In California water news today …
Californians were asked to cut water use 15% during the drought. How close did they get?
“The results are in: As California endured its three driest years on record, urban water users made a significant effort to conserve water, but fell far short of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request to reduce their use by 15%. Between July 2021, when Newsom first called on water users to voluntarily cut back, and March of this year, when he rescinded that request amid a very wet winter, statewide savings were 7%, or about half of what was requested. That amounts to about 9 fewer gallons per person per day, a Los Angeles Times analysis has found. The findings varied considerably by region and by water district, with the North Coast and San Francisco Bay areas saving the most water — 14% and 12%, respectively — against the baseline year of 2020. The inland Tulare Lake and Colorado River regions saved the least, 4% and 2%, respectively. (The analysis did not include agricultural water use.) … ” Read more from the LA Times.
SEE ALSO: What the data says (and doesn’t say) about drought, from the LA Times
California is living between ever-widening climate extremes
“In the early 2010s, California endured a very severe drought that killed millions of trees and fueled horrific wildfires. That was followed by a total reversal in 2017, the state’s second-wettest year on record, which caused landslides, evacuations and $1 billion in damages to roads and highways. Sound familiar? Six years later, Californians have lived through yet another cycle of lengthy drought followed by record-breaking destructive rains. Dozens of atmospheric rivers over the winter removed all of the state from drought conditions. The transformation from drought to deluge and back again can feel so complete that it’s easy to forget what conditions were like just a few years before, or how long we’ve been lurching between the two. That’s been true for generations, as John Steinbeck observed in “East of Eden”: “During the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.” … ” Read more from the New York Times.
Facing the dragon: California’s nasty ecological debts
Andrew L. Rypel writes, “When I was younger, a close friend of mine struggled with a crippling debt. It was during that unique period shortly before and after college graduation. He had, in relatively short order, maxed out three credit cards, plus taken out a line of credit as a ‘student loan’. … Being young at the time, watching this unfold was a formative experience. It taught me the important and timeless lesson: There is no free lunch. Recently, I have been reflecting on California’s intractable environmental woes: its ecosystems, water, and the communities who rely on them. For many, these problems seem too difficult to solve, so much as to classify them as ‘wicked problems’. Sometimes however, solutions require fresh perspectives. For example, there is much we can glean from economics and study of debt. In this essay, I explore the concept of ecological debts, the extent to which California has amassed ecological debt, and what a return to solvency might look like. … ” Read the full post at the California Water Blog.
Pour it on: Almond growers encouraged to recharge groundwater
“The atmospheric rivers that flowed over California this past winter opened growers’ eyes to the potential of groundwater recharge, which could save them precious water in such heavy precipitation years for the inevitable years of drought that lie ahead. The Almond Board of California (ABC) and the nonprofit Sustainable Conservation have developed an “Introduction to Groundwater Recharge” guide so California almond growers can begin evaluating their options for addressing local sub-basin overdraft through recharge, helping secure reliable, sufficient, and drought-resilient groundwater supplies. These on-farm recharge strategies can be adapted so almond growers can play a big part in helping to recharge groundwater with valuable runoff flows this spring and even into summer, says one of the guide’s authors, ABC Principal Analyst Jesse Roseman. … ” Read more from Growing Produce.
Giant magnet hanging from a helicopter could solve California’s drought water shortages
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane … no it’s a giant electromagnet that dwarfs the helicopter that it hangs from. The enormous hoop, flying about 200 feet off the ground, that looks like a something out of a fantasy or sci-fi movie, will actually help California during the next drought. The huge magnet can “see” 1,500 feet through the ground similar to a superhero. “This system images down to about 1,500 feet down, and it looks for the soils down there and it tells us whether or not we’ve got some sand or clay down there,” Aaron Fukuda, General Manager of the Tulare Irrigation District told FOX Weather. … ” Read more from Fox Weather.
California’s greatest water gain for decades seen in satellite images
“California has seen a huge amount of water returned to its drought-hit soils because of intense storms and huge snowmelt since the beginning of 2023. Data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellite mission, a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), shows that California has just seen its greatest year-over-year water gains for two decades. GRACE-FO found that the water contained in lakes, rivers, soil, snowpack and underground aquifers in California’s Central Valley rose by around 20 inches between October 2022 and March 2023. The average increase during the same period is normally only around half that amount. … ” Read more from Newsweek.
