A wrap-up of posts published on Maven’s Notebook this week …
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In California water news this week …
In an era of dam removal, California is building more
“When the largest dam removal in U.S. history began on the Klamath River this year, it seemed as if the era of dam building was over in the West. Just a month later, however, the federal government finalized $216 million dollars in funding for a controversial dam project south of the Klamath, adding to the $1 billion in direct grants already pledged to the project known as Sites Reservoir. Rights for the water are being distributed this summer. This would be California’s first major new reservoir in half a century. The project will require building two main dams on a pair of streams that typically only run during big winter rains. Most of the water would come from much farther away, however: Filling the reservoir means piping water from the Sacramento River uphill, away from the Central Valley. If it’s built, the reservoir will inundate Antelope Valley, 14,000 acres of hilly grassland in the California Coast Range, northwest of Sacramento. … ” Read more from High Country News.
Billions of gallons of water from Lake Shasta disappearing into thin air
“Hundreds of millions of gallons of water in Lake Shasta and other major reservoirs in the North State have been disappearing into thin air. Considering the region has suffered recently through some of the most extreme heat ever recorded, water evaporating off the lakes in vast quantities hasn’t surprised water managers. On July 3, 288.8 million gallons of water evaporated off Lake Shasta. And during the first nine days of July, 3,392 cubic-feet per second of water — or about 2.2 billion gallons — turned into vapor and floated away into the atmosphere. That is a substantial amount of water, said Don Bader, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Shasta Dam. For comparison, he said that is more than the amount of water flowing down Clear Creek south of Redding. … ” Read more from the Redding Record-Searchlight.
C-WIN PRESS RELEASE: While fish go extinct, DWR claims no environmental impact from SWP operations
“A recently released draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) purports to analyze the long-term operations of the State Water Project, which diverts massive quantities of water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta to San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California cities. The DEIR comes about nine months after the State Water Resources Control Board issued a comprehensive environmental review that found conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed are dire and that significantly higher river flows are needed to restore and maintain ecosystem health. However, DWR’s DEIR ignores the Water Board’s assessment and instead concludes that its operations plan – which is driving native aquatic species toward extinction – will not cause additional environmental damage. … ” Read more from the California Water Impact Network.
A bigger, older fish gasping for more water: White sturgeon slipping away
“Another fish native to the San Francisco Bay estuary may be joining the queue filing toward extinction. That’s the fear of a coalition of environmental groups that have petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission to list the white sturgeon, one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world, as a threatened species under California’s Endangered Species Act. At its June 19th meeting in Mammoth Lakes, the commission responded to the petition by calling for a full status review of the species, which could lead to a formal listing. The decision gives the white sturgeon full protected status while the review is underway. This will mean a pause on recreational sturgeon fishing—popular in the Bay and Delta—and more careful operation of water pumping stations in the south Delta. … ” Read more from Maven’s Notebook.
Restoration of Tidal wetlands of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – Where are we at?
“Tidal wetlands in the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta used to be vast. You may have seen artistic renditions of how the landscape may have looked with meandering channels weaving through a mosaic of land and water and with teaming wildlife. In fact, prior to European colonization, the the Delta used to be a whole 95% tidal freshwater wetlands covered in tule and cattail vegetation, stewarded by a number of Indigenous Tribes. We know this historical landscape was forever changed when settlers forcibly removed Indigenous people and their stewardship practices from the landscape, and spent the subsequent hundred and fifty years diking and draining the wetlands to create farmland. … ” Read more from the California Water Blog.
The challenges of implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act ten years in
A decade after the introduction of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), significant strides have been made in managing California’s groundwater resources. However, the path to effective implementation has been fraught with challenges. At ACWA’s 2024 Spring Conference, a panel discussed some of those challenges, such as State Water Board intervention, lawsuits affecting SGMA implementation, domestic well mitigation plans, and groundwater allocations. … “We have everything in this state,” said attorney Jeanne Zolezzi. “We have basins that are being put in probationary hearings, we have those that have been approved, we have those whose plans are being sued, and we have those that are trying to fund their projects and management actions and being sued on those funding attempts. So I will turn it over to the panel now so they can start with all these issues we’re facing.” … ” Read the full panel summary from Maven’s Notebook.
