A wrap-up of posts published on Maven’s Notebook this week …
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In California water news this week …
Forecast for California’s atmospheric river event is in flux
“Meteorologists are confident that California will see rain next week associated with an atmospheric river, but they’ve yet to nail down rainfall amounts and the exact timing of the storm. Forecasters use a series of weather models to look at the forecast several days ahead, and on Thursday, these suggested the storm will likely arrive later than originally expected. The models showed some disagreement around just how much rain the storm will deliver. “The broader weather pattern that’s dominated for the past few weeks is possibly in the process of shifting, and predicting that shift into a new regimen, or new weather pattern, is one of the harder things to do as forecasters,” said Marty Ralph, the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. “The two models are showing different behavior in terms of that shift.” … ” Read more from SF Gate.
California is drought-free for first time in years. What it means.
“California is drought-free for the first time in more than three years because of a remarkably wet, snowy winter and a rare tropical storm over the summer. The last remaining traces of drought disappeared in October, as autumn rainstorms grazed the northwestern corner of the state. Last year at this time, California faced a deepening water crisis amid “extreme” and “exceptional” drought, and officials feared another dry winter because of La Niña, the climate pattern that tends to reduce precipitation in southern and central California. It was the culmination of the three driest years on record, a period defined by parched reservoirs, heat waves and record-breaking wildfires.But, defying predictions, last winter was exceptionally wet. … ” Read more from the Washington Post.
What NOAA’s new snow maps say about California’s upcoming winter
“New maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that a large part of California’s Sierra Nevada has, on average, seen above-normal snowfall during El Niño events. With a strong El Niño pattern predicted to occur this winter, you may jump to the conclusion that the Golden State could see a massive snow pile-up this year. But Michelle L’Heureux, a physical scientist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, cautions against viewing the maps as a forecast for what is likely to happen this winter. Rather, they are historical data that show how snowfall deviated from the average in winters marked by El Niño weather patterns. On the map, which uses data from 1959 to 2023, brown depicts less-than-normal snowfall and blue is above normal. … ” Read more from SF Gate.
DR. JAY LUND: Why can’t we capture all the water in wet years?
John Chacon / DWR
“Capturing water from wet periods for use in drier seasons or years has been central to California’s water management since the early 1900s. Reservoirs and aquifers are routinely used for this purpose by many agencies and regions. How much more water can be saved in wetter times for later use? How much would this cost? What are the potential environmental costs (and benefits) of storing additional water? Dr. Jay Lund, Vice Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences and an engineering professor at UC Davis, dove into those questions in the presentation for Sacramento State’s Office of Water Programs webinar series. … ” Continue reading this article from Maven’s Notebook.
California governor taps new law to streamline Sites Reservoir project
“California Governor Gavin Newsom fast-tracked a massive reservoir project Monday using a law he signed this past summer to accelerate construction. The Sites Reservoir Project near the town of Maxwell, about 81 miles northwest of Sacramento, is slated to hold up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water — enough for 3 million households for a year. Once complete, it’ll increase Northern California’s water capacity by up to 15%. Additionally, it’s expected to lead to ecosystem improvements, benefits to flood control and added recreational opportunities. The Sites project already has $46.75 million in state funding. It’s eligible for a total of $875.4 million in Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014 funds. The total project cost is estimated at $4 billion. … ” Read more from the Courthouse News Service.
Governor streamlines Sites Reservoir Project, despite opposition by conservationists and tribes
“Despite strong opposition from Tribes, fishing groups and conservation organizations, Governor Gavin Newsom on November 6 took action to accelerate the Sites Reservoir project, utilizing new tools from the controversial infrastructure streamlining package to “build more faster.” “We’re cutting red tape to build more faster,” said Governor Newsom. “These are projects that will address our state’s biggest challenges faster, and the Sites Reservoir is fully representative of that goal – making sure Californians have access to clean drinking water and making sure we’re more resilient against future droughts.” … However, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups blasted the certification of the sites Reservoir project for judicial streamlining under Senate Bill 149, describing the project as “environmentally destructive.” … ” Continue reading at the Daily Kos.
