A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation News & Publications Director Chris Bowman.
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Fourteen months ago, a catastrophic flood upended thousands of
lives in Pájaro, a small Central California farmworker town
filled with immigrants who speak mostly Spanish or Indigenous
languages. A relentless series of atmospheric rivers
transformed the inviting Pájaro River into a malevolent foe
that charged through a crumbling levee and engulfed the coastal
community in floodwaters. Regional and state officials
knew a levee break was inevitable—it had failed at least four
times before—but didn’t prioritize desperately needed repairs
for a town populated by low-income farmworkers. … A
group of Pájaro residents explored the impacts of climate
change on their town through a very personal lens as part of
the Pájaro PhotoVoice Project, organized by the nonprofit
climate justice organization Regeneración. The photos will be
on display at Somos Watsonville, a nonprofit community
center, until June 7.
Seeking to squeeze more value out of wastewater, the Palo Alto
City Council approved on May 13 the construction of a
$63-million salt-removing plant in the Baylands. Known as the
Local Advanced Water Purification System, the plant will go up
at the periphery of the Regional Water Quality Control Plant,
the industrial facility at 2501 Embarcadero Way that serves
Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford
University and the East Palo Alto Sanitary District. It will
consist of three structures: a 30-foot-tall storage tank, an
open-air building and a prefabricated building. They would go
up at the northwest side of the regional plant, next to
Embarcadero Road. Unlike other advanced purification systems,
the new Palo Alto plant will not make wastewater safe for
drinking.
Gardening and landscaping allow us to beautify our properties
and give us something fun to do on weekends, but it can also
help improve the watershed ecosystem we live in. Russian
River-Friendly Landscaping, a set of guidelines developed by
the Russian River Watershed Association (RRWA), is a systematic
approach to designing, constructing, and maintaining landscapes
based on basic principles of natural systems. When we
incorporate these guidelines into our landscaping, there are
multiple benefits: we protect and conserve our local waterways
by reducing plant debris and pesticide use, decreasing runoff
by allowing more water to infiltrate into the soil, and more.
The last of four Klamath River dams undergoing deconstruction
began earlier this week. Located in Klamath County, J.C. Boyle
Dam is the northernmost of the four planned for removal by the
Klamath River Renewal Corporation. KRRC CEO Mark Bransom said
the corporation received approval from the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission to begin removal starting Monday, May 13.
“As of Monday morning, the contractor was working on the
earthen embankment section of the dam,” Bransom said. J.C.
Boyle Dam is part embankment and part concrete, consisting of
earth-fill, concrete gravity, intake and spillway sections.
As of Tuesday morning, there was no news from Sacramento County
Superior Court Judge Stephen Acquisto on a dispute over the
city’s approval of the proposed Sage Ranch subdivision. The
issue is whether the city of Tehachapi violated state law when
it approved a 995-unit residential project on 138 acres near
Tehachapi High School in September 2021. The long-awaited
hearing on the first through third causes of action of the
case, Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District vs. City of
Tehachapi, took about three hours on May 3, with Acquisto
questioning attorneys about case law and water.
With wildfires raging in western Canada and heat and drought
leading to heightened fire risks in Mexico, the U.S. faces a
fast start to the smoke season but a slower one when it comes
to fires. Why it matters: After last year’s relatively inactive
U.S. wildfire season, forecasters expect this fire season to be
overall more active but likely not as extreme as the
destructive years of 2020 or 2021. The 2024 U.S. wildfire
season is set to pick up over the coming weeks as
hotter-than-average summer temperatures set in, according to
the National Interagency Fire Center’s (NIFC) forecast.
… Threat level: With computer models signaling the
likelihood of an unusually hot and dry summer across the West,
even states like California, which was inundated with heavy
rain and snow last winter, may see a significant
uptick in its wildfire activity toward the latter portion of
the summer into the fall, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain
told Axios.
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in
California is taking applications for the Migratory Bird
Resurgence Initiative (MBRI). California has $500,000
available. Please call or visit your local NRCS office to
apply. Due to the current compressed planting season, we
have confirmed with NRCS that you can register your interest in
the opportunity with just a phone call by May 24, but then you
will still need to sign your application in person by May 31.
