Topic: Water Supply

A nonprofit in Peru is gaining attention for its work in developing a simple system that gathers moisture from fog and channels it to storage containers for use in areas where water is in short supply. The systems are dropping in price and increasing in efficiency, experts say. The “fog catchers” have been installed in several countries and were even considered for possible use in the San Francisco area. … “It’s a very intriguing idea,” says Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis. … Lund explored the idea of demisting fogs over San Francisco in the aftermath of the droughts in the Bay Area between 2012 and 2016, but concluded it would likely not be economically viable.

… In recent decades, California has experienced five prolonged drought periods (1976-77, 1987-1992, 2007-09, 2011-16, 2020-22). Urban water agencies have responded with investments in supply and demand management measures, which have made California’s cities more resilient to drought effects. What motivated these investments? Our current habits of water use in California’s cities are shaped by past policies and habits.

NASA scientists are testing a technology that could more accurately measure water stored in snow as seen from a satellite in orbit. Melting snow provides much of the water that the western United States depend on for agriculture and power. But warming winters due to climate change led to decreased seasonal snowpacks high up in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada mountains. That in turn affects the volume of water that travels downriver to irrigate crops and turn hydroelectric turbines.

Despite a megadrought, states in the West have been able to avoid drastic cuts to their allocations of Colorado River water this year not only because of surprising storms but also thanks to generous financial incentives from all levels of government that have encouraged people to conserve. The temporary Colorado River water-sharing agreement that Arizona, California and Nevada announced in May depends on an injection of $1.2 billion from the federal government. Some of the 30 tribal nations in the river basin also are getting federal dollars. The Gila River Indian Community, for example, will receive $233 million from the feds over the next three years, mostly to conserve water. Fueled by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the feds will spend a total of $15.4 billion for drought resiliency programs …

Related articles: 

• Fox 5 – Las Vegas: Once-exposed boats in Lake Mead covered by water again, but progress is minimal amid drought
• KTAR – Phoenix: ‘Cloud seeding’ offers water generation possibilities for Arizona
• KJZZ – Tempe: ‘Fill Mead First’ proposal picking up steam as Colorado River faces ongoing drought
• Colorado Public Radio: Southern Colorado property owners are starting to receive notices of illegal ponds. Here’s why hundreds of them may need to go

[Editor's note: Scroll to fourth section of story for water-related bills] A bill headed to Newsom’s desk would ban the use of drinking water to irrigate purely decorative grass that no one uses. Another bill approved by lawmakers would allow cities to ban the installation of artificial turf at homes, based on research showing that fake grass can result in microplastics washing into streams and the ocean. Assembly Bill 249 would tighten standards for lead testing in schools’ drinking water. In the latest chapter in San Diego County’s ongoing water drama, lawmakers approved a bill that could make it harder for local water agencies to withdraw from larger regional water authorities — but too late to stop the contentious bureaucratic divorce already underway in San Diego County due to high water costs. Assembly Bill 779 would tweak California’s work-in-progress groundwater rules to “level the playing field for all groundwater users, particularly small farmers and farmers of color,” according to three UCLA law students who helped write the bill.

Nestled in the heart of California’s vast Central Valley lies a shimmering oasis, a testament to human ingenuity and the ongoing quest for water management: the San Luis Reservoir. This magnificent reservoir, holding both natural beauty and immense significance for the Golden State’s water system, is much more than just a large lake. Here’s everything you need to know about this impressive structure. The San Luis Reservoir was constructed as a result of a collaboration between the federal and state governments in the 1960s. It stands as a primary off-stream storage facility and is a key component of both the California State Water Project (SWP) and the federal Central Valley Project (CVP). The aim was to cater to the growing water demands of the state’s booming population and agricultural sectors.

Seizing a generational opportunity to leverage unprecedented state funding to combat drought and climate change, the State Water Resources Control Board provided an historic $3.3 billion in financial assistance during the past fiscal year (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022) to water systems and communities for projects that bolster water resilience, respond to drought emergencies and expand access to safe drinking water. The State Water Board’s funding to communities this past fiscal year doubled compared to 2020-21, and it is four times the amount of assistance provided just two years ago. 

