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.”
A federal judge denied summary judgment to a California
nonprofit that accuses a solid waste facility in Butte County
of allowing contaminants to seep out of its facility and into a
wetland preserve that leads to a Sacramento River tributary
during a major rainstorm. Nonprofit California Open Lands
maintains a wetland preserve in Butte County that sits near the
Neal Road Recycling and Waste Facility, operated by the Butte
County Department of Public Works.
The California State Water Resources Control Board will hold a
multiday public workshop to discuss voluntary agreements (VAs)
proposed by water users and state and federal agencies. The VAs
proposed are to update the Sacramento River and Delta
components of the Water Quality Control Plan for the San
Francisco Bay/Sacamento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary (Bay-Delta
Plan). The purpose for the planned workshop is for the VA
parties to provide a detailed overview of the VA proposal. It
is also planned to receive input and answer questions from
board members and receive input from the public. The workshop
will take place from April 24 through April 26, 2024. The
schedule for the workshop can be found here.
Rosana Monge clutched her husband’s death certificate and an
envelope of his medical records as she approached the
microphone and faced members of the water utility board on a
recent Monday in this city in southeast New Mexico. “I
have proof here of arsenic tests — positive on him, that were
done by the Veterans Administration,” she testified about
her husband, whose 2023 records show he had been diagnosed with
“exposure to arsenic” before his death in February at age 79.
“What I’m asking is for a health assessment of the community.”
… Naturally occurring in the soil in New Mexico, arsenic
seeps into the groundwater used for drinking. In water, arsenic
has no taste, odor or color — but can be removed with
treatment. Over time, it can cause a variety of health
problems, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease,
endangering the lives of people in this low-income and
overwhelmingly Latino community.
With private investors poised to profit from water scarcity in
the west, US senator Elizabeth Warren and representative Ro
Khanna are pursuing a bill to prohibit the trading of water as
a commodity. The lawmakers will introduce the bill on Thursday
afternoon, the Guardian has learned. “Water is not a commodity
for the rich and powerful to profit off of,” said Warren, the
progressive Democrat from Massachusetts. … Water-futures
trading allows investors – including hedge funds, farmers and
municipalities – to trade water and water rights as a
commodity, similar to oil or gold. The practice is currently
limited to California, where the world’s first water futures
market was launched. So far, the market hasn’t taken off,
dampened by the reality that the physical trade of water in the
state has been limited. After a couple of wet years in
California, the price of water futures has also plummeted.
Proposed state legislation to modify California’s longstanding
farmland conservation law could pave the way for large swaths
of farm acreage to be repurposed as sites for renewable energy
projects. The California Land Conservation Act of 1965,
commonly known as the Williamson Act, preserves farmland by
assessing property taxes based on the land’s agricultural value
rather than its full market value. Landowners with Williamson
Act contracts, which cover about half the state’s 30 million
acres of farm and ranchland, generally see a 20% to 75%
reduction in property taxes. … The proposed legislation
seeks to align the state’s renewable energy and groundwater
management goals. California’s Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act, or SGMA, requires users to bring groundwater
basins into balance within the next two decades.
Frustrated with the amount of water dribbling down the western
reach of the Kern River, plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over
the river filed a motion Tuesday asking the judge in the case
to intervene. The motion says the City of Bakersfield has
not maintained flows required to keep fish in good condition,
particularly in the areas of the river from Allen Road
westward. “Fish have died and habitat has dried up and
the Bakersfield community has lost much of the living river
that it had enjoyed for almost all of 2023,” it says. The
motion seeks to compel the city to keep the flow at a specified
level based on water levels where the river enters the city’s
jurisdiction. The city’s water attorney Colin Pearce said
the motion is being reviewed and the city will respond
accordingly.
After waiting 14 years, water rights protestants to a 2009
proceeding have filed a complaint against the State Water
Resources Control Board alleging it has given preferential
treatment to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) regarding
antiquated water rights claims. They also said the board failed
to implement state laws requiring the reasonable and equitable
development of water diversions and the protection of water
resources in the State. … The complaint alleges that DWR
has failed to comply with state water rights law requiring
water rights be timely put to full beneficial use; the
purpose of this requirement is to safeguard the public
interest.
In much of the United States, groundwater extraction is
unregulated and unlimited. There are few rules governing who
can pump water from underground aquifers or how much they can
take. This lack of regulation has allowed farmers nationwide to
empty aquifers of trillions of gallons of water for irrigation
and livestock. Droughts fueled by climate change have
exacerbated this trend by depleting rivers and reservoirs,
increasing reliance on this dwindling groundwater. In many
places, such as California’s Central Valley, the results
have been devastating. As aquifers decline, residential wells
start to yield contaminated water or else dry up
altogether, forcing families to rely on emergency deliveries of
bottled water.
In an effort to protect more than 5 million Californians from a
cancer-causing contaminant, state regulators today set a new
standard that is expected to increase the cost of water for
many people throughout the state. The State Water Resources
Control Board unanimously approved the nation’s first drinking
water standard for hexavalent chromium, which is found
naturally in some California groundwater as well as water
contaminated by industries. Now water suppliers will be forced
to install costly treatment to limit the chemical in water to
no more than 10 parts per billion — equivalent to about 10
drops in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The troubled Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic received a new
violation last week from a state water agency for pumping
untreated leachate water from the landfill into local waterways
that empty into the Santa Clara River. A violation letter dated
April 9 was sent to the landfill operators by the Los Angeles
Regional Water Quality Control Board, raising concerns that the
landfill’s wastewater may reach groundwater sources fed by the
river and used for drinking water.
How Colorado protects wetlands depends on two perspectives: Is
it a water quality issue or a land management issue? Even
assuming it’s a little of both, either answer leads to
different approaches, each to be overseen by a different
agency. And either path offers implications for construction,
permitting and management of habitats. This month,
lawmakers looked at the dueling approaches contained in two
measures seeking to implement a way for the state to manage
“dredge and fill discharge” permits tied to a recent U.S.
Supreme Court decision that redefined how a body of water can
be protected under the Environmental Protection Agency’s
“Waters of the United States” rule.
Insurers in California have sounded the alarm: A warming
climate has dramatically raised the risk of devastating
wildfires, and with it the cost of providing coverage. But now
a Peninsula lawmaker says those insurance companies should
credit the state and homeowners for the work done to reduce our
vulnerability to wildfires. State Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo
Park Democrat, has introduced a bill that would require
insurers to consider the state’s efforts to thin flammable
brush and trees as well as property owners’ steps to make their
homes more fire resistant, such as covering vents and clearing
vegetation. Those efforts would need to be incorporated into
their risk modeling to determine coverage decisions and costs.
Kings County growers will face millions of dollars in fees and
a mandate to report groundwater pumping after California
officials voted unanimously today to put local agencies on
probation for failing to protect the region’s underground water
supply. The unprecedented decision is a first step that could
eventually lead to the state wresting control of a groundwater
basin in a severely depleted part of the San Joaquin
Valley. Before issuing the probation order, the State
Water Resources Control Board had repeatedly warned five
groundwater agencies in Kings County that their management plan
for the Tulare Lake basin is seriously deficient, failing to
rein in the dried-up wells, contaminated water and sinking
earth worsened by overpumping.
The governance of San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta water quality falls under the authority of the State
Water Quality Control Board. Among other duties, the Water
Board is responsible for adopting and updating the Bay-Delta
Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco
Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary (Bay-Delta
Plan). The Bay-Delta Plan’s purpose sets forth measures
and flow requirements to safeguard various water uses within
the watershed, including municipal, industrial, agricultural,
and ecological needs. Comprising five political appointees with
extensive powers, the Water Board plays a pivotal role in
shaping California’s water management policies. -Written by Cary Keaten, the general manager of
the Solano Irrigation District.
The Bureau of Reclamation today announced the initial 2024
water supply allocations for the Klamath Project along with
$8.5 million in immediate funding for the Klamath Basin
communities to support drought resiliency and $5 million for
Klamath Basin tribes impacted by drought. In partnership with
the Klamath Project Drought Response Agency, Reclamation has
secured $8.5 million for administration of specifically
authorized drought resiliency programs targeted for project
contractors who receive a reduced water allocation. Reclamation
is announcing this funding together with an additional $5
million from separate program sources which will be disbursed
through technical assistance agreements with Klamath Basin
Tribal Nations for drought and ecosystem activities.
A Supreme Court decision that stripped protections from
America’s wetlands will have reverberating impacts on rivers
that supply drinking water all over the U.S., according to a
new report. The rivers of New Mexico are among the waterways
that will be affected most by the May 2023 Supreme Court
decision in Sackett v. EPA, which rolled back decades of
federal safeguards under the Clean Water Act for about half of
the nation’s wetlands and up to four million miles of streams
that supply drinking water for up to four million people,
according to the report, titled “America’s Most Endangered
Rivers of 2024.” … [The report, issued by the advocacy group
American Rivers, also cited the Trinity River in
California and the Tijuana River in California and Mexico as
among the ten most endangered rivers.]