Reading strong local journalism is tied to greater support for
funding dams, sewers and other basic infrastructure vital to
climate resilience, according to new research from UCLA and
Duke University. The study, published this month in the journal
Political Behavior, found that reading fictionalized samples of
news coverage with specific local details about infrastructure
maintenance requirements led to as much as 10% more electoral
support for infrastructure spending compared to reading
bare-bones reporting. Just a few extra paragraphs of context in
the mock news stories not only increased support for spending,
but also increased voters’ willingness to hold politicians
accountable for infrastructure neglect by voting them out of
office.
Taking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) at its word to
employ a “robust public engagement process”, a coalition of
over a dozen national and state farm and water organizations
have engaged the agency on its proposal to list the
northwestern and southwestern pond turtles under the federal
Endangered Species Act (ESA). The litigious Center for
Biological Diversity has been pushing for stronger protection
for the pond turtles for over a decade. The proposed listing of
the turtle could potentially impact producers and water
managers in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
… For example, millions of acre-feet of stored water in
the past decade have been directed away from farmland and
flushed out to the sea to “protect” delta smelt in California
and coho salmon on the Klamath River. -Written by Dan Keppen is executive director of the Family
Farm Alliance.
Wildfire weather has become more frequent in the Western United
States over the past five decades, with some of the largest
jumps in California, according to a new report by Climate
Central, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on climate
change. The report looks at three key weather conditions —
heat, dryness and wind — that, when combined, load the dice for
wildfires to spread quickly and grow large, said Kaitlyn
Trudeau, senior research associate with Climate Central.
… The report serves as a good reminder that
the Western U.S. has become warmer and drier in ways
that tend to promote more large wildfires, said Park Williams,
climate scientist and professor in the UCLA Department of
Geography, who was not involved in the analysis.
Imperial Irrigation District officials have figured out how to
surmount a key hurdle to complete a Colorado River conservation
deal worth nearly $800 million: pushing to have California
legislators quickly pass a bill that would immediately give
them the power to kill endangered fish and birds. District
staff, the bill’s sponsor and environmentalists say that likely
wouldn’t occur, thanks to funding to create habitat elsewhere,
and due to backstop federal species protections that are
actually stronger than the state’s. But it is a
counter-intuitive piece of lawmaking that has upset one
longtime critic. What’s driving the legislation are a tiny
desert pupfish and two types of birds, all nearing extinction,
which have found unlikely refuge in the Imperial Valley’s
concrete drainage channels and marshy areas by the fast-drying
Salton Sea.
Related Salton Sea and endangered species articles:
The summer of 2023 was exceptionally hot. Scientists have
already established that it was the warmest Northern Hemisphere
summer since around 1850, when people started systematically
measuring and recording temperatures. Now, researchers say it
was the hottest in 2,000 years, according to a new study
published in the journal Nature that compares 2023 with a
longer temperature record across most of the Northern
Hemisphere. The study goes back before the advent of
thermometers and weather stations, to the year A.D. 1, using
evidence from tree rings. … Extra greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels are responsible for
most of the recent increases in Earth’s temperature, but other
factors — including El Niño, an undersea volcanic eruption and
a reduction in sulfur dioxide aerosol pollution from container
ships — may have contributed to the extremity of the heat last
year.
A proposed water rights settlement for three Native American
tribes that carries a price tag larger than any such agreement
enacted by Congress has taken a major step forward with its
introduction to the Navajo Nation Council. The Navajo Nation
has one of the largest single outstanding claims in the
Colorado River basin and will vote soon on the measure in a
special session. It’s the first of many approvals — ending with
Congress — that’s needed to finalize the deal presented on
Monday. Climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and demands on
the river like those that have allowed Phoenix, Las Vegas and
other desert cities to thrive pushed the tribes into settlement
talks. The Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes are
hoping to close the deal quickly under a Democratic
administration in Arizona and with Joe Biden as president.
