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.
Pipeline leaks at the Grand Canyon will shut down overnight
hotel accommodations over Labor Day weekend, the National Park
Service announced Thursday. Officials found four significant
breaks in the Transcanyon Waterline, reducing water supplies in
the canyon and forcing multiple hotels inside the park to stop
hosting overnight guests for the foreseeable future, according
to a release. Hotels booked in Tusayan, the town outside the
Grand Canyon, will not be affected. Water will be unavailable
from spigots in South Rim dry campgrounds, but bathroom faucets
will still work. Daytime food and beverage services will still
be in operation.
Last August, following a public hearing, the Arizona Department
of Water Resources adopted its management goal for the
citizen-approved Douglas Active Management Area. I objected to
the goal and subsequently filed a “Judicial Review of
Administrative Decision” appeal. Maricopa County Superior Court
Judge Scott Blaney is expected to issue a ruling soon, and the
future of rural Arizona hangs in the balance. Why such a
dramatic statement?
—Written by Christian Sawyer, techno-economic
researcher who lives in the Douglas groundwater basin area in
southeastern Arizona
In Rancho Mirage, the Walt Disney Co. is making progress on an
ambitious development that promises to sprinkle some Disney
magic into real estate. Dubbed Cotino, the master-planned
community is the first of the entertainment giant’s
“Storyliving” projects, designed for home buyers who want to
bring Disney deeper into their everyday lives. Donald Duck
won’t be delivering your mail, but the specs offer plenty of
Disney flourishes, including an “Incredibles”-themed gathering
space and a 24-acre lagoon. … “Rancho Mirage is quiet,
peaceful and friendly,” said Mark Wolpa, who moved to Rancho
Mirage from San Francisco in 2008. “But Cotino’s bringing
pollution, commotion and chaos to an area that didn’t want
it.” Wolpa said his main concern is the water usage
required to fill and maintain a lagoon in the middle of the
desert.
Water scarcity is a global issue that affects nearly 2 billion
people today. According to UNICEF, over 700 million people
could be displaced by intense water shortages by 2030. The
World Bank notes that 40% of the world’s population is already
impacted by water scarcity, with some regions, such as the
Middle East and North Africa, facing particularly severe
challenges. In Sub-Saharan Africa, many communities still rely
on contaminated sources, resulting in significant public health
issues. … Economically, water scarcity disrupts
agriculture and industry. In California, prolonged droughts
have devastated crops, leading to increased food prices and
economic instability.
… AI is also thirsty for water. ChatGPT gulps roughly a
16-ounce bottle in as few as 10 queries, calculates Shaolei
Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering
at UC Riverside, and his colleagues. The increasing consumption
of energy and water by AI has raised concerns in California and
around the globe. Experts have detailed how it could stall the
transition to green energy, while increasing consumer’s
electric bills and the risk of blackouts. To try to
prevent those consequences … experts are calling on the
tech companies to disclose to users how much power and water
their queries will consume. “I think the first step is to
have more transparency,” Ren said. The AI developers, he said,
“tend to be secretive about their energy usage and their water
consumption.”
A dispute between the U.S. Forest Service and the bottler of
Arrowhead Water could deprive the San Manuel Band of Mission
Indians of millions of gallons of water, compromising the
tribe’s ability to fight wildfires around its iconic Arrowhead
Springs Hotel. Blue Triton Brands, which bottles and
manufactures Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, was denied a
special-use permit by the federal agency on July 26. The Forest
Service ordered the company to stop drawing water from
Strawberry Canyon, near the architecturally renowned hotel, and
to remove its equipment and infrastructure. The San Manuel
Indians receive a substantial amount of water from Blue
Triton’s gravity-fed pipeline. A San Manuel spokesperson said
the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District, Cal Fire
and the Forest Service all share the tribe’s water supply with
the San Manuel Fire Department, and assist each other in
battling wildland fires in the foothills and front country
areas.
… On the trail, water truly does dictate most decisions. The
availability and quality of drinking water dictates how much to
carry, how to purify it and how far to walk each day. Water
from the weather—rain, snow, sleet, humidity—dictates when the
PCT thru-hiking season begins. It usually begins between March
and May so a northbound hiker hits the Sierras after the
snowpack on its passes has sufficiently melted to allow for
safe passage, and ends by September or October, before the snow
begins to dump on Washington. … “Part of the reason
it’s so hard to see climate change is that there’s so much
variation from year to year that it hides the trend,” said
Naomi Tague, a professor in ecohydrology and ecoinformatics at
University of California, Santa Barbara. “Everybody wants
these easy prescriptions that work everywhere,” she said, but
“How much water you have in a particular stream depends on the
snow it got that year. It depends on geology. It depends on how
big that watershed is. It depends on the type of vegetation.
You want to start putting all the pieces together. That’s how
you get an integrated systematic perspective.”
… Between its high Rockies headwaters and its Sonoran
Desert delta, 1 to 2 million acre-feet of water evaporates each
year in the Colorado River Basin. That’s a big gulp in a
watershed where seven thirsty U.S. states and northern Mexico
skirmish for their share of an overallocated, shrinking water
supply. And the evaporation will only increase as the Southwest
grows hotter and drier. To cut their losses, a growing number
of Western water managers want to install solar-paneled
canopies over canals and even flotillas of solar panels on
reservoirs to turn the sun’s rays into electricity before they
hit the water.
California is making moves to keep control of its water — and
protect the state’s endangered species from a potential second
Trump administration. With federal and state officials in the
midst of renegotiating how they manage a 400-mile system of
reservoirs, pumps and canals that moves water out of the San
Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to deliver it to taps and farms
across the state, California water officials are taking steps
to adopt guidelines from the state’s own wildlife officials
rather than federal ones.