A new lawsuit filed by public drinking water systems in
California against manufacturers of toxic “forever chemicals”
is among the first to cite new Biden administration regulations
that set strict limits for the chemicals in drinking water. The
Orange County Water District and more than a dozen other
California water utilities filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles
federal court on Friday against seven manufacturers of per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including Dynax America
Corp. and Arkema Inc. The lawsuit accuses the manufacturers of
negligence and of creating a nuisance by contaminating water
with PFAS, and seeks money to remediate that contamination.
The International Boundary and Water Commission is again being
sued over water-quality permit violations that have led to
rampant sewage polluting San Diego County’s southernmost
shoreline. The San Diego Coastkeeper and Coastal Environmental
Rights Foundation on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court
against the U.S. arm of the IBWC and its contractor Veolia
Water North America-West, alleging violations of the Clean
Water Act.
For the second year in a row, there will be no commercial or
recreational salmon fishing in California. … The Golden
State Salmon Association supports the recommendation of the
[Pacific Fishery Management Council], which works closely with
federally recognized West Coast tribes, many who define
themselves as “salmon people” and hold annual ceremonies to
honor their return each year. Bates said $20.6 million has
been allocated from the U.S. Department of Commerce to
compensate for some of the losses caused by last year’s closure
to charter fleets and commercial fleets, buyers and processors.
But the fisheries are calling on the state to allocate water,
not cash. Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden
State Salmon Association, said big agriculture is not limited
in their water use, but fisheries get hit with constraints.
… The federal government’s current approach to this imbalance
is the equivalent of trying to cure cancer with a Band-Aid.
Instead of pursuing a long-term solution, Washington is using
federal funds to pay states and tribal nations to leave water
in the river instead of taking their full allocation. Mostly,
that means paying farmers to stop farming. That is not a viable
long-term solution, and strategically, we need to be
encouraging MORE local farming and food production, not less.
It does make sense to assist local farmers in switching to
crops that require less water, but it does not make sense to
put American farmers out of business and make us more reliant
on food trucked or shipped thousands of miles before it arrives
on our tables. -Written by Arizona Republican Kari Lake, who is running
for the U.S. Senate.
Missouri lawmakers say water has almost always been plentiful
in their state, giving no reason to think twice about a concept
known as riparian rights — the idea that, if you own the land,
you have broad freedoms to use its water. But that could change
under a bill advancing quickly in a state legislature that is
normally sharply divided. The measure would largely forbid the
export of water across state lines without a permit, even
though there is no evidence that is happening on any large
scale. … lawmakers are wary of the West, and the chance that
thirsty communities facing dwindling water supplies will look
east for lakes and rivers to tap.
For the first time in California history, state officials are
poised to crack down on overpumping of groundwater in the
agricultural heartland. The State Water Resources Control
Board on Tuesday will weigh whether to put Kings County
groundwater agencies on probation for failing to rein in
growers’ overdrafting of the underground water supply.
Probation — which would levy state fees that could total
millions of dollars — is the first step that could allow
California regulators to eventually take over management of the
region’s groundwater.
President Biden has approved California’s request for a major
disaster declaration to support recovery efforts from a string
of February storms that drenched much of the state with
historic rainfall and mountain snow and resulted in numerous
deaths, officials announced Sunday. Nine California counties —
Butte, Glenn, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa
Barbara, Santa Cruz, Sutter and Ventura — will receive federal
aid as a result of the declaration, which also includes funding
for statewide hazard mitigation efforts, officials said. “
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [last week] unveiled
the first nationwide limits on dangerous “forever chemicals” in
drinking water, setting standards that will have sweeping,
costly effects throughout California. … In California
alone, traces of the compounds have been detected in water
systems serving more than 25 million people, nearly a third in
disadvantaged communities, according to an analysis by
the Natural Resources Defense Council.
As part of a new survey launched this year, personnel with the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife are visiting various
locations along the Russian River, including at least two in
Ukiah, to collect data regarding the Steelhead trout that local
anglers are catching. One of the main reasons why the survey is
being done in person, according to CDFW staff, is that while
the existing “Steelhead report Card program is meant to collect
similar data,” only about a third of the report cards are
submitted.
President Biden plans to expand the perimeters of two national
monuments in California, protecting mountains and meadows in a
remote area between Napa and Mendocino as well as a rugged
stretch east of Los Angeles, two people familiar with the
administration’s plans said Thursday. The San Gabriel Mountains
National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National
Monument will each get new boundaries designed to protect land
of cultural significance to Native American tribes, as well as
biodiversity and wildlife corridors, said the people, who asked
not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the
plans publicly.
A stretch of California that’s considered one of the
fastest-sinking areas in the nation, where farms have pumped so
much water from the ground that the land has slowly collapsed,
is on the verge of state intervention. In a first-ever move,
California regulators are looking to step in and monitor
groundwater pumping in the Tulare Lake subbasin, an
837-square-mile hydrological region flush with cotton, hay and
almonds between Fresno and Bakersfield. Because of heavy
pumping, some places here are sinking a foot a year, causing
roads to buckle and canals to crack. … The looming
confrontation between the state and water agencies marks the
latest, and one of the most significant, developments with
California’s decade-old groundwater legislation, the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA.
… the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [on
Wednesday] announced the final National Primary Drinking Water
Regulation establishing the first national legally enforceable
drinking water standards … for six per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly referred to as
“forever chemicals” …. actions required for public water
systems under the final rule are likely going to require
significant investment of money, time, and human effort.
California fishermen spoke out against state water management
policies Thursday after federal fishing officials canceled
ocean salmon fishing season in the state for the second
consecutive year, delivering a major blow to the fishing
industry. … Salmon stocks have been impacted by the
state’s multi-year drought and climate disruptions, including
wildfires, algal blooms and ocean forage shifts, according to
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The salmon
population has also been impacted by rising river water
temperatures in addition to a rollback of federal
protections for waterways by the Trump administration.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced
the first federal limits on PFAS — manmade “forever
chemicals” linked to cancer, organ damage and other health
issues — in the nation’s drinking water. The regulation,
which was initially proposed in 2023, requires water systems to
reduce levels of six of the most studied types of PFAS to
the lowest levels that can be reliably measured with
testing. … The Bay Area’s drinking water generally
has low levels of PFAS because large water systems in the
region get most of their drinking water from pristine sources
in the Sierra or local reservoirs in regional parks, according
to researchers who study toxic chemicals in drinking water. The
city of San Francisco, for instance, gets most of its water
from Hetch Hetchy, a reservoir north of Yosemite Valley.
In a devastating blow to California’s fishing industry, federal
fishery managers unanimously voted today to cancel all
commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of
California for the second year in a row. The decision is
designed to protect California’s dwindling salmon populations
after drought and water diversions left river flows too warm
and sluggish for the state’s iconic Chinook salmon to
thrive. … Many in the fishing industry say they
support the closure, but urged state and federal officials to
do more to improve conditions in the rivers salmon rely on.
Fishing advocates and environmentalists have lambasted Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s administration for failing to prioritize
water quality and flows to protect salmon in the
vital Bay-Delta watershed.
California lawmakers want to establish the state’s position on
environmental health, taking a first step Monday in their
proactive approach to ensure processes for the state’s
environmental management remains secure, regardless of any
federal changes. … The Los Angeles Democrat is
propositioning a constitutional amendment that would enshrine
into law the Californian’s right to clean air, water and the
environment. Assembly Constitutional Amendment 16,
authored by Bryan, passed Monday out of the Assembly Natural
Resources Committee and into his chamber’s Appropriations
Committee. It must pass both houses by at least two-thirds and
then secure a majority vote at the polls.
A bill that would allow graywater systems to be included in new
homes throughout Colorado received rare unanimous approval from
the Colorado House on Friday. Graywater is made up of water
that has been used a single time from appliances like laundry
machines, baths or sinks and can be used again for non-drinking
purposes like toilet flushes and irrigation. Conservationists
point to graywater uses as a way to cut down on water
consumption as the drought in the West has deepened in recent
years.
Arizona House Republicans convened in a newly created committee
Thursday afternoon to discuss an investigation into the state’s
Democrat attorney general. The conservative lawmakers announced
the creation of the House Committee on Executive Oversight
Wednesday in response to Attorney General Kris Mayes’ ongoing
investigations into “megafarms” she says are overusing
groundwater and draining the wells of rural Arizonans. …
Mayes has recently indicated in multiple town halls across
rural Arizona, specifically La Paz County, her intent to file a
public nuisance complaint against large industrial farms and
corporations that she says are sucking rural Arizonans dry.
New California legislation seeks to permanently ban paraquat, a
powerful and widely used weedkiller that has been linked to
Parkinson’s disease and other serious health issues. Assembly
Bill 1963, introduced recently by Assemblymember Laura Friedman
(D-Glendale), would sunset the use of paraquat beginning in
January 2026. The herbicide, which is described by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency as highly toxic, is regularly
sprayed on almonds, grapes, cotton and other crops in the
state. … California is the nation’s top user of paraquat
…
Powerful pumps that supply much of California’s population with
water have killed several thousand threatened and endangered
fish this year, prompting a coalition of environmental groups
to demand that state and federal agencies take immediate steps
to limit “alarming levels” of deaths. In
a letter to state and federal water managers, leaders
of five fishing and environmental groups said the estimated
losses of threatened steelhead trout and endangered winter-run
Chinook salmon have exceeded maximum annual limits for water
intakes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Think “Sonoma County farm,” and most people will conjure an
image of docile cows chewing cud or chickens scratching the
dirt, idly whiling away their days among the grassy, green
hills of this mostly rural, coastal Northern California county.
