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.
The Marin Municipal Water District is set to release a plan
next month to replace all of its analog water meters with smart
meters by 2026. The district, which serves 191,000 residents in
central and southern Marin, estimates replacing its nearly
58,000 analog meters would take three years at a cost ranging
from $20 million to $25 million. The switch allows ratepayers
to track their water use in real time. Staff and board members
say the smart meters will improve conservation, reduce the need
for staff to manually read meters and result in faster leak
detection and fewer bills.
Concerns of raw water users, the Tuolumne County Farm Bureau,
and its water committee came before the Tuolumne Utilities
District Board of Directors at a meeting Tuesday. The concerns
were raised near the end of a discussion of a draft water rate
study that’s focused on increasing rates to generate revenue to
operate and maintain TUD’s proposed acquisition of the Pacific
Gas and Electric Co. water system in the South Fork Stanislaus
watershed and at the Phoenix Lake reservoir. The draft water
rate study includes five years of proposed water rate increases
to be effective beginning Sept. 1.
A group of senators has introduced the Support to Rehydrate the
Environment, Agriculture and Municipalities, or STREAM, Act.
The bill would increase water supply and modernize water
infrastructure throughout the West. The three senators, all
from states affected by the current drought, include Sens.
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Kyrsten
Sinema (D-Ariz.). … Infrastructure improvements and
additions work toward a long-term solution. And it’s important
to think urgently, said the release.
Federal officials have a sobering forecast for the Colorado
River Basin: Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir which
serves millions of people in the Southwest, will likely drop
another 12 feet by this fall. It’s far below what the outlooks
were predicting as of last year. The latest forecast from the
US Bureau of Reclamation shows the reservoir plummeting from
its current elevation of around 1049 feet above sea level to
around 1037 feet by this September. One year after that,
in September 2023, it suggests Lake Mead will be 26 feet lower
than its current level — just 19% of the lake’s full capacity
and a level that would trigger the most severe water cuts for
the Southwest.
A state program aimed at retiring and repurposing farmland
could get $60 million – more than doubling its current funding
– under Gov. Newsom’s proposed budget. The Multibenefit Land
Repurposing Program was created with $50 million from the 2021
state budget. The program helps pay for farmland to be taken
out of production and repurposed to less water intensive uses.
Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have pumped groundwater for
crops without limits for generations. But groundwater levels
are plummeting …
[On the southeast side of California’s Central
Valley] farmers are pumping unreliable groundwater to make
up the difference, hoping their already struggling wells don’t
go dry … Others will rip up their trees and leave their
fields fallow. … About 100 miles away, on the northwest
side of the Central Valley, the situation could not be more
different. Even during an unprecedented drought, the almond and
pistachio farmers around the city of Los Banos will get around
75 percent of a normal year’s water … The startling contrast
is the result of an obscure and contentious legal agreement
known as the exchange contract …
Each year, Lake Shasta brings in locals and tourists from all
over, especially for Memorial Day weekend. Businesses on Lake
Shasta are dealing with low lake levels and short staffing but
despite the challenges, they still expect a good holiday
turnout. … With a three-year drought, lake levels are
front-of-mind for many frequent lake visitors, but
there is good news. Lake levels are currently
about 120 feet below full pool and expected to drop 155 feet
later this summer, but that’s still 30 feet higher than we saw
last year. Matt Doyle, general manager of Lake Shasta Caverns,
said businesses around the lake are very hopeful for this
year’s summer.
California water regulators strengthened the state’s drought
rules this week, ordering local suppliers to take steps to
reduce water usage to stretch limited supplies this summer.
Gov. Gavin Newsom warned that more stringent statewide water
restrictions could come if the state doesn’t make more progress
on conservation soon. … As part of the new rules, the state
also banned the use of drinking water for irrigating grass that
is purely decorative at businesses and in common areas of
subdivisions and homeowners associations. Here is a
breakdown of what is going on:
Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, is maneuvering against a bill
that seeks higher flows on local rivers. Assembly Bill 2639
would set a Dec. 31, 2023, deadline for the State Water
Resources Control Board to complete its plan for tributaries to
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. They include the Stanislaus,
Tuolumne and Merced rivers. The decision would follow decades
of wrangling over whether fish should get more water on the
lower rivers at the expense of farms and cities.
It is mid-May, and a couple of days ago, the Hermits Peak Fire
in northern New Mexico reached 299,565 acres in size,
surpassing the 2012 Whitewater-Baldy Fire as the state’s
largest wildfire on record. … It is mid-May, and a dozen
other fires have already charred tens of thousands of acres
across the West … It is mid-May, and the spring winds have
been relentless … It is mid-May, and the temperature in
Phoenix has reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit two days in a row.
Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, is Monday. What’s
in store for the upcoming season of beach days and barbecues in
Southern California? To start with, it will be dry. That’s not
just because California’s Mediterranean climate means rain
mostly falls during a few wet winter months, but because the
state is in its third year of drought…. Major reservoirs
statewide were at 76% of average levels this week, with the
long, hot summer months still ahead….This month, 59.64% of
the state is categorized as being in extreme drought, the
second-worst category, with just 0.18% in exceptional drought —
but then this is May, not July.
The water level in Lake Mead — the nation’s largest reservoir —
dropped below 1,050 feet elevation for the first time last
week, a critical milestone that signals more stringent water
cuts are around the corner for the Southwest…. As of Tuesday,
Lake Mead’s level was around 1,049 feet above sea
level…. If the lake’s water level is expected to stay
below 1,050 feet by January 2023, the more significant Tier 2
shortage would be implemented. Additional cuts — each tier with
rising impact on agriculture and municipal water use — are
expected if Lake Mead continues to fall.
California’s vast network of surface water reservoirs is
designed to hold carryover storage from year to year to ensure
water is available for urban, agricultural and environmental
purposes during dry months and years. But climate change has
begun to affect our reliance on historical weather patterns to
predict California’s water supply, making it even more
difficult for water managers to manage drought conditions and
placing a greater emphasis on better precipitation forecasting
at longer lead times. Learn about efforts being made to
‘get ahead of the storms’ through new science, models and
technology at our special one-day workshop June 9 in
Irvine, Making
Progress on Drought Management: Improvements in Seasonal
Precipitation Forecasting.
The California Senate has proposed a $2 billion reconciliation
framework to rebalance water supply and water rights, as part
of proposed investments of $7.5 billion in state and federal
funds spread over three years for climate resiliency. It is the
most sweeping land retirement proposal since the landmark 1992
Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture says that
more than 90% of the cotton harvested in California has been
grown in the San Joaquin Valley but continuing dry weather is
posing significant challenges for growers. Consumer demand is
driving the market for cotton, including high-quality Pima
cotton now reaching record levels of more than $3 a pound. But
as California faces another dry year many farmers in Kern
County are impacted not only by an increase in price but also
by a decrease in production.
A “Tier 1″ shortage was triggered by Lake Mead falling below
1,075 feet of water this past year. This means less
Colorado River water is flowing into Arizona. Historic drought
conditions are impacting critical infrastructure that provides
water and power to the region, like the Hoover Dam, and Lakes
Mead and Powell…. For now, [Bureau of Reclamation official
Dan] Bunk says Yuma and its agricultural industry remain
unaffected by the tier one shortage. But the future is unknown.
Despite being surrounded by water, Bay Area residents are
routinely told during dry years to take shorter showers, let
lawns brown and slow the rush of water from their taps. But as
climate change prolongs drought and challenges local water
supply, regional water managers are warning that none of those
actions will be enough. Many say the time has come to invest in
technically feasible, though politically and environmentally
complicated alternatives like purifying wastewater and sucking
salt out of seawater to bolster stores.
As drought and climate change tighten their grip on the
American West, the sight of fountains, swimming pools, gardens
and golf courses in cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los
Angeles, Salt Lake City, Boise, and Albuquerque can be jarring
at first glance. Western water experts, however, say they
aren’t necessarily cause for concern. Over the past three
decades, major Western cities — particularly in California and
Nevada — have diversified their water sources, boosted local
supplies through infrastructure investments and conservation,
and use water more efficiently.
Residents in Santa Clara County could face fines of up to $500
— and in extreme cases, $10,000 — for wasting water, under new
drought rules approved Tuesday afternoon that are among the
toughest of any urban area in California. … The new
rules take effect June 1, but depend largely on citizen
complaints and very few “water cops” to investigate
them. Under the rules, residents who see water being
wasted can notify the district of the address and date of
incident by calling 408-630-2000, or emailing
WaterWise@valleywater.org, or reporting online….
Californians can expect to see more yellow grass around
hospitals, hotels, office parks and industrial centers after
water regulators voted Tuesday to ban watering of
“nonfunctional” turf in commercial areas. The State Water
Resources Control Board also moved to order all the state’s
major urban water providers to step up their conservation
efforts. The moves are the strongest regulatory actions state
officials have taken in the third year of the latest drought.
California’s top water regulators adopted emergency drought
rules Tuesday that scale up conservation requirements for water
suppliers throughout the state and prohibit watering grass that
is purely decorative at businesses and in common areas of
subdivisions and homeowners associations. The regulations
outlaw the use of potable water for irrigating “non-functional”
grass at commercial, industrial and institutional properties.
For the fourth time in 10 years, farmers I know in California
are facing a harsh reality — they won’t see a drop of water
from federal government reserves to supplement the little bit
they’ll get from Mother Nature. … Precision
agriculture — the use of technology like networked sensors and
artificial intelligence — is helping farmers get by without the
water they once had. The efficiencies are real, and the impact
is tangible. I’ve seen up close how precision agriculture is
making a difference for farms facing extreme drought. -Written by Michael Gilbert, CEO of Semios,
helping farmers use data to optimize every acre.
The water crisis in Arizona affects all of us. From our tap
water to our crops, even our electricity. The supply is running
short, so FOX 10’s Steve Nielsen headed to Lake Powell to
investigate our ongoing water crisis and uncover what’s being
done to safeguard our most important resource in the desert.
