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In California water news today …
Storm stunner: Tahoe’s snowiest day of season, S.F.’s rainiest May day in decades
“An anticipated late-season storm delivered in a big way Saturday, dropping 2 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada and up to 2 inches of rain in the Bay Area. San Francisco picked up 0.94 inches of rain, exceeding the rainfall average for the entire month (0.7 inches). It was also the wettest May day in the city since May 12, 1998, when 1.14 inches fell. … The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, located at Donner Pass at an elevation of 6,894 feet, picked up 26.4 inches of snow between 8 a.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. Sunday, the largest one-day total of the snowfall season, which began in October. The previous daily record from the snowfall season was 23.8 inches set during the multiday blizzard in early March. … ” Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle. | Read via MSN News.
SEE ALSO: NWS releases snowfall and rainfall totals from recent Northern California storm, from Fox 40
How to incentivize better groundwater use
“For more than a century, parts of California have been using groundwater faster than the resource can be replenished. As a result, aquifers are dwindling—a mounting challenge for irrigators, communities, and ecosystems. The negative impacts of over-extraction include subsidence, shallower wells running dry, and water-quality deterioration. If overextraction remains unaddressed, groundwater will become more expensive and less reliable. This could have rippling economic and social consequences. California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014 (ten years ago), a law that aims to protect and restore our aquifers. Going forward, traditional management tools may not be sufficient. To comply with SGMA’s mandates, new and creative management strategies are needed. … ” Read more from the California Water Blog.
In commentary today …
Water bond would benefit farmers and rare San Joaquin Valley grasslands area
State Sen. Anna M. Caballero and Ric Ortega, is the general manager and director of governmental and legislative affairs for the Grasslands Water and Resource Conservation District, write, “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. … ” Read more from the Fresno Bee. | Read via Yahoo News.
In regional water news and commentary today …
MOUNTAIN COUNTIES
Nevada Irrigation District: When the water can’t flow: conservation is necessary
“Making water conservation a lifestyle has become a mantra given increasing drought conditions and shortage of available water. Yet, right now, we in the Sierra foothills are in a unique, dire situation. Becoming more water efficient is more important than ever. This water year has been “normal,” yet the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) is facing an unprecedented situation where rockslide damage to and failure of infrastructure at Lake Spaulding has effectively cut off water supplies to the district. So, even though adequate snow has fallen in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada, the resulting snowmelt that is our primary water source cannot be transported to NID reservoirs in the foothills. … ” Continue reading at YubaNet.
SACRAMENTO VALLEY
Lake Oroville nears full capacity, CA DWR warns of potential overflow
“Lake Oroville is currently sitting at 99% of total capacity—127% of the historical average for this time of year, according to the California Department of Water Resources (CA DWR). As the lake approaches full capacity, the CA DWR is alerting the public of the potential for waves to splash over the crest of the emergency spillway during windy days. They also say Oroville Dam visitors may notice small amounts of water flowing from drains built into the emergency spillway. They assure that the dam and emergency spillway continue to operate as intended. … ” Read more from KRCR.
California mobile home park residents face persistent PFAS water contamination
“Kimberlee has lived at the Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park in Red Bluff, California for over 30 years. She has plenty of fond memories of this place, near a bend in the Sacramento River and surrounded by walnut and olive tree fields in Tehama County. Just behind the property is a ranch that’s home to the famous bucking bull Red Rock, who she remembers as a calf, depicted in the rodeo movie “8 Seconds.” For decades she drank water from her tap without thinking twice. “Our water here tastes wonderful. I mean, it’s well water. It’s cold. It’s good water. Other than finding out this,” says Kimberlee, who wants to use only her first name because she fears retaliation from the owners of the park. … ” Continue reading from Jefferson Public Radio.
BAY AREA
From tunnel muck to tidal marsh, BART extension could benefit the bay
“The massive infrastructure project to extend BART through Downtown San José and into Santa Clara is inching closer to getting underway. Valley Transportation Authority officials expect the $76 million tunnel boring machine ordered from Germany to be ready to start digging around 2026, making way for two side-by-side tracks along with three underground stations in San José’s Little Portugal neighborhood, Downtown and at Diridon Station. Between the tunneling of nearly 5 miles and other excavation work, officials said the project overall will remove roughly 3.5 million cubic feet of dirt from the ground. But it’s not just potential riders, politicians and transit advocates who are anxiously waiting for the major work to begin; environmentalists working for years to restore historic marshlands in the San Francisco Bay are set to receive a major portion of that dug up earth to support their efforts. … ” Read more from KQED.
