on her washing machine. Outlet pipes that
would normally send wash water to the sewer system were
redirected to go outside and around her garden. Valves
installed in the ground let the water seep out to irrigate her
plants and trees.
Gov. Doug Ducey on April 21 signed a bill that provides larger
grants for developing water projects in rural areas, but
questions linger on whether there will be any money for
them. House Bill 2388, sponsored by Rep. Gail Griffin,
R-Hereford, expands the amount of a single grant from the Water
Supply Development Revolving Fund from $100,000 to
$250,000. The recipient water provider must be
located in a county with a population of fewer than 1.5 million
people. While Griffin said the fund isn’t just
meant for rural areas, some experts who work with water believe
the benefits can greatly help many rural communities.
Arizona may be facing its first official declaration of water
shortage next year, a move that would trigger water cutbacks of
512,000 acre-feet — almost 20% of Arizona’s Colorado River
entitlement — affecting mainly agricultural users. The
24-Month Study on the Colorado River system, released this
month by the Bureau of Reclamation, projects that in
June water levels in Lake Mead will fall below 1,075 feet
for the first time, which would put the state in a Tier 1
shortage.
After back-to-back dry winters, two of the Bay Area’s biggest
water agencies on Tuesday moved forward with plans to urge the
public to reduce water use to avoid shortages this year. But
for now, they are using a carrot rather than a stick, saying
they have enough water to get by without resorting to fines,
water cops and strict rules. The Santa Clara Valley Water
District, based in San Jose, voted Tuesday night to double the
amount of money it pays homeowners to replace their lawns with
drought-tolerant landscaping, from $1 a square foot to $2, and
to expand the maximum amount it will pay per household from
$2,000 to $3,000 under the conservation program.
The competing needs of different protected fish species are
pitting the Klamath Tribes against the federal government in a
court battle with legal implications for Oregon irrigators. The
Klamath Tribes are seeking an injunction to scale back how much
water the federal government can release from Upper Klamath
Lake to the detriment of endangered sucker species that inhabit
it. … The bureau has prioritized flows in the Klamath
river to benefit threatened coho salmon, jeopardizing the
survival of the suckers by allowing the lake to fall below
levels needed to sustain them…
Hunter Farms in Atwater is bracing for a second straight year
of drought. Scott Hunter grows almonds and pistachios but won’t
plant as many pumpkins this time around…. Hunter hopes his
surface water deliveries will be enough to keep the crops
going. During the last extended drought, he had to pump
groundwater as deliveries started to dry up. Scott is
frustrated by the state’s inability to establish a stable water
system for farmers and communities….
Mayor London Breed on Monday said she has nominated City
Attorney Dennis Herrera to lead the San Francisco Public
Utilities Commission as general manager. … The
SFPUC oversees the generation of clean power for the city’s
buildings, residents and businesses through programs like
CleanPowerSF, and also oversees the delivery of drinking water
and the treatment of wastewater. The commission is tasked with
providing oversight for the SFPUC’s rates and charges,
services, approval of contracts and organization policies.
While a decades-long battle over one major dam and river
diversion in northern Colorado appeared to end last week,
environmental groups signaled another fight will go on longer
as they filed an appeal meant to undermine Denver Water’s Gross
Dam expansion. The environmental coalition Monday asked
the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to review a dismissal of
their case by a federal district court and order a trial on the
merits of their claims about the dangers of adding 131 feet to
the height of Gross Reservoir Dam. They argue federal review
agencies neglected species-protection laws and other guidelines
when handing Denver Water a permit for Gross.
The State Water Resources Control Board issued investigative
orders on March 11 to over 160 refineries and bulk fuel storage
terminals in over 30 California counties, requiring
environmental investigation and sampling for per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as “PFAS.” This most recent
wave of PFAS investigation orders is consistent with
California’s increasingly aggressive approach to regulating and
investigating PFAS in everything from soil, groundwater, food
packaging, and consumer products.
California’s continuing failure to adopt a comprehensive water
strategy is exacerbating its looming drought crisis. For nearly
two decades, the state has put its focus on dam projects and
the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta tunnel fiasco. The
primary aim is creating new ways of diverting additional water
to Central Valley farmers at the expense of the fragile,
over-tapped Delta, which supplies about one-third of the Bay
Area’s fresh water supply. There’s a better approach. President
Biden’s infrastructure plan calls for $50 billion to ease the
West’s drought crisis by heavily investing in water efficiency
and recycling programs.
The Marin Municipal Water District on April 20 enacted a series
of water conservation rules, including banning home car washes,
no watering of outdoor lawns between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., and no
refilling decorative pools or fountains. A day later,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for
the Russian River watershed in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
Marin County borders Sonoma. Newsom chose to make the
declaration in those two counties only, rather than statewide,
as some officials and farmers in the agricultural-rich Central
Valley had hoped. But Newsom said a broader drought declaration
could come as conditions change.