… Lake Powell historical data in 2011 shows the water
level was at 3,622 feet. It ebbs and flows a little bit every
year, but there’s been a steep drop off the last two
years. As of May 2022, the water level is sitting at
3,522.
New Melones Reservoir is the proverbial canary in the mine when
it comes to where state water policy wedded with the return of
megadroughts is taking California. Using historical hydrology
data on the Stanislaus River basin between 1922 and 2019:
*Based on current regulatory rules New Melones Reservoir would
fall below 250,000 acre feet of storage in 3 out of the 98
years. -Written by Dennis Wyatt, editor of The Manteca
Bulletin.
A pre-Memorial Day heat wave will prime the Bay Area for
another dry fire season, roasting the region’s landscape with
some of the hottest weather so far in 2022 and pushing
temperatures in some cities close to 100 degrees. A month ahead
of the official start of summer, high temperatures could climb
5 to 20 degrees above normal on Tuesday and Wednesday for much
of the Bay Area — a pre-Memorial Day blast of hot weather that
prompted a heat advisory for the entire Central Valley and a
red flag warning for a broad swath of Northern California
stretching from Vallejo to Redding…. Already,
California’s drought has depleted reservoirs and contributed to
some of the state’s largest fires on record in recent years.
A Trump era decision has further imperiled endangered fish
species in the Trinity River, and commercial fishermen and
local tribes are demanding the federal government take action.
This week, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations and its sister organization Institute for
Fisheries Research sent the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a 60-day
notice of their intention to sue the federal agency for
violating the Endangered Species Act. The amount of water the
bureau is diverting from the Trinity River to the Central
Valley Project has decimated the river’s salmon populations
…
Outdoor watering restrictions area set to take effect in Los
Angeles at the end of the month, and the prospect of an
improvement in drought conditions appears dim. Just how bad is
the drought? According to state figures, the first three months
of the year were the driest in the state’s recorded history.
California is currently in the third year of a
drought. Wade Crowfoot is the state secretary for natural
resources. The one resource he oversees that we all use is
water. According to his agency, the drought is getting worse,
not better.
When California suffers a heat wave, it leans heavily on
hydropower from the Pacific Northwest to keep the lights on.
But that hydropower may not always be available when it’s most
needed, as climate change is shifting the ground on which the
West’s dams sit. Higher temperatures means snowmelt occurs
earlier in the year and leaves less water available for power
generation during the depths of summer.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Bakersfield) and state Sen. Dave
Cortese (D-San Jose) are calling for U. S. Attorney General
Merrick Garland to investigate possible drought profiteering
and water rights abuses in the western states. … A
county supervisor in Arizona joined the California state
senators in calling for the investigation. … In addition
to raising anti-trust questions, Hurtado and Cortese expressed
concern about the potential for hedge funds to divert water
intended for food production to cannabis growing operations.
Three years ago, when he sank everything he had into 66 acres
of irrigated pasture in Shasta County, [farmer Josh] Davy
thought he’d drought-proofed his cattle operation. He’d been
banking on the Sacramento Valley’s water supply… But this
spring, for the first time ever, no water is flowing through
his pipes and canals or those of his neighbors: The district
won’t be delivering any water to Davy or any of its roughly 800
other customers.
City of Porterville Manager John Lollis … announced at
Tuesday’s Porterville City Council meeting the County and State
may exercise its right to take 3 million gallons of
water a month at no charge from a city well as part of the
arrangement the city, county and state reached to supply East
Porterville with water after the 2015 drought. … Lollis
noted the state still hasn’t fulfilled its portion of the
agreement which called for the development of three wells for
the City of Porterville as part of the East Porterville
project.
Despite two board members expressing doubts that a new spending
measure would be approved by voters, the Mendocino County Board
of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with a
possible sales tax ordinance to fund projects protecting local
water supply and boosting local fire services.
One hundred years after a landmark agreement divided the waters
of the Colorado River among Western states, the pact is now
showing its age as a hotter and drier climate has shrunk the
river….Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who oversaw
management of the river under President Clinton, said it’s
become clear that the 1922 Colorado River Compact should be
revamped to adapt to the reduced amount of water that is
available as global warming compounds the 22-year megadrought
in the watershed.
As the drought deepens and an election nears, Gov. Gavin Newsom
is taking extra steps to increase pressure—and
responsibility—on the Water Commission for the Sites Reservoir
Project proposal. During a Senate budget subcommittee
hearing on Tuesday, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot
said the governor has tasked him with ensuring the commission
“isn’t slowing down the progress of getting those [Proposition
1] projects online.” Newsom also charged Crowfoot with finding
ways to remove regulatory barriers and accelerate the approval
process for those projects.
Local and state water leaders were practically upbeat two years
ago at the last in-person Water Summit put on by the Water
Association of Kern County. At least as upbeat as California
water folks typically get. They advocated for new ideas,
radical partnerships and solutions that could benefit both ag
and environmental interests. That was then. Facing a third year
of punishing drought and the bleak realities of new groundwater
restrictions, the vibe at this year’s summit was more “in the
bunker” than “in it together.”
The Interior Department’s internal watchdog on Thursday said it
found no evidence that former secretary David Bernhardt
violated lobbying laws regarding a former client, a California
water district that is the nation’s largest agricultural water
supplier, although he continued to advise them on legislative
matters on occasion after he stopped being their lobbyist.
For Executive Pastor Mark Spurlock, expanding classroom space
at the Twin Lakes Christian School in Aptos has been addition
by subtraction. At least when it comes to saving water.
Following development offset rules outlined by the Soquel Creek
Water District, the school engineered water-saving solutions to
offset the new space they were building including replacing
lawn areas with a drought-friendly plaza that catches and
diverts water routed from nearby rooftops. … To
better understand seawater intrusion, Duncan says the layman
can think of the Santa Cruz area’s aquifer as a giant bathtub
with mountain watershed on one side, and ocean on the other.
A proposal apparently headed to the November ballot would have
voters in rural southeastern Arizona decide whether to create a
new regulatory district to manage large-scale groundwater use
for agriculture in an area where aquifer levels have dropped in
recent years. A grassroots group collected sufficient voter
signatures on petitions required under state law for a ballot
measure on creation of an active management area in the Willcox
basin in Cochise and Graham counties, myheraldreview.com
reported. The management area would be Arizona’s first created
through a petition drive.
New numbers continue to show California Sierra snowpack is
dropping along with the state’s groundwater but why is that
important? Check out this image below and you’ll see all of the
ways we use snowpack. That Spring snowmelt not only fills
our streams, reservoirs and lakes, we also use it for
agriculture, household, ecology and hydropower. In total
providing one-third of the state’s water supply. The
problem lately, we just can’t get enough storms to keep the
snowpack at normal levels. This year only finished at 42%
of normal.
Illegal pot grows were already a problem in the High Desert,
but during the pandemic, the number increased, and now
officials say with scarce water resources in Southern
California, it’s a drought problem too. The NBC4 I-Team has
been following the efforts to eradicate illegal marijuana
operations in the high desert region of Southern California. On
May 17, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced a
new operation targeting those operations. The problem
exploded during the pandemic with illegal marijuana grow
operations quickly multiplying in High Desert
communities.
The ongoing water feud between two of Kings County’s biggest
farming entities recently spilled into Kern County and up to
Sacramento with allegations on both sides of misuse of water
and other public resources. In a May 12 letter, the Southwest
Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency complains that the J.G.
Boswell Company has been pumping and storing massive amounts of
groundwater for irrigation in a shallow basin, subjecting it to
extreme evaporation and contributing to the area’s already
significant subsidence problems.
On Wednesday, State Senator Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger joined
her colleague, Democratic State Senator Dave Cortese in sending
a letter to United States Attorney General Merrick
Garland requesting an investigation into possible drought
profiteering and water rights abuses in the Western
states. The Senators said they’re concerned about the
increasing amount of water rights being purchased by hedge
funds, their potential anti-competitive practices and the
devastating impact that could have on water security.
The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta lies at the confluence of two
of the state’s largest rivers. Forty percent of California’s
runoff flows into the Delta, which—together with the San
Francisco Bay—forms one of the West Coast’s largest estuaries.
The Delta watershed supplies water to roughly 30 million
residents and more than 6 million acres of farmland. Water
exported from the Delta goes to the Bay Area, the southern San
Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast, and Southern California
(first figure).
More reservoirs across Utah may run dry and the Great Salt Lake
will continue to decline, state officials warned lawmakers on
Wednesday. During a briefing before the Utah State
Legislature’s Natural Resources Interim Committee, lawmakers
were told that 99% of Utah remains in severe or extreme
drought…. A legislative commission [is] requesting a
study on the idea of a pipeline to take water from the Pacific
Ocean across California and Nevada into the Great Salt Lake.
How can California water managers get ahead of the storms to
improve drought management? A special one-day workshop June 9
in Irvine will highlight some of the latest research on
seasonal precipitation forecasting that could help water
managers across the state plan better for what winter might
bring. The workshop, Making Progress on Drought Management: Improvements in
Seasonal Precipitation Forecasting, is sponsored
by the California Department of Water Resources in partnership
with the Water Education Foundation.
New research predicts that changes in mountain snowmelt will
shift peak streamflows to much earlier in the year for the vast
Colorado River Basin, altering reservoir management and
irrigation across the entire region. … The basin
stretches from sea level at the Gulf of California to higher
than 14,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and
provides critical water to cities and farmers within the basin
and beyond. Significant water is diverted to large population
centers, including Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake
City, San Diego and Santa Fe.
