A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation News & Publications Director Chris Bowman.
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Good news on the Colorado River is rare. Its reservoirs, the
two largest in the country, have shrunk to record lows. The
policymakers who will decide its future are stuck at an
impasse. Climate change has driven more than two decades of
megadrought and strained the water supply for 40 million people
across the Southwest. But a new study is delivering a potential
dose of optimism for the next 25 years of the Colorado River.
The findings, published in the Journal of Climate, forecast a
70% chance the next quarter century will be wetter than the
last.
Perhaps no environmental topic is as controversial in
California as the Delta Tunnel. … The tunnel is a key
part of the State Water Project’s new risk-informed strategic
plan. That strategic plan is known as Elevate to ‘28.
It lists five goals that it says will help to make the State
Water Project (SWP) “the most reliable, sustainable, and
resilient water provider for the people and environment of
California, now and for future generations.” To learn more
about the plan, ABC10 Meteorologist Brenden Mincheff invited
Tony Meyers, the Principal Operating Officer for the State
Water Project for a conversation. Here are some key takeaways
from that.
Bureaucratic blunders, mismanagement, partisan politics,
cross-border politics, understaffing, equipment failures. The
list of reasons for the longstanding sewage crisis at the
U.S.-Mexico border is long. At the center is the International
Boundary and Water Commission, the binational agency
responsible for preventing water pollution in the Tijuana River
and southern San Diego County shorelines. It has been severely
handicapped in its task. The result: beach closures due to
contaminated ocean water, economic losses and growing concerns
about the long-term health impacts caused by breathing,
smelling and touching sewage-tainted water. Each country is
represented by a commissioner appointed by their respective
presidents. Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner, appointed by
President Joe Biden in 2021, inherited the broken system. She’s
been trying to steer the federal agency in the right direction
ever since.
Last year, California experienced weather whiplash. After years
of severe drought, 2023 saw heavy rainfall and snowpack that
flooded the state, recharged groundwater and filled our
reservoirs. While desperately needed, we cannot pretend that
the good times are here to stay. Increasingly dry years are in
our future, and it will not be long until we find ourselves
facing drought conditions once again. The time to prepare our
water infrastructure for the future is now. Currently,
lawmakers in Sacramento are working to close a $37.9 billion
deficit. While we have made progress at the state level in
recent years — including allocating $8.6 billion in state
funding for water projects — pulling back on water
infrastructure funding now could jeopardize further federal and
local funding sources for key projects already underway. -Written by Senator Anna M. Caballero and Ric Ortega,
general manager of the Grassland Water
District.
The massive infrastructure project to extend BART through
Downtown San José and into Santa Clara is inching closer to
getting underway. … The restoration project plans
to convert 15,000 acres of former Cargill salt ponds — sold to
federal and state wildlife agencies in 2003 — back into
marshes, which provide a slew of benefits to the
region. … And while Bay restoration projects have
often made good use of dirt from other construction and
infrastructure projects previously, this is the first time the
region has seen the use of what’s known as “tunnel muck”
specifically to raise the bottoms of a former salt pond.
The Marin Municipal Water District is bolstering its strategy
on conservation with policy updates and incentive programs
designed to reduce water use by hundreds of millions of gallons
annually. The draft “2024 Water Efficiency Master Plan” is a
playbook that outlines how water is used today in the county,
and how the district can help its 191,000 customers in central
and southern Marin cut back. The plan aims to reduce water use
districtwide by more than 1,000 acre-feet a year starting in
2025, with even greater incremental reduction targets beyond
that. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons of water. District
staffers presented the draft plan to the board at a special
meeting on Wednesday.
For all the damage that microplastics are doing to the planet,
it may be that only an impending threat to the human body will
direct the kind of attention to the issue that it has long
deserved. That moment, researchers say, is here. Several recent
studies into microplastics, the voluminous and tiny (think 5mm
or smaller) bits of material that can take hundreds of years to
degrade, suggest not only that they are everywhere, but that
they’re making their way into our bloodstreams–with potentially
hazardous results. The research isn’t nearly complete, and
the science is evolving. … The threat of microplastics to
some of our body functions is real, and it is growing. …
Plastic-based products and their detritus are everywhere on
Earth. Microplastics are in the food we eat, even
raw fruits and vegetables, and have been found
in both tap and bottled water.