A unique Bay Area wildlife refuge is beginning to thrive again — but its most fascinating endangered species is still in peril
“Looking out at the wildflower-laden landscape of the national wildlife refuge along Antioch’s waterfront, it’s hard to imagine it was once part of a massive sand dune system that stretched more than two miles along the San Joaquin River’s southern banks. Ancient deposits of glacial sands carried downstream from the Sierra Nevada formed the dunes, shaped by the winds and tides, once reaching almost 120 feet tall and stretching some 800 feet inland. Up until the early-to-mid-1900s, the 400-acre site was Antioch’s sandy gateway to the river — a place to picnic, play and bask in the sun. But over many years, natural processes and human intervention — starting from the late 1800s with large-scale sand mining — isolated the Antioch Dunes into a much smaller footprint: 55 acres, plus another 12 with the recent addition of nearby unused PG&E land. Sandwiched between a gypsum processing plant and the former Fulton Shipyard where WWII vessels were once built, the now-isolated landscape contains certain plants and a butterfly species that are entirely unique to the dunes. … ” Read more from the San Jose Mercury News (gift article).
CENTRAL COAST
Judge in major water lawsuit delays ‘pulling the ripcord’
“The judge in the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper case has ordered a further six-month stay in the litigation so that structured mediation can continue. In Los Angeles County Superior Court, Judge William F. Highberger on May 3 extended the stay, the sixth so far in the case, to Nov. 27. He granted the original six-month stay on March 29, 2022. Judge Highberger also set a hearing on an order to show cause why the stay should not be extended further to Nov. 13. 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.” However, in a tentative ruling he issued this week, Highberger proposed only extending the stay to Sept. 3. He stated that the court was “inclined to ‘pull the ripcord’ and get this case set for trial by January 2025.” … ” Read more from the Ojai Valley News.
Carpinteria’s living shoreline project gets $1.62 million to protect coast from climate change
“To protect its vulnerable coastline, the City of Carpinteria recently secured a $1.62 million grant from the California State Coastal Conservancy to fund the “Carpinteria Living Shoreline Project,” which aims to add needed defenses to the low-lying Carpinteria City Beach, surrounding neighborhoods, and downtown areas that lack any “hardened coastal armoring” against climate change impacts. Sea level rise, flooding, and erosion are growing threats facing Carpinteria’s coast, as detailed in the city’s 2019 Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan, which was made to inform community discussions and guide efforts around enhanced coastal resiliency. According to the plan, Carpinteria could see sea levels rise 2–10 feet by 2100 (10 feet being the extreme worst-case scenario). … ” Read more from the Santa Barbara Independent.
SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY
City of Tehachapi files another lawsuit against water district
“With two other legal disputes between the two public agencies still pending, the city of Tehachapi on May 1 filed suit against Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District. The civil case, a complaint for declaratory relief, was filed in Kern County Superior Court and is related to a dispute over an agreement the parties made in 2020. According to the city’s filing, the object of the agreement “was to enhance the quantity and quality of the water supply of the Tehachapi Basin through upgrading the city’s wastewater treatment plant and more efficient handling and storage of treated wastewater.” … ” Read more from the Tehachapi News.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Metropolitan Chair Adan Ortega: Ensuring 19 million people have clean water
“In Episode 21, Curt Pringle sits down with Adan Ortega, Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Hear about his role on the Board, where Southern California gets its eater, how water usage has become more efficient over the last 30 years, and what future alternatives are available as current water sources become less reliable.”
Policymakers, experts, others tackle issues at North Santa Monica Bay State of the Watershed discussion
“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. … ” Read more from the Malibu Times.
Red tides off Southern California coast are getting worse, new Scripps study finds
“The spring of 2020 saw one of Southern California’s most prolific red tides on record, and while the bioluminescence left beaches from Santa Barbara down through Baja California with ravishing visual displays at night, the algal inundation – more of a chocolate-brown than a crimson-red– resulted in graver consequences for many creatures within it. Red tides are notorious for causing grandiose algal blooms (in this case, of the dinoflagellate Lingulodinium polyedra), then sucking up all of the oxygen in the water and leaving for dead everything from small invertebrates to any fish unfortunate enough to be in the area at the time. Last week week, a multi-institutional team of researchers led by UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a report on a several-years-long study in the academic journal Elementa, identifying deteriorating water quality. … ” Read more from Surfer.
New study details downside of bioluminescence along SoCal coast
“Southern California’s bioluminescence events are sights many nighttime beachgoers have on their bucket list. The dazzling, iridescent spectacle is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for those who are able to spot it. However, a new study from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains that this display can come at a cost: mass mortality among fish and other marine organisms. The study specifically focused on the ecological impact of a particularly incredible bioluminescence event caused by a historic “red tide” event that occurred in the spring of 2020. Red tides describe a bloom of microscopic organisms, like algae or plankton, in the water. … ” Read more from Fox 5.
IMPERIAL/COACHELLA VALLEYS
Companies partner in geothermal desalination project
“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. … ” Read more from the Imperial Valley Press.
