The San Joaquin Valley stretches from across mid-California
between coastal ranges in west and the Sierras on the east. The
region includes large cities such as Fresno and Bakersfield,
national parks such as Yosemite and Kings and fertile farmland
and multi-billion dollar agriculture industry.
The federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project (about
30 percent of SWP water is used for irrigation) helped
deliver water to the valley. Today, San Joaquin Valley crops
include grapes, tomatoes, hay, sugar beets, nuts, cotton and a
multitude of other fruits and vegetables. At the same time, water
used to grow these crops has led to the need for agricultural
drainage.
The Bureau of Reclamation today announced the selection of Rain
Emerson to assume the role of deputy area manager for the
South-Central California Area Office for the California-Great
Basin Region. The role will serve as a deputy to the SCCAO area
manager and advise on planning, coordinating, managing and
directing of program activities. The office encompasses
the San Francisco Bay-Delta, San Joaquin Valley, and
the south coast area including Santa Barbara and Ventura
counties.
In a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed on May 8,
Westlands Water District, Metropolitan Water District, and
Friant Water Authority agreed to improve collaborations on
surface, groundwater, transfers, and exchanges of water from
the San Joaquin Valley to Southern California. Furthermore, a
second MOU was signed between Metropolitan and Water Blueprint
for the San Joaquin Valley, a coalition that aims to advance
water accessibility across the state. The MOU intends to
identify, develop, and initiate water projects for the Central
Valley to solidify water resilience. The MOUs are the
first step to initiating discussions on water supply challenges
and improvements that can be made for residents, agriculture,
and industry parties who all rely on some share of California
water allocations.
Under a shaded refuge adjacent to a still pond in the Central
Valley, dozens of California State Parks officials and
nonprofit leaders assembled Wednesday to laud the first state
park to open in a decade. Among the beaming faces was
Lilia Lomeli-Gil, a community leader representing the tiny town
5 miles away that, thanks to the park’s debut, is being
transformed. If Merced is the “Gateway to Yosemite,”
then Grayson is the gateway to Dos Rios State Park.
The 1,600-acre property lies within the floodplains outside
Modesto and features the intersection of the San Joaquin and
Tuolumne rivers. The park’s proximity to Grayson
offers the town a sense of renewal. Dos Rios will lure visitors
off Interstate 5 and provide residents with a communal backyard
haven. Efforts to restore the floodplain have already shown
signs of success in protecting Grayson from disaster. The
town owes part of its livelihood to restoring the original
habitat and defending itself from flooding.
More than 20,000 San Joaquin Valley residents could be left
high and dry, literally, by Sacramento politicians intent on
using $17.5 million that had paid for water trucked to their
homes to help fill California’s gaping two-year $56 billion
deficit. A local nonprofit that has been hauling water to those
residents sent a letter recently to Governor Gavin
Newsom and top leaders in the Legislature begging them to
reinstate the money in the ongoing budget negotiations.
“Cutting funding for such a crucial program would have
devastating effects on rural and disadvantaged communities by
immediately cutting them off from their sole source of water
supply, and doing so with no warning,” states the June 11
letter from Self-Help Enterprises, a Visalia-based nonprofit
that helps low-income valley residents with housing and water
needs.
California is awash in water after record-breaking rains
vanquished years of crippling drought. That sounds like great
news for farmers. But Ron McIlroy, whose shop here sells
equipment for plowing fields, knows otherwise. “I’ll be lucky
if I survive this year,” he said. Illustrating how broken
California’s vast water-delivery system is, many farmers in
Central Valley, America’s fruit and vegetable basket, will get
just 40% of the federal water they are supposed to this year.
Why? Endangered fish. The pumps that transport water from wet
Northern California to the semiarid south have been drastically
slowed to protect threatened migrating smelt, measuring up to 3
inches, and steelhead. That means growers in the U.S.’s richest
farming area are having to plant fewer crops even as they are
surrounded by water.