Conservation groups are speaking out in support of water rights
in rural Mono County, saying thirsty Los Angeles is endangering
wildlife, ranching and tourism. All parties are awaiting the
judge’s decision after a recent hearing, where the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power (DWP) argued it has the right to
cut off water ranchers use to irrigate Long Valley and Little
Round Valley for cattle grazing near the Crowley Lake
Reservoir. Wendy Schneider, executive director of the nonprofit
Friends of the Inyo, said the DWP bought up water rights 100
years ago, but the Eastern Sierra is getting the short end of
the stick.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging Californians to find ways to reduce
their water use in an effort to combat the historic drought and
said upcoming conservation mandates are a priority. The
governor visited a water recycling facility Tuesday afternoon
in Carson. It was originally built as a demonstration project
to recycle household wastewater and replenish groundwater
supplies…. Statewide, water consumption is up just 3.7% since
July compared to 2020, woefully short of Newsom’s 15% goal.
Newsom pledged to spend $100 million on a statewide advertising
campaign to encourage water conservation.
Most people have never heard of Sites, California. It’s just a
tiny dot on maps, little more than an intersection in the road
on the remote west side of rural Colusa County in Northern
California. But the surrounding Antelope Valley, where
wildflowers bloom and cattle graze on spring grasses, is one of
the next battlegrounds in California’s water wars. Under plans
endorsed by state, federal and local officials, the valley
would be flooded by the Sites Reservoir, a 14,000-acre lake
that would take in water pumped from the Sacramento River and
store it for agricultural and municipal use during dry periods.
With 60% of the state now in extreme drought conditions, state
officials are warning water-right holders that they should
expect more curtailments during peak irrigation season in June
and July. … Drought emergency curtailment
regulations were issued last fall by the California State Water
Resources Control Board for certain watersheds in response to
persistent dry conditions and spurred by a drought emergency
declaration by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Curtailment orders
adopted last year are effective for up to one year unless
readopted.
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and
Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) yesterday introduced S.4231, the
Support to Rehydrate the Environment, Agriculture and
Municipalities Act or STREAM Act, a bill that would increase
water supply and modernize water infrastructure in California
and throughout the West.
As the Western United States endures an ongoing megadrought
that has spanned more than two decades, an increasing number of
cities, towns and water districts are being forced to say no to
new growth. There’s just not enough water to go around. Last
month, the California Coastal Commission urged San Luis Obispo
County to stop all new development requiring water use in the
communities of Los Osos and Cambria.
A legislative commission is floating the idea of a pipeline to
bring water from the Pacific Ocean into the Great Salt Lake.
“There’s a lot of water in the ocean and we have very little in
the Great Salt Lake,” said Sen. David Hinkins, R-Orangeville,
who co-chairs the Legislative Water Development Commission.
… The study would look at the cost to actually create a
pipeline from the Pacific Ocean, across California and the
Sierra-Nevada mountains, across the deserts of Nevada and
ultimately into the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
The Interior Department is doling out more than $240 million
for repairs to aging water infrastructure in the drought-ridden
West, one of the first investments with ramifications for
agriculture in the $1.5 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
enacted last year.
Climate change and water shortages are in large part
responsible for causing the drought within California in the
US, as well as other western states. This has been an ongoing
trend for three years now, and in 2022 alone, California has
experienced 1,402 wildfires that have consumed at least 6,507
acres of land. However, there is also a weather phenomenon
known as La Niña, … This produces little precipitation,
thereby leading to less snowmelt and runoff during the spring
thaw, which then leads into optimal drought conditions.
Naturally, La Niña and exacerbating climate factors would
strain already dwindling water sources.
For something that is so crucial to all aspects of life,
including the most fundamental business operations, water risk
is a blind spot for many investors and businesses. There is
little understanding of how overuse, pollution and increasingly
frequent extreme weather events, such as the years-long drought
in California, the recent heatwave in India and Pakistan, and
last year’s floods in Europe, are affecting water availability,
says Cate Lamb, global director of water security at disclosure
not-for-profit CDP. A third of listed financial institutions do
not assess exposure to water risk in their financial
activities, although 69% of listed equities told CDP in 2021
that they are exposed to water-related risks.
A California federal judge has declined to lift an injunction
on two Northern California county ordinances that require
strict permits for the transport of water, saying that while
the local laws were enacted to quash illegal cannabis farms,
they’ve caused harm to a group of Hmong farmers. In a decision
handed down Friday, Chief U. S. District Judge Kimberly J.
Mueller found that although Siskiyou County had modified the
ordinances, they were still likely to cut off water to a
community of Hmong farmers within the county’s borders.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised budget proposal would set aside $75
million to aid small agricultural businesses as the drought
deepens. The one-time assistance would provide grants ranging
from $30,000 to $50,000, depending on the amount of lost
revenue. The program would prioritize businesses in the hardest
hit regions, such as the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys….
Newsom’s budget plan would allocate $100 million for repairing
conveyance canals, which was part of a 2021 budget deal. But it
would not add anything further.
The Colorado River plays a pivotal role in the American West,
supplying water to more than 40 million people, irrigating 5
million acres of farmland, and providing critical habitat for
rare fish, birds and plants. But demand for the Colorado’s
water far exceeds supply in the fast-growing Southwest, as a
climate change-fueled megadrought and rising temperatures place
an unprecedented strain on the iconic river, The Washington
Post’s Karin Brulliard, Matt McClain and Erin Patrick O’Connor
report.
If there’s one thing people in the West know how to fight over,
it’s water. California was built on scarcity, whether it
be gold or silver, land or water. In the mid-1800s, when
European Americans arrived to the land where Indigenous people
had lived for at least 10,000 years, they wasted no time
staking their claims. A big head-scratcher for those early
colonizers was how to get water to sustain burgeoning
towns.
Two recent moves aim to benefit water access for tribal
communities in the Colorado River basin. One, a bill in the
U.S. Congress, could increase access to clean water. Another,
the release of a “shared vision” statement, outlines the goals
of tribes and conservation nonprofits. Tribes in the basin hold
rights to about a quarter of the river’s flow, but have often
been excluded from negotiations about how the river’s water is
used.
The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors and Sonora City
Council generally liked what they heard Tuesday from Tuolumne
Utilities District staff in a special, non-action joint meeting
Tuesday about TUD’s plan to acquire Pacific Gas and Electric
Co.-owned water rights and infrastructure. A county supervisor
emphasized there may be urgent incentive for TUD to close the
deal because other water agencies from the Central Valley
expressed keen interest in PG&E’s assets in Tuolumne County
back in June 2019.
Jamie Traynham has spent nearly half a century in and around
the lush Northern California valley, about 70 miles north of
Sacramento, that is home to her family’s ranch. As a girl, she
and her sister rode their horses through Sites Valley, and
helped build the barn stalls where they raised livestock to
show in local 4-H competitions. As an adult, Traynham and her
husband rent the ranch from her mother and use the land —
typically a sea of green in the rainy season — as a key
winter-feeding location for their cattle.
John Gamlin’s recent defense of his Coral Mountain wave
basin resort in The Desert Sun (guest column, May 8) fails
to address the main issue. Planning development according to
historic water levels is extremely naive in the desert, and we
have seen this story pan out before. In 1959, the North Shore
Beach and Yacht Club opened on the shore of the Salton
Sea — a massive lake created in the early 1900s when
engineers accidentally flooded the ancient basin with
diverted Colorado River water intended to irrigate the dry,
fertile Imperial Valley. -Written by Sydney Hayes, a student majoring in
environmental studies and economics at Bowdoin
College.
The process of connecting Tooleville’s water system to
Exeter’s, which would relieve the small community of longtime
water supply and contamination issues, is expected to take
eight years. Information from the feasibility study
needed to start planning the project has been unfolding bit by
bit, mainly through biweekly meetings held between Exeter city
officials, representatives from Tooleville, staff from Self
Help Enterprises and Provost and Pritchard, the consultants in
charge of the study.
Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his revised state budget for the
2022-’23 Fiscal Year. The $300.7 billion budget includes
several priorities of interest to ACWA members, including
funding for drought, climate change, forest management and
more. Building upon last year’s three-year, $5.2 billion
allocation to support drought response and long-term water
sustainability, the governor’s revised budget includes an
additional $2 billion for drought response and water
resilience. This is part of the governor’s larger $47.1 billion
climate package.
It is a powerhouse: a 1,450-mile waterway that stretches from
the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, serving 40 million
people in seven U.S. states, 30 federally recognized tribes and
Mexico. It hydrates 5 million acres of agricultural land and
provides critical habitat for rare fish, birds and plants. But
the Colorado’s water was overpromised when it was first
allocated a century ago. Demand in the fast-growing Southwest
exceeds supply, and it is growing even as supply drops amid a
climate change-driven megadrought and rising temperatures.
States and cities are now scrambling to forestall the gravest
impacts to growth, farming, drinking water and electricity,
while also aiming to protect their own interests.
Everything everyone — by which I mean the wrong ones, the
NIMBYs — says about housing in Southern California is always
wrong. … Fact: Take your average Southland single-family
homestead, raze it and replace it with an eight-unit apartment
building, and you’d be … saving water. That’s because,
even in our xeriscaped age, unless you have Astroturfed your
entire yard, your landscaping uses a lot more water than your
sinks, shower and dishwasher do. -Written by Larry Wilson, a member of the Southern
California News Group editorial board.
Forested lands across the U.S. provide 83 million people with
at least half of their water, according to a broad new study of
surface water sources for more than 5,000 public water systems.
125 million people, or about 38% of the country’s population,
receive at least 10% of their water from forests. In the arid
western U.S., 39.5 million people get more than half of their
surface drinking water from forests that are increasingly under
threat of wildfires.
New legislation introduced in the State Assembly aims to make
the Governor’s March 28 order on new water well permits
permanent. Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) and
representatives from Visalia-based Community Water Center (CWC)
introduced Assembly Bill 2201 on March 31 requiring local
Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) to evaluate new well
drilling permits to ensure those wells will not negatively
affect domestic wells nearby before the permits can be approved
by county government. The law would codify Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
executive order, which is temporary.
Severe drought is taking a severe toll on California rice crops
as this year, hundreds of thousands of acres won’t be planted.
Some call the impact on farmers and the surrounding communities
catastrophic…. The Northern California Water Association
expects the rice industry to lose more than $250 million
statewide, including more than $70 million in lost wages.