But animal rights activists say all is not right in this region
known for its wine and farm-to-fork sensibilities. They say
there are two dozen large, concentrated animal farming
operations — which collectively house almost 3 million animals
— befouling watersheds and torturing livestock and poultry in
confined lots and cages. And in an effort to stop it, they’ve
collected more than 37,000 signatures from Sonoma County
residents to put an end to it — forcing the county Board of
Supervisors to either enact or match the ordinance themselves,
or have it kicked over to the November ballot.
Two letters filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) reveal details of the damage at PG&E’s Lake
Spaulding Powerhouse No. 1, which is out of service since early
March. The failure of the powerhouse, combined with a massive
rockslide over the PG&E-owned starting portion of the South
Yuba Canal, have effectively cut off water supplies from the
higher elevations to the Bear River and Deer Creek. The State
Historic Preservation Officer’s letter to FERC provides
additional information on the damage discovered by PG&E.
Are you a water rightsholder? Have you filed your Annual Water
Diversion and Use reports for Water Year 2023? If you answered
“yes” then “no,” a notice of violation could be on the way.
It’s just been announced that the Division of Water Rights will
be sending Notices of Violation in the next few weeks for those
who have not submitted the annual reports or statements. Those
were due before February 1. According to the Board, if you
submit your past-due report promptly, you will not receive the
notice and potential future enforcement action. There is a help
website that has been set up in an attempt to walk
rightsholders through the process. You can access that at
https://shorturl.at/xNY28.
As Attorney General Kris Mayes gathers evidence to take action
against corporate farms’ groundwater pumping, some lawmakers
would like to establish protections that discourage such
lawsuits. Agricultural operations could get their legal fees
paid by the plaintiff if they are sued in a nuisance action to
reduce or take away their water use under a bill filed early
this year by state Rep. Austin Smith, R-Wittmann. The measure
would have a “chilling effect” on new approaches to reduce
groundwater use, several legal experts told The Arizona
Republic, because the claimant would need to pay filing fees
and attorney fees for themselves and the sued party.
The Sacramento County district attorney’s office has sued a
state agency alleging that storage tanks are leaking hazardous
substances under several downtown buildings, including the
state Capitol. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Sacramento
Superior Court against the California Department of General
Services, alleges the leakages are also happening in Oakland.
It was filed jointly by Sacramento County District Attorney
Thien Ho and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price. The
district attorneys filed the lawsuit “to protect public health
and the environment from harm due to releases of hazardous
substances from leaking Underground Storage Tanks, including
harm to groundwater and surface waters and against harm from
indoor air impacts,” the lawsuit stated.
At the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority board meeting
on March 29, the IWVGA board approved motions to reimburse two
domestic well owners who had to replace their wells due to
declining groundwater levels. IWVGA reimbursed $37,996 for the
Halpin Well and $31,082 for the Byerly Well. Reimbursement
covers the estimated current value of the exhausted well and
the incremental costs of drilling a deeper well. California’s
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act requires groundwater
basins like the IWV groundwater basin to reach sustainability
by 2040. This is why the IWVGA initially formed to draft and
implement a Groundwater Sustainability Plan.
On April 2, 2024, the California Department of Water Resources
(DWR) released the California Water Plan Update 2023 (CWP 2023
Update). DWR’s press release dubs the plan “A Roadmap to Water
Management and Infrastructure for a Water Resilient Future.”
Resiliency is one of the key focuses for the CWP 2023 Update,
as its chapter on objectives is entitled the “Roadmap to
Resilience.” The plan is focused on the vision that “All
Californians benefit from water resources that are sustainable,
resilient to climate change, and managed to achieve shared
values and connections to our communities and the environment.”
As elected officials representing Colusa and Yuba counties, we
sent a letter to Governor Newsom earlier this year encouraging
him and his administration to advance the Agreements to Support
Healthy Rivers and Landscapes (sometimes known as the Voluntary
Agreements) and the associated benefits for communities, farms,
businesses, the environment and the public. We were joined in
this letter by counties throughout the Sacramento River
Basin—we have specifically urged the State Water Board to
identify the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and
Landscapes alternative in its final staff report and
forthcoming program of implementation as the State Water
Board’s best pathway for updating the Sacramento/Delta portions
of the Bay-Delta Plan.
Water access in California has seen growing scrutiny as the
climate shifts from more extreme dry to wet swings. This
results in increasing year-to-year uncertainty for both
commercial and residential water availability. One area getting
more attention from an ethical and practical application is the
system of water rights, which first took shape in the late
1800s.
Winter brought just average rain and snow to Stanislaus
County’s main watershed, but most farmers will get abundant
supplies. That’s because reservoirs continue to hold much of
the runoff from last year’s truly wet conditions. Only in parts
of the West Side will water be limited. The storms also boosted
groundwater, which is part of the supply in many places. City
residents, too, can expect no cutbacks, but they still have to
follow rules against outdoor watering in the afternoon. Too
much demand on a hot summer day can tax the distribution
system.
The Department of the Interior announced the Yuma East Wetlands
will receive $5 million to upgrade infrastructure to ensure the
continued existence of the marshes for future
generations. There will be improvements that include
designing and replacing the system used to move water around
the wetlands. Pumps currently fueled by diesel with
electrical pumps will be replaced, concrete canals will be
extended and electrical power will be brought to the
conservation area to allow for technology updates. The
Yuma East Wetlands is used by the community for public
recreation and it also provides habitat for wildlife including
endangered species.
Yesterday, Gov. Gavin Newsom surveyed the Sierra snowpack and
outlined a new state water plan focused on climate change.
Scott and KQED climate reporter Ezra David Romero are joined by
California’s former top water regulator Felicia Marcus. As
the state’s top water czar, she navigated severe droughts,
balancing demands for scare water by cities, farms, businesses
and homeowners.
The $171 million Kern Fan Groundwater Storage project – with a
unique “eco-twist” – received another chunk of public funding
just as the first section of the 1,300-acre project had a
formal christening on Wednesday. Officials with Rosedale-Rio
Bravo Water Storage District, Irvine Ranch Water District and
the Bureau of Reclamation gathered at the project site near
Enos Lane west of Bakersfield to look over construction of the
first part of Phase 1, which began in February. The Bureau
announced earlier in the week that it had approved a $3.9
million grant for the project, which is in addition to $4.7
million awarded by the Bureau in 2023. That funding requires a
75% match from Rosedale-Rio Bravo and Irvine Ranch.
Chemical manufacturer 3M will begin payments starting in the
third quarter to many U.S. public drinking water systems as
part of a multi-billion-dollar settlement over contamination
with potentially harmful compounds used in firefighting foam
and several consumer products, the company said. St. Paul,
Minnesota-based 3M announced Monday that last year’s lawsuit
settlement received final approval from the U.S. District Court
in Charleston, South Carolina. The agreement called for payouts
through 2036. Depending on what additional contamination is
found, the amount paid out will range from $10.5 billion to
$12.5 billion.
Years ago, in a moment of despair over the utter dead-end that
solving the Tijuana River sewage crisis seemed to be, I asked
U.S. officials why we don’t just cross the border and start
fixing broken pipes in Mexico. Nations can’t just cross
each other’s borders like that, MacKenzie, the kindly federal
official told me. At least, they shouldn’t. It would be a rude
mistake. Mexico could consider such federal intrusion without
permission as an act of war. But President Joe Biden’s pick to
rein in cross-border sewage spills has found a way to leverage
her relationships with Mexico to encourage more collaborative
U.S. involvement. Maria-Elena Giner announced to reporters
during a press conference last week that the International
Boundary and Water Commission (the binational agency that deals
with cross-border water issues) will start monthly inspections
of a key sewage pump and trash shredder in Tijuana that feeds
wastewater into San Diego for treatment. -Written by MacKenzie Elmer, Voice of San Diego
reporter.
Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) and Mono Lake
Committee staff met this morning at the shore of Mono Lake to
conduct the annual joint reading of the surface elevation of
Mono Lake. The consensus is that the lake stands at 6,383.70
feet above mean sea level which means that Mono Lake is only
halfway to the 6,392-foot elevation level mandated by the
California State Water Resources Control Board 30 years ago to
resolve ecological, wildlife, economic, Tribal, public trust,
and air quality harms caused by the lowering of Mono
Lake. Today’s lake level triggers an important choice for
DWP: Will the Department choose a nearly fourfold increase in
diversions (16,000 acre-feet), or will it choose to leave
exports unchanged (4,500 acre-feet) and preserve the lake level
gains of the record-wet winter of 2023?
In December 2018 the State Water Resources Control Board (State
Board) adopted updates to the Bay-Delta Plan (Plan) in
accordance with its obligations under the Porter-Cologne Act.
The updated Plan included flow objectives intended to restore
and protect Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead in the
lower San Joaquin River and its tributaries. Twelve lawsuits
and 116 claims were filed challenging the State Board’s updated
Plan. On March 15, 2024, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge
Stephen Acquisto rejected all lawsuits and claims. To some
degree the court’s decision is a win for California’s
fisheries, but the decision also affirmed the discretionary
right of the State Board to keep less water in rivers than
needed to restore fisheries and aquatic ecosystems.
