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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A Southern California environmental group is suing the U.S.
Forest Service for allowing bottled water company BlueTriton
Brands to pipe water out of the San Bernardino National Forest.
The nonprofit group Save Our Forest Assn. filed the lawsuit in
federal court, arguing the Forest Service violated federal laws
by allowing the company to continue piping water from boreholes
and water tunnels in the San Bernardino Mountains. The
environmental group said the extraction of water, which is
bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, has
dramatically reduced the flow of Strawberry Creek and is
causing significant environmental harm.
Dams and reservoirs are often needed to provide environmental
water and maintain suitable water temperatures for downstream
ecosystems. Here, we evaluate if water allocated to the
environment, with storage to manage it, might allow
environmental water to more reliably meet ecosystem objectives
than a proportion of natural flow. We use a priority-based
water balance operations model and a reservoir temperature
model to evaluate 1) pass-through of a portion of reservoir
inflow versus 2) allocating a portion of storage capacity and
inflow for downstream flow and stream temperature objectives.
We compare trade-offs to other senior and junior priority water
demands. In many months, pass-through flows exceed the volumes
needed to meet environmental demands. Storage provides the
ability to manage release timing to use water efficiently for
environmental benefit, with a co-benefit of increasing
reservoir storage to protect cold-water at depth in the
reservoir. (The researchers are affiliated with the Public Policy
Institute of California, Stanford University, University of
North Carolina, University of Essex and Blue Point Conservation
Science.)
Local water bills might not be going up quite as sharply next
year as expected. The [San Diego] County Water Authority’s
board tentatively shrank a proposed rate hike for wholesale
water from 18 percent to 14 percent on Thursday — despite
concerns the move could hurt the water authority’s credit
rating. An increase in wholesale rates will force nearly every
local water agency to pass on the extra costs to its customers,
but just how much gets passed on could vary widely. Some
agencies buy less wholesale water than others, especially those
with groundwater basin storage or other local water supplies.
The board delayed a final vote on the proposed 2025 increase to
its July 25 meeting, but a coalition led by the city of San
Diego had enough support Thursday to reduce the increase to 14
percent. It would be part of a three-year set of rate hikes
that would cumulatively raise rates by more than 40 percent
when compounded — if the board also follows through on a 16.4
percent increase in 2026 and a 5.7 percent increase in 2027.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1972 Clean
Water Act should only apply to waters that are navigable
year-round, and not to ephemeral streams — waterways that
are underground for much of the year, until there is
significant rainfall. In doing so, the court significantly
rolled back federal environmental protections that had been
around for half a century. A new study seeks, for the first
time, to quantify the volume of water that was affected by last
year’s ruling. According to the paper, published Thursday in
the journal Science, ephemeral streams are responsible for
roughly 55% of all water that comes from regional river systems
in the U.S. In other words, more than half of the water flowing
in and out of rivers in the U.S. is no longer under the
protection of federal law. This newly opened loophole in the
Clean Water Act could have massive implications, the study’s
authors say. Waterways are, after all, connected, and
pollutants from one stream inevitably make their way
downstream. … Some states, like California, have their own
protections. But many do not, and have relied on federal law,
which gives third parties the right to sue for polluting
waterways. Much of the enforcement of the Clean Water Act is
done by nonprofits like the Waterkeeper Alliance and
Riverkeeper suing polluters. Now, it will be left up to the
states to regulate ephemeral streams.
Christina Hecht remembers how water made its way into school
lunch law because the process was unusually easy. Back in the
mid-2000s, a researcher toured school cafeterias in California
and wondered, “What are these kids to do if they want a drink
of water?” said Hecht, a policy adviser at the University of
California’s Nutrition Policy Institute. At the time, 40% of
the state’s schools failed to offer free water in their
cafeterias. That fact eventually reached the then governor and
former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, who moved to pass SB
1413 requiring schools to offer free, fresh water during
mealtimes. Advocates then used California’s example to convince
US senators working on 2010’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act
(HHFKA) – a federal package setting nutrition standards and
food funding for public schools and childcare centers – to add
drinking water to that legislation, too. … Yet experts
say that 14 years after the passage of the HHFKA, many schools
are still falling short of its potable water requirement.
It’s officially summer, and the Utah Water Conditions Update is
here from the Utah Division of Water Resources, and the
headlines are positive. Reservoirs are at 92% capacity, 88% of
streams are flowing at normal to above-normal and Great Salt
Lake has risen 6.5 feet since its historic low in 2022.
According to the report, most of Utah’s snowpack has melted.
Streams and reivers and running high, fast and cold, which
creates dangerous conditions. The Park Record reported earlier
this week that Wasatch County Search and Rescue has been called
in to the Provo River frequently in the last two weeks due to
recreationists falling in the rushing river, which has picked
up due to snowpack melt.
The Bureau of Reclamation today announced the selection of Rain
Emerson to assume the role of deputy area manager for the
South-Central California Area Office for the California-Great
Basin Region. The role will serve as a deputy to the SCCAO area
manager and advise on planning, coordinating, managing and
directing of program activities. The office encompasses
the San Francisco Bay-Delta, San Joaquin Valley, and
the south coast area including Santa Barbara and Ventura
counties.
