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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Wyoming native Leslie Hagenstein lives on the ranch where she
grew up and remembers her grandmother and father delivering
milk in glass bottles from the family’s Mount Airy Dairy. …
This summer, for the second year in a row, water from Pine
Creek will not turn 600 acres of grass and alfalfa a lush
green. … The Colorado River basin has endured decades of
drier-than-normal conditions, and steady demand. That imbalance
is draining its largest reservoirs, and making it nearly
impossible for them to recover, putting the region’s water
security in jeopardy. Reining in demand throughout the vast
western watershed has become a drumbeat among policymakers at
both the state and federal level. Hagenstein’s ranch is an
example of what that intentional reduction in water use looks
like.
… Unlike climate change, no statewide goal or target exists
for a sustainable, clean water supply in California, to ensure
service to our residents, businesses, and the environment.
Instead, water managers around the state work to hold onto as
much water as the system can store. This strategy was
sufficient for the last 80 years, from the beginning of the
Central Valley Project in the 1930s up to the last major
construction on the State Water Project. But now that
California’s population is pushing 40 million – and facing an
increasingly volatile climate – the absence of a clear,
overarching target has left California’s system, and approach,
outdated. … That is why I introduced SB 366, which would
fundamentally transform the state’s water management and
provide a path to drought proof California’s water supply and
ensure a sustainable water supply for cities and towns,
agriculture, other industries, and the environment. — Written by State Sen. Anna Caballero, California’s Senate
District 14
Downey Brand LLP, a leading full-service law firm renowned for
its statewide expertise in water, environmental, and natural
resources law, is pleased to announce that Ernest Conant, a
distinguished water law attorney and the former Regional
Director of the California-Great Basin Region of the Bureau of
Reclamation, U.S. Department of the Interior (Reclamation),
joined the firm’s Natural Resources Department as Counsel on
June 24, 2024… Among his many achievements, Ernest
played a key role in the development of major groundwater
banking and storage projects, including the Kern Water Bank,
Semitropic Water Banking Project, and Arvin-Edison Metropolitan
Banking Project. Additionally, he was instrumental in assisting
Kern County interests with developing and implementing the
Monterey Amendments to the State Water Project water supply
contracts.
A Texas lawmaker has reinforced Republican-led efforts to roll
back Endangered Species Act protections with new legislation
that targets seven kinds of fresh-water mussels with funny
names. In the latest Congressional Review Act salvo focused on
ESA listings, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) introduced H.J.
Res. 169 to erase the Guadalupe fatmucket, Texas pimpleback and
five other mussels from the list of threatened and endangered
species. Arrington’s resolution, introduced with two
co-sponsors Friday, comes about three weeks after the Fish and
Wildlife Service announced the final decision listing the seven
species and designating 1,578 river miles as critical
habitat… In making the listing decisions, the Fish and
Wildlife Service cited water diversions from the Colorado
River, Rio Grande and other river networks as leading threats
to the species, along with drought, flooding and pollution. But
on a more positive note, the administration also pointed to
conservation measures undertaken by the Brazos River Authority,
the Lower Colorado River Authority and the Trinity River
Authority.
Arizona lawmakers adjourned last week after hearing more water
bills they had in decades. But of the few measures that made it
through to Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk, none addressed rural
groundwater management in a way that would protect the state’s
dwindling aquifers, according to the governor’s staff. In the
end, the Legislature heard 24 water bills. Of those that
passed, Hobbs signed four and vetoed 12. Her office said Monday
she was ready to talk with policymakers and water users to find
reforms they could all agree on.
Sea level rise driven by global heating will disrupt the daily
life of millions of Americans, as hundreds of homes, schools
and government buildings face frequent and repeated flooding by
2050, a new study has found. Almost 1,100 critical
infrastructure assets that sustain coastal communities will be
at risk of monthly flooding by 2050, according to the new
research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). … The
number of critical infrastructure assets at risk of disruptive
flooding is expected to nearly double compared to 2020, even
when assuming a medium rate of climate-driven sea level rise
(rather than the worst case scenario). California, Florida,
Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey have the most
critical infrastructure that needs to be made more flood
resilient – or be relocated to safer ground.
