“Infrastructure” in general can be defined as the components and
equipment needed to operate, as well as the structures needed
for, public works systems. Typical examples include roads,
bridges, sewers and water supply systems.Various dams and
infrastructural buildings have given Californians and the West
the opportunity to control water, dating back to the days of
Native Americans.
Water management infrastructure focuses on the parts, including
pipes, storage reservoirs, pumps, valves, filtration and
treatment equipment and meters, as well as the buildings to
house process and treatment equipment. Irrigation infrastructure
includes reservoirs, irrigation canals. Major flood control
infrastructure includes dikes, levees, major pumping stations and
floodgates.
The City is letting some people in the county who get their
water from wells instead hook up to its city water supply
for free. The work to the water tank started in October and now
crews are welding the red steel panels as part of the base of
the massive tank. It’s a milestone for the one million gallon
water tank project underway. … The City Manager, Pete Carr,
said the water tank will bring water to 185 homes and a mobile
home park with 75 residents and fire hydrants to neighborhoods
which previously had none. The city received $16 million in
state grants for the project.
The Bureau of Reclamation has announced a $134 million award
for the proposed Sites Reservoir Project. This new water
storage project would be the second largest off-stream
reservoir in the nation and would increase Northern
California’s water storage capacity by up to 15 percent. The
award, funded by the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the
Nation Act, previously received $389.65 million and was also
authorized $256.5 million from the Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act, for a total of $780.15 million in federal
contributions to date.
A packed veterans hall in the northern Sonoma County city of
Cloverdale became the latest battleground in Northern
California’s escalating water war. On March 20, Cloverdale
Mayor Todd Lands hosted a town hall that brought together
community members from across the region to discuss the future
of the Potter Valley Project. … Although PG&E
announced its plan to give up control of the diversion system a
decade ago, the March 20 gathering was the first town
hall-style public meeting that invited Russian River officials
and residents to question the plan’s impact, voice concerns and
demand answers about the path forward. The meeting, which
SFGATE attended, drew a strong turnout from Russian River
residents critical of the decommissioning plans, reflecting
deep community frustration about how PG&E’s plans could
fundamentally change water availability throughout the
region.
Project Nexus: California’s first solar-covered canals. The
initiative that’s been years in the making is now generating
electricity while conserving the state’s water supply. The
solar panels sit over Turlock Irrigation District canals in
Central California. … The project is funded by the state and is
a public-private-academic partnership between Turlock
Irrigation District, Solar AquaGrid, UC Merced and the
California Department of Water Resources. Project Nexus stems
from a 2021 research project by UC Merced alumni and project
scientist, Brandi McKuin. Her study found covering canals with
solar panels reduces evaporation while generating power – and
brings other benefits.
Amid rising concerns about California’s water future, the fifth
largest reservoir in the state is primed for expansion. A
coalition of water agencies, from Silicon Valley to Fresno, has
agreed to partner with the federal government to raise the
382-foot-tall dam at San Luis Reservoir, the giant holding pool
that looms as a small sea along Highway 152 in the hills
between Gilroy and Los Banos. The dam’s enlargement would allow
the federally owned reservoir to take in 130,000 acre-feet of
additional water, equal to the annual use of more than 260,000
households. … While the proposed expansion hasn’t faced
significant opposition — no small feat for such a large
undertaking — a sticking point has emerged: a plan to move the
nearby highway, accounting for nearly half of the cost of the
$1 billion project.
An initiative led by faculty from seven top research
universities — six of which are in California — aims to
accelerate the deployment of solar arrays over the state’s
extensive canal network. According to a 2021 UC Merced study
published in Nature Sustainability, covering large sections of
the state’s 4,000 miles of canals with solar panels could help
conserve water, reduce air pollution, save land and generate
clean energy using existing land and infrastructure. The
California Solar Canal Initiative (CSCI) research project aims
to accelerate the deployment of solar canals across the state
by equipping government agencies, utilities, community members
and other interested parties with data on optimal locations and
identifying willing host communities.
