In general, regulations are rules or laws designed to control or
govern conduct. Specifically, water quality regulations under the
federal and state Clean Water Act “protect the public health or
welfare, enhance the quality of water and serve the purposes of
the Act.”
By any objective standard, the southern coast of San Diego
County is enduring a long-running environmental nightmare.
Decades of billions of gallons of untreated human waste flowing
north from broken sewage infrastructure in Tijuana have
sickened a vast number of surfers and swimmers and many Navy
SEALs training at Coronado. Especially because of ailments
reported by border agents, some doctors worry that the health
threat goes far beyond active ocean users to include those who
spend extended time in coastal areas and breathe air that often
smells like a filthy portable toilet. Now there is fresh
confirmation of how uniquely awful this problem is. The
Surfrider Foundation has released a report on 567 sites in
which it tested water for unsafe bacteria levels and found
Imperial Beach — which has been closed for more than two years
— had far and away the dirtiest water in the United
States.
More than 20,000 San Joaquin Valley residents could be left
high and dry, literally, by Sacramento politicians intent on
using $17.5 million that had paid for water trucked to their
homes to help fill California’s gaping two-year $56 billion
deficit. A local nonprofit that has been hauling water to those
residents sent a letter recently to Governor Gavin
Newsom and top leaders in the Legislature begging them to
reinstate the money in the ongoing budget negotiations.
“Cutting funding for such a crucial program would have
devastating effects on rural and disadvantaged communities by
immediately cutting them off from their sole source of water
supply, and doing so with no warning,” states the June 11
letter from Self-Help Enterprises, a Visalia-based nonprofit
that helps low-income valley residents with housing and water
needs.
Every snowflake or drop of rain that falls in Wyoming’s Wind
River Mountains eventually plays a part in quenching the water
needs of 20 million Californians, and the demand only seems to
be rising. Meanwhile, the amount of water available from the
Colorado River, which is partly fed by the Green River flowing
out of the Wind River range, is at best barely holding steady.
That means that as a headwaters state, Wyoming could start
feeling pressure from those downriver to give up more.
In an effort to elevate the needs of the environment in water
management, the state of Colorado is convening a new committee
that is scheduled to begin meeting this summer. The
Colorado Water Conservation Board and Boulder-based nonprofit
River Network are creating a pilot program known as the
Environmental Flows Cohort, which will assess how much water is
needed to maintain healthy streams and how to meet these flow
recommendations. The cohort will include not just environmental
advocates, but agricultural and municipal water users, who may
initially feel threatened by environmental flow
recommendations. The goal of the program is to address
the barriers that lead to these recommendations being excluded
from local stream management plans. The cohort was one of the
recommendations in a January 2023 analysis of SMPs by
the River Network.
Tensions are rising in a border dispute between the United
States and Mexico. But this conflict is not about migration;
it’s about water. Under an 80-year-old treaty, the United
States and Mexico share waters from the Colorado River and the
Rio Grande, respectively. But in the grip of severe drought and
searing temperatures, Mexico has fallen far behind in
deliveries, putting the country’s ability to meet its
obligations in serious doubt. Some politicians say they cannot
give what they do not have. It’s a tough argument to
swallow for farmers in South Texas, also struggling with
a dearth of rain. They say the lack of water from Mexico
is propelling them into crisis, leaving the future of farming
in the balance. Some Texas leaders have called on the Biden
administration to withhold aid from Mexico until it makes good
on the shortfall.
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.
California is awash in water after record-breaking rains
vanquished years of crippling drought. That sounds like great
news for farmers. But Ron McIlroy, whose shop here sells
equipment for plowing fields, knows otherwise. “I’ll be lucky
if I survive this year,” he said. Illustrating how broken
California’s vast water-delivery system is, many farmers in
Central Valley, America’s fruit and vegetable basket, will get
just 40% of the federal water they are supposed to this year.
Why? Endangered fish. The pumps that transport water from wet
Northern California to the semiarid south have been drastically
slowed to protect threatened migrating smelt, measuring up to 3
inches, and steelhead. That means growers in the U.S.’s richest
farming area are having to plant fewer crops even as they are
surrounded by water.
Mike Shannon’s city hall office is a “war room” for water. Maps
of wells and charts of usage rates cover the beige room’s
meeting table and desk. A large television screen mounted on
the wall displays satellite images of a future groundwater well
project. Coworkers visit throughout the day, often to talk
about those plans to pump more water. As city manager of
Guymon — a town of about 13,000 in the state’s panhandle —
Shannon oversees a network of 17 groundwater wells, all
operating near capacity to draw water from the Ogallala
Aquifer, the only water source in this arid region of
tumbleweeds and sand dunes. … At the top of the
list was Seaboard, a pork processing plant on the north side of
town that slaughtered more than 20,000 hogs daily. The plant
used 3,500 gallons of water a minute, three times the amount
used by all the homes in Guymon combined.
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.
Los Osos is one step closer to lifting its 35-year building
moratorium. Since 1988, construction in the coastal town of
15,500 people has been effectively banned due to a limited
water supply, habitat constraints and ineffective wastewater
treatment infrastructure. The Los Osos Community Plan, however,
seeks to solve those challenges by setting rules for
development that protect sensitive habitats and the water
supply. On Thursday, the California Coastal Commission is
poised to approve the Los Osos Community Plan with a handful of
revisions. If the commission supports the plan, the San Luis
Obispo County Board of Supervisors will vote on the
modifications in September or October, according to SLO County
Supervisor Bruce Gibson. After that, the commission would vote
on the plan one last time in December — clearing the way for
the county to start issuing building permits for Los Osos early
next year, Gibson said.