Kaweah groundwater planning still at a “stand off” even with state take-over looming
“San Joaquin Valley groundwater managers have had six years to come up with plans to bolster critically overdrafted aquifers. Yet, some appear still stuck at the starting line even as the specter of state intervention is marching ever closer. In the Kaweah subbasin covering northern Tulare County, one groundwater agency is just now setting out to collect basic groundwater pumping data, to the intense frustration of farmers and other groundwater managers. And after back-to-back marathon workshops and meetings in late October, the Greater Kaweah groundwater agency did not address concerns over its recently set pumping allotments, which other water managers have said are excessive. … ” Read more from SJV Water.
Public mostly mum on prospect of state take-over of Kings County groundwater pumping
“With the state poised to possibly mandate how much water Kings County farmers are allowed to pump, it was surprising how quiet the first public workshop on this contentious issue was. While more than 225 people attended the online workshop Nov. 3, hardly anyone spoke or asked questions of the Water Resources Control Board staff. Staff provided a slide show and explanation of the state’s findings that the region, known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, does not have an adequate plan to bring its aquifer back into balance. That “inadequate” finding triggered possible intervention by the state Water Board, the enforcement arm of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which mandates that overdrafted subbasins bring their aquifers into balance by 2040. … ” Read more from SJV Water.
Tulare Lake Subbasin/State Board Workshop November 9, 2023
“About 300, motivated people showed up Wednesday evening November 8th at the beautiful and historic Hanford Civic Center to hear the State Water Resources Control Board staff talk about putting the Tulare Lake Subbasin into probation by April 2024. This will cost the area an immediate $30 million fine when it happens – if it happens. This is all part of how the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is playing out in the San Joaquin Valley. On October 12th staff sent out a 176 page notice of the workshop scheduled on this topic. Folks showed up, listened and then responded. But how did we get to a place where an unelected state agency has the power to come into an area and remove $30 million from an ag based economy? It started decades ago when surface water supplies to the San Joaquin Valley were repeatedly reduced in the name of environmental causes in the Delta. … ” Read more from Water Wrights.
Over 17,000 fall-run chinook salmon return to Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery
“A possible record run of fall-run Chinook salmon is now returning to the Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery. In contrast, the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento, is reporting the second lowest return of fall-run Chinooks in many years. The fish are now returning from the ocean in a year where all salmon fishing was closed in California’s rivers and ocean waters, due to the projected low abundance of Sacramento and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon, so fishery managers and salmon advocates are keeping a close eye on this fall’s spawning escapement. The total numbers of hatchery and naturally spawned fish returning to the Mokelumne, American, Feather and Sacramento River and their tributaries won’’t be known until the numbers of fish returning to the hatcheries and carcass counts on the rivers are compiled by the CDFW and NOAA Fisheries in February 2024 in preparation for the Pacific Fishery Management Council meetings that craft the fishing seasons and restrictions. … ” Read more from the Daily Kos.
RELATED: Why are Mokelumne salmon doing so well? The Magic of the Mokelumne: How such a small river produces so many salmon
Rewilding baby salmon using indigenous knowledge
“In July 2022, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe as well as several fish and wildlife agencies celebrated the reintroduction of Chinook salmon to the McCloud River in far Northern California for the first time since World War II. That was when federal officials removed Winnemem Wintu people from their ancestral homes along the river and erected the 602-foot Shasta Dam, blocking the salmon’s migration path and flooding 27 miles of the lower McCloud.Because mother salmon couldn’t swim up the river to dig their nests, called redds, agency staff trucked and helicoptered fertilized salmon eggs from a Sacramento River hatchery to the remote, mountainous site on the McCloud River. They then deposited the eggs into streamside incubators, which are designed to imprint the unhatched salmon with an urgent desire to return to the river’s unique water chemistry as adults. After experimenting with a barrel-like incubator, agency staff eventually moved the eggs to another device called “heath trays” because they could filter the McCloud’s potentially dangerous spouts of turbid flows. … ” Read more from the Earth Island Journal.