California’s new permanent water restriction will hit these 3 areas hardest
“A new regulation approved by California’s State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) last week is going to hit some cities a lot harder than others, with water suppliers in the Golden State’s Central Valley facing the biggest cuts. The policy, called Making Conservation a California Way of Life, will require the state’s largest water utilities to reduce the amount of water they provide to customers over the next 15 years by close to 40 percent. If they don’t, they could be fined as much as $10,000 a day. The board’s goal is to make California more water-resilient and efficient, as well as avoiding the government having to introduce emergency measures during periods of drought. … According to the board’s estimates, cuts greater than 30 percent will only affect six suppliers (two percent of all suppliers in the state affected by the regulation) by 2025 and 46 (12 percent) by 2040; this means that 118,370 people will be affected by the largest cuts by next year, and 1,733,569 in 15 years. … ” Read the full article at Newsweek.
California Supreme Court reverses Public Utilities Commission on water surcharges
“The California Supreme Court on Monday reversed the state’s Public Utilities Commission’s 2020 order that stopped water companies from using certain surcharges when their revenue falls short because of conservation efforts. The court agreed with a group of water companies that the commission hadn’t clearly informed them that it would consider eliminating the so-called decoupling mechanisms — initially prompted by years of drought and the need to conserve water — in the scoping memos for the yearslong rulemaking proceedings that culminated in the 2020 order. The scoping memos identify what possible rule changes the commission will be considering, and they give the utilities an opportunity to prepare their arguments and evidence to address them. In this case, the court said, the memos only referred to how to improve water sales forecasting, not to eliminating the decoupling mechanisms. … ” Read more from the Courthouse News Service.
Your guide to Proposition 4: California Climate bond
“The Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024 would have the state borrow $10 billion to pay for climate and environmental projects — including some that were axed from the budget because of an unprecedented deficit. California taxpayers would pay the bond back with interest. A legislative analyst estimated it would cost the state $650 million a year for the next 30 years or more than $19 billion. According to the 49-page proposal, $3.8 billion would be allocated to water projects, including those that provide for safe drinking water, recycle wastewater, store groundwater and control flooding. An additional $1.5 billion would be spent on wildfire protection, while $1.2 billion would go toward protecting the coast from sea level rise. … ” Read more from the LA Times.
The Supreme Court took powers away from federal regulators. Do California rules offer a backstop?
“Tucked between headline-grabbing opinions on presidential immunity, Jan. 6 rioters and homeless encampments, the U.S. Supreme Court closed out a momentous session late last month with a series of body blows to the federal bureaucracy. Under three back-to-back rulings, regulations that touch nearly every aspect of the American economy and American life (see: rules on food safety, water quality, overtime pay, medical billing, carbon emissions, fisheries monitoring and housing discrimination, to name a few) may soon be harder to enforce, more convenient to challenge in court and easier to strike down once challenged. For the conservative legal movement and for major business interests who bristle under what they see as an overreaching federal regulatory apparatus, the rulings mark a once-in-a-generation victory against the “administrative state.” But in California, the effects of those rulings may be a bit more muted, legal experts say. California has an administrative state of its own. … ” Read more from Cal Matters.
How bad is warming? La Niña may reveal
“The Pacific is set to shift from its warmer El Niño phase to its cooler La Niña phase in late summer or early fall, U.S. officials say, likely bringing an end to a long stretch of unprecedented warmth. The world has seen 13 consecutive months of record-breaking heat, according to the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service. The last 12 of those months have measured 1.5 degrees C warmer than the preindustrial era, meaning the world has at least temporarily surpassed the temperature target set forth in the Paris Agreement. “This is more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a large and continuing shift in our climate,” said Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo. How much of a shift is not entirely certain, however, as the record heat is being driven both by warming and by El Niño. Scientists say the end of El Niño, which was pronounced over in June, will help clarify the role of climate change. … ” Read more from Yale e360.
Hot nights fuel wildfires in California, complicating containment
“Over the July 4 weekend, hundreds of fires sparked across California, feeding on the hot, dry conditions of an ongoing heat wave. But some of these fires were strange. They grew rapidly and expanded their territory at a time when fires, like people, traditionally rest: at night. Overnight hours, when temperatures tend to go down and relative humidity, or the amount of water vapor in the air, goes up, can act as a barrier to fire. Overnight, fires tend to creep along, giving firefighters a chance to sleep or manage smaller flames. But human-caused climate change has accelerated nighttime warming more quickly than daytime warming, dismantling this natural shield. “Night won’t save us,” said Kaiwei Luo, a doctoral student in environmental sciences at the University of Alberta and the lead author of a recent study in the journal Nature that found overnight burning can cause fires to burn larger and longer. “With climate change, we will see more and more overnight burning,” he said. … ” Read more from the New York Times (gift article).
