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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The Marin Municipal Water District is seeking $4 million in
grants to fund two of its dam projects. The district board
unanimously approved two grant applications for the state
Department of Water Resources’ safety and climate resiliency
program. The grants would give up to $2 million for each
project. The funds would go toward repairing spillways at
various dams and replacing valves and actuators at Phoenix and
Lagunitas dams. Actuators help control water flow. “This
opportunity for the submission of these proposals seems like
it’s quite new, or this is a new program focused on the
maintenance of dams that predate a certain period,” Ranjiv
Khush, the board president, said at its meeting on Oct. 15.
“It’s a great opportunity that’s come up from our department
resources and I was really excited to see that we jumped on
it.”
Keyes Community Services District general manager Ernie Garza
wants the people of Keyes to know that they don’t have to be
“afraid of the faucet.” Earlier this month, construction began
on a long-awaited water filtration project in Keyes that will
eliminate the chemical called 1,2,3-trichloropropane from being
a threat to the town’s drinking water system. In 1992, 123
TCP was added to the list of chemicals known to the state
to cause cancer, pursuant to California’s Safe
Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. It has been used as
a cleaning and degreasing solvent and also is associated
with pesticide products, according to the State Water Resources
Control Board.
The Los Angels River is many things to many people and on one
recent Saturday evening, for Ashley Sparks, it was art. She was
one of a few dozen people who sat down at the river’s edge for
the opening of an art activation called “What Water Wants” by
Roston Woo. … “What Water Wants,” part of PST ART: Art &
Science Collide, is a half hour audio presentation that
involves music, ambient sounds and narration — a kind of guided
meditation that is available on your phone at any time through
a QR code posted near Lewis MacAdams Riverfront Park.
When the Trump administration presented a new plan exporting
more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta five years
ago, state officials and environmentalists objected that the
new rules would increase the chances that salmon, smelt and
steelhead would go extinct. Now, state and federal agencies are
nearing the finish line on a replacement plan that could boost
water supplies for cities and some growers but, according to a
federal analysis, could be even more harmful to the estuary and
its fish. The Trump administration rules, critics say,
fail to adequately protect endangered fish, while
increasing Delta water exports to some Central Valley farms and
Southern California cities. But the new proposal from the Biden
and Newsom administrations — developed mostly by the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Water
Resources — does not fix what environmentalists considered
deal-breaking flaws in the Trump rules. Rather, they say, it
worsens them, and could lead to lower survival and accelerated
declines in fish listed as threatened or endangered.
A federal district court judge ruled last week that the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental
Protection Act and the Clean Water Act when it approved
expanding a Colorado reservoir. But a footnote to that decision
is even more significant, experts and environmentalists say,
with potentially far-reaching impacts on water management in
the West and current negotiations to cut back use of the
declining Colorado River. Since 2002, Denver Water, which
supplies 1.5 million people in the Denver metropolitan area,
has been seeking to expand the Gross Reservoir. … The
diversion of more water from the already over-appropriated
Colorado River would threaten the wildlife that depend on the
waterway and put the state at risk of violating the guidelines
that regulate the river’s water supply, environmentalists have
argued. Senior federal judge Christine Arguello agreed, noting
that diverting more water from the Colorado River could result
in forced reductions for the state.
Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Department of Water Resources
have made the first move toward regulating the use of
groundwater in the state’s rural southeast that is being
rapidly being drawn down through agricultural use. The state
agency said Wednesday it will hold a public hearing Nov. 22 to
present data and hear comments about the possibility of
designating what is known as an “active management area” for
the Willcox Groundwater Basin in Arizona’s Cochise and Graham
counties. In the meantime, the basin is closed to new
agriculture use while the department decides whether to create
the management area southeast of Tucson that would allow it to
set goals for the well-being of the basin and its aquifers.
Approximately 71 to 95 million people in the Lower 48 states –
more than 20% of the country’s population – may rely on
groundwater that contains detectable concentrations of per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, for their
drinking water supplies. These findings are according to
a U.S Geological Survey study published Oct. 24. The
predictive model results can help members of the public, water
suppliers and regulators understand the potential for PFAS
contamination, guide future studies and inform strategic
planning for water resources. USGS scientists are the
first to report national estimates of PFAS occurrence in
untreated groundwater that supplies water to public and private
wells. This research also provides the first estimate of the
number of people across the country who are potentially
affected by PFAS-contaminated groundwater.