The Marin Municipal Water District’s water supply projects
can’t be phased as the staff had hoped. Staff presented an
update on its pipeline projects to the operations committee at
its meeting on Friday. The update included construction cost
estimates on three water conveyance options, and news on how
they could be built. … The utility is exploring whether to
connect pipelines in Petaluma and Cotati to its reservoirs in
order to fortify its supply. The pipelines would transport
treated Russian River water into Marin reservoirs through a
9-mile aqueduct along the Highway 101 corridor from Petaluma to
the North Marin Water District in Novato. The district would
send the water to the Marin Municipal Water District’s
distribution system.
In anticipation of the Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month water
forecast on the Colorado River, a coalition of nonprofit
organizations is calling for more focus on the climate crisis
in managing Colorado River water supplies. The Bureau’s
forthcoming August 24-month study is a key benchmark for
managing the nation’s two largest reservoirs – Lake Mead and
Lake Powell – but this annual exercise continues to be a
problematic endeavor that creates false hopes and unrealistic
expectations for the 1 in 10 Americans who live in the Colorado
River Basin. The coalition — Glen Canyon Institute, Great
Basin Water Network, Utah Rivers Council and Living Rivers the
Colorado River Waterkeeper — is calling on the Bureau and water
managers to do more to plan for a drastically drier
future.
Senator Melissa Hurtado said she believes the problems facing
the Central Valley and California, while myriad and complex,
have a common denominator: data manipulation. And that is
restricting Valley residents from living the American dream. In
a recent interview with the Times, Hurtado (D-Bakersfield)
touched on multiple topics, including the state budget deficit,
homelessness, the high cost of living, water shortages,
Proposition 47 and the skyrocketing cost of energy. … In
May 2022, Hurtado wrote a letter to the U.S. Attorney General,
Merrick Garland. In her letter, Hurtado expressed concern that
non-ag entities, including hedge funds, have engaged in
anti-competitive prices with respect to purchasing water
rights. She said these same entities potentially profit from
the drought affecting Western states. In August 2022, Hurtado
again wrote Garland. In this letter, she asked him to take
urgent action “to address potential fraud and market
manipulation practices that result in less water availability
in the Western states.”
A plan from water officials in Arizona, Nevada and California
to cut back on the amount of water those states use from the
Colorado River in exchange for money with hopes of saving 3
million acre-feet of water over three years is meeting
conservation goals, a top water official said Wednesday. The
2023 agreement has already seen 1.7 million acres of
improvement less than one year into the effort, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said. She says she
believes the states are on pace to reach their original goal.
… A multidecade drought in the West intensified by climate
change has increased the demand from the dwindling Colorado
River supply that has been taxed by overuse. The 1,450-mile
river provides water to 40 million people in seven U.S. states,
parts of Mexico and two dozen Native American tribes. The
Colorado River Basin is divided into two regions: Lower Basin
states are Nevada, Arizona and California; Upper Basin states
are Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Earthquake and drought risks to the Tri-Valley’s water supply
may be mitigated in coming years by increased water storage at
the Los Vaqueros Reservoir. The expansion project would also
include obtaining access to a second source of San Francisco
Bay Delta water through the Contra Costa Water District (CCWD).
On Aug. 7, the Zone 7 Water Agency Board of Directors, which
manages the area’s water supply, discussed options for
participating in the Los Vaqueros Expansion project ahead of
agreement negotiations later this month. The board said more
data was needed before deciding what form Zone 7’s
participation would take. “The bottom line is we’re missing the
bottom line,” said Director Kathy Narum.
The federal government is expected to announce water cuts soon
that would affect some of the 40 million people reliant on the
Colorado River, the powerhouse of the U.S. West. The Interior
Department announces water availability for the coming year
months in advance so Western cities, farmers and others can
plan. Behind the scenes, however, more elusive plans are being
hashed out: how the basin will share water from the diminishing
1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) river after 2026, when many
current guidelines that govern it expire. The Colorado River
supplies water to seven Western states, more than two dozen
Native American tribes, and two states in Mexico. It also
irrigates millions of acres of farmland in the American West
and generates hydropower used across the region. Years of
overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have
meant less water flows in the Colorado today than in decades
past.
Even as work on the first phase of fixing the sinking
Friant-Kern Canal is nearly done, officials are worried they
won’t be able to pay the bill and have come up with a plan that
puts pressure on four agricultural water districts to pony up.
The Friant Water Authority owes the federal Bureau of
Reclamation potentially $90 million, plus interest, for its
share of the massive project. It is also looking at a possible
$5.1 million construction payment in summer 2026 that it may
not have funds for. That bill isn’t due yet. But the Bureau has
asked the authority to explain how it will get the money to pay
its share of the first phase of construction, which totaled
$326 million. And wants to make sure a funding path is lined up
for the second phase of construction, anticipated to cost about
$247.2 million.
The Office of Administrative Law has approved the direct
potable reuse regulations that were adopted by the State Water
Resources Control Board on Dec. 19, 2023, a major milestone in
diversifying California’s water supply while maintaining its
safety, quality and reliability. As approved, the regulations
address a number of issues identified in a
September comment letter from a coalition led by
WateReuse California that includes ACWA. The regulations
establish criteria for the introduction of recycled water
either directly into a public water system or into a raw water
supply immediately upstream of a water treatment plant. In
December, State Water Board members voted unanimously to adopt
the regulations, also directing staff to provide an update on
implementation of the regulations in approximately a year.
A California water solutions company, announced [Thursday] the
release of a new video focused on the hydrogeology of the
watershed surrounding the Company’s Cadiz Ranch in California’s
eastern Mojave Desert. The Cadiz Aerial Tour video utilizes new
photography, underground imagery and aerial footage to bring to
life the vast and unique aquifer system flowing beneath Cadiz
Ranch. With as much as 30-50 million acre-feet of water in
storage today, the 2,000 square mile aquifer system at Cadiz
contains more water than Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in
the United States. The water flowing through the aquifer has
supported sustainable agriculture operations at Cadiz Ranch for
four decades.
In a decision that could end a years-long battle over
commercial extraction of water from public lands, the U.S.