SEE ALSO: Before and After Satellite Images Show a Complete Water Transformation at Shasta Lake, from Active NorCal
The future of water: A new book from water expert Peter Gleick urges a rethinking of how we use, manage and value one of our most important resources.
“It’s time for a reckoning … with water. It’s central to our bodies, the planet, our modern lives, and yet we continue to use it unwisely, to pollute rivers, to overdraft groundwater, to dewater ecosystems, and to leave some of our fellow humans without this most basic necessity. Faced with mounting water problems, compounded by biodiversity loss and climate change, we have an opportunity — and a necessity — to chart a new course. “We are a minor character in the scientific epic of water — and we’re at a moment in time when we must decide whether to recognize that fact and all its consequences and move to a sustainable and equitable future or to barrel forward in catastrophic denial,” writes Peter Gleick in his new book, The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future. … The Revelator spoke to Gleick about where the “soft path” takes us, what conflicts lie ahead, and how far we’ve already come. … ” Read the full post at The Revelator.
SEE ALSO: Finding a new path to water conservation for the next millennium, for California and the world, from Peter Gleick at the LA Times
Dan Walters: California Senate takes rare stand against misuse of budget ‘trailer bills’
“Few people inside or outside the Capitol were paying much attention last year when Assembly Bill 205 popped up on the California Senate floor on June 29. The measure had been sitting in the Senate for more than four months, one of many so-called “trailer bills” legally connected to the state budget but having little, if any, policy connection to the budget. Over the previous decade, after voters – perhaps unwittingly – reduced the legislative vote requirement for budgets from two-thirds to a simple majority, it had become common practice for governors and legislative leaders to put sweeping policy changes into trailer bills to make their passage easier. Trailer bills need just simple majority votes, take effect immediately on being signed by the governor, and are typically taken up in rapid fire order with little or no serious discussion. … ” Continue reading at Cal Matters.
Number of fire weather days increasing in California, study finds
“Nothing has dominated headlines in the past decade like wildfires in California. A new analysis performed by Kaitlyn Trudeau and her team at Climate Central shows that the number of fire weather days has increased in the last 50 years. Trudeau grew up in Placerville and received her degree from Sacramento State University, so she is no stranger to California’s wildfire history. “Fire weather days are the hot, dry, windy days that you see that really promote the kind of extreme and severe fire behavior that we’ve been seeing over the past few years,” said Trudeau. … ” Read more from Channel 10.
In commentary today …
Peter Gleick: Finding a new path to water conservation for the next millennium, for California and the world
Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, writes, “In the long sweep of human history, water has always played a central role in determining the geography of civilizations, and eons ago it influenced the migration of our early ancestors out of Africa and across the world. The ability to manage water contributed to the success or failure of empires along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of the Middle East, the Indus in southern Asia, and the Yangtze in China. This First Age of water saw the earliest efforts to manipulate water with dams, aqueducts and intentional irrigation, and also the first water laws, institutions and water conflicts. As human populations and economies outgrew local water resources, a new age led to revolutions in science, engineering, medicine and knowledge. During this Second Age of water, we uncovered the chemical, physical and biological nature of water, improved our ability to understand and control the hydrologic cycle, learned about the causes and cures for water-related diseases and built the agricultural systems that let us feed and support today’s 8 billion people. We now have the technology to produce the cleanest water from the most contaminated, purify and recycle water to support astronauts on the space station and launch instruments and robotic explorers into the far reaches of the solar system, often looking for water. But this second age has also led to unintended consequences … ” Continue reading at the LA Times.
SEE ALSO: The future of water: A new book from water expert Peter Gleick urges a rethinking of how we use, manage and value one of our most important resources, from The Revelator
Proposed water regulations may not help the people they are supposed to
Ike Brannon, a senior fellow at the Jack Kemp Foundation, writes, “Late last year the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new set of rules that would designate perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) – two types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – as hazardous substances, and other regulations that would reduce the allowable level of these substances in the drinking water to just four parts per trillion. These stringent limits—which go beyond the UN recommendations of twelve parts per trillion as well as those of any other country and approach or exceed what state-of-the-art technology can currently detect—would dramatically increase costs for water treatment facilities, requiring most of them to make new investments in equipment both to detect and remove the substances. The lower threshold would provide a new impetus for future lawsuits. … ” Read more from Forbes.