Las Vegas isn’t just a hot spot for revelers. Thousands of businesses, particularly from California, have moved to the region over the past few decades, and the population is booming alongside other Southwestern cities. All of that growth in a region plagued by extreme heat, drought, and a dwindling water supply raises tough questions for city and state officials who want to spur economic growth without draining the Colorado River dry. In one example of that challenge, Arizona’s governor in June halted construction in areas around Phoenix, citing a lack of groundwater.

Leveling off after steady increases since early April, Lake Mead appears to have reached its peak for the year — more than 22 feet above last year. … Average daily levels computed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show the surface of Lake Mead at 1,066.32 feet above sea level on Thursday, Sept. 7. Since then, it has hovered around the same level and come down slightly, now at 1,066.25 feet as of midday Wednesday.

Related articles: 

• Newsweek: Nevada official wants to completely drain Lake Powell
• Civil Eats: Farming in dry places - Investors continue to speculate on Colorado water

Reservoirs across the state of California remain elevated as another wet season approaches.  Following the record wet winter, lakes and reservoirs were nearly full to the brim as the melting snowpack made its way into them. Following the melt-off period, Lake Shasta — the keystone of the Central Valley Project — was at 98% capacity, Oroville was at 100% capacity, and Folsom Lake was nearly full as well at 95% capacity. These bodies of water were quite parched heading into the winter due to the three years of drought preceding the past winter’s deluge and ranged from 25-32% capacity before the atmospheric river events rolled in.

Community leaders along the Mississippi River worried that dry southwestern states will someday try to take the river’s water may soon take their first step toward blocking such a diversion. Mayors from cities along the river are expected to vote on whether to support a new compact among the river’s 10 states at this week’s annual meeting of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, according to its executive director Colin Wellenkamp. Supporters of a compact hope it will strengthen the region’s collective power around shared goals like stopping water from leaving the corridor. 

Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S., with an economy that offers many opportunities for workers and businesses. But it faces a daunting challenge: a water crisis that could seriously constrain its economic growth and vitality. … Israel’s approach to desalination offers insights that Arizona would do well to consider.

Related article: 

• Business Insider: US Southwest riddled with mile-long cracks due to pumping groundwater

The hottest summer on record for many Texas cities has brought millions of dollars in damage to municipal plumbing and the loss of huge volumes of water during a severe drought.  Authorities across the state are struggling to keep up with widespread leakage even as they plead for water conservation and have restricted outdoor water use. The impact on Texas’s water systems highlights both the vulnerability of basic infrastructure to a warming climate and the high costs of adaptation.

Dirt roads neatly bisect acres and acres of vibrant green plants here: short, dense alfalfa plants fed by the waters of the Colorado River, flowing by as a light brown stream through miles of narrow concrete ditches. But on a nearby field, farmer Ronnie Leimgruber is abandoning those ditches, part of a system that has served farmers well for decades. Instead, he’s overseeing the installation of new irrigation technology, at a cost of more than $400,000, and with no guarantee it will be as dependable as the open concrete channels and gravity-fed systems that have long watered these lands. … What Leimgruber is pursuing on his acreage is part business savvy and part guarding against a drier future. Like many farmers in this region, he’s figuring out how to keep growing his crops with less water. Two decades of drought have shrunk the Colorado River, which feeds farms in the Imperial Valley, an agricultural oasis fed solely by the 82-mile All-American Canal, which delivers river water to this arid Southern California region.

As the final days of summer near, California’s reservoirs are in a position they have not been in for some time, they still have a significant amount of water in them. As of Thursday, all but Trinity Reservoir near Redding and Casitas near Ventura are at or above their historic average levels, according to the California Department of Water data exchange. … Most reservoirs are also still well above 70 percent of their total capacity, with Lake Cachuma having the highest total capacity percentage of 95 percent. The Department of Water Resource told FOX40.com that not since 2019 has California seen most of the major state reservoirs above their average level for the given time of year. Just a year ago, California’s two largest reservoirs Shasta and Oroville were at 34 percent and 36 percent of their total capacity respectively.

