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.
… Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders are trying
to assassinate three initiatives that the people of California
put on the ballot using the powers of direct democracy. They
are attacking two initiatives that are set to be on this
November’s ballot, and one that was long ago approved by voters
and now is being hollowed out. That initiative is Proposition
218 from 1996. It amended the state constitution to put some
limits and controls on property-related fees and charges. For
example, public agencies planning a new or increased
“assessment,” such as higher rates for water service, have to
comply with certain procedures. -Written by columnist Susan Shelley.
In the three years that Adel Hagekhalil has led California’s
largest urban water supplier, the general manager has sought to
focus on adaptation to climate change — in part by reducing
reliance on water supplies from distant sources and investing
in local water supplies. His efforts to help shift priorities
at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California,
which has traditionally focused largely on delivering imported
water to the region, have won praise among environmental
advocates who hope to reduce dependence on supplies from the
Colorado River and Northern California. However, now that
Hagekhalil is under investigation for harassment allegations
and has been placed on leave by the MWD board, some of his
supporters say they’re concerned that his sidelining might
interfere with the policies he has helped advance.
Commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of
California was banned for the second year in a row in April due
to low numbers of salmon. The Chinook salmon, which enter the
Sacramento River system on four runs throughout the year, have
been declining for decades due to pollution, water management,
dams and drought. With salmon decreasing and fishing off the
California coast banned, Save California Salmon is dedicated to
helping restore and protect salmon and rivers. Save California
Salmon is a nonprofit organization built on creating community
power around water issues in Northern California while also
working to save salmon through advocacy for policy change. The
organization is run by Native American people from California
and has an entirely Indigenous board. According to Executive
Director Regina Chichizola, the organization began in 2017 and
was born out of the movement to remove the current dam on the
Klamath River.
An honest-to-goodness map of the American West would show
L.A.’s tentacles everywhere. You’d see canals — the Los Angeles
Aqueduct, running along the base of the Sierra Nevada, carrying
water from the Owens River; the State Water Project, meandering
through the San Joaquin Valley, supplying many Southern
California cities and farms; and the Colorado River Aqueduct,
cutting through the desert on its mission to deliver water from
desert to coast. You’d see electric lines too — a sprawling
network of wires that over the decades have furnished Angelenos
with power from coal plants in Nevada, Utah and Montana; from
nuclear reactors in Arizona; and from hydropower dams in the
Pacific Northwest. Los Angeles has reshaped the West. And
the city’s Department of Water and Power has been the agent of
change. Last month, Janisse Quiñones took the helm as
the agency’s new leader, after being recommended by L.A. Mayor
Karen Bass and confirmed unanimously by City Council. -Written by Sammy Roth, climate columnist for the LA
Times.
Several dozen dams throughout California could store up to 107
billion more gallons of water if they underwent repairs to fix
safety problems. But facing a staggering state deficit, Gov.
Gavin Newsom has proposed cutting funding for a dam repair
grant program in half this year, while state legislators want
the $50 million restored. California has an aging network
of nearly 1,540 dams — large and small, earthen and concrete —
that help store vital water supplies. For 42 of these dams,
state officials have restricted the amount of water that can be
stored behind them because safety deficiencies would raise the
risk to people downstream from earthquakes, storms or other
problems. Owned by cities, counties, utilities, water
districts and others, these dams have lost nearly 330,000
acre-feet of storage capacity because of the state’s safety
restrictions. That water — equivalent to the amount used by 3.6
million people for a year — could be used to supply
communities, farms or hydropower.
The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California voted to place General Manager Adel Hagekhalil on
leave Thursday while the agency investigates accusations of
harassment against him by the agency’s chief financial officer.
Chief Financial Officer Katano Kasaine made the allegations in
a confidential letter to the board, which was leaked and
published by Politico. She said Hagekhalil has harassed,
demeaned and sidelined her and created a hostile work
environment. MWD Board Chair Adán Ortega Jr. announced the
decision after a closed-door meeting, saying the board voted to
immediately place Hagekhalil on administrative leave and to
temporarily appoint Deven Upadhyay, an assistant general
manager, as interim general manager.
