A watershed is a land area that helps drain runoff (snowmelt and
rain) into a diverse system of lakes, streams, rivers, and other
waterways.
Watersheds may be as small as a patch of land draining into a
tiny pond or as large as the Sacramento River Basin, which drains
an area about 27,000 square miles.
Watersheds follow natural boundaries and are usually separated
from one another by ridges or mountains. A watershed has many
important natural functions. It collects water from
precipitation, stores groundwater in aquifers, releases
water as runoff and provides habitat for plants and animals.
Snowfall this week in the Rockies has improved the water
picture for the Colorado River, but one expert says she’s not
counting her chickens before they’re hatched. Current
information on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s website shows
that snowpack levels in the Upper Colorado River Basin are at
110% of normal for this time of year. That’s an improvement
over March 1 when it was at 101%. … important weeks are
still ahead, even though the snowpack peak is typically
measured on April 1 each year.
The United States suffers the world’s second-highest toll from
major weather disasters, according to a new analysis — even
when numbers are adjusted for the country’s wealth. The report
released late last month by Zurich-based reinsurance giant
Swiss Re, which analyzed the vulnerability and damages of 36
different countries, suggests that weather disasters may become
a heavy drag on the U.S. economy — especially as insurers
increasingly pull out of hazardous areas. Those disasters are
driving up insurance rates, compounding inflation and adding to
Americans’ high cost of living. … Some insurers have
stopped offering home insurance policies in California, which
has seen numerous large wildfires in the past few years.
After nearly 60 years of being submerged in the clear waters of
the American River, chunks of concrete and steel will be
removed from the river in the Auburn State Recreation Area, but
how did they get there? Before the current State Route 49
bridge straddled the American River, a similarly placed bridge
provided the vital connection between Auburn and the
communities of northwest El Dorado County. That bridge,
named the Georgetown Bridge, was built in 1948 and ended its
time of providing safe passage for motorists on Dec. 23,
1964. According to the Association of State Dam Safety
Officials (ASDSO), Hell Hole Dam breached, releasing
30,000 acre-feet of water down the Rubicon River, into the
Middle Fork of the American River and down to the confluence
with the North Fork of the American River near Auburn.
In January, the Sierra Nevada snowfall outlook was bleak.
California’s snowpack sat at levels less than half of normal,
and more sand than snow lined the shores of Lake Tahoe. Across
the West, experts voiced concern about snow drought. But, in
California, prospects turned around the following month as a
steady stream of storms added to the snowpack, culminating in
an epic blizzard. Things played out quite differently in other
parts of the country — large swaths of the U.S., including the
Midwest, lack healthy snow levels. … In the future,
snowy winters producing well above-normal snowpack like last
year may still occur, but “those kinds of winters are going to
become less common in a warming world,” said Brian
Brettschneider, a climate scientist at the National Weather
Service Alaska Region.
Photos recently shared by the National Weather Service (NWS)
office in Las Vegas revealed a key difference in snowpack
levels between this year and last year. After years of drought,
an abnormally wet winter produced more than a dozen atmospheric
rivers that brought a deluge of rain and snow to the region. A
similarly wet winter has happened this year, with multiple
atmospheric rivers bringing torrential downpours to California,
Nevada, and other western states. However, despite the
storms, the region’s snowfall hasn’t been as impressive as it
was last year.
A powerful winter storm buried the Sierra last weekend, with
wet weather continuing for days in the Bay Area and Central
Coast. Thunderstorms Wednesday drenched Salinas, dropping
an entire inch in just 25 minutes. After historic weather last
year, intense California storms have persisted this winter,
with strong downpours causing widespread flooding in San Diego
and damaging landslides in places like Los Angeles. Many
ingredients contribute to extreme storm activity, but
scientists agree that climate change is already amping up
winter rains — and may bring even wilder weather in the
future.
A search continues for a woman last seen being carried
downriver in the Angeles National Forest, California sheriff’s
officials said. The 59-year-old woman lost her footing while
crossing a river near the Heaton Flats Trail at 9:51 a.m.
Saturday, March 9, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office said
in a news release. Strong river currents swept her downstream,
deputies said. She had been hiking with friends. … Some
teams have been airlifted to search areas because of the rugged
terrain and swift river currents, deputies said. The sheriff’s
office encouraged hikers to use “extreme caution” when crossing
rivers.
California has set ambitious climate goals, including phasing
out the use of fossil fuels and becoming carbon neutral by
2045. Our guest today is here to talk about the role nature can
play in meeting those goals. Laurie Wayburn is the co-founder
and president of the Pacific Forest Trust and the chair of the
California Natural and Working Lands Expert Advisory Committee.
She was also the lead author of a recent report suggesting the
state should invest “as much in nature-based climate solutions
as it has in clean energy and transportation.” With proper
forest management, California could capture 400 million tons of
carbon each year, lower wildfire risk and vastly improve flood
protection in the state.
What a difference a month makes. There has been some
hand-wringing this winter regarding California’s 2024 water
outlook, especially in the southern mountains and the Kern
River Watershed. But new reports are pointing toward a much
more favorable water year, including in the Kern River Basin,
and by extension, Isabella Lake storage.
In 2012, one of the driest years in Colorado in recent memory,
the Crystal River practically dried up. Ken Neubecker, a
now-retired Colorado projects director at environmental group
American Rivers and former member of the Pitkin County Healthy
Rivers board, recalls the stream conditions. … These
extremely low-water conditions returned in the drought years of
2018, 2020 and 2021, with river flows near the fish hatchery
just south of Carbondale hovering around 8 to 10 cfs — not
enough to support aquatic life and nowhere near the 100 cfs
that the state of Colorado says is the minimum needed to
maintain a healthy stream.
Countries, regions, and river basins globally are struggling to
provide and manage flows in rivers for ecosystems. One
approach, of many, is a Functional Flows approach, because it
seeks to provide a range of streamflows over the year and
between years to support fundamental functions of river
ecosystems and the ecosystem services for society. … The
approach also involves a process for balancing multiple human
and ecological objectives for river systems through broad
engagement of multiple interests. In their challenge to
maintain riverine ecosystem services, Chile and California can
benefit from this dynamic approach to managing instream flows.
A series of late-season winter storms has filled reservoirs,
boosted snowpack and left forecasters anticipating a late start
to California’s wildfire season. And while the odds are
also tilting toward a milder than normal fire season overall,
that outlook could change by July, said National Interagency
Fire Center meteorologist Jonathan O’Brien. … For now,
Predictive Services is forecasting below-normal large fire
activity in Southern California in May and June, and normal
activity in Northern California.
