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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A California landfill has been illegally dumping toxic waste
into the Napa River for years, polluting waters that feed a
valley known around the world for the quality of its vineyards,
according to a federal lawsuit filed by landfill employees.
Fifteen workers from Clover Flat Landfill and Upper Valley
Disposal Service (UVDS) in Napa County, California, allege that
operators of the landfill intentionally diverted what is called
“leachate” – untreated liquid wastewater often containing heavy
metals, nitrates, bacteria and pathogens – into the Napa River
and other area waterways for decades. The actions were done to
“avoid the costs of properly trucking out the toxic leachate”
to facilities designated for safe disposal, the lawsuit
alleges.
Mayor Andrew Lara joined other city leaders in dedicating a new
water treatment facility in Pico Rivera on Monday, calling the
$15 million Groundwater Treatment Project a milestone decades
in the making. “This sends a message to our residents that we
will put their health and well-being first and foremost,” Lara
said. “This underscores Pico Rivera’s obligation to safeguard
water quality for future generations and prioritize our
community’s well-being through strategic investment and
inter-agency collaboration.” The new treatment plant is
part of the city’s 2020 Water Master Plan, launched in response
to state mandates on drinking water. City staff and the City
Council spent years working to safeguard the health of the
community after industrial pollution contaminated many of the
region’s groundwater aquifers, Lara said.
Campbell Soup Company and Kind Snacks announced projects that
would advance regenerative agriculture practices for key
ingredients with financial support from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. Campbell’s received $3.4 million through USDA’s
Regional Conservation Partnership Program to increase adoption
of sustainable practices and reduce water consumption among
tomato growers in California. Separately, Kind, a subsidiary of
Mars Inc., said it will unlock more than $300,000 for
regenerative agriculture in almonds through USDA’s Partnership
for Climate-Smart Commodities Program.
If the 2024 ballot poses the question of whether voters care
more about leaky schools or wildfires, the answer appears
clear: Climate change trumps education in the California
consciousness. … Proposition 4, which would spend the
same amount on wildfire, flooding and other climate
resiliency programs, is at a comfortable 60 percent,
according to polling released last week. Much of the difference
is due to climate being the fresh face on the block, pollsters
and backers of both bonds said. While school funding has been
on the ballot six times since 1998, most recently in 2020, this
is the first time climate-specific spending has gone before
voters, said Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public
Policy Institute of California, which conducted last week’s
poll.
The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake by surface area, is
experiencing an increasing rate of shoreline retreat following
a policy change that shifted more water from the Colorado River
to San Diego, according to a newly published study. The
resulting dried lakebed is creating more polluted dust from
dried agricultural runoff that affects nearby communities,
researchers said. Researchers forecast that parts of the Salton
Sea’s North Shore are expected to retreat 150 meters by 2030
and an additional 172 meters by 2041 given the current rate of
retreat. The average rate of retreat between 2002 and 2017 rose
from 12.5 meters a year to nearly 38.5 meters per year after
2018.
Aaron Fukuda, general manager of the Tulare Irrigation
District, took a gamble when he supported cracking down on his
growers as wells across the arid southern San Joaquin Valley
were going dry — and he’s still waiting to see if it will pay
off. Fukuda said he got angry phone calls from his community
for about a year after he championed a local emergency
ordinance in 2022 to put pumping limits and penalties on
irrigation wells across 163 square miles of prime farmland in
Tulare County, where overuse and drought have been lowering
groundwater levels 2 to 3 feet per year. He’s since also
embraced policies to recharge more groundwater and protect
domestic wells. But the specter of his region’s over-pumping is
still coming for Fukuda. State officials have determined that
his sub-basin still hasn’t done enough to stop groundwater
levels from dropping further by 2040, as required by the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
The U.S. Supreme Court won’t take up an Arizona tribe’s
petition that looks to overturn a ruling that sides with a
state environmental agency’s decision to let a copper mining
company discharge untreated wastewater into a creek that’s
considered sacred to the Indigenous community.