Self-Help Enterprises has launched a partnership with three
groundwater sustainability agencies in the Kaweah Subbasin to
expand assistance for rural residents who lose water due to
lowering groundwater levels. The East Kaweah, Greater
Kaweah and Mid-Kaweah groundwater sustainability agencies will
invest up to $5.8 million annually to ensure that water users
in the area will receive emergency water supplies if their
wells go dry. The big picture: Along with the
emergency water supplies, Self-Help Enterprises will also
provide a long-term drinking water solution through its water
support program. Self-Help Enterprises has over a decade
of experience operating its water support program to provide
emergency water supply, interim supply – which includes tanks
and hauled water – and long-term solutions, such as working
with well drillers to replace failed wells.
The good news is that the San Joaquin Valley has managed to
store a little more groundwater since the drought of 2016. The
bad news is that it is hard to keep account of what’s working
and what’s not. On Tuesday, the Public Policy Institute of
California, a nonprofit policy research organization, released
an update report on the replenishment of groundwater in the San
Joaquin Valley, one of the areas of the state that is heavily
dependent on groundwater. The report also identified those
basins best suited to accept water recharge operations, with
the highest number being in the eastern and southern regions of
the valley.
Evidence is stacking up against the state in one of multiple
lawsuits over last year’s devastating floods in Merced County.
One of the most stunning new pieces of evidence is a string of
12 emails from Merced County staff that went ignored by the
state for more than four months before last year’s floods. The
lawsuit was filed against the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife (CDFW) on behalf of the City of Merced, a local
elementary school and 12 agricultural groups. All the
plaintiffs took significant damage from flooding after water
backed up in clogged waterways and broke through, or overtopped
creek banks and levees. The flooding came primarily from
Bear Creek and Black Rascal Creek, both of which have flooded
before. Flooding from Miles Creek also damaged nearly every
home in the small, rural town of Planada.
Fireworks were already popping between board members of a key
Tulare County groundwater agency recently over an 11th hour
attempt to rein in pumping in the severely overdrafted area.
The main issue at the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA) meeting June 6 was whether to require farmers in
subsidence prone areas to install meters and report their
extractions to the agency, which is being blamed for almost
single handedly putting the entire subbasin in jeopardy of a
state takeover. … In the end, the Eastern Tule
board voted 6-0 to require all landowners in the subsidence
management area along the canal to meter their wells and report
extractions by January 1.
Recently, former Panoche Drainage District general manager
Dennis Falaschi pled guilty in federal district court in Fresno
to having conspired to steal millions of gallons of
publicly-owned water from California’s Central Valley Project
(CVP) for private gain. This surreptitious water theft
apparently had been going on for well over two decades before
Falaschi was finally brought to justice.
… Unfortunately, the Falaschi case and conviction are
not isolated incidents. To the contrary, illegal
diversion, use and black market sales of the public’s finite
and precious water supplies have quite likely gone on for
decades, if not centuries.
The end of a two-year legal fight over who should pay, and how
much, to replenish the groundwater beneath Madera County could
be in sight. A motion to dismiss the lawsuit by a group of
farmers against the county is set to be heard June 18.
The outcome could determine whether Madera County, which acts
as the groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) for hundreds of
thousands of acres across three water subbasins, can finally
move forward on a host of projects to improve the water table
per the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). From the
farmers’ point of view, the outcome of this case could make or
break their farms, some that have been in their families for
generations.
Californians can soon enjoy a new state park at the heart of
the Central Valley, the first in about a decade. The Dos Rios
preserve, about 90 minutes east of San Francisco, is a lush
floodplain filled with green grass, shrubs and native trees
like cottonwood, willows and valley oaks. Visitors can hike
through miles of trail beginning this Wednesday, June 12. The
park is located eight miles east of Modesto near the
convergence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers. Until about
a decade ago, Dos Rios was a dairy and cattle ranch owned by
farmers who grew tomatoes and almonds. But year after year,
floods swept through, damaging the crops. In 2012, the owners
sold all 1,600 acres to River Partners, an environmental
nonprofit dedicated to conservation.