More logging won’t curb wildfire smoke
Chad Hanson, Ph.D., a forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project, writes, “With wildfires sweeping across 10 million acres of Canada’s forests in recent weeks, residents of New York and other northeastern U.S. cities and towns have struggled with wildfire smoke, and the irritation of eyes and lungs that it can cause. The conversations under the hazy, orange-tinted skies in recent days have turned political. People are concerned. They want answers, and solutions. Unfortunately, in response, some elected officials are offering mainly misinformation, cynical opportunism, and a new form of climate denialism. … ” Continue reading at The Hill.
In regional water news and commentary today …
NORTH COAST
The massive dam removal on the Klamath may save salmon but can’t solve the West’s water crisis
“… This year, Yurok and Karuk tribal members began pressing the roots of native plants like Oregon ash and Klamath plum into the fluffy volcanic soil surrounding the Iron Gate Reservoir, some 200 miles east of the free-flowing water at the river’s mouth. It’s the first in a series of three pools that will be reverted to those lush flows when the dams are destroyed in what may be the nation’s largest planned dam removal project, already underway. The Seattle Times traveled from the Klamath’s mouth, among the towering redwood forests of Northern California, through the ancestral lands of the Yurok, Karuk and Hupa, to the concrete dams set to come down and to the farmland and ranches the basin supports. The stories told along the way not only paint a picture of a decadeslong fight to restore a river’s flow and a way of life but also the distinct challenges of finding enough water to go around amid a changing climate. The dam’s removal won’t resolve a growing water crisis. Yet what happens on the Klamath has implications for dammed rivers across the American West. … ” Continue reading from the Seattle Times.
MOUNTAIN COUNTIES
See moment California’s Sonora Pass opens after epic 2023 snow season. And Tioga Pass?
“Highway 108 over Sonora Pass reopened on Friday afternoon after 211 days, the longest closure since 2004/2005 when the route was closed for 220 days, according to Caltrans officials. Video captures the moment with the reopening of the gate. The last time the pass was closed for this long was 2017, when it was closed until June 13, Caltrans said. The route had been shut since Nov. 14, 2022. … ” Read more from the Sacramento Bee.
How the $100 million proposed reopening of a former gold mine has angered Grass Valley
“Ben Mossman believes one of the largest amounts of unmined gold in the world lies deep under the ground in Grass Valley and wants to extract it. And that has made him, and his Rise Gold Corp., public enemy No. 1 in this town. Sixty-eight years have passed since the Idaho-Maryland Mine operated in this small city in the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 50 miles east of Sacramento. Grass Valley residents want to keep it idle, a relic of the past. Residents cite concerns that the 2,585-acre mine site would create failed wells, groundwater contamination, noise pollution and air pollution and increased truck traffic. Mossman said he and environmental studies have rebutted all those fears. He promises a mine that won’t damage the environment and will create an economic boom. “There are some people who are just trying to stir up fear intentionally,” said Mossman. Not so, residents counter. .. ” Continue reading at the Sacramento Bee.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Only 12 ballots tallied in Chino against increases
“Trash and sewer rates will be going up substantially in Chino over the next five years. Only 12 ratepayers submitted written protests to the city during the Prop. 218 election process after more than 20,000 notices were mailed. A majority of 50 percent plus one was required to defeat the increases. Under the rules of Prop. 218, approved by California voters in 1996, cities are not allowed to impose rate increases without a majority protest. If a protest vote is not submitted to the city by the ratepayer, it counts as a “yes” vote, thus making it difficult to defeat increases. By 2027, trash rates will rise up to $14.03 per month and sewer rates will increase up to $10.50 per month, for a total amount of approximately $24.03 per month. … ” Read more from the Chino Champion.
Newport Beach’s CAD project on pause amid lawsuit by O.C. Coastkeeper
“In what may be a tentative victory for environmentalists and those opposed to the project, plans for the confined aquatic disposal site in Newport Bay have been halted as a result of a lawsuit filed by Orange County Coastkeeper. The environmentalist group has long contested the construction of the CAD, which is meant to contain dredged material considered too toxic for open ocean release from federal channels. Opponents of the project have contended that U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans wrongfully characterize the sediment as “harmless,” though city officials say the Environmental Protection Agency described it as neither toxic nor threatening. The Coastal Commission gave the OK for the project in October 2022, and the first dredge of those same channels occurred in the summer of that year. … ” Read more from the LA Times.
