A wrap-up of posts published on Maven’s Notebook this week …
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In California water news this week …
Fishermen, Tribal members, and residents ask California Water Board to support science-based water plan, deny Voluntary Agreements
“A coalition of Tribal members, fishermen, and others from all over Northern California will rally and testify before the State Water Resources Control Board to urge them to deny a proposal to replace flow requirements in the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan) with agriculture-led voluntary flow agreements. Communities from the Klamath River to the South Delta have participated in the science-based Bay-Delta Plan process for almost 15 years and repeatedly seen voluntary agreements and local cooperative solutions in Delta tributary watersheds fail, leading to water quality and salmon crises. On the last day of the State Board Hearing on the Bay-Delta Voluntary Agreements, they will once again urge the Board to heed their warnings. “For a decade, California water agencies have promised a voluntary agreement to address the deteriorating health in Central Valley rivers and the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. Unfortunately, the process seems less focused on creating a credible agreement than on preventing the State Water Board from actually implementing a plan that recognizes the need for increased cold-water flows,” said Scott Artis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association. … ” Continue reading this press release.
State hears feedback on controversial water plan
“As the California State Water Resources Control board meets at the California Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters for three days of discussion on its Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan Solano County water officials are there to speak in opposition to a course of action that could see the county’s water allocation from Lake Berryessa cut by 75 percent. Chris Lee and Alex Rabidoux of the Solano County Water Agency presented information regarding the growth of salmon populations in Putah Creek in recent years. The state has claimed that diminished river flows in these areas are harming fish habitats and are ecologically detrimental to the water system as a whole, but SCWA argues that Putah Creek is already a standout example of salmon repopulation. … ” Read more from the Vallejo Times-Herald.
The agreements to support healthy rivers and landscapes benefits all Californians
“The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) multi-day public workshop is underway, April 24-26 at the CalEPA Building in Sacramento. A broad, bipartisan coalition of industries and organizations support and encourage the State Water Board to approve the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes, as the approach for meeting the goals of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan Update. The Agreements between state, federal and local water agencies represent a collaborative and holistic approach to water management in the Delta and its tributaries that benefits the environment, agriculture, utilities, housing needs, and California’s economy. We have been working closely with the organizations representing these industries and their input has been very valuable to ensure the Agreements will benefit all of these important uses of water throughout California. … ” Read more from the Northern California Water Association.
‘Rivers in the sky’ have drenched California, yet even more extreme rains are possible
“For years, scientists have said that atmospheric rivers can either make or break the water supplies of thirsty California cities and farms. For the last two winters, a steady succession of these giant “rivers in the sky” have dumped record-breaking and drought-busting precipitation across the state, while simultaneously causing catastrophic floods, landslides, and dangerous blizzards. But now, new research has found that these recent atmospheric rivers pale in comparison to some of the monster storms that battered ancient California — a sobering revelation that suggests to some experts that the state could be revisited once again by such cataclysmic storms. “Our findings show that atmospheric river activity exceeds what has occurred since instrumental record keeping began,” said Clarke Knight, a U.S. Geological Survey research geographer and the lead author on the study that detailed — for the first time — atmospheric river activity dating back 3,200 years. “This is important because it suggests the latent potential of our area to experience storms beyond those that we have seen today.” … ” Read more from the LA Times. | Read more from AOL News.
California increases water allocation after wet winter, but fish protections limit pumping
“With runoff from this year’s snow and rain boosting the levels of California’s reservoirs, state water managers on Tuesday announced plans to increase deliveries of supplies from the State Water Project to 40% of full allotments, up from 30% last month. The increased allocation, which had been widely expected, means that suppliers serving 27 million Californians, as well as some farming areas, will have substantially more water available to use and store this year. But the Department of Water Resources also said officials have had to limit pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta this year because of environmental protections for native fish. Although this year has brought average wet conditions, the agency said its ability to move water south through the system of aqueducts and reservoirs has been “impacted by the presence of threatened and endangered fish species” near the state’s pumping facilities in the south delta. … ” Read more from the LA Times. | Read via AOL News.