A sinkhole opened in the roadway in Madera on Monday, causing a
trailer of fertilizer to fall into the hole, according to the
California Highway Patrol. A truck driver suffered minor
injuries in the crash about 10:25 a.m. on Avenue 13 west of
Granada Drive, and the street was expected to be closed for
weeks as piping below ground was damaged, according to the CHP
and city officials. The city of Madera also asked its residents
to reduce water use to aid workers trying to fix the pipe,
which does not carry drinking water, officials said on social
media. “This is NOT a drinking water issue; drinking water
remains safe and unaffected,” the city said on the Madera
police Facebook page. “However, to assist in the repair efforts
and prevent further complications, which could result in sewage
backup, we ask that you please refrain from non-essential water
use.”
Today, Senator Durazo amended Senate Bill 1255, which will
provide an avenue for universal water affordability rate
assistance for public water systems with more than 3,300
connections. As water rates continue to rise three times faster
than inflation, a water affordability program is necessary for
low-income families statewide.
An accidental release of crude oil into Bakersfield’s municipal
water system has temporarily shut down businesses and prompted
an advisory for about 40 commercial customers to avoid tap
water in the area south of Lake Truxtun. Signs of a possible
problem first appeared Monday afternoon, when pipes in the area
started shaking and spurting water from faucets.
Strategies to replenish groundwater basins—long used in some
areas of the San Joaquin Valley—have increasingly come into
focus as the region seeks to bring its overdrafted groundwater
basins into balance under the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA). In late 2023, following a very wet
winter and spring, we conducted a repeat survey of local water
agencies about their recharge activities and perspectives,
building on a similar survey at the end of 2017, a year with
similar levels of precipitation. We found signs of progress on
recharge since 2017, as well as areas where more work is needed
to take full advantage of this important water management tool.
California is a semi-arid state in which the availability of
water determines land use, and in turn shapes the economy.
That, in a nutshell, explains why Californians have been
jousting over water for the state’s entire 174-year history.
The decades of what some have dubbed “water wars” may be
approaching a climactic point as climate change, economic
evolution, stagnant population growth and environmental
consciousness compel decisions on California’s water future. A
new study, conducted by researchers at three University of
California campuses, projects that a combination of factors
will reduce California’s water supply by up to 9 million
acre-feet a year – roughly the equivalent of all
non-agricultural human use. -Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
The Turlock Irrigation District (TID) Board of Directors has
appointed Brad Koehn as General Manager, effective June 21,
2024. Koehn will replace Michelle Reimers who announced her
resignation on May 31, 2024, after an 18-year career with the
District. Koehn has been with TID for 13 years and has held
various leadership roles at the District, most recently serving
as the Chief Operating Officer since 2020. … Koehn
is a licensed professional engineer and land surveyor in the
State of California, and joined the District in 2011 as the
Civil Engineering Department Manager. In 2018, he was appointed
to Assistant General Manager of the Power Supply
Administration. Prior to working at TID, Koehn spent 16 years
in private practice engineering, most recently co-owning a
local civil engineering firm.
In the spring of 2024, I met top members of the Tachi Yokuts
Tribal Environmental Protection Agency at their offices on the
Santa Rosa Rancheria near Lemoore CA. During the extremely wet
winter a year earlier, the great Tulare Lake had once again
overflowed its dams, dikes, levees and ditches, as it does
every once in a while despite all the efforts of government and
agribusiness, and spread to its full size of 800 square miles
just south of the Rancheria, The return of the lake brought new
faith and determination to these extraordinary people, who have
lived here since long before the coming of the Europeans whom
they have barely managed to survive. -Written by Bill Hatch, a member of the
Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco.
Wetlands are the Earth’s largest natural source of methane — a
potent greenhouse gas roughly 30 times more powerful than
carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere — according to the
Department of Energy’s Larence Berkeley National
Laboratory. Methane is a key point of controversy
among dairy producers and the environmental justice community
given that dairy and livestock are responsible for over half of
California’s methane emissions, according to the California Air
Resources Board. However, a peer-reviewed paper
recently published by CABI Biological Sciences argues that the
state’s dairy sector can reach climate neutrality in the coming
years through aggressive methane mitigation which almost no
other sector can achieve.