California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from
siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San
Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead
brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the
state. The draft cease-and-desist order, which still
requires approval from the California Water Resources Control
Board, is the latest development in a protracted battle between
the bottled water company and local environmentalists, who for
years have accused Nestlé of draining water supplies at the
expense of local communities and ecosystems.
With a snowpack at 20-percent of normal, as of April 1, Inyo
County and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power begin
a month of discussion over the proposed pumping plan for the
2021-22 run-off year. LADWP intends to pump from 64,600 to
78,980 acre-feet of water from well fields in the Owens Valley.
Inyo’s Water Commission will meet this evening at 6 p.m. for
its initial discussion of the plan, laid out with proposed
volumes from Laws to Lone Pine.
Along the Oregon-California border, the Klamath River Basin is
a crucial water source for Indigenous tribes, endangered
species, and farmers. This year, though, there is simply not
enough to go around. The Western US is enduring another
major drought, and the Klamath River Basin is at a historic
low. This resulted in different groups being forced to compete
and make their case for why water, now precious and scarce,
should be diverted to their needs. It’s a stark reminder of the
tough, no-win decisions that citizens will continue to face
amid the worsening climate crisis.
Living in California means living with droughts – there’s no
getting around it. The devastating 2014-15 drought
resulted in water shortages for our communities, farms and the
environment, prompting California’s water leaders and
decision-makers to implement early planning, improved
collaboration, added conservation measures and new local supply
projects to help balance the water needs of people and fish in
preparing for the drought that is currently before us.
… Let’s improve storage and conveyance so we can better
manage our fluctuating and unpredictable climate. -Written by Chandra Chilmakuri, assistant general
manager of the State Water Contractors.
California is in the second year of a drought. Governor Newsom
this week made his first drought declaration. Just how dry is
this drought, so far? What are some likely
implications? And what might State and local governments
do about it?
News of drought and climate change impacts on Arizona’s water
supplies has become more alarming with the release of each new
study. To prepare for a drier future, Arizona will need an
informed public. For help in understanding the state’s water
management situation, a brief new reference work is now
available from the University of Arizona Water Resources
Research Center.
A storm system is bringing rain to the Valley and snow to the
High Sierra. Several inches of snow accumulation are expected
by the time the storm is through. There was light snowfall in
Shaver Lake Sunday evening, but not much was sticking.
… The National Weather Service in Hanford said even
though this storm is bringing in snow in the High Sierra, it
will not make a dent in the precipitation deficit we’ve been
seeing.
The Colorado River cuts through the Grand Canyon, providing
water for about 40 million people and 5 and a half million
acres of farmland. To some, the water is as valuable as
oil. In 1922, the seven U.S. states through which the
river flows signed onto the Colorado River Compact, a
water-sharing agreement that divvies up the river’s annual
flow. The water must be shared equally between Upper Basin
states: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico; and the Lower
Basin: California, Arizona and Nevada. There’s been infighting
ever since.
On Earth Day, the California Coastal Commission conditionally
approved a general management plan for a 28,700-acre federally
owned park in the San Francisco Bay Area — a plan vehemently
opposed by conservationists because it calls for killing native
tule elk in an area where thousands of acres of federal land
are leased to small dairy and cattle beef farmers.
… Last year, an estimated one-third of one the
tule elk herds died due to malnutrition, likely
exacerbated by drought conditions which decimated the animals’
foraging habitat at Point Reyes.
It has taken until the end of the second straight historically
dry winter, but California and its vast network of urban and
agricultural water suppliers, including those on the parched
North Coast, are now ramping up to confront the drought that is
tightening its grip on the state. Sonoma County
supervisors are set on Tuesday to proclaim a drought emergency,
becoming the first local government to take formal action on a
burgeoning water crisis that Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted
Wednesday.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has approved
approximately $33.5 million in grants to help enhance flows in
streams throughout California. A total of 30 stream flow
enhancement projects were approved for funding at its April 22
meeting. The approved projects will provide or lead to a direct
and measurable enhancement of the amount, timing and/or quality
of water in streams for anadromous fish or special status,
threatened, endangered or at-risk species, or to provide
resilience to climate change.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today awarded $26
million in grant funding for capital project investments to
improve water supply security, water quality and the
reliability of domestic wells – advancing access to safe,
affordable drinking water. This funding provides
important assistance for successful local implementation of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which
establishes a framework for managing the state’s groundwater
resources and will help California be better prepared for
longer, more severe droughts.
California Governor Gavin Newsom declared drought in two
counties Wednesday and predicted others would soon join. He
bemoaned the prospect of another period of drought only a few
years removed from a five-year drought that strained the
state’s water resources. A study published this week in
Science Advances revealed one solution to the drought-like
conditions and their increased frequency due to a changing
climate is a counterintuitive one — floodwaters.