The start of April means that California’s rainy season is
coming to an end. Things are looking pretty good this year, but
there are some caveats. The snowpack across the Sierra Nevada
and the Colorado River Basin — both critical stores of water —
is hovering slightly above average, though it’s nowhere near
what we saw last winter. … It’s looking unlikely, as our
reservoirs are quite full and we’ve had a good showing of
snow. “We pulled back on restrictions last year, however,
we’re telling people to use their common sense,” said Adel
Hagekhalil, CEO of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California. The public agency will neither be drawing from
or putting water into storage, though that’ll change if the
allocation increases. According to Hagekhalil, the MWD has
enough water to help Southern California get through the next
three years.
Time is quickly running out for businesses, HOAs and
multifamily properties to get the most out of the cash
incentives offered by the Southern Nevada Water Authority
(SNWA) for replacing thirsty non-functional grass with
drought-friendly landscaping. The SNWA recently approved
changes to the Water Smart Landscapes rebate program that will
decrease cash incentives for non-functional grass conversion
projects on non-single-family properties. Starting Jan. 1,
2025, the rebate for such projects will be reduced to $2 per
square foot for the first 10,000 square feet of non-functional
grass converted to drip-irrigated trees and plants, and $1 per
square foot thereafter.
For a place where nature didn’t intend lettuce to grow, the
southwest corner of Arizona has built a spectacular record as
“America’s salad bowl.” Thanks to copious irrigation and
decades of public investment, Yuma and the bordering Imperial
Valley of California supply as much as 90 percent of the
nation’s salad greens during the winter, making the area
pivotal to the debate over the future of American agriculture
in an era of oppressive weather made worse by the changing
climate.
Groundwater in Arizona belongs to all of us. It is a public
resource and sensible management of it is vital to our shared
future. But instead of fulfilling their obligation to
protect this finite and diminishing water supply, Arizona’s
Republican legislators have introduced dozens of bills at the
statehouse aimed at enriching residential developers and
corporate farmers who want to expand their groundwater
use. Many of these bills are advancing and will end up on
the governor’s desk. One intent of these bills is to
weaken the state’s assured water supply requirement for
development in urban areas. This crucial consumer protection
prevents the sale of subdivision lots that lack a 100-year
water supply, thereby assuring our desert state’s
longevity. -Written by Kathleen Ferris, a Phoenix water
attorney and sits on the Governor’s Water Policy
Council.
With California snowpack and reservoirs at above-average levels
following two wet winters, Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on a snowy
field near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday and urged the state to do much
more to make its water supplies resilient to the extreme
droughts and flooding that come with climate change. … The
governor presented a new water plan that lays out priorities
for changing how the state captures, stores and moves water,
including efforts to replenish groundwater, recycle wastewater
and restore the natural ecosystems of watersheds. Newsom said
his administration is focusing on infrastructure projects such
as building the Sites Reservoir — the first new major reservoir
in decades — and he vowed to move ahead with the proposed Delta
Conveyance Project.
The basin depends on 7,650 acre feet of natural inflow each
year but users pump out nearly 28,000 acre feet annually,
creating a severe overdraft. As the Authority has worked to
comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)
to bring the basin into balance numerous legal actions have
erupted. The Authority restricted pumping for most users. The
U.S. Navy, which operates the China Lake Navale Weapons Base in
the basin, got the lion’s share of pumping. While agricultural
users, such as Mojave Pistachios, which started planting in the
high desert around 2010, received zero pumping allocation.
Marin County and Novato are disputing a state water board’s
contention that they are doing too little to prevent the
discharge of fecal bacteria into the Petaluma River. The San
Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Board notified both the
county and Novato in January that they are out of compliance
with a program that it adopted in 2019 to reduce the level of
fecal bacteria in the river. Both jurisdictions, however,
contend that they are not required to comply with the program
because the scheme has not yet been incorporated into their
municipal storm sewer system permits, which are issued by the
State Water Resources Control Board.
As mining operations ramp up across Arizona, two massive
projects facing opposition from environmental groups and Native
American tribes have public comment deadlines in the coming
weeks. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is
accepting comments on the proposed Resolution Copper project
near Superior through April 7 and for the Copper World project
in the Santa Rita Mountains, about 30 miles south of Tucson,
through April 10. … Oak Flat sits over one of the
largest remaining copper deposits in the world. The mine would
sink more than 7,000 feet into the ground, where temperatures
reach 180 degrees Fahrenheit. It would require large quantities
of water for cooling, dust control to remediation of mine
waste.
Federal salmon overseers say Oregon Coast Chinook face a low
risk of extinction, according to a recently concluded deep dive
into the health of runs stretching from the Necanicum in the
north to the Elk and Sixes in the south. It’s not the
final word on whether an Endangered Species Act listing is
needed or not, but the 195-page status review does
represent an assessment by the National Marine Fisheries
Service’s Northwest Science Center in response to a petition
filed in 2022 to list the stock and will be a relief to
fishermen and salmon managers. … However, the news
wasn’t as good for Chinook in the Southern Oregon and Northern
California ESU, which stretches from Bandon to the Klamath
River. Even as the overall population is also at low risk of
extinction, key components aren’t doing as well, raising the
risk for the entire stock.
California’s State Water Board is wrestling with what terms to
set for water conservation regulation for urban areas. This
regulation implements state policy designed to Make
Conservation a California Way of Life. But the only way to make
that vision equitable is to ensure the needs of low-income
communities are taken into account. Unfortunately, the Water
Board is considering making it too easy to slow-walk
investments in conservation, not only in low-income
communities, but also in wealthy places like Beverly Hills that
use significantly more than their fair share. The proposed
regulation currently under consideration means that 72% of
Californians will not need to save a single additional drop
until 2035. -Written by Kyle Jones, Policy & Legal Director
at the Community Water Center.
[Denise] Moreno Ramírez wasn’t surprised when she heard an
Australian mining company, South32, planned to open a
manganese, zinc, lead and silver operation in the same area
where her family had worked. … But this latest proposed mine
was alarming, she said, because Biden is fast-tracking
it in the name of the energy transition – potentially
compromising the mountain’s delicate ecosystems, many of which
have begun to be restored as mines have shut
down. … A growing network of Arizona residents say
that allowing the mine to proceed as planned could introduce a
grave new layer of environmental injustices.
…Conservationists say they worry that South32 is seeking to
use water irresponsibly amid long-term drought.
Attorney General Kris Mayes told La Paz County residents she’s
considering a lawsuit to stop corporate farms from overpumping
groundwater there and in Cochise County. Her investigators are
seeking examples of harm such as dry wells, cracked foundations
and dust on which to build a possible case using the state’s
nuisance laws, she said Thursday.
Residents at Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park were given bottled
water and warned about possible contamination in their
well during a March meeting organized by the Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board and California’s Division
of Drinking Water. First reported by the Red Bluff Daily News,
the concern stems from alarming levels of per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances. Those man-made chemicals, called
PFAS, are used to make a huge number of modern products like
stain-resistant material, nonstick cookware, food packaging and
waterproof clothing. They’ve also been linked to health impacts
including cancer, liver and thyroid damage.
An elected member of a Ventura County water board has pleaded
guilty to a felony charge of stealing water for his Oxnard
farm. Daniel Naumann, 66, admitted to one count of grand theft
of water, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said
in a Friday news release. As part of his plea agreement,
five other felony charges will be dropped, the Ventura
County Star reports. Naumann,
a Camarillo resident who is owner and operator of
Naumann Family Farms, was an elected board member of the United
Water Conservation District and an alternate board member of
the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency. … Despite
those roles, Naumann took nearly $30,000 in water between 2019
and 2021 using “diversion bypasses [that] were installed on two
commercial water pumps that irrigated Naumann’s crops,” the
release stated.
As a homeowner, you invest a great deal of time, money, love,
imagination, and hard work into your house and property.
Of course, you hope nothing will go seriously wrong. Still, you
purchase homeowner’s insurance to give you peace of mind and to
ensure you’re financially protected if your home and belongings
are damaged by unpredictable events such as fire, vandalism,
theft, or storms. Today, climate change is causing
increasingly erratic weather patterns. Natural disasters,
including severe storms and wildfires, are becoming more
frequent and devastating. In 2023, nine “atmospheric
rivers” pummeled the western United States, dumping record
amounts of rain and snow. According to the National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, more
than 32 trillion gallons of water drenched California, racking
up $4.6 billion in damages. -Written by John Petrov, a contractor and public
insurance adjuster with over 25 years of experience in the
construction industry.
A special workshop on the binational sewage crisis was held
Wednesday in Imperial Beach. The meeting featured a panel of
experts from various government agencies and academic
institutions. Dozens of concerned residents gathered at the
special council workshop addressing the ongoing sewage crisis.
They heard from the International Boundary and Water Commission
shed light on cross-border sewage flows. … Scripps
Institution of Oceanography offered valuable insights into the
environmental impact of sewage contamination, while SDSU School
of Public Health discussed risks associated with chemical and
biological pollutants in water, air, and soil.
Plastic fragments have been found at the top of the Alps, in
the deepest parts of our oceans and likely, in your local
waterways. Some of this microplastic is in the form of nurdles.