The entire West Desert is now about the exact opposite of what
the area once was. The planet warmed as it left the Pleistocene
era and Lake Bonneville receded to what is now the Great Salt
Lake. And as the Great Salt Lake now dries to the lowest level
in its recorded history, there is plenty more moonscape to go
around.
After hearing hours of heated debate, the California Coastal
Commission voted against a controversial plan by the company
Poseidon Water to build a huge desalination plant in Huntington
Beach. Despite worsening drought and repeated calls from Gov.
Gavin Newsom to tap the Pacific Ocean as a source of drinking
water, commissioners voted unanimously against the plan
Thursday night. The decision, which was recommended by
commission staff, may end the company’s plans for the
$1.4-billion plant.
On May 17, the Monterey City Council will discuss four
city-owned properties it hopes to turn into affordable housing,
and will be asked to wrestle with some challenging questions
about how to move forward with making them a reality. At the
top of that list is water, or the lack thereof: The city has
5.2 acre-feet of water annually it can allocate to the
projects. But dedicating all the water to one or more of the
projects, City Manager Hans Uslar says, would hinder the city’s
ability to give water to public works projects….
I will attempt to convince you the drought is simply an excuse
to take our water and that farmers are the unfortunate victims,
too. Just ask members of the Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation
District (ACID), who thought they were safe from having their
water taken because ACID holds a Sacramento River Settlement
Contract with the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The
contract states the irrigation district… will have their full
supply of 100 percent cut to 25 percent (although some users
say it’s 18 percent) even though their contract states 75
percent during critical years. -Written by Shanna Long, a fourth generation
journalist and former editor of the Corning Daily
Observer.
In the middle of a parched summer in the arid West, any amount
of rain can feel like a gift. But in reality, those precious
summer showers barely move the needle when it comes to
water…. As a drought-stricken region looks ahead to the
summer, climate scientists are keeping an eye on high-mountain
snowpack and its path to streams and rivers. Snow at high
altitudes makes up the majority of the water in the Colorado
River – where this past winter has left low totals. On top of
that, warm temperatures and dry soil mean that snow is likely
to melt early and soak into the ground before it can get to the
Colorado River.
Climate change is making the West hotter and drier, threatening
the Colorado River system, including the man-made reservoirs of
Lake Powell in Utah and Lake Mead in Nevada that provide water
for 40 million people in seven states. The National Park
Service has been forced to shut down 11 boat ramps at the Lake
Powell recreation area, which draws millions of visitors. The
critically low lake levels could soon cause the Glen Canyon Dam
to stop producing hydropower for more than five million people
in six states, forcing them to find alternative sources.
As drought conditions worsen in California and other western
states, rating analysts are weighing the potential impacts.
California state water officials announced during a media call
Tuesday that the governor plans to increase his budget request
for state conservation efforts after the state’s residents
failed to heed his request in March to reduce consumption,
instead increasing usage by 19% compared to the same month in
2020. Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to add an additional $180 million
for a total of $300 million when he releases his revised
proposed budget on Friday, said Lisa Lien-Mager, a spokeswoman
with the California Department of Water Resources.
With the recent news that California has officially
begun 2022 with its lowest January through April
precipitation level since 1895, how reliable are the
historical patterns traditionally used to forecast California’s
water supply? Tomorrow’s weather forecast may be spot on,
but can we ever get accurate precipitation forecasts weeks to
months in advance? To get the answers, register today
for Making
Progress on Drought Management: Improvements in Seasonal
Precipitation Forecasting, a one-day workshop June
9 in Irvine sponsored by the California Department of Water
Resources in partnership with the Water Education Foundation.
There’s a city twice the size of Tucson out in the desert south
of Apache Junction. It houses 900,000 people in thousands upon
thousands of homes. But it just hasn’t been built yet.
The area is 276 square miles of empty desert called
Superstition Vistas. It stretches from the southern border of
Apache Junction, down the edge of San Tan Valley, all the way
down to Florence, then across to the US 60 and
beyond. … And for all that area, with all those
people estimated to live there upon completion, there’s not
enough water.
Siding with public agencies and environmental groups who filed
numerous legal challenges to the “twin tunnel” Delta conveyance
project known as California WaterFix, the Third District Court
of Appeal today unanimously held that the trial court
improperly denied the appellants’ attorneys’ fees motions when
it ruled that their legal challenges were not a “catalyst” for
the State’s 2019 decision to rescind the WaterFix project
approvals and decertify the project environmental impact report
(EIR).
The Imperial Irrigation District is preparing a water
apportionment plan for Imperial Valley growers to rein in a
projected water overrun after the federal government declared a
water shortage, reducing the amount of water that Arizona,
Nevada and Mexico can claim from the Colorado River. The IID
holds the largest and most secure federal entitlement on the
Colorado River, but current Bureau of Reclamation projections
show the district exceeding its allocation by more than 92,000
acre-feet of water this year…. IID’s Ag Water Advisory
Committee was scheduled to review the EDP proposal on Thursday,
May 12.
Construction recently began on a well designed to inject water
back into the groundwater basin beneath Long Beach. The
groundbreaking last week took place at the Water Replenishment
District’s advanced water treatment facility, on the
southeastern border of Long Beach, next to the San Gabriel
River. The plant further treats sewer effluent from the Los
Angeles County Sanitation District to create purified recycled
water. Recycled water already is used for irrigation and in
other wells to form a barrier against salt water so it won’t
get into the ground water basin.
A body in a barrel. Human bones along the shoreline. Ghost
towns. A crashed B-29 Superfortress used to track cosmic rays.
Prehistoric salt mines. What will the rapidly receding waters
of Lake Mead reveal next? “This is just the tip of the
iceberg,” said Travis Heggie, a former National Park Service
official who has studied deaths at Lake Mead Recreation Area.
“I’m expecting all sorts of criminal things to show up, and I
mean a lot.”
The electricity generated [at Flaming Gorge Dam], in northern
Utah near the Wyoming state line, helps keep the lights on
across 10 states. It’s made possible by a dam that interrupts
the Green River, which meanders into the Colorado River at Lake
Powell hundreds of miles downstream before flowing southwest to
Lake Mead — meaning as an Angeleno, I’ve been drinking this
water my whole life. … The Biden
administration said this month it would release an
extra 500,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir
over the next year, as part of a desperate effort to stop
Powell from falling so low that Glen Canyon Dam can no longer
generate power.
The Woodland City Council received an update on the city’s
planned water supply for 2022 and adopted a resolution
implementing stage two of Woodland’s water shortage contingency
plan. “The state of California is in the third year of a
drought and issued a governor’s executive order in March 2022
requiring urban water suppliers to implement at least stage two
of their water shortage contingency plans,” the city staff
report stated. “Stage two of the WSCP implements a goal of
reducing water use by 20%.”
After California saw extended periods of
dry weather in the middle of winter, a series of
late-season storms swept the Golden State in April and May,
dusting the Sierra Nevada with fresh snow. Did those
spring snow showers help bolster the dwindling snowpack that
historically provides about a third of the state’s water
supply? The short answer is that every little bit helps,
but the snow did not come close to making up for almost no
precipitation in January through March …
Facing a third year of drought, leadership from county Farm
Bureaus, spanning all regions of California, gathered in
Sacramento last week to engage with state water officials about
all things water. A changing climate, shrinking snowpack, water
rights, aging infrastructure, groundwater regulations and
solutions to the state’s water crisis were among the topics
discussed at the California Farm Bureau Water Forum. The event
brought together state water officials and county Farm Bureau
leaders from the Mountain, North Coast, Central Valley, Central
Coast and Southern California regions.
The Delta is crucial because, if it ever failed as a hub, the
resulting water crisis in California would increase existing
tensions with the Colorado’s other parched dependents. … The
Delta’s problems are as dire, but they receive far less public
attention. The main threat to the Delta is saltwater
intrusion. If an earthquake caused a major levee failure, the
sunken islands would flood, drawing salt water from the Pacific
into waterways that are now kept fresh by the pressure of
inflows from the Sacramento.
In October, and then again in December 2021, as the third
severe drought this century was entering its third year,
not one but two atmospheric rivers struck California.
Dumping torrents of rain with historic intensity,
from just these two storm systems over 100 million acre feet of
water poured out of the skies, into the rivers, and out to sea.
Almost none of it was captured by reservoirs or diverted into
aquifers. Since December, not one big storm has hit the state.
After a completely dry winter, a few minor storms in April and
May were too little too late. -Written by Edward Ring, a contributing editor
and senior fellow with the California Policy Center.
Central California lawmakers, growers and advocates are calling
on the state to invest in canal repairs that they say will help
improve water security. The call for funding comes as the state
experiences the third year of drought. SB 559, known as
the State Water Resiliency Act, aims to fix canals that deliver
water across Central California fully. Currently, $200 million
has been allocated in the 2021 and 2022 budgets. But the
bill’s author, State Senator Melissa Hurtado of Sanger, said
that funding would only cover limited repairs.
The pendulum of Northern California weather is getting ready to
swing once again, from rain, hail, thunderstorms and snow
showers at the start of this week to sunny and much warmer than
average temperatures by the weekend. … The latest
turnaround brings the same pair of questions Californians have
grown used to asking: What do the latest weather trends mean
for the drought, and for wildfire risk? … The anomalies
are impacting reservoir levels as well. Eleven of the state’s
17 reservoirs are below 80% of average, according Department of
Water Resources data updated Tuesday.
A significant percentage of the world’s population does not
have adequate access to water, food, and energy resources
(WFE). Although efforts to achieve the UN Millennium
Development Goals and later the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) have increased access to scarce resources, still, 25.9%
of the population is affected by moderate or severe food
insecurity in 2019, 2.2 billion people lacked access to potable
water in 2017, and 789 million people lacked electricity
service in 2018. The pressure on WFE resources will increase as
the world’s population grows from 7.4 billion in 2016 to 9.7
billion in 2050.