Both proponents and opponents of the controversial Poseidon
Water desalination plant in Huntington Beach made their voices
heard Friday in an all-day virtual meeting that continued well
into the night. In the end, however, a decision by the Santa
Ana Regional Water Board on whether to permit Poseidon’s
$1.4-billion project will have to wait until at least [this]
week. Another meeting is scheduled for Thursday, with a third
meeting on May 13, as necessary.
California water officials on Friday issued a draft order
telling Nestlé to ”cease and desist” taking much of
the millions of gallons of water it pipes out of the San
Bernardino National Forest to sell as Arrowhead brand bottled
water. The order, which must be approved by the
California Water Resources Control Board, caps years of
regulatory probes and a public outcry over the company’s
water pipeline in the San Bernardino Mountains, where opponents
argue that siphoning away water harms spring-fed Strawberry
Creek and the wildlife that depends on it.
The San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District is asking:
Can an old dam learn new tricks? Specifically, the wholesale
water district has its sights on the Seven Oaks Dam located
near Highland that holds snowmelt and storm water runoff from
the San Bernardino Mountains. As operators, the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers typically releases the water in one flush, making
it impossible for water agencies to capture any of the flow,
explained Heather Dyer, CEO and general manager of Valley
District.
The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir,
has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000,
when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover
Dam. Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River
consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown
warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39%
of capacity. … The river’s reservoirs are shrinking as
the Southwest endures an especially severe bout of dryness
within a two-decade drought intensified by climate
change, one of the driest periods in centuries that shows no
sign of letting up.
Limited access to clean water remains a struggle for millions
of Americans. And lack of water access is expected to become an
even greater problem in the coming years across the U.S. and
around the world. … To help boost water supplies in
Southern California, water and sanitation officials are working
on plans for the largest recycled water project in the nation.
The Biden administration and Congress are stepping up efforts
to control the release and cleanup of poly and perfluoroalkyl
substances, or PFAS, in drinking water sources and elsewhere,
joining states that have expanded scrutiny of the chemicals,
which are used widely in manufacturing and are extremely
persistent in the environment. EPA’s current “advisory”
limit on PFAS in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion, but
some states have set or proposed required levels from 6.5 to 20
ppt, including California …
Questions have been raised over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
political maneuvers to push a controversial seawater
desalination plant proposed for the Huntington Beach
coastline. Critics say their concerns about the actual
need for the project and its potential environmental effects
remain. The company pushing it, Poseidon Water, remains
steadfast in its intent to build a plant that would suck in 100
million gallons of seawater daily and make half of it
drinkable….[The Regional Water Quality Control] board’s next
hearing is scheduled for [Friday] April 23. If the board
approves the permits, the project then goes for a final say
from the state Coastal Commission.
An unseasonably dry March and lack of sufficient water supplies
have foiled a proposed water release by the Oakdale and South
San Joaquin Irrigation Districts that would have boosted
Stanislaus River flows beginning this past week for the benefit
of out-migrating salmon, and also supplied water to farms and
communities in the San Joaquin Valley most vulnerable to
extreme drought conditions. The plan would have sent up to
100,000 acre-feet of water down the river between April 15 and
May 15 in what are known as “pulse flows” to help young salmon
navigate their way toward the Delta and, eventually, out to
sea.
Typical data centers guzzle local drinking water to keep
systems cool. By one estimate, traditional evaporative
air-cooling annually consumes up to eight million gallons of
water for each megawatt (MW) of energy needed to run the
facility. Silicon Valley alone is home to 411 MWs of data
center capacity – with those estimates, it would be more than
three billion gallons of water wasted per year in one of the
most drought-stricken areas of the country.
The Placer County Water Agency (PCWA) has acquired five new
miles of canal and associated facilities from South Sutter
Water District (SSWD) after an agreement between the two
agencies was approved by the PCWA Board of
Directors. Located in the Auburn Ravine, the newly
acquired Moore and Pleasant Grove canals have long served
PCWA’s agricultural customers west of the City of Lincoln, who
primarily grow rice and provide habitat for waterfowl and other
species.
A complex Front Range dam-building project that includes
transferring water from the Colorado River will move forward
this summer after Northern Water agreed to a settlement putting
$15 million in trust for waterway improvements in Grand
County. Environmental opponents begrudgingly accepted the
mediated settlement of their lawsuit against Northern Water’s
Windy Gap Firming Project, which involves a menu of waterworks
construction including Chimney Hollow dam near Loveland and
rerouting the Colorado River around Windy Gap Dam near Granby.
