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 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.
The Biden administration just approved a massive geothermal
energy project in Utah, marking a significant advance for a
climate-friendly technology that is gaining momentum in the
United States, the White House confirmed to The Washington Post
on Thursday. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land
Management gave final approval to Fervo Energy’s Cape
Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah, the White
House said. Once fully operational, the project could generate
up to 2 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 2
million homes. … Despite its climate benefits, some
environmentalists oppose enhanced geothermal because of its
reliance on fracking, which has the potential to
contaminate drinking water and trigger
earthquakes or tremors.
The Bureau of Reclamation [Oct. 17] announced the availability
of $25 million from the Inflation Reduction Act for fish
habitat and facility improvements in the Sacramento River
Valley. This funding will complement the State of California’s
Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program, which is working to
increase river flows, restore ecosystems and strengthen water
supply reliability across the state. The rivers of the
Central Valley support populations of fall-run Chinook,
spring-run Chinook, winter-run Chinook salmon and steelhead
trout. Due to water resources development, stream channel
changes and other recent actions historical salmon habitats
have been reduced and modified.
A neighborhood election affecting less than 0.1% of
California’s population — roughly 37,000 people — is one the
most heated races in Sacramento County. Campaigns for
seats on the Fair Oaks Water District (FOWD) board of
directors are smeared with
misinformation. ABC10 spent weeks gathering
information and statements from both sides.
The Colorado River watershed, a vital source of water for seven
U.S. states and Mexico, is in historic crisis. This major river
system irrigates vast agricultural lands in the West, supports
cities, generates hydroelectricity and is used by 40 million
people. But since the turn of the century natural runoff in the
watershed has dropped by 13 percent, and the two largest
reservoirs in the system haven’t been anywhere near full since
1999. Drought, overuse and climate change mean that water
levels will likely remain seriously low, even despite the
occasional wet period, according to Jack Schmidt from Center
for Colorado River Studies. In a recent special edition of PBS
Newshour, Schmidt explained why matching supply and demand is
so difficult in the high-stakes political environment in which
future management is now being negotiated on a state and
federal level.
A group of environmental nonprofits and southern Utah residents
are suing a mineral company and the state engineer who approved
its application to produce lithium along the Green River.
Filed on Tuesday in Utah’s 7th District Court in Moab, the
lawsuit names Utah Division of Water Rights director Teresa
Wilhelmsen, who also serves as the state engineer, and
Blackstone Minerals, a subsidiary of Australian-based Anson
Resources. … In 2023, the company filed an application
seeking 19 cubic feet per second from aquifers near the Green
River — that’s about 14,000 acre-feet of water each year,
roughly enough to fill some of the state’s smaller
reservoirs. The water, called brine, has a high
concentration of salt. Through a relatively novel process
called Direct Lithium Extraction, Blackstone would separate the
lithium from the brine using what’s called lithium extraction
resin and additional water pulled from the Green and Colorado
rivers.
Families in the South Bay are being asked to share their
concerns regarding sewage pollution along the Tijuana River
Valley for a health assessment being conducted by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC arrived to the
region Thursday to begin the assessment intended to gather
information about the needs arising due to concerns about toxic
air pollution in the South Bay stemming from sewage overflow in
the Tijuana River Valley. Over the last few weeks, more than
6,000 homes were expected to receive flyers informing them of
the Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response,
or CASPER, Volunteers wearing reflective vests will begin
distributing the flyers door-to-door on Oct. 3.
The San Pedro River, nestled in southeastern Arizona’s San
Pedro Valley just north of the US-Mexico border, is one of the
last undammed rivers in the Southwest and is considered a
biodiversity hotspot. Lined with cattails, willows and
cottonwoods, the marshy waterway shelters hundreds of diverse
bird species, including many considered endangered and
protected by federal law. The area is also home to the Fort
Huachuca US Army base, which has been heralded as an example of
the military’s efforts to become more environmentally
conscientious due to its use of solar power and other “green”
initiatives. Ten years ago, Fort Huachuca forged a plan to
achieve “net-zero” by 2025. But today, that goal has been
largely abandoned, and an expanding group of critics says the
installation’s well-meaning conservation efforts are falling
short, and the Army instead is posing a dire threat to a
protected conservation zone as a result of the base’s rampant
pumping of precious groundwater.
At the state and local level, ballot measures give voters an
opportunity to influence policy and spending decisions. Several
of those measures relate to water. There are fewer big-dollar
measures in 2024 compared to past years. But many smaller
considerations dot ballots from New Mexico and Minnesota to
Colorado and California. Water infrastructure
spending is a typical ballot question, and one that voters
generally endorse. Three states and a handful of towns and
counties will ask voters to approve funding measures for land
conservation, water quality protection, and climate resilience.
The biggest outlay would be in California, which has a $10
billion water and climate bond on the ballot.
In 1998, Tony Kay, who was president of Colorado Trout
Unlimited at the time, knew something was wrong at Windy Gap
Reservoir. Aquatic life was dying at the spot where the
Colorado River had been dammed. Northern Water’s Municipal
Subdistrict had created the reservoir near Granby through a
diversion damn that disconnected the river. The project,
completed in 1985, helps store and supply water to the Front
Range — but it had unintended consequences. Kay partnered with
Colorado Parks and Wildfire biologist Barry Nehring, who was
conducting studies about whirling disease at Windy Gap. This
unsettling disease had devastated the area’s rainbow trout. It
also was the “seed of the project” that eventually led to the
creation of the Colorado River Connectivity Channel. Today,
this channel is almost fully completed.
In a landmark report, the Global Commission on the
Economics of Water recently identified water markets as a
fundamental solution to the world’s escalating climate-driven
water crisis. The logic is simple: When something is scarce, it
becomes more valuable. By pricing water appropriately and
creating markets to allocate water based on demand, we could
promote more efficient use and incentivise conservation. Yet
while the concept of water markets appears promising, Chile,
Australia, the United States, and other countries’ experiences
show that implementation can prove challenging. -Written by Eduardo Araral, associate professor, former
vice dean for research, and former co-director of the Institute
of Water Policy at the National University of Singapore’s Lee
Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