Ventura has struck a 20-year deal with a Riverside County water
wholesaler that would save the city millions of dollars in
costs to maintain its rights to imported state water. Under the
agreement approved last month, the city would lease its share
of imported water to the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency in
Beaumont, an arrangement that would reap $1.1 million this
year and cover nearly half of the $2.27 million it will owe to
keep its state water entitlement. San Gorgonio would
increase its share of the costs starting next year.
Spring snowmelt likely won’t deliver the big water supply bump
the drought-stricken Colorado River and its reservoirs need,
data from the latest federal river forecast shows. The May to
July season is a crucial time for the river, which is
replenished by snowmelt running off the mountains on the
Western Slope, and the system is in need of a major moisture
boost amid a 20-year drought fueled by climate change.
Throughout the state, water agencies are telling Californians
that they must seriously curtail lawn watering and other water
uses. We can probably scrape through another dry year, but were
drought to persist, its impacts would likely be widespread and
permanent. … It didn’t have to be this way. We could
have built more storage to capture water during wet years, we
could have encouraged more conservation, we could have more
efficiently captured and treated wastewater for re-use and we
could have embraced desalination. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters
columnist.
If you waste water in Santa Clara County, water cops could soon
be on the way. Since last summer, Santa Clara County residents
have been asked to cut water use by 15% from 2019 levels to
conserve as the state’s drought worsens. But they continue to
miss that target — and by a growing amount. In March, the
county’s 2 million residents not only failed to conserve any
water, but they increased use by 30% compared to March 2019,
according to newly released data…. Santa Clara Valley
Water District … is proposing to hire water enforcement
officials to issue fines of up to $500 for residents …
wasting water ….
A Democrat lawmaker from the central San Joaquin Valley wants
to put cash in the hands of eligible farmworkers to help them
deal with the devastation of California’s drought. Proposed by
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat from Sanger, Senate Bill
1066 would allocate $20 million to create the California
Farmworkers Drought Resilience Pilot Project, a state-funded
project that would provide unconditional monthly cash payments
of $1,000 for three years to eligible farmworkers, with the
goal of lifting them out of poverty.
California had its driest start to a year since the late 19th
century, raising drought and wildfire concerns heading into the
summer. In data released Monday, NOAA’s National Centers for
Environmental Information found January through April
precipitation in the state was the lowest on record dating to
1895. The statewide precipitation of 3.25 inches was only 25%
of average, topping the previous record-dry January through
April from 2013, according to NOAA statistics.
While the seven Colorado River Basin states including Arizona
hunt for 500,000 acre-feet a year in water savings in both the
Upper and Lower basins, the biggest problem facing the river
lurks in the shadows: a supply-demand gap that keeps growing.
Over the past five years, the river’s annual water flow,
greatly diminished since 2000 compared to 20th century
averages, has tumbled even faster. Water demands have also
fallen, but not nearly as fast.
In a state where every drop of water matters, Sears and another
grad student, Mikaela Richardson, are out collecting data that
will help answer an important question that’s gaining more
attention from the scientific community: If massive wildfires
continue to spread across the West, particularly at higher
altitudes where snowpack is more plentiful and critical, what
effect will that have on the region’s water supply?
For weeks, we’ve been seeing media reports regarding conditions
in the Colorado River Basin – specifically with
regard to our country’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and
Lake Mead, which have dropped to record low elevations. The
media have been reporting it accurately. -Written by Tom Buschatzke, director
of Arizona Department of Water Resources; and Ted
Cooke, general manager of Central Arizona
Project.
Amid the historic drought now entering its third painful
summer … the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, has
demanded [millions of homes] cut irrigation by 35 percent
as of June 1. If things don’t improve by September, authorities
say, outdoor water use could be banned entirely. … Since the
restriction warnings began, customers have bombarded the Las
Virgenes water office — one of 26 public water agencies which
operate under the Metropolitan Water District — with angry
phone calls.
At a point in the year when California’s water storage should
be at its highest, the state’s two largest reservoirs have
already dropped to critically low levels — a sobering outlook
for the hotter and drier months ahead. Shasta Lake, which rises
more than 1,000 feet above sea level when filled to the brim,
is at less than half of where it usually should be in early May
— the driest it has been at this time of year since
record-keeping first began in 1976. Lake Oroville, the largest
reservoir in the State Water Project, a roughly 700-mile
lifeline that pumps and ferries water all the way to Southern
California, is currently at 55% of total capacity.
From its headwaters in the Sierra Nevada, the Feather River
flows some 3,600 feet downhill, where, in Oroville, it meets
the tallest dam in the nation. Its path shows exactly why
California geology is ideal for the production of hydropower.
It’s physics. The higher the mountains, the faster the water
falls. Hydropower dams capture this power and divert it through
spinning turbines in nearby powerhouses that activate
generators to produce electricity. But all this hydropower
comes at a cost.
Constructed four generations ago, the massive rock and clay dam
at El Capitan Reservoir is capable of storing over 36 billion
gallons of water, enough to supply every resident in San Diego
for most of a year. Today, it’s three-quarters empty,
intentionally kept low because of concerns it could fail under
the strain of too much water. … Seismic instability and
a spillway in need of “significant repair” led El Capitan
to be added to a growing list of dams rated in poor condition
or worse that would likely cause deaths downstream if they
failed.
At a tiny airport surrounded by mountains, a three-person crew
takes off for the inaugural flight above the headwaters of the
Colorado River to measure the region’s snow by air. Under the
plane is a device that uses lasers, cameras and sensors to map
snow and help drought-prone communities improve forecasts of
how much water will later fill reservoirs. The method,
developed nearly a decade ago at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, “is the gold standard of snow measurement,” said
Emily Carbone of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy
District, one of Colorado’s largest water providers and the
primary funder for the flight.
Over the past four decades, the Western U.S. has demanded more
water. And the landscapes — the valleys and mountains and
lakes — that make up the region’s arid ecosystems have borne
the impacts of increasing water needs in more ways than one.
It’s not only fast-growing cities, searching for faraway
supplies, that have affected these landscapes. The
atmosphere itself has become thirstier, using up, and
potentially evaporating, more water from the land beneath it.
Researchers describe this as increased evaporative demand …
With water scarcity increasing around the globe, arid regions
are striving to develop more flexible and diversified water
supplies. For example, California’s 2020 Water Resilience
Portfolio Initiative recommends improving and expanding the
state’s conveyance and storage infrastructure as well as
developing groundwater banking and other means of more flexibly
sharing water. The success of such initiatives depends in large
part upon the ability of water providers to collaboratively
finance and build new infrastructure.
In the midst of a years-long drought, California is
implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
creating even more concerns for the state’s dairy farmers.
… The biggest impact for dairies may be not so much on
the dairy facility but on the feed side. Without adequate water
or certainty of water, the question is where the feed will come
from. The implementation of SGMA is going to impact local
forages, hay, silages and wheat …
[Despite] the 99.9% consensus in the science community
that the burning of fossil fuel is driving the rise in global
temperatures, a 2021 analysis from the Center for American
Progress identified “109 representatives and 30 senators who
refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused
climate change.” These are the people we are depending on to
steer the Southwest through its driest period since Vikings
roamed the seas. Anyone concerned? Particularly among the 25
million people across three states and Mexico who rely on Lake
Mead for water. -Written by LZ Granderson, LA Times culture and politics
columnist.
Rolf Schmidt-Petersen knows what can happen when a water
shortage hits: Reservoirs shrink and tempers flare. “We
had people literally throwing rocks, tomatoes when Elephant
Butte went down,” recalled Schmidt-Petersen, director of the
New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. He was talking about a
2003 deal to release water from a reservoir in southern New
Mexico and drop the lake by about 33 feet to assist farmers in
the state and neighboring Texas. … Decades later, the
2.2-million-acre-foot reservoir, part of the Rio Grande Basin,
contains only about 260,000 acre-feet of water, according to
the Bureau of Reclamation.
Some water use restrictions that were imposed on most Marin
County residents during the drought last year are now set to
become permanent. The Marin Municipal Water District Board of
Directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to continue limiting
sprinkler use to two days per week, which is down from three
days it allowed before it adopted its drought restrictions in
2021. Drip irrigation will be allowed three days a week. All
pool owners in the district must also have a pool cover. These
rules will be part of the district’s list of permanent
conservation rules …
In the early 1900s, there was plenty of water to go around. But
there weren’t enough dams, canals or pipelines to store, move
or make use of it. Devastating floods in California and Arizona
spurred plans for building dams to hold back high river flows.
… Today the West faces conditions that [water law expert
Delph] Carpenter and his peers did not anticipate. In 1922,
Hoover imagined that the basin’s population, which totaled
about 457,000 in 1915, might quadruple in the future.
Today, the Colorado River supplies some 40 million
people – more than 20 times Hoover’s projection.
Chances are, you’ll eat something grown in California today.
Its farms churn out a third of US-grown vegetables and
two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, and more milk than any other
state. But as I’ve documented in many articles and in my 2020
book Perilous Bounty—released in paperback today, May 2—its
water resources are dwindling, parched by climate change and a
relentless expansion of thirsty nut groves. ..Where will we get
our fruits and vegetables as California’s farms inevitably
adapt to a hotter, drier new normal? -Written by reporter Tom Philpott.
State water leaders begin the second day of a three-day
conference to address the drought and lack of water in
California. NBC Bay Area’s Laura Garcia spoke with the
executive director of the Association of California Water
Agencies about the issue.
The cost to repair flood-damaged Stern Grove in San Francisco
ballooned to $20 million, according to a recent report from the
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — five times more
than the $4 million city officials initially estimated. The
concert venue’s hillside was washed out after an air release
valve failed during maintenance of a 54-inch diameter water
line last August.