The Colorado River is managed like a joint bank account — seven
states have equal shares of two basins, and not a single drop
of water is overlooked. Lake Powell in Utah and Lake Mead in
Nevada manage the fortune; when drought hits, and the budget is
low, the stress of being down on funds is shared among account
partners. … When the Colorado River
Compact was established in 1922, it allocated 7.5 million
acre-feet of water per year, or 75 million acre-feet over 10
years, to each of the two basins. However, the river’s strain
from population growth in certain areas, agricultural demands
and the impacts of climate change have decreased the flow
significantly, often delivering less than the initially
intended amount.
Amid warmer-than-average fall temperatures, Colorado’s snowpack
levels are pacing above normal. Snowpack, also referred
to as snow-water equivalent, is a measurement of how much
liquid water is held within the state’s snowfields — a key
indicator for drought conditions and seasonal runoff. As
of Friday, Nov. 1, the statewide snowpack was at 143% of the
30-year median, which is considered the historical normal,
according to data from the Natural Resources Conservation
Service.
San Francisco is often said to have some of the best
drinking water in the nation. Fed by snow on the peaks at
Yosemite, the cold, unspoiled supplies are so crisp and clean
that the water requires no filtration before being piped 160
miles to Bay Area taps. Celebrity water sommelier Martin Riese
once called the city’s water “smooth” with earthy notes and
“almost like you have little lime” in the aftertaste. This
beloved elixir, however, may not be as good as some people
think it is. A recent taste test found that the city’s supplies
were slightly inferior to water from other Bay Area
providers. To be clear, the test conducted by researchers
at the University of Colorado at Boulder, with Bay Area
residents doing the tasting, is not the final word on San
Francisco water.
Conservationists and an advocacy group for Native Americans are
suing the U.S. to try to block a Nevada lithium mine they say
will drive an endangered desert wildflower to extinction,
disrupt groundwater flows and threaten cultural resources. The
Center for Biological Diversity promised the court battle a
week ago when the U.S. Interior Department approved Ioneer
Ltd.’s Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron mine at the only place
Tiehm’s buckwheat is known to exist in the world, near the
California line halfway between Reno and Las Vegas. It is the
latest in a series of legal fights over projects President Joe
Biden’s administration is pushing under his clean energy agenda
intended to cut reliance on fossil fuels, in part by increasing
the production of lithium to make electric vehicle batteries
and solar panels.
Chinook salmon are spawning in streams above four former dam
sites on the Klamath River in numbers that are astounding
biologists. Now, a network of tribes, agencies, university
researchers, and conservation groups is working together to
track the fish as they explore the newly opened habitat.
Reservoirs behind three of the Klamath River dams were drawn
down starting last January; by October 2, the barriers were
fully removed. Just days later, the first Chinook was
discovered in Jenny Creek in California’s Siskiyou County. On
October 16, biologists from Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife and the Klamath Tribes spotted the first Chinook in a
key tributary in Oregon, above all four of the former dams.
The Martinez Refining Company has agreed to pay $4.482 million
to settle allegations of federal Clean Water Act violations at
its refinery, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality
Control Board said Thursday. The refinery allegedly discharged
millions of gallons of wastewater from oil refinery processes,
which harmed water quality and threatened aquatic life in
marshes linked to the Carquinez Strait. … The water
board found three cases of unauthorized discharges into nearby
marshes.
Known by a deceivingly healthy-sounding name —nutria — its
eating and burrowing ways can literally destroy natural wetland
systems if left unchecked. So far more than 500 nutria have
been detected since last year in the Suisun Marsh in the far
western Delta. “We’re very concerned,” said Krysten Kellum, a
spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “They are destroying our wetlands.” This foreign
creature has plenty of company in this 700,000-acre estuary.