It’s not every day that a former source gets indicted. So when
a San Joaquin Valley water manager was charged by federal
prosecutors two years ago with allegedly stealing millions of
dollars worth of water for lavish personal gain, it stopped me
cold. It simply did not square with the person that I thought I
knew. Former general manager Dennis Falaschi of the Panoche
Water District ended up agreeing to a plea deal last week,
acknowledging that he stole some water and falsified some
income on a tax return. But upon any objective examination, the
deal is far more of a black eye to federal prosecutors than to
Falaschi himself because the feds had accused him of stealing
$25 million worth of water – more water than some California
cities use annually. The government utterly failed to prove
anything close to its original case. -Written by columnist Tom Philp.
There’s a new opportunity for private wetland owners to make
money from their land. The BirdReturns program pays wetland
owners to flood their land and provide habitat for birds in the
Central Valley. The program offers seasonal participation and
is currently accepting applications for fall participation.
Applications close on June 9. The program is funded
through a $15 million grant from the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife which will keep the program running through
2026. The program, “aims to fill in all the other gaps
throughout the rest of the year when, in the natural cycle,
there would be habitat for birds,” said Ashley Seufzer, senior
project coordinator for Audubon California. This is the
second year of the fall program. In the past, there have been
participating landowners in the San Joaquin Valley but the
number changes every season, said Seufzer.
A lengthy complaint alleging secretive, self-dealing on the
part of a prominent farmer and board member on a key Tulare
County groundwater agency slogged through a Fair Political
Practices Commission investigation over the past four years
resulting in, essentially, a slap on the wrist late last month.
Eric L. Borba, former chair of the Eastern Tule Groundwater
Sustainability Agency, was found in violation of the state’s
disclosure rules at the Commission’s April 25 meeting for not
listing his ownership in several ditch companies including the
value of those water assets. He was ordered to revamp his Form
700s, which public board members and executives must file each
year, and pay a $5,400 fine. The Form 700s now list Borba’s
ownership, through a variety of entities, in five area ditch
companies.
The Sites Reservoir project is getting more federal
funding. Officials with the U.S. Department of the
Interior announced on May 30 that the Biden-Harris
Administration is investing $242 million toward projects aimed
at offering clean, as well as reliable, drinking water in
Western communities. From this funding, $67.5 million will be
offered for the Sites Reservoir project in Colusa and Glenn
counties. The initiative will add up to 1.5 million acre-feet
of new water storage west of the city of Maxwell, on the
Sacramento River system.
Michelle Reimers is resigning as general manager of the Turlock
Irrigation District after four years in the job. The water and
power utility announced the decision, effective June 21, in a
news release Friday. Reimers was its first female GM and had
started there as a public information officer in 2006. “She
does not have anything specific that she is moving to right
away and is looking forward to exploring new ways in which she
can impact the water and power industries,” said an email from
Constance Anderson, communications division manager.
When the state of California began to implement and enforce the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act some nine years ago, it
became clear that without change, there will not be enough
sustainably available groundwater to support all of the
irrigated acres that are currently in production. With that
decline in agriculture, the businesses, communities and tax
base that depends on those farms would be very negatively
impacted as well. This reality prompted a wide variety of
interests in the San Joaquin Valley to form a “coalition
of the willing” that came to be known as the Water Blueprint
for the San Joaquin Valley (Blueprint). The dairy industry was
one of those interests. Over 90% of California milk production
is located in the San Joaquin Valley, much of which is
designated by the State as “critically overdrafted.” On behalf
of Milk Producers Council, I have been involved with the
Blueprint from the beginning. Here is an update on the progress
of the Blueprint.
A wind-driven wildfire in San Joaquin County reached 14,168
acres by Sunday night, prompting evacuations in some areas,
officials said. The Corral fire near the city of Tracy,
east of San Francisco, is 50% contained, the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The blaze
was reported late Saturday afternoon near the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory Site 300, southwest of Tracy. The
Environmental Protection Agency describes Site 300 as
a “high-explosives and materials testing site in support of
nuclear weapons research.” The EPA said operations at the site,
which began in the 1950s, “contaminated soil and groundwater
with hazardous chemicals,” and long-term cleanup is ongoing.