How bad are wildfires going to be in California this summer?
“After brutal wildfire seasons in 2020 and 2021, California has enjoyed two mild years in a row. The good fortune was driven largely by rain and snow that ended three years of drought. What’s on tap for this summer and fall? Nobody knows for sure. But three points are key, experts say. First, California had a wet winter this year, with rainfall since Oct. 1 in San Francisco at 113% of normal, 157% in Los Angeles, and 92% in Fresno. The Sierra Nevada snowpack was 111% of normal on April 1. Second, California has a Mediterranean climate, and wildfires are part of the state’s natural landscape. Third, wildfires have generally been getting worse across the West in recent decades. Climate change is raising temperatures and drying out vegetation more than in the past. Forests in many areas are unnaturally dense after generations of fire suppression by state and federal agencies. And more people are moving to fire-prone areas, increasing fire risk from power lines, vehicles and other human causes. … ” Read more from the Mercury News (gift article).
Welcome to the Age of Fire: California wildfires explained
“After two mild wildfire seasons, California is bracing for whatever 2024 brings. Favorable weather marked 2023 and 2022, when the total acreage burned — less than 400,000 acres each year — was considerably lower than the state’s 5-year average of more than 2.3 million acres. But 2024 has already started in a worrisome way, particularly in areas where two heavy rainy seasons fueled thick grasses and brush. The Post Fire in the Gorman area of Los Angeles County burned almost 16,000 acres in its first three days and remained active for 11 days in June. The fire raged in steep, hard-to-reach areas, and Cal Fire noted that “fire weather conditions” — gusty winds and warm temperatures — were making it even more difficult to control. As climate change warms the planet, the state’s wildfires have become so unpredictable and extreme that new words were invented: firenado, gigafire, fire siege — even fire pandemic. California now has 78 more annual “fire days” — when conditions are ripe for fires to spark — than 50 years ago. When is California’s wildfire season? It is now almost year-round. … ” Read more from Cal Matters.
In commentary this week …
Editorial: Full reservoirs, but California sticks with water rationing
The Southern California News Group editorial board writes, “California’s regulatory policy often is at odds with reality, but the latest water-conservation rules seem extreme even within that context. The State Water Resources Control Board has approved new mandatory conservation standards that comply with a package of state laws passed by the Legislature in recent years. They will force us to use less water by imposing targets on suppliers. This isn’t rationing for individual households, but the net result might be the same as water agencies are forced to meet the targets or face fines. The water agencies will then impose restrictions and raise prices. Conservation is an important part of any water strategy, but as usual the state prefers the stick to the carrot. … ” Read more from the OC Register.
$5 bass bounty could help threatened salmon & reduce need for $20B tunnel
Dennis Wyatt, editor of the Manteca Bulletin, writes, “The Bureau of Reclamation has made a strong case to declare the non-native bass Public Enemy No. 1 in California’s perennial water wars. And the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has indirectly agreed. Decisions by the federal agencies this past week could end up having major ramifications on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s future, blow a big hole in a major argument for the Delta tunnel, and reset how water much water even in drought years is sent into the San Francisco Bay. … Each vetted plan reached the same decision: It is environmentally sound and effective to reduce the numbers of non-native species to strengthen the number of threatened native species. … ” Read more from the Manteca Bulletin.
Salmon need passage of Assembly bill
Frankie Joe Myers, the vice chair of the Yurok Tribe and a resident of Weitchpec, writes, “Salmon are a cornerstone of our culture and the importance of salmon to our people cannot be overstated. Salmon are intertwined with our cultural identity and religion — what it means to be Yurok. Our ceremonies celebrate the annual migrations of salmon, and the harvest and preservation of salmon is central to community activities that have persisted for generations. In late January, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a strategic plan aimed at helping restore California’s dwindling salmon population. The Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Dryer Future, lays out a plan for ensuring that California salmon and the communities who rely on them have a future in our changed climate. The Yurok Tribe applauded the Newsom administration and stood with the governor when this plan was released, and we now urge Governor Newsom to set in motion his plan by signing AB1272. … ” Read more from the Eureka Times-Standard.