You may not be familiar with them, but these lentil-sized
plastics pose a huge threat to our waters and
wildlife. Nurdles, also called plastic pellets, are the
building blocks of plastic manufacturing. At plastic factories,
pellets that fall on the floor or get contaminated with dirt
are sometimes washed down drains. Because they’re small and
lightweight, nurdles are often spilled during transport too.
… Plastic pellets are extremely difficult to clean up once
they reach our waterways, and often polluters are not held
accountable.
A recent court ruling may have thrown a wrench in the state’s
funding plans for the controversial and expensive Delta
Conveyance Project – a tunnel to move Sacramento River water 45
miles beneath the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. In January, the Sacramento Superior Court denied
the state Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) request to
finance the project through bonds. Tunnel opponents hailed
the ruling as a blow to the project. But state staff say the
ruling will not impede funding. DWR has appealed the case and
is still planning on using bonds to pay for the project if it
comes to fruition.
Kings County growers are organizing to stop a set of
groundwater and land fees they say will wipe out small farmers,
even as the drumbeat of a looming state takeover grows louder.
Managers of the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA), which covers the northern tip of Kings County,
have been holding a flurry of meetings asking farmers to
approve the fees – a combination of $95-per-acre-foot of water
pumped and $25-per-acre of land – at its April 23
meeting. That is after April 16, when the state Water Resources
Control Board will hold a hearing to decide whether to put all
of Kings County, known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin,
into probation for failing to come up with an adequate plan to
stop over pumping.
On the heels of two wet winters, it’s easy to forget how close
some parts of California came to running out of water a few
short years ago. But this climate amnesia will not help us
prepare for the next inevitable drought. … the water board is
about to trample the hard-won work that’s been done so far by
allowing water utilities until 2035 or later to
implement meaningful reductions. … Because the water
board’s latest plan for implementing efficiency standards has
such an extended timeline, water will inevitably become even
more expensive, including for low-income households and
communities. -Written by Robert Hertzberg, a former speaker of
the Assembly and former majority leader of the state Senate;
and Assembly member Laura Friedman
(D-Glendale), running to replace Adam Schiff in the U.S.
House of Representatives.
Karrigan Börk, UC Davis professor of law and Associate Director
at the Center for Watershed Sciences, has been awarded the
prestigious $10,000 Morrison Prize for his paper on water
rights. The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State
University recognizes Börk’s paper as “the most impactful
sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North
America” for 2023. Börk’s winning paper, “Water Exaction
Rights,” published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review,
proposes a solution to address current and future water crises
in the US: an exactions framework.
For the first time in four years, water is being pumped from
Tulelake to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. The
historic Pumping Plant D in Tulelake Irrigation District (TID)
was constructed at the base of Sheepy Ridge in 1942. TID
Manager Brad Kirby said the five massive pumps ran year-round
for nearly 70 years. … In 2020, drought conditions and
federal regulations rendered the plant inoperative. As of
Monday morning, the D-Plant is up and running again, pumping
water from the Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge through Sheepy
Ridge to the Lower Klamath refuge thanks to the efforts of TID,
Ducks Unlimited and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
Fishers are fighting tire companies’ attempt to dismiss an
Endangered Species Act suit over the use of a rubber additive
known as 6PPD, which harms salmon, telling a California federal
judge the companies are trying to delay accountability…
Southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which
supplies water to farmers who grow most of the nation’s winter
vegetables, planned to start a conservation program in April to
scale back what it draws from the critical Colorado River. But
a tiny, tough fish got in the way. Now, those plans won’t start
until at least June so water and wildlife officials can devise
a way to ensure the endangered desert pupfish and other species
are protected, said Jamie Asbury, the irrigation district’s
general manager.
The Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency is
looking to impose a pumping fee of nearly $100 per
acre-foot. Mid-Kings River GSA is comprised of the Kings
County Water District, the City of Hanford and Kings
County. The big picture: The GSA is proposing a
pumping fee maximum of $95 per acre-foot. This comes after
the State views that the region has not made enough progress
through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA). The state wants agriculture and industrial water
pumpers to cut back or pay to mitigate the impacts on
other users. The state could move to put the subbasin in
probation if it does not feel confident in local groundwater
management, and could completely take over operations in 2025.
California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways is
offering grant funding to prevent the further spread of quagga
and zebra mussels into California’s waterways. Funded by the
California Mussel Fee Sticker (also known as the Quagga
Sticker), the Quagga and Zebra Mussel (QZ) Infestation
Prevention Grant Program expects to award a total of up to $2
million across eligible applicants. Applications will be
accepted from Monday, April 1 through Friday, May 10, 2024.All
applications must be received by 5 p.m. on May 10, 2024. The QZ
grants are available to entities that own or manage any aspect
of water in a reservoir that is open for public recreation, is
mussel-free, and do not have an existing two-year QZ Grant
awarded in 2023.
A Senate panel voted to shut the public out of the key business
of the state agency tasked with finding new water for Arizona.
HB 2014 authorizes the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority
to enter into agreements to facilitate the construction of a
project that would bring water from outside the state into
Arizona. It also empowers the agency to negotiate deals with
others to agree to purchase the water once it becomes
available. But what HB 2014 also would do is exempt all
communications and information gathered related to water
augmentation from all provisions of the state’s Public Records
Law. And the only time anyone could get information would be
“on the consent of the authority.”
Does the public sector need the private sector’s help to
address the freshwater crisis? That’s the controversial thesis
of Stanford law and environmental social sciences professor
Barton “Buzz” Thompson’s provocatively titled new book: Liquid
Asset: How Business and Government Can Partner to Solve the
Freshwater Crisis. (Buzz is also a member of the PPIC Water
Policy Center’s research network.) We sat down with him to hear
more. … The private sector is already involved in water in
many ways, some more controversial than others. … We
think of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) as a
public program, and it is. The legislature passed the law, and
public agencies are implementing it. But if you look carefully,
you’ll see private handprints all over SGMA’s success.
A new research paper published recently in Annual Review of
Earth and Planetary Sciences, coordinated by scientists from
The University of New Mexico and collaborating institutions,
addresses the complex nature and societal importance of Grand
Canyon’s springs and groundwater. The paper,
“Hydrotectonics of Grand Canyon Groundwater,” recommends
sustainable groundwater management and uranium
mining threats that require better monitoring and
application of hydrotectonic concepts. The data suggest an
interconnectivity of the groundwater systems such that uranium
mining and other contaminants pose risks to people, aquifers,
and ecosystems. The conclusion based on multiple datasets is
that groundwater systems involve significant mixing.
The Colorado River is relied upon by roughly 40 million people.
That includes members of 30 federally-recognized tribes, as
well as residents across seven states. Four of those are in the
region known as the Upper Basin – that includes Colorado, Utah,
Wyoming, and New Mexico – and the other three are in the Lower
Basin – California, Arizona, and Nevada. In Colorado alone,
half of Denver’s supply – as well as half of Colorado Springs’
supply – rely on the river. Tribal nations in Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have been left out of key
agreements involving the Colorado River for well over a century
now.
Water Audit California has voiced concerns about Napa County in
recent months, appealing two Planning Commission decisions and
calling new county plans for storing paper records a “black
hole.” The environmental advocacy group appealed a Dec. 20
county Planning Commission decision approving a Nova Business
Park project. But its bigger claim is that the county fails to
do adequate due diligence, something the county denies.
Reclamation today announced a $5.5 million investment from
President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to repair the
Willow Creek Dam in Montana and the B.F. Sisk Dam in California
as part of the Investing in America agenda. Willow Creek Dam in
Montana will use $2.1 million to fund temporary spillway
improvements by installing rock in the spillway to reduce risk
of spillway erosion until a permanent dam safety modification
is completed. Construction will include purchase and placement
of 9,100 cubic yards of rock. Reclamation will reserve another
900 cubic yards on site for flood fighting activities.
Reclamation’s project stakeholder, Greenfields Irrigation
District, will perform the work. B.F. Sisk Dam in California
will use $3.4 million to modify the Phase 1 contract, to adapt
to delays caused by high precipitation levels in 2023.
Two-thirds of the tribes with lands and water rights in the
Colorado River Basin are calling for equal status in developing
new river management guidelines and protection of their senior
water rights against proposed cuts or caps on developing their
water. Leaders from 20 tribes, including eight in Arizona, sent
a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation March 11. In the
letter, obtained by The Arizona Republic, the tribes outlined
what they expect in new river management guidelines that will
take effect when the current guidelines expire Dec. 31, 2026.
The two tribes with Arizona’s largest river allocations — the
Colorado River Indian Tribes, which holds senior rights to
720,000 acre-feet of water, mostly in Arizona, and the Gila
River Indian Community, with 653,000 acre-feet of Colorado
River and other waters — did not sign the letter.
State officials on Friday doubled the amount of water
California agencies will get this year following some strong
storms that increased the snowpack in the mountains. The State
Water Project is a major source for 27 million people. The
majority of contractors who supply the water are located south
of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Previously, the
Department of Water Resources had told them to expect 15% of
their requests this year. The department increased that to 30%
on Friday. The department said contractors north of the delta
can expect 50% of their requests, while contractors in the
Feather River Settlement can expect 100%.