The Bureau of Reclamation has announced the award of a
$115,900,000 contract to AMES Federal Contracting Group of
Burnsville, Minnesota, for the construction of a new spillway
at Hyrum Dam. Hyrum Dam was built on the Little Bear River in
northern Utah in 1935 and impounds Hyrum Reservoir, which
provides water storage for irrigation and municipal use.
In addition to continued repairs and modifications over the
years, operators have done their best to minimize the amount of
water released through the spillway. … “The spillway at Hyrum
Dam is used every year to release excess water downstream, and
though continuous maintenance has occurred on the spillway
since its construction, the 90-year-old structure is in need of
replacement,” said Reclamation Upper Colorado Basin
Regional Director Wayne Pullan.
Drinking water has earned a “C-” on the 2025 American Society
of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Report Card for America’s
Infrastructure, which is the same score it received in 2021.
ASCE released the report card grading America’s infrastructure
on March 25, 2025, where the country received an overall grade
of “C,” its highest ever score. ASCE drinking water report card
The ASCE Report Card highlighted the need for funding and
building more resilient infrastructure. According to ASCE, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the
nation’s water infrastructure needs stand at $625 billion over
20 years, exceeding EPA’s 2018 assessment by more than $150
billion. … The report highlighted new funding opportunities,
such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA),
which invested more than $30 billion for drinking water
improvements, removal of lead service lines and addressing
emerging contaminants like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS).
When the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Board of Directors
meets again this Wednesday, it will be hot on the heels of a
relatively contentious meeting that took place March 12 wherein
the board voted on what would become of properties that were
initially designated as surplus land for what was intended to
be part of the now-abandoned Centennial Dam project. Greg
Jones, Assistant General Manager for NID, proposed the
resolution to declare 17 properties, mostly residential and in
the Bear River region in the footprint of the Centennial
Reservoir, exempt surplus land for certain real property
purchased. … The 17 properties include residential units
ranging from mobile homes to houses valued at over $1
million.
At its February 13, 2025, meeting, the Mendocino County Inland
Water & Power Commission (IWPC) discussed a landmark Memorandum
of Understanding (MOU) that sets the stage for a New
Eel-Russian Diversion Facility (NERF). … IWPC also
discussed efforts to restart the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE)
Feasibility Study on raising Coyote Dam, a long-debated project
aimed at increasing water storage capacity in the Upper Russian
River Watershed. Coyote Dam was originally designed to be
36 feet taller, but funding shortfalls prevented the full
construction. Increasing the dam height would allow more water
to be stored for dry-season use, especially as flows from the
Potter Valley Project decrease.
More than 200 people from Humboldt to Marin counties packed the
Cloverdale Veterans Memorial Hall Thursday night for a town
hall meeting about how PG&E’s planned shutdown of its
Potter Valley hydropower plant would impact the region’s water
supply. The controversial project involves the removal of the
Scott and Cape Horn dams and PG&E’s nearby hydroelectric
facility in Lake County, with PG&E saying it won’t shut
down the plant and begin dam removal until 2028 at the
earliest. Residents and some elected officials are
concerned the project will spark the potential loss of water
from the Eel River to the Russian River that individuals from
Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties have relied on for more
than 100 years.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has fixed or
replaced the vast majority of fire hydrants flagged for repairs
in last year’s inspections after a long delay by the L.A. Fire
Department in forwarding the inspection results, officials
confirmed this week. The LAFD — which is contracted to annually
inspect 66,000 fire hydrants across the city — had identified
at least 1,350 hydrants in need of repair, according to its
2024 inspection. But the department did not properly transmit
the data to DWP in August, a lapse that came to light only
after the Palisades fire when LAFD shared its year-old
inspection data with KCBS-TV. DWP finally received the data
Feb. 14.
Over $500 million is on the table for water storage projects
across California. Options on how to allocate this money were
discussed at the February meeting, and a final decision on
funding was expected to be made at the March 19 meeting.
However, the commissioners ultimately decided to withhold the
majority of the money, at least for now. Most of the available
funding came from the failed Los Vaqueros Reservoir
expansion in Contra Costa County. $453.7 million was
returned to the California Water Commission Water Storage
Investment Program (WSIP) following the collapse of the
project.