Forest Service has ordered the company that sells Arrowhead
bottled water to shut down a pipeline and other infrastructure
it uses to collect and transport water from springs in the San
Bernardino Mountains. The Forest Service notified BlueTriton
Brands in a letter last month, saying its application for a new
permit has been denied. District Ranger Michael Nobles wrote in
the July 26 letter that the company “must cease operations” in
the San Bernardino National Forest and submit a plan for
removing all its pipes and equipment from federal land. The
company has challenged the denial in court.
… Out of 18 approved hydrogen production projects that will
require significant freshwater, four are in areas of high or
extremely high water stress … according to the World
Resources Institute’s Water Risk Atlas. … The question
is where that green hydrogen production will be consuming
water. Four of the private green hydrogen projects as well as
the ARCHES hydrogen hub, which has been awarded up to $1.2
billion by the DOE, are located in the southwestern United
States. This region has the most sunshine for cheap solar
energy to power the electrolysis, and it’s also near
California, where limits on emissions from transportation fuels
have spurred interest in hydrogen for trucking. But parts
of the Southwest remain in the worst megadrought in
1,200 years despite a bout of rainfall this winter; the Great
Basin has lost trillions of gallons of groundwater,
and the vital Colorado River is drying up.
… The policy response to water scarcity in California is
invariably the same: conserve. Ration urban water consumption
with flow restrictors, dual meters, and outdoor “xeriscapes.”
Take millions of acres of farmland out of production. Leave
higher percentages of water in the dwindling rivers as
unimpaired flow. Demolish dams. Make do with less. Neither
climate change alone, nor this policy response, is the most
accurate description of our challenge or the most sensible
strategy to move forward. While few people would deny that our
climate is changing, conservation alone is a dangerously flawed
approach.
The Pacific Institute, Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network
(LiKEN), and Rural Community Assistance Partnership
Incorporated (RCAP) today released new research outlining how
climate change impacts are leading to devastating consequences
for water and wastewater systems in rural communities across
the United States. The report also introduces an innovative
community-centered framework to assist leaders in rural
communities to build equitable water and wastewater systems
that will be resilient to climate change in the future.
… The report, “Water and Climate Equity in Rural Water
Systems in the United States,” highlights these issues in the
Southwest and Central Appalachian regions, where a
concentration of homes lack access to water and sanitation
services. … The report also underscores that climate change
will continue to exacerbate many existing water challenges,
including water quality, affordability, availability, and
access, as well as aging infrastructure and disaster recovery.
The San Diego County Water Authority will supply the Mexican
state of Baja California with 200 liters of water per second to
support Tijuana residents during the summer. This water will be
delivered through an international pipeline connecting San
Diego, California, to Tijuana. ”There is a greater demand
when it gets hot,” said Carlos Alberto Machado Parra, director
for Baja’s Public Service and Planning Commission (CESPT) in
Tijuana, according to Border Report. “We always maintain
this binational connection so we can supply neighborhoods that
may be short on supply. ” He said the water would be stored in
the Carrizo Dam, a reservoir south of the town of Tecate.
Ensuring sufficient water for the greater Tehachapi area
requires balancing groundwater supplies and water imported from
the State Water Project with demand. That would be easier for
the Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District and local water
users if the supply from the SWP was more stable. A July 31
announcement from the California Department of Water Resources
reports a reduction in the 20-year forecast supply for SWP
deliveries, according to a news release from the water district
Friday. The report indicated a reduction in the 20-year
forecast supply for SWP deliveries of 119,000 acre feet per
year from the 2021 DCR forecast, the TCCWD said.
A team of scientists and engineers at NASA and the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) collaborated to see if a small piloted
drone, equipped with a specialized payload, could help create
detailed maps of how fast water is flowing. Rivers supply fresh
water to our communities and farms, provide homes for a variety
of creatures, transport people and goods, and generate
electricity. But river flows can also carry pollutants
downstream or suddenly surge, posing dangers to people,
wildlife, and property. As NASA continues its ongoing
commitment to better understand our home planet, researchers
are working to answer the question of how do we stay
in-the-know about where and how quickly river flows change?
Eighteen water districts in the arid U.S. West will receive a
share of $400 million from the USDA for local projects that pay
farmers to reduce water consumption while keeping land in
production, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Thursday.
Irrigation use could drop by 50,000 acre-feet on 250,000 acres
in 12 states, from Texas to California and Oregon.
“Agricultural producers are the backbone of rural communities
across the West, and many of them are struggling under
prolonged drought conditions,” said Vilsack. “We want to scale
up the tools available to keep farmers farming while also
voluntarily conserving water and expanding markets for
water-saving commodities.”
Soledad City Council met on Wednesday, July 31 to address
issues with its potable water supply. The council
authorized $120,000 for emergency repairs to wells. (This
estimate is based on previous repairs that range from $25,000
to $120,000.) This issue happened just before a seasonal surge
in demand. August and September are the months when water usage
swells. “With three out of our five wells down, it’s tough to
keep our reservoirs full. Our reservoirs are designed to have
adequate storage for this community,” said Don Wilcox, director
of public works, during the July 31 meeting. …
Officials are asking residents for voluntary water reductions,
asking them to cut water consumption by 25 percent. (These
reductions are voluntary, and the city did not implement a
water shortage contingency plan.)
A “pumped energy storage” project above Isabella Lake that
generated dozens of negative comments when it was first
proposed back in 2020 is again rousing concerned comments from
Kern River Valley residents. Ten individuals have so far
weighed in on the proposal, which would build a small reservoir
somewhere above Isabella Lake, move water uphill when power is
abundant, then run it down through turbines when demand
increases. The concept is a way to supplement renewable
sources, such as solar, that don’t produce power at night. But
the Isabella Lake proposal by Premium Energy Holdings LLC has
been met with heavy local opposition.