As an endorheic—or terminal—lake with no outlet, Mono Lake
loses water naturally only through evaporation. Evaporation is
a complex process, influenced by radiation, wind, temperature,
and humidity. The rate of evaporation varies across seasons and
over the lake’s surface. With no long-term observational data
of evaporation at Mono Lake, the effect of evaporation on the
water balance is not well understood. Longtime Mono Lake
Committee hydrogeographer Peter Vorster studied evaporation
here for a short period in the early 1980s. He determined Mono
Lake loses nearly four vertical feet of water to evaporation
each year. With a more current understanding of evaporation
specifically at Mono Lake, the Committee can better estimate
lake level fluctuation.
Clean Up The Lake, the environmental non-profit responsible for
the 72-mile cleanup of Lake Tahoe, has recently completed a
two-year monitoring effort on the lake. CUTL conservation dive
teams revisited 20 litter hotspots in the 0 to 25-foot depths
along the Nevada shoreline that were identified during the
72-mile cleanup of Lake Tahoe in 2021. The primary purpose of
this project was to survey these nearshore zones along the
Nevada shoreline to observe changes in litter accumulation and
perform surveillance for aquatic invasive species (AIS) that
may have progressed since 2021. By revisiting places that were
already cleaned, the data collected helped determine the status
of litter accumulation in Lake Tahoe, its rate of change since
the 72-mile cleanup, and the efficacy of CUTL’s SCUBA-enabled
cleanup methodology.
The impacts to Lake County’s water supply were debated at the
Board of Supervisors meeting February 27 with discussion
centered over the substantial effects on the county’s future
water supply if PG&E’s proposed plans are carried out in
full. Consideration was made of: A. requesting a letter of
support from the State Department of Water Resources, and B,
approval of resolution authorizing the grant application,
acceptance and execution of the Potter Valley Project
de-commissioning. Such action means probable removal of Scott
Dam and maybe elimination of Lake Pillsbury. Asking the Board
chair to sign the letter was Matthew Rothstein, Chief Deputy
County Administrative Officer along with Patrick Sullivan,
treasure/ tax collector.
Three weeks after citizens stood up at a public meeting in
Siskiyou County, California, and raised concerns about heavy
metals in the Klamath River, the situation is about as clear as
the river. And the river’s pretty muddy. The breaching of the
Iron Gate, Copco 1 and JC Boyle hydroelectric dams in January
was done to draw down the reservoirs behind the dams as a
prelude to dam removal later this year. But the drawdown
released vast amounts of sediment that had been backed up
behind the dams. And some of those sediments contain metals.
… Only after a year from when drawdown is complete will
the company test for more metals, as directed by the state.
After a series of atmospheric river storms dumped record levels
of rain on Southern California, the region’s largest natural
freshwater lake has recovered in a major way. As of last week,
Lake Elsinore was deeper than it had been since June 2011,
according to data from the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water
District. Years of drought and the occasional wet winter have
caused wide variations in the lake’s depth. At 1,248 feet above
sea level, the lake is now more than 10 feet deeper than it was
in July 2022, and almost 15 feet deeper than at its lowest
recent point, in November 2018.
The Watershed Protection and Forest Recovery Act would create a
new Emergency Forest Watershed Program at the U.S. Department
of Agriculture to aid and streamline watershed recovery efforts
on U.S. Forest Service lands. The bill is intended to help
communities protect their water supply after natural disasters
on U.S. Forest Service lands. The bill was introduced by U.S.
Senators Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Mitt Romney, R-Utah alongside
U.S. Representatives Joe Neguse, D-Colo., Celeste Maloy,
R-Utah, Yadira Caraveo, D-Colo. and John Curtis, R-Utah.
According to a press release sent by Bennet’s office, following
the East Troublesome Fire, water providers faced obstacles that
limited their ability to protect drinking water supplies for
communities downstream of the fire.
With a solid winter of rain in the hills, it’s peak waterfall
season in Marin County. The only question is which cascade to
see first. For Ian McLorg, chief park ranger with Marin County
Parks, Dawn Falls is the first that comes to mind. The
approximately three-quarter-mile trail to the falls is in the
Baltimore Canyon Preserve. “Dawn Falls, especially after some
good rain, is a pretty spectacular waterfall,” McLorg said. To
access Dawn Falls Trail, he suggested entering via Crown Road
in Kentfield and hiking the Southern Marin Line Fire Road. “A
short jaunt from the trailhead at Southern Marin Line Fire
Road, you just head as if you’re going towards Corte Madera,
and the Dawn Falls Trail drops off to your left down the fire
road,” McLorg said. “That one is a great one to see this time
of year.”
When the San Juan River flows out of the San Juan Mountains in
Southwestern Colorado, it contributes 15% of Lake Powell’s
water. But there’s a problem: The river carries a hefty 55% of
the sediment entering the reservoir, and that mud is piling up.
… Now, as the San Juan River flows toward Lake Powell, it
rambles over a huge pancake of mud that’s 49 miles long, a mile
wide in some places, and as much as 120 feet deep in the final
reaches of the San Juan River. Unique hydrology has contributed
to this plug, a relatively wide canyon and multiple waterfalls
slow down the river, allowing sediment to drop out. Though the
San Juan is the muddiest tributary, all the Colorado’s
tributaries drop a good deal of mud 100 miles or more upstream
of Glen Canyon Dam. It’s a Western phenomenon caused by damming
swift rivers … -By Dave Marston, publisher of the independent
nonprofit Writers on the Range.
The most powerful California blizzard of the season pounded the
Sierra Nevada with gusts of up to 190 mph, while heavy snow
Sunday forced the closure of key roads to the Lake Tahoe and
Mammoth Mountain areas. A rare blizzard warning was extended
through Monday morning for the Lake Tahoe area, and until
Sunday night for the Mammoth Mountain area. … The crest
of the Sierra overall is expected to get 6 to 10 feet
of snow; Mammoth Lakes, 2 to 4 feet; and the Tahoe Basin, 3 to
6 feet. Snow has been falling steady at about 2 inches per
hour, with intermittent rates of 3 to 4 inches per
hour, the weather service said, which should peak late
Saturday. The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow
Lab had received 3 feet of snow by Saturday morning, and
expected several more feet by Monday morning.
… [Denise] Moreno Ramírez wasn’t surprised when she heard an
Australian mining company, South32, planned to open a
manganese, zinc, lead and silver operation in the same area
where her family had worked. … The grasslands, woodlands,
swamps and prairies of south-east Arizona’s Sky Islands are
home to more than 100 species of large mammals: the greatest
number north of Mexico. Residents from the borderlands area
have long dealt with the health impacts of pollution linked
with earlier industrial activity, including mining – from lupus
to cancer. And in spite of it all, they have managed to
preserve a patch of one of the most biodiverse, and imperiled,
ecosystems in the world. … The lithium
boom has received the bulk of attention amid calls to
electrify everything – but another mineral, manganese, has
been earmarked by the US as a critical element to ramp up
the production of electric vehicle batteries.