Six months after the collapse of a $1.5 billion plan to expand
Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County to provide more
water to Bay Area residents, state officials began Wednesday to
redistribute nearly half a billion dollars that had been
earmarked for the failed project. The California Water
Commission, a panel appointed by the governor, voted 7-0 to
give $73 million immediately to the Harvest Water Program in
Sacramento County, in addition to $291 million it had
previously provided. … But the commission punted Wednesday on a
question being closely watched by water managers around the
state: When will it dole out the rest of the Los Vaqueros
money? And which other reservoirs and other water storage
projects being planned around California will receive it?
Mexico will invest $6.1bn on 17 water projects in regions hit
by drought and flooding over the next six years, news website
Aquínoticias reports. The country is increasingly prone to
drought partly as a result of climate change and partly through
rapid urbanisation, which are draining aquifers. The work will
help 36 million people, said Efraín Morales López, director
general of Conagua, which manages Mexico’s water
infrastructure. He said $750m would be spent in the coming
year, and would fund site preparation for a desalination plant,
aqueducts and flood protection. The plant will be built in
Rosarito, Baja California, with a six-year investment of around
$600m. It will provide water to the Tijuana area, benefiting 6
million residents. Work will begin in November.
Last week, the Sites Reservoir Project received $134 million in
federal funding from the Water Infrastructure Improvement for
the Nation Act (WIIN Act), which provides funding to help
improve water infrastructure around the United States. … With
the $134 million investment, the Sites Reservoir Project has
been designated a total of $780.15 million in federal
contributions to date. The Sites Project Authority says that
they will continue to work with the United States Bureau of
Reclamation on achieving their 16% participation goal as space
in the reservoir becomes available and sufficient funds are
appropriated to the project.
New research released today by the Pacific Institute and
DigDeep outlines over 100 actionable strategies for frontline
communities’ water and sanitation systems in the face of
intensifying climate impacts while addressing systemic
inequities. This report, “Achieving Equitable,
Climate-Resilient Water and Sanitation for Frontline
Communities,” defines specific attributes of equitable,
climate-resilient water and sanitation that are key to
advancing solutions to the climate crisis. … The report
identifies eight categories of attributes and strategies for
achieving equitable, climate-resilient water and sanitation
systems.
Other climate change and water science and analysis:
From my home in Los Angeles, I witnessed the devastation of
wildfires earlier this year and how they underscored the rising
urgency to modernize water infrastructure. … As wildfires grow
more frequent and intense, it becomes even more urgent to adapt
our water infrastructure to meet this new reality. Much of the
nation’s water infrastructure is nearing the end of its
lifespan. And yet, modernizing drinking and wastewater systems
could exceed $744 billion in costs over the next 20
years. Between the urgent need to upgrade decades-old
systems and the rising impacts of climate-driven weather
extremes, the vast networks of pipes, treatment plants, and
drainage systems across the U.S. are under immense strain. –Written by Kirsten James, senior program director for
water at the nonprofit sustainability organization Ceres.
Trump administration workforce cuts at federal agencies
overseeing U.S. dams are threatening their ability to provide
reliable electricity, supply farmers with water and protect
communities from floods, employees and industry experts warn.
The Bureau of Reclamation provides water and hydropower to the
public in 17 western states. Nearly 400 agency workers have
been cut through the Trump reduction plan, an administration
official said. “Reductions-in-force” memos have also been
sent to current workers, and more layoffs are expected.
Other environmental and public resource agency job
cut news:
Representatives of California, Arizona and Nevada are urging
the Trump administration to take a different approach in
confronting the problems of the water-starved Colorado River.
As Trump’s appointees inherit the task of writing new rules for
dealing with the river’s chronic water shortages, the three
states are raising several concerns they want to see addressed.
One of their top asks: consider fixing or overhauling Glen
Canyon Dam. … If the levels of Lake Powell continue to
decline and reach critically low levels, water could be
released only through four 8-foot-wide steel tubes. … Last
year, federal officials discovered damage inside those
four tubes that could severely restrict water flow
when reservoir levels are low.