… In 1995, the State Water Resources Control Board issued
Order 95-10, declaring that California American Water was
entitled to take only 3,376 acre-feet of water a year from the
Carmel River. The utility at the time was taking about 14,000
acre-feet to supply the region. … A 2009 update to the
cease-and-desist order prohibited new water connections until
Cal Am was pumping within its legal limit. That meant putting
the pressure on conservation measures to simply use less water,
and also the pursuit of a replacement water supply. It’s
the latter that today, 30 years after the original
cease-and-desist order, remains a point of contention.
… There is no dispute that Cal Am has been pumping within its
legal limit for the past three years, since 2021. That
fact has led a number of local stakeholders to ask the state
board to suspend or amend the cease-and-desist order, again
allowing new water hookups, specifically development of
much-needed new housing.
Climate change threatens to dramatically shrink the amount of
water California can deliver over the next 20 years and could
reduce supplies available from the State Water Project by up to
23%, according to new projections released
Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
administration.The analysis by the California
Department of Water Resources examined a range of climate
change scenarios and projected that by 2043 the average amount
of water transported through the massive network of reservoirs
and canals to more than half the state’s population could
decline between 13% and 23%.
… Before California Forever could break ground, their
proposal, the East Solano Plan, needed approval from the people
who already live in Solano County. Where Sramek envisioned
growth, however, others warned of irreversible ecological
damage. Despite launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to
persuade the public to vote for the proposal in the upcoming
November election, concerns continued to grow as elected
officials began speaking out in opposition, and a coalition
against the project formed. … And although California
Forever holds water rights that could support the first 40,000
residents, Solano Together says that these
don’t accurately reflect water availability. Securing
a reliable supply, they argue, would
be challenging in a region so prone to drought.
The Water Education Foundation’s “Sierra Headwaters Tour”
concluded on Friday, July 26, wrapping up multiple days of
educational seminars about Tahoe Basin water issues. The
tour visited Eldorado National Forest, the UC Davis Tahoe
Environmental Research Center, and Lake Tahoe (among other
locations) to highlight the work each does in the California
watershed. The Bureau of Reclamation and the California
Department of Water Resources are both major sponsors of the
multi-day event. … The tour tied wildfire and forest
health to water issues in California. The event’s description
highlighted that California’s “water supply is largely
dependent on the health of our Sierra forests, which are
suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and
widespread tree mortality.”
As we move into the full swing of summer, water managers are
paying close attention to the remaining snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada. Each year, water from melting snow flows into rivers,
creating important environmental cues for native
freshwater species and filling reservoirs, just as
agricultural water demands peak during the growing season. But
as California gets hotter with global climate change, our
snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier in the year (Stewart
et al. 2009), profoundly changing snow-dependent river
ecosystems (Leathers et al. 2024), and leaving us with less
water when people need it most. … Two recent papers from
the Berkeley Freshwater group investigated how flow
regimes – the natural seasonal patterns of flowing water – are
shifting in the state’s rivers.
New California water regulations likely will transform much of
the Coachella Valley’s landscape in coming years. But how
quickly that shift will happen hinges on whether some local
water suppliers win major exemptions written in to the new
rules. On paper, water agencies serving the scorched desert
valley could be required to cut water use by a third or more
under new rules rolled out by the State Water Quality Control
Board in early July. Agencies out of compliance would face
fines of up to $10,000 a day. But the drastic-sounding changes
won’t be enforced until 2027, and contain multiple avenues to
dramatically scale back required cutbacks — caveats that
infuriate some environmentalists.
California’s water supply is trending poorly. Unless we act now
to transform how California manages its water — by passing an
important bill that would update our approach — the state will
soon lose some of its year-to-year supply. By 2050, California
is expected to lose between 4.6 and 9 million acre-feet of its
annual water supply. In other words, by 2050 at the latest,
Californians would lose access to a volume of water that is
enough to supply 50-90% of all the state’s households — or to
irrigate 17-33% of all the state’s farmland. Picture a volume
of water as large as two Lake Shastas disappearing from the
state’s water bank.
The federal government plans to spend $7 billion to $8 billion
to build a hydrogen economy in the U.S. The money will be
allocated to seven regional “hydrogen hubs” across
the U.S. mainland. …. California gets a hub of its own — and
$1.2 billion. … The program will kick off with 37 projects —
yet to be announced — spread across the state with a heavy
concentration in the Central Valley. … Water is also an
issue in drought-prone California. “There are certainly
questions about where the water is going to come from,” said
[Katelyn Roedner Sutter, Sacramento representative for the
Environmental Defense Fund.]
The state of Baja California will get 200 liters of water per
second from the San Diego County Water Authority to help
Tijuana residents during the hot summer months. The water will
be delivered through an international line that crosses the
border from San Diego to Tijuana. … Carlos Alberto Machado
Parra, director in Tijuana for Baja’s Public Service and
Planning Commission … stated his department is prepared to
pay 85 million pesos, or about $5 million, for the water this
summer.
Water availability and its scarcity affect our lives and
livelihoods. This is a case of applying the experience acquired
in one area of human activities to another despite the great
differences between the two areas. As improbably as it may
appear, it may make sense to apply the lessons learned in
controlling Avian flu to solve California’s almond production
issue. But first, the facts about almonds and water. About 80%
of the world’s supply of almonds is produced in California.
Essential nutrients are those that the body cannot produce on
its own or in sufficient quantities to meet its needs. Almonds,
while nutritious, do not contain any nutrients that exclusively
fulfil a common definition of “essential nutrients,” i.e.,
those the body cannot produce on its own or in sufficient
quantities to meet its needs. —Written by Richard Seifman, former World Bank senior
health advisor and U.S. senior foreign service officer
Summers that follow wet winters usually bring high hopes for
big water infrastructure projects to capture it all, and this
year is no exception. Gov. Gavin Newsom has fast-tracked Sites
Reservoir, lauding the proposed project northwest of Sacramento
as a panacea for a California that still remembers the
challenges of an extreme drought. But big water storage and
conveyance projects such as Sites and the Delta tunnel, another
massive boondoggle, pose huge environmental and financial
risks. These are old ideas that claim to respond to climate
change when in fact they destroy intact ecosystems and wildlife
habitats. —Written by Sofia Prado-Irwin, staff scientist at the
Center for Biological Diversity.