The tangle of pipes at this industrial plant [in Corpus
Christi, Texas] doesn’t stand out in this city built around the
carbon-heavy business of pumping oil and refining it into fuel
for planes, ships, trucks and cars. But this plant produces
fuel from a different source, one that doesn’t belch greenhouse
pollution: hydrogen. Specifically, hydrogen made from water
using renewable electricity, also known as green hydrogen. This
process could represent the biggest change in how fuel for
planes, ships, trains and trucks is made since the first
internal combustion engine fired up in the 19th century. …
Turning hydrogen into liquid fuel could help slash
planet-warming pollution from heavy vehicles, cutting a key
source of emissions that contribute to climate change. But to
fulfill that promise, companies will have to build massive
numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to power the
energy-hungry process. Regulators will have to make sure
hydrogen production doesn’t siphon green energy that could go
towards cleaning up other sources of global warming gases, such
as homes or factories.
In 2022–23, the state of California allocated $100 million to
the University of California to fund research grants supporting
climate change resilience in communities across the state.
Three of the California Climate Action Seed Grant-funded
research projects are establishing collaborations between
academic institutions and Tribal nations to support climate
change resilience through tribal resource management. The
projects involve investigating pinyon pine forest ecology and
cultural values in the Eastern Sierra, monitoring fisheries on
the North Coast, and surveying the changing landscapes of
California Indian Public Domain Lands.
Contra Costa County received $1,499,285 from the California
Ocean Protection Council’s Senate Bill 1 Sea Level Rise
Adaptation Planning Grant Program, which aims to provide
funding for coastal communities to develop plans to combat sea
level rise and projects to build resilience along the entire
coast of California and the San Francisco Bay, according to a
press release from the state. The Contra Costa Resilient
Shoreline Plan will create a comprehensive roadmap to address
sea level rise across the entire 90-miles of the county’s
shoreline with a focus on impacted communities. It will serve a
coordinating and organizational role for local plans in
alignment with Bay Conservation and Development Commission
guidelines and explore natural and constructed infrastructure
improvements.
New research further magnifies the growing risk rising
groundwater poses to San Francisco and other low-lying Bay Area
cities. The nonprofit SPUR (the San Francisco Bay Area Planning
and Urban Research Association) and the East Palo Alto
community organization Nuestra Casa released a study earlier
this week analyzing the impacts groundwater rise could have on
East Palo Alto. The research centered on the Peninsula city
because of its proximity to the water, making it one of the Bay
Area jurisdictions most susceptible to groundwater rise. But
the findings, researchers said, can be applied to all of the
Bay Area’s at-risk cities, including San Francisco. Groundwater
is rainwater that is stored underground in soils. It provides
50% of Americans’ drinking water and is a key resource for crop
irrigation and agricultural production. But as sea levels rise
due to climate change, groundwater is pushed up further towards
the surface. The closer the groundwater table gets to the
surface, the less capacity the soil has to absorb rain and,
consequently, the more likely heavy precipitation will cause
flooding, damage infrastructure and mobilize soil pollutants
like pesticides and asbestos.
The Tuolumne Utilities District held a ceremonial ribbon
cutting marking the completion of the successful
overhaul/replacement of the Sonora Regional Wastewater
Treatment facility. The project commenced in October of 2021
and the updated operation, on the outskirts of Sonora, now has
the ability to treat an average of two million gallons of
wastewater per day. The $42-million project replaces an
outdated plant built in the 1970s. The project site was
strategically contained within the footprint of the existing
treatment plant on Southgate Drive.
Scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) Southwest Climate Hub and California Climate Hub have
developed a browsable map-based tool that addresses water
scarcity in the U.S. Southwest. The Water Adaptation Techniques
Atlas (WATA) consolidates over 200 case studies on research and
practices that water managers and producers can use to find
location-specific and topical information to make informed
decisions regarding water management. … water scarcity has
become a pressing issue with extremely hot temperatures and
severe prolonged droughts in a region already challenged by its
arid and semi-arid conditions. As reservoir and aquifer levels
drop, information about strategies to adapt to this new reality
is urgently needed. WATA provides information based on research
from USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and other sources
about practices for lessening the gap between water demand and
available supply, with an emphasis on cropping and irrigation
practices across the Southwest, including Arizona, California,
Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
It’s around 9:30am on the banks of Penitencia Creek in San
Jose, and Santa Clara Valley Water is here for creek clean-up.
This public agency that provides water to county residents is
charged with keeping water sources clean and preventing
floods. … Valley Water is getting $3 million in federal
funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to ramp up the
cleanups across nine of the county’s creeks, and undo other
ecological damage—like fixing up human-dug caves and stairways
along river banks, or removing rafts of entangled trash that
are clogging salmonid streams. But with no long-term housing
solution for the people living in the camps, trash and damage
tends to reappear rapidly. Most camps are cleaned up on a
monthly or quarterly basis. The whole operation (trash
compactor, laboring crew, police escort, and all) is as
expensive as it looks.