The Salton Sea is a terminal saltwater lake. It’s a flooded
basin with no natural outlet, similar to the Great Salt Lake or
the Aral Sea. And the Salton Sea is shrinking. One of the
reasons for that is the Imperial Water Transfer deal that has
brought hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water to San
Diego over the last two decades. The deal, signed 21 years ago,
meant the Imperial Valley began transferring excess water from
the valley’s farm fields to San Diego’s water taps. That meant
a lot less farm runoff that had been sustaining the Salton
Sea. San Diego State University economics professor Ryan
Abman said the biggest effects of that conservation plan were
seen about eight years into the agreement. “So really, after
2011, we see a noticeable increase in the rate of decline of
the water level and that leads to an increase in the increased
rate of playa exposure. So more of this dust-emitting surface
is being exposed every single year,” Abman said.
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.
The Yorba Linda Water District in Orange County, Calif., is so
proud of its $28 million PFAS filtration plant, considered the
largest in the US, that it hosts regular tours of Boy Scouts,
school groups, and on Monday, a group from South
Korea. The need for the filtration plant is representative
of the widespread PFAS contamination in groundwater and stream
water in Southern California, and it symbolizes the costs that
the YLWD and 14 other drinking water utilities in the region
are suing to recoup from manufacturers of PFAS-containing
firefighting foam or its components. Unlike nearby Los
Angeles, the Yorba …
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is demanding the U.S.
Air Force and Arizona National Guard take action as
concentrations of toxic “forever chemicals” are increasing in
the groundwater in a historically contaminated area on Tucson’s
south side. The EPA found the pollution came from the nearby
military properties and ordered them to clean up the
contamination. High concentrations of PFAS, or per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, were detected in Tucson’s
groundwater near the Tucson International Airport at the
National Guard base and at a property owned by the U.S. Air
Force. The contaminants threaten the groundwater extracted at a
water treatment run by Tucson Water in the Tucson Airport
Remediation Project area, known as TARP. That water was
intended for drinking, the EPA said in its May 29 order.
The good news is that the San Joaquin Valley has managed to
store a little more groundwater since the drought of 2016. The
bad news is that it is hard to keep account of what’s working
and what’s not. On Tuesday, the Public Policy Institute of
California, a nonprofit policy research organization, released
an update report on the replenishment of groundwater in the San
Joaquin Valley, one of the areas of the state that is heavily
dependent on groundwater. The report also identified those
basins best suited to accept water recharge operations, with
the highest number being in the eastern and southern regions of
the valley.
… 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.
Evidence is stacking up against the state in one of multiple
lawsuits over last year’s devastating floods in Merced County.
One of the most stunning new pieces of evidence is a string of
12 emails from Merced County staff that went ignored by the
state for more than four months before last year’s floods. The
lawsuit was filed against the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife (CDFW) on behalf of the City of Merced, a local
elementary school and 12 agricultural groups. All the
plaintiffs took significant damage from flooding after water
backed up in clogged waterways and broke through, or overtopped
creek banks and levees. The flooding came primarily from
Bear Creek and Black Rascal Creek, both of which have flooded
before. Flooding from Miles Creek also damaged nearly every
home in the small, rural town of Planada.
The billionaire proponents of a brand-new city that would rise
from the rolling prairie northeast of the San Francisco Bay
cleared their first big hurdle Tuesday, when the Solano County
Registrar of Voters certified the group had enough signatures
to put its proposal before local voters in November. The group
backing the measure, called California Forever, must now
convince voters to get behind the audacious idea of erecting a
walkable and environmentally friendly community with tens of
thousands of homes, along with a sports center, parks, bike
lanes, open space and a giant solar farm on what is now
pastureland. … But the proposal faces opposition from
some local leaders, along with environmental groups concerned
about the loss of natural habitat. Project opponents said a
recent poll they conducted found that 70% of the people
surveyed were skeptical.
The Klamath Water Users Association, along with the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation and other plaintiff appellants asked a Ninth
Circuit appeals panel Wednesday morning to reverse summary
judgment from a case that confirmed the bureau and other actors
must comply with the Endangered Species Act when operating the
Klamath Irrigation Project. Managed by the Bureau of
Reclamation, the Klamath Irrigation Project supplies water to
over 225,000 acres of farmland and two wildlife refuges in the
Klamath Basin along the Oregon-California border. The project,
however, decimated the local Chinook and Coho salmon
population, which the Yurok tribe rely on to survive. Dams are
currently being removed from the upper Klamath Basin, allowing
the river to flow freely for the first time in 100 years. In a
victory for the fish and the tribe, U.S. District Judge William
Orrick ruled in 2023 that the federal government must follow
its own laws, such as the Endangered Species Act…
Some $253 million helped Angelenos pay back utility bills from
March 2020 through December 2022, city officials announced on
Wednesday, June 12. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember
Heather Hutt, state Environmental Protection Agency Secretary
Yana Garcia, Water Resources Control Board Chair Joaquin
Esquivel, and officials with the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power and L.A. Environment and Sanitation celebrated
the distribution of federal funding at a news conference.