State Water Contractors respond to updated allocation of State Water Project supplies for 2024
Statement from Jennifer Pierre, General Manager of the State Water Contractors: ““While we are glad to see this modest allocation increase for public water agencies who rely on SWP supplies, it is still far below the amount of water we need. Water deliveries should be far higher in a good water year like we’ve had — there is a lot of water in the system, California reservoirs are full, and runoff from snowpack melt is still to come. Today’s modest allocation highlights just how difficult it is to operate within current regulatory constraints and with infrastructure in need of modernization. Even in a good water year, moving water effectively and efficiently under the current regime is difficult. … ” Continue reading this statement from the State Water Contractors.
Reclamation increases CVP allocations for South of Delta ag to 40%; Westlands and others respond
“Today, the Bureau of Reclamation announced another increase in the Central Valley Project 2024 water supply allocation for south-of-Delta contractors and those in the Friant Division. While all north-of-Delta CVP contractors are currently at 100% of their supplies, south-of-Delta agricultural contractors are today being increased from 35% to 40%. Last week, on April 18, the Friant Division Class 1 allocation was increased from 95% to 100% and the Class 2 allocation increased from 0% to 5%. … “Hydrologic conditions have improved enough that we are able to provide this gradual increase,” said California-Great Basin Regional Director Karl Stock. “We realize that our contractors were hoping to see a greater amount of water, and we understand how critical irrigation is to California agriculture and the surrounding communities. However, continued uncertainty in long-term hydrology and regulatory constraints necessitate Reclamation’s approach with available water supplies.” … ” Read this post at Maven’s Notebook, which includes reactions from Westlands Water District, the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority, and Congressman David Valadao.
Sacramento Delta stewards eye climate change protection for levees, habitats
“The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta faces significant challenges affecting the health of its waterways and ecosystem, and stewards say state agencies must accelerate efforts to prepare for the impacts of climate change and a growing urban landscape. Delta Stewardship Council staff presented the Delta Plan Five Year Review on Thursday, recommending numerous measures to preserve precious water and environmental habitats against future crises such as extreme drought, sea level rise and earthquakes. The council recommended that stewards work with state regulators to improve the delta’s ecosystems and reduce reliance on delta water, and with landowners to identify affordable uses of sinking land for sustainable farming. … ” Read more from the Courthouse News Service.
SEE ALSO: YOUR INPUT WANTED: Draft Delta Plan Five-Year Review Report
Visualizing contaminated groundwater in 3D
“A whopping 191 billion gallons of water are provided annually by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to meet the needs of Los Angeles County’s approximately 10 million residents—with more than one-third of that water coming from aquifers. The bad news for these aquifers—and in turn for county residents—is that groundwater is vulnerable to a number of contaminants that can be introduced by processes like oil production or improper disposal of industrial waste. Water can become polluted with salts, chemicals, residual hydrocarbons, and toxic solvents like Trichloroethylene (TCE), which can potentially affect soil and groundwater quality. The LADWP monitors its water supply for more than 200 different contaminants throughout the year, including industrial discharges, residential and commercial wastewater, pesticides, stormwater runoff, and vehicle emissions. The danger posed by these pollutants to the county’s water supply means that it is also monitored by organizations like the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which uses GIS technology to obtain data about well contamination in LA County. With 3D visualization, for instance, the EPA can make targeted regulatory actions based on a broad swath of data. … ” Read more from ESRI.
