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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Pacific Gas and Electric Company has requested a roughly
six-month extension from the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission for the process of decommissioning two dams on the
Eel River. Friends of the Eel River, a conservation non-profit
founded to advocate for the dams’ removal, is concerned about
the impact this delay will have on the timeline of getting the
Eel undammed. The final draft of the decommissioning plan would
come out in June of 2025 rather than January of that year.
Alicia Hamann, executive director of the Friends, said “a delay
of six months could mean another year of those really dangerous
conditions for native fish,” when reached by phone Monday. She
noted the dangerous conditions were created by variances in the
way the dams release water. PG&E has to get approval for
the water it releases every year from FERC, and in 2023 the
approval was delayed to the point that no cold water was there
for fish by the time it was worked out, said Hamman. She said
this impacted fish on the river.
Imagine growing up in a home where tap water consistently runs
a stomach-churning brown, sometimes with an odor. You hate to
bathe in it, and you certainly aren’t going to drink it. You’re
not in some remote hinterland, either. You’re in Los Angeles
County. Brown tap water was a feature of my childhood. No one
outside our poorly managed and financially challenged Sativa
Water District in Compton and Willowbrook seemed to understand
or care that we feared our own water. My mom purchased bottled
water for drinking and cooking, shouldering the cost like an
extra tax. Still, we had to climb into the murky stuff in the
bathtub. Sometimes our clothes came out of the wash more
stained than when they went in. -Written by Oralia Avila, who works in customer
services for Suburban Water Systems and lives in unincorporated
Los Angeles County.
… All might be well in Lodi, but some other regions reported
cuts in their 2024 water supply. In the Westlands Water
District, which manages the water supply on the westside of
Fresno and Kings counties, a Westlands spokeswoman said the
agency was allocated less water than it had contracted for:
“[It’s] an incredibly disappointing and unjustifiably low
allocation for our district water users,” she said. How
is this possible, given the state’s historic rain and snow in
the 2023 water year and optimistic forecasts for the 2024 water
year? As of May 31, precipitation stood at 104% of normal for
the state, while major reservoirs are at 118% of normal,
according to figures compiled by California Water Watch.
Grass, meet spark. Bay Area residents, meet fire. The explosive
start to the 2024 fire season — the Corral Fire near Livermore
that tore through rolling grasslands and rapidly scorched more
acreage than the 1,253 previous California wildfires this year
combined — heralds the types of blazes experts say residents of
the Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California can expect in
coming weeks: fast-moving grass fires. What comes later depends
largely on the weather. … The Sierra Foothills and Sacramento
Valley are also facing normal wildfire threat levels.
California’s water supply could be in trouble, as a new study
has found that the state’s rivers and streams are severely
under monitored, posing serious risks to effective water
management. The study, published in Nature Sustainability,
stresses that while the state relies heavily on its rivers and
streams for water supply, flood control, biodiversity
conservation and hydropower generation, only 8 percent of
California’s rivers and streams are monitored by stream gauges,
devices used to measure water flow. The lack of monitoring
not only makes it difficult to manage water resources
efficiently but also hinders the ability to understand the
effects of climate change and conserve freshwater biodiversity.
… The study found that only 9 percent of California’s
large dams had stream gauges upstream or downstream to measure
water flow. The lack of monitoring hampers the ability to
manage water supply and control floods effectively, the
researchers said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta intensified his legal
fight against five of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies
Monday, filing an amended complaint that accuses Exxon Mobil,
Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and the American Petroleum
Institute of engaging in a prolonged campaign of deception
about the realities of climate change and the environmental
damage caused by fossil fuels. In the amended complaint, filed
Monday afternoon in San Francisco County Superior Court, the
attorney general introduces new evidence of false advertising
and greenwashing by the companies and seeks the disgorgement
remedy provided by Assembly Bill 1366, which was enacted
earlier this year. The remedy would require the defendants to
surrender profits obtained through their alleged illegal
activities, with the funds being directed to the newly
established Victims of Consumer Fraud Restitution
Fund. Related article:
Recently, former Panoche Drainage District general manager
Dennis Falaschi pled guilty in federal district court in Fresno
to having conspired to steal millions of gallons of
publicly-owned water from California’s Central Valley Project
(CVP) for private gain. This surreptitious water theft
apparently had been going on for well over two decades before
Falaschi was finally brought to justice.