For too long, California and other states have viewed
stormwater as either a threat or an inconvenience — something
to be whisked away from cities and communities as quickly as
possible. But as traditional sources of water face worsening
strain from climate change, population growth, agriculture and
other factors, those unused gallons of rainwater pouring across
asphalt or down rain gutters are starting to be viewed as an
untapped resource that can help close the widening gap between
supply and demand. In a report released Thursday,
researchers with the Pacific Institute determined that every
year, 59.5 million acre-feet of stormwater go uncaptured across
the United States — or roughly 53 billion gallons per
day.
In the past 10 days, nearly 2,000 people have signed an online
petition opposing a proposal that asks President Joe Biden to
designate a national monument around western Colorado’s Dolores
River. “I think it absolutely, positively could be a threat,”
petition organizer Sean Pond told The Colorado Sun.
… Pond once had a career in the nuclear industry in the
West End of Montrose County, home of the Uravan Mineral Belt,
which is one of the country’s richest caches of uranium and
vanadium. Now he rents paddleboards and off-road vehicles to
tourists. He says a monument designation would bring crowds
that could lead to future bans on motorized travel, which would
hinder grazing and hunting. He worries a monument would ban
mining in an area where residents have spent almost half a
century waiting for a nuclear revival that would resuscitate
uranium mining and milling.
America’s rivers are changing rapidly due to climate change,
and fish are getting confused as a result, a new study has
found. The study, published in the journal Science by
scientists at the University of Leeds in the U.K., found that
climate change is disrupting the seasonal flows of rivers
around the world, which is posing a serious threat to water
supply and ecosystems. Rivers and their reservoirs provide
water for human use, whether for drinking or agricultural
purposes, meaning that changes to their flows can greatly
affect everyday life. … Climate change is also causing
more extreme weather patterns. An example of this can be seen
in California. The state was in the grips of a severe drought
for years, until last year the prolonged dry period was broken
by a deluge of intense storms. These storms caused severe
flooding and landslides that greatly disrupted local
communities.
When residents of the Yuba River watershed northeast of
Sacramento saw a stretch of the emerald-green river suddenly
turn an alarming reddish-brown on a recent winter day, they
knew immediately who to call. Though water quality concerns are
the purview of federal, state and county environmental
agencies, they alerted the local South Yuba River Citizens
League, confident its volunteers could get to the scene quicker
and investigate the discoloration faster than any regulator.
… The league is among dozens of volunteer organizations
that monitor the health of their local waterways and native
fish populations across California and the West.
California fails to capture massive amounts of stormwater
rushing off city streets and surfaces that could help supply
millions of people a year, according to a new analysis released
today. The nationwide report, by researchers with the Pacific
Institute, ranks California ninth nationwide among states with
the most estimated urban runoff. … The analysis reports
California sheds almost 2.3 million acre-feet of precipitation
from pavement, roofs, sidewalks and other surfaces in cities
and towns every year. If it were captured and treated, that
would be enough to supply more than a quarter of California’s
urban water use, or almost 7 million Southern California
households each year.
When Allison Dodds hit the slopes at June Mountain Ski Resort
this past winter the mountain looked a little different than it
had in past years. Not only was there extra snow from 2023’s
historic precipitation, but there was also extra space between
the trees, making it easier for her to maneuver (and shred) her
way down the mountain. Why the extra space? Over the past
two years, CalTrout and Inyo National Forest have been working
together to restore and remove infested and dead whitebark pine
trees on June Mountain. Dodds works as a Project Manager for
CalTrout’s Sierra Headwaters region, and she leads the June
Mountain Forest Health Project. After a century of fire
suppression, forests across the state have become densely
packed and overloaded with dead wood that is primed to burn
intensely and causes fires to spread quickly.
In Northern California, before European settlement it’s been
said that clouds of birds would block out the sun and one could
cross a river by walking across the backs of fish. According to
historic accounts, the Laguna de Santa Rosa was once such a
place. That’s the 22-mile-long network of wetlands that drains
the Santa Rosa plain. After a century of degradation,
restoration is underway. Once a thriving wetland, history
hasn’t been kind to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Historic dumping
of untreated sewage, industrial and agricultural waste and
cities growing up around it have all taken a toll. State health
officials still recommend limitations on eating certain fish
caught there, due to mercury and PCB contamination.
During California’s March 5 primary election, voters in
Woodland will decide whether to approve a flood control
project. Measure M would allow the City of Woodland to accept
at least $300 million in state and federal funding to protect
the city against flooding. It would authorize the construction
of the Lower Cache Creek Flood Risk Management Project, which
would channel floodwaters away from Woodland to a bypass in the
east, away from homes and businesses. … While Woodland
has never flooded, Woodland mayor Tania Garcia-Cadena said it
is important to be prepared.
The money, drawn from the Inflation Reduction Act and the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will help pay for wildfire
prevention projects in central Oregon, the Klamath River Basin
and around Mount Hood. The three regions are among 21 “priority
landscapes” across the West made up of a mix of tribal, state,
federal and private land that the U.S. Forest Service considers
faces a high risk for wildfires. … Wildfire prevention
efforts around Mount Hood are focused on its watersheds that
provide drinking water to more than one third of the state’s
residents, including the Bull Run watershed, which supplies
drinking water to nearly a million people in the Portland area.
A powerful winter storm system is expected to hammer California
later this week, bringing 5 to 10 feet of new snow between
Thursday and Sunday to the Sierra Nevada, white-out conditions
and the potential for extended highway closures. … Snow will
begin falling Thursday, and become most extreme on Friday at
amounts of 2 to 4 inches an hour, posing “near to impossible”
conditions for drivers … The powerful blizzard is the latest
and most dramatic example of a winter that started slow but has
steadily increased, improving California’s water picture with
every passing week, and all but guaranteeing that there will be
few, if any water restrictions this summer for most communities
in the state.
On the north edge of the Salton Sea, a movement is gaining
steam to create a new national monument that would protect
swaths of recreational land used by the valley’s communities of
color. A coalition of environmental groups and tribes,
including the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, Audubon
California, Consejo de Federaciones Mexicanas and the Center
for Biological Diversity are urging the federal government to
designate large sections of land there with similar protections
to national parks. National monuments are typically shielded
from mining and drilling and can also open the door for tribes
and federal agencies to work together to manage the land.
