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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… The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest most probable forecast
for Lake Powell shows it sinking below “power pool” — 3,490
feet — by December. At that level, water can’t make it through
the turbines at Glen Canyon Dam that generate hydropower and
keep the lights on across Utah and six other states.
… To prop up Powell, the bureau will likely rely on
another popular Utah reservoir: Flaming Gorge. The reservoir
that straddles the border of Utah and Wyoming has the best
water outlook in the basin, at 64% of normal, according to the
forecast center.
There was no reason for the hydrologists who help predict the
annual water supply for metro Phoenix to visit
the snow survey site here until the last week of February.
Until a storm passed through heading into that week, there had
been no snow to speak of. … The federal government’s
Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s March report noted much
of the drainage, especially in the mountains of
Colorado and Utah, had experienced their worst snowpack since
at least 1981. … The warmth that pervaded the West
had melted much of the existing snowpack or caused it to fall
as rain instead, encouraging evaporation and plant uptake and
reducing the amount that will reach reservoirs this spring and
summer.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors will meet on Tuesday,
March 10, to consider sending a formal request to Governor
Gavin Newsom for $6.3 million in state funding for a critical
water infrastructure project. The funding would support
construction of the Sierra Pines Raw Water Reservoir, a
shovel-ready project designed to protect public health, fire
safety, and disaster response. The request follows severe
damage to the Pacific Gas and Electric Main Tuolumne
Canal during a multi-day winter storm on Feb. 17. More
than 200 trees fell onto the canal, damaging wooden flumes and
forcing PG&E to halt water flows. The interruption cut off
95% of Tuolumne Utilities District’s drinking water
supply.
A large-scale pilot project studying the effects of recharging
water onto pistachio orchards, some with cover crops and some
without, is in full swing across the San Joaquin
Valley. The project, a collaboration between private
nonprofit Sustainable Conservation, American Pistachio Growers
and Fresno State University kicked off in January and will
study recharge on six orchards in Tulare, Merced and Madera
counties. Each pilot partner recharges onto 20 acres of orchard
with cover crops and 20 acres with no cover crops. …
Specifically, the project will look at whether recharge
cover crops can reduce nitrates in groundwater.
… [W]hat’s now known as geoengineering remains a strange,
somewhat ad hoc field even today. A recent report by the
Government Accountability Office, or GAO, found that the
federal government still does not have sufficient oversight
over weather modification activities and is also “not fully
meeting its responsibilities to maintain and share weather
modification reports.” … As drought
intensifies and water demand increases across the West, states
have been ramping up cloud-seeding efforts, as one way
to work around the lack of water. … Cloud seeding
alone can’t fix that. Another report from the GAO last
year found that the process still needs more research to
determine how well it works and why.
An Aspen activist is hoping to gain support for a paradigm
shift in the way people view their local waterway by granting
rights to the Roaring Fork River. Environmental psychologist,
author and Aspen Times columnist Lindsay Branham is asking
local elected officials to consider a resolution protecting the
Roaring Fork and its tributaries by recognizing that nature has
rights and that it’s the government’s responsibility to care
for them. … The Rights of Nature is a small but growing
movement that seeks to evolve the legal system’s relationship
with nature from one that views rivers as a resource and
property for human use, to recognizing that natural entities
have intrinsic value and an inherent right to exist.
California parks officials will begin another season of
herbicide treatments in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta later
this month, targeting invasive aquatic plants that clog
waterways, threaten boaters and disrupt marinas and irrigation
systems. Starting March 19, California State Parks’ Division of
Boating and Waterways (DBW) plans to treat thousands of acres
across the Delta and its southern tributaries as part of its
2026 control program. The invasive plants include water
hyacinth, South American spongeplant, Uruguay water primrose,
Alligator weed, Brazilian waterweed, curlyleaf pondweed,
Eurasian watermilfoil, coontail, fanwort and ribbon weed.
Conservation groups joined state Rep. Mandy Lindsay, Rep.
Elizabeth Velasco, Sen. Cathy Kipp and Sen. Lisa Cutter
Thursday to introduce a first-of-its-kind bill to protect
beavers on public lands and support their proven role in
building drought and wildfire resilience. The bill is
especially important as historically low snowpack heightens
drought and wildfire danger across Colorado. … House
Bill 26-1323 would prohibit killing beavers on public lands
while preserving flexibility to remove beavers when necessary
to address conflicts involving infrastructure, agriculture or
other management needs.
Ater more than five years, Turlock Lake State Recreation Area
will once again be open to the public. Stanislaus County,
Turlock Irrigation District and California State Parks
announced this week the approval of an agreement to re-open and
operate Turlock Lake thanks to nearly $8.2 million in funding
from the state of California for facility improvements and
one-time start-up costs. … Turlock Lake, with 26 miles
of shoreline, is owned by Turlock Irrigation District and sits
on the south side of the Tuolumne River, along the rolling
foothills of eastern Stanislaus County, about 25 miles
northeast of Turlock.
A California tribe is speaking out after reports surfaced that
soil created from composted human remains was spread on land
along the San Joaquin River—an action tribal leaders say is
deeply disrespectful to Native cultures and ancestral lands.
The Tribal Council of the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi
Indians issued a public statement on Thursday condemning the
activity and calling for an immediate halt to the practice. The
tribe said the land in question lies within the ancestral
homeland of the Yokuts people and holds deep cultural and
spiritual significance for Native communities in the region.
The controversy centers on the San Joaquin River Parkway and
Conservation Trust, which manages a 76-acre property known as
Sumner Peck Ranch in Fresno County.