Small water and wastewater utilities would get a boost to their
cybersecurity defenses under a bipartisan Senate bill that a
pair of lawmakers re-introduced Thursday. Sens. Catherine
Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., are taking
another swing at the Cybersecurity for Rural Water Systems Act
after the legislation stalled out in the 118th Congress. The
bill would update and expand the Department of Agriculture’s
Circuit Rider Program, which provides technical assistance to
rural water systems. The lawmakers’ legislation calls on the
program to develop protocols to bolster water systems’ cyber
defenses and provide additional aid to improve
protections.
The U.S. has paused negotiations with Canada on a keystone
management plan that governs flood control, water supply and
hydropower in the shared Columbia River Basin as President
Donald Trump escalates his trade war and threats to Canada’s
sovereignty. British Columbia’s energy ministry said in a news
release this week that Trump administration officials notified
them they would pause and review their engagement with Canada
on final updates to the 61-year-old Columbia River Treaty. …
Under the terms of the treaty, Canada controls the flow of the
northwest’s largest river from its headwaters in British
Columbia, ensuring enough water is sent downstream to meet U.S.
hydropower needs.
The California Department of Water Resources Thursday released
a report that shows a change to reservoir operations at both
Lake Oroville and New Bullards Bar Reservoir can further reduce
flood risks for communities along the Feather River and Yuba
River during extreme atmospheric storm events and potentially
benefit water supply during drier periods. The DWR says that
this approach, known as the Forecast-Informed Reservoir
Operations, or FIRO for short, uses improved monitoring,
weather, and runoff projections.
Decarbonization and water technology startup Capture6 announced
that it has raised $27.5 million in a Series A funding round,
with proceeds aimed at advancing its projects converting water
treatment brine into a carbon removal solution, while also
recovering fresh water. Established in 2021, California and New
Zealand-based Capture 6 offers a solution that simultaneously
provides carbon removal and water treatment, and connects
directly with existing water infrastructure. The company has
developed a system that transforms waste brine, a byproduct of
many water treatment and desalination methods that is expensive
to dispose of, into a solvent that mineralizes CO2. This
material can then be used to trap the carbon produced in the
water treatment process.
A desalination plant in Baja California. A large-scale water
storage project in the Mexico City metropolitan area. A flood
prevention initiative in Tabasco. A new system of reservoirs in
Sonora. All these water infrastructure projects — and more than
a dozen more — are slated to be built in the coming years
in Mexico, a country where water scarcity is a major
concern. National Water Commission (Conagua) General
Director Efraín Morales said Wednesday at President Claudia
Sheinbaum’s morning press conference that federal and state
authorities will invest more than 120 billion pesos in
strategic water infrastructure projects between 2025 and 2030.
Farmers and others reliant on water provided by the Bureau of
Reclamation are warning that staffing cuts at the agency could
threaten access to supplies — and in one case are offering to
step into the breach to help keep flows moving. Reclamation,
like other federal agencies operating under a directive from
the White House and so-called Department of Government
Efficiency, has been actively reducing its staff across the 17
states where it manages canals, reservoirs, dams and hydropower
facilities. That leaves open concerns that the agency
won’t merely be short-staffed, but lack employees who are
literally responsible for turning on pumps and releasing water
to irrigators, said Shane Leonard, who serves as secretary and
district manager for the Kennewick Irrigation District.
Other Bureau of Reclamation and water agency news:
A plan to build a new reservoir in Stanislaus County is getting
some pushback. The Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir would basically
cover the current Del Puerto Canyon Road, west of Interstate 5.
The project would cause a roadway and power lines to be
rerouted. The reservoir would hold water to be used for local
agriculture. The Del Puerto Water District’s Patterson general
manager, Anthea Hansen, said hundreds of thousands of acres of
land would benefit the district, as the current water supply it
uses is unreliable. … In a Stanislaus County Board of
Supervisors meeting, some residents in the community expressed
concerns about the project.
The Oroville Dam Citizens Advisory Committee met Friday to
address safety and flood concerns, as well as the next steps to
improve the Oroville levee. The levee that protects Downtown
Oroville from flooding is over a hundred years old and has
fallen into disrepair in recent decades. … The Army Corps
of Engineers will be inspecting the levee to determine what
needs to be done next to improve it. As for the cost to make
those repairs, for local leaders, the hope is to have DWR cover
it.