Given a growing body of evidence that many chemicals in
plastics pose human health risks, Californians should welcome
recently-passed legislation putting the state on path to be the
first to track microplastics in tap water. Because
plastics are highly resistant to biodegradation, instead
fragmenting into ever smaller bits, eventually reaching micron
and nanometer dimensions (there are 25.4 million nanometers in
one inch)—they travel unseen in wind and waterways so that even
the most remote regions of the globe, like the Arctic
seabed and summit of Mount Everest, are contaminated
with microplastics. -Written by Sarah Mosko.
As extreme drought conditions continue to expand across the San
Francisco Bay Area, a leading climate researcher issued a new
warning Thursday of another sign that a water supply crisis is
developing across the region. Dan McEvoy, a researcher
with the Western Region Climate Center, told KPIX 5 he was
startled to discover that several locations in Sierra had seen
the biggest decline in snowpack’s water content on record for
the time span covering the first three weeks of April…. [T]he
snowpack in the central Sierra has declined significantly to
just 37% of average. … Much of Northern California
experienced temperatures 4-degrees above average for the
period.
A burst of rain is expected to drench the Bay Area this
weekend, bringing much-needed moisture to a parched region. The
rains will likely be intense — but short-lived, tapering off to
another stretch of warm, dry conditions by the middle of next
week, meteorologists said. Showers were expected to start in
the North Bay as early as Saturday evening, with steady
rainfall pounding much of the Bay Area Sunday. Lingering
showers were expected in the central coast through Sunday
night, according to the National Weather Service.
Thousands of wells that bring water to San Joaquin Valley homes
are at risk of drying up this summer, leaving families without
running water for drinking, cleaning and bathing. While no one
knows the extent of the threat from this second year of drought
conditions, Jonathan Nelson with the Community Water Center
says “the alarm bells are sounding.” Homes, farms and
entire communities that rely on shallow wells as their only
source of water are vulnerable to declining groundwater levels
from dry conditions and agricultural pumping.
Join us May 6 for a
virtual open house where you can test your water
trivia knowledge, win prizes and meet the people behind our
programs that foster a deeper understanding of California’s
most precious natural resource – water. The Foundation’s open
house runs from 4:30–5:30 p.m., when you will be able to bounce
among chatrooms to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and
join a fast and fun trivia contest hosted by our Programs
Director Nick Gray.
After two dry winters, the April 1 snowpack measurement, which
is typically the deepest and highest in water concentration, is
far below average at 59% according to the Department of Water
Resources. … [T]o substantially decrease water demands the
Central Valley needs to address agricultural water
usage. The main problem with agricultural water use is
pricing. … [It's] cheaper for farmers to use more water than
it is for them to invest in water-efficient
technologies. -Written by Caitlin Perkey, a masters of public
administration student at California State University,
Stanislaus in Turlock.
The Central Valley in California is a farming powerhouse,
growing more than 250 crops and producing $17 billion of
agricultural products every year to feed the world. The
competing demands of both agriculture and a growing local
population — along with droughts made worse by the climate
crisis — have put a dramatic strain on the local wells
supplying groundwater for both the farmers and rural residents.
… In short: the wells are literally running
dry. According to a new study, the
same groundwater problem plaguing the Central Valley
is occurring around the world, threatening the drinking water
of billions of people.
Install photovoltaic panels atop canals, and avoid the land-use
battles over habitat protection and rural community character
that are a growing roadblock for the solar industry. Save water
in a drought-prone state that can use every last drop. …But
when I’d heard these ideas floated in the past, I’d also heard
skepticism from the people who run California’s water
systems…. Then a surprising thing happened…. -Written by Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times staff
writer.
The Biden administration has launched a working group focused
on addressing drought conditions in the West as the region
continues to suffer from a long period of water scarcity. The
group, which will be co-chaired by the departments of the
Interior and Agriculture, will work with state, local and
tribal governments on community needs in weathering drought,
according to a news release from the Interior Department.
Los Angeles is currently at only 46% of average rainfall for
the Water Year according to the California Department of Water
Resources (DWR). … Drought is a condition to be expected a
large percent of the time. So why did California’s State
Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) decide
that the Southern California region should plan for an
additional 1.34 million residents over the next nine years?
-Written by Alyssa Erdley.
Turlock residents impacted by nitrate groundwater contamination
will soon be supplied with safe drinking water as the state
seeks out more permanent solutions. The Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board is leading the charge on a
program which will provide bottled water deliveries or
bottle-filling kiosks to six geographic zones deemed to have
the most-serious groundwater contamination issues. The
Turlock Subbasin has been identified as a Priority 1 zone by
the board and is one of the two largest zones included in the
program.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District is asking for public
input from residents of Alameda and Contra Costa counties for
an update of its water supply plan, which is updated every five
years. The plan assesses water supplies against expected water
needs for a 30-year planning horizon. A virtual public comment
meeting will be held April 29 and a virtual public hearing on
May 11, during the regularly scheduled EBMUD board of directors
meeting.