Exports and Bay Delta habitat – early July 2024
Tom Cannon writes, “This is an update on my last several posts on spring habitat conditions in the Bay-Delta in this Above Normal water year. After a wet winter-spring with good Delta and Bay conditions in Above Normal water year 2024, June 2024 water project operations returned the river, Delta, and Bay to drought-year conditions. I warned in late June that habitat conditions (flows and water temperatures) were getting bad and that a forecasted heat wave could make conditions even worse. It’s happened. The State Water Project (SWP) and the Central Valley Project (CVP) started moving water south in earnest at the beginning of July. Shasta, Oroville, and Folsom reservoir releases increased, raising Delta inflow at Freeport to 20,000 cfs … ” Read more from the California Fisheries Blog.
Prisoner’s dilemma of groundwater
Michael Craviotto of Moorpark writes, “The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is a landmark legislation in California, enacted in 2014 to ensure the sustainable management of groundwater resources. The primary goals of SGMA are to prevent overdraft, bring groundwater basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge, and provide a framework for local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) to develop and implement Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs). … Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting.” When these local agencies develop GSPs, they are almost destined to be litigated which results in a Prisoner’s Dilemma for all parties involved. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game theory scenario featuring two rational individuals who face a choice: either collaborate for shared benefit or betray one another to achieve personal advantage. The dilemma highlights that although mutual cooperation leads to the best collective outcome, each prisoner has a strong incentive to defect. As a result, both prisoners often end up defecting, leading to a worse outcome for both than if they had cooperated. … ” Continue reading at the Santa Barbara Independent.
Logging can protect forests, increase water supplies
Edward Ring, Director, Water and Energy Policy at the California Policy Center, writes, “Practical solutions to California’s energy and water shortages will always have a better chance of being implemented if they adhere to the limitations placed upon them by those concerned about climate change. A solution that should work for everyone is forest thinning. It will save our forests, with the added benefit of increasing our water supply. Wildfires have become catastrophic because the California Legislature funds fire suppression at the same time as it has regulated timber harvesting nearly out of existence. We are very good at squelching wildfires before they get started. But if ignited, our overgrown forests can now fuel infernos that were once unfathomable. California’s forests today have tree densities that are many times what is historically normal, and conditions are more dangerous because we’ve reduced our annual timber harvest from 6 billion board feet per year in the 1990s to around 1.5 billion board feet today. … ” Continue reading from Ag Alert.
California’s water economy: Challenges and opportunities
Edward Ring, Director, Water and Energy Policy at the California Policy Center, writes, “If energy powers civilization, water gives it life. One of the biggest challenges of our time is to develop the means to deliver both of these essentials in abundance, while also keeping them affordable and ecologically sustainable. … According to data compiled by the California Department of Water Resources, over the 10-year period from 2011 through 2020, on average California receives about 200 million acre-feet (MAF) of rain each year. The potential for multi-year droughts along with occasional very wet years necessitates a robust system of water storage and distribution. Before discussing what we should add to this system, and how to prioritize the maintenance and upgrades of what we’ve already got, it’s necessary to know how we currently use water in the state. … ” Read more the California Policy Center.
California’s almond industry gets a bad rap. This organization aims to fix that
Lauren Tucker, project coordinator for The Almond Project and the nonprofit convener White Buffalo Land Trust, writes, “California’s $11 billion-dollar almond industry is always under the spotlight. You might have heard about the sector’s water consumption or the trucking of bees to pollinate the state’s 1.3 million acres of crops. Other headlines have contemplated what fluctuating prices and leveling demand might mean for the industry’s future. Even Gov. Gavin Newsom poked fun at taking on “Big Almond” on comedian Bill Maher’s HBO show earlier this year. But it’s important to see the forest for the trees — or, in this case, the aromatic orchards that bloom in the spring and almond kernels that mature in the summer. Almonds are the state’s leading agricultural export, responsible for nearly 80% of the world’s almonds. Efforts to demonize the almond simply do not help the industry evolve to meet environmental goals and address current issues. … ” Read more from the Fresno Bee.
