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 Vik Jolly.
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Water managers along the Colorado River are looking for
an amount of water equal to what the entire state of
Utah has rights to in order to head off a water and power
crisis across the West, they said Tuesday. …
Speaking at a meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission on
Tuesday, Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart said the
upstream states estimate an additional 1.7 million acre-feet of
water will need to be added to Lake Powell to keep the water
level there from falling below the hydropower turbines at Glen
Canyon Dam. The Bureau of Reclamation has said it will not let
water levels fall below the turbines because of concerns that
doing so could damage the dam, which sits on the river near the
Arizona and Utah border.
The heat dome that settled over California, broke records, and
scorched most of California last week is creeping eastward,
with some temperature relief in sight. In the meantime,
temperatures across the Golden State will remain slightly above
average into April. … Weather experts say the state’s
snowpack was reported below normal, with less than 50% of the
average across much of Northern California.
… California’s reservoirs are in good shape,
above historic averages, with many nearing capacity.
But that summertime snowbank on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada
is disappearing early and fast, dropping to 38% of average for
mid-March statewide.
Other snowmelt and heat wave news around the West:
An update from the Bureau of Reclamation means a modest
increase in water sent to south-of-Delta contractors, including
Westlands Water District. On Tuesday, the bureau announced the
yearly allocation would increase to 20% from 15%. This comes as
a recent heat wave has experts worried about accelerated
melting of the vital Sierra snowpack. Allison Febbo, general
manager of Westlands, said in a release that the
government needs to better coordinate with experts to adapt
allocations to real-world conditions and decrease the need for
groundwater pumping.
Do you use Chat GPT? Do you talk to Siri on your phone? If so,
you’ve helped fuel the rise in data centers. Now, the
energy-hungry, water-thirsty centers are
coming to places in the Southwest, including the lands of
native peoples. That was the topic of a panel discussion Friday
in Window Rock, Arizona, organized by Diné C.A.R.E., a Navajo
environmental organization. Executive director of Diné
C.A.R.E. Robyn Jackson said data centers have become a serious
concern for the Navajo Nation. She said five centers have been
proposed in and near the nation, three in Arizona and two in
New Mexico. … Water required to cool the facilities is
also enormous. Yet centers are being built in hot, arid states
such as Arizona, even as it and six other states wrangle over
how to allocate Colorado River water.
California’s largest solar energy project won approval Tuesday
with the Kern County Board of Supervisors’ 4-0 vote in favor of
a 2-gigawatt photovoltaic installation expected to create 1,300
construction jobs at its peak and generate tax revenue of $1.5
billion during its roughly three-decade lifespan. Complete
with batteries capable of delivering 16 gigawatt-hours of
energy, the Buttonbush Solar and Storage project represents a
significant shift, in that Kern’s other utility-scale solar
farms are located in the eastern portion of the county. San
Diego-based developer Avantus says it chose western Kern for
its transmission capacity and because farmland there is under
stress from groundwater management
regulations.
Denver Water commissioners could decide at a Wednesday board
meeting on implementing Stage 1 drought restrictions for
customers across its service area. The utility is targeting a
20% reduction in water use as it’s facing severe drought
conditions and Denver Water warns low snowpack could impact
supply this year. If Denver’s Board of Water Commissioners
approves the Stage 1 drought restrictions Wednesday, the limits
would be in place through April of next year. In the meantime,
Denver Water is asking everyone to start conserving now. This
would be the first time that level of restriction has been in
place since 2013, according to the utility.
A Chico-based nonprofit is leading two large-scale restoration
projects along the Sacramento River corridor aimed at improving
salmon populations, restoring wildlife habitat, and expanding
public access to nature in Northern California. … [I]n
collaboration with agencies like the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management and the California Wildlife Conservation Board,
River Partners is advancing two major restoration projects,
Rancho Breisgau and Battle Creek Ranch, along Battle Creek
between Redding and Red Bluff. The Rancho Breisgau and
Battle Creek Ranch projects are designed to reconnect critical
habitat corridors stretching from the Sacramento River toward
Lassen Volcanic National Park.