New funding and coordinated action to help bring California salmon back from the brink
“The Office of Habitat Conservation’s Restoration Center has awarded an unprecedented $27.8 million to its California salmon restoration partners through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. The funding is dedicated to bringing Central California Coast coho salmon back to California rivers. NOAA designated CCC coho as a Species in the Spotlight due to its high risk of extinction. Trout Unlimited, the San Mateo and Gold Ridge Resource Conservation Districts, and The Nature Conservancy will implement or design more than 40 projects over the next 3 to 4 years with these funds. These projects will allow salmon to reach their historic spawning grounds by removing barriers and increase their survival rates by restoring degraded habitat and increasing floodplain access. In addition, the project partners will work with landowners to develop land management practices that benefit both fish and people. … ” Continue reading from NOAA Fisheries.
With toxic chemical runoff, tiremakers kill protected fish, lawsuit says
“Chemicals from car tires have leached into rivers and other waterways along the West Coast, killing protected fish and causing California to cancel this year’s commercial fishing season, according to claims made by a conservation group and a fishing trade association in a lawsuit filed in federal court on Wednesday. In their suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Institute for Fisheries Resources and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations claim that the 13 largest car tire manufacturers in the U.S. — including Bridgestone America, Goodyear Tires, and Michelin North America — make or distribute products that contain an additive called 6PPD. That chemical ultimately transforms into 6PPD-quinone. As the tire interacts with the environment and roads, 6PPD-quinone leaches onto hard surfaces. When it rains, the chemical falls into rivers and other waterways, where it kills protected and endangered fish species like coho salmon, steelhead trout, and Chinook salmon, the lawsuit claims. … ” Read more from the Courthouse News Service.
Mark Arax: What happened when California chose to rebuild a town devastated by wildfire
“Before the fire that destroyed almost everything here, Paradise was one of those blunders of American suburbia, a misplaced place that made little ecological sense. It inhabited a California landscape that wasn’t quite rolling foothill or rugged Sierra but an in-between zone where Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs and incense cedars kept the earth from baking like the great valley below. Psychically, it represented California affordability and escape, a refuge that drew a whole carnival of believers: hippie gun nuts and backwoodsmen, growers of pot and fruit, trailer park dwellers and two-income families in middle-class houses and retirees from the city who had enough equity to buy a lovely acre with a creek called Honey running through it. … ” Continue reading at the New York Times (gift article).
In commentary this week …
California bureaucrats embrace water rationing
Edward Ring, co-founder of the California Policy Center and the author of The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California. writes, “On October 4 the California State Water Board held a hearing to discuss how it will implement Senate Bill 1157, passed by the state legislature in 2022, which lowers indoor water-use standards to 47 gallons per person starting in 2025 and 42 gallons in 2030. The title of the hearing was “Making Water Conservation a Way of Life.” Rationing would be a more apt term for what’s coming for California’s households.It isn’t as if conservation hasn’t been a way of life in California for decades. Despite the growth of the state’s population to over 39 million today, total urban water consumption in the state has been falling each year since the mid 1990s. At just over 7 million acre-feet (MAF) per year in 2022, urban water consumption hasn’t been this low since 1985, when the population of the state was only 26 million. That’s not enough, however, for California’s water bureaucrats, and the environmentalist organizations they answer to. … ” Read more from the National Review.
Cognitive dissonance [noun] 1: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes 2: the State of California’s salmon management policy
Paul S. Weiland writes, “The State of California has committed to a policy of protecting wild runs of its Chinook salmon. It’s reflected in both State law, in the Delta Reform Act, and in State policy, including the State Board’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan and Delta Stewardship Council’s Delta Plan. The State implements salmon policy by imposing considerable restrictions on the agencies that supply water to residents, businesses, and farmers across much of California at a cost that runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet this year returns of wild spring-run Chinook salmon from the ocean were vanishingly small. State officials report that fewer than 25 returning adults were recorded in two of the three remaining upper Central Valley streams that feed the Sacramento River and still support independent spring-run Chinook populations. How could this happen? There is no single explanation. But ironically, certain elements on the State’s salmon-management agenda appear to be leading causes of harm to wild runs of Chinook. Those policies could push one or more of those wild runs past the brink of extinction. … ” Read more from Center for California Water Resources Policy and Management.