A committee for the Monterey One Water Board has recommended
final certification of an environmental report crucial to the
expansion of Pure Water Monterey, signaling increased momentum
for the recycled water project. The five-member Recycled
Water Committee of the Monterey One Water Board of Directors
voted 4-0-1 on April 15 to recommend the board of directors
certify the completed supplemental environmental impact report,
or SEIR, needed for the expansion.
If the Midwest is the breadbasket of America, then California
is its produce section. Two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and
nuts and more than one-third of its vegetables are produced in
the Golden State. But California’s abundance is threatened by
wildfires, extreme weather and chronic drought — the effects of
climate change.
A new report is highlighting the gaps in California’s water
infrastructure — and how much money the state will need to fix
it. The report, published by the state’s Water Resources
Control Board, found that 620 public water systems and 80,000
domestic wells are at risk of failing to provide affordable and
uncontaminated water, a problem that California will need
$4.7 billion of extra funding to solve. The report includes the
first-ever analysis of the state’s domestic wells — a common
water source for rural communities. Threats to these systems
are often poorly understood due to lack of good data.
A weather pattern change will bring much-needed rain and
mountain snow to parts of the drought-stricken West, including
California, into the weekend. So far this month, the jet stream
has often taken a huge detour northward over the eastern
Pacific Ocean, effectively blocking Pacific storms from
reaching the West Coast.
During its regularly scheduled meeting yesterday, the Westlands
Water District Board of Directors elected Ryan Ferguson to
serve as president of the District. Ferguson succeeds Daniel
Errotabere, who will continue to serve on the Board.
The dry year and reduced flows in the Sacramento River System
are challenging the ability for water resources managers to
serve water for cities and rural communities, farms, wildlife
refuges, fish and recreation. Part of the challenge has been
the inordinate focus on temperature management in the upper
part of the river below Shasta Lake. As we have all seen
countless times before, a focus on one species or in this case
one aspect (temperature) of water management is not a path
forward for the long-term, successful recovery of salmon…
A federal court has ruled that Best Best & Krieger LLP client
City of Santa Maria and others are correctly not releasing more
water from a dam above the City, as doing so would be in
conflict with the dam’s Congressional purpose. … The
lawsuit claims the defendants are violating the Endangered
Species Act by not releasing enough water from Twitchell Dam on
the Cuyama River, thereby not providing sufficient water for
federal law-protected Southern California Steelhead trout to
spawn.
Eastern Municipal Water District’s (EMWD) Board of Directors
today selected Joe Mouawad as EMWD’s next General Manager
following a nationwide search. Mouawad has served in various
leadership roles with EMWD for the past 15 years, bringing a
wealth of internal experience to his new responsibility of
leading California’s sixth-largest retail water agency. Mouawad
is the eighth General Manager in EMWD’s 71-year history.
Following a temporary delay in Colorado federal court, the
Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR)
will now take effect in Colorado on April 23, 2021. Under
the NWPR, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
Army Corps of Engineers will no longer require permits for
operations affecting certain categories of streams and wetland
areas previously subject to the Clean Water Act.
Floodwaters are not what most people consider a blessing. But
they could help remedy California’s increasingly parched
groundwater systems, according to a new Stanford-led study.
The research, published in Science Advances, develops
a framework to calculate future floodwater volumes under a
changing climate and identifies areas where investments in
California’s aging water infrastructure could amplify
groundwater recharge.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a drought emergency for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties, but resisted calls to issue a
statewide proclamation — at least for now. Newsom’s emergency
order primarily affects communities and water districts in the
Russian River watershed, which includes the cities of Santa
Rosa, Ukiah and Sebastopol. Some 360,000 people live in the
area.
Visit key infrastructure and environmental restoration
sites along the lower Colorado River during our online
tour May 20 of the iconic river as it weaves through the
Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. Our
Lower Colorado
River Tour starts at Hoover Dam near Las Vegas and
stops at major agricultural regions, tourist
destinations and key wildlife areas such as the Salton Sea
and a wildlife refuge in Yuma, Ariz. resulting from a
tribal-city partnership.
Gov. Gavin Newsom officially declared a drought emergency
Wednesday in one of the driest regions of California, the
Russian River watershed in Northern California. While the
governor stopped short of declaring a statewide drought, the
move makes various forms of drought assistance available for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties and could allow the state to take
swifter action on curtailing farmers and others from pulling
water from the river.
[A] study, titled “Freshwater Salinization Syndrome on a
Continental Scale,” found at least a third of U.S. streams and
rivers have become saltier over the last 25 years. On December
3, freshwater scientist John Olson of California State
University, Monterey Bay, conducted a modeling study that
validated these results, indicating that the future looks briny
as well. The study is titled “Predicting Combined Effects of
Land Use and Climate Change On River and Stream Salinity.”
Salinization levels will likely increase by at least 50% in
half of U.S. streams by 2100 if salt use persists at its
current pace, according to Olson’s party.