Last month’s devastating fires in Los Angeles brought attention
to the need for California to build needed water storage
facilities throughout the state. Case in point is the proposed
expansion of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which was halted in
November after the Contra Costa Water District (CCWD) withdrew
from the plans. The CCWD board explained: “Beyond the
significant cost increase, there were several other significant
factors that led to this project – including decreased benefits
for partners, increased benefit uncertainty and insufficient
guarantees of backup water supplies for CCWD customers while
the reservoir is demolished and reconstructed.”
The Trump administration is pulling back on staff firings at
the federal agency that runs California’s sprawling water
system after the cuts threatened undercut President Donald
Trump’s order to maximize water deliveries to farms, according
to three agency staffers. The Bureau of Reclamation employees,
who were granted anonymity due to fear of reprisals, said
political officials have paused an additional planned round of
terminations across the federal agency that manages Western
water and are bringing back five previously fired employees of
the California office. The move comes after POLITICO reported
that the firings were impacting Reclamation’s ability to
operate facilities that are crucial to carrying out Trump’s
executive orders calling for California water supplies to be
dialed up.
Chandler, Arizona, recently completed construction on its $44.6
million Reclaimed Water Interconnect Facility (RWIF). The
facility treats water from the Salt, Verde and Colorado rivers
and utilizes Chandler’s reclaimed water distribution system for
delivery to several aquifer recharge sites owned by the city.
The RWIF project, completed by general contractor McCarthy
Building Companies, is a membrane water treatment facility that
allows the city to increase the volume of water delivered to
recharge the aquifer beneath the city and enhance the
sustainability of the aquifer. Aquifer health is a priority for
the city because groundwater is a reliable back-up supply that
may be needed during times of drought.
A massive new reservoir project in Northern Colorado is closer
to reality after its architects settled a lawsuit with an
environmental group seeking to block construction. The Northern
Integrated Supply Project, or NISP, will go ahead sooner than
expected after a lawsuit settlement. Northern Water will pay
$100 million into a trust after Save the Poudre, a nonprofit,
agreed to drop its lawsuit. That money will fund river
improvement projects. The controversial water project, which
will cost around $2 billion to build, has been tied up in
planning and permitting for more than two decades.
Communities in 27 states saw important progress for river
health, clean water, and public safety in 2024 thanks to the
removal of 108 outdated, unsafe, and uneconomical dams,
American Rivers announced today. 2024 tied with 2019 for the
most dams removed in a single year. The dam removals
reconnected more than 2,528 miles of rivers, improving river
habitats for fish and wildlife and public safety for thousands
of people across the country. A total of 2,240 dams have been
removed in the U.S. since 1912. The nation is blanketed with
more than 550,000 dams.
As wildfires burned across Los Angeles in early January,
nearly 200,000 people were put under evacuation orders. In
the weeks since, these residents have slowly started returning,
some to properties that were lost to the fires and others to
structures that seemed to be untouched but where less
visible threats lurk. That includes potential contaminants
coursing through the water pipes beneath their feet, which can
incur fire damage that takes days, if not weeks, to
address. … Experts say there is a need for government
officials and utility agencies across the United States to step
up their preparations and response to extreme weather events in
recognition that they have become more common and are
increasingly leaving communities cut off from the water sources
they rely on.
Nevada Irrigation District (NID) will continue to discuss the
selling of 17 parcels the District initially intended to serve
as land that would have been part of the Centennial Dam
project, which in September the board resolved it would not
move forward with. The California Surplus Lands Act (SLA) is
used to help governmental agencies, such as NID, focus on
various land uses including public amenities like parks and
schools. In recent years, the SLA has been used to promote
affordable housing in a time where such dwellings are less
plentiful. “Surplus land” basically refers to any land owned by
a local or state agency that is no longer necessary to the
agency’s use.
