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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During the Grand County Board of County Commissioners meeting
on Oct. 1, the commissioners approved signing a letter of
support for the Bureau of Land Management’s application for
funds from the Bureau of Reclamation. The BLM is seeking funds
for a project that affects a half-mile of land on the Fraser
River referred to as the “Fraser River Canyon site,” a 2-mile
section of the Colorado River at Blue Valley Ranch southwest of
Kremmling referred to as the “Confluence Recreation Area site”
and nine parcels of land managed by BLM along 1.7 miles on the
Colorado River near Kremmling, referred to as the “Junction
Butte sites.”
The California Water Association (CWA) [Oct. 21] announced it
has
been selected as the beneficiary of a
prestigious $50 million grant award, to reach $100 million
with matching funds, from the Grid Resilience and Innovation
Partnerships (GRIP) program under the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) to accelerate electric grid resilient projects. The grant
program will be implemented across CWA members’ local utility
service areas in partnership with Generac Power
Systems. The aim of the grant is to advance clean energy
solutions across water utility infrastructure to enhance grid
reliability, conserve resources, and protect air quality for
communities throughout California. In collaboration with
Generac, diverse union contractors, local community-based
organizations (CBO,) and workforce development partners, CWA
member water utilities will install clean battery storage
systems at water treatment sites across the state. These
microgrids will allow water utilities to utilize
reliable, clean energy solutions to deliver
uninterrupted water service, even during extreme heat and other
stressors to the state electric grid.
Butte County has launched a Drought Resilience Outreach Project
(DROP) to assist residents with wells that have been damaged by
recent wildfires or drought. The county administration said
that the DROP would allow qualified residents to get their
damaged wells repaired at little to no cost. Funding for this
project comes from the State Water Resources Control
Board. Applications for the program are being accepted
throughDecember 31, 2024, with applications being reviewed in
January. … For those accepted into the program, well
repairs or replacement is expected to begin in April 2025.
Days after the administrator of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency visited a Los Angeles public housing project
with lead-contaminated water, the agency ordered drinking water
systems nationwide to replace every lead pipe within 10 years.
… But in Los Angeles — where the discovery of contaminated
water in public housing in Watts has shocked officials — the
EPA mandate is unlikely to result in immediate change.
When [EPA Director Michael Regan] joined Mayor Karen Bass
on a visit to the 700-unit Jordan Downs complex this
month, he suggested the brain-damaging element could be from
household plumbing — a critical risk in older homes. It’s a
possibility that highlights the difficulty of eliminating the
threat of lead in California drinking water. Although the
new EPA rule targets lead service lines connecting homes to
water mains, it doesn’t address plumbing inside the building
that can still pose a risk, such as lead soldering, brass
fixtures and interior mains.
The developer of the nationally lauded but controversial Hell’s
Kitchen geothermal and lithium extraction project near the
Salton Sea illegally drained 1,200 acres of fragile wetlands by
dumping dredged fill nearby, according to a settlement
agreement announced on Thursday by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. The work was performed on leased Imperial
Irrigation District land as part of Controlled Thermal
Resources’ Hells Kitchen pilot project west of Niland — on hold
due to an unrelated lawsuit — which aims to produce 49.9
megawatts of steam power and 20,000 tons of lithium annually.
The project is the first stage of much larger planned
production of the mineral, which is used in everything from
commercial solar projects to to smart phones.
The California Department of Insurance (CDI) has announced the
launch of a community-based flood program that will provide
payouts if floodwaters reach a predetermined level. The
initiative, which is the first of its kind in the state, is
part of broader efforts to address increasing flood risks
driven by climate change, according to a report from AM Best.
The program is set to begin in Isleton, a small town in
Sacramento County with fewer than 1,000 residents,
according to US Census Bureau data. The town was selected due
to its location in a 100-year floodplain, making it
particularly vulnerable to flooding, according to CDI. The new
flood program will function separately from existing insurance
policies and is intended to supplement current coverages. In
the event of a significant flood, the program will provide
“relatively small” payouts to residents.
Less than two months after the removal of dams restored a
free-flowing Klamath River, salmon have made their way upstream
to begin spawning and have been spotted in Oregon for the first
time in more than a century. Biologists with the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that they found a
single fall-run Chinook on Oct. 16 in a tributary of the
Klamath River upstream of the spot where J.C. Boyle Dam was
recently dismantled. State biologists in California have also
been seeing salmon in creeks that had been inaccessible since
dams were built decades ago and blocked fish from reaching
their spawning areas.