Years after a massive spill at a Los Angeles water treatment
facility dumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the
Pacific, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency have ordered several improvements at the plant to help
prevent another such disaster, even when facing more intense
storms from a changing climate. The administrative order of
consent, issued this month, requires the Hyperion Water
Reclamation Plant in Playa del Rey to make significant fixes to
its operations and infrastructure, including improving
monitoring systems and overflow channels, after the federal
agency’s review of the 2021 spill. The agreement, between the
EPA and the Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment division,
mandates the updates be implemented by the end of 2025, though
some are required to be completed as soon as within 30 days,
according to the order.
In what has been a years-long fight to fend off efforts to mine
sites and areas the Quechan Indian Tribe say are culturally
significant, the tribe was victorious in preserving those sites
this week with an unexpected win against Canada’s SMP Gold
Corp. … The federally protected land, under the
U.S. Bureau of Land Management, is culturally significant and
important to the Quechan Indian Tribe and its members have been
vehemently fighting the Oro Cruz mining project for years, with
the support of other tribes, and numerous environmental and
social justice groups and concerned residents behind them.
… After the hearing, White elaborated further and told
the Calexico Chronicle that the tribe is trying to dedicate the
Cargo Muchacho Mountains area as the “Kw’tsán National
Monument”
Outrage over the Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court rolling back
federal reproductive rights has in some ways overshadowed the
now 6-3 conservative majority’s relentless assault on
environmental regulations that for decades protected Colorado’s
clean air and water. … Now Colorado lawmakers are trying
to step into that regulatory void with Wednesday’s filing of
the Regulate Dredge and Fill Activities in State Waters bill
(HB24-1379). If passed, it would require a rulemaking process
by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s Water
Quality and Control Division to permit dredge and fill
activities on both public and private land. -Written by contributor David O. Williams.
Klamath Project irrigation districts are preparing to move
water as concerns grow about potential flood releases on Upper
Klamath Lake in the coming weeks. The Klamath Water Users
Association says its members have been concerned over water
management in Upper Klamath Lake. The Klamath irrigation
district says given the possibility of flood conditions in the
coming weeks, it could pose a risk for everyone along the
Klamath River, including those working on dam removals.
Irrigation District Executive Director Gene Souza says their
request to discuss these concerns with the Bureau of
Reclamation has gone unanswered.
Last winter’s big rain and snow brought immediate benefits to
California’s water supply and data now shows that there are
long-term benefits, too. According to data gathered by
Sacramento’s Regional Water Authority, a surplus of surface
water following the 2022-2023 winter allowed water managers to
use 17% less groundwater compared to 2022. Historically,
groundwater throughout California’s Central Valley had been
severely overdrawn. Over the past 20 years, policy changes and
more nuanced water management have helped groundwater levels
recover.
California wineries appear to be complying with the Water
Board’s statewide Winery General Order’s winery wastewater
requirements, but the pace is slow, state statistics reveal.
And many are not in the compliance reporting pipeline at all,
data shows. (An overview page is provided here.) The order was
passed, the water boards said, for two major reasons. One was
because, “Winemakers requested the order to address the
statewide inconsistencies in permitting.” This request was from
large wineries that operate numerous facilities throughout the
state. (Smaller wineries opposed this in the public
hearings.) … As of Feb. 20, 2024, 201 wineries had
begun the process of filing, leaving a gap of 1,449 wineries
(the difference between 1,650 and 201, based on the initial
estimates).
Chevron has agreed to pay more than $13 million in fines for
dozens of past oil spills in California. The California-based
energy giant agreed to pay a $5.6 million fine associated with
a 2019 oil spill in Kern County. The company has already paid
to clean up that spill. This money will instead go toward the
state Department of Conservation’s work of plugging old and
orphaned wells. The department said it was the largest fine
ever assessed in its history. … The 2019 oil spill
dumped at least 800,000 gallons (3 million litres) of oil and
water into a canyon in Kern County, the home of the state’s oil
industry. Also, Chevron agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine
for more than 70 smaller spills between 2018 and 2023.
A Sacramento judge upheld a decision by California’s water
regulator to cut back agricultural and municipal water use from
the San Joaquin River. The decision could lend support for
future regulations in the rest of the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta system. It comes amid declining fish populations
and increasing pressure on water supply due to climate change.
But rather than move forward with strict regulations, the state
agency is considering a plan pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that
would grant water districts more flexibility.
Thousands of leaking, idle oil wells are scattered across
California, creating toxic graveyards symbolic of a dying
industry. To tackle this “urgent climate and public
health crisis,” Santa Barbara Assemblymember Gregg Hart
introduced Assembly Bill 1866 last week. The bill would mandate
oil operators to develop plans to plug the 40,000 idle wells
(and counting) in the state within a decade, prioritizing those
within 3,200 feet of vulnerable communities. … Ann
Alexander, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense
Council, calls the system “very badly broken.” Companies “just
sit indefinitely on their defunct wells” as they leak methane
gas, pollute the air, and contaminate groundwater.
… Last fall, the county announced its plan to
spend $3.7 million to repair an “unpluggable” well at
Toro Canyon Creek. Drilled in the 19th century, this idle well
has leaked thousands of gallons of crude oil since
the 1990s, contaminating waterways and killing wildlife as a
result.
The California water conservation crisis continues as lawmakers
may delay rules that could significantly help improve
California water. Environmentalists are expressing concerns
after regulators proposed delaying the timeline of implementing
lawn water regulations by five years until 2040. KRCR
spoke with Butte Environmental Council Member, Patrizia
Hironimus, who said despite the delay of California rules, they
are still aiming to educate the community on how to cut down on
their lawn water use. While also collecting local data to give
to the state to help them understand the water crisis even just
in Butte County.
A court has upheld a key decision by California’s water board
calling for reductions in water diversions from the San Joaquin
River and its tributaries to help revive struggling fish
populations. In his ruling, Sacramento County Superior Court
Judge Stephen Acquisto rejected lawsuits by water districts
serving farms and cities that would be required to take less
water under the standards adopted by regulators. The judge also
rejected challenges by environmental groups that had argued for
requiring larger cutbacks to boost river flows. The judge’s
ruling, issued in a 162-page order last week, supports the
State Water Resources Control Board’s 2018 adoption of a water
quality plan for the lower San Joaquin River and its three
major tributaries — the Tuolumne, Merced and Stanislaus rivers.
Members of the state Water Resources Control Board voted
unanimously on Tuesday, March 19, to reduce pumping fees for
groundwater users in subbasins that come under state control,
known as “probationary status.” The controversial fee was
lowered from $40 per-acre-foot of pumped water to $20 per acre
foot. The board will hold its first probationary hearing
on the Tulare Lake subbasin, which covers Kings County, on
April 16. … Groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) for
Tulare Lake and five other San Joaquin Valley subbasins were
rejected twice by the state as inadequate, which is why they
are now coming before the Water Board to determine if they
should be put into probationary status.
The Kern subbasin, composed of 22 water entities across the
valley portion of Kern County, is working on a groundwater
sustainability plan its members hope will be accepted by the
State Water Resources Control Board after the subbasin’s
initial plan was deemed inadequate. Currently the subbasin has
two main objectives. One is partnering with Self-Help
Enterprises to assist with the administration of a program to
fix domestic wells harmed by over pumping. The other is
gathering support among the 22 entities to participate in the
Friant-Kern Canal subsidence study. Proposed partnership: Under
the proposal, Self-Help would assist with subbasin’s well
issues in several ways.
California officials are trying to boost state wetlands
protections in order to guard against a 2023 Supreme Court
decision that slashed federal oversight of wetlands.
Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s A.B. 2875 would declare it the
state’s policy to ensure long-term gain and no net loss of
California’s wetlands. And Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
administration is proposing to add 38 new positions to enforce
the state’s existing wetlands protection laws and scrutinize
development permits.
A state policy that seeks to protect California’s major rivers
and creeks by cracking down on how much water is pumped out by
cities and farms can move forward despite widespread
opposition, the Superior Court has ruled. The long-awaited
decision on what’s known as the Bay-Delta Plan denies 116
claims in a dozen separate lawsuits that seek to undo a 2018
update to the policy, most of which are from water agencies
saying the limits on their water draws go too far. The 160-page
verdict, released Friday by Sacramento County Judge Stephen
Acquisto, specifically notes that arguments made by San
Francisco against the regulation fell short.
Ten years. That’s how much time the Bay Area’s 37 wastewater
treatment plants will have to reduce fertilizer and sewage in
their water by 40%. The estimated price tag for the facility
upgrades is $11 billion. The San Francisco Regional Water
Quality Control Board plans to adopt the change as part of its
new discharge permit requirement beginning June 12. Previous
permits did not require reductions …The regulatory change
follows a damaging algae bloom in 2022 and 2023. A brown algae
species called Heterosigma akashiwo, which feeds off the
nitrogen in wastewater, infected the Bay and damaged aquatic
ecosystems.