Officials said the aid was automatically applied to about
204,500 DWP customer accounts. The California Water and
Wastewater Arrearage Payment Program was the source of the
funds, administered by the state water board using federal
American Rescue Plan Act funds.
In the Golden State, we pride ourselves on our future-facing
environmental values and our climate leadership. At the same
time, nearly 1 million residents, primarily in disadvantaged
communities, are without access to clean drinking water, and
California cities such as Los Angeles, Long Beach and Fresno
are burdened year after year by some of the dirtiest, most
polluted air in the nation. This glaring duality underscores
the failure of our current legal framework to ensure the
fundamental rights of all Californians to clean air, water and
a healthy environment. It’s time for a change. It’s time for
California to enshrine this right into our state constitution.
The inalienable rights of life, liberty, safety and happiness
guaranteed in the state constitution are under threat by a
climate crisis that negatively impacts the health and
well-being of all Californians. -Written by Terry Tamminen and James Strock, former
secretaries of the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Alan Lloyd, who also contributed to this piece, is also a
former secretary of the California EPA.
Plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over the Kern River filed a
petition asking the California Supreme Court to review an order
that tossed out an injunction many had anticipated would
guarantee a flowing river through Bakersfield. Specifically,
the petition asks the Supreme Court to direct the 5th
District Court of Appeal to explain why it stayed the
injunction that had required enough water in the river to keep
fish in good condition. The Supreme Court petition was filed
June 11. The 5th District issued what’s known as a “writ of
supersedeas” May 3 setting aside the injunction and staying all
legal actions surrounding the injunction, which had been issued
by Kern County Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp last fall.
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.
Native American tribal leaders with a stake in the Colorado
River Basin have regular meetings with top Interior Department
officials, can claim progress toward major water rights
settlements, and often appear on panels at key conferences with
federal and state leaders. It’s a significant improvement
compared to decades of exclusion of Indigenous people on
decisions over the 1,450-mile-long river that supports 40
million people across seven states. But it’s also not enough,
according to officials from some of those tribes — who argue
their role still falls short of equal footing with states.
As climate change unleashes ever-more powerful storms,
worsening floods and rising sea levels, San Francisco remains
woefully unprepared for inundation, a civil grand jury
determined in a report this week. The critical assessment —
written by 19 San Franciscans selected by the Superior Court —
found that the city and county lacked a comprehensive funding
plan for climate adaptation and that existing sewer systems
cannot handle worsening floods. Among other concerns, the
report also concluded that efforts toward making improvements
have been hampered by agency silos and a lack of transparency.
Members of the volunteer jury serve yearlong terms and are
tasked with investigating city and county government by
reviewing documents and interviewing public officials, experts
and private individuals.
Silicon Valley billionaires are still aggressively moving
forward with their attempt to create a utopian, sustainable
“city of yesterday” near San Francisco atop what they describe
as “non-prime farmland.” However, an accredited land trust now
claims California Forever’s East Solano Plan is intentionally
misleading local residents about the “detrimental harm” it will
cause ecosystems, as well as its potential to “destroy some of
the most self-reliant farmland and ranchland” in the state.
… [A]s CBS Sacramento first reported on June
7, Solano Land Trust’s executive director Nicole Braddock
contends California Forever’s aim “really goes against our
mission of protecting working farms, natural areas, land and
water Solano County.” Additionally, the influx of as many as
400,000 new residents would result in “a detrimental impact on
Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic,
farmland, and natural environment,” according to the trust’s
board of directors.
Amid the historic removal of dams on the Klamath River, the
Humboldt Area Foundation and Wild Rivers Community Foundation
announced the launch of a new fund to support projects in the
drastically changing Klamath Basin. According to a Tuesday news
release, the fund will support “grantmaking to bolster
community healing, Tribal self-determination, science and
restoration, storytelling, climate resilience, regenerative
agriculture, environmental stewardship, and more.” Starting
with $10 million, the foundations aim to support the health and
restoration of the basin and the communities that live in it.
At least 60% must go to tribes or Indigenous-led organizations,
according to the release, with a focus on climate resilience
and restorative justice projects.
Working together to support local Tribal farmers, the
Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Santa Rosa Rancheria
Tachi Yokut Tribe have expedited two water transfers to meet
immediate water supply needs and to address long-term demands
north of the Tulare Lake area. Working with the Tulare Lake
Irrigation District, DWR and the Tachi Yokut Tribe entered into
a contractual agreement to institute both a temporary and
permanent transfer of water resulting in over 600-acre feet of
additional water for the area.
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.
Fireworks were already popping between board members of a key
Tulare County groundwater agency recently over an 11th hour
attempt to rein in pumping in the severely overdrafted area.
The main issue at the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA) meeting June 6 was whether to require farmers in
subsidence prone areas to install meters and report their
extractions to the agency, which is being blamed for almost
single handedly putting the entire subbasin in jeopardy of a
state takeover. … In the end, the Eastern Tule
board voted 6-0 to require all landowners in the subsidence
management area along the canal to meter their wells and report
extractions by January 1.
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.