Neighborhoods across northern San Diego will be disrupted by
tunneling and pipeline construction this summer when work kicks
into high gear on Pure Water, the largest infrastructure
project in city history. With contracts totaling more than $1
billion recently awarded for eight of the 10 major projects
that make up Pure Water’s first phase, city officials say
nearly the entire project will be under construction starting
in late summer or early fall. Meanwhile, city officials are
preparing to make key decisions soon on the second phase of
Pure Water, which is slated for construction in the 2030s.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced two measures [Tuesday]
to boost water levels in Lake Powell, keeping them high enough
to continue generating hydropower at the Glen Canyon Dam. Both
moves are being framed as painful but necessary band-aids,
cutting into reserves elsewhere in the region to stave off the
worst effects of a decades-long drought that has sapped the
nation’s second-largest reservoir. One measure will send water
from upstream to help refill Lake Powell. About 500,000
acre-feet of water will be released from Flaming Gorge
Reservoir, which straddles the border between Wyoming and Utah.
Over the past decade, climate
whiplash in California has been evident in the big swings from
very dry years to very wet years and back again. That dynamic has
been seen in microcosm within the 2021-2022 water year as we went
from a relatively wet beginning from Oct.-Dec. to the driest
Jan.-March period in the state’s history, rendering this spring’s
precipitation “too little, too late.”
How has this new reality affected our reliance on historical
patterns to forecast California’s water supply? What efforts are
being made to improve precipitation forecasting at varying time
scales through new science, models and technology? Find out at
our one-day event June 9 in Irvine, Making Progress on
Drought Management: Improvements in Seasonal Precipitation
Forecasting.
A new estimated cost for the Advanced Water Purification
project, a system of recapturing sewage and transforming it to
drinkable water for about 500,000 East County residents,
escalated to about $850 million, an increase of more than $300
million above the estimate three years ago. Allen Carlisle,
general manager of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District,
revealed the number at a public forum held April 24 in Santee,
saying the project should begin construction this summer.
Under a state law passed last year that is the first of its
kind in the nation, patches of grass like this, found along
streets and at housing developments and commercial sites in and
around Las Vegas, must be removed in favor of more
desert-friendly landscaping. The offense? They are
“nonfunctional,” serving only an aesthetic purpose. Seldom, if
ever, walked on and kept alive by sprinklers, they are wasting
a resource, water, that has become increasingly precious.
A divided Zone 7 Water Agency Board of Directors voted to
continue participating in the planning phase for the ambitious
and long-discussed Delta Conveyance Project, following
discussions about intricacies and concerns related to the
matter last month. The directors’ 5-2 vote on April 20 comes
with an a commitment of an additional $4.75 million in funding
by Zone 7 for environmental planning for the proposed project.
California walnut grower Tim McCord is at the dry end of the
spigot, facing a zero-water allocation from the Central Valley
Project, which is supposed to deliver to his local San Benito
County Water District. … The farmer is not just concerned
about his orchard; he’s also frustrated that he owes
substantial water-related taxes to the district, and, if water
is eventually delivered, he’ll be charged $309.75 per acre-foot
— more than in non-drought years. McCord is not alone.
During drought, it’s common for farmers across the West to pay
higher water-related rates, assessments, fees and taxes than
during wet years.
Despite the late-season snow that blanketed Northern
California last month, almost all of the state remains under
significant drought conditions. California’s snowpack, which
helps fill up much of the state’s reservoirs, is below average
and far from where it needs to be. The dwindling snowpack was
captured in a video taken Friday from the International Space
Station.
Has a seat on the sleepy Kings County Board of Supervisors
become a proxy fight for control of water flows in the southern
San Joaquin Valley? It sure looks that way as political
youngster Martín Chavez, a member of the Stratford Public
Utilities District, has received unprecedented financial
backing from Bay Area native and controversial water giant John
Vidovich and affiliates. Vidovich … is currently locked
in a fight with the Tulare Lake Canal Company over a water
pipeline that he is trying to construct in Kings County to
connect to a larger interconnected conveyance system.
With long-term severe drought continuing to take a toll on the
Colorado River, the federal government is expected to announce
that it will retain some water in one of the river’s major
reservoirs to temporarily stave off what it called increased
uncertainty in water and electricity supplies. … Powell,
behind Glen Canyon Dam, currently holds less than one-fourth of
the amount it held when it filled after the dam was built in
the 1960s.
Marin County’s two largest water utilities are working to
narrow down what new sources of supply would provide the most
benefit in droughts. The North Marin Water District presented
findings of a study looking at how to bolster supplies for the
more than 60,000 residents it serves in its greater Novato
service area. The top scorers were projects to enhance the
storage at the district’s Stafford Lake reservoir. Other
options such as desalination, creating new reservoirs, dredging
the lake and a major recycled water expansion were deemed too
expensive or infeasible given the district’s size.
After the driest start to the year across much of Northern
California, April saw the return to near average rainfall for
areas north of San Francisco – this after many areas missed out
on nearly 7 to 15 inches inches of rain from January through
March. While the April rain totals weren’t much, it appears the
rain and the cooler temperatures have made a short term
positive change when it comes to Bay Area fire danger and
drought conditions.
We’re holding an open house
and reception Thursday in conjunction with
Big Day of Giving, a 24-hour online event aimed at raising
funds for nonprofits and highlighting the good work they do in
their communities. As a nonprofit, we are
“mission-driven, but revenue-dependent.”
Please show your support and make a tax-deductible donation
today by clicking
here.
A series of hot, dry years in the Upper Colorado River Basin
has led to increasing concern about the security of water
supplies at region-wide and local scales…. Without a strategic,
collaborative approach to addressing these issues, there is a
risk that individual entities will act independently to secure
their water supplies against climate and legal uncertainties.
This could lead to more permanent transfers from agriculture,
with detrimental impacts on rural communities and unpredictable
impacts on river ecosystems.
It’s far better to stop a water problem before it starts than
to try to fix it after it appears. We’re seeing that all over
the state, from the rapidly developing Rio Verde Foothills near
Scottsdale to the farming community of Willcox. Those who
thought they could build without water – or who had a well and
surrounding uses sucked it dry – are now in a world of hurt.
Some are hoping that if they create a water improvement
district, it can save the day. This is not a dig on those
efforts, but rather a cautionary tale about what happens when
our development decisions fail to reflect our water
realities. -Written by Arizona Republic columnist Joanna
Allhands.
When the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
this week unveiled its strictest-ever water restrictions for
about 6 million residents, it did so with an urgent goal in
mind: a 35% reduction in water consumption, equating to an
allocation of about 80 gallons per person per day. …But what
does 80 gallons per person look like, and what would it mean
for the daily life of average Californians? For
starters, more brown lawns are a given.
The California Coastal Commission wants San Luis Obispo County
to immediately halt all new water-using development, including
housing, in Los Osos and Cambria. … The Coastal Commission
also sent a letter on the same day to the Cambria Community
Services District (CCSD) notifying that it had violated the
California Coastal Act over more than three decades due to its
water extractions from wells in the San Simeon and Santa Rosa
creek aquifers …
Water officials believe the past three years could end up as
the driest in California’s history. State reservoir levels are
alarmingly low, and measurements of the Sierra Nevada snowpack
are “grim,” the state’s natural resources secretary tells
Lester Holt. The drought is impacting the water supply for
residents and farms, which supply critical crops for the
nation.
Momentum is building for a unique interstate deal that aims to
transform wastewater from Southern California homes and
business into relief for the stressed Colorado River. The
collaborative effort to add resiliency to a river suffering
from overuse, drought and climate change is being shaped across
state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies. Southern California’s giant wholesaler,
Metropolitan Water District, claims a multi-billion-dollar
water recycling proposal will not only create a new local
source for its 19 million customers, but allow it to share part
of its Colorado River supply …
Lake Powell, the country’s second-largest reservoir, is drying
up. The situation is critical: If water levels at the lake were
to drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would
be halted at the reservoir’s Glen Canyon Dam. The West’s
climate change-induced water crisis is now triggering a
potential energy crisis for millions of people in the Southwest
who rely on the dam as a power source. Over the past several
years, the Glen Canyon Dam has lost about 16% of its capacity
to generate power. The water levels at Lake Powell have dropped
around 100 feet in the last three years.
As part of continuing efforts to maintain and invest in City of
San Diego infrastructure, repair work starts within the next
two weeks on Hodges Dam, at the Hodges Reservoir north of
Rancho Bernardo. … During a recent inspection, staff
identified areas in the dam wall that require repair and need
to be sealed. To access these areas, the water level of the
reservoir needs to be lowered by approximately 18 feet from its
current level to an elevation of 275 feet.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
California’s housing crisis, with its soaring real estate
prices and 160,000 unhoused people, threatens these hills. It
also threatens the remaining marshes and wetlands, coastal
bluffs and mountain meadows. Any open space not yet protected
by park or preserve is at risk. … Building farther out
from population centers also strains other public
resources. As demand expands for energy, emergency services and
water, so must the infrastructure to provide them. -Written by Nicholas Crane Moore, a writer and
public-interest environmental attorney in Anchorage, Alaska,
and a former California land-use attorney.
Following the driest three-month stretch in the state’s
recorded history and with warmer months ahead, the Department
of Water Resources (DWR) announced its seventh round of grant
awards for local assistance through the Small Community Drought
Relief program. In coordination with the State Water Resources
Control Board, DWR has selected 17 projects … 14 will
directly support disadvantaged communities, including three
Tribes, and will replace aging infrastructure, increase water
storage, and improve drinking water quality and supply.
Three back-to-back dry years have crunched water supplies for
many cities and farms across Nevada and throughout the West.
The past two decades, according to a report released earlier
this year, represent the most extreme drought in the last 1,200
years. … But officials at the Truckee Meadows Water
Authority, the regional water purveyor for the Reno-Sparks
area, struck a different message during a water update last
week: We have analyzed the numbers, and we are prepared for
prolonged drought.