The U.S. has a long record of extracting resources on Native
lands and ignoring tribal opposition, but a decision by federal
energy regulators to deny permits for seven proposed hydropower
projects suggests that tide may be turning. As the U.S. shifts
from fossil fuels to clean energy, developers are looking for
sites to generate electricity from renewable sources. But in an
unexpected move, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
denied permits on Feb. 15, 2024, for seven proposed hydropower
projects in Arizona and New Mexico. The reason: These
projects were located within the Navajo Nation and were
proposed without first consulting with the tribe. FERC said it
was “establishing a new policy that the Commission will not
issue preliminary permits for projects proposing to use Tribal
lands if the Tribe on whose lands the project is to be located
opposes the permit.”
Roughly a half-dozen agencies, governments and a nonprofit
group have filed briefs with a state regulator that could
determine whether or not California American Water Co. gets the
OK for its years-long effort to build a desalination plant on
the Monterey Peninsula. The issue comes down to whether the
peninsula will have enough water to meet the demand for the
next three decades by tapping into recycled water, or whether a
desal plant will be needed. Administrative Law Judge Robert
Haga will examine the April 30 filings, render an up-or-down
proposed ruling and ship it off to the five-member California
Public Utilities Commission to vote on. In late 2022, Cal Am
won the hearts of the California Coastal Commission when the
12-member appointed body approved a permit allowing Cal Am, an
investor-owned utility, to move forward with the desal plant in
Marina. But for Cal Am, it was a double-edged sword.
[Last] week, the state of California stuck a shovel in the
third of four hydroelectric dams being demolished on the
Klamath River, which wends its way through Northern California
from Oregon to the Pacific. Removing those structures is the
first step in the most ambitious experiment in nature
restoration in American history. The goal is to save wild
salmon, a once-abundant resource that anchored the region’s
economy and shaped its Indigenous societies. … Yet more than
fisheries may be renewed. The project marks another example of
rethinking humanity’s relationship with nature at a turning
point in global environmental welfare.
A long-running legal battle over stopping invasive aquatic
weeds from spreading through Tahoe Keys, a man-made lagoon and
wetlands system that feeds into Lake Tahoe, hit a turning point
[last] week after a Superior Court judge halted a controversial
weed-control project. [Weeds] have plagued the Tahoe Keys
lagoons for decades following the subdivision’s construction in
the 1960s on top of what was once a large wetlands environment
at the southern end of Lake Tahoe. The plants have
since grown out of control and significantly impacted
the 163 acres of waterways that make up the lagoon
system.
Tim’s story unfolds with his entry into the rice industry back
in 1996, when he assumed the role of Marketing Projects
Coordinator for the California Rice Promotion Board. Tasked
with promoting rice both domestically and internationally, Tim
quickly found himself immersed in the intricacies of the
industry. Little did he know that this role would mark the
beginning of a lifetime career in California rice production
and agriculture. A pivotal moment in Tim’s career came with the
formation of the California Rice Commission a few
years later, where he was appointed as its first executive.
This transition, as Tim fondly recalls, marked a significant
milestone in his professional trajectory—a journey that began
with humble beginnings, including his days working on a
Frito-Lay truck right out of college.
With squeals, shrieks and plenty of peer pressure, Palisade
High School students lined up to release endangered razorback
suckers — with a kiss for good luck — into the Colorado River.
“Grab a fish, kiss it, put it in the river,” Charlotte Allen,
18, a senior at the high school, told amped up students as they
prepared to hold the slippery fish. The school’s
endangered fish hatchery, which began in 2020, released its
thousandth razorback sucker Friday during its annual release
celebration. The program is part of a greater effort to restore
populations of the native fish — an effort that helps pull
water west in Colorado to benefit ecosystems, farmers,
communities and industries along the Colorado River.