More than 95 percent of the Delta’s fish and plants are
non-native. While the Delta may look outwardly bucolic, it is
one of the most altered places on earth. —Written by Tom Philp, editorial writer and columnist
with The Sacramento Bee
In much of the American West, water districts dominate water
governance. These districts serve vitally important functions
in regions challenged by aridity, growing populations, and
climate change. These districts also often operate within
boundaries developed a century ago, or more, and under
governing rules that are undemocratic by design. In many water
districts, people who do not own land cannot serve on the
governing board. Nor can they vote in water district
elections. … This article describes these problems.
Drawing on original data and mapping, it shows how pervasive
these undemocratic governance structures can be and how water
districts with these structures are expanding their reach into
new policy realms. It also explains continued problems with the
geography of water districts. And it shows how some water
districts have acted to thwart important state policy interests
and why such conflicts are likely to increase.
… Lake Oroville is at 764 feet elevation and storage is
approximately 1.73 million acre-feet (MAF), which is 50 percent
of its total capacity and 96 percent of the historical average.
Feather River flows are at 800 cubic feet per second (cfs)
through the City of Oroville with 950 cfs being released from
the Thermalito Afterbay River Outlet (Outlet) for a total
Feather River release of 1,750 cfs downstream. DWR continues to
assess Feather River releases daily.
After assuring residents here for months that their tap water
is safe to drink despite earlier tests showing high lead
levels, city officials announced Thursday that some of their
earlier assessments were done improperly. The news in Syracuse
— the latest U.S. city grappling with a crisis over
contaminated drinking water — comes after officials first
disclosed in August that samples collected in the spring found
that dozens of homes had dangerous levels of lead exposure. The
city said 10 percent of the homes it surveyed had levels more
than four times the Environmental Protection Agency threshold
that triggers government enforcement, or more than twice what
officials found during the Flint, Michigan, water crisis a
decade ago.
A new species of mussels discovered in California’s waterways
earlier this month could have massive ramifications for the
entire state if it’s not contained, the California Department
of Fish and Wildlife said Thursday. The California Department
of Water Resources discovered golden mussels, which are native
to China and Southeast Asia, while doing routine maintenance in
the Port of Stockton, marking the first-ever appearance of the
species in North America. The mussels likely reached California
by clinging to the bottom of an international vessel, Fish and
Wildlife officials said, announcing the
discovery. The department said the
species poses a significant, immediate threat to the ecological
health of all of California’s waters, not just the
Sacramento-Joaquin Delta where it was discovered.
Standing knee-deep in one of California’s famed Gold Rush
rivers, a scientist gingerly held up a cheesecloth sack
carrying 5,000 pink salmon eggs, each slightly smaller than a
marble, with a big eye incubating within. A series of
dams have long arrested the natural flow of water on the North
Yuba River in the Tahoe National Forest, blocking the salmon
from these spawning grounds for more than 80 years. State
officials are trying to bring the threatened spring-run chinook
salmon back, starting this week with 300,000 eggs planted in
the streambed. “Bye bye, little guys,” said Aimee Braddock, an
environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife, as she poured the eggs into a wide tube leading
down to a hole she’d dug in the gravelly streambed.
The Shoshone Hydropower Plant in Glenwood Canyon was not
operating for nearly all of 2023 and more than half of 2024,
adding urgency to a campaign seeking to secure the plant’s
water rights for the Western Slope. According to records from
the Colorado Division of Water Resources, the Shoshone
Hydropower Plant was not operating from Feb. 28, 2023 until
Aug. 8, 2024. … The recent extended outages of the plant
increase the urgency of the effort by the Colorado River Water
Conservation District to acquire Shoshone’s water rights, which
are some of the oldest and most powerful non-consumptive rights
on the main stem of the Colorado River. If the plant were to
shut down permanently, it would threaten the Western Slope’s
water supply. The water rights could be at risk of being
abandoned or acquired by a Front Range entity.