… If we’re serious about having enough water in
California, then our commitment to infrastructure must finally
meet our needs. A century ago, our nation and state had a
vision for building federal and state water infrastructure that
would build California into the fifth largest economy in the
world. But we haven’t made any substantial investments in
infrastructure since the 1970s, even though California’s
population has doubled. Here’s what we can do: Let’s get
serious about evaluating raising Shasta Dam. … We
should also make investments for ourselves, our children and
our grandchildren in projects like San Luis Reservoir expansion
in the San Joaquin Valley, Sites Reservoir in the Sacramento
Valley and canal conveyance so that California continues to
have a strong economy. –Written by Allison Febbo, general manager of Westlands
Water District.
The Trump administration has ordered firings and buyouts at the
federal agency that operates water infrastructure in
California, potentially jeopardizing the agency’s ability to
manage dams and deliver water, according to Central Valley
water officials. … The bureau, which employs about 1,000
people, is set to lose about 100 employees in California
through terminations and buyouts, eliminating about 10% of its
regional staff, one of the employees said. But larger workforce
reductions are slated, and the bureau has been ordered to
prepare plans to cut its staff by 40%, this person said. …
Internal documents reviewed by The Times show that the
positions being eliminated include maintenance mechanics,
engineers, fish biology specialists and others.
Other water and natural resource jobs and funding news across
the West:
Discussions among Kern County agricultural water districts on
whether to continue funding the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP)
are ramping up. … Kern ag district participation is key
to helping pay for the $20 billion project, as the districts,
collectively, make up the second largest contractor on the
State Water Project, at nearly 1 million acre feet per year.
The contract is held by the Kern County Water Agency on behalf
of 13 local ag districts. The Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California is the SWP’s largest contractor. MWD
recently agreed to pay its share of $141 million of $300
million the Department of Water Resources needs to begin the
planning and preconstruction phase of the project. The state is
waiting to hear whether Kern districts will pay their $33
million share.
Cities across California and the Southwest are significantly
increasing and diversifying their use of recycled wastewater as
traditional water supplies grow tighter.
The 5th edition of our Layperson’s Guide to Water Recycling
covers the latest trends and statistics on water reuse as a
strategic defense against prolonged drought and climate change.
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.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
Managers of California’s most
overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s
landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable,
detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered
basins into balance. It was a task that required more than 250
newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the
drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather
data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on
multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a
groundwater basin.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
As California slowly emerges from
the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, one remnant left behind by
the statewide lockdown offers a sobering reminder of the economic
challenges still ahead for millions of the state’s residents and
the water agencies that serve them – a mountain of water debt.
Water affordability concerns, long an issue in a state where
millions of people struggle to make ends meet, jumped into
overdrive last year as the pandemic wrenched the economy. Jobs
were lost and household finances were upended. Even with federal
stimulus aid and unemployment checks, bills fell by the wayside.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water
supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the
numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another
drought. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most
of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project
will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low
number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more
rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather
forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing. The National
Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and
windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
It’s been a year since two devastating wildfires on opposite ends
of California underscored the harsh new realities facing water
districts and cities serving communities in or adjacent to the
state’s fire-prone wildlands. Fire doesn’t just level homes, it
can contaminate water, scorch watersheds, damage delivery systems
and upend an agency’s finances.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
The San Joaquin Valley, known as the
nation’s breadbasket, grows a cornucopia of fruits, nuts and
other agricultural products.
During our three-day Central Valley Tour April
3-5, you will meet farmers who will explain how they prepare
the fields, irrigate their crops and harvest the produce that
helps feed the nation and beyond. We also will drive through
hundreds of miles of farmland and visit the rivers, dams,
reservoirs and groundwater wells that provide the water.
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
Get a unique view of the San Joaquin Valley’s key dams and
reservoirs that store and transport water on our March Central
Valley Tour.
Our Central Valley
Tour, March 14-16, offers a broad view of water issues
in the San Joaquin Valley. In addition to the farms, orchards,
critical habitat for threatened bird populations, flood bypasses
and a national wildlife refuge, we visit some of California’s
major water infrastructure projects.
One of the wettest years in California history that ended a
record five-year drought has rejuvenated the call for new storage
to be built above and below ground.
In a state that depends on large surface water reservoirs to help
store water before moving it hundreds of miles to where it is
used, a wet year after a long drought has some people yearning
for a place to sock away some of those flood flows for when they
are needed.