Major reservoirs across California are performing above or near
their historical average, but a dry summer has contributed to
falling water levels. Regardless of the plunge, most of
the Golden State’s major reservoirs are in a much better state
than at their lowest point in 2022. After years of drought,
several reservoirs in California reached concerningly low water
levels in the summer of 2022. However, an abnormally wet winter
that followed alleviated much of the state’s drought and
replenished the lakes. A similarly wet winter last year brought
a deluge of rain to the state. Reservoir water levels rose
across the state, with several reservoirs nearing their
capacity in 2023 and 2024, including the state’s two
largest reservoirs, Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville.
… We need to take action to protect the largest estuary on
the West Coast, as well as those who suffer as the environment
declines, including Delta communities, Tribes, and salmon
fishermen. … The Central Valley Flood Protection Board has
adopted a new Central Valley Flood Protection Plan to respond
to this growing risk. A cornerstone strategy is to restore tens
of thousands of acres of floodplains along Central Valley
rivers. That will allow floodwaters to spread out and sink into
groundwater aquifers – rather than threaten communities like
Stockton. … When existing agricultural land is restored
as native floodplain habitat, it no longer needs irrigation.
Restored habitat consumes some water – provided through natural
precipitation and river flows. But even so, restoring
floodplains reduces net water use. That saved water can be
dedicated to restoring rivers. —Written by Rick Frank, professor of environmental
practice at U.C. Davis School of Law and Julie Rentner,
president of River Partners
… In the western United States, extensive fires are now
commonplace. … The area of land burnt each year increases
exponentially with aridity. And climate change is making the
fire season in the western United States both warmer and drier.
… In the past six years, just three fast-moving
wildfires — in Paradise, California, in 2018; the 2021 Marshall
fire in Colorado; and the 2023 fire in Lahaina, Hawaii —
destroyed thousands of homes and together took more than 150
lives. As well as spreading flames and choking smoke, fires
increase the likelihoods of water pollution, flooding and
mudslides by, for example, killing vegetation that would
otherwise regulate water run-off and stabilize soils.
Other wildfire research and climate change articles:
The US Forest Service and water bottling company BlueTriton
[Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water] must fight their California
water permit battle in a court closer to the case’s origin, a
federal judge ruled. Judge John D. Bates transferred BlueTriton
Brands Inc.’s bid to reinstate its special use permit related
to San Bernardino National Forest water diversions to the US
District Court for the Central District of California,
according to an order filed in US District Court for the
District of Columbia.
As rain returns to the Sacramento area, the California
Department of Water Resources is observing Flood Preparedness
Week. Local agencies across the state are sharing information
about California’s flood risks and how to prepare for flooding,
according to the department’s website. Where is the flood risk
in Sacramento County? What can residents do to prepare? Here’s
what you should know ahead of the winter weather season.
Denver will transform the landscape around its iconic City and
County Building into a waterwise shortgrass prairie, tearing
out thirsty bluegrass turf and creating a demonstration
showcase for conservation. The rip-out-and-replace
project, scheduled for completion by next fall, will slash 44%
of water use on the traditional bluegrass lawn surrounding City
Hall, dropping water use in that area from 1.2 million gallons
a year to 670,000 gallons. The 1932 neoclassical
building has historic landmark designation, but the
grounds do not, so Denver Parks and Recreation is free to
design and build the $400,000 project, parks spokesperson
Stephanie Figueroa said. The money will come from the Parks
Legacy Fund, created by a special sales tax Denver voters
approved in 2018 for open space acquisition and
renovation.
The Biden administration Thursday approved a massive lithium
and boron mine in southern Nevada, overriding some
environmentalists’ protests that it could drive an endangered
wildflower to extinction. … Some environmentalists have also
raised alarm about the mine’s water consumption, given a
historic drought gripping much of the American West. But
Bernard Rowe, Ioneer’s managing director, said the company is
taking steps to mitigate these concerns. The mine will be “very
efficient with water. We recirculate about 50 percent of our
water,” Rowe said on a call with reporters Thursday, adding
that “we’ve designed the project to be very, very respectful of
environmental sensitivities.”