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board said
Friday that “significant amounts of contamination” exist on the
650 acres that make up Phillips 66 refinery sites in Wilmington
and Carson, and that it will probably take “years to clean up”
the soil and groundwater. Phillips 66 announced Wednesday, Oct.
16 that it would close the refineries connected by 5 miles of
pipeline by the end of 2025. The Houston-based energy giant
also hired a pair of real estate firms to develop potential
uses for the land. “There is a large amount of pollution in
soil and groundwater at the Carson and Wilmington facilities,”
a spokeswoman for the LA Water Board said via email. “However,
there is ongoing soil vapor and groundwater clean-up and
significant amounts of contamination are presently being
removed at both facilities.” The agency, in a roundabout
manner, said the site cleanup would be monitored carefully.
Managing waterways for ecosystems with minimal loss to existing
water uses is increasingly difficult. As we’ve discussed in the
first two blogs in this series (here and here, now
with Spanish language translations), California and Chile both
struggle with this challenge. Both are mostly dry regions with
deep economic and human dependence on water and very disrupted
and vulnerable native ecosystems. Both also face the dual
challenges of droughts and floods. For the last year, an
international collaboration on environmental flows between
Chile’s Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD)
and Universidad de Talca, and the University of
California, Davis (UCD) focused on these common issues to
draw lessons from California’s experience. … The project
supports further investigation of a functional
flows approach for Chilean watersheds, implemented through
a collaborative portfolio of water management instruments. This
blog summarizes the findings of the research group.
Dissatisfaction is rising about development restrictions along
San Geronimo Creek that were approved by county supervisors in
2022. The county Planning Commission is set to hear an appeal
on Monday from a San Geronimo Valley property owner who has
been ordered to move or demolish several accessory structures
that were built without permits within a restricted area close
to the creek. “This is the first test case that highlights some
of the challenges with the ordinance and how we may need to
work with it and make some allowances for existing developments
to remain,” said Breeze Kinsey, who operates CivicNet, a
planning consultancy, together with his father, former Marin
County supervisor Steve Kinsey. The regulations also might have
played a role in a failed effort by the Two Valleys Community
Land Trust to create five affordable dwellings at 6956 Sir
Francis Drake Ave. in Forest Knolls.
The California Court of Appeal ruled in favor of Orange County
Water District’s (OCWDs) authority to manage the Orange County
Groundwater Basin in the case Irvine Ranch Water District v.
Orange County Water District et al. The announcement of the
legal victory was made by OCWD on October 11, 2024, following
the court’s decision on October 7, 2024, to uphold OCWD’s
authority to manage the basin.
Colorado’s Eagle County and a coalition of environmental groups
are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject what they called an
attempt to “dramatically remake” federal environmental law by
the backers of a controversial oil-by-rail project in eastern
Utah. First proposed in 2019, the 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway
would connect Utah’s largest oil field to the national rail
network, allowing drillers there to ship large volumes of the
basin’s “waxy” crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries — with the
vast majority of the traffic routed through Colorado.
Months after a coalition of billionaires hit pause on its
plans to build a walkable city in rural Solano County,
another tech-centric group is moving forward on its dream to
create their own community near Wine Country. The proposed
enclave, called “Esmeralda,” would spread across 267
acres just southeast of Cloverdale in Sonoma County. Though the
site is now a vast tangle of oak-studded grassland by Highway
101, industrial yards and a municipal airport, Esmeralda’s
developers envision it as a future tech utopia with the look of
a rustic Italian village. Their still-gestating plan provoked
excitement — and suspicion — online and off.
San Diego County is home to more than 5,000 small farms, but
fewer than 2% are owned or operated by Black, Indigenous, or
people of color, according to the 2022 Agricultural Census. For
many marginalized communities, historical inequities have
limited access to land and farming opportunities.
… Byron Nkhoma, a Zimbabwean farmer in Ramona, leases
land to grow vegetables under his operation, Hukama Produce.
