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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Please Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing. Also, the headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
As vice president, [Kamala] Harris argued for the allocation of
$20 billion for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, aimed
at aiding disadvantaged communities facing climate impacts, and
frequently promoted the IRA at events, touting the bill’s
investments in clean energy jobs, including installation of
energy-efficient lighting, and replacing gas furnaces with
electric heat pumps. She was also the highest-ranking U.S.
official to attend the international climate talks at COP28 in
Dubai last year, where she announced a U.S. commitment to
double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy capacity
by 2030. At that same conference, Harris announced a $3 billion
commitment to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations
adapt to climate challenges, although Politico reported that
the sum was “subject to the availability of funds,” according
to the Treasury Department.
Coronavirus levels in California’s wastewater now exceed last
summer’s peak, an indication of the rapid spread of the
super-contagious new FLiRT strains. California has “very high”
coronavirus levels in its wastewater — one of 21 states in that
category, up from seven the prior week, according to estimates
published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. That means about 155 million people — nearly half
of America’s population — live in areas with “very high”
coronavirus levels in sewage. Besides California, the other
states with “very high” levels are Alaska, Colorado,
Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland,
Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina,
Oregon, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and
Wyoming. Washington, D.C., is also in that category.
The legacy of a public health achievement in Oroville — adding
fluoride in drinking water — is now on its way to being
reversed as Oroville councilors pleaded for personal choice
over its widely-researched public health benefits, leaving
health experts worried on dental care costs likely increasing
for rural children. The City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday and
passed an ordinance to begin working with the California Public
Utilities Commission on lifting its fluoride requirement with
Cal Water. The requirement has been in place since 1957, thanks
to a grassroots movement of citizens in the late 1940s and
1950s which pushed the City Council at that time to directly
request the CPUC to order Cal Water to add fluoride; tension
between the city and the utility ran deep at the time.
As firefighters continue to battle more than two dozen active
wildfires in California, new research has found that millions
of people are living in close proximity to oil and gas wells
that are in the potential path of flames. More than 100,000
wells in 19 states west of the Mississippi River are in areas
that have burned in recent decades and face a high risk of
burning in the future, with the vast majority in California,
according to a study published recently in the journal One
Earth. What’s more, nearly 3 million Americans live within
3,200 feet of those wells, putting them at heightened risk of
explosions, air and water pollution, infrastructure damage and
other hazards.
Solano County raised concerns about the impacts of California
Forever’s East Solano Plan, citing questions over water,
traffic, taxes, agriculture, Travis Air Force Base, and other
issues in its initiative report released Thursday evening. …
In the county’s projection, water treatment appears to be one
of the biggest standalone price points on the public utilities
bill. Under Phase 1, a projection of 20,000 dwelling units,
wastewater output is estimated at 3.56 million gallons per day.
The county estimates this would jump to nearly 24.5 million
gallons per day with the project’s Buildout estimation of
160,000 dwelling units. The county expects output to be even
higher, as these estimates don’t even include non-residential
wastewater.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a state Assembly bill by
Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) on Thursday that would beef up water
regulations during droughts on the coast. AB 1272 would have
made the State Water Resources Control Board outline guidelines
for water use and diversion in some coastal watersheds during
times of drought. “While I support efforts to protect coastal
watersheds from the extreme dry conditions exacerbated by
climate change, this bill creates significant, ongoing costs in
the millions of dollars that should be considered in the annual
budget process,” Newsom wrote in his veto message.
The Medicine Lake Highlands complex of public lands, some 30
miles northeast of Mt. Shasta in California’s Cascade region,
is a truly remarkable place. … This area has been
called Sáttítla for time immemorial by the Pit River
Tribe. It is remote and hardly a blip on most people’s radar.
Yet it is on the radar of resource developers. The Pit River
Tribe has been fighting for three decades to safeguard this
landscape and the waters, cultural values and habitats it
provides from proposed development. Last November, the
Tribe launched a new initiative to permanently protect the
Sáttítla region as a national monument. Trout Unlimited,
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and other conservation-oriented
angling and hunting groups are supporting this campaign.
