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Aurora City Council members unanimously passed a Stage I Water
Shortage declaration in Monday night’s meeting, putting
restrictions on outdoor water use starting
immediately. The shortage declaration imposes
restrictions on outdoor watering for residents and businesses
and reduces commercial user allocations, such as that for golf
courses, by 20%, according to Aurora Water General Manager
Marshall Brown. With the passage of the shortage declaration
Monday night, Aurora Water officials will also start to ramp up
enforcement. In the past, enforcement was gentle, water
officials said. This year, officials will issue one
warning.
Wyoming has seen a decent amount of snow in the first
week of April, but meteorologists says it’s officially too
little, too late to save the state’s historically low snowpack,
which has been melting for weeks. The spring storm brought
much-needed moisture to several dry spots across the Cowboy
State. … Tony Bergantino, the director of the Water
Resources Data System and the Wyoming State Climate Office,
finally said the word that describes this past winter’s
miserable snowpack. “I guess you could say that it’s
‘unprecedented,’” he said. … Bergantino added that Wyoming
could already be primed for a disastrous fire season.
In Aurora, data center proposals run through a simple filter.
City officials compare total water use against how much of that
water won’t come back—lost to evaporation. If either number
gets too high, the project doesn’t move forward. When a
developer wants to build in Denver, there is no matrix. That
gap—two cities, two standards, nothing statewide connecting
them—is the center of a question Colorado has avoided
answering: who is responsible for knowing how much
water AI data centers use, and when does that become too
much? The question got harder to ignore this spring.
On March 16, Governor Jared Polis activated Phase 2 of the
state’s Drought Response Plan—the first activation in nearly
six years—after federal water managers ranked this year’s
snowpack 45th out of 46 years on record.
Beneath California’s Salton Sea, there is so
much metal essential to rechargeable batteries that Gov. Gavin
Newsom calls the vast lake “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.” An
estimated $500 billion worth of lithium here could help power
our smartphones, electric cars and electricity grids. … But
not everyone is eagerly welcoming the lithium industry. The
Salton Sea is already an environmental disaster zone. It’s
shrinking, and as it does, it spews plumes of pesticide-laden
dust throughout Imperial County, home to 182,000 people.
Extracting lithium requires a steady supply of fresh
water, and locals worry the process will deplete the
region’s scarce water resources.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that
Monterey Bay—part of the Central Coast region, which spans from
Pigeon Point south to the Mexico border—will open to
recreational salmon fishing on April 11. For the first
time in four years, the region is also expected to reopen to
commercial fishing sometime in May. It’s highly
anticipated news following years of consecutive closures tied
to low population counts. The commercial fishing season for
Chinook has been closed since 2022. … As part of a
broader plan called California Salmon Strategy for a Hotter
Drier Future, which aims to protect native salmon from
extinction, officials will be closely monitoring catch numbers,
especially in a year that is unusually hot and dry.
The White House seeks to slash the Environmental Protection
Agency’s budget from roughly $8.8 billion down to $4.2 billion.
… More than $1 billion would be cut from categorical
grant programs that assist states in enforcing federal
environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water
Act. The EPA’s Superfund Program, responsible for cleaning
up contaminated sites, would face funding reductions as well.
This is troubling for environmental groups that fear the cuts
will disrupt projects slated to clean up the Tijuana River
Valley, which has been plagued for decades by raw sewage,
chemicals and trash that enter the United States from south of
the border on a daily basis.
As Aurora city leaders consider reducing water usage, a closer
look inside the city’s purification system shows how reused
water from river basins is transformed into drinking water
through a multi-step process designed to remove contaminants
for more than 400,000 customers. … Aurora Water said
it’s able to reuse 90 to 99% of its water rights, meaning it
can be reused several times before traveling down the river.
… Binney is one of three purification facilities in
Aurora, but it is its most advanced and in-depth plant. Aurora
Water said on high demand days in the summer, 85 million
gallons of water can be purified across the three locations.
30,000, of which, get processed at Binney.
… [A] 2008 legal mandate means the Truckee Meadows Water
Authority (TMWA) is required to align regional growth with its
two main critical water resources: the vibrant, snow-fed
Truckee River and the deep, silent aquifers lying beneath the
valley floor. … Adam Sullivan, the former state engineer for
Nevada, confirms the scale of the problem. He notes that
about half of Nevada’s 256 groundwater basins are
“over-appropriated,” meaning more water rights exist on paper
than the land can yield, and 25% are already being
over-pumped. The fear that development will outpace the
aquifer isn’t hypothetical; other western cities have already
hit the wall.
Phragmites are a tall wetland grass that can grow up to 15
feet, but it’s actually an invasive species that uses up a lot
of water. In 2011, Becka Downard, a wetland ecologist with the
Utah Geological Survey, said phragmites were basically
everywhere there was water. In order to get established, the
invasive species needs to have a source of seeds, disturbance,
and sunlight. … She said they’ll have to spray
phragmites with herbicide, mow and trample it, and then do
follow-up treatments. … She said when they’re
drought-stressed, they can catch fire more easily, and the
three-year treatment won’t work.
… Scientists and officials are now preparing for not one
threatening storm, but a 30-day maelstrom of megastorms unlike
anything seen in the state [Calif.] for almost 200 years. Such
a scenario was always possible, but rising global temperatures
are making it more likely – and far more destructive. “It
was always a when, not if,” says Dr Daniel Swain, a climate
scientist at UCLA, who co-authored the study warning of the
coming storm. “Before global warming, that ‘when’ might have
been centuries away. Now it’s quite likely to be within my own
lifetime.” This storm system, dubbed ‘ARkStorm 2.0’, could
strike this year or in 60 years – no one knows for sure.
Whenever it does, it is likely to be one of the most costly
disasters in global history. The only question is whether
California can prepare in time.
A river access advocacy group is splintered. Landowners are
organized to protect a decades-old “float but don’t touch”
decree. And lawmakers, halfway through the legislative session,
have yet to take up any bill that would change that
state’s murky rules around recreational access to the state’s
waterways. As a short and dry river season takes shape
after a snow-starved winter, it appears the status quo will
hold. But passions are roiling at Colorado’s uniquely volatile
confluence of property rights, recreational pressures and river
safety. … The blend of three divergent arguments — the
right-to float, the right-to-wade and do nothing — seems to
have stymied any new laws.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the
world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an
immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these
reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries
production and management potential, indicates a study from the
University of California, Davis. The study, published
in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S.
reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of
fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems
could play major roles in food security and fisheries
conservation.