Since starting in 2015, he has faced two ownership changes,
raising concerns about the stability of his lease. … Nkhoma
applies sustainable farming practices, such as drip irrigation
and composting, to improve soil health. Through CALE, Hukama
Produce receives technical support for conservation, grant
writing, and tenure-building strategies.
The East Bay Regional Park District Board election won’t be on
your Berkeley ballot in November, but as incumbent
Elizabeth Echols heads into her second full term as director
unopposed, Berkeleyside felt it was important for you to hear
directly from her. That’s why we’re publishing this candidate
questionnaire…. Over the next century, projected sea level
rise between 15 and 55 inches will impact the district’s 40
miles of San Francisco Bay shoreline and 15 miles of
Delta shoreline, increasing erosion and
destroying the wetlands that protect coastal infrastructure
like levees, piers and docks, according to a district report.
… We asked Echols about what she’s accomplished since
taking office in 2020, how she feels the district should
improve access to parks and to spell out her top priorities for
her coming term. Answers have been edited for length and
clarity.
As South Pasadena prepares for the upcoming November 5
election, residents are set to vote on Measure SP, a
significant local ballot measure that could reshape the town’s
landscape and housing policies. The measure seeks to modify the
current 45-foot building height limit in specific areas of the
city, which has been in place since 1983, and allow for greater
flexibility in housing development. … South
Pasadena, like much of California, has faced water
shortages and rising water costs during extended
droughts. The addition of more housing units will
increase demand on already-strained water resources, with no
clear plan in Measure SP on how the city will handle this added
burden. Critics argue that the measure leaves too many
financial and infrastructural questions unanswered, adding
uncertainty about how these developments will be managed
long-term.
California water regulators took a step Wednesday toward
requiring permanent protections for endangered salmon in two
far Northern California rivers where farmers and
environmentalists have long fought over water supplies. The
State Water Resources Control Board voted to complete a report
setting out the scientific justification for permanent
in-stream flow minimums on the Scott and Shasta rivers, a
prerequisite before it can establish the
requirements. ”The resolution is a step that can be used
to move us forward, and what has been a lot of work, long time
coming,” said the water board’s chair, Joaquin Esquivel.
A weak La Niña is forecast to appear this winter and affect
weather patterns across the country, likely bringing
drier-than-average conditions in much of the Southwest and
wetter-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest,
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. The outlook is uncertain, however, for
much of California, where NOAA experts predict there
are equal chances of below-average, average or above-average
winter precipitation. “For California, there was quite a bit of
uncertainty,” said Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational
Prediction Branch at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “Drought
is not favored to develop in California at the current time,
but it’s something we will be watching very closely as we go
into the winter, because La Niña events do sometimes have a dry
signal, especially in Southern California.”
Denver Water’s permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for
the ongoing expansion of Gross Reservoir violates the Clean
Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, according
to a ruling Wednesday from a U.S. District Court judge.
Senior federal judge Christine Arguello did not order Denver
Water to stop construction in Boulder County, which has been
underway since 2022, but said the environmental plaintiffs have
a right to relief from any damage that will occur to
surrounding land and forest once the dam closes and the
expanded pool rises. … “It’s huge. Put that in capital
letters,” said Save the Colorado founder Gary Wockner in an
interview. “It’s a stunning victory for the Colorado River, for
the people of Boulder County and Grand County,” Wockner said.
“Boulder County, because of where this massive project was
being built, and in Grand County, because their rivers were
going to be further drained. And it’s a victory for the rule of
law.”
A deeply polarized Supreme Court heard arguments October 16
involving San Francisco’s challenge to the EPA’s water
pollution standards. Under the Clean Water Act, San Francisco
must have a permit to ensure that its discharge of untreated
sewage into local waterways does not hurt water quality or
people’s health. The city claims, however, that the EPA’s
generic prohibitions impose unclear requirements that fail to
tell permit holders how to control sewage discharges. … Among
the trade groups backing San Francisco are those
representing companies in extraction industries, like mining
and oil drilling, and others that can produce waste that needs
to be discharged, like farming. Representing the Biden
administration, Assistant Solicitor General Frederick Liu
pushed back on that argument. “To be honest, these standards
are much more specific than a general tort regime,” Liu said.
He added that San Francisco’s problems were of its own making
in asserting that the city had not provided information about
its own sewer system to the EPA for the last 10 years despite
requests from the agency.