In October, CSU Monterey Bay received a $1.13 million grant
from the U.S. Geological Survey to support their ongoing role
in a project called OpenET. The tool uses satellites to
calculate how much water is lost to the air after being applied
to farmland. “There are still gaps in the information and
understanding between how much water we need and how much we
are actually using,” said Dr. AJ Purdy, a senior research
scientist at CSUMB working on the project. “This project fills
a big gap.” OpenET uses satellites from NASA, USGS, and others
to measure evapotranspiration, or the amount of water that
evaporates from soil combined with the water that transpires
through plants — traveling from the roots and evaporating off
the leaves. The satellites measure reflectance — energy from
the sun that bounces off the Earth, which hits the satellites
in different wavelengths that correspond to color. OpenET
measures plant coverage, so it looks for green.
The legacies of California’s 1849 Gold Rush and the relentless
search for gold that continued decades later are well known:
the rise of San Francisco; statehood; Wells Fargo; Levi’s
jeans; a Bay Area football team named after the fortune-seeking
miners. But along the shores of Clear Lake, just north of Napa
Valley’s famed wineries, is another gold-rush legacy: toxic
pollution. From the 1860s until it closed in 1957, the Sulphur
Bank Mine was one of the largest mercury mines in the United
States. Gold miners in the Sierra Nevada used the mercury dug
from its deep tunnels and craggy cavities to separate gold from
the ore that held it. … Now a major effort has begun to
clean up the historic mess and reduce health threats to people
who have called the area home for thousands of years.
On a late autumn day, a team of forestry workers spreads out
among the burned trunks of giant sequoia trees. The
1,000-year-old trees in the grove are dead but still standing,
killed in an extreme wildfire that raced through Sequoia and
Kings Canyon National Parks. In the shadow of one of the trees,
the crew gets to work, pulling tiny, 4-inch seedlings out of
bags clipped to their belts and tucking them into the dirt.
… Over only two years, about one-fifth of all giant
sequoias have been killed in extreme wildfires in California.
The numbers shocked ecologists, since the enormous trees can
live more than 2,000 years and have evolved to live with
frequent, low-intensity fires in the Sierra Nevada. Recent
fires have burned bigger and more intensely than sequoias are
accustomed to, a result of the way humans have changed the
forest.
With its Mediterranean climate, California receives most of its
annual precipitation in just a few months, with the bulk of it
falling from December to February. That means that by the time
March 1 comes around, we usually have a good sense of how much
water we’re going to have for the rest of the year. The state
keeps track based on a “water year” that runs from Oct. 1 to
Sept. 30, so the whole winter rainy season will fall in the
same year’s statistics. As of Sunday, California had received
slightly more rain than usual this winter — 105 percent of the
average, according to state data. In some parts of the state,
though, it’s been much rainier than normal. Los Angeles, which
just endured one of its wettest storm systems on record, had
received 159 percent of its annual average rainfall as of
Sunday. San Diego was at 133 percent, and Paso Robles at 160.
Microplastics have been found in every human placenta tested in
a study, leaving the researchers worried about the potential
health impacts on developing foetuses. … [T]he most common
plastic detected was polyethylene, which is used to make
plastic bags and bottles. A second study revealed microplastics
in all 17 human arteries tested and suggested the particles may
be linked to clogging of the blood vessels. Microplastics have
also recently been discovered in human blood and breast milk,
indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The
impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been
shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory.
When a water agency for most of California’s Inland Empire and
parts of Orange County started a pilot program to seed clouds
in the region in November to see if it could increase water
supplies, officials expected to face some questions and
skepticism. What officials didn’t expect was to be wrongly
accused by conspiracy theorists and critics of causing one of
California’s strongest storms in recent history — or, worse
yet, trying to poison the region.
Quechan tribal members Elan and Donald Medart were excited for
the opportunity to see some of their tribe’s most significant
lands along Haquita — known to the greater world as the
Colorado River — from the air. The day was especially
noteworthy for Elan, who’s 14, because it was his first-ever
flight over the rugged peaks and washes of Indian Pass, about
30 miles north of here. The six-passenger Cessna took load
after load of tribal members and other interested people over
the Colorado River Valley in Imperial County, California, to
see Indian Pass, Picacho Peak and the nearby Picacho Peak
Wilderness, the Colorado, and glimpses of trails, sleeping and
prayer circles and an occasional geoglyph that hasn’t yet been
ground to death under the wheels of ATVs and RVs.
Forests in the coolest, wettest parts of the western Pacific
Northwest are likely to see the biggest increases in burn
probability, fire size and number of blazes as the climate
continues to get warmer and drier, according to new modeling
led by an Oregon State University scientist. Understanding how
fire regimes may change under future climate scenarios is
critical for developing adaptation strategies, said the study’s
lead author, Alex Dye. Findings were published today in JGR
Biogeosciences. … Forests in all of the affected areas
are linchpins of multiple socio-ecological systems in the
Northwest, Dye said, meaning more fire will likely put pressure
on everything from drinking water sources and timber resources
to biodiversity and carbon stocks.
After this winter’s faltering start, the snowstorms in January
and February boosted Colorado’s snowpack from around 10% to
nearly 100% of normal accumulation for this time of year.
… The Colorado River Basin, which provides water to 40
million people across the West, receives much of its water
supply from the mountain snowpack in Colorado and other Upper
Basin states. The snowpack conditions generally range
between 75% and 105% of normal across the Upper Basin, which
includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Modeling of
the Lower Colorado River Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada
— indicates that snowpack conditions are much higher than
usual, ranging from 120% to 250% of normal.
A community group is worried a project to strengthen levees in
Sacramento will lead to the removal of several hundred trees
along the American River Parkway, creating long-lasting
environmental effects while damaging a popular regional
recreation area. The community group, American River Trees, is
specifically concerned about a portion of the levee upgrade
project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers known as the
“Contract 3B site,” where erosion protection measures will be
constructed upstream of Howe Avenue along the river to Watt
Avenue. … Project officials said the upgrades are needed to
“armor the riverbank to reduce and prevent erosion which, if
left unaddressed, could result in levee failure.” William
Avery, a Sacramento State biology professor emeritus and a
member of American River Trees group … said the project plans
call for the removal of about 500 trees south of the river and
about 200 trees on the north side …
After years of controversy, the Nevada County Board of
Supervisors unanimously struck down a Grass Valley gold mining
project. … Rise Gold first submitted an application to resume
gold mining operations at the Idaho Maryland Mine, which is in
Grass Valley, in 2019. The site had been inactive since its
closure in the 1950s, but Rise Gold said it had untapped
potential. But the company was quickly met with mass
opposition. Christy Hubbard, a Grass Valley resident and
volunteer for a couple local groups opposing the project …
said she was particularly concerned with the potential for
mining operations to contaminate or otherwise negatively impact
local groundwater supply. As a member of the Wells Coalition, a
local group of well owners, and an owner of a well herself, she
worried mining could reduce water flows or contaminate
them.
