Soledad City Council met on Wednesday, July 31 to address
issues with its potable water supply. The council
authorized $120,000 for emergency repairs to wells. (This
estimate is based on previous repairs that range from $25,000
to $120,000.) This issue happened just before a seasonal surge
in demand. August and September are the months when water usage
swells. “With three out of our five wells down, it’s tough to
keep our reservoirs full. Our reservoirs are designed to have
adequate storage for this community,” said Don Wilcox, director
of public works, during the July 31 meeting. …
Officials are asking residents for voluntary water reductions,
asking them to cut water consumption by 25 percent. (These
reductions are voluntary, and the city did not implement a
water shortage contingency plan.)
… In 1995, the State Water Resources Control Board issued
Order 95-10, declaring that California American Water was
entitled to take only 3,376 acre-feet of water a year from the
Carmel River. The utility at the time was taking about 14,000
acre-feet to supply the region. … A 2009 update to the
cease-and-desist order prohibited new water connections until
Cal Am was pumping within its legal limit. That meant putting
the pressure on conservation measures to simply use less water,
and also the pursuit of a replacement water supply. It’s
the latter that today, 30 years after the original
cease-and-desist order, remains a point of contention.
… There is no dispute that Cal Am has been pumping within its
legal limit for the past three years, since 2021. That
fact has led a number of local stakeholders to ask the state
board to suspend or amend the cease-and-desist order, again
allowing new water hookups, specifically development of
much-needed new housing.
Celebrating the successful funding of $35 million for the
Rancho Cañada Floodplain Restoration Project on the Carmel
River, federal, state, and local partners gathered Friday at
Palo Corona’s Rancho Cañada Unit to mark the milestone which
will further return a former golf course to nature. “Today we
mark a major investment in this land because it is going to be
a major enhancement for our environment with this floodplain
restoration project,” said Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley.
“A project to restore the Carmel River in this special 1-mile
section in its natural state so that it reconnects with its
historic floodplain habitat.” That reconnection will create a
mosaic of resilient and self-sustaining habitats that provide
refuge for sensitive wildlife species, such as steelhead and
the California red-legged frog, and a restored park for the
community. Funding has now been secured to begin construction
of the restoration project next summer.
A massive fish die-off has closed a popular lake and recreation
area in Monterey County amid speculation by state officials
that warming water caused the kill. Lake San Antonio, a county
park in southern Monterey County, was closed Tuesday as crews
deal with the removal of up to hundreds of thousands of
freshwater fish of multiple species that have washed up against
the shoreline. Among the species in the die-off are trout,
carp, crappie and bass, including one 4-pound trophy
bass. The water is being tested in an attempt to
determine the cause. A preliminary indication is oxygen
depletion due to warm water, according to the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A large fish die-off event hit Lake San Antonio on the Fourth
of July, according to California Department of Fish and
Wildlife biologist Zachary Crum. Biologists are still
investigating the incident, but they suspect that extreme heat
caused algae to bloom in the lake — consuming most of the
oxygen in the water and suffocating the fish. “Algal blooms
produce oxygen through photosynthesis during the day when
sunlight is available, but algae will consume large amounts of
oxygen at night when cellular respiration is occurring in the
absence of sunlight,” Crum wrote in an email to The Tribune.
“This can lead to lethally low dissolved oxygen levels in
reservoirs, which can essentially cause fish to suffocate.”
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
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.
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
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.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
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.
Spurred by drought and a major
policy shift, groundwater management has assumed an unprecedented
mantle of importance in California. Local agencies in the
hardest-hit areas of groundwater depletion are drawing plans to
halt overdraft and bring stressed aquifers to the road of
recovery.
Along the way, an army of experts has been enlisted to help
characterize the extent of the problem and how the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014 is implemented in a manner
that reflects its original intent.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
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.
A new era of groundwater management
began in 2014 with the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA), which aims for local and regional agencies
to develop and implement sustainable groundwater management
plans with the state as the backstop.
SGMA defines “sustainable groundwater management” as the
“management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be
maintained during the planning and implementation horizon without
causing undesirable results.”
This handbook provides crucial
background information on the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act, signed into law in 2014 by Gov. Jerry Brown. The handbook
also includes a section on options for new governance.