California Forever plans to use a combination of water sources
to supply the needs of the new city, including tapping into
groundwater and surface water rights, which the company already
owns thanks to its purchase of more than 60,000 acres of
farmland. … They expect the groundwater and local surface
water to make up more than a quarter of the new city’s water
supply and will be used for some of the drinking
water. California Forever representatives said they also
plan to import almost a third of their water supply “upriver
from out-of-county sites in California,” conveying it through
“existing points of diversion on the Sacramento River and its
associated tributaries.” Water experts who have reviewed
California Forever’s plan said it’s clear the company did its
homework, but some vital questions remain — especially around
its plan to rely on water diverted from rivers in a state where
drought is so commonplace.
Customers served by Placer County Water Agency (PCWA) are urged
to reduce their water use to help manage an ongoing water
delivery problem caused by damaged Pacific Gas and Electric
Company (PG&E) facilities. PG&E has run into several
unanticipated schedule delays that have pushed their return of
service date from June to July 30th, more than 50 days beyond
the original estimate.
Nine people have tested positive and 21 people have suspected
cases of Shigella as Santa Clara County’s public health
department continues to respond to an outbreak primarily
impacting homeless encampments in San Jose, including several
along the Guadalupe River. The general public is advised to
avoid using the Guadalupe River downstream of Highway 85 and
Almaden Expressway “out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Monika
Roy, assistant health officer and communicable disease
controller for Santa Clara County, said at a news conference
Monday afternoon. People infected with Shigella have reported
using the river for hygiene reasons, she said. There are no
reported cases along Coyote Creek, but the public health
department is continuing to investigate, Roy said. Six of the
cases have resulted in hospitalization.
Delta Watermaster Jay Ziegler talks new water tracking and data
systems and the threats climate change poses in the Delta that
impacts all of California.
Conservation advocates say a new Bureau of Land Management
final Environmental Impact Statement takes positive steps
toward developing a management plan to conserve public lands in
Northwest California. The Northwest California Integrated
Resource Management Plan will manage more than 380,000 acres in
Butte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama and
Trinity counties for at least the next two decades. … The
lands covered by the plan stretch from the North Coast to the
Central Valley and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains. They include isolated redwood groves, oak woodlands,
rivers and streams, and are home to elk, bald eagles, sandhill
cranes, salmon and steelhead.
A dam in southern Minnesota is in “imminent failure condition,”
according to local authorities, as communities across the Upper
Midwest continue to deal with major flooding from heavy
rains… The county added that they had first been
notified of “accumulating debris” at the dam Sunday. Workers
from Blue Earth County Public Works, the emergency management
agency, and the sheriff’s office are actively monitoring the
dam… The Blue Earth River cut around the west side of the
dam, emergency management said, carrying damaging debris in its
wake and causing power outages. In a Monday evening update, the
county noted that although there was a “partial failure on the
west abutment,” the “dam is still intact” and there are
currently no plans for a “mass evacuation.”
The highest court in the land will soon review a proposed oil
railroad in Utah. The 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway would connect
remote, oil-rich eastern Utah to the broader rail network,
including existing rail along the Colorado River — making it
easier for Utah’s fossil fuels to reach refineries on the Gulf
Coast. … In August, a U.S. Appeals Court revoked
approval for the project, finding that the federal Surface
Transportation Board did not sufficiently analyze the project’s
environmental impacts. … Colorado’s elected
representatives fear that the project carries dire safety risks
for communities along the Colorado River. “Last year, a federal
court agreed with Coloradans that the approval process for the
Uinta Basin Railway had been gravely insufficient, and did not
properly account for the project’s full risks,” said U.S. Sen.
Michael Bennet in a January statement. “A derailment along the
headwaters of the Colorado River could have catastrophic
effects for Colorado’s communities, water, and environment.”
