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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Utah saw well-above-normal levels of rainfall in August,
helping state water levels after a dry summer. Nearly
double the amount of normal rainfall fell in Utah’s mountains
and valleys last month according to data from the National
Water and Climate Center. That water helped maintain reservoir
levels at 77% capacity statewide. Jordan Clayton, the
Utah Snow Survey supervisor, said the summer started out dry,
but August turned things around. According to Clayton, rainfall
has kept the soil wet and helped with reservoir water
preservation. Reservoir levels are expected to decrease
slightly through September, and then increase again when the
colder months arrive.
Nearly two years ago, officials with the Pine-Strawberry Water
Improvement District seemed on the verge of finding a solution
to their water woes. Located between Phoenix and
Flagstaff, the water infrastructure of these two rural
unincorporated communities of roughly 3,000 in Gila County was
failing. … It spent millions fixing leaky pipes and
failing wells. But if the community was to grow, it needed a
new, more reliable source of water. In Pine-Strawberry, the
community, like many rural areas around the country, is
entirely reliant on groundwater, and the easiest solution would
be to drill a new deep well. A hydrologist identified multiple
locations they could choose from, but the district’s board
members determined they were too expensive and would be too
difficult to build on. Instead, the water district bought a
house in a subdivision and in the summer of 2023 and began
digging a new deep well. Then its customers sued the
district.
San Diego County is home to more than 214,000 acres of
agricultural land. Avocados, lemons, oranges and a variety of
vegetables are grown in the county. This week, during NPR’s
Climate Solutions Week, we look at how San Diego County farmers
are adapting to climate change with local growers Daniel and
Paula Coxe, who grow avocados in Fallbrook, along with Amy
Quandt, a San Diego State University professor who has surveyed
farmers on the subject.
… Recently, the transitional journey from freshwater to
brackish environments was studied in juvenile green sturgeon
using acoustic telemetry. Tracking sturgeon movement in the
Sacramento River allowed the researchers to better understand
what might be influencing the migration of these mysterious
fish (Poytress, Polansky, & Gruber, 2024). The data gathered by
this study improves understanding of the habitat transitions
and migration patterns of juvenile green sturgeon, information
that is vital for developing management strategies to best
support the recovery of this threatened fish species.
As we move into the fall months a number of people are curious
about how far down Yolo County can draw the lake. The lake
level is currently at 3.6 feet on the Rumsey Gauge. Clear Lake
historically reaches its lowest level during the months of
October and November. Yolo County can take the lake level down
to a plus-1 foot on the Rumsey Gauge. … Since Yolo County
could draw an unlimited amount of water from Indian Valley
Reservoir, it didn’t need as much water from Clear Lake. Of
course, that doesn’t tell the whole story. Evaporation takes
about three feet off the lake annually and if the weather is
hotter than normal, it can be even more. Adding to the water
draw is that homes around the lake can legally take an
unlimited amount of water from the lake for their lawns and
gardens.
A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) from the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation on the continued operation of the federal
Central Valley Project (CVP) favors corporate agricultural
profits over the interests of ratepayers, tribes, and the
environment and pointedly ignores state groundwater law. The
CVP is a massive federal system of reservoirs, aqueducts and
pumping stations that delivers water from the Trinity River in
Northwest California and Central Valley rivers to San Joaquin
Valley agricultural operations and some California cities. The
CVP is operated in coordination with its state analogue, the
State Water Project (SWP). The CVP and SWP annually provide a
small number of corporate farmers a volume of water equal to
the total water usage of California’s 40 million residents.
Aquatic plants in lakes and rivers are important refuges for
animals, bring oxygen into the water and remove nutrients.
However, they are not universally popular: some people find
them a nuisance when swimming or doing water sports, and they
also change the hydrology of aquatic systems. When aquatic
plants grow in large numbers, they are often
removed. Researchers involving the Leibniz-Institute of
Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) have
conducted field experiments in six freshwater
ecosystems in five countries to investigate why such mass
developments occur and what the consequences of removing them
are. The evaluation of different management approaches showed
that the “do nothing” option can also be considered when
dealing with aquatic plants.