At the dawn of the new year in 1997, the Truckee River
transformed. The winter season had thus far been great for
snow, but when a subtropical storm from near the Hawaiian
Islands rolled in, it carried with it unseasonably warm rain.
The warm rainfall combined with snowmelt to swell the rivers,
with the Truckee burying much of downtown Reno under water. Two
people were killed amidst the nearly $1 billion disaster, and
it wasn’t the first nor the last time that warm rains triggered
severe flooding in the area. These types of storms, called
“rain-on-snow” storms, can produce river flows 50-80% higher
than typical spring snowmelt. Nevada cities nestled against the
dramatic peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains are at
particularly high risk from these storms: Reno and Carson City
have records of flooding linked to these storms as early as
1862 and as recent as 2017.
The massive deaths of non-native fish and the deluge of
sediments resulting from the drawdown of reservoirs as part of
the Klamath River dam removals was expected and is predicted to
result in long-range benefits. Public concern has been
expressed following because of the recently completed initial
drawdown of reservoirs created by the John C. Boyle, Copco 1
and Irongate hydroelectric dams. Copco 2, a diversion dam, was
removed late last year because it would have interfered with
the Copco 1 drawdown. The dam removal project is the largest in
U.S. history. During a Thursday video news conference, Mark
Bransom, chief executive office for Klamath River Renewal
Corporation, which is overseeing the dam removal project, and
Dave Coffman, the habitat restoration as program manager for
RES (Resource Environmental Solutions), briefly discussed the
ongoing project and impacts of the recently completed initial
drawdown.
After a slow start to the year, the Sierra Nevada snowpack has
grown by leaps and bounds in recent weeks, thanks to a series
of heavy storms with especially big impacts in the northern
Sierra. The latest measurements from the California
Department of Water Resources places the statewide snowpack at
85% of normal for this time of year, according to data as of
Tuesday. In comparison, the snowpack was just 52% of average on
Jan. 30 and a paltry 25% of average on Jan. 2. But the gains
haven’t been evenly distributed. “Recent storms have
provided a boost (to) the snowpack, but the Central and
Southern Sierra still have not caught up from the deficit
accumulated earlier this season,” said Michael Anderson, DWR’s
state climatologist.
The U.S. Forest Service withdrew its record of decision and
amendment that would have allowed the Utah Seven County
Infrastructure Coalition to build and operate a railway on 12
miles of National Forest System lands on Jan. 17. The activity
required a project-specific Forest Plan amendment to reflect
the railway’s visual impact on the landscape in order to move
forward. The Uinta Basin Railway project has faced significant
backlash from Colorado communities and organizations, including
Grand County’s chapter of Trout Unlimited. The withdrawal of
the permit is a victory for opponents of the railway who say
the approval process “did not properly account for the
project’s full risks.”
Heavy rain and flooding over the last year have caused roughly
$100 million in damage to Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power infrastructure and dust control systems in the Owens
Valley, according to officials, and that figure is expected to
climb as Southern California endures yet another atmospheric
river this week. Although heavy storms have dumped a bounty of
rain and snow along the southern Sierra Nevada, enabling Los
Angeles to draw millions of gallons of water for its residents,
the precipitation has also taken a heavy toll on systems
designed to prevent choking dust storms from developing on the
dry bed of Owens Lake.
Iron Gate, the lowest of the Klamath dams, was breached first
on Jan. 9, followed by J.C. Boyle in Oregon, and finally, Copco
1. Draining the three reservoirs marks another milestone toward
the removal of dams in the Lower Klamath
Project. … In total, KRRC expects 5 to 7 million
cubic yards of sediment — the same amount that the Klamath
River would normally drain in a single year — to wash
downstream over a short period of time. The material, composed
mostly of very fine silt and dead algae, has imbued the river
with a dark coffee color. For several days last week,
dissolved oxygen levels in the first 20 miles below Iron Gate
dam hovered close to zero. Decomposing algae rob water of
oxygen, as do oxidizing minerals. As the last of the reservoirs
drained, they released oxygen-poor water, as well.
The plastics industry has worked for decades to convince people
and policymakers that recycling would keep waste out of
landfills and the environment. Consumers sort their trash so
plastic packaging can be repurposed, and local governments use
taxpayer money to gather and process the material. Yet from the
early days of recycling, plastic makers, including oil and gas
companies, knew that it wasn’t a viable solution to deal with
increasing amounts of waste, according to documents uncovered
by the Center for Climate Integrity. … But the industry
appears to have championed recycling mainly for its public
relations value, rather than as a tool for avoiding
environmental damage, the documents suggest.
If open space, ocean views and wildlife are your thing,
Chanslor Ranch in Bodega Bay should be your next destination.
Long a privately owned getaway known primarily for horseback
trail rides, the 378-acre ranch across Highway 1 from Bodega
Dunes and Salmon Creek state beaches is now in county hands and
open to the general public. … [V]isitors are welcome to hike
4.5 miles of trail leading up coastal hills, down to Salmon
Creek and around the rugged landscape, which is bounded in part
by the creek. The land is known for a diversity of habitat,
from wetlands to coastal prairie, as well as many plants and
animals. The wetlands are a stopover for migrating birds, as
well.
Winter storms have hammered the Bay Area in the past month, and
the active weather isn’t letting up anytime soon. Back-to-back
storms on tap for the holiday weekend will bring heavy rain,
gusty wind and a large swell to Northern and Central California
from Saturday through Monday. Before the rainmakers hit over
the weekend, Friday is shaping up to be a pleasant day, with a
mix of sun and clouds. … A quick-moving storm is expected to
hit the Bay Area on Saturday, but a long-duration rain event
will begin Sunday afternoon and last through at least Tuesday.
The culprit is a slow-moving weather system known as a cutoff
low.
A new report released Tuesday and written by researchers
at San Diego State University calls the Tijuana River a “public
health crisis,” citing broad evidence of unhealthy conditions
from untreated sewage to industrial waste. Authors
synthesize multiple studies that have documented pollution over
the years, leading with a recent paper that documented that the
threat also extends to ocean-going mammals. Bottle nose
dolphins stranded in San Diego died from infection by a
bacteria “generally transmitted through contact with feces or
urine in contaminated water, food or soil.
Another company has given up on trying to develop oil shale in
the Uinta Basin, faced with legal battles, environmental
concerns and money going down the drain. Estonia’s national
energy company announced that it was wrapping up its fruitless
oil shale venture in Utah at the end of last month. Estonia
Finance Minister Mart Võrklaev said that the company’s project
in Utah was “neither profitable nor promising” in a news
release. … Oil shale is a hard sedimentary rock that can
be heated to release synthetic crude oil. It’s a thirsty and
expensive process that threatens air quality, water quality and
endangered species, and exacerbates global warming, according
to nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust staff attorney
Michael Toll.