Flooding has become a common occurrence in the East Houston
neighborhood where ecologist Jessica Díaz Vázquez grew up. When
the water rises, she and other residents of this predominantly
Latinx community wonder whether pollutants from nearby
petrochemical plants are coming with it. “You don’t want to go
near [the water] because you really just don’t know what could
be in it,” said Vázquez, who is now a fellow at NOAA. Hers
isn’t the only community wondering what’s in its water.
According to a new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and
the Environment, lakes in communities where more than a quarter
of residents are Hispanic or people of color are 3 times less
likely to have been monitored for water quality than lakes in
predominantly white, non-Hispanic areas of the United States.
… ABC10 meteorologist Rob Carlmark took a trip to Southern
California’s largest natural lake, Lake Elsinore. This lake is
facing the same scenario, but the leaders of the community
surrounding the lake are taking the next step. They put forth
real action and are getting results. … It’s the largest
natural freshwater lake in Southern California. It is fairly
shallow but six miles long and the surface area is nearly 3,000
acres. … When the lake turned green with toxic
cyanobacteria algae in 2022, the town was heavily impacted.
They’ve had numerous periods of the water turning green, but
the outbreak prompted a six-month closure. Residents demanded
Lake Elsinore’s mayor and city council address the issue.
… For the first paper, published in June in the journal
Energy & Environmental Science, William Tarpeh and his
co-authors – including first author Dean Miller, a Stanford PhD
candidate in chemical engineering – used wastewater from a Palo
Alto treatment plant to test a process for converting nitrate
into ammonia. For the second paper, published in October in the
same journal, Tarpeh’s team tested another process that
produces high-purity ammonia from agricultural runoff.
… Tarpeh and his colleagues created an
“electrocatalyst-in-a-box” – an electrically driven process
that both extracts nitrate from wastewater and converts that
nitrate into ammonia. For the second paper, Tarpeh’s team used
a two-step process of electrodialysis and nitrate reduction to
take nitrate and ammonia from wastewater and convert them
together into high-purity ammonia. They successfully
concentrated ammonia about 12 times compared to the nitrate and
ammonia in the original wastewater, Tarpeh said.
San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer is teaming up
with several local officials in an attempt to get the
Environmental Protection Agency to take action against the
sewage crisis in the South Bay. On Thursday morning in
Coronado, Lawson-Remer is slated to speak alongside those
officials and some South Bay residents, submitting a petition
to the EPA to designate parts of the Tijuana River Valley as a
“superfund site.” A superfund site is part of a 1980 law
that the EPA can use to free up federal funding to clean up
hazardous waste sites around the country. Those sites are meant
to target toxic waste, not raw sewage — which normally falls
under the Clean Water Act. But Lawson-Remer wants the EPA to
designate a six-mile stretch of the Lower Tijuana River Valley
as a superfund site after decades of exposure to toxic
chemicals, heavy metals, and pesticides.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) was nationally
recognized for its leadership in climate action and integrated
water management at the 2024 American Water Resources
Association (AWRA) conference in St. Louis earlier this month.
DWR received two prestigious awards: the Sandor C. Csallany
Institutional Award for its comprehensive Climate Action Plan
(CAP), as well as accepting the Integrated Water Resources
Management Award on behalf of the Flood-Managed Aquifer
Recharge (Flood-MAR) Network which includes DWR and partners.
These awards, received during the 60th Anniversary of AWRA,
highlight DWR’s ongoing commitment to addressing climate change
and enhancing California’s water resilience through
collaboration, innovation, and forward-thinking strategies.
Building on their established history of collaboration, the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Los
Angeles County Sanitation Districts announced an expansion of
their partnership to advance Pure Water Southern California, a
proposed regional water recycling project positioned to become
one of the largest of its kind in the world. Following the
approval of a revised agreement by the Sanitation Districts’
Board of Directors on Wednesday (Oct. 23), and Metropolitan’s
board last month, the Sanitation Districts will take on a
broader role in the program. This strategic update clarifies
each agency’s responsibilities, enabling them to leverage their
unique expertise to optimize the project’s success.
