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.
California lawmakers want to establish the state’s position on
environmental health, taking a first step Monday in their
proactive approach to ensure processes for the state’s
environmental management remains secure, regardless of any
federal changes. … The Los Angeles Democrat is
propositioning a constitutional amendment that would enshrine
into law the Californian’s right to clean air, water and the
environment. Assembly Constitutional Amendment 16,
authored by Bryan, passed Monday out of the Assembly Natural
Resources Committee and into his chamber’s Appropriations
Committee. It must pass both houses by at least two-thirds and
then secure a majority vote at the polls.
Lake Shasta could reach its full capacity this spring,
following a high amount of rainfall in California. The largest
reservoir in California has been steadily rising since the
beginning of March. It has gone up sharply since the start of
the year, which saw its levels at 1,012 feet, compared to its
current level on April 5 of 1,058 feet. The lake has risen by
about 19 feet since the beginning of March alone. “Shasta
Reservoir is currently 121 percent of the 15-year average and
93 percent full as of April 4. Unlike other Central Valley
Project reservoirs, Shasta is predominantly filled by rainfall
rather than snowpack runoff,” a Bureau of Reclamation
spokesperson told Newsweek. … The reservoir, located in
Shasta County, California, was in a dire situation due to
drought in 2022.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced Monday that recently
uncovered damage to the Glen Canyon Dam will require it to
reduce flows through portions of the structure as it looks to
repair the site and prevent future problems at one of the
nation’s major reservoirs. Wayne Pullan, the Bureau of
Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Basin regional director, said that
the agency — which is responsible for delivering water to
Arizona, California and Nevada — is investigating damage to the
lowest level of pipes at the dam, four structures known as the
“River Outlet Works.” “In nearly 60 years of operation in Glen
Canyon Dam, we didn’t need to address the issues that we’re
facing now,” Pullan said in a news conference. “We didn’t need
to consider the possible sustained operation of the River
Outlet Works at low elevations.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom has a new sales pitch for a tunnel to move
more water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
that past governors have tried and failed to build for five
decades. “The Delta conveyance is an adaptation project,” he
said last week in a snowy field in the Sierra Nevada, where a
winter that started out dry eventually delivered a
just-above-average snowpack that will soon melt into the
Sacramento River and its
tributaries. … Long-skeptical Delta lawmakers
aren’t convinced by the latest rationale. “He’s searching for a
reason,” said Representative John Garamendi, a Democrat
from the western part of the Delta.
As the date of reckoning for excessive groundwater pumping in
Tulare County grows closer, lobbying by water managers and
growers has ramped up. The Friant Water Authority, desperate to
protect its newly rebuilt – yet still sinking –
Friant-Kern Canal, has beseeched the Water Resources Control
Board to get involved. Specifically, it has asked board members
to look into how the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA) has, or has not, curbed over pumping that affects
the canal. Meanwhile, the Eastern Tule groundwater agency has
been doing a bit of its own lobbying. It recently hosted all
five members of the Water Board on three separate tours of the
region, including the canal. Because the tours were staggered,
there wasn’t a quorum of board members, which meant they
weren’t automatically open to the public.
Hydropower generation in the U.S. West plunged to a 22-year low
last year — dropping 11 percent from the year before, according
to a new federal data analysis. The total amount produced
in the region amounted to 141.5 million megawatt-hours, or
about 60 percent of the country’s total hydroelectricity output
in the 2022-23 “water year,” per the data published
by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
… On the other hand, a series of atmospheric rivers in
California spurred an increase in hydroelectricity production
in the Golden State — nearly doubling it in comparison to the
previous water year, the analysis noted.
The Commerce Department announced Monday it pledged up to
$6.6 billion to Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC,
which will add a third chip manufacturing facility in Arizona
to the two in the works. The grant will go down in Washington
as one of the crown jewels of the Biden administration’s
initiative to bring the supply chain for ubiquitous—and
strategically vital—computer chips back to the United
States. But in Phoenix, where the factories are going to
be built, TSMC faces a lingering question: where’s the water
going to come from in one of the driest cities in the
country?
