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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Colorado legislators in 2022 passed a bill that delivered $2
million to programs across the state for removal of turf in
urban areas classified as nonfunctional. By that, legislators
mean Kentucky bluegrass and other thirsty-grass species that
were meant to be seen but rarely, if ever, otherwise
used. Now, they are taking the next step. The Colorado
Senate on Tuesday, Jan. 30 voted in favor of a
bill, Senate Bill 24-005, that would prevent thirsty turf
species from being planted in certain places that rarely, if
ever, get foot traffic, except perhaps to be mowed.
How will selling groundwater help keep more groundwater in the
San Joaquin Valley’s already critically overtapped aquifers?
Water managers in the Kaweah subbasin in northwestern Tulare
County hope to find out by having farmers tinker with a pilot
groundwater market program. Kaweah farmers will be joining
growers from subbasins up and down the San Joaquin Valley
who’ve been looking at how water markets might help them
maintain their businesses by using pumping allotments and
groundwater credits as assets to trade or sell when water is
tight.
State health officials know that extreme heat can cost lives
and send people to the hospital, just like wildfire smoke. Now,
new research finds that when people are exposed to both hazards
simultaneously — as is increasingly the case in California —
heart and respiratory crises outpace the expected sum of
hospitalizations compared to when the conditions occur
separately. … The study joins a growing body of research
about the intersection of different climate risks. Last month,
California-based think-tank the Pacific
Institute published a report about how converging
hazards — including wildfires, drought, flooding, sea level
rise and intensifying storms — are harming access to drinking
water and sanitation in California and other parts of the
world. The deadly 2018 Camp fire in Butte
County impacted an estimated 2,438 private wells, the
report said.
The dam removal projects- aimed at sustaining the salmon
population, are underway, with the latest drawdown being three
reservoirs on the Klamath River. The removal process has
already dramatically changed the landscape in Southern Oregon
and far Northern California, along the course of the river. The
lowest of the three remaining dams- Iron Gate, was initially
breached on January 9, followed by the J.C. Boyle reservoir on
January 16. A concrete plug in the tunnel at the base of Copco
1 was blasted away on January 23, with the reservoirs draining
quickly, leaving vast expanses of fissured mud that was the
consistency and color of chocolate cake batter. Shaping its new
course, the Klamath River is winding through the bare
landscape, but the transformation has had some unintended
consequences and saddened some residents.
Water regulation in Arizona has devolved into a game of
chicken. The governor and farmers are rivals revving their
engines, hoping their opponent will flinch first. Caught
in the middle is Gila Bend, a groundwater basin south of
Buckeye, where the state could decide to impose its most
stringent form of regulation, whether folks like it or not.
Both sides are using Gila Bend as a bargaining chip to win
support for competing legislative proposals. But to what
end? - Written by Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic digital
opinions editor
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an
important hearing Thursday on S. 2385, a bill to
refine the tools needed to help Tribal communities gain access
to something that most non-Indian communities in the western
United States have long taken for granted: federally subsidized
systems to deliver safe, clean drinking water to our homes.
… This is the sort of bill (there’s a companion on the
House side) that makes a huge amount of sense, but could easily
get sidetracked in the chaos of Congress. The ideal path is for
the crucial vetting to happen in a process such as Thursday’s
hearing, and then to attach it to one of those omnibus things
that Congress uses these days to get non-controversial stuff
done. Clean water for Native communities should pretty clearly
be non-controversial.
Tesla will pay several district attorney’s offices $1.5 million
over violations of hazardous waste laws, per an agreement it
reached this week in San Joaquin County Superior Court. The
payment stems from Tesla’s handling, transporting and disposing
of hazardous materials from its facilities in California. Tesla
knew about policies and procedures for handling that waste and
violated the law by disposing of waste at unauthorized spots.
It also failed to determine whether waste created at its
facilities was hazardous and didn’t properly label and store
it.
For as long as he can remember, Rob Sowby has heard people call
Utah the second-driest state in the nation. Over the years,
that claim has become nearly inescapable, echoed by everyone
from state departments, city governments and water conservancy
districts to national news outlets without a clear citation for
what data it’s based on. … Now a Brigham Young
University civil engineering assistant professor focused on
sustainable water supplies, he decided to get to the bottom of
it. Using precipitation data, he found that Utah is actually
the nation’s third-driest state, behind Nevada and
Arizona.
The return of fully planted rice crops to the Sacramento Valley
following years of drought has restored another essential
feature of the region. After harvest, reservoirs replenished by
last year’s historic storms enabled farmers to flood more of
their fields this winter, creating wetland habitat for
migrating waterfowl. … Today, around 300,000 acres of the
valley’s rice paddies are flooded each winter to provide food
and shelter for 7 million ducks and geese, according to the
California Rice Commission. More than 200 species of wildlife,
including threatened species such as Sandhill Cranes, rely on
the fields. Especially over the past decade, state and federal
programs have been developed to incentivize winter flooding,
defraying some of the cost, and rice farmers have embraced
their role in wildlife conservation.