Registration is now open for our popular Northern
California Tour October 16-18, and seats
always fill quickly! This 3-day, 2-night
excursion across the Sacramento Valley travels north from
Sacramento to Oroville, Redding and Shasta Lake. Experts will
talk about the history of the Sacramento River as the tour
winds through riparian woodland, rice fields, wildlife refuges
and nut orchards. …. We’re hiring! Join
the Water Education Foundation as its full-time
operations manager and play a central role in
supporting our operations, programs and fundraising efforts. We
are seeking someone who is organized, detail-oriented and
energetic with the ability to manage changing priorities. See
the
full job posting.
… Last year, Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg)
introduced a pivotal piece of legislation to enhance drought
preparedness and climate resiliency for North Coast watersheds.
Supported by a coalition of organizations and Tribal Nations,
and co-sponsored by CalTrout, AB 1272 promises a better future
for North Coast communities and the iconic species that live
there. North Coast communities are deeply connected to
salmon populations and rivers. Declining salmon numbers due to
severe droughts and water management challenges have led to the
closure of salmon fishing in 2023 and again this year.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is killing her proposal to increase
state regulators’ authority over the owners of California’s
oldest, most senior water rights amid intense opposition from
water agencies, farmers and business groups. Wicks’ legislative
director Zak Castillo-Krings confirmed Tuesday that she was
pulling the bill, A.B. 1337, which passed the Assembly last
year but has been awaiting a hearing in the Senate. The
decision comes after water users reached a deal last week with
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on a bill, A.B. 460, to
increase fines for water theft. Both bills emerged last year
after three years of historic drought exposed the state’s
limits in overseeing water use.
The board of the agency that delivers water to nearly half of
Californians will consider firing its top leader over claims of
retaliation, harassment and cultivating a toxic work
environment at a special meeting Thursday morning, according to
an agenda and three people with knowledge.The Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California plans to consider whether
to discipline or dismiss its general manager and CEO, Adel
Hagekhalil, at a Thursday morning board meeting, according to
an agenda posted Tuesday.
U.S. drinking water is among the world’s safest and most
reliable, but aging infrastructure across the country is posing
challenges. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates
that there’s a water main break every two minutes. Shannon
Marquez, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia
University, joins John Yang to discuss why these problems are
so common.
Water diversions can harm aquatic ecosystems, riparian habitat,
and beaches fed by river sediment. But the people who use water
don’t bear the cost of this ecological damage. “The public
pays for it,” says Karrigan Börk, a University of California,
Davis law professor who has a PhD in ecology. He is also
Co-Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy
Center and an Associate Director of the UC Davis Center for
Watershed Sciences. Börk presents a new solution to this
problem in a recent Harvard Environmental Law
Review paper. His idea was sparked by the fact that
developers are required to help pay for the burden that new
housing imposes on municipal services. To likewise link
water infrastructure and diversions with their costs to
society, Börk proposes requiring water users to pay towards
mitigating the environmental harm they cause. … …One
example is in the upper basin of the Colorado River, where
water users pay for their environmental
impacts.
Chemical and manufacturing groups sued the federal government
late Monday over a landmark drinking-water standard that would
require cleanup of so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer
and other health risks. The industry groups said that the
government was exceeding its authority under the Safe Drinking
Water Act by requiring that municipal water systems all but
remove six synthetic chemicals, known by the acronym PFAS, that
are present in the tap water of hundreds of millions of
Americans. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that
the new standard, put in place in April, will prevent thousands
of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious
illnesses.
A contentious proposal to amend California’s Constitution to
enshrine environmental rights for all citizens has been delayed
for at least another year after it failed to gain traction
ahead of a looming deadline. ACA 16, also known as the green
amendment, sought to add a line to the state Constitution’s
Declaration of Rights affirming that all people “shall have a
right to clean air and water and a healthy environment.” The
single sentence sounds straightforward enough, but by the start
of this week, the proposal had not yet made it through the
state Assembly or moved into the state Senate. Both houses
would need to pass the proposal by June 27 in order to get it
on voter ballots this fall. … The [Chamber of
Commerce] said compliance costs could lead to economic
impacts for businesses, communities and local governments. …”
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.
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:
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 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.
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.