In regional water news this week …
Lake Tahoe Restoration Act extended for 10 years
“Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s (D-Nev.) legislation to extend the authorization of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act for 10 years passed the Senate on Wednesday. Cortez Masto’s legislation is cosponsored by Senators Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) and it would allow federal funds to continue maintaining the environment, supporting local jobs, and strengthening the tourism economy around Lake Tahoe. The legislation now heads to the U.S. House of Representatives. “Sustainability programs in Tahoe must be able to keep up their operations so we can continue to keep the lake clean and support our local communities – not just today, but for future generations. That was the vision previous Senate leaders had for Lake Tahoe, and it is what I’ve been fighting for,” said Cortez Masto. “Passing the reauthorization of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act through the Senate is a huge step forward, and I urge my colleagues in the House to pass this vital bill into law as soon as possible.” … ” Read more from the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
Regional Water Board adopts permit requiring critical investments to protect San Francisco Bay
“To help protect water quality and aquatic life in San Francisco Bay for generations to come, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a permit today that will for the first time require nutrient reductions for all wastewater treatment plants discharging into the bay. The new permit, adopted under the Clean Water Act after years of monitoring and research, will go into effect Oct. 1. It requires that 40 sewage treatment plants must collectively reduce nitrogen discharges by 40% compared to 2022, when a “red tide” harmful algal bloom (HAB) triggered a massive fish kill in the San Francisco Bay. Nutrients are discharged into the bay from sewage treatment plants’ wastewater. Excessive nutrients are a major contributor to HABs, which cause a dramatic depletion in dissolved oxygen levels, killing aquatic species. … ” Read more from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Board.
California’s depleting groundwater threatens community’s future
“The Cuyama Valley north of Santa Barbara is one of the areas of California where groundwater levels have been rapidly dropping, and where water continues to be heavily pumped to irrigate thousands of acres of farmland. Like other regions, the Cuyama Valley has developed a state-mandated plan to address overpumping under California’s groundwater law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. But while that plan is just starting to be implemented, disagreements over addressing the water deficit have led to a bitter legal fight. A group of agricultural landowners in 2021 sued other property owners throughout the valley, asking a judge to determine how water rights should be divided. That case, called a water adjudication, sparked an outpouring of opposition and prompted residents to organize a boycott of carrot-growing companies that are the valley’s biggest water users. Participants have put up signs and banners reading “Boycott Carrots” and “Stand with Cuyama Against Corporate Greed.” … ” Read more from the LA Times via Governing.
Hoping to reduce Colorado River dependency, Southern California bets big on wastewater recycling
“Can wastewater be made potable again on a mass scale? Water-district managers in California think so. At a wastewater treatment plant in Carson in the Los Angeles area, scientists and engineers have been fine-tuning their purification process since 2019. The facility — known as the Grace F. Napolitano Pure Water Southern California Innovation Center — purifies 500,000 gallons of water each day with the goal of someday processing 300 times that amount, or 150 million gallons daily. The project is still in the environmental planning and review phase, and for now the water is just for research — not drinking. But with construction on a permanent plant slated to begin as early as 2026, researchers here hope arid Southern California could soon be home to one of the biggest water-recycling operations in the world. “We’re in the business of doing big projects,” Deven Upadhyay, interim general manager at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said in an interview. “We saw that in the future, we could not rely on an unsustainable supply of water.” … ” Read more from the Courthouse News Service.
LA City Council committee seeks study of possible ban on artificial turf
“When a Los Angeles City Council committee approved a motion calling for a feasibility study into a potential ban on artificial grass in L.A., Kelly Shannon McNeil, associate director of the nonprofit Los Angeles Waterkeeper, saw the move as an “incredibly positive step.” The city council’s Energy and Environment Committee voted on June 28 to approve a study in order to understand the health impacts of artificial turf — a product that is widely used by schools, homeowners and many others, but which can contain synthetic chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. McNeil has spent years advocating for environmental and water resource causes, and she said the issue of PFAS and other “forever chemicals” is especially important to her as a mother of a two-year-old. “We’re looking at all of the different ways we can limit exposure to PFAS in our communities and banning artificial turf would be an immediate opportunity to do so,” McNeil said. … ” Read more from the LA Daily News.
San Diego to spend $100M to figure out how to fix its aging, vulnerable dams
“San Diego plans to pay an engineering firm $100 million over the next decade to thoroughly evaluate the city’s aging dams and create a strategy to prioritize and coordinate repairs and possible rebuild projects. The strategic plan will include proposals to shore up every dam, including cost estimates and specific timelines. It will also evaluate safety risks and how much each dam upgrade would boost reservoir capacity. Because four city dams have been deemed safety risks, the city has been forced by the state to reduce how much water they can hold. Those restrictions have lowered the city’s reservoir capacity by 20 percent. The plan, which city officials call a long-term strategic phasing plan, will also evaluate the accuracy of a loose city estimate that the dams require a total of $1 billion in repairs and upgrades. … ” Read more from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Announcements, notices, and funding opportunities …
NOTICE: Status of water quality objectives for salinity in the Lower San Joaquin River
NOTICE: Bulletin 74: Progress on the California Well Standards Update