A major milestone has been reached for the proposed Sites
Reservoir project, a plan to build a large new water storage
facility west of Colusa. The state has issued a draft decision
to conditionally approve a key water right permit for the
project. Under the proposal, water would be pumped from the
Sacramento River to the reservoir, which would store up to 1.5
million acre-feet of water. Supporters say the added storage
would help improve water supply during dry years for farms,
communities and wildlife. … Environmental groups are
opposing the project. “The draft water right decision clearly
shows that the Board agrees with our position that the proposed
reservoir will cause major water quality and environmental
impacts that need to be addressed,” said Keiko Mertz, policy
director of Friends of the River.
While regional agencies weigh a proposal to raise a floodprone
stretch of U.S. Highway 101 between the Manzanita park-and-ride
and Donahue Street in Marin County, a local scholar has
explored an alternate vision: putting the freeway in a tunnel
beneath a new linear park. The two views highlight the
stakes for Marin City, a lowlying community that is already
likened by experts to a bathtub with an inadequate drain as sea
levels rise. There is currently a preliminary plan to
elevate Highway 101 from Manzanita to Donahue at a rough
estimate of $1.2 billion, with an extra $33 million for
stormwater pumps and a drain pipe to carry rainwater beneath a
shopping center that sits on slightly higher ground between
Marin City’s entrance road and Richardson Bay.
Colorado’s dry winter is now raising concerns about what summer
recreation could look like, but rafting outfitters said the
outlook isn’t as bleak as it might seem. At Dillon
Reservoir, low snowpack paints a concerning picture, with
statewide levels dipping to record lows. But according to AVA
Rafting and Ziplining owner Duke Bradford, snowpack is only
part of the equation. Bradford said rafting conditions
depend heavily on spring and summer rain, especially on
free-flowing rivers like Clear Creek near Idaho Springs. He
explained that water levels, measured in cubic feet per second
(cfs), could rise dramatically overnight with the right storm.
New research suggests drought conditions may
promote elevated antibiotic resistance in soil microbes,
researchers reported yesterday in Nature Microbiology. To
determine how drought might affect soil microbial communities,
which have been the source of many antibiotics used in clinical
medicine, scientists from the California Institute of
Technology began by compiling five metagenomic
datasets. … When the researchers exposed dried soil
samples to a representative natural antibiotic
(phenazine-1-carboxylic acid), they found that lower water
content favored the growth of bacteria that were resistant to
the antibiotic. In addition, they found that drought conditions
also increased the abundance of antibiotic-resistance genes.
Just a day after the Stanislaus County Department of Public
Health was bombarded with questions after allegations that a
stomach bug a Stockton man contracted came from the water at
Woodward Reservoir came to light, they’re now saying that the
water is actually cleaner than what was previously
thought. In a release that was sent out Thursday
afternoon, the department outlined how recently completed tests
on water at popular swimming areas – the same areas that were
tested before the Memorial Day weekend and showed higher than
normal traces of Coliform bacteria – actually show a
significant decline to a level that would normally be below
where postings would be required.
… The story of the Great Salt Lake’s decline is the template
for others around the world, writer and reporter Caroline
Tracey writes in her debut book, “Salt Lakes: An Unnatural
History.” … Tracey’s book documents the miraculous
efforts to save places like California’s Mono Lake, and how a
tiny, unique bird— Wilson’s phalarope,—may be key to saving
others like the Great Salt Lake. Even President Donald Trump
has said the decline of the Great Salt Lake is an
“environmental hazard” and that the country must make it “great
again.” Tracey recently spoke with Inside Climate News about
her book and the lessons saline lakes can provide us in a
changing climate.
The Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Indian tribes have been
pushing for the federal government to uphold its water-related
responsibilities for years. Now, Colorado legislators are
jumping back into the fight. Lawmakers in the Colorado House of
Representatives unanimously passed a resolution advocating for
tribal water access Friday, during Ute Day at the Capitol. The
resolution — which lists a series of longheld tribal water
priorities and urges federal agencies to respond — awaits
consideration in the Senate. It calls on the feds to take
action on everything from releasing frozen funding for tribal
water projects to repair deteriorating federal water systems
and improving access to reservoirs like Lake Nighthorse near
Durango.
Seeing little indication that states in the Colorado River
headwaters will accept or impose new cuts on their water users,
Arizona has hired a law firm to defend its water rights at
trial or before the U.S. Supreme Court, Gov. Katie Hobbs’s
office announced. The hiring allows Arizona to prepare for a
legal fight, though it has not yet initiated one. That decision
would come after the U.S. Department of Interior this summer
adopts new guidelines for sharing the burden of a shrinking
river that has struggled to maintain adequate reservoir storage
for existing uses in Arizona, California and
Nevada. Absent a seven-state deal that has so far
eluded negotiators, the new guidelines appear likely to hit
Arizona hardest.
The consequences of Colorado’s unprecedented hot, dry winter
will begin to show this week. Denver Water is expected
to declare a Stage 1 drought on Wednesday, March 25,
which would immediately implement mandatory watering
restrictions for customers. This would be the first time since
2013 that Denver Water has set use limits beyond the typical
summer rules for outdoor watering. The move comes after
Colorado’s warmest winter in recorded state history, resulting
in one of the worst snowpacks on record. … The proposed
water restrictions will impact all of the 1.5 million people
served by Denver Water, extending beyond just outdoor watering
and into restaurants, hotels, parks and car washes.
A stunning heatwave that shattered records in the US west is
threatening to rapidly melt the sparse snowpack and ramp up
wildfire risks in the seasons ahead. … This heatwave is
also posing significant threats to the water supply. After one
of the warmest winters in the west, the snow that feeds
streams, reservoirs and soil moisture as it melts through the
summer season is already dismally scarce in key watersheds.
… “Anomalous warmth and historic snow drought will still
lead to ecological and wildfire-related impacts as soon as this
spring, and possibly wider water challenges by late summer and
beyond,” climate scientist Daniel Swain said.
Other snowmelt and heat wave news around the West:
A just-hatched Chinook has been spotted in an Upper Klamath
Lake tributary, the first time a young salmon has been
observed there in over 100 years. It follows last
year’s return of adult Chinook here for the first time in over
a century following the removal of four dams on the Klamath
River in far northern California and southern Oregon.
… The baby Chinook was discovered via rotary screw traps
operated by the tribes’ fisheries agency. … Officials
said that around 10,000 adult-sized fish were counted this past
fall at a sonar station below the former site of Iron Gate Dam,
the lowest of the four dams on the Klamath. That figure was 30
percent higher than the previous fall, the first that fish
could go past that point.
Water is known for being a cautious sector. While pressure
grows on some workers to use AI for more tasks, most California
water agencies are just beginning to take advantage of the
technology. Eventually, AI is likely to help water agencies
with a range of applications, including finding ways to save
time, reduce water use, and bring down costs. So how are
California water agencies currently using AI, and what should
agencies consider as they adopt the technology? We spoke with
experts who shared some key first steps.
The State Water Resources Control Board on Friday unveiled a
draft approval that would advance Sites Reservoir, marking
another step forward for what would be the largest reservoir
project for California since the 1970s. The draft decision came
two months after the Bureau of Reclamation gave the project a
green light on environmental review, moving a plan forward that
would store up to 1.5 million acre-feet of
water west of Colusa County in the Sacramento Valley.
… Environmental groups have long opposed the Authority’s
premise, arguing that the claimed environmental benefits
promoted by the project advocates “rely on promises of
responsible management by the people who give away too much
water in the first place.”