The Water Association of Kern County’s annual Water Summit is
virtual this year but will still pack a punch of who’s who in
the water world. The day kicks off with an update on water
brought to the San Joaquin Valley via the federal Central
Valley Project. The speaker will be Deputy Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton. Next will be an update
on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and where the
process is at this point. The speaker will be Steven
Springhorn, Acting Deputy Director Groundwater Management
Department of Water Resources.
The 2020-21 California drought has led to significant water
cutbacks, compelling farmers to fallow ground and public
officials to respond with legislation intended to address the
state’s chronic water shortages. Farmers in more parts of
the state have learned in recent days just how little water
they will have available to them this summer, as water
suppliers from the Oregon border to the North Coast to the San
Joaquin Valley announced low allocations.
Just how bad is the drought in the Western US? The
shrinking of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, is a
troubling indicator. The massive man-made lake, which
straddles the border of Arizona and Nevada, is now only
at 39 percent of its full capacity, down from 44
percent in April 2020. That’s equivalent to a 10-foot drop
in the water level, according to the latest data from
the Bureau of Reclamation. Which means mandatory
restrictions on the amount of water surrounding states draw
from Lake Mead could be triggered in the next few months.
Casitas Municipal Water District has set a May 3 deadline
to apply for a vacant seat on its board. Former board member
Angelo Spandrio resigned last month. Now, the rest of the board
members plan to appoint someone to fill the seat for the
remainder of his four-year term, set to expire in December
2022. Spandrio, of Ojai, announced his decision at a March
10 board meeting, saying he and his wife plan to move to
Arizona.
The state and federal agencies tasked with protecting our fish,
wildlife, and natural resources are once again scrambling to
avoid wiping out this year’s cohort of chinook salmon that
spawn below Shasta Dam. If this sounds familiar, it is because
this scenario is a repeat of attempts to “manage” Shasta
operations in 2014 and 2015, which resulted in over 75% of the
eggs and fry of endangered winter run chinook salmon being
destroyed in both of those years, solely from the lack of
sufficient cold water being released from Shasta Dam …
More than 20 years ago, aquatic ecologist Michael Bogan
interned with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in
Bishop, east of the Sierra Nevadas. It was 1998, a wet year for
California, and the idea of studying water in the desert lodged
in his brain. Desert streams are approachable subjects,
especially compared to, say, a massive and murky system like
the Mississippi River, says Bogan, now a professor at the
University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the
Environment: … For Bogan, studying those small systems over
the past two decades has meant witnessing their decline.
It won’t solve California’s drought problems, but it’s better
than nothing. The first rain in a month could wet the Bay Area
and much of Northern California this weekend, forecasters say,
as a late-season storm from the Gulf of Alaska appears to be
headed toward the region. Computer models show the rain will
begin late Saturday in the North Bay, spreading across the
wider Bay Area and Santa Cruz Mountains on Sunday. … The
weekend system also could bring snow to the Sierra Nevada on
Sunday.
Large areas of California farmland, particularly in the San
Joaquin Valley, face future restrictions on groundwater pumping
to meet the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act. We talked to Caity Peterson—an adjunct fellow
at the PPIC Water Policy Center and a consulting
agroecologist—about a joint research project* on the potential
for dryland farming to reduce the amount of land needed to be
retired from production to balance water budgets.
With a drought affecting the Western part of the country, here
are ten simple ways to conserve water this Earth Day: Turn off
the faucet while brushing your teeth; Fix leaky faucets; Only
run a fully loaded dishwasher or wash a full load of laundry;
Take a shorter shower; Consider installing a water-saving
shower head; Use a broom to clean your driveway instead of
hosing it down; Find a use for water instead of pouring it down
the drain…
The state assembly on Monday unanimously approved a bill that
would assist with the retrofitting of Anderson Dam in Morgan
Hill. Assembly Bill 271, which was introduced and authored by
Assemblymember Robert Rivas, passed in the assembly April 19 on
a vote of 71-0, according to Rivas’ office. The bill now
proceeds to the state senate. The legislation builds on Rivas’
previous efforts to expedite the construction of Anderson Dam,
which has been deemed seismically unsafe and is currently
undergoing a significant retrofit.
As drought conditions worsen across Northern California, the
Marin Municipal Water District is about to become the Bay
Area’s first major water agency to make the leap to mandatory
water restrictions. The utility is expected to adopt a plan
Tuesday that would require nearly 200,000 residents of southern
and central Marin County to limit outdoor watering to one day a
week as well as to stop washing their cars, refilling their
swimming pools and power-washing their homes, among other
things. Offenders could face fines of up to $250…
People in some Stanislaus and Merced counties are being warned
if their water comes from groundwater wells, it could be
contaminated with harmful amounts of nitrate. Now those
homes could be receiving free bottled water as a solution. Some
have already been buying bottles for years, to avoid getting
sick. … At his Salida home with a water fountain flowing in
his front yard, Jose Olagues can’t drink from the faucet in his
own home. … Bottled water keeps him from becoming sick.