The end of a two-year legal fight over who should pay, and how
much, to replenish the groundwater beneath Madera County could
be in sight. A motion to dismiss the lawsuit by a group of
farmers against the county is set to be heard June 18.
The outcome could determine whether Madera County, which acts
as the groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) for hundreds of
thousands of acres across three water subbasins, can finally
move forward on a host of projects to improve the water table
per the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). From the
farmers’ point of view, the outcome of this case could make or
break their farms, some that have been in their families for
generations.
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.
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:
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.
… 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The San Jose City Council yesterday approved increased costs
for drinking water and wastewater services for some local
residents and businesses. The cost of drinking water will
increase $10-$11 per month for customers of the San Jose
Municipal Water System living in North San Jose, Alviso,
Evergreen and Edenvale. Services for wastewater management will
also increase by 9% per month. The changes are expected to go
into effect on July 1. San Jose Municipal Water System provides
drinking water to 12% of residents in the city, according to
the city. It is one of three drinking-water suppliers in San
Jose, along with San Jose Water Company and Great Oaks Water
Company, which are both privately owned. City councilmembers
voted 10-1 in favor of increasing rates for wastewater
management services and 8-2 in support of raising rates on
drinking water.
California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan this week removed
the most controversial parts of her bill to expand the state’s
ability to fine illegal water diverters, resolving a yearslong
fight with public water agencies and farmers. What happened:
After Monday’s amendments, Bauer-Kahan’s AB 460 (23R) would
still increase the penalties for those who steal water or
exceed their allotted share during times of drought. But it no
longer expands the Water Resources Control Board’s overall
power to investigate and punish what it sees as violations of
water rights, which business and water groups said last year
would have robbed them of due process. Water users have already
begun dropping their opposition.
Of California’s many tough water challenges, few are more
intractable than regulating how much water must be kept in
rivers and streams to protect the environment. … But now, a
new strategy developed by scientists to end the
stalemate is gaining momentum. … Gov. Gavin Newsom has
already made the blueprint a key element of his plans
to recover salmon populations and build climate
resilience in California’s water systems. Known as
the California Environmental Flows Framework, the
scientists’ strategy shifts the focus of environmental
water management from single species to entire ecosystems.
… The blueprint is already being used for rivers that
wind through California’s famed vineyards and ancient redwood
groves, and streams that feed a Northern California lake of
cultural importance to Native American tribes.
One year after the U.S. Supreme Court removed federal
regulations protecting wetlands and streams from development
pressures in its Sackett v. the EPA decision, Colorado is the
first state in the nation to pass legislation replacing those
regulations, according to a new national report. The report, by
the Clean Water For All coalition and Lawyers for Good
Government, shows that eight other states have taken action to
restore some level of protection or are trying; five launched
failed attempts to impose further cutbacks; and one state,
Indiana, rolled back protections further. Thirty-five states
have taken no action. Environmentalists say the spotty response
is a clear indication that Congress must intervene to create
consistent, clearly defined protections that work for all
states, and which protect rivers and wetlands that cross state
boundaries.
The state engineer recently approved water rights for lithium
drilling on the Green River. She is now reconsidering her
decision. Lithium extraction requires a lot of water. An
Australian company promises that a new method uses virtually no
water to draw out the metal, which is a fundamental element for
rechargeable batteries used in phones, computers, cameras — and
especially electric vehicles. The Biden administration
considers lithium vital to the nation’s transition to cleaner,
renewable energy, and in her approval, Utah State Engineer
Teresa Wilhelmsen cited a growing demand for lithium and
batteries. But a group of farmers, residents and
environmentalists said that using water from the
drought-plagued Colorado River system for an unproven project
opens a dangerous door.
Solano County has announced next steps for the controversial
California Forever development. The proposal, backed by
tech and finance billionaires, would build a new city of up to
400,000 people between Fairfield and Rio Vista. Officials
will announce by June 12 whether the project gained enough
signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Bill Emlen,
Solano County Administrator, said there’s not a lot of
information yet about how this new city could impact roadways
and water supplies.
… [I]n California, a two-year-old investigation by
Attorney General Rob Bonta into the plastics industry and its
claims about recycling shows signs of concluding, potentially
resulting in a case pitting the largest state in the nation
against one of the largest plastic makers in the world,
ExxonMobil, and powerful industry trade associations such as
the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the Plastics Industry
Association (PIA).
The people who decide the fate of the Colorado River are
gathering in Boulder this week for an annual conference. Their
meeting comes at a pivotal time for negotiations on the river’s
future. Negotiators from all seven states that use the river
will be speaking publicly at the two-day conference. They’re in
the middle of tense talks about how to cut back on demand as
climate change is shrinking water supplies. They’ve got to come
up with new rules for sharing the river before the current
guidelines expire in 2026. … This week’s conference will also
feature speakers from tribes, cities and farm districts.
… California and the life cycle of salmon have been linked
for centuries, beginning when only indigenous people lived in
the state. California’s rivers and streams benefit from the
nutrients salmon bring with them from the ocean. Salmon create
jobs. Salmon are our shared living heritage. … [S]almon are
on the brink despite California having some of the strictest
environmental laws on the planet. The government’s ability to
regulate this species to safety is dubious at best. Consider
that the state’s primary plan to protect the Delta by balancing
the uses of water has not been updated by the State Water
Resources Control Board since Bill Clinton was in office. It’s
a telling example of water’s political and regulatory
paralysis. There is no shared sense of responsibility to save
the salmon because we have devised such self-centered
regulatory systems. -Written by Tom Philp, reporter with the Sacramento
Bee.