The City of Malibu on April 25 hosted the North Santa Monica
Bay State of the Watershed, an impressive meeting coordinated
by Melina Watts, the watershed coordinator for Safe, Clean
Water LA. Attendees at the large gathering included
various water experts and policy officials; city engineers;
water quality professionals; watershed
coordinators; state, county, and municipal elected
officials; and public policy professionals who administer
various programs that address water policy
and representative from public works departments in
Los Angeles County, Malibu, Calabasas City, Westlake Village,
Hidden Hills, and Agoura Hills. The gathering’s central
purpose was for the attendees to inform one another of their
efforts by providing status updates concerning the many water
policy issues and programs that cover the vast area encompassed
within the North Santa Monica Bay Watershed. -Written by local freelance writer Barbara
Burke.
[T]here’s an undercurrent of doom these days in the North Bay
fisher community that might dampen the celebration. That’s
because federal officials are reportedly about to declare that
no one will be allowed to catch any salmon off the California
coast this year, for the second year in a row. … Local
salmon populations are in the pits right now, due to years of
drought and low flows in local waterways — made worse, of
course, by human diversions and dams. … On the upside:
Many hundreds of millions more state dollars are being
invested right now into restoring salmon habitats across
California. There are also huge
American-Indian efforts underway to introduce more
salmon back into rotation, especially up north in the Klamath
River area.
President Biden on Thursday expanded San Gabriel Mountains
National Monument by nearly a third in an action that was
widely praised by the Indigenous leaders, politicians,
conservationists and community organizers who had long fought
for the enlargement of the protected natural area that serves
as the backyard of the Los Angeles Basin. … Stretching
from Santa Clarita to San Bernardino, the San Gabriel Mountains
watershed provides Los Angeles County with 70% of its open
space and roughly 30% of its water. The added protections
will help ensure equitable access to the San Gabriels’ cool
streams and rugged canyons while also preserving clean air and
water.
Winter-like weather will make a brief return to California this
weekend, with widespread snow in the Sierra Nevada. The
National Weather Service has issued winter weather advisories
for much of the Sierra, including Donner Pass, the Tahoe
Basin and Yosemite National Park. The spring snowmaker will add
fresh powder in some locations, boosting an already healthy
snowpack.
Tribes that use the Colorado River want a say in negotiations
that will reshape how the river’s water is shared. Eighteen of
those tribes signed on to a letter sent to the Bureau of
Reclamation, the federal agency that will finalize new rules
for managing the river after 2026, when the current guidelines
expire. In the memo, tribal leaders urge the federal government
to protect their access to water and uphold long-standing legal
responsibilities. … The tribes’ letter aims to make sure
that Indigenous people, who used the Colorado River before
white settlers ever occupied the Western U.S., are not
left behind as Reclamation considers those proposals. “If you
are not at the table, you are on the menu,” Jay Weiner, a water
lawyer for the Quechan Indian Tribe, said. Weiner, who helped
craft the letter, said it aims to answer the complicated
question: What do tribes want?
Governor Gavin Newsom, with the support of the Department of
Water Resources (DWR) and other state agencies, signed into
effect new developments for the California Water Plan which
details water conservation efforts for the next five
years. Newsom said that the state has invested $9 billion
in the last three years, and that “I want folks to know that we
are not just victims of fate, that we recognize the world we’re
living in.” Recognizing that California will be
operating with ten percent less water in 2040 than what is
currently available, Newsom said “We put out a hotter, drier
strategy” to offset the loss. This includes plans for improving
water security, desalinization plants, stormwater capture,
water recycling, and new strategies for large-scale
conveyance.
Grand County and Northern Water have struck a deal that will
send more water running down Western Slope streams to benefit
farmers, boaters and the environment. Grand County in northern
Colorado is home to nearly 16,000 people, part of Rocky
Mountain National Park and the headwaters of the Colorado
River. Each year, four major diversion tunnels take up to
350,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water out of the county and
push it east to the Front Range. Now, the county and the water
provider are agreeing to release water in the opposite
direction, to the west.