In a major milestone, state regulators announced in July that
nearly a million more Californians now have safe drinking water
than five years ago. But across the state, the problem
remains severe: More than 735,000 people are still served by
the nearly 400 water systems that fail to meet state
requirements for safe and reliable drinking water. Latino farm
communities struggling with poverty and pollution are
especially hard-hit. About three-quarters of the failing
systems in California have violated state or federal standards
for contaminants that are linked to serious health problems,
such as cancer and effects on developing babies, according to a
CalMatters analysis of state data. Among the most pervasive
contaminants are arsenic, nitrate and a chemical called
1,2,3-trichloropropane, or 1,2,3-TCP. Combined, elevated levels
of these chemicals contaminate more than 220 failing systems
serving nearly half a million people.
The impacts from California’s financial problems are starting
to be revealed as some water agencies are implementing serious
cutbacks. During its August board meeting, staff at the
Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board announced
they are trimming the operations budget by 5% because of state
budget cuts. Meanwhile, San Joaquin Valley groundwater
managers are wary, expecting far less grant funding for
projects. California is in the throes of a $68 billion
budget deficit largely because of declining revenue
from 2022-2023. While the state will pull from reserves for
spending, that is not a sustainable solution and spending cuts
are necessary.
Four years after unveiling an ambitious plan to conserve 30% of
California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030, state officials
on Monday announced that they are closing in on that target.
… California also made progress toward the goal through
its first-ever ancestral land return effort, which
provided $100 million in grant funding for the return of
roughly 38,950 acres to Indigenous communities. Among the
recipients were the Hoopa Valley Tribe, which received funding
to help reacquire about 10,300 acres of their lands in the
Klamath River watershed that were formerly being managed
by a timber trust. … Additionally, the state’s effort
to transform more than half of its 100 million
acres into multi-benefit landscapes that can absorb carbon
and combat climate change will help reach the 30×30 goal,
officials said. Those targets, known as nature-based solutions,
include millions of acres that will be managed to reduce
wildfire risk, protect water supplies and enhance biodiversity,
among other outcomes.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is looking into
the mass fish die off in the Kern River after the City of
Bakersfield cut flows on Tuesday in order to do weir
maintenance. “CDFW takes all instances of fish mortality
seriously and is investigating what has occurred on the Kern
and how it may relate to the authorizations that the City has
from CDFW for work on the Kern,” wrote Julie Vance, regional
manager of the agency’s central region, in an email. She
provided SJV Water with a copy of a permit obtained by
Bakersfield in February this year to replace the weir at Coffee
Road and noted “…we are unclear at this time if the river
drying is related to this project or some other work.” That
project is separate from maintenance and sediment removal
projects at Bellevue Weir across from the Park at River Walk on
Stockdale Highway.
South-central Utah is not your typical farm country. To the
eye, there appears to be more red rock than green fields. To
make a go of it, farms often huddle around the precious few
rivers that snake across the sun-baked landscape. That’s the
case for rancher Andy Rice, who raises hundreds of hungry goats
and sheep in the Garfield County town of Boulder — population
227 — just outside Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument. There’s no mistaking how dry it is. The area averages
less than 12 inches of annual precipitation. … This ranch
draws water from Boulder Creek that would otherwise be on its
way to Lake Powell. Between drought and competition for
the Colorado River, however, Rice knows that Utah’s water
supply faces a precarious future. That means ranches like his
will need to find ways to cut their water use to survive. …
That’s why Rice applied for funding from
Utah’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program — a
big money push to help farmers and ranchers modernize their
irrigation.
… The Line fire and others feed on a “whiplash” between very
wet conditions and extremely hot conditions. “It’s arguably the
worst climate sequence for the wildfire in Southern
California,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the
University of California, Los Angeles. For the past two years,
wet conditions have caused vegetative growth that quickly dried
out during the coastal heat wave that began last week. Fire
intensity and behavior is a function of how much fuel is
available to burn, so a rapid loss in moisture can create a
feast for wildfires. The phenomenon is so new, Dr. Swain
said, science could require a new term to articulate. That’s
because climate change makes it increasingly likely there will
be back-to-back seasons like these of extreme rain, followed by
extreme heat, that could worsen fire conditions.
A congressional panel wants to know why water is short in parts
of the San Joaquin Valley despite above-average reservoir
storage this year. Six Republican lawmakers, and zero
Democrats, took part in Friday’s hearing of the House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries. It
happened in a conference room at the Hotel Mission de Oro in
tiny Santa Nella, Merced County. The members criticized fish
protections that reduce pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta to as far south as Kern County. They also urged new and
enlarged reservoirs to store more water from wet years for use
in dry ones.