Justin Seidenfeld’s vineyard ran out of water last year. The
area of Petaluma where his Parliament Hills Vineyard is located
received just 4.5 inches of rain throughout 2021, not nearly
enough sustenance for his vines of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
… This year, however, Seidenfeld’s grapevines are
healthy and happy, with plenty of water to drink. It’s not
because of rainfall, but rather because of a newly constructed
pipeline bringing recycled water from Petaluma’s
water treatment plant to vineyards along Lakeville Highway.
Major water restrictions are about to take effect in areas
ranging from Rancho Cucamonga to Thousand Oaks, and Baldwin
Park to North Hollywood. But many nearby areas will escape the
mandatory one-day-a-week watering limits — among them Santa
Monica, Long Beach, Torrance and Beverly Hills. Why? The
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has targeted
these first-ever water restrictions for areas that
rely heavily or entirely on the State Water Project — a
Northern California water supply that officials say faces
a real risk of running dry.
A proposed La Quinta resort with a hotel, homes and a wave
basin — which has brought loud opposition from people saying it
is a poor use of water during a drought
— narrowly won the planning commission’s
endorsement Tuesday and will now move to the city council
for final consideration. The vote for the Coral Mountain
project came in two motions: The first was for
certification of the environmental impact report, which passed
5-2 with Vice Chairperson Loretta Currie and Commissioner
Michael Proctor voting no.
Despite a glut of recent rain descending on Sonoma County in
late spring and ratcheting rainfall totals to more than double
last winter’s paltry numbers, the region remains locked in
drought, and local water experts say residents should prepare
for ongoing restrictions. Since last September, Petaluma has
sought to curb the city’s overall water usage by 30% compared
to 2020 numbers, implementing restrictions on water use to help
the city meet mandatory cutback targets set by Sonoma Water,
the region’s primary supplier.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) announced last month that nearly 60 percent of
the U.S. is experiencing some level of drought, including
severe conditions that threaten wildfires, heatwaves and low
precipitation. States along the Colorado River Basin have
entered into agreements to reduce their demands on the
dwindling river, including recycling local water to make up the
difference. This Water Week, we’re focused on a series of
remaining actions that will help unleash the full potential of
water recycling across the United States. -Written by Craig Lichty, client director
and vice president for Black & Veatch and president of the
WateReuse Association; and Patricia Sinicropi, the
executive director of the WateReuse Association.
Right on time, the Monterey Peninsula, along with the rest of
the region, learned on April 21 how many new housing units the
state not only expects, but will require, it to plan to build
between 2023 and 2031. Historically, for the Peninsula, this
has been as awkward as a relationship between local and state
government can get. The local governments here agree they need
to add housing, yet the region, served by water utility
California American Water, remains under a cease and desist
order from the state that has, for years, barred adding new
water connections.
Growing up in Anaheim, the beach and the ocean served as a
place of solace for Orange County Coastkeeper Founder and
President Garry Brown, who created the nonprofit to help
protect the place he loves most. … In their mission to
protect water in Orange County, they’ve taken a stance on a
divisive issue affecting their community — whether the region
needs desalination, a costly, energy-intensive process that
uses reverse osmosis technology to remove salt from seawater to
make drinking water.
A coalition of water stakeholder organizations from across
California joined together to send a letter addressed to
Gov. Gavin Newsom and six key legislators requesting
action to address water issues. The nine page document dated
April 19, 2022 was signed by 18 organizations and entities
including the San Joaquin Valley Water Blueprint and 10
Southern California, four Bay Area and three trade groups. The
letter laid out the need to include a $6.5 billion
appropriation in the 2022-2023 General Fund budget to
strengthen statewide drought and flood resilience. -Written by Don Wright, a contributor to The San
Joaquin Valley Sun.
During Tuesday’s Butte County Board of Supervisors Meeting, the
board heard from Luhdorff and Scalmanaini Consulting Engineers,
who they hired in December 2021 to do a drought impact analyst
study. The results found that for agriculture: Areas that
utilize surface water in normal years pump more in drought
years, as is expected. Total cost of water compared to total
cost of production remains low but may increase in the
future…
Under the pressures of overuse and climate change, the fate of
the entire Colorado River system is being redetermined in real
time, amid what scientists think is the worst drought in over
1,200 years. Now that the reservoir is below 3,525 feet,
it has officially crossed the “hydropower buffer” — which
forces policymakers to start working on a solution. Every
option seems to have immense challenges, with seven states
invested in the matter and 40 million people who are directly
affected by the Colorado River system’s water.
The Metropolitan Water District said Wednesday that the
unprecedented decision to reduce outdoor watering to one day a
week for about 6 million Southern Californians could be
followed by even stricter actions in September if conditions
don’t improve, including a total ban in some areas.
… The MWD’s board has never before taken such a step,
but officials said it became an inevitability after
California’s driest ever January, February and March left
snowpacks shrunken and reservoirs drained.
California’s agricultural sector is the nation’s largest,
generating more than $50 billion in annual revenue and
employing more than 420,000 people. But water supply has always
been an issue in the drought-prone state, and that’s growing
more pressing with the warming, increasingly volatile climate.
… Escriva-Bou presented new findings from
joint research with a team from UC Merced about how the ongoing
drought is affecting the state’s farming regions, which
suffered $1.1 billion in direct economic costs in 2021.
The country’s largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead, has
dropped to such a historically low level that Las Vegas water
officials have completed the process of turning on a pump
station that will allow Southern Nevada to retrieve water, even
under extreme conditions. The move — to turn on the pump
station full bore — is an indication of how low Lake Mead
has fallen over the past decade and serves as a bulwark against
the possibility of Las Vegas losing physical access to its
water as regional issues on the Colorado River become
increasingly dire.
As California’s wildfire season nears amid another year of
drought, Folsom Lake looks much different than it did a year
ago when a low water level left an exposed lakebed. Now,
splashing, swimming and boats have returned—but will it last?
… According to the National Weather Service Sacramento,
Folsom Lake’s water level has risen to 75% capacity. That’s
103% of the historical average for this time of year …
In the rolling hills around San Diego and its suburbs, the
rumble of bulldozers and the whine of power saws fill the air
as a slew of new homes and apartments rise up. The region is
booming, its population growing at a rate of about 1 percent a
year. This, in spite of the fact that Southern California,
along with much of the West, is in the midst of what experts
call a megadrought that some believe may not be a temporary,
one-off occurrence, but a recurring event or even a climate
change-driven permanent “aridification” of the West.
Rather than planning for droughts and ensuring that minimum
water quality objectives are achieved in critically dry years,
the proposed voluntary agreement appears to be a “plan to fail”
to protect the Delta in future droughts. Droughts are a
fact of life in California, even as climate change is making
them worse. The Governor’s Water Resilience Portfolio
recognizes the need to improve drought preparedness, requiring
that the State to be able to protect fish and wildlife during a
six year drought …
Hours from the California coast, surfers are hoping one of the
next spots where they can catch a wave is in the desert. At
least four large surf lagoons are proposed for the region
around Palm Springs, which is more commonly known for art
festivals, mountain hikes and golf, and has no natural waves in
sight. But some environmentalists and residents say it isn’t
water-wise to build large resorts in one of the driest spots in
California during one of its driest periods in recent
memory.
No one was surprised by Thursday’s letter granting PG&E an
annual license to run the Potter Valley Project until April of
next year. And, while a last-minute mystery application did
provide a few moments of titillating speculation, the enigmatic
Antonio Manfredini failed to generate any real suspense. The
50-year license to operate the Potter Valley Project, which
diverts water from the Eel River into the east branch of the
Russian River to Lake Mendocino by way of a tunnel, a pair of
dams and reservoirs, and a small hydropower plant, expired on
April 14.
Sea level rise is one of the many threats we face as Earth’s
climate changes. … The worry there is obvious for
coastal communities in California. But the sea-level rise is
something that could affect all Californians because of where
that rising seawater would end up: the Central Delta.
… The Delta’s complex network of waterways is home to a
diverse ecosystem. It also serves 750,000 acres of farmland
with fresh water. Drinking water is also sent through the Delta
to the State Water Project system in Southern California.
The Long Beach Water Commission may upgrade the city’s water
shortage level next week, which would bring with it new
restrictions on when residents can water
landscaping. Updating the city’s water shortage stage
comes as California heads toward its third straight year of
drought. The proposal to go to Stage 2, which would limit
landscape irrigation to two days per week year-round, would
take the city back to water conservation rules not seen since
June 2016.
Water resources are declining in many regions of the world. Due
to climate change, increased air temperatures, and reduced
precipitation, we will face a decline in water resources in the
future. … Lampinen et al investigated soil and
plant data and evapotranspiration for irrigation management of
walnut trees in California, USA. Fernandes-Silva, by
examining the effect of different irrigation regimes (dryland
irrigation with 30% and 100% water requirement) on yield and
WUE of olive, reported that crop evapotranspiration (ETc) is
the most influential parameter in changes in fruit yield.
The Delta Science Program is excited to release the 2022-2026
Science Action Agenda (SAA). Developed by and for the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta science community, the 2022-2026
SAA builds on the progress of the 2017-2021 iteration to
prioritize and align science actions to meet management needs,
foster collaboration and coordination, and guide science
funding. It will serve as a roadmap for the allocation and
integration of investments through research, time, and
resources.
The Colorado River Basin is inching ever closer to “Day Zero,”
a term first used in Cape Town, South Africa when they
anticipated the day in 2018 that taps would run dry. Lakes
Powell and Mead, the Colorado River’s two enormous reservoirs,
were full in 2000, storing more than four years of the river’s
average annual flow. For more than two decades water users have
been sipping at that supply, watching them decline. Long-term
drought and climate change is making this issue potentially
catastrophic.
In a letter sent Friday, the seven states that use the Colorado
River agreed with the U.S. Department of Interior
and recommended that federal water managers take an
emergency action aimed at stabilizing a dwindling Lake Powell,
one of the main storage reservoirs on the river. Earlier
this month, federal water managers warned the states,
including Nevada, that they were considering an emergency
action to hold water back in Lake Powell, an attempt to
stabilize the reservoir at serious risk of losing the ability
to generate hydropower and deliver water to Page, Arizona, a
city with roughly 7,500 residents, and the LeChee Chapter of
the Navajo Nation.