From prolonged drought to excessive flooding, water conditions
in California have been anything but consistent during the past
few years. That’s a problem for one of the world’s leading
agricultural regions. With climate change threatening one of
California’s biggest industries, we need to invest in a truly
resilient and reliable water future. We need Sites Reservoir.
After the worst drought on record in 2022, historic, wet
winters in 2023 and 2024 produced record rain that filled
reservoirs and aquifers above average levels. It was a welcome
change for California’s farms, which were relying on depleted
wells and aquifers in the previous two years. But it wasn’t
enough to overcome losses from the state’s large groundwater
deficit. If it were already operational, Sites Reservoir—a 1.5
million acre-feet off-stream water storage project planned for
rural Glenn and Colusa counties north of Sacramento—would be
100% full as of this past spring.
A Silicon Valley-backed initiative to build a green city for up
to 400,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area on land now
zoned for agriculture won’t be on the Nov. 5 ballot after all,
officials said Monday. The California Forever campaign
qualified for the ballot in June, but a Solano County report
released last week raised questions about the project and
concluded it “may not be financially feasible.” With Solano
County supervisors set to consider the report on Tuesday,
organizers suddenly withdrew the measure and said they would
try again in two years. The report found the new city —
described on the California Forever website as an “opportunity
for a new community, good paying local jobs, solar farms, and
open space” — was likely to cost the county billions of dollars
and create substantial financial deficits, while slashing
agricultural production and potentially threatening
local water supplies, the Bay Area News Group
reported. … The Solano Land Trust, which protects open
lands, said in June that such large-scale development “will
have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources,
air quality, traffic, farmland, and natural environment.”
Congressman Josh Harder uses the State of California’s own
words to make his case to make it impossible for the $20
billion Delta bypass tunnel to be built. It would: Increase
salinity, devastate San Joaquin County agricultural production,
deteriorate critical ecological systems that fish rely on, land
a severe economic blow to the region. And just how would Harder
make it impossible from his position in Congress to pull the
plug on a state water project pushed by urban Southern
California and large southern San Joaquin Valley corporate farm
concerns? Harder is pushing for the adoption of legislation
directing the Army Corps of Engineers not to issue a required
permit to allow federally controlled Central Valley Project
water — essentially flows from Shasta Dam — to be diverted into
the proposed tunnel south of Sacramento. Without the permit or
the participation of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the
tunnel can’t be built or the water diverted.
Solano County raised concerns about the impacts of California
Forever’s East Solano Plan, citing questions over water,
traffic, taxes, agriculture, Travis Air Force Base, and other
issues in its initiative report released Thursday evening. …
In the county’s projection, water treatment appears to be one
of the biggest standalone price points on the public utilities
bill. Under Phase 1, a projection of 20,000 dwelling units,
wastewater output is estimated at 3.56 million gallons per day.
The county estimates this would jump to nearly 24.5 million
gallons per day with the project’s Buildout estimation of
160,000 dwelling units. The county expects output to be even
higher, as these estimates don’t even include non-residential
wastewater.
Much of California’s water supply
originates in the Sierra Nevada, making it dependent on the
health of forests. But those forests are suffering from
widespread tree mortality and other ecosystem degradation
resulting mostly from the growing frequency and severity
of droughts and wildfires.
On our Headwaters
Tour July 24-25, we will visit Eldorado and Tahoe
national forests to learn about new forest management practices,
including wildfire prevention and recovery.
With temperatures spiking across
California this week, now is a great time to reserve your
spot on our Headwaters Tour July
24-25 when we’ll explore the role of the Sierra
Nevada snowpack in the state’s water supply and how heatwaves can
accelerate snowmelt.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
Moab is a growing town of 5,300 that up to 5 million people
visit each year to hike nearby Arches and Canyonlands national
parks, ride mountain bikes and all-terrain vehicles, or raft
the Colorado River. Like any western resort town, it
desperately needs affordable housing. What locals say it
doesn’t need is a high-end development on a sandbar projecting
into the Colorado River, where groves of cottonwoods, willows
and hackberries flourish. “Delusional,” shameful” or
“outrageous” is what many locals call this Kane Creek
Preservation and Development project. - Written by Mary Moran, a contributor to Writers on
the Range
After more than two decades of
drought, water utilities serving the largest urban regions in the
arid Southwest are embracing a drought-proof source of drinking
water long considered a supply of last resort: purified sewage.
Water supplies have tightened to the point that Phoenix and the
water supplier for 19 million Southern California residents are
racing to adopt an expensive technology called “direct potable
reuse” or “advanced purification” to reduce their reliance on
imported water from the dwindling Colorado River.
The climate-driven shrinking of the
Colorado River is expanding the influence of Native American
tribes over how the river’s flows are divided among cities, farms
and reservations across the Southwest.
The tribes are seeing the value of their largely unused river
water entitlements rise as the Colorado dwindles, and they are
gaining seats they’ve never had at the water bargaining table as
government agencies try to redress a legacy of exclusion.
Explore the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
A new but little-known change in
California law designating aquifers as “natural infrastructure”
promises to unleash a flood of public funding for projects that
increase the state’s supply of groundwater.
The change is buried in a sweeping state budget-related law,
enacted in July, that also makes it easier for property owners
and water managers to divert floodwater for storage underground.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
Much of California’s water supply
originates in the Sierra Nevada, making it dependent on the
health of forests. But those forests are suffering from
widespread tree mortality and other ecosystem degradation
resulting mostly from the growing frequency and severity
of droughts and wildfires.