Mission Bay looks effortless now — sailboats drifting, joggers
circling the paths, SeaWorld rising across the water. It feels
permanent. It isn’t. Before it became Mission Bay, it appeared
on 19th-century maps as “False Bay.” For much of San Diego’s
early history, it was a shifting estuary of mudflats, tidal
creeks, and salt marsh. … Almost none of the
original salt marsh survives; however, one fragment remains at
the Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Marsh Reserve in Pacific Beach,
part of the University of California Natural Reserve System.
There, pickleweed still grows in salty soil, and shorebirds
move through tidal shallows — a living glimpse of the ecosystem
that once dominated the basin.
None of the seven Colorado River states is happy with the Trump
administration’s plans to divvy up the river as it faces its
driest conditions in decades, but Nevada may have its own
solution. Breaking from its longstanding pact with its Lower
Basin neighbors, Nevada has proposed its own short-term plan to
stabilize Lake Powell and Lake Mead levels that are expected to
plunge over the next two years. … “Nevada is willing to
step out on our own and propose a pragmatic, two-year
operating plan that we hope all six other states will
adopt,” [Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John]
Entsminger said. … In Nevada’s proposal, officials say
that beyond 2028, hydrological conditions are
bad enough that states must re-evaluate how to operate
the Colorado River system every six months.
… The [Western] region is currently in the grip of a severe
snow drought, as more precipitation falls as rain.
… Scientists seem to have found a way to help alleviate
the West’s fire and ice problems simultaneously, at least in
Washington state. Working in the forests of the Cascade
Mountains, researchers divided plots on the south and north
slopes of a ridge and thinned their vegetation to varying
degrees. … Western states will no doubt be interested in what
these researchers found: up to 30 percent more snowpack on the
thinned plots compared to the areas left unkempt. Scaled up,
that would mean an additional 4 million gallons of
water per 100 acres of forest.
Destructive, tiny golden mussels that hitched
their way across the ocean into the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta about two years ago are likely here to
stay, according to panelists at this year’s annual Kern County
Water Summit. And, so far, no eradication, or even effective
treatment, method has been discovered to keep the invasive
mollusks from clogging up equipment and pipes in the state’s
vast water delivery networks. … Water managers in Kern
were dismayed to find the mussels had made their way from the
delta into local water systems all the way to Arvin last
November. And getting them out of the delta … will likely
prove impossible.
Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind
assessment of the health of nature in the United States when
President Trump returned to the White House. He canceled the
report. The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their
own. This week, they released a 868-page draft for public
comment and scientific review. Many of the preliminary findings
are grim: Freshwater ecosystems across the
country are in crisis, “overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and
invaded.” Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are degraded, with
reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34 percent of plant species
and 40 percent of animal species are at risk of extinction.
A new report from the climate advocacy nonprofit Food and Water
Watch says artificial intelligence data centers across the
nation consume outsized amounts of energy, undermine progress
toward adopting clean energy portfolios and threaten limited
water supplies. The report, which was published Wednesday and
is titled The Urgent Case Against Data Centers, calls the
proliferation of these developments “one of the greatest
environmental and social challenges of our
generation.” The report finds that one hyperscale data
center can use as much energy as 2 million U.S. households and
warns that by 2028, data centers across the nation
could collectively use as much water as 18.5 million
households.
It has been more than two weeks since a major environmental
incident broke out in the Yuba County foothills. A penstock
pipe at the new Colgate Powerhouse suffered a catastrophic
failure on Feb. 13, flooding the facility located south of New
Bullards Bar Reservoir and forcing workers to evacuate. The
14-foot-diameter pipe carried water from the reservoir through
a tunnel into the powerhouse for hydroelectric power
generation. … As of March 3, the state Office of Spill
Prevention and Response reported nearly all large, oily debris
has been recovered from Englebright Lake, totaling about 1,440
cubic yards. But much work still remains.
Salmon in Battle Creek will soon benefit from a $1.85 million
habitat restoration project. According to the North State
Planning and Development Collective at Chico State, the project
is part of more than $59.6 million in grants awarded by the
California Wildlife Conservation Board to enhance wildlife
habitats. Chico State says that the restoration aims to reverse
habitat fragmentation and improve floodplain connectivity.
Crews will construct a new perennial side channel and remove
about 1,700 feet of abandoned levee to support salmon rearing
and spawning.
More than a decade after efforts began to protect land along
the lower Eel River, the Fortuna City Council unanimously voted
Monday to approve moving forward with the purchase of more than
200 acres of undeveloped property. …The council approved the
process for purchasing two plots of land: a 7.2-acre parcel at
1320 Riverwalk Drive and a 236-acre property along the Eel
River, which will be returned to the Wiyot Tribe. … [City
Manager Amy] Nilsen said the purchase has been in the works for
more than a decade and would secure both parcels from the
landowners, with funding from the California River Parkways
Grant Program and forthcoming grant funding from the California
Coastal Conservancy.
Responding to residents who waged a social media campaign
against the spraying of herbicides in local creeks, Orange
County officials announced they will halt the practice in
waterways near Doheny State Beach. Members of the community
group Creek Team OC are calling the decision a huge victory.
After three weeks of nonstop Instagram posts demanding the
county stop using plant-killing chemicals in San Juan and
Trabuco creeks, officials held a town hall in Dana Point on
Monday. … County officials have long used the chemicals
in waterways to clear out vegetation and maintain the
water-carrying capacity of flood control channels.