California is a semi-arid state in which the availability of
water determines land use, and in turn shapes the economy.
That, in a nutshell, explains why Californians have been
jousting over water for the state’s entire 174-year history.
The decades of what some have dubbed “water wars” may be
approaching a climactic point as climate change, economic
evolution, stagnant population growth and environmental
consciousness compel decisions on California’s water future. A
new study, conducted by researchers at three University of
California campuses, projects that a combination of factors
will reduce California’s water supply by up to 9 million
acre-feet a year – roughly the equivalent of all
non-agricultural human use. -Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
PG&E announced on Friday, May 31 late last week that it
will request a 7-month extension from the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) in decommissioning the Eel River
dams. Stakeholders were expecting the utility to file its Draft
Surrender Application plan with FERC this month, with a final
version due in January 2025. PG&E now says it will file the
draft plan in January 2025 and the final version in June 2025.
In announcing the delay, PG&E expresses support for the
still vague proposal for the New Eel-Russian Facility. This
proposal would see a dam-free diversion from the Eel River to
the Russian River constructed and managed by the newly formed
Eel Russian Joint Powers Authority.
Navajo and Hopi are hardly friends. Yet they have unanimously
agreed to a deal that could finally bring running water to
thousands of tribal homes that lack it in northeastern Arizona.
The wide-reaching settlement would resolve a slew of tribal
water claims in Arizona, not just those for the Little Colorado
River that have been tied up in court for generations. As a
result, Navajo and Hopi would be entitled to water from the
Little Colorado River and the Colorado River, as well as to the
effluent they produce and the groundwater that lies beneath
their lands. The deal also carves out a permanent homeland
for the San Juan Southern Paiute tribe and quantifies water
rights for use on those lands. That’s
huge. The closest Arizona ever got to a
settlement was more than a decade ago, when some tribal
members balked at the last minute and the deal fell apart under
its own weight. -Written by columnist Joanna Allhands.
Drought is a hazard, but it needn’t be a disaster. That is,
provided all communities are adequately equipped before it
strikes. At the 10th World Water Forum, held in Bali from 18 to
25 May, experts urged decision-makers to prioritize drought
resilience in the face of climate change, drawing inspiration
from success cases around the globe. Representatives from the
scientific, non-profit, and technical sectors made the case for
building resilience to the world’s costliest and deadliest
hazard at an event featuring partners of the International
Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA.) … “Drought and
desertification are not just problems for the Sahel region of
Africa and for developing countries,” said UNCCD policy officer
Daniel Tsegai before an international audience. “We already see
impacts in highly productive and populated parts of the
developed world like California, Spain, and Australia.”
Two rural California airports that are crucial to local air
ambulance services, firefighting efforts and search and rescue
operations are unable to perform critical repairs, blocked by
an agency 300 miles away: the city of Los Angeles. The airports
are two of several major pieces of infrastructure in
California’s Owens valley left in disrepair because of LA
policies, an investigation by AfroLA, the Sheet and the
Guardian reveals. Los Angeles has owned large swaths of Inyo
county, where the Owens valley is located, for more than a
century. With ownership of the land comes rights to its water –
water that is key to servicing the thirsty metropolis of 3.8
million people. Aqueducts carrying water from Inyo and
neighbouring Mono county to LA provided 73% of the city’s water
supply last year.
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman co-sent a letter to federal
administrators on Tuesday calling for disaster relief funding
to be allocated quicker for the state’s salmon fishery closure
in 2023. A year later and no disaster funds have been
distributed, and fishermen face another closed season.
… Historically, federal disaster aid for fishing
disasters has taken years to reach the pockets of fishermen.
The season was closed this year, the fourth in California’s
history, for largely the same conditions in 2023: low salmon
counts. In press releases, the Golden State Salmon Association
cited the failure of water management to keep fish eggs in 2021
and 2020 cool, while the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife pointed to the multi-year drought conditions the now
adult fish were reared under.
It’s not every day that a former source gets indicted. So when
a San Joaquin Valley water manager was charged by federal
prosecutors two years ago with allegedly stealing millions of
dollars worth of water for lavish personal gain, it stopped me
cold. It simply did not square with the person that I thought I
knew. Former general manager Dennis Falaschi of the Panoche
Water District ended up agreeing to a plea deal last week,
acknowledging that he stole some water and falsified some
income on a tax return. But upon any objective examination, the
deal is far more of a black eye to federal prosecutors than to
Falaschi himself because the feds had accused him of stealing
$25 million worth of water – more water than some California
cities use annually. The government utterly failed to prove
anything close to its original case. -Written by columnist Tom Philp.
This year, engineers in California and Oregon are carrying out
the largest dam removal project in history. For decades, salmon
and trout in the Klamath River have struggled to survive in the
unhealthy water conditions created by four dams and diversions
of water for irrigation. And for more than 20 years, Indigenous
Tribes that depend on the fish have been fighting for dam
removal. In late 2022, after many rounds of litigation to keep
water flowing and the fish alive, federal regulators finally
approved a dam removal plan. As the dams on the Klamath come
down, members of the Yurok, a Tribe whose reservation sits at
the mouth of the river, say they are feeling hopeful about the
Klamath’s future.