… Unfortunately, the Falaschi case and conviction are
not isolated incidents. To the contrary, illegal
diversion, use and black market sales of the public’s finite
and precious water supplies have quite likely gone on for
decades, if not centuries.
Californians can soon enjoy a new state park at the heart of
the Central Valley, the first in about a decade. The Dos Rios
preserve, about 90 minutes east of San Francisco, is a lush
floodplain filled with green grass, shrubs and native trees
like cottonwood, willows and valley oaks. Visitors can hike
through miles of trail beginning this Wednesday, June 12. The
park is located eight miles east of Modesto near the
convergence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers. Until about
a decade ago, Dos Rios was a dairy and cattle ranch owned by
farmers who grew tomatoes and almonds. But year after year,
floods swept through, damaging the crops. In 2012, the owners
sold all 1,600 acres to River Partners, an environmental
nonprofit dedicated to conservation.
As crowds head to cool off in the water early this summer,
authorities at Discovery Park, Folsom Lake and other capital
region waterways are taking steps to prevent incidents such as
the ones that have occurred recently at other Northern
California watering holes. There have been various incidents
reported since Memorial Day involving fights and other unruly
crowds at Northern California waterways that have led to
arrests, injuries, and even death. … In Stanislaus County on
Sunday, 75 to 80 people had a confrontation with deputies who
were patrolling near Woodward Reservoir. At least six people
were arrested.
A sinkhole opened in the roadway in Madera on Monday, causing a
trailer of fertilizer to fall into the hole, according to the
California Highway Patrol. A truck driver suffered minor
injuries in the crash about 10:25 a.m. on Avenue 13 west of
Granada Drive, and the street was expected to be closed for
weeks as piping below ground was damaged, according to the CHP
and city officials. The city of Madera also asked its residents
to reduce water use to aid workers trying to fix the pipe,
which does not carry drinking water, officials said on social
media. “This is NOT a drinking water issue; drinking water
remains safe and unaffected,” the city said on the Madera
police Facebook page. “However, to assist in the repair efforts
and prevent further complications, which could result in sewage
backup, we ask that you please refrain from non-essential water
use.”
Dozens of environmental groups, renewable energy companies,
labor unions, water agencies and social justice advocates are
lobbying state lawmakers to place a multibillion dollar climate
bond on the November ballot. Sacramento lawmakers have been
bombarded with ads and pitches in support of a ballot proposal
that would have the state borrow as much as $10 billion to fund
projects related to the environment and climate change. “Time
to GO ALL IN on a Climate Bond,” says the ad from WateReuse
California, a trade association advocating for projects that
would recycle treated sewage and storm runoff into drinking
water. … Negotiations are ongoing in closed-door
meetings, but details emerged recently when two
spreadsheets of the proposed spending, one for an Assembly
bill known as AB 1567 and the other for the Senate’s SB 867,
were obtained by the news organization Politico. The two
plans, which would be combined into a single ballot measure,
include money for wildlife and land protection, safe drinking
water, shoring up the coast from erosion and wildfire
prevention.
California officials will formally open the state’s 281st state
park on Wednesday, and it’s an unusual one. Dos Rios is a
riverfront oasis in the San Joaquin Valley that offers a window
into what the region was like before it was transformed into an
agricultural powerhouse. The 1,600-acre property, eight miles
west of Modesto at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San
Joaquin Rivers, for decades housed dairy farms and almond
orchards. It has now been restored to a broad natural
floodplain, where visitors will be able to hike, watch birds
and other wildlife, and have a picnic along the riverbanks.
Officials hope to eventually add trails for bicycling and more
river access for swimming, angling and boating.
The future of the Colorado River is in the hands of seven
people. They rarely appear together in public. [Last week],
they did just that – speaking on stage at a water law
conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The solution
to the Colorado River’s supply-demand imbalance will be
complicated. Their message in Boulder was simple: These things
take time. “We’re 30 months out,” said John Entsminger,
Nevada’s top water negotiator. “We’re very much in the second
or third inning of this baseball game that we’re playing here.”