The completion of Woodward Reservoir 114 years ago has been a
godsend to South San Joaquin Irrigation District as well as the
cities of Manteca, Lathrop, and Tracy. It has played a key role
as an in-district safety net to help SSJID to weather droughts
in much better shape than many other water purveyors in
California including Tri-Dam Project partner, the Oakdale
Irrigation District. The reservoir that holds 36,000 acre feet
of water or enough for just over three complete districtwide
irrigation runs is off stream as opposed to Tri-Dam reservoirs
at Goodwin, Tulloch, Beardsley, and Donnells as well as the
Bureau of Reclamation’s New Melones Reservior. New Melones
holds up to 600,000 acre feet for OID and SSJID as the
result of the original Melones Reservoir built by the two
districts being inundated to build it. -Written by Manteca Bulletin editor Dennis Wyatt.
… the fields that grow our food are filthy with plastic
waste — the direct result of modern farming’s increasing
reliance on the signature material of the Anthropocene. Whether
incidentally littered onsite or directly diffused into the soil
via polymer-coated chemical pellets, plastic is now embedded
both in agricultural practices and the tilled earth itself. It
leaks into waterways, might be poisoning our food, and is
virtually unregulated. Nobody knows what to do about
it. “Now we have it, and it’s the devil … it’s a global
menace,” says Tom Willey, a retired certified organic farmer in
the San Joaquin Valley who reluctantly used plastic sheet
“mulch” for about 20 years ago on his farm near Madera.
… From Modesto to Manteca, from Davis to Petaluma, and
throughout the Delta and North Bay regions, plastic sheeting
for hoop-style greenhouses and groundcovers are seen in fields
beside public roads and waterways, sometimes strewn in
windblown rags and tatters, waiting for disposal.
… The vast majority of Tricolored Blackbirds spend their
whole lives in California. A handful breed in Oregon,
Washington, Nevada, and Baja California, and at least 20 of the
birds were spotted last year in Idaho. Most, however, nest in
the San Joaquin Valley, and many are known to breed a second
time in the early summer months—often 50 to 100 miles north in
the wetlands and willows of the Sacramento Valley. It’s here,
too, that the birds feed on rice in the fall. They often browse
the paddies alongside other blackbirds—including the very
similar Red-winged Blackbird—that farmers can legally cull as
pests. This has inevitably led to losses of Tricolors over the
years. Although the species’ native
nesting habitat has been almost entirely removed from
California, they’ve adapted with varying success to shifting
land use. Where vineyards and orchards have replaced grassland
and marsh, the blackbirds have mostly disappeared.
Above-average storms have allowed the Modesto Irrigation
District to offer Tuolumne River water to nearby farmers who
normally tap wells. It is getting few takers. The program is
designed to boost the stressed aquifer generally east of
Waterford, just outside MID boundaries. The district board on
Tuesday debated whether to drop the price to spur interest, but
a majority voted to leave it unchanged. The discussion came
amid a state mandate to make groundwater use sustainable by
about 2040. MID does not have a major problem within its
territory, which stretches west to the San Joaquin River. But
it is part of a regional effort to comply with the 2014 law.
This includes out-of-district sales of Tuolumne water in years
when MID’s own farmers have plenty. That was the case in 2023,
one of the wettest years on record, and this year thanks to
storage in Don Pedro Reservoir.
How will selling groundwater help keep more groundwater in the
San Joaquin Valley’s already critically overtapped aquifers?
Water managers in the Kaweah subbasin in northwestern Tulare
County hope to find out by having farmers tinker with a pilot
groundwater market program. Kaweah farmers will be joining
growers from subbasins up and down the San Joaquin Valley
who’ve been looking at how water markets might help them
maintain their businesses by using pumping allotments and
groundwater credits as assets to trade or sell when water is
tight.
… A state audit from the California Water Resources Control
Board released last year found that over 920,000 residents
faced an increased risk of illness–including cancer, liver and
kidney problems–due to consuming unsafe drinking water. A
majority of these unsafe water systems are in the Central
Valley. The matter has prompted community leaders to mobilize
residents around water quality as politicians confront
imperfect solutions for the region’s supply. Advocates point
out that impacted areas, including those in Tulare County, tend
to be majority Latino with low median incomes. … This
year’s extreme weather has only worsened the valley’s problems.