IMPERIAL/COACHELLA VALLEYS
Crop commitments secured for SVE sugarcane ethanol bio-refinery in Imperial Valley
“Sugar Valley Energy (SVE), an advanced low-carbon sugarcane-to-ethanol and power facility, has secured letters of intent with local Imperial Valley farmers to grow 12,000 acres of sugarcane to support its initial feedstock production schedule, announced California Ethanol + Power (CE+P) President and CEO Dave Rubenstein, per an SVE news release dated June 12, 2023. “Local farmers who were interested in a profitable and stable long-term crop represented the driving force behind the Sugar Valley Energy project,” Rubenstein said. “The interest continues to be as strong in 2023 as it was in 2013 when the project was first envisioned, if not more so. We are pleased to see the overwhelming local support for an economically viable crop processed in our community for the benefit of the region’s economy and our country’s energy security.” … ” Read more from the Holtville Tribune.
SAN DIEGO
Column: Turmoil in San Diego’s water world
Columnist Michael Smolens writes, “What seemed like an internal dispute among San Diego County water agencies is now reverberating in Sacramento and Los Angeles, potentially raising the stakes in the outcome. At issue is the effort by two small North County water districts to get out from under the San Diego County Water Authority umbrella and hook up with an agency in Riverside County to obtain cheaper water. But that would lead to higher rates for remaining authority members and possibly alter the governing structure of the massive Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, according to the leader of the Los Angeles-based agency. Meanwhile, heavy political maneuvering could make the process to leave the county water authority, which wasn’t easy to begin with, much more difficult. … ” Read more from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Padre dam board tells San Diego County Water Authority it can’t accept any water rate increase
“Padre Dam Water District’s board is fed up with having to pay higher rates for the water it purchases from the San Diego County Water Authority, and voted unanimously not to go along with any rate hike unless the CWA gets serious about its long-range planning. The five-member board took the vote after listening to a presentation by CEO Kyle Swanson about CWA raising the wholesale rate charged to member water agencies next year by a range between 8.2 to 12.7 percent. At one point, CWA was considering increasing to about 13 percent, but the range is ever-changing and unknowable at the current time, Swanson said. … ” Read more from the East County Tribune.
Padilla: $300 million allocated in U.S. budget to keep sewage from Mexico out of California
“Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, of California, on Monday visited the Tijuana River Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant on the U.S. side of the border to announce that $300 million has been budgeted to stem the flow of raw sewage from Mexico into California. The money is part of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which set aside money to clean up the environment along the southern border. During heavy storms or when facilities in Tijuana break down, millions of gallons of raw sewage flow downhill into the U.S. side of the border in the Tijuana River Valley and out to sea, contaminating miles of Southern California beaches. … ” Read more from Channel 10.
Along the Colorado River …
A portrait of the Colorado River
“It’s the origin story and home of the prehistoric Patayan people. It’s the deliverance of 40 million Americans and Mexicans in need of water. A time capsule of Earth’s heaving layers — a place to touch the rock of a billion years before. It’s a collection of campsites and rapids that draw folks out of the humdrum of their lives into its canyons. It’s the child of the Never Summer mountains and an elder of the Sea of Cortés. A political beast caught between red tape and time. A thing to be tamed. A thing to be freed. But the multitudes of the mighty Colorado River run like tributaries toward the one thing that it has always been: the hardest working river in the West. … ” Read more from the Deseret News.
Bullhead City: Recycled water will not go into river without compensation, city manager says
“City Council approved a $793,827 contract last Tuesday for wastewater improvements aimed at pumping reuse water into the Colorado River — if the city is credited for it. Under the contract, Kay Constructors, LLC, will install pumps, piping and electrical Section 10 Water Reclamation Plant. The upgrades will allow the plant to pump its effluent, or reuse, water into the Colorado River. Currently, the plant’s effluent water is pumped into ponds to evaporate. “We don’t have large enough piping or powerful enough pumps to get all of our reuse water out of the plant,” Utilities Director Mark Clark said. … ” Read more from the Mohave Valley Daily News.