Related articles: 

• Manteca Bulletin: 4 dam projects = 1.8M acre feet of storage
• Paso Robles Daily News: City releases video about local water supply

This summer’s unprecedented floods across the U.S. highlight how a massive piece of infrastructure — the nation’s 90,000-plus dams — can play the role of hero or villain in these climate-enhanced calamities. … [I]n 2017, 200,000 people were evacuated downstream of California’s massive Oroville Dam when flood waters, combined with design and construction weaknesses, resulted in a $1 billion repair bill. In the arid western states, drought rather than floods often causes dams to make the news. Colorado River reservoirs supply drinking water to 40 million people in seven states but face increasing challenges — and decreasing water levels — with a multi-year drought across the region. And dams serve other roles — navigation, irrigation, recreation and, of course, electricity generation.
-Written by Dan Reicher, a Senior Scholar at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability; and Tom Kiernan, CEO of American Rivers; and Malcolm Woolf, CEO of the National Hydropower Association.  

Over the weekend, Burning Man attendees were forced to shelter in place when the usually-parched Black Rock Desert got roughly 3 months’ worth of rain in 24 hours. … In the U.S., there’s strikingly little mainstream discussion of scaling what’s arguably the simplest, cheapest and most sustainable solution for harvesting water: catching it from the sky. The time is ripe for a national policy agenda to dramatically scale up rainwater harvesting. Around the world, humans have been systematically gathering rainwater since ancient times. The technologies are simple: Collect rainwater from rooftops—on homes, warehouses, factories—and send it down gutters into tanks, where it can be filtered and used for domestic purposes, landscaping, or industrial processes. For farms, harvesting rainwater typically means configuring land with slopes and basins that maximize natural irrigation.
-Written by Justin Talbot Zorn, senior adviser to the Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Israel Mirsky is a New York-based writer and technologist. 

Remember this time last year, when water stores depleted by several years of drought left water managers and consumers alike hoping desperately for a wet winter ahead? Well, Sonoma Water says the region’s main reservoirs — Lakes Sonoma and Mendocino — ended this August with the highest combined storage level since 1985, the first full year the newly constructed Lake Sonoma was filled. This, less than nine months after the reservoir on Dry Creek reached its lowest level in history on Dec. 9 — 96,310 acre feet, just more than a third full. Lake Sonoma now has nearly 240,000 acre feet in it, while Lake Mendocino, which is smaller, has nearly 84,000 acre feet, for a combined total of more than 322,000 acre feet. (An acre foot of water equals 325,851 gallons, or about the amount of water needed to flood most of a football field one foot deep.)

For years, environmentalists have argued that the Colorado River should be allowed to flow freely across the Utah-Arizona border, saying that letting water pass around Glen Canyon Dam — and draining the giant Lake Powell reservoir — would improve the shrinking river’s health. Now, as climate change increases the strains on the river, this controversial proposal is receiving support from some surprising new allies: influential farmers in California’s Imperial Valley. In a letter to the federal Bureau of Reclamation, growers Mike and James Abatti, who run some of the biggest farming operations in the Imperial Valley, urged the government to consider sacrificing the Colorado’s second-largest reservoir and storing the water farther downstream in Lake Mead — the river’s largest reservoir.

Related articles: 

• Colorado Sun: Here’s how Colorado uses its water amid climate change
• Rolling Stone: The climate crisis could mean the twilight of the American West
• Live Science: Will El Niño end the Southwest’s megadrought?

The North San Joaquin Water Conservation District recently received some help from the federal government to ensure its ratepayers continue to receive water. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday that the district has been awarded a $1 million grant to make repairs and upgrades to its irrigation system. The investment will help make critical improvements to upstream level control, gates, and flow meters to meet delivery needs and support effective, safe groundwater management, the agency said. Jennifer Spaletta, the district’s attorney, said the grant money will be used to build a lateral off the south distribution system located near Handel Road.

There’s a saying used in Washington to describe the woes of conserving large sums of Colorado River water amid one of the worst droughts in the history of the Western United States. It was supposedly coined by the man who oversees Nevada’s largest water agency. “Here’s the fundamental problem: We have a 19th-century law and 20th-century infrastructure in a 21st-century climate,” says John Entsminger, the general manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority. It’s a phrase he and others began to use throughout negotiations between the seven states dependent on the Colorado River for its water before they reached a tentative deal in May to conserve roughly 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026.