California residents have received a welcome break from rain
and storms following the deadly mudslides that
tore through southern parts of the state earlier in the month.
The floodgates of the Pacific Ocean will again be flung open
as AccuWeather meteorologists project a storm duo to
provide a one-two punch of wet weather this weekend into early
next week. A brief storm will break the dry stretch for
Northern California around midweek. … Areas of
Southern California that received historic rain amounts from
the atmospheric river last week will be spared from
any precipitation with this round. However, AccuWeather experts
say the next pair of storms will take a path farther to the
south, increasing the risk of hard-hit areas receiving
additional rainfall.
What a difference a month makes. On Jan. 1, the Sierra Nevada
snowpack, the source of nearly one-third of California’s water
supply, was a meager 28% of its historic average. October,
November and December had brought few storms, leaving ski
resorts with many runs closed and water managers around the
state beginning to get nervous that California could be heading
back into the kind of dry conditions that defined the 2020-22
drought. But since then, winter has arrived. Multiple
atmospheric river storms have sent the Sierra Nevada snowpack
back to respectable levels. On Wednesday, it was 74% of the
historic average.
… El Niño’s time in the limelight is coming to an end. The
warmer-than-average Pacific waters that define El Niño are
cooling off and temperatures are expected to drop below normal
in the coming months. The Climate Prediction Center issued a La
Niña watch last week, meaning conditions are favorable for La
Niña to develop this summer. … From April to June,
there’s a 79% chance of El Niño transitioning to “neutral”
conditions, with sea surface temperatures closer to
normal. The shift, coinciding with the typical end of the
wet season, suggests less precipitation in California in the
spring. … La Niña is typically associated with
drier-than-normal conditions in Central and Southern
California.
The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) recently published
a scientific brief in February regarding illegal water use for
cannabis plants. Entitled “Water Use: Cannabis in Context,” the
brief was conducted by individuals at the Berkeley Cannabis
Research Center, which is part of the College of Environmental
Science Policy & Management. The Cannabis Research Center has
been reviewing cannabis water use since 2017, and the most
recent brief is split into four sections posed with a question.
First, “How much water does cannabis use relative to stream
flow?” explains that cannabis water use in regions along the
Northern California coast and semi-inland areas (primarily
Humboldt and Mendocino County) represents a “small fraction” of
surface water supplies year-round, and especially during the
months of July, August, and September.
Winter snowpacks are an important source of water in the West,
and their size can impact fire seasons. But researchers are
finding that wildfires themselves can impact snowpack. Bright,
white fresh snow has a high albedo, meaning it reflects much of
the sun’s light. But wildfires, which are increasing in size
and frequency, can substantially reduce the reflective power of
snow for years. Blazes can also burn off the tree canopy,
exposing snow to more sun. “Following a fire, snow
disappears four to 23 days earlier and melt rates increase by
up to 57%,” reads the opening of a 2022 paper that
University of Nevada Reno geography professor Anne Nolin
co-authored. A 2023 paper she also co-authored looked
at burns in California and had similar findings.
Coloradans gunning to join this year’s effort to save water in
the Colorado River Basin could help conserve up to 17,000
acre-feet of water — much more than the 2,500 acre-feet saved
in 2023 — and receive about $8.7 million in return. The
voluntary, multistate program pays water users to temporarily
use less water. … After a stumbling relaunch in 2023,
this year’s program is moving forward with more applications,
more potential water savings and more money for
participants. This year’s application period closed in
December with 124 applications, according to the Upper Colorado
River Commission. Of those, Colorado water users submitted 56;
Utah, 32; New Mexico, one; and Wyoming, 35.
For many Southern Californians, [flooding and landslides are]
the new normal. Homes once prized for hillside views and
apartment complexes on low-lying urban streets alike are
increasingly under threat from severe flooding, mudslides and
heavy winds. Wildfires and earthquakes have long been the focus
of concern, but the consequences of wet storms are only now
beginning to generate similar levels of alarm. The Rivases [a
family in West Hills] had renters insurance when they
lived in a house a few doors down. But when they moved in
November, they couldn’t get a policy because of the location.
What’s been called the “disaster insurance gap” has become an
increasingly dire concern in recent years. Even those who have
insurance but live in imperiled places are often unable to
secure sufficient policies to protect their residences and
belongings.
The winter of 2022-23 brought historic levels of precipitation
to California after years of deep drought, dwindling
reservoirs, and groundwater depletion. In the first quarter of
2023, most of the state received rainfall exceeding historic
averages, with some areas experiencing 200%, or even 300% of
average levels. … Despite heavy precipitation over the past
year, California’s drought resilience remains in question, as
critical infrastructure projects face staunch opposition and
climate change increases the likelihood of extreme and
prolonged droughts. … This blog post summarizes key
actions taken by state and federal officials in 2023 with
respect to California’s water supply and provides an outlook
for 2024.
As muddy water flows down the Klamath River after the recent
breaching of three dams, the Siskiyou County, Calif., Board of
Supervisors has scheduled a special meeting on Tuesday at the
former site of Copco Lake. The supervisors say they want
to hear from concerned constituents and provide “accurate and
vital” information to them. With the breaching last month
of Iron Gate and Copco 1 dams in California about 25 miles
southeast of Ashland and the breaching of JC Boyle Dam near
Klamath Falls, sediment in reservoirs behind the dams has
flowed downstream and muddied the river. It has killed
fish, while at least 10 deer have gotten stuck in the muck
and died. Those scenes have prompted a flood of
comments, including those made via social media sites and one
made from the halls of Congress. … The dams are being
removed in an effort to improve fish populations and river
health.
A Union Pacific train carrying 118 tons of coal derailed Sunday
due to a track defect and dumped its contents into and around
Plumas County’s Feather River, according to railroad officials
and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Fifteen
rail cars chugging west on tracks parallel to the Middle Fork
Feather River in Blairsden derailed, spilling the coal into the
river. At least 14 rail cars tipped over or sustained damage,
Fish and Wildlife officials said. At least one rail car fell
into the water. … The cost estimate to clean up the river is
more than $150,000, according to the CalOES spill
report. There could be potential “smothering effects” on
organisms in the river, but its short-term impacts are not
expected to affect the water, the Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response said in a
Facebook post.
During November 2018, the Camp Fire burned more than 150,000
acres in Butte County, California, including the Town of
Paradise. The fire was the deadliest and most destructive in
California history, causing at least 85 fatalities and
destroying more than 18,000 structures. In the fire’s
aftermath, understanding of the impact on connected ecosystems,
including the regional watershed, will inform how we may
prepare for and respond to fire events in the future. This was
prime focus of a multi-year research effort led by faculty at
Chico State University and supported by researchers at the
University of Colorado Boulder, the USGS, and other research
institutions.