The San Diego County Water Authority was successful in its rate
lawsuit against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, and the SDCWA provided a check to the Rainbow
Municipal Water District for Rainbow’s share of the settlement.
On March 23, the Rainbow board voted 5-0 to place the money
into the district’s reserves rather than to attempt to provide
refunds to each individual ratepayer.
Publicly owned treatment works in California have been
observing a trend of permit requirements issued by EPA Region 9
and the State to develop and utilize an Asset Management
Program as part of their NPDES/Wastewater Discharge Order. In
the case of OC San, an Asset Management Plan has already been
in place; however, with many of its major assets aging, the
development of a more robust AMP became a priority for the
agency.
Thousand Oaks plans to upgrade much of its aging infrastructure
over the next two fiscal years, with help from President
Joe Biden’s recently enacted American Rescue
Plan. … The proposed $111 million budget contains
132 projects, mostly infrastructure improvements. The
10 most expensive projects are, in millions of
dollars: $19.9 — Converting an irrigation well at the Los
Robles Golf Course to a treated drinking water source for
municipal supplies, lessening the city’s reliance on more
expensive imported water.
The Yolo County Farm Bureau as well as two former Farm Bureau
presidents have filed a lawsuit against the City of Woodland
and the Woodland City Council over the Woodland Flood Risk
Management Project. The suit — which was filed on March 25
— is a Verified Petition for a Writ of Mandate and
Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, or a way to
get the judicial branch to reaffirm previous contracts.
Last Tuesday, American Rivers released its annual America’s
Most Endangered Rivers list for 2021. Because of a Trump-era
proposal to raise Shasta Dam, the group named northern
California’s McCloud River as the nation’s 7th most threatened
river. Over the past century, California has engineered the
structure of water capture and distribution in the state.
… During the Trump administration, then Secretary of the
Interior David Bernhardt advanced plans to increase the height
of Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet and to expand Shasta Lake by more
than 200 billion gallons.
The Klamath River Basin is in a dire situation this
year. The plan curtails irrigation diversions to less than
10% of demand while failing to meet the biological needs of
salmon and other fisheries downstream. … Reclamation also
announced $15 million in immediate aid to the Klamath Project
through the Klamath Project Drought Relief Agency, an
additional $3 million in technical assistance to Tribes for
ecosystem activities in the basin, as well as funding for
groundwater monitoring in the basin.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will begin releasing warmer
water from the upper layers of the Shasta Reservoir directly
into the Sacramento River to maintain flows, while saving
colder water for the winter-run Chinook salmon migration.
The release of last week’s Bureau of Reclamation 24-month study
felt like very bad news for the Colorado River (See Tony Davis
for details.). But a careful reading of the numbers, and an
understanding of the process through which they are developed,
suggests things are likely even worse than the top-line numbers
in the study. The problem: the assumptions underlying the study
do not fully capture the climate-change driven aridification of
the Colorado River Basin.
Suisun Marsh is central to the health of the San Francisco
Estuary. Not only is it a huge (470 km2) tidal marsh in
the center the northern estuary (Figure 1), but it is an
extremely important nursery area for species such as splittail,
striped bass, longfin smelt, and, formerly, delta smelt. Since
January 1980, a team from The University of California, Davis,
in partnership with the California Department of Water
Resources (DWR), has systematically monitored the marsh’s fish
populations. The team had been sampling the fish and
invertebrates every month with trawls and beach seines, with a
nearly unbroken record. Then Covid-19 restrictions settled
in…
The Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs are likely to drop to
historically low levels later this year, prompting mandatory
conservation by some of the river’s heaviest users. The latest
Bureau of Reclamation reservoir projections, which take into
account river flows in a given year, show a likelihood that
Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada stateline will dip below the
critical threshold of 1,075 feet in elevation in May and remain
below that level for the foreseeable future. A first-ever
official shortage declaration from the Department of the
Interior is almost certain later this year.
Reclamation announced today that spring-time operations at
Shasta Dam will adjust to benefit endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon in the Sacramento River during this critically dry water
year. … No additional water from Shasta Reservoir will be
released during this temporary adjustment—only the withdrawal
elevation and timing of water releases will change.
The Alameda County Water District board has promoted Ed
Stevenson to serve as the district’s new general manager. The
district, which provides water to roughly 350,000 homes in
Fremont, Newark and Union City, announced that Stevenson,
a 24-year district employee, will take over after current
general manager Robert Shaver retires on July 1 following 30
years of service.