The storms that hit California at the start of this year caused
stormwater tainted with farm industry fertilizer, manure and
nitrates to flow into valley aquifers.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
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.
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
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
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.
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 whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
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.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers are the two major Central Valley waterways that feed the
Delta, the hub of California’s water supply
network. Our last water tours of
2018 will look in-depth at how these rivers are managed and
used for agriculture, cities and the environment. You’ll see
infrastructure, learn about efforts to restore salmon runs and
talk to people with expertise on these rivers.
More than a decade in the making, an
ambitious plan to deal with the vexing problem of salt and
nitrates in the soils that seep into key groundwater basins of
the Central Valley is moving toward implementation. But its
authors are not who you might expect.
An unusual collaboration of agricultural interests, cities, water
agencies and environmental justice advocates collaborated for
years to find common ground to address a set of problems that
have rendered family wells undrinkable and some soil virtually
unusable for farming.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Get a unique view of the San Joaquin Valley’s key dams and
reservoirs that store and transport water on our March Central
Valley Tour.
Our Central Valley
Tour, March 14-16, offers a broad view of water issues
in the San Joaquin Valley. In addition to the farms, orchards,
critical habitat for threatened bird populations, flood bypasses
and a national wildlife refuge, we visit some of California’s
major water infrastructure projects.
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.
The 2-day, 1-night tour traveled along the river from Friant
Dam near Fresno to the confluence of the Merced River. As it
weaved across an historic farming region, participants learn
about the status of the river’s restoration and how the
challenges of the plan are being worked out.
A few tickets are still available for our Nov. 1-2 San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour, a once-a-year educational opportunity to
see the program’s progress first-hand. The tour begins and ends
in Fresno with an overnight stay in Los Banos.
Explore more than 100 miles of Central California’s longest river
while learning about one of the nation’s largest and costliest
river restorations. Our San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour on Nov. 1-2 will feature speakers from key
governmental agencies and stakeholder groups who will explain the
restoration program’s goals and progress.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin are the two major rivers in the
Central Valley that feed the Delta, the hub of
California’s water supply network.
Our last two water tours of 2017 will take in-depth looks at how
these rivers are managed and used for agriculture, cities and the
environment. You’ll see infrastructure, learn about efforts to
restore salmon runs and talk to people with expertise on these
rivers.
Protecting and restoring California’s populations of threatened
and endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead trout have been a big
part of the state’s water management picture for more than 20
years. Significant resources have been dedicated to helping the
various runs of the iconic fish, with successes and setbacks. In
a landscape dramatically altered from its natural setting,
finding a balance between the competing demands for water is
challenging.
Our water tours give a behind-the-scenes look at major water
issues in California. On our Central Valley Tour, March
8-10, you will visit wildlife habitat areas – some of which are
closed to the public – and learn directly from the experts who
manage them, in addition to seeing farms, large dams and other
infrastructure.
The recent deluge has led to changes in drought conditions in
some areas of California and even public scrutiny of the
possibility that the drought is over. Many eyes are focused on
the San Joaquin Valley, one of the areas hardest hit by reduced
surface water supplies. On our Central Valley Tour, March
8-10, we will visit key water delivery and storage sites in the
San Joaquin Valley, including Friant Dam and Millerton Lake
on the San Joaquin River.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
Contaminants exist in water supplies from both natural and
manmade sources. Even those chemicals present without human
intervention can be mobilized from introduction of certain
pollutants from both
point and nonpoint sources.
Both the drought and high nitrate levels in shallow groundwater have necessitated deeper
drilling of new wells in the San Joaquin Valley, only to expose
water with heightened
arsenic levels. Arsenic usually exists in water as arsenate
or arsenite, the latter of which is more frequent in deep lake
sediments or groundwater with little oxygen and is both
more harmful and difficult to remove.