… In California, just figuring out who holds a water right
requires a trip to a downtown Sacramento storage room crammed
with millions of paper and microfilmed records dating to the
mid-1800s. Even the state’s water rights enforcers struggle to
determine who is using what. … Come next year, however,
the board expects to have all records electronically accessible
to the public. Officials recently started scanning records tied
to an estimated 45,000 water rights into an online database.
They’re also designing a system that will give real-time data
on how much water is being diverted from rivers and streams
across the state. … Proponents say the information
technology upgrade will help the state and water users better
manage droughts, establish robust water trading markets and
ensure water for fish and the environment.
Twenty early to mid-career water professionals from
across California have been chosen for the 2024 William R.
Gianelli Water Leaders cohort, the Water Education Foundation’s
highly competitive and respected leadership
program. The cohort includes engineers,
lawyers, resource specialists, scientists and others from a
range of public and private entities and nongovernmental
organizations.
The Topock Marsh has seen a significant drop in water levels
recently, with dry patches visible and locals concerned about
the effects on wildlife. The 4,000-acre Bureau of Reclamation
marsh is adjacent to the Colorado River in the Havasu National
Wildlife Refuge. Managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
it serves as a recreation area and wildlife habitat for the
Tri-state.
… Without more investment and regulatory relief,
Californians face a future of chronic water scarcity. Our
system of water storage and distribution is in trouble. We have
depleted aquifers, nearly empty reservoirs on the Colorado
River, and a precarious network of century-old levees that are
one big earthquake away from catastrophic failure. Then there’s
always the next severe drought. Even if the governor
aggressively pushes for more investment in water supply
infrastructure and more regulatory relief so projects can go
forward, the state is again staring down a budget deficit.
Bonds to fund water infrastructure projects are going to have a
hard time getting approval from voters already overburdened
with among the highest taxes in America. - Written by Edward Ring, senior fellow with the
California Policy Center.
…Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board took
action to protect the salmon,
unanimously extending the region’s
expired emergency drought measures. Ground and surface
water for farms will be restricted for another year if flows in
the Shasta and Scott rivers dip below minimum thresholds. State
officials say these measures are likely to kick in next
year. Water board chair Joaquin Esquivel said action
is needed because “a fish emergency” remains on the rivers.
“Time isn’t our friend,” he said at a previous meeting in
August. “There is an urgency.” The water board also
is investigating the possibility of permanent requirements to
keep more water in the rivers, after the Karuk Tribe and the
fishing industry petitioned the state for stronger protections.
That decision, however, could take years.
Below-average precipitation and snowpack during 2020-22 and
depleted surface and groundwater supplies pushed California
into a drought emergency that brought curtailment orders and
calls for modernizing water rights. At the Water Education
Foundation annual water summit last week in Sacramento,
Eric Oppenheimer, chief deputy director of the California State
Water Resources Control Board, discussed what he described as
the state’s “antiquated” water rights system. He spoke before
some 150 water managers, government officials, farmers,
environmentalists and others as part of the event where
interests come together to collaborate on some of the state’s
most challenging water issues.
As the permitting battle over the proposed Sites Reservoir
Project in Northern California heats up, it’s become clear that
the project would further heat up the atmosphere as well. Just
as California has made bold commitments to achieve carbon
neutrality in the next few decades, the state seems ready to
approve a dam project that would put that progress in jeopardy.
A new report, “Estimate of Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the
Proposed Sites Reservoir Project Using the All-Res Modeling
Tool,” created by a science team at my organization, Tell The
Dam Truth, exposes the climate impacts caused by this massive
dam and reservoir system. -Written by Gary Wockner, PhD, who directs Tell The
Dam Truth
Residents living below the Isabella Auxiliary Dam were thrilled
earlier this month with a temporary fix that finally dried up
excessive seepage from the dam that had been swamping septic
systems and breeding forests of mosquito-infested weeds around
their homes. The didn’t realize how temporary the fix would be,
however. After only 12 days without a river cutting through his
land, rancher Gerald Wenstrand woke up to see the seepage back
on Saturday.
… A state audit from the California Water Resources Control
Board released last year found that over 920,000 residents
faced an increased risk of illness–including cancer, liver and
kidney problems–due to consuming unsafe drinking water. A
majority of these unsafe water systems are in the Central
Valley. The matter has prompted community leaders to mobilize
residents around water quality as politicians confront
imperfect solutions for the region’s supply. Advocates point
out that impacted areas, including those in Tulare County, tend
to be majority Latino with low median incomes. … This
year’s extreme weather has only worsened the valley’s problems.
The storms that hit California at the start of this year caused
stormwater tainted with farm industry fertilizer, manure and
nitrates to flow into valley aquifers.
The application period for our 2024 Water
Leaders cohort is now open, and don’t forget
to sign up for our
virtual Q&A session on Oct. 31 if you are
interested in applying or supporting a candidate. Check out the
interesting lineup of topics and speakers for
our Oct. 25 Water
Summit; the
agenda is now posted. And don’t miss out on snatching
up a sponsorship for our annual event!