Over the past several years, California’s water managers have
seen a pattern emerge in farming areas of the Central Valley:
Even as declining groundwater levels have left thousands of
residents with dry wells and caused the ground to sink,
counties have continued granting permits for agricultural
landowners to drill new wells and pump even more water. A bill
that was sponsored by the California Department of Water
Resources sought to address these problems by prohibiting new
high-capacity wells within a quarter-mile of a drinking water
well or in areas where the land has been sinking because of
overpumping. Despite support from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
administration, the measure was narrowly rejected in the Senate
last week after encountering opposition from the agriculture
industry, business groups, local governments and water
agencies.
… Under a blazing Palmdale sun recently, state and local
officials gathered to break ground on one such project, a
first-of-its-kind wastewater treatment facility that also
removes CO₂ from the atmosphere. Project Monarch, a
public-private partnership between the Palmdale Water District
and the climate technology company Capture6, will not only
provide residents with new water supplies, but will also help
California achieve its goals of 100% renewable energy and
carbon neutrality by 2045, according to Nancy Vogel, deputy
secretary for water at the California Natural Resources Agency.
The Supreme Court’s new ruling that rejected a state-authored
settlement in the long-running legal battle over the Rio Grande
could bolster the federal government’s position in negotiations
over other Western waterways — including the Colorado River.
The court Friday ruled 5-4 in favor of the Biden administration
to rebuff the proposed settlement among the three Western
states named in Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado over how to
account for water use in the Rio Grande River Basin. …
James Eklund, Colorado’s former top water official, predicted
the Supreme Court’s decision in the Rio Grande case stands to
strengthen the federal government’s “already substantial role”
in brokering interstate water agreements.
California’s summer is off to a fiery start after an explosion
of wildfire activity across the state this week, with blazes
stretching firefighting resources thin, forcing evacuations and
scorching several homes, businesses and bone-dry hillsides.
Perilous weather conditions in the last days of spring before
Thursday — strong winds, low humidity and high temperatures —
fueled flames from Los Angeles County to Colusa County north of
Sacramento, with more than 30 wildfires igniting, including two
of the state’s largest this year that each surpassed 15,000
acres in a matter of hours, according to the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The early boom in
wildfires is casting new concerns about what the rest of 2024
will bring, especially with the hottest months ahead and
another heat dome forecast for interior California this
weekend.
Sand waves flow behind Jack Stauss, repeatedly rolling and
breaking near a debris-heavy section of the river as he
discusses sediment-related phenomena in Lake Powell. …Sand
waves are one of many sediment-related phenomena at Lake
Powell. They form in water containing a high percentage of
sediment when the river’s bottom isn’t perfectly flat.
… Created on the Utah-Arizona border with the 1963
construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell, the nation’s
second-largest reservoir, could once hold almost 26 million
acre-feet of water. But, according to a 2022 report from
the U.S. Geological Survey, its capacity has since dropped
by nearly 7%, primarily due to sediment deposited by the
Colorado River’s tributaries and trapped by Lake Powell’s still
waters.
After years of work by the Tule River Tribe, a family of seven
beavers has been released into the South Fork Tule River
watershed on the Tule River Indian Reservation as part of a
multi-year beaver reintroduction effort done in partnership
with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).
Beavers play a critical role in the ecology and stewardship of
the land. They build dams that retain water on the landscape,
extending seasonal flows, increasing summer baseflows,
improving drought and wildfire resilience and better conserving
the Tribe’s drinking water supply, of which about 80% comes
from the Tule River watershed. CDFW wildlife biologists also
expect to eventually see better habitat conditions for a number
of endangered amphibian and riparian-obligate bird species,
including foothill and southern mountain yellow-legged frogs,
western pond turtle, least Bell’s vireo and southwestern willow
flycatcher.
Board members of Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainablity Agency
signed a deal with Self-Help Enterprises this week to respond
to dry or damaged drinking water wells. The deal may, or may
not, be extended throughout the Tule subbasin as part of a
larger effort by managers to revamp their groundwater plan and
submit it to the state Water Resources Control Board by July 1
to try and stave off state intervention. But if this one piece
of the larger puzzle is any indication, July 1 may be a pipe
dream for a cohesive plan as other water managers are
negotiating their own deals with Self-Help and questioning
Eastern Tule’s ability to pay for a well program long term.
