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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A local ag industry titan is being recognized for his lifelong
service in farming and civic life. Assemblymember Esmeralda
Soria has recognized Firebaugh farmer Joe L. Del Bosque as her
office’s 2024 Latino Spirit Award Honoree. Following years of
migrant farm work, Del Bosque’s family established themselves
on the westside of the San Joaquin Valley, where he grew up on
the farm with his father, going to work at age 10. He graduated
from Fresno State in 1975 and then his started own operation in
1985. Del Bosque Farms produces organic melons, tomatoes,
almonds and cherries. Del Bosque is a vocal advocate for
farmers and farmworkers impacted by water policies.
Nearly 1,600 acres of land used as rice fields north of
Sacramento could one day become public land, after a huge
restoration project funded partly by
big tech. Apple is among the donors to the Dos
Rios Norte project, an effort to restore a floodplain located
where the Sacramento and Feather rivers meet that’s crucial to
wildlife, the Sacramento Bee first reported.
California conservation nonprofit River Partners is leading the
efforts, with the goal of repairing the area habitat for the
state’s native Chinook salmon population, threatened bird
species and other wildlife species. The project aims to save
around 7,000 acre-feet of water each year, among other
environmental benefits. Apple would not disclose how much the
company contributed to this project, but confirmed to SFGATE it
has pledged more than $8 million since 2023 to California
watershed projects, including this one.
For several years now, one question has held the key to
understanding just how much we should worry about the hundreds
of tons of DDT that had been dumped off the coast of Los
Angeles: How, exactly, has this decades-old pesticide — a toxic
chemical spread across the seafloor 3,000 feet underwater —
continued to reenter the food web? Now, in a highly anticipated
study, researchers have identified tiny zooplankton and
mid-to-deep-water fish as potential links between the
contaminated sediment and the greater ecosystem. For the first
time, chemical analyses confirmed that these deep-sea organisms
are contaminated by numerous DDT-related compounds that match
similar chemical patterns found on the seafloor and animals
higher up on the food chain.
The California Desalination Association (CalDesal) today
announced the unanimous appointment of Lacy Carothers, PE,
Director of Engineering for California American Water, to its
Executive Committee. Carothers brings a wealth of
experience in the water industry to CalDesal, a statewide
association comprised of leaders from public and private water
agencies, non-profit organizations, and others committed to
integrating desalination into California’s sustainable water
future. “We’re all very excited to have Lacy join our Executive
Committee,” said Glenn Farrel, Executive Director of CalDesal.
“Her expertise and leadership will be invaluable as we continue
to advocate for desalination as a key solution to California’s
water challenges.”
As temperatures begin to warm up in Northern California, you
might be tempted to take a dip in local waterways. “Keep in
mind that the area rivers and streams will continue to run COLD
as a product of mountain snowmelt,” the National Weather
Service posted Monday afternoon on X, formerly known as
Twitter. The weather service is forecasting temperatures in
Sacramento to reach 90 degrees by Sunday, for the first time in
2024. “We will be going from below-normal temperatures to
above-normal temperatures for this time of the year,” Scott
Rowe, a senior service hydrologist at the weather service in
Sacramento, said Monday.
Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California,
reached capacity on Monday for a second straight year after
another relatively wet winter. The rising waters come as state
reservoir managers have been reducing outflows from the lake in
recent weeks — as winter inflows tailed off and the threat
of downstream flooding waned — allowing the reservoir to
slowly fill to its current 899-foot elevation, or 3.52-million
acre-feet of water. … Lake Oroville contains 28% more water
than it historically has on this date. “This is great news
for ensuring adequate water supply for millions of Californians
& environmental needs,” the state Department of Water Resources
posted Monday afternoon on X, formerly Twitter.
In another move to build water resilient systems in the West
and particularly in the Colorado River Basin, the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation announced Monday $147 million in federal grants
to help underserved communities dogged by water scarcity
issues. The funding will support 42 projects in 10 states. In
eastern Utah, nearly $6.6 million was granted to the Ute Indian
Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation which operates the
Ute Tribe Water Systems, providing water service to tribal
members.
A federal judge ruled Monday afternoon that a California dam
harms endangered salmon when it conducts flood control
operations. Coyote Valley Dam, operated by the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, protects the city of Ukiah from flooding from
nearby Lake Mendocino. In 2022, fisheries biologist Sean White
sued the Corps claiming the dam’s flood control operations kick
up sediment in the water, increasing turbidity and harming
endangered Central California coast steelhead, coho and Chinook
salmon. White’s previous requests for injunctive relief were
denied in 2023, yet he was granted summary judgment on his
claims on Monday after providing more data. U.S. District Judge
Jacqueline Scott Corley, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote in her
18-page opinion that it was beyond dispute that the dam’s
operations harm the fish.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is warning
people to keep their pets away from Silverwood Lake in San
Bernardino after water officials identified toxic algae in the
water. Last week, the DWR announced that water officials have
issued a “caution algal bloom advisory” for Silverwood Lake
after blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, was found
at the lake. Not all algae is toxic, but it’s impossible to
tell just by looking at it. Exposure to toxic
cyanobacteria can cause unpleasant symptoms, such as eye, nose,
mouth or throat irritation, headache, allergic skin rash, mouth
ulcers, vomiting, diarrhea, and cold- and flu-like symptoms,
according to a DWR website. Pets and children are especially
susceptible, prompting the DWR to urge people to be aware of
the conditions.