The United States suffers the world’s second-highest toll from
major weather disasters, according to a new analysis — even
when numbers are adjusted for the country’s wealth. The report
released late last month by Zurich-based reinsurance giant
Swiss Re, which analyzed the vulnerability and damages of 36
different countries, suggests that weather disasters may become
a heavy drag on the U.S. economy — especially as insurers
increasingly pull out of hazardous areas. Those disasters are
driving up insurance rates, compounding inflation and adding to
Americans’ high cost of living. … Some insurers have
stopped offering home insurance policies in California, which
has seen numerous large wildfires in the past few years.
California regulators this week proposed delaying new rules
aimed at reducing how much water people use on their lawns,
drawing praise from agencies that said they needed more time to
comply but criticism from environmentalists who warn that the
delay would damage the state’s already scarce supply. Last
year, California proposed new rules that would, cumulatively,
reduce statewide water use by about 14%. Those rules included
lowering outdoor water use standards below the current
statewide average by 2035. On Tuesday, regulators proposed
delaying that timeline by five years, until 2040. The State
Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to vote on the rules
later this year. The state would not punish people for using
too much water on their lawns.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering three
options for the ocean salmon season, set to begin May 16. The
federal council that manages water from California, Oregon and
Washington state came up with two options that would entail a
short salmon season, and it’ll come with small harvest limits
for both commercial and sport fishing. The last option includes
closing off the ocean fisheries for the second consecutive
year. Last year, commercial and recreation salmon fleets in
California were left anchored following the PFMC’s decision to
cancel the 2023 fishing season due to years of drought, low
river level and dry conditions affecting the Chinook salmon
populations in the Klamath and Sacramento rivers.
In a Sacramento office building, university students carefully
scan pieces of paper that underpin California’s most
contentious and valuable water disputes. One by one, they’re
bringing pieces of history into the digital era, some a century
old and thin as onion skin. The student workers are beginning
to digitize the state’s water rights records, part of a project
launched by the state’s water regulator earlier this year. It
may seem simple, but scanning two million musty pages is part
of a $60 million project that could take years. The massive
undertaking will unmask the notoriously opaque world of
California water. Right now, it’s practically impossible to
know who has the right to use water, how much they’re taking
and from what river or stream at any given time in the state.
The Sacramento Superior Court has ruled in favor of the State
Water Board’s 2018 Bay Delta Plan update, denying all 116
claims by petitioners. In December 2018, the State Water
Resources Control Plan adopted revised flow
objectives for the San Joaquin River and its three major
tributaries, the Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Merced rivers. The
new flow objectives provide for increased flows on the three
tributaries to help revive and protect native fall-run
migratory fish populations. The Board also adopted a revised
south Delta salinity objectives, increasing the level of
salinity allowed from April to August. Several petitions
were filed in several counties challenging the Board’s
action.
California environmental groups are urging a federal court to
intervene amid a “dramatic increase” in the deaths of
threatened steelhead trout at pumps operated by state and
federal water managers. Since Dec. 1, more than 4,000 wild and
hatchery-raised steelhead have been killed at pumps in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, according to public data
for the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley
Project. The agencies are now at about 90% of their combined
seasonal take limit, which refers to the amount of wild
steelhead permitted to be killed between January and March
under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. A coalition of
environmental and fishing groups — including the Golden State
Salmon Assn., the Bay Institute and Defenders of Wildlife — are
involved in ongoing litigation that seeks to challenge current
federal operating plans in the delta, an estuary at the heart
of the state’s water supply.
The states that use the Colorado River have put out their
latest proposals on how to manage the river’s shrinking amount
of water, and the two plans reveal that there are still big
differences in how upstream and downstream states want to divvy
up future cuts to their water consumption. While state water
negotiators say they’re committed to figuring out how they can
compromise in the age of climate change when there is less
water available to the 40 million people who rely on it, the
Southern Ute tribal government in southwestern Colorado doesn’t
believe either proposal addresses their concerns or helps them
secure their water future.
The Biden administration will be allocating more than $120
million to tribal governments to fight the impacts of climate
change, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. The
funding is designed to help tribal nations adapt to climate
threats, including relocating infrastructure. Indigenous
peoples in the U.S. are among the communities most affected by
severe climate-related environmental threats, which have
already negatively impacted water resources, ecosystems and
traditional food sources in Native communities in every corner
of the U.S. “As these communities face the increasing
threat of rising seas, coastal erosion, storm surges, raging
wildfires and devastation from other extreme weather events,
our focus must be on bolstering climate resilience …”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of
Laguna, said in a Wednesday press briefing.
On the eve of its first subbasin probationary hearing, the
state Water Resources Control Board announced it will vote on
whether to reduce a controversial groundwater extraction
fee. The board will vote at its March 19 meeting on
whether to cut the fee from $40 to $20-per-acre-foot for well
owners in a subbasin placed on probation. It will hold
its first probationary hearing on the Tulare Lake subbasin,
which covers Kings County, on April 16. Then the Tule subbasin,
in the southern half of the valley portion of Tulare County,
will come up for hearing Sept. 17. The extraction fee would
only be charged if the Water Board had to step in and
administer a subbasin in cases where it finds local groundwater
agencies aren’t up to the job.
Sacramento and cities across California caught a break from the
state’s water regulator this week after the agency faced
criticism that its water conservation rules were too
complicated and costly to meet. Regulators at the State Water
Resources Control Board proposed new conservation rules Tuesday
that would ease water savings requirements for urban water
suppliers and will ultimately lead to less long-term water
savings than initially planned. Under the new rules, the city
of Sacramento would have to cut its overall water use by 9% by
2035 and 14% by 2040, far less than an initial proposal that
would have required it to cut back water use by 13% by 2030 and
18% by 2035.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge confirmed that the
Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one connected basin—not
separate subbasins—allowing for the groundwater adjudication to
move forward following a year and a half of delays and
litigation. … The Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one of
California’s 21 critically overdrafted basins that was required
under the 2014 California Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act (SGMA) to create a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA)
and corresponding groundwater sustainability plan.
Can Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado agree to a new
apportionment of the Rio Grande’s waters without the U.S.
government’s approval? The Supreme Court of the United States
is set to hear a case next week that may affect access to water
for millions of Americans — and set a precedent that could
impact millions more, as increased usage and climate change
further strain supply of the precious resource. On March 20,
the Court will consider Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, a
tangled case involving water rights to the Rio Grande, a
1,896-mile river that begins at the base of the San Juan
Mountains and runs into the Gulf of Mexico. The case, which has
been in litigation for more than a decade, centers around a
1939 compact between the three states over how to apportion the
river’s waters.
The Gila River Indian Community says it does not support a
three-state proposal for managing the Colorado River’s
shrinking supply in the future. The community, which is located
in Arizona, is instead working with the federal government to
develop its own proposal for water sharing. The tribe is among
the most prominent of the 30 federally-recognized tribes that
use the Colorado River. In recent years, it has signed
high-profile deals with the federal government to receive big
payments in exchange for water conservation. Those deals were
celebrated by Arizona’s top water officials. But now, it is
diverging from states in the river’s Lower Basin — Arizona,
California and Nevada. Stephen Roe Lewis, The Gila River Indian
Community’s Governor, announced his tribe’s disapproval of the
Lower Basin proposal at a water conference in Tucson, Ariz.,
while speaking to a room of policy experts and water
scientists.
The European Commission said on Wednesday it was taking Greece
to the EU’s top court for failing to revise its flood risk
management plans, a key tool for EU countries to prepare
themselves against floods. The action comes five months
after the worst rains in Greece flooded its fertile
Thessaly plain, devastating crops and livestock and raising
questions about the Mediterranean country’s ability to deal
with an increasingly erratic climate. Under EU rules,
countries need to update once in six years their flood
management plans, a set of measures aimed to help them mitigate
the risks of floods on human lives, the environment and
economic activities. Greece was formally notified by the
Commission last year that it should finalise its management
plans but the country has so far failed to review, adopt or
report its flood risk management plans, the Commission said in
a statement.
A new recommendation from the California State Water Quality
Control Board in its Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan
(Bay-Delta Plan) for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Estuary could see Solano County forced to adapt
to a fraction of the water it is currently allocated from Lake
Berryessa. The implications for Solano County cities could be
enormous, leaving Solano County with about 25 percent of its
current allocation. Spanning hundreds of miles from north of
Lake Shasta to Fresno, the tributaries of the Sacramento and
Sac Joaquin rivers that feed into the San Francisco Bay reach
well into the Sierra Nevadas and Central Valley. The State
Water Quality Control Board has noted that diminished river
flows in these areas are harming fish habitats and are
detrimental to the water system as a whole ecologically.
California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW)
today announced the availability of grant funding to prevent
the further spread of quagga and zebra mussels into
California’s waterways. Funded by the California Mussel Fee
Sticker (also known as the Quagga Sticker), the Quagga and
Zebra Mussel (QZ) Infestation Prevention Grant Program expects
to award a total of up to $2 million across eligible
applicants.
Still water in the Tijuana River Valley reflects the chirping
birds who live there, giving the impression it is as nature
made it — until you see the floating trash and smell the
stagnant, polluted water. For decades, activists tried to clean
up the Tijuana River’s watershed as it flowed from Tijuana into
San Diego’s coastal waters, which are contaminated with both
human and industrial waste. A recent study from the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography found that coastal pollution is
also transferring to the air. “This is nothing short of an
environmental and public health crisis, and it has been made
worse by the fact that California companies are part of the
problem,” said State Senator Steve Padilla Monday, while
announcing SB 1178, a bill to address cross-border pollution.