California announces first new state park in a decade and sets climate goals for natural lands
“California will open its first new state park in a decade this summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state officials announced Monday, as the state sets targets for cutting planet-warming emissions on natural lands. The 1,600-acre (648-hectare) Dos Rios tract in the state’s crop-rich Central Valley is set to open June 12 as California’s 281st state park. Located near the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers, it is surrounded by vast almond orchards and dairy pastures. Californians will be able to use the park for hiking and picnicking, with plans for swimming and boating access in the future. Ali Manzo, a Central Valley native and California State Parks interpreter, said the new park will help bring people together and allow them to develop a deeper respect for nature. “Dos Rios is not just a park,” Manzo said. “It’s a community treasure that offers peace, adventure and a vital connection to nature.” … ” Read more from the Associated Press.
Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs
“For decades, concerns about automobile pollution have focused on what comes out of the tailpipe. Now, researchers and regulators say, we need to pay more attention to toxic emissions from tires as vehicles roll down the road. At the top of the list of worries is a chemical called 6PPD, which is added to rubber tires to help them last longer. When tires wear on pavement, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to become a different chemical, 6PPD-q, which can be extremely toxic — so much so that it has been linked to repeated fish kills in Washington state. The trouble with tires doesn’t stop there. Tires are made primarily of natural rubber and synthetic rubber, but they contain hundreds of other ingredients, often including steel and heavy metals such as copper, lead, cadmium, and zinc. … ” Read more from California Healthline.
Reservoirs-plus-snowpack water storage in the Sierra Nevada
“Current measures of water stored in Sierra Nevada reservoirs and snowpacks are now continually updated and available from CW3E. Mountain snowpacks provide an “extra” way that water gets stored in California and across the Western US, acting as natural reservoirs that hold winter precipitation (as snow) from the cold wet season until spring and summer when the water is released as snowmelt when water demands for human and environmental uses, including irrigation, are high. Thus the combination of water stored as snow and water stored in human-built reservoirs is a useful indicator of development, persistence, and termination of droughts in many western water-supply systems. As the climate warms in coming decades, the “typical” mix of water in snowpack versus reservoir is projected to change, with far less snow holding far less water in future winters. Whether the water no long stored in snow ends up residing instead in reservoirs for more of the year in the future will depend on a variety of tradeoffs associated with winter-weather and hydrological changes, infrastructure constraints, and flood- and resource-management responses that tracking of the combined storage amounts may help to highlight. … ” Read more from the Center for Western Weather & Water Extremes.
DWR DELTA CONVEYANCE UPDATE: Schedule, Charts Permitting Pathway + Other Project Updates
“DWR has updated the permitting schedule for the next several years of the Delta Conveyance Project planning process, creating a pathway for obtaining key permits by the end of 2026. There are new informational materials about the project, including a new Myth/Fact fact sheet, a new Q&A and an updated Fast Facts. The deadline to submit protests regarding the Delta Conveyance Project change petition has been extended to May 13, 2024. .. ” Read the full update from DWR.
Millions of California trees were lost to drought. Will two wet winters help repair our forests?
“Over the past decade or so, California’s forests took a beating as more than 170 million trees died, many weakened by drought and extreme heat, and killed off by beetles and disease. Others were destroyed by fires. Now that we have two wet winters on the books, soils are saturated, the snowpack is sufficiently dense and we may start to see some decent recovery. “I expect to see a pretty dramatic decrease in fir mortality and conifer mortality overall this year due to nice precipitation years back to back,” said Jeffrey Moore, who’s been documenting California’s tree mortality from the air since 2009, as the aerial detection survey program manager for the U. S. Forest Service. He’ll begin performing the 2024 survey in July. … ” Read more from the LAist.
DR. MICHAEL ANDERSON: Climate change and California’s water resources
“California’s climate is changing, with atmospheric rivers and extreme events occurring more frequently. This is not the new normal; we’re just getting started, says state climatologist Dr. Michael Anderson in this presentation at the California Irrigation Institute’s 2024 annual meeting. In this presentation, Dr. Anderson talked about how climate change is altering water availability, the rise in extreme events, the increasing variability of the climate, and the importance of flexible water management strategies. … ” Continue reading at Maven’s Notebook.