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
The three-year span, 2019 to 2022, was officially the driest ever
statewide going back to 1895 when modern records began in
California. But that most recent period of overall drought
also saw big swings from very wet to very dry stretches such
as the 2021-2022 water year that went from a relatively
wet Oct.-Dec. beginning to the driest Jan.-March period in the
state’s history.
With La Niña conditions predicted to persist into the
winter, what can reliably be said about the prospects for
Water Year 2023? Does La Niña really mean anything for California
or is it all washed up as a predictor in this new reality of
climate whiplash, and has any of this affected our reliance on
historical patterns to forecast California’s water supply?
Participants found out what efforts are being made to
improve sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) precipitation
forecasting for California and the Colorado River Basin at our
one-day Winter Outlook Workshop December
8 in Irvine, CA.
Beckman Center
Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Managers of California’s most
overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s
landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable,
detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered
basins into balance. It was a task that required more than 250
newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the
drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather
data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on
multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a
groundwater basin.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
On average, more than 60 percent of
California’s developed water supply originates in the Sierra
Nevada and the southern spur of the Cascade Range. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This tour ventured into the Sierra to examine water issues
that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
As California slowly emerges from
the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, one remnant left behind by
the statewide lockdown offers a sobering reminder of the economic
challenges still ahead for millions of the state’s residents and
the water agencies that serve them – a mountain of water debt.
Water affordability concerns, long an issue in a state where
millions of people struggle to make ends meet, jumped into
overdrive last year as the pandemic wrenched the economy. Jobs
were lost and household finances were upended. Even with federal
stimulus aid and unemployment checks, bills fell by the wayside.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
This beautifully illustrated 24×36-inch poster, suitable for
framing and display in any office or classroom, highlights the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, its place as a center of
farming, its importance as an ecological resource and its
vital role in California’s water supply system.
The text, photos and graphics explain issues related to land
subsidence, levees and flooding, urbanization, farming, fish and
wildlife protection. An inset map illustrates the tidal action
that increases the salinity of the Delta’s waterways.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water
supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the
numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another
drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most
of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project
will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low
number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more
rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather
forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing. The National
Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and
windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.
Members of the 2020 Water Leaders class examined how
to adapt water management to climate change. Read their
policy recommendations in the class report, Adapting
California Water Management to Climate Change: Charting a Path
Forward, to learn more.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Radically transformed from its ancient origin as a vast tidal-influenced freshwater marsh, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem is in constant flux, influenced by factors within the estuary itself and the massive watersheds that drain though it into the Pacific Ocean.
Lately, however, scientists say the rate of change has kicked into overdrive, fueled in part by climate change, and is limiting the ability of science and Delta water managers to keep up. The rapid pace of upheaval demands a new way of conducting science and managing water in the troubled estuary.
Colorado is home to the headwaters
of the Colorado River and the water policy decisions made in the
Centennial State reverberate throughout the river’s sprawling
basin that stretches south to Mexico. The stakes are huge in a
basin that serves 40 million people, and responding to the water
needs of the economy, productive agriculture, a robust
recreational industry and environmental protection takes
expertise, leadership and a steady hand.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
Members of the 2019 Water Leaders class examined the
emerging issue of wildfire impacts on California’s water
supply and quality. Read their policy recommendations in the
class report, Fire and Water: An Emerging Nexus in
California, to learn more.
Many of California’s watersheds are
notoriously flashy – swerving from below-average flows to jarring
flood conditions in quick order. The state needs all the water it
can get from storms, but current flood management guidelines are
strict and unyielding, requiring reservoirs to dump water each
winter to make space for flood flows that may not come.
However, new tools and operating methods are emerging that could
lead the way to a redefined system that improves both water
supply and flood protection capabilities.
It’s been a year since two devastating wildfires on opposite ends
of California underscored the harsh new realities facing water
districts and cities serving communities in or adjacent to the
state’s fire-prone wildlands. Fire doesn’t just level homes, it
can contaminate water, scorch watersheds, damage delivery systems
and upend an agency’s finances.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
The majestic beauty of the Sierra
Nevada forest is awe-inspiring, but beneath the dazzling blue
sky, there is a problem: A century of fire suppression and
logging practices have left trees too close together. Millions of
trees have died, stricken by drought and beetle infestation.
Combined with a forest floor cluttered with dry brush and debris,
it’s a wildfire waiting to happen.
Fires devastate the Sierra watersheds upon which millions of
Californians depend — scorching the ground, unleashing a
battering ram of debris and turning hillsides into gelatinous,
stream-choking mudflows.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
Registration opens today for the
Water Education Foundation’s 36th annual Water
Summit, set for Oct. 30 in Sacramento. This year’s
theme, Water Year 2020: A Year of Reckoning,
reflects fast-approaching deadlines for the State Groundwater
Management Act as well as the pressing need for new approaches to
water management as California and the West weather intensified
flooding, fire and drought. To register for this can’t-miss
event, visit our Water Summit
event page.
Registration includes a full day of discussions by leading
stakeholders and policymakers on key issues, as well as coffee,
materials, gourmet lunch and an outdoor reception by the
Sacramento River that will offer the opportunity to network with
speakers and other attendees. The summit also features a silent
auction to benefit our Water Leaders program featuring
items up for bid such as kayaking trips, hotel stays and lunches
with key people in the water world.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Our 36th annual
Water Summit,
happening Oct. 30 in Sacramento, will feature the theme “Water
Year 2020: A Year of Reckoning,” reflecting upcoming regulatory
deadlines and efforts to improve water management and policy in
the face of natural disasters.
The Summit will feature top policymakers and leading stakeholders
providing the latest information and a variety of viewpoints on
issues affecting water across California and the West.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
Sixty percent of California’s
developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada,
making the state’s water supply largely dependent on the health
of Sierra forests. But those forests are suffering from ecosystem
degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
On our Headwaters Tour
June 27-28, we will visit Eldorado and Tahoe national forests to
learn about new forest management practices, including efforts to
both prevent wildfires and recover from them.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As stakeholders labor to nail down
effective and durable drought contingency plans for the Colorado
River Basin, they face a stark reality: Scientific research is
increasingly pointing to even drier, more challenging times
ahead.