A family of beavers — three adults, one subadult and three
babies, known as “kits” — were released into the South Fork
Tule River watershed on June 12, the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife said. Two other beavers were released into
Miner Creek on June 17. … A decade ago, tribal leaders
called for the animals to be returned, driven by traditional
Indigenous knowledge about beavers’ importance to the ecosystem
— and inspired by the 500-to-1,000-year-old beaver images left
at the Yokuts village site known as Painted Rock. In 2022, Fish
and Wildlife received state funding to start a restoration
program to prepare sites in California for the semiaquatic
animals. Beavers aid the environment by building dams that help
to keep landscapes well-hydrated and more resilient in droughts
and wildfires. That enhanced water retention could also protect
the Tule River Indian Tribe’s drinking water supply — 80% of
which comes from the river’s watershed, the CDFW said.
It’s been two and a half months since the state brought the
hammer down on water managers in Kings County for lacking an
adequate plan to stem overpumping in the region and the
situation is, in a word – chaotic. One groundwater
sustainability agency (GSA) has imploded, leaving the county to
potentially pick up the pieces. Another doesn’t have enough
money in the bank to pay its newly hired manager. One GSA
has repeatedly canceled meetings, others appear to be crafting
their own plans and one is banking on being exempted as a “good
actor,” despite the state’s repeated insistence that there will
be no such exemptions in San Joaquin Valley basins now under
scrutiny. Oh, and the Farm Bureau is suing the state Water
Resources Control Board over its vote April 16 to put the
region, the Tulare Lake subbasin, into probation – the first
step toward a possible state pumping takeover. All this while a
deadline is rapidly approaching July 15 for all Kings County
pumpers to register their wells and begin tracking their
groundwater consumption.
… The budget battle is not over … Legislators are still
working out two bond measures that will ask voters in November
to allow California to borrow even more money for school
facilities and climate change-related programs. Senate
President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, on Monday
confirmed lawmakers will seek to extend the deadline for adding
measures to the November ballot from June 27 to July
3. Lawmakers have sliced budget dollars for climate change
and school facilities, an indication they’re hoping to use bond
money to fill those holes. The spending plan agreement includes
hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to water
storage projects, climate resilience
initiatives and dam safety as well as a handful of
other related reductions. … Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica,
and Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, have climate
bonds, both of which seek more than $15 billion for water
quality and conservation, wildfire prevention, coastal
preservation, clean energy projects and more.
Related political and water infrastructure stories:
Stephen Roe Lewis grew up seeing stacks of legal briefs at the
dinner table — often, about his tribe’s water. His father, the
late Rodney Lewis, was general counsel for the Gila River
Indian Community and fought for the tribe’s rights to water in
the Southwest, eventually securing in 2004 the largest Native
American water settlement in U.S. history. Years later, Stephen
would become governor of the tribe, whose reservation is about
a half-hour south of downtown Phoenix. Amid his tenure, he’s
been pivotal in navigating a water crisis across the
seven-state Colorado River basin caused by existential drought
made worse by climate change and decades of Western states
overdrawing from the river. Lewis, 56, has leveraged the Gila
River tribe’s water abundance to help Arizona, making his tribe
a power player in the parched region. His fingerprints are on
many recent, high-stakes decisions made in the West about the
future of the river that supports 40 million people, and the
tribe’s influence is only growing.
With California experiencing extreme swings between severe
drought to torrential rain, the Department of Water Resources
(DWR) wanted to see if the State Water Project’s largest
reservoir, Lake Oroville, had shrunk (or lost storage capacity)
due to weather swings and almost six decades of service. DWR
utilized the latest terrain-mapping technology to determine if
there have been any changes in the lake’s volume to optimize
how the reservoir is operated and ensure accuracy in estimating
California’s water supply availability. … Starting with
an airplane-mounted LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) laser
system, DWR took advantage of the lake’s historically low water
levels in 2021 to first map portions of the basin that would
typically be under water during normal years. Then a boat
outfitted with multibeam-sonar bathymetry instruments spent
weeks in 2022 sending sonar pulses into the depths of Lake
Oroville to map its underwater surface terrain. What resulted
were highly detailed 3D topographic terrain models of the
bottom of the lake, which DWR engineers used to calculate a new
storage capacity of 3,424,753 acre-feet, approximately 3
percent less than previously estimated.
Thursday [June 27] is doomsday for water prices in San Diego.
That’s when the region’s water importer – the San Diego County
Water Authority – debates whether to boost its prices a
whopping 18 percent come Jan. 1. The price increase is massive
compared to previous rate increases, and the Water Authority’s
biggest customer, the city of San Diego, is pretty ticked off.
… San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria directed his powerful
contingent of 10 water board members to fight the increase. We
won’t know how hard they’ll fight until the full 33-member
board meets Thursday afternoon to vote on it. Gloria’s
administration is building a water recycling project, which
costs billions of dollars. Once its built, in 2035, San Diego
won’t buy as much water from the Water Authority. But for now,
San Diegans are saddled with the cost of building water
recycling and purchasing expensive water from outside city
boundaries.