A dozen tire companies are asking a California federal judge to
toss a suit claiming a rubber additive is harming protected
salmon, arguing that the litigation stretches the Endangered
Species Act “beyond its breaking point” and that regulation of
the substance belongs with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, not in courts.
Across the parched West, there are signs the region’s
decades-long population and housing boom is confronting the
realities of dwindling water supplies. These have come in
recent months from court rulings and executive edicts alike, as
states crack down on the potential for new users to draw from
already oversubscribed aquifers and surface waters. The
skeleton of a would-be subdivision outside Las Vegas
illustrates the coming constraints, stymied by a lack of water
to support the new community. Water shortages also forced
difficult decisions in other places, such as new restrictions
in the Phoenix suburbs and a Utah town that halted all new
construction for more than two years until it could secure a
new well.
Drought or no drought, California water regulators are pushing
ahead with a new conservation policy that could force some
communities to cut water use upward of 30% permanently — though
on more lenient terms than originally proposed. The
first-of-its-kind regulation is intended to help the state
confront chronic water shortages as climate change makes for
hotter, drier weather. The initial draft of the regulation,
released last year, was widely criticized for asking roughly
400 cities and water agencies to cut back too much too quickly.
The cost of compliance was also a concern. Acknowledging the
burden, the State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday
unveiled a revised set of rules that would allow some
communities to use more water than originally planned as well
as extend deadlines for meeting the conservation mandates.
The California State Water Resources Control Board issued a
$6.6 million grant for a city of San Luis Obispo project
intended to clean up contaminated groundwater. Presently, the
city does not use groundwater for its drinking water supply.
SLO’s potable water supply comes from Whale Rock Reservoir,
Santa Margarita Lake and Nacimiento Reservoir. City
officials have sought to diversify the water supply in an
attempt to achieve “greater drought and climate change
resiliency.” Previously, contamination from
tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, served as a barrier to doing so.
PCE is a toxic chemical produced by dry cleaning and industrial
activities, which took place in the city decades ago. The
cleanup project will consist of the city building two new
groundwater supply wells that are expected to be fully
operation in 2026.
This month, several wildlife conservation groups petitioned the
California Fish and Game Commission to list these owls as
endangered or threatened under the California Endangered
Species Act. … [Chair of the environmental studies department
at San Jose State University Lynne] Trulio’s speciality is
urban species, and she’s contributed to the research that
underpins Santa Clara County’s habitat conservation plan on
burrowing owls. But before that she was also the lead scientist
for the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, one of
the largest tidal wetland restoration projects on the West
Coast. “One of the things that drove the effort was the
fact that there were endangered species” in wetlands, said
Trulio. She said it took years to change the perception of the
wetlands as a dumping ground and to get a ballot measure to
fund its preservation.
Monday marked a key cutoff time by which Colorado River states
had been tasked with proposing a consensus-based plant for
long-term water conservation in the overtaxed system. But
with the arrival of that deadline, set by the Department of the
Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, no such agreement was on the
table. Instead, the river system’s two main contingents — the
Upper and Lower basins — submitted their own competing
plans. The proposals pertained to an upcoming update of
the rules — known as the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower
Basin Shortages — that govern where, when and how much the
seven basin states must conserve water from the 1,450-mile
river.
The Friant-Kern Canal was called out specifically as one of the
reasons the state should take over pumping in the Tule
groundwater subbasin in Tulare County. The recommendation was
contained in a recently released staff report to the Water
Resources Control Board. While the report stated groundwater
management plans covering the subbasin didn’t adequately
address subsidence and continued depletion of the aquifer and
degradation of water quality in general, it also noted the
significant harm to the Friant-Kern Canal, which brings water
152 miles south from Millerton Lake to Arvin. Excessive
overpumping caused land beneath a 33-mile stretch of the
Friant-Kern Canal to collapse, creating a sag that reduced the
canal’s carrying capacity south of Pixley by 60%.
California’s fishing industry is bracing for another bad year
as federal managers today announced plans to heavily restrict
or prohibit salmon fishing again, after cancelling the entire
season last year. The Pacific Fishery Management Council
today released a series of options that are under
consideration, all of which either ban commercial and
recreational salmon fishing in the ocean off California or
shorten the season and set strict catch limits. The council’s
decision is expected next month; the commercial season
typically begins in May and ends in October. … [P]opulations
are now a fraction of what they once were — dams have
blocked vital habitat, while droughts and water diversions have
driven down flows and increased temperatures, killing large
numbers of salmon eggs and young fish.
California officials are preparing new urban water conservation
rules intended to help the state adapt to a drier future caused
by climate change. In reality, the proposed restrictions are so
great they could actually harm those adaptation efforts by
sacrificing the tree canopy we have nurtured in our cities for
generations. The “Making Conservation a California Way of Life”
rule package, proposed by the State Water Resources Control
Board, sets conservation targets unique to each urban water
agency in the state. While conserving each and every year makes
sense, so must the restrictions. A recent report by the
non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found big flaws in
the Water Board’s approach, describing the proposal as overly
complex, expensive and unrealistic, with potential water
savings amounting to a mere drop in the bucket statewide. -Written by Jim Peifer, executive director of the
Sacramento Regional Water Authority; and Victoria
Vasquez, grants and public policy manager
for California ReLeaf, which works to protect, enhance and
grow California’s urban and community forests.
California today took another step in implementing the nation’s
most comprehensive measure to tackle the rise in plastic waste
polluting our communities and ecosystems. Plastic waste is a
major contributor to climate and trash pollution,
with less than 9% of plastic recycled in California
and the rest of the U.S. Governor Gavin Newsom signed
the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer
Responsibility Act (SB 54) in 2022, which requires
producers to cut single-use plastic waste and ensure the
packaging on products they sell is recyclable or compostable.
The state today released draft regulations for the
measure, kicking off the formal rulemaking process.
Almost three months after a January storm and flash floods
killed several people and displaced hundreds of San Diego-area
residents, the state is offering one-time
Disaster CalFresh benefits to help families
recover. To be eligible for disaster food benefits, people
must have lived or worked in storm-impacted areas on Jan. 21,
the day record rainfall swelled creeks and rivers, deluging
neighborhoods. About 600 people sought emergency shelter.
California’s Department of Social Services said it will provide
30 days of food benefits to families who qualify.
On March 6, a coalition of environmental and fishing groups
reiterated their request that a federal court modify federal
agencies’ proposed interim plan for operating the federal
Central Valley Project (CVP), in coordination with the State
Water Project (SWP), to protect fish species listed under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA) and California Endangered Species
Act (CESA). That coalition includes the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Golden State Salmon
Association, The Bay Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, and
Natural Resources Defense Council. Coinciding with that filing
has been a recent dramatic increase of protected steelhead
dying at the projects’ water pumps. The CVP and SWP are
still largely operating under rules written in 2019 under the
leadership of, among others, Interior Secretary David
Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the powerful Westlands Water
District.
Arizona officials said a Saudi-owned company they targeted over
its use of groundwater to grow forage crops is moving its
farming operation out of a valley in the Southwestern state’s
rural west. Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona State Land
Department announced late Thursday that Fondomonte Arizona is
officially no longer pumping water in the Butler Valley
groundwater basin. Some residents of La Paz County had
complained that the company’s pumping was threatening their
wells. A statement by Hobbs says an on-site inspection had
confirmed that Fondomonte was moving to vacate the property.
Fondomonte has several other farms elsewhere in Arizona that
are not affected by the decision.
… Los Angeles desperately needs to become more like a
sponge. That will help to capture more stormwater locally when
rain does come and lessen devastating flooding, said Edith de
Guzman, a UCLA water equity and climate adaptation researcher.
… The Rory M. Shaw Wetlands Park Project will
turn a 46-acre landfill formerly used for materials such as
concrete and gravel into an engineered wetland that can boost
local water supply and alleviate local flooding. It’ll also
become a 15-acre park with a lake and walking paths.
… But now, the biggest barrier to completing the project
is funding, said Mark Pestrella, the director of L.A. County
Department of Public Works, which is spearheading the project
(after it’s constructed, the city of L.A. will take over
maintenance). The new goal is to complete it by 2028 or 2029.
In what one Ukiah Valley water leader calls “the next big era
of major water decisions,” the City of Ukiah has joined up with
Redwood Valley and the Millview water district to form a new
water authority. The aim is to qualify for state infrastructure
grants to create a more reliable water supply for small
communities. The new authority has around 8500 to 9000 water
users, with about half of them in the city of Ukiah. That’s
pretty small by state standards, but First District Supervisor
Glenn McGourty, who is retiring this year, thinks the water
authority will help smaller districts comply with
ever-increasing state requirements.
Countries, regions, and river basins globally are struggling to
provide and manage flows in rivers for ecosystems. One
approach, of many, is a Functional Flows approach, because it
seeks to provide a range of streamflows over the year and
between years to support fundamental functions of river
ecosystems and the ecosystem services for society. … The
approach also involves a process for balancing multiple human
and ecological objectives for river systems through broad
engagement of multiple interests. In their challenge to
maintain riverine ecosystem services, Chile and California can
benefit from this dynamic approach to managing instream flows.
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 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.
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 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.