In commentary this week …
Article misses the mark in describing impacts of operations of California water projects on protected salmon and steelhead
Paul S. Weiland writes, “The Sacramento Bee offers its readers a series of articles presented under the moniker “Reality Check,” which the editors describe as “holding officials and organizations accountable and shining a light on their decisions.” That certainly is a laudable and much needed endeavor in this era when partisanship has infected a number of the major outlets that Americans turn to for news and where citizen journalists produce content absent editorial oversight. Unfortunately, the Bee’s reality check article “California water agencies broke own rules, possibly killing thousands of endangered fish” damages the paper’s credibility by misstating and distorting the facts of the matter. The article is rife with misstatements and mischaracterizations; a few of the more egregious examples of the article’s false and misleading content need to be called out. … ” Read more from the California Water Policy Center.
Newsom’s 2023 California Water Plan: Supplying imaginary water to meet an insatiable demand
Sarah Vardaro writes, “On April 2, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the release of the 2023 update of the California Water Plan (Water Plan). Governor Newsom announced the Water Plan at a press conference held at Phillips Station in the high Sierra, just after this year’s snowpack was measured there at 113 percent of average. At the press conference, Governor Newsom stated that the Water Plan contains a new strategy to help California adapt to future cycles of extreme drought and extreme precipitation. At the core of this strategy is the plan to build Sites Reservoir for more storage and the Delta tunnel for more conveyance. The Water Plan also supports the weakening of regulations that could be used to keep more water in rivers to protect public trust resources. The update of the Water Plan offers no reckoning with the fact that the state constantly promises and delivers more water than falls from the sky or is left in the ground. Rather, the Water Plan outlines a strategy that will continue the same overallocation of the state’s water resources that has led to the near collapse of ecosystems in the Bay-Delta, its tributaries, and beyond. … ” Read more from the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
California desperately needs water reform. San Francisco is standing in the way.
Peter Drekmeier, Policy Director for the Tuolumne River Trust, and Scott Artis, the Executive Director of the Golden State Salmon Association, write, “The recently announced closure of the salmon fishing season delivered yet another devastating blow to the thousands of families that depend on commercial and recreational fishing for their livelihoods. For the second year in a row, fishing boats at Fisherman’s Wharf will remain mothballed. The recent drought contributed to the salmon decline, but the larger problem is archaic water policies that allow too much water to be diverted from our rivers and the Delta. As a result, salmon experience manmade droughts almost every year, and the droughts we notice become mega-droughts for fish. Frontline communities in the Delta also suffer from inadequate freshwater inflow. Warm, nutrient-rich water fuels toxic algae blooms that can kill pets and wildlife and make people sick. So much for taking a plunge on a hot summer day. … ” Read more from the San Francisco Examiner.
Sites Reservoir project is a huge boondoggle with harmful effects
Max Gomberg, senior policy consultant and board member of the California Water Impact Network, writes, “When Californians voted for Proposition 1 in 2014, they had every reason to expect sound investments in climate-resilient water projects. And all but one of the projects selected to receive the proposition’s $2.7 billion in water supply funding fulfill those criteria. They replenish groundwater basins and enhance the storage capacity of existing reservoirs to better withstand droughts — benefits that are realized by all people across the state. Unfortunately, the one project that does not measure up — the Sites Reservoir Project — would be publicly funded to the tune of nearly $900 million. That’s fully a third of the entire water storage budget. The federal government has also pitched in another $200 million in taxpayer funds, bringing the total to over $1 billion in subsidies. With that degree of public funding, one would expect a level of benefits equivalent to a national park. … ” Read more from the San Jose Mercury News (gift article).