Due to elevated levels of bacteria the Carnelian Bay West beach
and Patton Landing beach will remain closed to the public until
further notice. A health advisory also remains in effect for
Lake Tahoe shoreline from 5500 North Lake Boulevard (Sahara
Drive and Highway 28) to 4600 North Lake Boulevard. (see
attached map for reference). Residents and visitors are advised
that contact with the lake water in the advisory area could
cause illness due to elevated bacteria levels. The NTPUD’s
public drinking water system is not at risk and tap water is
safe to drink.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a
$14.8 million Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act
(WIFIA) loan to Palmdale Water District (PWD) in Southern
California. The agency said the loan will assist the district’s
regional advanced water augmentation program to expand the
water supply by and establish a drought-proof drinking water
supply for more than 125,000 residents. “We are grateful to the
EPA for awarding this loan for our Pure Water Antelope Valley
Demonstration Facility,” said PWD General Manager Dennis
D. LaMoreaux. “It gives us the funds needed to build a project
that will enable us to be more drought-proof, have local
control of our water, and improve the groundwater quality and
quantity.”
The newly formed Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy
Clinic at Yale Law School is partnering with the Delta
Tribal Environmental Coalition (DTEC) to restore and protect
the Delta – a resource that is intrinsically connected to the
livelihood and traditions of their communities. The coalition
consists of the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians,
Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Winnemem Wintu Tribe,
Little Manila Rising and Restore the Delta. The Yale Clinic
represents community-based organizations, Tribal Nations, and
non-profit coalitions, providing high quality legal services
for issues at the intersection of environmental, social, and
Indigenous justice concerns. The Clinic aims to tackle issues
such as inequitable distribution of environmental benefits and
burdens, exclusion of impacted communities from environmental
decision-making processes and repair for communities that have
been alienated from environmental resources and governance.
Laura Norman stood by the trickling stream and let the
enchantment of her surroundings wash over her. The landscape
was verdant, lush even, but Norman wasn’t standing in a
tropical paradise. In fact, her oasis was in one of the driest,
hottest regions in the world, and only a handful of years ago,
this gully was virtually barren of plants. … But it
wasn’t a spell or a massive feat of engineering that caused
moisture to seep into the land, allowing plants to grow and
creating habitat for aquatic animals. It was simple technology
that when carefully applied, allowed the laws of nature to
transform the land. The simple technology Norman and her
team used was a type of nature-based solution they call Natural
Infrastructure in Dryland Streams, or NIDS. Essentially, NIDS
are structures made of rock, wood or mud that people or
reintroduced beavers construct across the flow of water in a
gully, creek or stream.
A Juvenile Production Estimate (JPE), as we discussed in Part 1
of this essay, is an estimate of the number and timing of
outmigrating juvenile spring-run Chinook(opens in new tab)
Salmon (“spring run”) as they enter the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. It is an important tool for protecting these fish
because it helps water managers anticipate when these salmon
may be at risk of becoming entrained in water diversions as
well as serving as an important check on the status of this
population. In this part, I’ll describe the cutting-edge
genetic and modeling tools we’re using to distinguish spring
run from the other Central Valley Chinook. This series will
finish with a final installment full of the quantitative
modeling we’re developing to pull in all the salmon and
environmental data and actually produce a forecast of juvenile
spring-run production.
The Verdugo Wash is a flood-control channel that starts rain
water on a 35-mile journey from the foothills above L.A. to the
Pacific Ocean. When you visit the wash, you can see the massive
chasm between rhetoric and reality in California water. Since
2017, the Crescenta Valley Water District has pursued the sort
of project that California water officials say they want.
Crescenta Valley, which serves 35,000 people in mostly
unincorporated neighborhoods between Glendale and La
Cañada-Flintridge, wants to capture ocean-bound rainwater from
the Verdugo Wash and use it to recharge local groundwater
supplies. Verdugo Wash doesn’t carry much water, but capturing
some of it would provide one-sixth of the small district’s
water supply for the small district. —Written by Joe Mathews, Connecting California
columnist for Zócalo Public Square.
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.