America’s biggest saltwater lake may hold a key to the
country’s energy future. This summer, a California startup
plans to start construction on a project to suck up water from
the Great Salt Lake to extract one of its many valuable
minerals: lithium, a critical ingredient in the rechargeable
batteries used in electric vehicles. The water will then be
reinjected back into the lake, which Lilac Solutions says
addresses concerns about the damaging effects of mineral
extraction.
A historic barrage of atmospheric rivers hit California. Across
the Sierra Nevada and down through the foothills into the
valley, rivers turned into raging torrents, overflowing their
banks and flooding entire communities. California’s Central
Valley turned into an inland sea, as low lying farms and
grasslands were incapable of draining the deluge. That was
1861, when one storm after another pounded the state for
43 days without respite. Despite impressive new
terminology our experts have come up with to describe big
storms in this century – “bomb cyclone,” “arkstorm,” and
“atmospheric river” – we haven’t yet seen anything close to
what nature brought our predecessors back in those
pre-industrial times over 150 years ago. But we are getting
rain this year. Lots of rain. According to the National
Weather Service, by the time 2024’s first two atmospheric
rivers are done with California, the state will have been
inundated with an estimated 11 trillion gallons of water.
That’s 33 million acre feet, in just 10 days. Are we harvesting
this deluge? -Written by Edward Ring, a contributing editor and
senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he
co-founded in 2013 and served as its first
president.
The Bureau of Reclamation today published an overview of
historical natural losses along the lower Colorado River. The
Mainstream Evaporation and Riparian Evapotranspiration report
looks at water surface evaporation, soil moisture evaporation,
and plant transpiration. It will be used by Reclamation as a
source of data as it manages regional water operations and to
improve the agency’s modeling efforts. … The report
provides an overview of average mainstream losses from both
river and reservoir evaporation, as well as the evaporation and
transpiration associated with vegetation and habitats along the
river. The report states that approximately 1.3-million-acre
feet of losses occur annually along the lower Colorado River
mainstream. Based on data from 2017 to 2021, approximately
860,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water is lost to
evaporation occurring annually from Lake Mead to the border
with Mexico. A further 445,000 acre-feet is lost to evaporation
and transpiration from natural vegetation and habitats.
Most people don’t know that California’s largest lake — the
Salton Sea — was a mishap. Birthed in 1905 when the Colorado
River experienced massive floods, the accidental lake soon
became a community commodity. It once was a recreation
destination, filled with fish and migratory birds, that
supported the surrounding agricultural communities throughout
the Imperial and Coachella valleys. … Other than its
origin story, the Salton Sea and Utah’s Great Salt Lake share
some commonalities. Both are drying terminal lakes hurt by the
West’s drought and where water is siphoned off for human needs
before water levels can replenish. In both places, dust is
a consequence of the exposed lakebeds — and both have
a pungent aroma. The ecological, environmental, and in Utah’s
case, economic, impacts of the lakes’ declines have pushed both
states into varying degrees of action to save them.
A bipartisan team of lawmakers from Colorado and Utah are
urging Congress to help safeguard the nation’s watersheds by
considering a new bill aimed at expediting the cleanup of
contamination caused by wildfires. The Watershed
Protection and Forest Recovery Act, co-sponsored by
Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Mitt
Romney (R-Utah), would accelerate watershed recovery
efforts on federal land, while also protecting private property
and water resources downstream.
The current El Niño is now one of the strongest on record, new
data shows, catapulting it into rare “super El Niño” territory,
but forecasters believe that La Niña is likely to develop in
the coming months. … But this so-called super El Niño’s
strength won’t last long – it has reached its peak strength and
is headed on a downward trend, said Michelle L’Heureux, a
climate scientist with the Climate Prediction Center.
… A La Niña watch is now in effect, meaning conditions
are favorable for a La Niña to form within the next six months,
according to a forecast released by the CPC Thursday.
The moment Daniel Swain wakes up, he gets whipped about by
hurricane-force winds. “A Category 5, literally overnight, hits
Acapulco,” says the 34-year-old climate scientist and
self-described weather geek, who gets battered daily by the
onslaught of catastrophic weather headlines: wildfires,
megafloods, haboobs (an intense dust storm), atmospheric
rivers, bomb cyclones. Everyone’s asking: Did climate change
cause these disasters? And, more and more, they want Swain to
answer. … His ability to explain science to the masses—think
the Carl Sagan of weather—has made him one of the media’s go-to
climate experts. He’s a staff research scientist at UCLA’s
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability who spends more
than 1,100 hours each year on public-facing climate and weather
communication, explaining whether (often, yes) and how climate
change is raising the number and exacerbating the viciousness
of weather disasters.
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
issued two new proposed rules, which further expand EPA’s
regulatory oversight of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS). The first rule would modify the definition of hazardous
waste as it applies to cleanups at permitted hazardous waste
facilities and to clarify EPA’s authority to address emerging
contaminants that are not included in the regulatory definition
of hazardous waste. The second rule would add nine particular
PFAS, their salts, and their structural isomers, to the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act’s (RCRA) list of
hazardous constituents for potential assessments and corrective
actions. Nicknamed “forever chemicals,” PFAS have been used in
a wide range of consumer products and industrial processes due
to their qualities to be waterproof, stain-resistant, and
nonstick.
Rosa Mandujano … said her son’s [respiratory problems]
problems get worse when the air quality is awful – another
common issue for Coachella and Imperial Valley residents.
Mecca, where the Mandujano family lives, is enveloped by
agricultural fields and a short distance from the north shore
of the declining Salton Sea, a saline lake facing similar
turmoil as Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Dust storms have
become the norm being so close to agricultural fields and the
Salton Sea, she said. Winds reaching 75 miles per hour whip
through predominantly low-income and immigrant communities. The
dust gets so bad, Mandujano said, that “you can’t see what’s in
front of you.” With the exposed Salton Sea lakebed and the
loose dirt and pesticides from the surrounding fields,
Mandujano said it’s rare to find a Coachella Valley resident
who doesn’t suffer from allergies or asthma. But the impact of
the bad air quality and dust storms is worse for some, like
Ruben.
The laws of thermodynamics dictate that a warmer atmosphere can
hold more water vapor, but new research has found
that atmospheric moisture has not increased as expected over
arid and semi-arid regions of the world as the climate has
warmed. The findings are particularly puzzling because climate
models have been predicting that the atmosphere will become
more moist, even over dry regions. If the atmosphere is drier
than anticipated, arid and semi-arid regions may be even more
vulnerable to future wildfires and extreme heat than projected.
The authors of the new study, led by the U.S. National Science
Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), are
uncertain what’s causing the discrepancy.