A rare late season storm dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on some
regions of Northern California over the weekend, breaking at
least one daily snowfall record. The storm, which swept in from
the Gulf of Alaska, dropped about 31 inches of snow on Lower
Lassen Peak, 26 inches at Palisades Summit and 22 inches at
Soda Springs Ski Resort and 16 inches at Kingvale, according to
the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office. The UC
Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory at Donner Summit
recorded 26.4 inches of snow in a 24-hour period on May 5,
making it the “snowiest day of the season at the lab,”
according to a social media post. The last record was 23.8
inches on March 3.
… Along the eastern edge of Imperial County, the landscape is
slowly changing. Acres of invasive saltcedar plants and other
weeds are vanishing, replaced by expanses of thorny green trees
dusted with bright yellow flowers. The shift is a result of the
Quechan Tribe’s ongoing efforts to restore the banks of the
parched Colorado River … where it winds through the Quechan
Reservation between California and Arizona.
An extraordinary water year brought much-needed relief to a
drought-stricken Golden State, but experts say California needs
several more exceptionally wet years to repair lingering damage
to precious underground water supplies. The newest Semi-Annual
Groundwater Conditions report — using the first annual data
collected from groundwater sustainability agencies across 99
basins holding more than 90% of the state’s groundwater —
indicates the state has gained 4.1 million acre-feet of water
through underground recharge, nearly the total storage capacity
of Shasta Lake. Meanwhile, underground storage improved by 8.7
million acre-feet. Thanks to the surprise string of
record-breaking storms, 2023 marked the first year since 2019
that agencies saw a jump in groundwater storage.
The judge in the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper case has ordered a
further six-month stay in the litigation so that structured
mediation can continue. … Eleven major parties involved
in the mediation process, including newcomers to the
negotiations the State Water Resources Control Board and the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife, had jointly asked
the court to continue the stay to Jan. 31, “to allow the
structured mediation a realistic period of time to reach its
conclusion.” … The case dates back to 2014, when Santa
Barbara Channelkeeper sued the city of Ventura and the State
Water Resources Control Board for taking too much water from
the Ventura River, in turn harming endangered Southern
California steelhead trout.
[Residents of the Friendly Acres mobile home park in Red Bluff]
learned in March that their well water had high levels of PFAS.
Those are chemicals used to make everything from nonstick
cookware to water-resistant clothing to cleaning products.
Officials from the California State Water Resources Control
Board held a meeting for tenants that month, warning them about
the contamination and providing bottled water. Kimberlee says
that meeting was the first time she had ever heard about PFAS.
That’s despite Friendly Acres having high levels for at least
four years, according to public data.
Primeval Energy Ltd is entering into a strategic partnership
with Global Water Farms (GWF) through which Primeval staff
members will provide geothermal assistance to GWF in their
Southern California desalination project. GWF has an ambitious
yet realistic business plan to provide vast volumes of clean
water to augment the flow of water in the Colorado River
through desalination, Primeval said in a press release. GWF
will use the salt by-product for the manufacture of salt-based
construction blocks, creating a second environmentally focused
business that lowers the demand for traditional cinder blocks.
The Salton Sea facility will require considerable energy in the
form of Combined Heat and Power, the companies said.
The Marin Municipal Water District is embarking on a yearlong
study to examine the impact of frequent, severe storms on the
utility’s seven dams. The district board authorized spending up
to $1.06 million to evaluate the capacity of the dam spillways,
and to use climate change projections to assess potential
hazards. The study is a response to a critical Marin County
Civil Grand Jury report published last summer. The watchdog
panel said dam safety plans for the Marin Municipal Water
District and the North Marin Water District are failing to
account for more regular “atmospheric river” storms brought on
by climate change. The grand jury recommended, among other
actions, that the water districts update their dam hazard
mitigation plans with the latest science on climate change
effects on storms.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will examine the possibility of
drilling tunnels through Glen Canyon Dam to ensure water can
pass through it at low Lake Powell elevations, two
knowledgeable sources told the Arizona Daily Star. Such a
re-engineering project will be among several options the bureau
will look at due to new concerns about the ability to deliver
Colorado River water through the 61-year-old facility under
such circumstances. It could prevent a catastrophic occurrence
if lake elevations ever fall so low that no water could get
through the dam to serve farms and Lower River Basin cities,
including Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San
Diego.
Diminished by decades of over-pumping, California’s groundwater
reserves saw a huge influx of water last year, in some places
the most in modern times, according to state data that offers
the first detailed look at how aquifers fared during
the state’s historically wet 2023. The bump was driven, in
part, by deliberate efforts to recharge aquifers — the
porous underground rock that holds water and accounts for about
40% of the state’s total water supply. The intentional water
banking, or managed recharge, resulted in at least 4.1 million
acre-feet of water pushed underground, nearly equivalent to
what California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, can hold.
About 90% of that recharge occurred in the San Joaquin Valley,
the state’s agricultural heartland, where aquifers have been
heavily taxed by pumping.
UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab says it has a reason to
celebrate after a weekend storm brought the most snow to date,
topping off a late-season surge. After storms in late February
and throughout March, readings at the lab surged from 102% of
normal for March 1 to 110% of normal for April
1. Accordingly, lab observers seemed excited by
the prospect of precipitation that forecasters
said could bring between 9 to 18 inches of new snow
Saturday through Sunday.