The latest sobering assessment landed the day after Thanksgiving,
when U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate
Assessment concluded that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly
compared to the pace of natural variations that have occurred
throughout its history, with greenhouse gas emissions largely the
cause.
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
The 1992 election to the United
States Senate was famously coined the “Year of the Woman” for the
record number of women elected to the upper chamber.
In the water world, 2018 has been a similar banner year, with
noteworthy appointments of women to top leadership posts in
California — Karla Nemeth at the California Department of Water
Resources and Gloria Gray at the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California.
The 2018 Water Leaders class examined ways to improve water
management through data. Read their recommendations in the class
report, Catch the Data Wave: Improving Water Management
through Data.
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
Just because El Niño may be lurking
off in the tropical Pacific, does that really offer much of a
clue about what kind of rainy season California can expect in
Water Year 2019?
Will a river of storms pound the state, swelling streams and
packing the mountains with deep layers of heavy snow much like
the exceptionally wet 2017 Water Year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30,
2017)? Or will this winter sputter along like last winter,
leaving California with a second dry year and the possibility of
another potential drought? What can reliably be said about the
prospects for Water Year 2019?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine?, a one-day event on Dec. 5 in Irvine,
water managers and anyone else interested in this topic will
learn about what is and isn’t known about forecasting
California’s winter precipitation weeks to months ahead, the
skill of present forecasts and ongoing research to develop
predictive ability.
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
“Dry, hot and on fire” is how the
California Department of Water Resources described Water Year
2018 in a recent report.
Water Year 2018 – from Oct. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2018 -
marked a return to dry conditions statewide following an
exceptionally wet 2017, according to DWR’s Water
Year 2018 report. But 2017 was exceptional as all but two of
the water years in the past decade experienced drought.
Was Water Year 2018 simply a single dry year or does it
signal the beginning of another drought? And what can
reliably be said about the prospects for Water Year 2019? Does El
Niño really mean anything for California or is it all washed up
as a predictor?
Attendees found out at this one-day event Dec. 5 in
Irvine, Water Year 2019: Feast or
Famine?
Beckman Center
Auditorium - Huntington Room
100 Academy Way
Irvine, California 92617
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
People in California and the
Southwest are getting stingier with water, a story that’s told by
the acre-foot.
For years, water use has generally been described in terms of
acre-foot per a certain number of households, keying off the
image of an acre-foot as a football field a foot deep in water.
The long-time rule of thumb: One acre-foot of water would supply
the indoor and outdoor needs of two typical urban households for
a year.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
We headed into the foothills and the mountains to examine
water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts
downstream and throughout the state.
GEI (Tour Starting Point)
2868 Prospect Park Dr.
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
As California embarks on its unprecedented mission to harness groundwater pumping, the Arizona desert may provide one guide that local managers can look to as they seek to arrest years of overdraft.
Groundwater is stressed by a demand that often outpaces natural and artificial recharge. In California, awareness of groundwater’s importance resulted in the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 that aims to have the most severely depleted basins in a state of balance in about 20 years.
Spurred by drought and a major
policy shift, groundwater management has assumed an unprecedented
mantle of importance in California. Local agencies in the
hardest-hit areas of groundwater depletion are drawing plans to
halt overdraft and bring stressed aquifers to the road of
recovery.
Along the way, an army of experts has been enlisted to help
characterize the extent of the problem and how the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014 is implemented in a manner
that reflects its original intent.
For decades, cannabis has been grown
in California – hidden away in forested groves or surreptitiously
harvested under the glare of high-intensity indoor lamps in
suburban tract homes.
In the past 20 years, however, cannabis — known more widely as
marijuana – has been moving from being a criminal activity to
gaining legitimacy as one of the hundreds of cash crops in the
state’s $46 billion-dollar agriculture industry, first legalized
for medicinal purposes and this year for recreational use.
As we continue forging ahead in 2018
with our online version of Western Water after 40 years
as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also
got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.
State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing
up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and
combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish
and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps
unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved
Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if
anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that
marijuana was legal.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
Learn what new tree-ring studies in
Southern California watersheds reveal about drought, hear about
efforts to improve subseasonal to seasonal weather forecasting
and get the latest on climate change impacts that will alter
drought vulnerability in the future.
At our Paleo
Drought Workshop on April 19th in San Pedro, you will hear
from experts at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of
Arizona and California Department of Water Resources.
Joaquin Esquivel learned that life is
what happens when you make plans. Esquivel, who holds the public
member slot at the State Water Resources Control Board in
Sacramento, had just closed purchase on a house in Washington
D.C. with his partner when he was tapped by Gov. Jerry Brown a
year ago to fill the Board vacancy.
Esquivel, 35, had spent a decade in Washington, first in several
capacities with then Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and then as
assistant secretary for federal water policy at the California
Natural Resources Agency. As a member of the State Water Board,
he shares with four other members the difficult task of
ensuring balance to all the uses of California’s water.
Does California need to revamp the way in which water is dedicated to the environment to better protect fish and the ecosystem at large? In the hypersensitive world of California water, where differences over who gets what can result in epic legislative and legal battles, the idea sparks a combination of fear, uncertainty and promise.
Saying that the way California manages water for the environment “isn’t working for anyone,” the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shook things up late last year by proposing a redesigned regulatory system featuring what they described as water ecosystem plans and water budgets with allocations set aside for the environment.
Every day, people flock to Daniel
Swain’s social media platforms to find out the latest news and
insight about California’s notoriously unpredictable weather.
Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the
Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, famously coined the
term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 to describe
the large, formidable high-pressure mass that was parked over the
West Coast during winter and diverted storms away from
California, intensifying the drought.