Starting Feb. 10, beavers will have more eyes on them as the
SLO Beaver Brigade and the Atascadero City Council team up to
celebrate their contributions to California’s ecosystem.
Beginning at 9 a.m. at the De Anza Trailhead in front of the
Atascadero wastewater treatment facility, the Central Coast
organization will unveil a new interpretive panel. SLO Beaver
Brigade Executive Director Audrey Taub told New Times that two
new interpretive panels and kiosks along the Juan Bautista De
Anza Trail will display information on beaver habits.
… Taub said these wetlands are a refuge for the local
animals and serve as firebreaks for cities and towns along the
Salinas River. To help fund these new interpretive panels,
Taub said SLO Beaver Brigade received a Whale Tail
Grant of a little more than $40,000 from the California
Coastal Commission.
After a slow start to California’s wet season, precipitation
has picked up dramatically in the past month, as winter storms
have driven heavy rain and snow across the state. The latest
tempest brought devastating impacts, including destructive
mudslides and at least three deaths. But the storms have also
provided benefits, making up precipitation deficits since the
beginning of the current water year, which is measured from
Oct. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30, 2024. That includes the Sierra
Nevada snowpack. … Statewide precipitation this water
year has been 98% of normal, according to the latest figure
from the Department of Water Resources.
Los Angeles County’s Byzantine flood control system has thus
far absorbed near-record precipitation — a feat that officials
say was made possible by extensive preparations, including the
massive dredging of key debris basins and clearing of storm
drains in areas deemed most susceptible to flooding. But as the
most intense period of rain passed into history Monday, the
concern among local engineers and officials was whether flood
infrastructure built over the last 100 years and based on 20th
century hydrologic records can continue to keep up with
increasingly frequent extreme weather events propelled by
climate change. … From Sunday and into Monday, the
sprawling network of 18 dams, 487 miles of flood-control
channels, 3,300 miles of underground storm drain channels and
dozens of debris basins managed to steer countless gallons of
water and flowing debris away from communities in historic
flood plains.
A motion that challenged four claims made in a lawsuit against
the City of Bakersfield over how it operates the Kern River got
a half-and-half ruling from Kern County Superior Court Judge
Gregory Pulskamp Monday evening. However, the heart of the
lawsuit – that Bakersfield breached its duties under the Public
Trust Doctrine by dewatering the river through town – will
remain intact. “The City does not have the discretion to ignore
its statutory and public trust duties,” Pulskamp’s ruling
states. The judge also overruled opponents’ arguments that the
Kern River isn’t subject to California Fish and Game Code 5937,
which requires dam owners to allow enough water to pass those
structures to keep downstream fish in good conditions.
Opponents had argued that structures used to divert water out
of the Kern River are weirs, or “conduits,” not dams. Pulskamp
noted the code includes “all artificial obstructions” in its
definition of dams.
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.
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.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
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.
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.
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.”
Each day, people living on the streets and camping along waterways across California face the same struggle – finding clean drinking water and a place to wash and go to the bathroom.
Some find friendly businesses willing to help, or public restrooms and drinking water fountains. Yet for many homeless people, accessing the water and sanitation that most people take for granted remains a daily struggle.
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.
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.
Water means life for all the Grand Canyon’s inhabitants, including the many varieties of insects that are a foundation of the ecosystem’s food web. But hydropower operations upstream on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, in Northern Arizona near the Utah border, disrupt the natural pace of insect reproduction as the river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically. Eggs deposited at the river’s edge are often left high and dry and their loss directly affects available food for endangered fish such as the humpback chub.
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.
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.
Lake
Tahoe, the iconic high Sierra water body that straddles
California and Nevada, has sat for more than 10,000 years at the
heart of the Washoe tribe’s territory. In fact, the name Tahoe
came from the tribal word dá’aw, meaning lake.
The lake’s English name was the source of debate for about 100
years after it was first “discovered” in 1844 by people of
European descent when Gen. John C. Fremont’s expedition made its
way into the region. Not long after, a man who carried mail on
snowshoes from Placerville to Nevada City named it Lake Bigler in
honor of John Bigler, who served as California’s third governor.
But because Bigler was an ardent secessionist, the federal
Interior Department during the Civil War introduced the name
Tahoe in 1862. Meanwhile, California kept it as Lake Bigler and
didn’t officially recognize the name as Lake Tahoe until 1945.
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.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
A new study could help water
agencies find solutions to the vexing challenges the homeless
face in gaining access to clean water for drinking and
sanitation.
The Santa Ana Watershed Project
Authority (SAWPA) in Southern California has embarked on a
comprehensive and collaborative effort aimed at assessing
strengths and needs as it relates to water services for people
(including the homeless) within its 2,840 square-mile area that
extends from the San Bernardino Mountains to the Orange County
coast.
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.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
Potable water, also known as
drinking water, comes from surface and ground sources and is
treated to levels that that meet state and federal standards for
consumption.
Water from natural sources is treated for microorganisms,
bacteria, toxic chemicals, viruses and fecal matter. Drinking
raw, untreated water can cause gastrointestinal problems such as
diarrhea, vomiting or fever.
The Eel River supports one of California’s largest wild salmon
and steelhead runs in a watershed that hosts the world’s largest
surviving stands of ancient redwoods.
The Eel flows generally northward from Northern California’s
Mendocino National Forest to the Pacific, a few miles south of
Eureka. The river and its tributaries drain
more than 3,500 square miles, the state’s
third-largest watershed.
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 28-page report describes the watersheds of the Sierra Nevada
region and details their importance to California’s overall water
picture. It describes the region’s issues and challenges,
including healthy forests, catastrophic fire, recreational
impacts, climate change, development and land use.
The report also discusses the importance of protecting and
restoring watersheds in order to retain water quality and enhance
quantity. Examples and case studies are included.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 Flood Management explains the
physical flood control system, including levees; discusses
previous flood events (including the 1997 flooding); explores
issues of floodplain management and development; provides an
overview of flood forecasting; and outlines ongoing flood control
projects.
A watershed is the land area that drains snowmelt and rain into a
network of lakes, streams, rivers and other waterways. It
typically is identified by the largest draining watercourse
within the system. In California, for example, the Sacramento River Basin is the
state’s largest watershed.
Southern California’s Santa Ana River is the largest watershed
drainage south of the Sierra and is located largely in a highly
urbanized, highly regulated setting.
At about 100 miles long and with more than 50 tributaries, the
Santa Ana spans parts of San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange
counties as it drains 2,840 square miles of land.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies.
Lake Tahoe is one of the Sierra Nevada’s crown jewels, renowned
for its breathtaking clarity. The high-altitude, clear blue lake
and its surrounding basin, which lie on the California-Nevada
state line, is a spectacular natural resource that provides
environmental, economic, recreational and aesthetic benefits.