‘A portion of paradise’: how the drought is bringing a lost US canyon back to life
“One night in May 2003, I found myself in search of a disappearing lake. A friend and I had ventured to the Hite Marina on Lake Powell to see what America’s second-largest reservoir looked like after three years of record drought. In search of a camping spot, we drove down a boat ramp that just a few years earlier was bustling with boaters. Now it sat eerily on a dry lakebed. Donning headlamps, we walked past marooned docks and stranded buoys, drawn toward a strange roaring sound I thought was wind or a boat motor. Instead, it was something I never thought I’d witness. “It’s the Colorado River!” my friend shouted in disbelief at how far the reservoir had already withdrawn. “It’s flowing!” This resurrection of a river that had been dammed to create the reservoir was a beautiful yet unsettling sight. The climate crisis was exposing flaws in a water system that – after years of denial – western states have finally been forced to confront. … ” Read more from The Guardian.
Municipalities pursuing solutions to Colorado River shortages — regardless of what neighbors do
“This winter dropped a lot of snow on the mountains above Boulder. The reservoirs are in good shape for now as Boulder Creek babbles. But that’s not the area’s only water source. Boulder and many other cities along the Front Range rely, at least in part, on water from the strained Colorado River. Younger cities with fewer senior rights for local water sources — like Superior and Erie — rely on it almost entirely. Because every city is responsible for its own water portfolio, as the Colorado River becomes a potentially unreliable source, wholly dependent cities could be far worse off than others. This isn’t a far-fetched idea. A Colorado State University study shows that for every degree Fahrenheit of global warming, flows of the Colorado River decrease by 4%. And already, the Windy Gap Project — responsible for supplying a portion of Colorado River water to Front Range cities — sometimes doesn’t provide any water at all. … ” Read more from Aspen News.
Colorado River officials lay out their top priorities ahead of upcoming negotiations
“In a warm, overstuffed auditorium at the University of Colorado on Thursday, tribal representatives from around the Colorado River Basin had a message for their federal and state counterparts: Tribes won’t be cut out of key water talks that will decide the future of the basin. “As we develop a post-2026 plan, it’s no longer acceptable for the U.S. to meet with seven basin states separately, and then come to basin tribes, after the fact, with a post-hoc explanation or rationalization of what was discussed, or even worse, what was decided,” said Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. … ” Read more from the Colorado Sun.
More news and commentary in the weekend edition …
In water news this weekend …
-
Crystal Springs at Sunset by Robert Gourley. The path forward for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
- Water Board authorizes more than a million acre-feet of groundwater recharge
- Lake Oroville hits 100% capacity Friday, Department of Water Resources says
- Balancing aquatic habitat and human water supply in California: a Q&A with Doug Chalmers
- Second district “waters down” Los Angeles Waterkeeper waste discharge permit CEQA exemption opinion after rehearing at request of Water Boards, narrows and clarifies holding with no change in judgment or result
- ARkStorm data wins 2023 DesignSafe Dataset awards
- DWR investments help strengthen drought resilience & prepare communities for future dry conditions
- Rising groundwater threatens to spread toxic pollution on U.S. coastlines
- Dan Walters: California water rights at risk as three legislative proposals advance
- Governor Newsom’s proposals to build more, faster heard in the legislature
- GOOD FOOD PODCAST: Mark Arax: The future of water in the Central Valley: Tulare Lake hits 150 year high
- Document available: Goal, Objectives, Principles and Constraints for the Sacramento Regional Water Bank
- Winter rains good news for endangered Marin County salmon
- Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency breaks ground on new College Lake water supply project
- What does record runoff mean for Mono Basin stream restoration?
- Wyoming rancher says stop blaming agriculture for Colorado River crisis
- And more …
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Also on Maven’s Notebook today …
NOW AVAILABLE: Final 2023 Sacramento River Temperature Management Plan
SF BAY NOTICE of Public Workshop & CEQA Scoping Meeting for a Basin Plan Amendment to Address NPDES Permitting Needs
FEATURE: El Niño is back – that’s good news or bad news, depending on where you live
FEATURE: Las Vegas Needs to Save Water. It Won’t Find It in Lawns.