Over the past few decades, the United States has imported most
of its lithium from Chile and Argentina, but there’s one major
domestic source of the mineral—Nevada. Clayton Valley, a remote
basin in the nation’s driest state, is home to the Silver Peak
mine, where lithium is extracted in gridded ponds that turn
neon blue as they recover one of Earth’s lightest elements
through solar evaporation. … Mining operators across the
West have faced major barriers in the global race for lithium.
Mines come with large footprints that can disrupt wildlife
habitat, harm cultural sites and put pressures on communities.
On top of all that is another major challenge posing a barrier
for lithium projects in the western U.S. and Clayton Valley:
Competition for limited water supplies.
Aiming to boost the county’s water supply, the Marin Municipal
Water District is exploring the idea of connecting pipelines in
Petaluma and Cotati to its reservoirs. District staff presented
three main potential projects — narrowed from 13 — at Tuesday’s
board of directors meeting. … The pipelines would transport
water from the Russian River into Marin reservoirs. Treated
Russian River water is transported to Marin through a 9-mile
aqueduct along the Highway 101 corridor from Petaluma to North
Marin Water District in Novato. The district then sends the
water directly to the Marin Municipal Water District’s water
distribution system. Board members expressed concern over cost
estimates, which ranged between $140 million and $380 million.
Acronyms are so prevalent in the water industry that stringing
several together can form an impressive-sounding
sentence. That’s exactly what Hanford High School junior
Morgan Carroll did at an April 5 workshop in Sacramento called
Water 101 put on by the Water Education
Foundation. After winning a game of bingo no
less. The bingo game kept the audience of water managers and
government and nonprofit employees on its toes during a talk on
what could be a very dry topic, especially after lunch: The
role of regulatory agencies in state and federal water law.
… Part of being on the team is keeping tabs on current
events in the water industry. Students subscribed
to Aquafornia, the foundation’s daily
news summary, and found out about the workshop that way.
They’re in makeup, dental floss and menstrual products. They’re
in nonstick pans and takeout food wrappers. Same with rain
jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and
artificial turf on sports fields. They’re PFAS: a class of
man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
They are also called “forever chemicals” because the bonds in
their chemical compounds are so strong they don’t break down
for hundreds to thousands of years, if at all. They’re also in
our water. A new study of more than 45,000 water samples
around the world found that about 31 percent of groundwater
samples tested that weren’t near any obvious source of
contamination had PFAS levels considered harmful to human
health by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Wetlands have flourished along the world’s coastlines for
thousands of years, playing valuable roles in the lives of
people and wildlife. They protect the land from storm surge,
stop seawater from contaminating drinking water supplies, and
create habitat for birds, fish and threatened species. Much of
that may be gone in a matter of decades. As the planet warms,
sea level rises at an ever-faster rate. Wetlands have generally
kept pace by building upward and creeping inland a few meters
per year. But raised roadbeds, cities, farms and increasing
land elevation can leave wetlands with nowhere to go. Sea-level
rise projections for midcentury suggest the waterline will be
shifting 15 to 100 times faster than wetland migration has been
clocked. -Written by Randall W. Parkinson, Research Associate
Professor in Coastal Geology, Florida International
University.
Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) has launched a new multi-year
campaign called “The Ripple Effect” aimed at promoting water
sustainability and resilience in the community. Acting General
Manager David Reyes urged all PWP customers to become local
water stewards for Pasadena and the region by participating
in the campaign. “We invite every member of our
community to embrace their role as local water stewards,” said
Reyes. “Each one of us holds a vital place in shaping
Pasadena’s water future.” About one-third of
Pasadena’s water supply comes from local groundwater, with the
remaining two-thirds imported from other sources. PWP
emphasized that understanding where the community’s water comes
from helps foster a greater appreciation for
this critical resource.