The Merced River and the San Joaquin River will be closed for
recreational use throughout Merced County, announced the Merced
County Sheriff’s Office on Monday. Sheriff’s officials say the
snow melting the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is provoking
more water to be released into the county’s waterways and is
making conditions very dangerous in the rivers. The
announcement comes after Sheriff Vern Warnke says they have
encountered tragedies along the river recently, including
people going missing after going to the river. Sheriff Warnke
says it is okay to go fishing in the river, but activities such
as kayaking, swimming, and any other activities that have
anything to do with getting into the water are prohibited until
further notice. “The water’s running fast, running cold,
running deep. So please, stay out of the water,” Warnke
said.
[Tuolumne River Trust's policy director Peter] Drekmeier’s beef
with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission goes back
years and rests on the premise that the agency stores far more
water than it needs in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, on the upper
Tuolumne, at the expense of the river downstream. The
commission’s water management plan is based on the unlikely
possibility of an 8.5-year drought—a theoretical disaster
dubbed the “design drought” that critics consider overkill. …
Environmentalists insist the agency could take a more
fish-friendly approach, releasing more water through
O’Shaughnessy Dam into the Tuolumne River while still providing
adequate supplies for its 2.7 million customers.
During a surprise appearance at the 2024 ACWA Spring Conference
& Expo in Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom addressed climate
change adaptation while expressing strong support for local
control of water resources. Newsom joins a long list of
California governors who have spoken at ACWA conferences
throughout the association’s history, including past Gov. Jerry
Brown. Gov. Newsom’s address highlighted several areas of
interest to ACWA member agencies. Water has remained a leading
issue during Newsom’s second term in office, and he made that
abundantly clear during his 15-minute address. California
Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot introduced Newsom
during Crowfoot’s May 8 keynote speech, which also focused on
the critical role of California water management in an era
defined by climate extremes.
Can metals that naturally occur in seawater be mined, and can
they be mined sustainably? A company in Oakland, California,
says yes. And not only is it extracting magnesium from ocean
water — and from waste brine generated by industry — it is
doing it in a carbon-neutral way. Magrathea Metals has produced
small amounts of magnesium in pilot projects, and with
financial support from the U.S. Defense Department, it is
building a larger-scale facility to produce about 200 tons of
the metal a year. By 2028, it says it plans to be operating a
facility that will annually produce more than 11,000
tons. … Brines come from a number of sources: much
new research focuses on the potential for extracting
metals from briny wastes generated by industry, including
coal-fired power plants that discharge waste into tailings
ponds; wastewater pumped out of oil and gas wells — called
produced water; wastewater from hard-rock mining; and
desalination plants.
The U.S. government is dedicating $60 million over the next few
years to projects along the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico
and West Texas to make the river more resilient in the face of
climate change and growing demands. The funding announced
Friday by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland marks the first
disbursement from the Inflation Reduction Act for a basin
outside of the Colorado River system. While pressures on the
Colorado River have dominated headlines, Haaland and others
acknowledged that other communities in the West — from Native
American reservations to growing cities and agricultural
strongholds — are experiencing the effects of unprecedented
drought.
California’s almond crop this year is expected to increase by
21 percent compared to 2023, according to the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. The USDA expects the almond crop to total
around three billion pounds, a significant boost from the 2.47
billion pounds produced last year. Driving the
news: California’s lofty almond production projections are
driven by favorable weather for the first half of the growing
season, according to an analysis from the USDA.
… If California’s almond crop projections are accurate,
2024 would be the second-best year on record in the last
decade.
A multi-disciplinary authorship group of over 30 individuals
has published a report comprised of literature review, policy
analysis, and recommendations pertaining to the water impacts
of cover crop practices in California’s Central Valley under
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The report,
entitled “Cover Cropping in the SGMA Era,” is the product of a
convening process jointly developed by the California
Association of Resource Conservation Districts (CARCD),
California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), Natural
Resources Conservation Service of California (NRCS-CA), and
University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC
ANR) and assembled by Sustainable Conservation.