Blueprint seeks water reliability for San Joaquin Valley farmers
Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition, writes, “California’s San Joaquin Valley is one of the most productive farming regions on Earth. Blessed with deep, alluvial soils and one of the world’s five Mediterranean climates, the valley’s agriculture is unmatched. Yet over the past three decades, a changing approach to water management has reduced water supplies to farmers by millions of acre-feet. In 2021 and 2022, farmers received zero water allocations from the federal Central Valley Project and just 5% of supplies from the State Water Project. Water shortages for farms weren’t just about the drought. They had much to do with changed priorities for the use of water stored in reservoirs such as Shasta, Oroville, Folsom, New Melones and others. Management of facilities originally built to provide water for agriculture and communities has now increasingly considered the needs of fish at the expense of the farmers who grow our food. … ” Continue reading this commentary.
Dam removal supports California’s 30×30 Goals
Julie Turrini, director of Lands, Rivers, and Communities at Resources Legacy Fund where she leads the Open Rivers Fund, writes, “California has hundreds of outdated dams, small and large, that no longer serve a function. These obsolete dams litter our rivers and streams, block fish passage, and create costly liabilities to communities. We need to accelerate our pace of dam removal as a nature-based strategy for restoring freshwater systems and preparing for increasing threats from climate change. Dam removal fits nicely within California’s effort to protect 30 percent of its land and coastal waters by 2030 (30×30). After all, rivers and streams connect the land to the coast and along the way, they provide critical habitat for fish and wildlife, drinking water for towns and cities, irrigation water for farmers and ranchers, first foods and important ceremonial spaces for Indigenous Peoples, and recreational opportunities for many. … ” Read more from Capitol Weekly.
In regional water news this week …
The wrong kind of blooms: Climate change, invasive clams are fueling algae growth on Lake Tahoe
“While out enjoying an afternoon on one of Lake Tahoe’s sandy beaches over the past few years, you might have noticed large mats of decomposing algae washing up or floating nearby. The lake’s famed blue waters are facing another threat while the battles of climate change and invasive species wage on — and it’s all very much connected. Nearshore algae blooms are a burgeoning ecological threat to Tahoe. Not only do they impact the experience for beachgoers, but they also degrade water quality and, in some cases, pose a threat of toxicity. Over the last 50 years, the rate of algal growth has increased sixfold, according to U.C. Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center’s 2022 State of the Lake Report. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, the amount of algae growing in the lake jumped up 300%. … ” Read more from the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
Measuring groundwater overdraft in the Sacramento Valley
“The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is now in its tenth year since passing in 2014, and we are beginning to see some real progress in coordination and implementation. Groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) have been formed and initial groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) submitted. Following submission, some plans have been approved, some are still under state review, and many have gone through some iteration to correct deficiencies. In an earlier series, we looked at the early stages of GSP development and planning in the San Joaquin Valley. Now that the Sacramento Valley has made similar progress, we look at these plans and what they mean for sustainable groundwater management. Much recent attention towards groundwater sustainability has focused on the heavily overdrafted San Joaquin Valley. However, the Sacramento Valley also needs to bring its groundwater basins into balance and avoid significant undesirable results of pumping. This can be a particular challenge during extended dry periods, such as the recent 2020–22 drought, which heavily impacted the region. … ” Read more from the PPIC.