The audience was mostly comprised of the people who will feel
the impact of their decisions most sharply – leaders from some
of the 30 Native American tribes that use Colorado River water,
nonprofit groups that advocate for the plants and animals
living along its banks, and managers of cities and farms that
depend on its flows.
In the form of a grant described as coming from a “brand-new”
source of infrastructure funding, the group hoping to continue
diversions from the Eel River to the Russian River in Mendocino
County has received $2 million from the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, federal officials announced during a visit to
Ukiah Friday. “Your success is reclamation’s success, and we
are committed to that,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner M.
Camille Calimlim Touton told the group gathered at Coyote
Valley Dam along Lake Mendocino June 7 to hear Rep. Jared
Huffman (D – San Rafael) announce the award of $2 million to
the Eel-Russian River Authority to help the group of regional
stakeholders study how best to approach the possible continued
diversion of Eel River water to the Russian River once the dams
created for the Potter Valley Project have been removed, a plan
being called the Two-Basin Solution.
The city of Bakersfield and California Water Service Co. on
Sunday lifted the do-not-drink, do-not-use advisory issued
Tuesday to 42 commercial customers south of Lake Truxtun after
an oil company reportedly allowed pressurized natural gas and
crude oil into the municipal water system.
Sonoma Water has begun the annual multiday task of inflating
the rubber dam located in the Russian River to prepare for
summer water demands. The agency began work after the 95-degree
temperatures in the June 4 and 5 heat wave led to a spike in
water use, said Andrea Rodriguez, communications manager with
Sonoma Water. The rubber dam, downstream of the Wohler Bridge
near Forestville, is vital to the county’s water supply system,
which supplies naturally filtered drinking water to more than
600,000 residents in Sonoma and Marin counties. The dam creates
a pool of water that allows the agency to refill nearby
infiltration ponds, which are then used to recharge
groundwater.
Today, it’s common to see farms covered in plastic. It lines
the sides of greenhouses, blankets fields as “plastic mulch,”
covers hoop houses, and winds through farms as irrigation
tubes, among other forms. In satellite images, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has observed the
typically golden and green agricultural fields turned white, as
though dusted in snow, from all of the plastic. Agriculture is
responsible for 3.5 percent of global plastic production, a
figure that may seem small until you consider the sheer volume
of plastics produced: around 400 million metric tons per year.
… Microplastics pervade every part of the Earth, from
the bottom of the ocean floor to all forms of drinking water to
the human placenta.
Famous for its lush vineyards and cherished local wineries,
Napa Valley is where people go to escape their problems. …
What the more than 3 million annual tourists don’t see,
however, is that California’s wine country has a brewing
problem – one that has spurred multiple ongoing government
investigations and created deep divisions. Some residents and
business owners fear it poses a risk to the region’s reputation
and environment. At the heart of the fear is the decades-old
Clover Flat Landfill (CFL), perched on the northern edge of the
valley atop the edge of a rugged mountain range. Two streams
run adjacent to the landfill as tributaries to the Napa
River.
Now that the EPA has finalized the first-ever national, legally
enforceable drinking water standards to protect communities
from six widespread PFAS compounds, public water systems will
be facing significant implications. According to the new
National Primary Drinking Water Regulation, initial monitoring
for these PFAS must be completed by 2027 (and followed by
ongoing monitoring), and by 2029, systems must mitigate these
PFAS if drinking water levels exceed the federal maximum
contaminant levels (MCLs).
The second phase of the San Dieguito Lagoon restoration reached
a significant milestone last week. On June 6, a collection of
SANDAG and Caltrans engineers and biologists gathered to
witness the active release of berm at the restoration project
site, opening up the saltwater marsh inlet to the tidal flow.
Rather than sending an epic torrent of water into the lagoon,
an excavator simply moved some dirt aside and the water slowly
began to trickle in. Kim Smith, SANDAG senior regional planner,
said while it may have appeared anticlimactic, it was an
incredibly exciting moment for staff to see on a project about
12 years in the making. … Water will flow through the
new inlet as the construction continues in its final months of
a three and a half year process, anticipated to be complete in
September. Eventually water will flow nearly all the way to El
Camino Real, stopping near the SDG&E utility corridor that
runs through the site.