Related articles: 

• KTNV – Las Vegas: State, local leaders looking on how to better manage resources from Colorado River in 2027 plan
• Colorado Sun: Was the leading Colorado River conservation program a flop? Officials say no, but it wasn’t perfect either
• Investors’ Observer: Press release - Limoneira capitalizes on water fallowing conservation program with Yuma Mesa Irrigation and Drainage District and the United States Bureau of Reclamation

Lake Oroville is down 40 feet from the start of the summer when the water level was at capacity thanks to a string of heavy winter storms. The storms also boosted the snowpack, allowing for consistent and often substantial runoff into the lake. Earlier this year, the California Department of Water Resources, which oversees the lake as well as the Oroville Dam, began releasing water from the reservoir’s main spillway in an effort to keep up with the inflows.

California is at yet another critical point in its struggle toward a sustainable water future, and yet we’re still talking about the wrong solutions. On Wednesday, the water rights protest period for Sites Reservoir will come to a close. Sites Reservoir is the latest in a long line of proposed dams promising to end our cycle of water insecurity. However, Sites won’t add much to California’s water portfolio, and its harm to the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem and communities that rely on them could be irreversible and ongoing.
-Written by Keiko Mertz, the Policy Director for Friends of the River.

Related article: 

• California Globe: Sites Reservoir - Greenhouse Gas Threat or Hot Air?

For most of the state, the drought is over. The Central Valley is receiving their full state water supply allocation and farmers don’t need to pull water from the ground to keep their crops from dying of thirst. But that doesn’t mean the signs along Interstate 5 and Highway 99 grumbling about the “Politicians Created Water Crisis” and the Valley’s man-made dust bowl, and asking if “Growing Food Is Wasting Water?” should be taken down. The abundance won’t last forever, and the farmers eventually will be back where they were before record rain and snow provided them with a bounty of life-giving water. That could be avoided, though, if policymakers got busy building needed water infrastructure.
-Written by Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.​

Water users in the Klamath Project may lose their remaining water allocations following a warning from the Bureau of Reclamation sent out last Friday. The letter tells irrigators “… there is projected to be a shortfall in the Sept. 30 Upper Klamath Lake elevation of 4139.2 feet that was identified in the May 18, 2023, update to the 2023 Annual Operation Plan. This situation is likely to require a reduction in project water supply in order to minimize or eliminate the shortfall.” The letter from Reclamation said the department will continue to explore actions to mitigate any reductions, but encourages contract holders to conserve their supplies.

Six years after unveiling plans to build a 320-foot high dam and reservoir at Pacheco Pass in southern Santa Clara County, the largest water district in Silicon Valley still hasn’t found any other water agencies willing to help fund the project. But this week, an unusual potential partner came to light: China. The revelation of interest from one of the United States’ most contentious rivals is the latest twist in the project’s shaky history: The price tag has tripled to $2.8 billion since 2018 due to unstable geology found in the area. The Santa Clara Valley Water District, which is pursuing the plan, has delayed groundbreaking by at least three years, to 2027, instead of 2024 as announced five years ago. And environmentalists won a lawsuit this summer that will require more study of how ongoing geological work will affect endangered plants and animals. 

Turlock Irrigation District’s newly completed $10 million Ceres Main Regulating Reservoir west of Keyes was unveiled Tuesday, with the district’s board of directors touring the new facility. Operational for nearly two weeks, the reservoir is capable of holding 220 acre feet of water (about 220 football fields each submerged in 1 foot of water) and is expected to save some 10,000 acre feet of water each year. … The reservoir will capture fluctuations in water flow from the Ceres Main Canal and pump the stored excess water back into the Ceres Main Canal to improve customer service downstream, lessen the need for groundwater pumping, and reduce water loss from the canal system.

Related article: 

• Manteca Bulletin: Commentary - California needs to set its ‘Sites’ on off- stream reservoirs & recharging aquifers

As most Californians know all too well, the rain that drenched the state this week was extreme and often record-breaking. As Tropical Storm Hilary passed through California, more rain fell in San Diego and Los Angeles on Sunday than on any other August day on record. The same was true in the desert city of Palm Springs, which received about 70 percent of its annual average precipitation in a 24-hour period, according to Mark Moede, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s San Diego office. “You look at those numbers, and you have to look at it twice to say, ‘Is this really real?’” Moede told me. Hilary arrived during what is usually California’s driest time of year, and the peak of the state’s fire season. Seven of the 20 largest wildfires in California history started in August.