Whiskeytown Lake, a major reservoir in the foothills of the
Klamath Mountains nine miles west of Redding, was
built at the site of one of Shasta County’s first Gold Rush
communities. Whiskeytown, originally called
Whiskey Creek Diggings, was founded in 1849 and named in
reference to a whiskey barrel rolling off a citizen’s pack mule;
it may also refer to miners drinking a barrel per day.
A new era of groundwater management
began in 2014 with the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA), which aims for local and regional agencies
to develop and implement sustainable groundwater management
plans with the state as the backstop.
SGMA defines “sustainable groundwater management” as the
“management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be
maintained during the planning and implementation horizon without
causing undesirable results.”
This issue examines the impacts of California’s epic
drought, especially related to water supplies for San Joaquin
Valley rural communities and farmland.
This handbook provides crucial
background information on the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act, signed into law in 2014 by Gov. Jerry Brown. The handbook
also includes a section on options for new governance.
This 3-day, 2-night tour, which we do every spring,
travels the length of the San Joaquin Valley, giving participants
a clear understanding of the State Water Project and Central
Valley Project.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Salt. In a small amount, it’s a gift from nature. But any doctor
will tell you, if you take in too much salt, you’ll start to have
health problems. The same negative effect is happening to land in
the Central Valley. The problem scientists call “salinity” poses
a growing threat to our food supply, our drinking water quality
and our way of life. The problem of salt buildup and potential –
but costly – solutions are highlighted in this 2008 public
television documentary narrated by comedian Paul Rodriguez.
A 20-minute version of the 2008 public television documentary
Salt of the Earth: Salinity in California’s Central Valley. This
DVD is ideal for showing at community forums and speaking
engagements to help the public understand the complex issues
surrounding the problem of salt build up in the Central Valley
potential – but costly – solutions. Narrated by comedian Paul
Rodriquez.
This 3-day, 2-night tour travels the length of the San Joaquin
Valley, giving participants a clear understanding of the State
Water Project and Central Valley Project.
15-minute DVD that graphically portrays the potential disaster
should a major earthquake hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Delta Warning” depicts what would happen in the event of an
earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale: 30 levee breaks,
16 flooded islands and a 300 billion gallon intrusion of salt
water from the Bay – the “big gulp” – which would shut down the
State Water Project and Central Valley Project pumping plants.
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.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
Fashioned after the popular California Water Map, this 24×36-inch
poster was extensively re-designed in 2017 to better illustrate
the value and use of groundwater in California, the main types of
aquifers, and the connection between groundwater and surface
water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Flood Management explains the
physical flood control system, including levees; discusses
previous flood events (including the 1997 flooding); explores
issues of floodplain management and development; provides an
overview of flood forecasting; and outlines ongoing flood control
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).
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36-inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
Located in the middle of California, the San Joaquin Valley is
bracketed on both sides by mountain ranges. Long and flat, the
valley’s hot, dry summers are followed by cool, foggy winters
that make it one of the most productive agricultural regions in
the world.
The valley stretches from across mid-California between coastal
ranges in west and the Sierras on the east. The region includes
large cities such as Fresno and Bakersfield, national parks such
as Yosemite and Kings, millions of people, and fertile farmland.
Flowing 366 miles from the Sierra
Nevada to Suisun Bay, the San Joaquin River provides irrigation
water to thousands of acres of San Joaquin Valley farms and
drinking water to some of the valley’s cities. It also is the
focal point for one of the nation’s most ambitious river
restoration projects to revive salmon populations.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and South America. Each year, birds follow
ancestral patterns as they travel the flyway on their annual
north-south migration. Along the way, they need stopover sites
such as wetlands with suitable habitat and food supplies. In
California, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
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 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 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 examines
groundwater banking, a water management strategy with appreciable
benefits but not without challenges and controversy.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the challenges facing
small water systems, including drought preparedness, limited
operating expenses and the hurdles of complying with costlier
regulations. Much of the article is based on presentations at the
November 2007 Small Systems Conference sponsored by the Water
Education Foundation and the California Department of Water
Resources.
This Western Water looks at proposed new measures to deal with
the century-old problem of salinity with a special focus on San
Joaquin Valley farms and cities.