Contrary to popular belief, “100-Year Flood” does not refer to a
flood that happens every century. Rather, the term describes the
statistical chance of a flood of a certain magnitude (or greater)
taking place once in 100 years. It is also accurate to say a
so-called “100-Year Flood” has a 1 percent chance of occurring in
a given year, and those living in a 100-year floodplain have,
each year, a 1 percent chance of being flooded.
Mired in drought, expectations are high that new storage funded
by Prop. 1 will be constructed to help California weather the
adverse conditions and keep water flowing to homes and farms.
At the same time, there are some dams in the state eyed for
removal because they are obsolete – choked by accumulated
sediment, seismically vulnerable and out of compliance with
federal regulations that require environmental balance.
The proposed Sites Reservoir would
be an off-river storage basin on the west side of the Sacramento
Valley, about 78 miles northwest of Sacramento. It would capture
stormwater flows from the Sacramento River for release in dry
years for fish and wildlife, farms, communities and
businesses.
The water would be held in a 14,000-acre basin of grasslands
surrounded by the rolling eastern foothills of the Coast Range.
Known as Antelope Valley, the sparsely populated area in Glenn
and Colusa counties is used for livestock grazing.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch map, which is
suitable for framing, explains the river’s apportionment, history
and the need to adapt its management for urban growth and
expected climate change impacts.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various facilities, operations and benefits the water
project brings to the state along with the CVP
Improvement Act (CVPIA).
Dams have allowed Californians and others across the West to
harness and control water dating back to pre-European settlement
days when Native Americans had erected simple dams for catching
salmon.
This printed issue of Western Water examines water
infrastructure – its costs and the quest to augment traditional
brick-and-mortar facilities with sleeker, “green” features.
Everywhere you look water infrastructure is working hard to keep
cities, farms and industry in the state running. From the massive
storage structures that dot the West to the aqueducts that convey
water hundreds of miles to large urban areas and the untold miles
of water mains and sewage lines under every city and town, the
semiarid West would not exist as it does without the hardware
that meets its water needs.
This printed issue of Western Water discusses low
impact development and stormwater capture – two areas of emerging
interest that are viewed as important components of California’s
future water supply and management scenario.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
groundwater banking, a water management strategy with appreciable
benefits but not without challenges and controversy.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
changed nature of the California Water Plan, some aspects of the
2009 update (including the recommendation for a water finance
plan) and the reaction by certain stakeholders.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at some of
the pieces of the 2009 water legislation, including the Delta
Stewardship Council, the new requirements for groundwater
monitoring and the proposed water bond.
It’s no secret that providing water in a state with the size and
climate of California costs money. The gamut of water-related
infrastructure – from reservoirs like Lake Oroville to the pumps
and pipes that deliver water to homes, businesses and farms –
incurs initial and ongoing expenses. Throw in a new spate of
possible mega-projects, such as those designed to rescue the
ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the dollar amount grows
exponentially to billion-dollar amounts that rival the entire
gross national product of a small country.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
financing of water infrastructure, both at the local level and
from the statewide perspective, and some of the factors that
influence how people receive their water, the price they pay for
it and how much they might have to pay in the future.
They are located in urban areas and in some of the most rural
parts of the state, but they have at least one thing in common:
they provide water service to a very small group of people. In a
state where water is managed and delivered by an organization as
large as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California,
most small water systems exist in obscurity – financed by
shoestring budgets and operated by personnel who wear many hats.
This issue of Western Water looks at water
infrastructure – from the large conveyance systems to the small
neighborhood providers – and the many challenges faced by water
agencies in their continuing mission of assuring a steady and
reliable supply for their customers.
Chances are that deep within the ground beneath you as you read
this is a vast network of infrastructure that is busy providing
the necessary services that enable life to proceed at the pace it
does in the 21st century. Electricity zips through cables to
power lights and computers while other conduits move infinite
amounts of information that light up computer screens and phone
lines.
This issue of Western Water explores the question of whether the
state needs more surface storage, with a particular focus on the
five proposed projects identified in the CALFED 2000 ROD and the
politics and funding issues of these projects.