Using bad math, water utilities fight to delay progress in tackling ‘forever chemicals’
“Many of the nation’s water utilities have been trying to weaken or delay Environmental Protection Agency final rules addressing the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. In recent weeks, the EPA finalized rules placing limits on the amount of six PFAS in drinking water and designating PFOA and PFOS – two of the most notorious PFAS – as hazardous substances, promises made by President Joe Biden during his election campaign. For the drinking water rule, the EPA’s economic analysis calculates that the benefits of the rule – including fewer deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease – exceed the costs. The EPA also anticipates significant benefits from “avoided negative developmental, cardiovascular, liver, immune, endocrine, metabolic, reproductive, musculoskeletal, and carcinogenic effects as a result of reductions in the levels of the regulated PFAS and other co-removed contaminants.” … ” Read more from the Environmental Working Group.
In eco-minded California, there’s still no constitutional right to clean air and water
The LA Times editorial board writes, “California may be a leader in the fight against climate change, but the state is years, even decades, behind other states when it comes to granting environmental rights to its citizens. While a handful of other state constitutions, including those of New York and Pennsylvania, declare the people’s rights to clean air, water and a healthy environment, California’s does not. That could change as soon as November. Under a proposal moving through the Legislature, voters would decide whether to add one sentence to the state constitution’s Declaration of Rights: “The people shall have a right to clean air and water and a healthy environment.” … ” Read more from the LA Times.
SEE ALSO: Do Californians have the right to a clean environment?, podcast from KCRW
In regional water news this week …
Mt. Shasta’s shrinking glaciers face an uncertain future as climate change intensifies
“For the past two years, Mt. Shasta has emerged from winter covered in thick blankets of white snow that conceal what decades of drought have done to the Northern California mountain’s ancient glaciers. The seasonal snows come and go on the 14,179-foot peak. For hundreds of years, the glaciers have clung to the mountain’s steep slopes, slowly changing and moving over time. But for the past few decades, droughts and periods of abnormally warm weather have caused the glaciers to shrink. Scientists have studied the glaciers and documented their demise as climate change — with its warmer temperatures and dearth of snow — has slowly caused Mt. Shasta’s glacial masses to dwindle, especially during the 2020-22 drought. … ” Read more from the Redding Record-Searchlight.
Removing lead cables from Lake Tahoe: it’s the mission of grassroots organizers
“Emerald Bay is known for its beauty, with an island castle at its center, and an underwater state park full of sunken boats. But that’s not all that lies beneath the water’s surface. Two defunct, lead-clad telecommunications cables run across the mouth of the bay and along Tahoe’s southwestern shores. An ongoing court battle and investigation by the Wall Street Journal have brought the cables into the public eye. The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance has sued AT&T to have the cables removed, while competing studies by AT&T and WSJ resulted in drastically different findings on whether the lines pose any risk to the lake and its visitors. … ” Read more from KTVN.
Valley Water working to reduce methylmercury (toxins) in local waterways
“For more than 15 years, Valley Water has measured mercury levels in reservoirs and creeks in the Guadalupe River Watershed and studied ways to reduce the metal’s harmful impacts. Parts of the Guadalupe River watershed, which covers about 171 square miles, are contaminated with mercury from the former New Almaden Mining District. The mining and processing of mercury occurred in the area from 1845 through 1971. These operations released large amounts of mercury into parts of the Guadalupe River watershed, which flows into South San Francisco Bay. Mercury-enriched sediment from mining waste made its way into creeks and reservoirs within the watershed. Creeks flowing in the watershed carry that sediment down the Guadalupe River to San Francisco Bay, especially during wet years. … ” Read more from Valley Water News.
Probation under SGMA will cost the region, farmers say
“Farmers in the critically overdrafted Tulare Lake Subbasin in the San Joaquin Valley are bracing for escalating costs as state and local agencies assess fees on wells and groundwater pumped. For the first time, the California State Water Resources Control Board last week placed the subbasin on probationary status as part of regulations under the state’s landmark 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA. The decision was based on a report from water board staff that concluded the joint plan submitted by the five local agencies failed to show how actions would address critical overdraft by limiting groundwater pumping, land subsidence and impacts to drinking water. … ” Read more from Ag Alert.