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) begins
construction this month to install a trash capture device along
northbound State Route 99, preventing trash in storm water
runoff from entering the Tuolumne River at Zeff Road. The trash
capture system will be located at the inlet of two existing
culverts on the southeast side of SR-99 and the Tuolumne River,
a location identified as a significant trash generating area.
The project will help the department achieve zero trash from
stormwater discharge into the lower reaches of the Tuolumne
River. It is consistent with the Caltrans’ Statewide Trash
Implementation plan and in compliance with the State Water
Resource Control Board water quality objectives for trash
pollutants.
… U.S. Geological Service data shows Teton Valley’s aquifer
steadily declined in recent decades as development increased
and crop watering systems became more efficient, reducing
infiltration by replacing flood irrigation with pivots and
sprinklers. In addition, the area’s transition from
agricultural valley to recreation hub has meant less acreage
being watered: farms replaced by subdivisions full of houses
with domestic wells, each one a straw guzzling from the
valley’s all-important aquifer. … Recharge has benefited
farmers and fish in western communities like Idaho’s Eastern
Snake River Plain and California’s Central Valley, and the
group believes the data shows it can work in the Teton Basin.
They hope it can. In addition to providing a bulwark against
future water shortages or legislative changes to water rights
laws, they want to do something groundbreaking: create a
market-based system to pay farmers for incidental recharge.
The Nesting Bird Habitat Incentive Program is still accepting
applications for the Delayed Cereal Grain Harvest and Fallow
Agriculture programs until end of day Wednesday, April 10. If
you have winter planted cereal grains, winter planted cover
crops or farm fields that will be left fallow this growing
season, these programs could be a great fit for your
operations. You must be willing to leave them undisturbed and
or delay harvest until at least July 15th. Below are key
details for each of the program.
Genes are the blueprints that inform development and behavior,
and over time they are molded by evolution into adaptations
that allow species to persist in an ever-changing world.
However, animals adapted to one environment sometimes find
themselves suddenly dropped in another. Such is the case for
certain hatchery-raised steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in
California’s Central Valley. The genes of steelhead play an
important role in determining their life history, and may
influence the timing of migration and maturation. To evaluate
how such genes may be impacted by hatchery practices,
researchers from UC Santa Cruz and the National Marine
Fisheries Service dove into the genetics of steelhead from four
hatcheries in the Sacramento River Basin (Goetz et al. 2024).
The findings of their investigation show just how influential
genes are in determining the path that a steelhead’s life will
take.
Powerful pumps that supply much of California’s population with
water have killed several thousand threatened and endangered
fish this year, prompting a coalition of environmental groups
to demand that state and federal agencies take immediate steps
to limit “alarming levels” of deaths. In
a letter to state and federal water managers, leaders
of five fishing and environmental groups said the estimated
losses of threatened steelhead trout and endangered winter-run
Chinook salmon have exceeded maximum annual limits for water
intakes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Spring storms brought more snow to mountains across the Western
U.S., bringing water for struggling Lake Powell with them. The
National Weather Service Colorado Basin River Forecast Center
on Friday estimated that Lake Powell will receive 5.7 million
acre-feet of water between April and July as snow melts off the
mountains. An acre-foot is roughly enough water to sustain two
houses for a year. That volume is 89% of the normal runoff for
that time period recorded between 1991 and 2020. Facing
extreme drought and climate change since the turn of the
century, Lake Powell dropped to a historic low of 22%
full in Feb. 2023. The reservoir currently stands at
about 32% full.
New California legislation seeks to permanently ban paraquat, a
powerful and widely used weedkiller that has been linked to
Parkinson’s disease and other serious health issues. Assembly
Bill 1963, introduced recently by Assemblymember Laura Friedman
(D-Glendale), would sunset the use of paraquat beginning in
January 2026. The herbicide, which is described by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency as highly toxic, is regularly
sprayed on almonds, grapes, cotton and other crops in the
state. … California is the nation’s top user of paraquat
…