It will be months before Thousand Oaks has full access to its
normal water supply, but the city is one step closer after
raising the roof last week. A 50-year-old reservoir, which held
3.4 million gallons, or roughly 10% of the city’s water storage
capacity, was examined last week for structural soundness.
While members of the city’s public works department await a
final analysis, public works Director Cliff Finley said things
look promising.
To see the trickle-down effect of the drought, you don’t have
to look much further than farms. Agriculture accounts for about
80% of the water used in California. … Selling fruit got
tougher during the COVID-19 pandemic, while maintaining the
farm got more expensive. Despite painstaking rationing and
letting go of several productive acres, water remains Bernard’s
most painful monthly expense. His February bill was as
expensive as last June’s — normally one of the hottest and
driest times.
Flaming Gorge reservoir in Wyoming will release 500,000
acre-feet of water under a new Drought Operations Plan to help
prop up dangerously low water levels at Lake Powell. The plan,
approved Thursday by the Upper Colorado River Commission, does
not call for any water to be released from Blue Mesa west of
Gunnison, but also does not rule out the possibility of that
being an option in the future.
As warm spring winds whip the Eastern Plains, sapping soils of
moisture, and the state’s reservoirs sit at below-average
levels, water managers got more bad news Tuesday: this two-year
drought cycle could continue through the summer and into the
fall leading the state into its third year of below-average
snowpack and streamflows and high wildfire danger. Looking
ahead the weather pattern known as La Niña, which has created
the intense drought of the past two years, is likely to
continue, according to Peter Goble, a climate specialist with
Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center.
The idea of taking water from one community and giving it to
another has some basis in American history. In 1913, Los
Angeles opened an aqueduct to carry water from Owens Valley,
230 miles north of the city, to sustain its growth. …
[B]uilding a pipeline that spanned a significant stretch of the
country would be astronomically more difficult. The distance
between Albuquerque, for example, and the Mississippi River —
perhaps the closest hypothetical starting point for such a
pipeline — is about 1,000 miles, crossing at least three states
along the way.
Mired in an extreme drought, California lawmakers on Thursday
took the first step toward lowering the standard for how much
water people use in their homes — a move that won’t be enforced
on individual customers but could lead to higher rates even as
consumption declines. California’s current standard for
residential indoor water use is 55 gallons per person per
day…. The California Senate voted 28-9 on Thursday to
lower the standard to 47 gallons per person per day starting in
2025; and 42 gallons per person per day beginning in
2030. The bill has not yet passed the Assembly, meaning it
is still likely months away from becoming law.
Facing a giant hole in her year-old yard, Tania Weingart’s
dream of summer fun in Novato runs deep. But one thing to fill
it is in short supply these days — water. Her water company,
North Marin Water, along with Marin Water, has imposed
drought-related water restrictions that prohibit the filling of
new pools and refilling existing ones. The mandate comes as the
state is asking water agencies to impose restrictions for
residents and businesses to cut water use by 10% among
California residents and businesses as of March 28.
Record heat hit early in April, which started warming the
ground and rapidly melting the meager snowpack. Thomas
Painter, CEO of Airborne Snow Observatories and
research scientist at the University of California Los Angeles,
… says there are three things that work against spring storms
helping for drought: periods of warm spring temperatures,
historically warmer storms and evaporation rates. He says
putting snow on warm ground is like throwing water into a hot
pan, it will melt quickly once it hits the surface this time of
year.
The ongoing drought and another year of unprecedented low
rainfall have prompted the California State Water Resources
Control Board to push for the consolidation of small public
water systems across the state. In a letter sent on April 4,
the water board asked North Marin Water District to consider
partnerships or consolidations with small systems across West
Marin and beyond.
With historic droughts strangling the world, from California to
Africa, Senator Paul Simon’s book Tapped Out: Water: The Coming
Crisis and What We Can Do About it, is now available in
paperback and as an eBook published by Inprint Books. …
In Brazil, the current drought is one of the worst ever
recorded. … In Madagascar, drought has left hundreds of
thousands of people malnourished, pushing the
country to the edge of famine. In the last two
decades alone, the United Nations estimates drought has
affected 1.5 billion people and led to economic
losses of at least $124 billion.
In March, the water level of Lake Powell declined below a
threshold at which the Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to generate
power becomes threatened, and the Bureau of Reclamation, the
federal agency that oversees the West’s water infrastructure,
is working with the states above Lake Powell to divert more
water to keep its dam operational. Meanwhile, the states around
Lake Mead have been hashing out the details of a plan to
voluntarily curtail their use to prevent even more dramatic
cuts to Arizona and Nevada from going into effect next year.
A strong storm inbound for Northern California will peak
Thursday, blanketing the mountains with feet of snow that will
make travel extremely hazardous if not impossible, according to
the latest weather forecasts…. Rain and snow may put a
small dent in California’s drought conditions, but storms this
week and last week won’t be enough to bust it. Statewide
snowpack as of Wednesday morning stood at just 30% of normal
for the date, according to the Department of Water Resources.
California is immersed in a third year of drought, with
January, February and March of 2022 experiencing the lowest
precipitation on record. Weather whiplash of big storms
followed by dry spells makes every drop of rain, every flake of
snow, and every water molecule vital this year for families,
farms, the environment and the economy. But outdated
infrastructure and the orientation of the pumping facilities in
the south Delta limits our ability to capture available water
from storm events. The Delta Conveyance Project would help
resolve this limitation.
With three consecutive years of drought reducing water levels
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed to alarming lows,
the State Water Resources Control Board [Tuesday] released the
draft of an emergency regulation to continue curtailments
adopted last year to preserve water storage in reservoirs,
protect drinking water supplies, prevent salinity intrusion and
minimize impacts to fisheries and the environment…. This
year, water users should expect curtailments to be imposed much
sooner and to affect more senior right holders and claimants
since supplies may be the most limited during the peak
irrigation period of June and July.
As the Ukraine war kindles fears of rising food prices, the
recognition of a secure domestic food supply – driven in large
part by irrigated agriculture in the Western U.S. – is
something we need to talk about. … Government water
policy decisions made in California and Oregon are currently
withholding once-reliable water from farmers in order to meet
perceived environmental priorities. In simple terms, our
own government is actually voluntarily directing measures
that restrict water to farmers. Sadly, this diminishes our
food production capacity, and with it, our national
security. -Written by Paul Orme and Dan Keppen, both of
the Family Farm Alliance.
In the Southwestern U.S., the massive Lake Mead Reservoir near
Las Vegas is not as massive as it used to be. The water level
has dropped to near-record-low levels. Drought has reduced the
flow of water into the river, which has forced communities to
cut back. … The water authority targeted the lush green
grass that’s not native to the desert, encouraging people to
remove it. … At first, residents and businesses were
slow to pull up their lawns.
Snow fell in parts of the Sierra Nevada and rain fell elsewhere
in Northern California on Tuesday as spring continued to
deliver a taste of the kind of weather that was mostly absent
during winter. Various chain requirements had to be put into
effect for vehicles on mountain routes, including Interstate
80, and strong winds created additional concerns for Sierra
travelers. The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab in Donner
Pass reported more than 5 inches of new snow by
midmorning. A second, more impactful weather system is
expected to move into California later this week.
During Gov. Gavin Newsom’s visit to Butte County on Tuesday,
Newsom said he will ask the legislature for $750 million to
help with drought conditions. At the Hyatt Powerplant at Lake
Oroville, which shut down last year due to record low lake
levels, Newsom spoke about how the state needs a different
approach to water conservation. Newsom already invested $5.2
billion in the past three years for water security for all
Californians.
A multimillion-dollar construction project is almost done on a
massive water tank in Mission Trails Regional Park. Once
construction is complete, it will likely be forgotten because
no one will be able to see it. The San Diego County Water
Authority is wrapping up construction on its newest flow
regulatory structure on the western edge of the park. Work
began in earnest at the beginning of 2021 on the
five-million-gallon water tank and it’s expected to wrap up
next month.
If the federal government goes through with its proposal to cut
Colorado River releases from Lake Powell, water users in
Arizona, California and Nevada won’t feel it this year — but
Lake Mead will. Due to what some observers call an accounting
trick, the reduced releases from Lake Powell wouldn’t translate
into immediate cuts or deeper water shortages for the three
Lower Basin states. Instead, the Interior Department’s plan
would lower the already depleted Lake Mead to prop up the even
more depleted Lake Powell…
A pair of storms will reach Northern California this week, with
lighter showers Tuesday intensifying to heavy April snow in the
Sierra Nevada mountains later in the week….Spring snowfall
has helped boost California a bit after an exceptionally dry
January through March. But it’s still very unlikely to bust the
drought, as the recent storms represent just a fraction of the
snowpack lost to record-low precipitation earlier in the year,
and the window for more heavy snow is quickly closing before
summer heat arrives.
The controversial Kings County water pipeline saga pitting two
of the region’s largest water players has turned into a
campaign issue for Kings County elections. Water giant
Sandridge Partners, led by John Vidovich, began installing a
sprawling water pipeline system that would be part of a larger
interconnected conveyance system that will run from north of
Highway 198, west of Lemoore, to the Blakeley Canal, south of
Stratford.
Arizona’s top water official says he never thought this day
would come so soon. Federal officials are warning that the
West’s escalating water crisis could put some Arizona
communities’ ”health and safety” at risk, by cutting off
their supply of drinking water.
As California sinks deeper into drought conditions, Dahle does
not favor imposing mandatory water use reductions … He raised
particular concerns, as a farmer, that harsh restrictions would
further devastate California agriculture by forcing farms to
fallow hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Dahle said the
state should put a greater emphasis on increasing water storage
by building the proposed Sites Reservoir. He also has a novel
idea to improve water supply by thinning forests, a policy that
would offer other benefits such as providing timber and
reducing wildfire risks.
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