There’s a new opportunity for private wetland owners to make
money from their land. The BirdReturns program pays wetland
owners to flood their land and provide habitat for birds in the
Central Valley. The program offers seasonal participation and
is currently accepting applications for fall participation.
Applications close on June 9. The program is funded
through a $15 million grant from the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife which will keep the program running through
2026. The program, “aims to fill in all the other gaps
throughout the rest of the year when, in the natural cycle,
there would be habitat for birds,” said Ashley Seufzer, senior
project coordinator for Audubon California. This is the
second year of the fall program. In the past, there have been
participating landowners in the San Joaquin Valley but the
number changes every season, said Seufzer.
A lengthy complaint alleging secretive, self-dealing on the
part of a prominent farmer and board member on a key Tulare
County groundwater agency slogged through a Fair Political
Practices Commission investigation over the past four years
resulting in, essentially, a slap on the wrist late last month.
Eric L. Borba, former chair of the Eastern Tule Groundwater
Sustainability Agency, was found in violation of the state’s
disclosure rules at the Commission’s April 25 meeting for not
listing his ownership in several ditch companies including the
value of those water assets. He was ordered to revamp his Form
700s, which public board members and executives must file each
year, and pay a $5,400 fine. The Form 700s now list Borba’s
ownership, through a variety of entities, in five area ditch
companies.
Officials in Berkeley and Albany are moving forward with plans
to test two popular bayside parks — César Chávez and the
Albany Bulb — for evidence of radioactive material
possibly dumped decades ago by the former Stauffer Chemical Co.
plant in Richmond. Richmond has been dealing with
radioactive material and other hazardous waste left by Stauffer
for decades, but Berkeley and Albany officials were warned only
this year that the company may have also discarded tons of
industrial waste into landfills that have since been covered
over and converted to the bayshore parks. The planned testing
in both cities will include uranium, thorium and the banned
pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), on the advice
of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board,
according to reports from both cities.
Michelle Reimers is resigning as general manager of the Turlock
Irrigation District after four years in the job. The water and
power utility announced the decision, effective June 21, in a
news release Friday. Reimers was its first female GM and had
started there as a public information officer in 2006. “She
does not have anything specific that she is moving to right
away and is looking forward to exploring new ways in which she
can impact the water and power industries,” said an email from
Constance Anderson, communications division manager.
Amid extreme drought affecting Rio Grande tributaries, Mexico
is struggling to make water deliveries to Texas as required by
an 80-year old treaty. Martha Pskowski is a reporter with
Inside Climate News and spoke with Living on Earth’s Paloma
Beltran about how the situation is linked to climate change and
farmer livelihoods in both the US and Mexico.
The nation’s high court has agreed to hear a water quality case
next year that will examine U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency authority to impose new wastewater discharge
requirements on utilities that are based on conditions without
specific numeric limits. San Francisco wants the U.S.
Supreme Court to review a July 2023 opinion by judges from the
federal appeals court in San Francisco that affirmed agency
authority to include broad language prohibiting the pollution
and placing conditions on the city’s National Pollutant
Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Those conditions
included requiring the San Francisco Public Utilities
Commission to update its long-term control plan for managing
combined-sewer overflows.
Forest Service officials reported that it took six hours and 17
trash bags to clear the mess left by approximately 3,000
students from both UC Davis and the University of Oregon. The
students are accused of littering the beaches and surrounding
areas of the popular lake with cups, drink cans, pool floats,
and other items, despite being asked to clean up after
themselves. Deborah Carlisi, a detailed recreation staff
officer for Shasta-Trinity National Forest, stated that staff
had provided trash bags and requested that the students pack
out whatever they brought in. “Some students used them.
Some students didn’t,” Carlisi said. She noted that the worst
part is the trash that has sunk to the bottom of the lake,
which cannot be cleaned up until water levels drop later in the
summer.
The completion of Woodward Reservoir 114 years ago has been a
godsend to South San Joaquin Irrigation District as well as the
cities of Manteca, Lathrop, and Tracy. It has played a key role
as an in-district safety net to help SSJID to weather droughts
in much better shape than many other water purveyors in
California including Tri-Dam Project partner, the Oakdale
Irrigation District. The reservoir that holds 36,000 acre feet
of water or enough for just over three complete districtwide
irrigation runs is off stream as opposed to Tri-Dam reservoirs
at Goodwin, Tulloch, Beardsley, and Donnells as well as the
Bureau of Reclamation’s New Melones Reservior. New Melones
holds up to 600,000 acre feet for OID and SSJID as the
result of the original Melones Reservoir built by the two
districts being inundated to build it. -Written by Manteca Bulletin editor Dennis Wyatt.
City leaders in Los Angeles have announced plans to take a
limited amount of water from creeks that feed Mono Lake this
year, a step that environmentalists say will help build on a
recent rise in the lake’s level over the last year. The Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power said it plans to export
4,500 acre-feet of water from the Mono Basin during the current
runoff year, the same amount that was diverted the previous
year, and enough to supply about 18,000 households for a year.