SAN DIEGO
$1M+ allocated to tackle invasive seaweed species in Coronado Cays
“There’s seaweed like eel grass that an ecosystem depends on, then there are other species that aren’t so welcome in San Diego Bay. If you have your own saltwater aquarium at home, then you might be familiar with a seaweed that has made its way into San Diego Bay, despite it being illegal in California, according to the Port of San Diego. Not only is the seaweed invasive, but it’s costing local agencies thousands of dollars to remove. “It’s a very bright fluorescent green algae. It looks very different from the drab olive green eel grass that you see in the bay naturally,” Dave Gibson, the executive officer with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, said. It’s called Caulerpa prolifera. Despite its catchy green hues, Gibson says it’s invasive and a threat to the ecosystem. … ” Read more from Channel 7.
Commissioner Giner’s mission: remove the obstacles keeping San Diego from resolving the border sewage crisis
“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. … ” Read more from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Along the Colorado River …
Why Colorado River basin states are split on long-term plan to manage its water
“Utah and the six other Colorado River basin states met virtually toward the end of April to address their differing opinions on how Lake Powell and Lake Mead should be managed in the long term and those discussions are expected to pick up steam this month. The states are dealing with the Colorado River Post 2026 Operations Plan, which is mostly an update to an agreement the Colorado River basin states approved in 2007 to manage Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the nation’s two largest reservoirs — as a part of the distribution of the river’s water. It will be the latest agreement since the original distribution plan was settled in 1922. Additional in-person meetings are scheduled for this month, according to Gene Shawcroft, chairman of the Colorado River Authority of Utah. … ” Read more from KSL.
A rare dose of hope for the Colorado River as new study says future may be wetter
“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. … ” Read more from KUNC.
Arizona’s groundwater regulation weaknesses exploited by industrial-scale agriculture
“Elaine Bailey stood at the microphone at the Sunsites Community Center in Southeastern Arizona, voice shaking as she described the massive scale of new agricultural development next to her property. The nearby fields have drawn so much water from the surrounding area, she said, that her well has gone dry. “Here we are, all these good people fighting for our lives, our homes, our everything,” Bailey said. “Because if the water goes, our homes aren’t worth anything. That’s the reality. And I just don’t understand how the state can even allow it.” “I don’t, either,” replied Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who visited the small community in February to hear residents’ concerns about the groundwater in Sulphur Springs Valley — home to the Willcox and Douglas groundwater basins. … ” Read more from the Arizona Daily Star.
In “Western Water A to Z” the Dolores River shows region’s water issues in microcosm
“Years ago while I was in graduate school, I had the opportunity to join the University of Colorado Adventure Program for a raft trip down the Dolores River in southwest Colorado. I was in a paddle raft, and we were fast approaching Snaggletooth, one of the more (in)famous rapids in the West. Ahead of us, the gear boat made it through the chute at the start of the rapid, but then momentarily lodged on the Snaggletooth, a gnarly pointed dagger of a rock located in the dead middle of the river. At the time, Snaggletooth, a Class IV rapid named after its namesake rock, was known for tearing holes in the rafts of even the most experienced oarsmen and women. We were next, and as we plunged into the chute, someone with a flailing paddle hit me in the forehead as I lurched forward in the raft. Bloodied but exhilarated, I saw Snaggletooth flash by us to our left. At the time, I was only vaguely aware that I was floating on a doomed river. … ” Continue reading at the Colorado Sun.
Perspective: Minding Colorado’s water
Jennifer Gimbel, senior water policy scholar at the Colorado Water Center, and Eric Kuhn, retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, write, “About 18 months ago as Terry J. Stevinson Fellows for the Common Sense Institute, we released a report on Colorado’s water management future titled “Adapting Colorado’s Water Management Systems for a 21st Century Economy and Water Supply.” In this report we made a statewide call for a list of collaborative and agency actions that we believe will help meet the future water needs of Colorado’s growing population and its critical agricultural and environmental/recreational-based economy. Although 18 months is a short time in the water world, it’s still timely to make a report on the progress we’ve made. There is some good news. With broad support from the water community, Colorado has enacted important turf management legislation and construction is proceeding on important water supply projects. Recently, Mother Nature has been kind to us, giving us two decent winters. But many challenges remain, there is interest in cooperative regional supply projects, but progress is painfully slow, and compliance with our interstate water compacts is as perilous as ever. … ” Read the full commentary at the Gazette.
More news and commentary in the weekend edition …
In California water news this weekend …
Groundwater levels got a huge bump from 2023’s historically wet weather- Jennifer Pierre wants more water
- The State Water Project, Restore the Delta and the Delta Tunnel in the age of climate change
- ‘Milestone among milestones’: Klamath River dams removal gets the green light for majority of remaining work
- From rail to trail: California plans for Great Redwood Trail along defunct railroad route
- Opposing views of Monterey Peninsula water supply filed with regulator
- Appellate court stymies mandated fish flows in Kern River. But it won’t go dry – yet
- Seismic waves used to track LA’s groundwater recharge after record wet winter
- Cracked safes, used condoms: Cleaning California’s dirtiest forest isn’t easy
- Tunnels may be drilled through Glen Canyon Dam to avert potential water crisis
- And more …
Click here for the weekend digest.
Also on Maven’s Notebook today …
Announcements, etc.