Incomplete local record-keeping may stymie EPA efforts to
locate the nation’s lead pipes to meet President Joe Biden’s
goal of replacing them and improving drinking water quality,
authorities say. A better way to reduce lead contamination in
the nation’s drinking water, a former Environmental Protection
Agency water chief says, is by enforcing an existing rule
requiring utilities to replace some of their lead pipes every
year. The Biden administration’s infrastructure plan, released
March 31, calls for replacing all lead drinking water pipes
throughout the U.S. to avoid lead contamination drinking water
…
California has entered another drought. But depending on who
you ask, the last one may have never really ended. Some
researchers believe the region is actually more than two
decades into an emerging “megadrought” — a hydrological event
that is on par with the worst dry spells of the past
millennium. Except this time, they say, human-caused climate
change is driving its severity — and will make it that much
harder to climb back out of.
Leaders of the Central Coast Water Authority fear that Santa
Barbara County is at a disadvantage in obtaining state water
because of the county’s failure to adopt an amendment to the
State Water Project that allows local water districts to buy
and sell water supplies outside the county. The CCWA is an
umbrella organization for all of the State Water Project
members in Santa Barbara County.
The Yurok Tribe said it’s sounding the alarm as culturally
invaluable salmon edge closer to extinction. The Yurok also
said it is canceling its commercial fishery for the fifth time
this year. Tribal officials said past water management
decisions and climate change have put Klamath river salmon
stocks at risk. The tribe said it’s gravely concerned about the
rapidly declining salmon stocks in the Klamath River
Basin … Tribal officials said [Reclamation's] plan
provides bare-minimum flows for imperiled Klamath salmon and
sucker fish populations.
After years of neglect, numerous measures to make sure much
needed and overdue repairs of the Friant-Kern Canal are fully
funded continue to be introduced. Congressman Jim Costa and
Senator Dianne Feinstein were the latest to introduce
legislation on Thursday that would help fund repairs for the
Friant-Kern Canal. Along with Congressman Josh Harder they
introduced a bill that has bipartisan support, the Canal
Conveyance Restoration Act that would provide more than $800
million for repairs to three San Joaquin Valley canals,
including the Friant-Kern Canal, along with restoring salmon
runs in the San Joaquin River.
No country is immune from water scarcity issues — not even the
world’s wealthiest country, the United States. The southwestern
states, in particular, have faced frequent and ongoing droughts
over the past two decades, and traditional water supplies are
failing. … Our existing water supplies must go
further, and the technology exists to make this happen — by
turning wastewater into drinking water.
The successful Bakersfield children’s book series “Indy, Oh
Indy” has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund its sixth
upcoming book, titled “The Mighty Kern River.” The book was
inspired by a larger effort from the grassroots group Bring
Back the Kern to raise awareness about Bakersfield’s mostly dry
river and efforts to revive a more regular flow of water
through town.
The worsening drought has canceled a large water sale to West
Side farmers by the Oakdale and South San Joaquin irrigation
districts. They announced Wednesday that their own
customers will need the water, which had been declared surplus
in early March. A revised forecast of Stanislaus River runoff
scuttled the sale, which could have brought up to $25 million
to the sellers.
Restoration flows will begin tomorrow, April 16, on the Trinity
River to help improve conditions after another critically dry
water year. A flow schedule based on the expected amount of
water available to support salmon restoration efforts on the
Trinity River is brought forward by the Trinity Management
Council each year. This week’s two-day schedule is slated to
increase daily average flows from 300 cubic feet per second to
1,300 cubic feet per second.
While high-profile surface-water initiatives like WaterFix and
the Delta Conveyance Project grab most of the headlines
pertaining to water management in the state, efforts to make
significant changes to the way groundwater is utilized have
been underway since 2014. Now, the state and the local water
agencies are seeking public comment on documents related to the
management of groundwater. In 2014, then-Gov. Jerry Brown
signed a three-bill legislative package collectively known as
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to better
manage groundwater supplies over the long term.
SCV Water, the Santa Clarita Valley’s water
agency, received a nearly $250,000 California Special
Districts Association Public Safety Power Shutoff program
allocation from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency
Services (Cal OES). The allocation will be used to help
fund the installation of a permanent generator at the Earl
Schmidt Filtration Plant on Lake Hughes Road near Castaic.
The addition of this second generator brings the facility up to
100% operational capacity in the event of a power outage.
California was the first U.S. state to legally recognize access
to safe, clean and affordable water as a human right. But
substantial parts of the state lack access to drinking water
that meets those criteria. A new study published by the
California State Water Board and supported by UCLA research
identifies a risk for failure among a significant portion of
the state’s small and medium-sized public water systems.
Congressman Jim Costa (D–Fresno) introduced a bill on Thursday
that would provide over $800 million in funding to water
projects in California. If the Canal Conveyance Capacity
Restoration Act is enacted, $653 million in Federal funds will
go to restore the capacity of three canals in the Central
Valley, and $180 million will be used to restore salmon runs on
the San Joaquin River.