Under the current rules, the city could take much more — up to
16,000 acre-feet this year. But environmental advocates had
recently urged Mayor Karen Bass not to increase water
diversions to help preserve recent gains and begin to boost the
long-depleted lake toward healthier levels. They praised the
decision by city leaders as an important step.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a
Unilateral Administrative Order to the Havasu Water Company [in
Southern California by the Colorado River] to take a series of
steps to prevent further violations of the Safe Drinking Water
Act. The EPA specifically cited the company’s failure to adhere
to the Act’s drinking water regulations.This included violation
of the maximum allowable level for total trihalomethanes.
Trihalomethanes are the byproducts that may form during the
disinfection process and may threaten human health through
long-term exposure at levels above federal limits.
… The vast majority of Tricolored Blackbirds spend their
whole lives in California. A handful breed in Oregon,
Washington, Nevada, and Baja California, and at least 20 of the
birds were spotted last year in Idaho. Most, however, nest in
the San Joaquin Valley, and many are known to breed a second
time in the early summer months—often 50 to 100 miles north in
the wetlands and willows of the Sacramento Valley. It’s here,
too, that the birds feed on rice in the fall. They often browse
the paddies alongside other blackbirds—including the very
similar Red-winged Blackbird—that farmers can legally cull as
pests. This has inevitably led to losses of Tricolors over the
years. Although the species’ native
nesting habitat has been almost entirely removed from
California, they’ve adapted with varying success to shifting
land use. Where vineyards and orchards have replaced grassland
and marsh, the blackbirds have mostly disappeared.
Above-average storms have allowed the Modesto Irrigation
District to offer Tuolumne River water to nearby farmers who
normally tap wells. It is getting few takers. The program is
designed to boost the stressed aquifer generally east of
Waterford, just outside MID boundaries. The district board on
Tuesday debated whether to drop the price to spur interest, but
a majority voted to leave it unchanged. The discussion came
amid a state mandate to make groundwater use sustainable by
about 2040. MID does not have a major problem within its
territory, which stretches west to the San Joaquin River. But
it is part of a regional effort to comply with the 2014 law.
This includes out-of-district sales of Tuolumne water in years
when MID’s own farmers have plenty. That was the case in 2023,
one of the wettest years on record, and this year thanks to
storage in Don Pedro Reservoir.
The federal government has released a 584-page document
detailing possible solutions to an invasive species that poses
“an unacceptable risk” to another fish that’s listed as
threatened. When it’s all said and done, officials want to give
smallmouth bass a cold shower — or a cool bath, anyway — to
discourage them from reproducing. Make no mistake, the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation’s plan is a detailed “Cool Mix” strategy
on how to reduce the threat to the humpback chub in the
Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam. Smallmouth bass are
voracious predators, and they’ve started to establish
populations below the dam where the chub is struggling to
survive. Biologists say the bass will feed on the chub, their
eggs, and pretty much anything else that will fit in its mouth.
Below-average precipitation and snowpack during 2020-22 and
depleted surface and groundwater supplies pushed California
into a drought emergency that brought curtailment orders and
calls for modernizing water rights. At the Water Education
Foundation annual water summit last week in Sacramento,
Eric Oppenheimer, chief deputy director of the California State
Water Resources Control Board, discussed what he described as
the state’s “antiquated” water rights system. He spoke before
some 150 water managers, government officials, farmers,
environmentalists and others as part of the event where
interests come together to collaborate on some of the state’s
most challenging water issues.
On average, more than half of
California’s developed water supply originates in the
Sierra
Nevada and the southern spur of the Cascade
Range. Our water supply is largely dependent on the health
of our Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem
degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree
mortality.
Join us as we head into the Sierra to examine water issues
that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state.
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.
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
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.”
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
On average, more than 60 percent of
California’s developed water supply originates in the Sierra
Nevada and the southern spur of the Cascade Range. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
This tour ventured into the Sierra to examine water issues
that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state.
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.
As California’s seasons become
warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water
rights permitting system needs revising to better reflect the
reality of climate change’s effect on the timing and volume of
the state’s water supply.
A report by the State Water Resources Control Board recommends
that new water rights permits be tailored to California’s
increasingly volatile hydrology and be adaptable enough to ensure
water exists to meet an applicant’s demand. And it warns
that the increasingly whiplash nature of California’s changing
climate could require existing rights holders to curtail
diversions more often and in more watersheds — or open
opportunities to grab more water in climate-induced floods.
Groundwater provides about 40
percent of the water in California for urban, rural and
agricultural needs in typical years, and as much as 60 percent in
dry years when surface water supplies are low. But in many areas
of the state, groundwater is being extracted faster than it can
be replenished through natural or artificial means.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
Shortly after taking office in 2019,
Gov. Gavin Newsom called on state agencies to deliver a Water
Resilience Portfolio to meet California’s urgent challenges —
unsafe drinking water, flood and drought risks from a changing
climate, severely depleted groundwater aquifers and native fish
populations threatened with extinction.
Within days, he appointed Nancy Vogel, a former journalist and
veteran water communicator, as director of the Governor’s Water
Portfolio Program to help shepherd the monumental task of
compiling all the information necessary for the portfolio. The
three state agencies tasked with preparing the document delivered
the draft Water Resilience Portfolio Jan. 3. The document, which
Vogel said will help guide policy and investment decisions
related to water resilience, is nearing the end of its comment
period, which goes through Friday, Feb. 7.