Monterey: Competing lawsuits argue over access to safe water
“David Schmalz here. For my entire life, I’ve been lucky enough to have clean water coming out of my tap. But for the majority of that time, I didn’t even know I was lucky—it was an expectation, something I took for granted. That started to change in adulthood as I read story after story about the Americans—invariably low-income Americans—whose water supplies were contaminated one way or another, and it fully crystallized when I moved to Monterey County in 2013. It’s a systemic problem in places like the Central Coast that are filled with agricultural fields and people that live amidst them, despite years of effort by state regulators to address it. In September, after two years of review, the State Water Board met in Sacramento to consider revisions to a 2021 Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board order that brought litigation from both growers and environmental groups—one side arguing its regulations are too stringent, the other arguing they’re not stringent enough. … ” Read more from Monterey Weekly.
Desperate for water, a desert city hopes to build a pipeline to the California Aqueduct
“After decades of unrestricted pumping in the rain-starved northwestern corner of the Mojave Desert, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin Authority has the distinction of managing one of the most critically overdrawn aquifers in California. Now, the region is in an uproar over a proposal that the authority sees as a way out of its groundwater crisis, one that critics say would give priority to urban consumers in the city of Ridgecrest and the adjacent Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake over farmers and mining operations. It’s a $200-million, 50-mile-long pipeline system that would move water from the California Aqueduct in California City — over arid desert mountains — to a storage tank in the urban center of Ridgecrest. … ” Continue reading at the LA Times. | Read via Lookout Santa Cruz (free registration required)
As the first major project at the Salton Sea nears completion, what’s next?
“After years of studies, public meetings and deliberation over the future of the receding Salton Sea, the first visible signs of major projects at the sea are starting to appear. Local and state officials are hoping to build on the momentum generated by the near-completion of the largest project at the sea to date: The 4,100-acre Species Conservation Habitat Project along the sea’s southern edge should be finished by the end of the year; a pilot project along the northern edge is officially in the works; and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the early stages of a feasibility study focused on potential long-term solutions at the Salton Sea. … ” Read more from The Desert Sun. | Read via Yahoo News.
Water customers in North County overwhelmingly approve divorce from regional agency
“Voters across two North County water districts overwhelmingly supported a ballot measure to break away from the San Diego County Water Authority, capping a years-long effort to divorce from the regional agency. In unofficial election results from the Tuesday election, roughly 19 of every 20 ballots cast by residents of the Rainbow Municipal Water District and the Fallbrook Public Utilities District supported leaving the county water authority. “We are extremely grateful to the people of Fallbrook and Rainbow for their strong support of these measures,” the agencies said in a joint statement. … ” Read more from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The historic claims that put a few California farming families first in line for Colorado River water
“Craig Elmore’s family history is the stuff of Westerns. His grandfather, John Elmore, a poor son of a Missouri preacher, arrived in California’s Imperial Valley in 1908 and dug ditches to deliver water to homesteaders. Thanks to his marriage to a citrus magnate’s daughter, reputed good fortune as a gambler and business acumen, he amassed the Elmore Desert Ranch, part of roughly 12,000 acres that two branches of the family still farm. All that land in the blazing-hot southeastern corner of California came with a huge bonanza: water from the Colorado River. In 2022, the present-day Elmores consumed an estimated 22.5 billion gallons, according to a Desert Sun and ProPublica analysis of satellite data combined with business and agricultural records. That’s almost as much as the entire city of Scottsdale, Arizona, is allotted. That puts the Elmores in exclusive company. They are one of 20 extended families who receive fully one-seventh of the river’s flow through its lower half — a whopping 1,186,200 acre-feet, or about 386.5 billion gallons, the analysis showed. … ” Read more from ProPublica.
SEE ALSO: The 20 Farming Families Who Use More Water From the Colorado River Than Some Western States, from Pro Publica
Announcements, notices, and funding opportunities …
YOUR INPUT WANTED: Public comment period opens for Water Commission’s Draft White Paper on Drought Strategies
NOTICE of Preliminary Draft Emergency Regulation for Scott and Shasta Rivers, Virtual Public Meeting, and Opportunity to Comment
NOTICE of Temporary Water Right Application to appropriate 6,000 AF from the Sacramento River for groundwater storage
NOTICE of 180-Day Temporary Permit Application T033404 – Mariposa Creek and Bear Creek in Merced County