Swain’s research focuses on atmospheric processes that cause
droughts and floods, along with the changing character of extreme
weather events in a warming world. A lifelong Californian and
alumnus of University of California, Davis, and Stanford
University, Swain is best known for the widely read Weather West blog, which provides
unique perspectives on weather and climate in California and the
western United States. In a recent interview with Western
Water, he talked about the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, its
potential long-term impact on California weather, and what may
lie ahead for the state’s water supply.
The 2017 Water Leaders class
organized by the Water Education Foundation completed its year
with a report outlining policy recommendations for the
future of water storage in California.
The class of 20 from
various stakeholder groups and backgrounds that hailed from
cities and towns across the state had full editorial control to
chose recommendations. While they did not endorse a specific
storage proposal, they recommended that California:
Deepen your knowledge of California water issues at our popular
Water
101 Workshop and jump aboard the bus the next day to
visit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a 720,000-acre
network of islands and canals that supports the state’s water
system and is California’s most crucial water and ecological
resource.
Atmospheric rivers are relatively
narrow bands of moisture that ferry precipitation across the
Pacific Ocean to the West Coast and are key to California’s
water
supply.
For decades, no matter the weather, the message has been preached
to Californians: use water wisely, especially outdoors, which
accounts for most urban water use.
Enforcement of that message filters to the local level, where
water agencies routinely target the notorious “gutter flooder”
with gentle reminders and, if necessary, financial penalties.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
For as long as agriculture has existed in the Central Valley,
farmers have pumped water from the ground to sustain their
livelihood and grow food consumed by much of the nation. This has
caused the ground in certain places to sink, sometimes
dramatically, eliminating valuable aquifer storage space that can
never be restored.
One of the wettest years in California history that ended a
record five-year drought has rejuvenated the call for new storage
to be built above and below ground.
In a state that depends on large surface water reservoirs to help
store water before moving it hundreds of miles to where it is
used, a wet year after a long drought has some people yearning
for a place to sock away some of those flood flows for when they
are needed.
A critical aspect of California’s drive to create new water
storage is in place after the California Water Commission
approved regulations governing how those potential storage
projects could receive public funding under Prop. 1.
The Dec. 14 decision potentially paves the way for new surface
water projects, such as Sites Reservoir, and expansion of Los
Vaqueros reservoir in Contra Costa County.
This 24-page booklet details the conflict between
environmentalists, fish organizations and the Yuba County Water
Agency and how it was resolved through the Lower Yuba River
Accord – a unique agreement supported by 18 agencies and
non-governmental organizations. The publication details
the history and hydrology of the Yuba River, past and present
environmental concerns, and conflicts over dam operations and
protecting endangered fish is included.
This 30-minute documentary, produced in 2011, explores the past,
present and future of flood management in California’s Central
Valley. It features stories from residents who have experienced
the devastating effects of a California flood firsthand.
Interviews with long-time Central Valley water experts from
California Department of Water Resources (FloodSAFE), U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Central Valley Flood
Management Program and environmental groups are featured as they
discuss current efforts to improve the state’s 150-year old flood
protection system and develop a sustainable, integrated, holistic
flood management plan for the Central Valley.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Salt. In a small amount, it’s a gift from nature. But any doctor
will tell you, if you take in too much salt, you’ll start to have
health problems. The same negative effect is happening to land in
the Central Valley. The problem scientists call “salinity” poses
a growing threat to our food supply, our drinking water quality
and our way of life. The problem of salt buildup and potential –
but costly – solutions are highlighted in this 2008 public
television documentary narrated by comedian Paul Rodriguez.
A 20-minute version of the 2008 public television documentary
Salt of the Earth: Salinity in California’s Central Valley. This
DVD is ideal for showing at community forums and speaking
engagements to help the public understand the complex issues
surrounding the problem of salt build up in the Central Valley
potential – but costly – solutions. Narrated by comedian Paul
Rodriquez.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
15-minute DVD that graphically portrays the potential disaster
should a major earthquake hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Delta Warning” depicts what would happen in the event of an
earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale: 30 levee breaks,
16 flooded islands and a 300 billion gallon intrusion of salt
water from the Bay – the “big gulp” – which would shut down the
State Water Project and Central Valley Project pumping plants.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
California’s little-known New River has been called one of North
America’s most polluted. A closer look reveals the New River is
full of ironic twists: its pollution has long defied cleanup, yet
even in its degraded condition, the river is important to the
border economies of Mexicali and the Imperial Valley and a
lifeline that helps sustain the fragile Salton Sea ecosystem.
Now, after decades of inertia on its pollution problems, the New
River has emerged as an important test of binational cooperation
on border water issues. These issues were profiled in the 2004
PBS documentary Two Sides of a River.
This 7-minute DVD is designed to teach children in grades 5-12
about where storm water goes – and why it is so important to
clean up trash, use pesticides and fertilizers wisely, and
prevent other chemicals from going down the storm drain. The
video’s teenage actors explain the water cycle and the difference
between sewer drains and storm drains, how storm drain water is
not treated prior to running into a river or other waterway. The
teens also offer a list of BMPs – best management practices that
homeowners can do to prevent storm water pollution.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this
24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson
River, and its link to the Truckee River. The map includes the
Lahontan Dam and reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming
areas in the basin. Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and
geography, the Newlands Project, land and water use within the
basin and wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant
from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan
Basin Area Office.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
Fashioned after the popular California Water Map, this 24×36-inch
poster was extensively re-designed in 2017 to better illustrate
the value and use of groundwater in California, the main types of
aquifers, and the connection between groundwater and surface
water.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Nevada Water provides an
overview of the history of water development and use in Nevada.
It includes sections on Nevada’s water rights laws, the history
of the Truckee and Carson rivers, water supplies for the Las
Vegas area, groundwater, water quality, environmental issues and
today’s water supply challenges.
The Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).