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.
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.
Dates are now set for two key
Foundation events to kick off 2020 — our popular Water 101
Workshop, scheduled for Feb. 20 at McGeorge School of Law in
Sacramento, and our Lower Colorado River Tour, which will run
from March 11-13.
In addition, applications will be available by the first week of
October for our 2020 class of Water Leaders, our competitive
yearlong program for early to mid-career up-and-coming water
professionals. To learn more about the program, check out our
Water Leaders program
page.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
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.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
We headed into the foothills and the mountains to examine
water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts
downstream and throughout the state.
GEI (Tour Starting Point)
2868 Prospect Park Dr.
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.
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.
For decades, cannabis has been grown
in California – hidden away in forested groves or surreptitiously
harvested under the glare of high-intensity indoor lamps in
suburban tract homes.
In the past 20 years, however, cannabis — known more widely as
marijuana – has been moving from being a criminal activity to
gaining legitimacy as one of the hundreds of cash crops in the
state’s $46 billion-dollar agriculture industry, first legalized
for medicinal purposes and this year for recreational use.
As we continue forging ahead in 2018
with our online version of Western Water after 40 years
as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also
got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.
State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing
up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and
combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish
and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps
unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved
Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if
anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that
marijuana was legal.
Joaquin Esquivel learned that life is
what happens when you make plans. Esquivel, who holds the public
member slot at the State Water Resources Control Board in
Sacramento, had just closed purchase on a house in Washington
D.C. with his partner when he was tapped by Gov. Jerry Brown a
year ago to fill the Board vacancy.
Esquivel, 35, had spent a decade in Washington, first in several
capacities with then Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and then as
assistant secretary for federal water policy at the California
Natural Resources Agency. As a member of the State Water Board,
he shares with four other members the difficult task of
ensuring balance to all the uses of California’s water.
Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply
originates high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Our water
supply is largely dependent on the health of our Sierra forests,
which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought,
wildfires and widespread tree mortality.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Water conservation has become a way of life throughout the West
with a growing recognition that water supply is not unlimited.
Drought is the most common motivator of increased water
conservation. However, the gradual drying of the West due to
climate change means the amount of fresh water available for
drinking, irrigation, industry and other uses must be used as
efficiently as possible.
Wastewater management in California centers on the collection,
conveyance,
treatment, reuse and disposal of wastewater. This process is
conducted largely by public agencies, though there are also
private systems in places where a publicly owned treatment plant
is not feasible.
In California, wastewater treatment takes place through 100,000
miles of sanitary sewer lines and at more than 900 wastewater
treatment plants that manage the roughly 4 billion gallons of
wastewater generated in the state each day.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when
the Colorado River broke
through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years,
creating California’s largest inland body of water. The
Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130
miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
The federal Safe Drinking Water Act sets standards for drinking
water quality in the United States.
Launched in 1974 and administered by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, the Safe Drinking Water Act oversees states,
communities, and water suppliers who implement the drinking water
standards at the local level.
The act’s regulations apply to every public water system in the
United States but do not include private wells serving less than
25 people.
According to the EPA, there are more than 160,000 public water
systems in the United States.
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 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.
This issue of Western Water looks at the political
landscape in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento as it relates to
water issues in 2007. Several issues are under consideration,
including the means to deal with impending climate change, the
fate of the San Joaquin River, the prospects for new surface
storage in California and the Delta.
2002 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most significant
environmental laws in American history, the Clean Water Act
(CWA). The CWA has had remarkable success, reversing years of
neglect and outright abuse of the nation’s waters. But challenges
remain as attention turns to the thorny issue of cleaning up
nonpoint sources of pollution.
This printed issue of Western Water, based on presentations
at the November 3-4, 2010 Water Quality Conference in Ontario,
Calif., looks at constituents of emerging concerns (CECs) – what
is known, what is yet to be determined and the potential
regulatory impacts on drinking water quality.
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 the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at hydraulic
fracturing, or “fracking,” in California. Much of the information
in the article was presented at a conference hosted by the
Groundwater Resources Association of California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study and what its
finding might mean for the future of the lifeblood of the
Southwest.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at California
groundwater and whether its sustainability can be assured by
local, regional and state management. For more background
information on groundwater please refer to the Foundation’s
Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
As the state’s population continues to grow and traditional water
supplies grow tighter, there is increased interest in reusing
treated wastewater for a variety of activities, including
irrigation of crops, parks and golf courses, groundwater recharge
and industrial uses.
The Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
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 CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this
24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson
River, and its link to the Truckee River. The map includes the
Lahontan Dam and reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming
areas in the basin. Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and
geography, the Newlands Project, land and water use within the
basin and wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant
from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan
Basin Area Office.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, explains how
non-native invasive animals can alter the natural ecosystem,
leading to the demise of native animals. “Unwelcome Visitors”
features photos and information on four such species – including
the zerbra mussel – and explains the environmental and economic
threats posed by these species.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, explains how
non-native invasive plants can alter the natural ecosystem,
leading to the demise of native plants and animals. “Space
Invaders” features photos and information on six non-native
plants that have caused widespread problems in the Bay-Delta
Estuary and elsewhere.