Related articles: 

• Vox: Why even Hurricane Hilary couldn’t solve California’s long-term drought crisis
• Newsweek: How California reservoir water levels changed after Hilary
• Voice of San Diego: Why Hilary didn’t blow San Diego away
• Desert Sun: Rep. Ruiz, other inland representatives call for federal aid after Tropical Storm Hilary
• Desert Sun: Hilary causes train derailments, delays in Coachella Valley

When Adel Hagekhalil speaks about the future of water in Southern California, he often starts by mentioning the three conduits the region depends on to bring water from hundreds of miles away: the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct. As general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Hagekhalil is responsible for ensuring water for 19 million people, leading the nation’s largest wholesale supplier of drinking water. He says that with climate change upending the water cycle, the three existing aqueducts will no longer be sufficient. … For Southern California to adapt, Hagekhalil said, it will need to recycle more wastewater, capture stormwater, clean up contaminated groundwater, and design new infrastructure …

Related article: 

• Union of Concerned Scientists: We Reviewed More Than 150 Paper on Water Management. Here’s What We Learned.

Strange times create strange bedfellows, as long-term water supply for farms and cities in the Lower Basin aligns with the best environmental alternative. The best solution for California, Arizona, and Nevada to achieve water supply security is to have the Colorado River bypass Glen Canyon Dam, drain Lake Powell’s water into Lake Mead, and let the Colorado River flow freely through Grand Canyon. As the comments are made public in the Post-2026 Colorado River Scoping EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) process, one thing is for certain: an alternative examining bypassing water around or through Glen Canyon Dam must be developed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The usual suspects — mostly environmental groups — are calling for either completely decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam or bypassing the Dam to support the “Fill Mead First” alternative.
-Written by Gary Wockner, a scientist and conservationist based in Colorado. 

Phoenix officials said this week the city will remain in a stage 1 water alert even though the United States Bureau of Reclamation announced a return to a tier 1 shortage on the Colorado River in 2024 as a result of a wet winter that elevated levels at lakes Powell and Mead. “While this favorable winter provides temporary relief to the Colorado River system, Phoenix, which receives 40% of its water from the river, is asking residents to continue conserving water due to the unpredictability of the river, prolonged drought and climate change,” city officials said in a release. Under the city’s drought management plan, a stage 1 water alert is declared when an insufficient supply of water appears likely due to water system or supply limitations, triggering an intensive public education and information program.

OceanWell and Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD) announced today their partnership to pilot California’s first-ever Blue Water farm. LVMWD Board of Directors unanimously approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that paves the way for the public/private partnership to research an environment-first approach that addresses the increasing concern of water scarcity and reliability. Blue Water is fresh water harvested from the deep ocean or other raw water sources. This, first-of-its-kind project, will test OceanWell’s proprietary water purification technology to produce safe, clean drinking water without the environmental impacts of traditional coastal desalination methods. 

Cleanup crews for East Bay Municipal Utility District were busy Wednesday extracting four vehicles from near the San Leandro Reservoir, a key water source for Bay Area residents. The extraction comes just a day after the agency cleaned up 10 tons of material from a similar location on Tuesday and a month after extracting eight other abandoned cars in July. There’s been an epidemic of abandoned cars in the Bay Area for years, especially in the East Bay, but EBMUD spokesperson Andrea Pook says the problem was exacerbated by the pandemic.

The Colorado River Basin supplies water to 40 million people. For seven U.S. states, including the headwater state of Colorado, it is an essential resource that sustains agriculture as well as local municipalities.  Since 2000, the amount of water consumed from the basin has exceeded its natural flow. This has led to historic lows in the nation’s two largest surface water reservoirs: Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This overuse puts 40 million of those water users at risk of water scarcity, which has led to renegotiations of water rights detailed in the Colorado River Compact within the past several years as well as local negotiations and agreements.