… In the face of climate change, wineries around the world
are innovating. New technology is being installed to keep the
grapes cool during heat spells. A handful of wineries are going
a step further. They’re experimenting with new grapes, ripping
out high-value cabernet vines to plant varieties from hotter
climates. The goal is to find heat-tolerant grapes that blend
well with cabernet, potentially making up for the flavors that
cabernet could lack when temperatures get even hotter. While
many bottles labeled cabernet are already blended with other
grapes in small amounts, winemakers may need more flexibility
in the future. ”We know we have to adapt,” says Avery
Heelan, a winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Calistoga, Calif.
“We can’t just pretend that it’s going to go away, because all
we see is each year it’s getting more and more extreme.”
U.S. House representatives from Southern California on Monday
called for a federal state of emergency declaration, with hopes
of bringing urgent relief to a region coping with toxic,
transboundary air pollution. Democratic Reps. Juan Vargas, Sara
Jacobs, Mike Levin and Scott Peters pressed for urgent action
“in light of new findings that alarming levels of noxious gas
are emanating from the Tijuana River” in a
letter sent Monday to President Biden and California Gov.
Gavin Newsom (D). … The representatives were referring
to an unrelenting crisis impacting the city of Imperial Beach
and its neighbors, which have for years been the
cross-border recipients of wastewater laced with
chemicals and pathogens. This unfettered flow, which
results from insufficient treatment in Mexico, ends up in
California via ocean plumes and the Tijuana River Watershed.
In a recent update that’s good news for local water bodies,
Clean Up The Lake (CUTL), in collaboration with The Martis
Fund, has wrapped up a pilot research project with encouraging
results. The study, which took place from June 26 to July 3,
involved underwater surveys and cleanups in Stampede and Boca
Reservoirs. The results show very low levels of litter and no
troubling infestations of aquatic invasive species (AIS).
During the pilot project, CUTL’s volunteer dive team carried
out eight survey dives, assessing 1.76 miles of underwater
terrain. The team removed a total of just 20.57 pounds of
litter, which consisted of 100 individual items. The results
indicate minimal litter accumulation despite potential
collection zones influenced by dams, human activity, and wind
patterns. The only AIS observed were the signal crayfish, known
locally as ‘crawdads,’ with no significant concerns regarding
other invasive species commonly seen in the region.
Historically, most of Californians’ drinking water has come
from the mountains; a complex series of water utility
infrastructure including dams, levees, intakes, and outflows
routes melted snowpack through the water system to homes,
businesses and farms. But California officials said climate
change has exacerbated the already fragile water conveyance
system, and the existing infrastructure has been delivering
less water than prior years. As a result, the California
Department of Water Resources (DWR) and its State Water Project
(SWP), are planning a colossal conveyance infrastructure
project at a value of more than $20 billion. The scheme, dubbed
the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), will add
new and upgrade existing water transmission facilities and
install 45 mi- (72km-) worth of concrete tunnels through a
regional river delta in between the state capitol of Sacramento
and the City of San Francisco.
The Monterey County Board of Supervisors will vote at their
Tuesday meeting on moving forward with the next steps of the
Carmel Lagoon Project which aims to help prevent flooding in
the area. The supervisors will be tasked with approving the
final Environmental Impact Report for the project Tuesday,
which includes constructing a wall and adding extra protective
measures to safeguard the beach. The recommendation also
includes seeking funding for the design, construction and
ongoing maintenance for the project and continuing to work with
other county departments to implement a home elevation project
for houses within the floodplains. The controversial project
has been met with pushback from homeowners who don’t want views
obstructed and financial challenges, as the project in total is
likely to cost millions.
… We live in a world where we are experiencing seemingly
insurmountable crises that threaten our way of life every day:
human-caused climate change, biodiversity loss, and racial
injustice. While we know people are causing these crises, it
feels harder to believe that people can similarly act to solve
these crises. The solutions feel too big and too complicated to
achieve given the deep differences we perceive in one
another. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time
working in the Klamath, it’s that no matter what my
preconception of others have been, we all share a core of
humanity. When we come together and name the feelings and
values we share, rather than categorizing our differences, we
can accomplish amazing feats.
