A wrap-up of posts published on Maven’s Notebook this week …
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In California water news this week …
Landmark legislation to address California’s water supply challenges heads to the Governor’s desk
“SB 72 (Caballero), critical water legislation to transform the state’s water management approach, has passed the Assembly floor and is headed to the Governor’s desk for signature. The bill addresses the state’s lack of water with multiple strategies to codify water supply targets, enhance the existing California Water Plan to plan water needs by region, and legislate reporting collaboration among the water community and all stakeholders. “I’m proud of my colleagues’ support on SB 72 in both houses. This bill represents a clear opportunity for the Governor to reaffirm his climate leadership and embrace new and bold strategies to address water supply challenges. The Department of Water Resources’ new State Water Project Adaptation Strategy underscores the urgency of this bill, which is a necessary next step to secure California’s water future in the face of intensifying climate threats,” said Senator Anna Caballero, bill author. … ” Read more from California Water for All.
California’s snowpack is the state’s biggest reservoir—and it’s declining
“When most Californians think about where their water comes from, they likely think of the state’s dams and reservoirs—and they’re largely correct. Most of the state’s annual rainfall arrives in a narrow window between October 1st and April 1st; twelve large reservoirs and over a hundred smaller reservoirs (scattered throughout the state) capture and store this water to control floods and keep our taps running in the dry season. But another natural reservoir is also essential to the state: snowpack. At the start of spring, California’s snowpack has historically contained about 70% as much water, on average, as all the state’s reservoirs combined. That’s an astonishing service, provided completely free of charge. Snowpack water storage is critical for a variety of downstream needs. … ” Read more from the PPIC.
When the West’s rivers surge each spring, older groundwater dominates the runoff
“Every spring, high-country streams and rivers in the American West begin to swell with water as the region’s snowpack starts to dissipate. It’s easy to assume that the liquid flowing in these water bodies is just fresh meltwater emanating from the preceding winter’s snowpack. But a recent study of 42 sites across the West finds that both the conventional wisdom and some traditional hydrologic models are wrong. Most of that vital runoff—which sustains both ecosystems and economies—is actually groundwater that is many years old. In the headwaters they studied, the researchers found the average age of the water in streams during snowmelt runoff was 5.7 years. Overall, about 58% of the runoff was derived from older groundwater that had been essentially pushed into the stream by the newer snowmelt. “Contrary to the common assumption that snowmelt quickly contributes to runoff, stream flow during snowmelt in western US catchments is dominated by older groundwater,” according to the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment. … ” Read more from the Water Desk.
California agriculture confronts a perfect storm of challenges
“In August, the California State Board of Food and Agriculture convened to discuss the current state of economic conditions for farmers and ranchers. From agricultural real estate to ongoing labor issues, industry leaders characterized the challenges confronting California agriculture as well as the financial stakes to stay in business. “I wanted to bring this up to our board and just take a look at where our ag industry is today,” board president and Fresno-based farmer Don Cameron said. “I know that there’s a lot of people in my region that are suffering from low commodity prices, lack of equity, declining and putting a lot of growers in some pretty tough situations right now.” The first panel featured a discussion on agricultural land values, presented by Karl Dalrymple from the California Chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers and Les Crutcher of the Ag Lenders Society of California. … ” Continue reading from Valley Ag Voice.
Securing statewide water supplies Part 6: Fact over fiction
“Modernizing the infrastructure that delivers clean, affordable water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland across the state is no small feat. The specifics of planning and implementing such a project are complex, dynamic and sometimes contentious. Due to these complexities, foundational elements grounded in fact are often mischaracterized or misrepresented, whether intentionally or not. Funding, permitting and other decisions related to the Delta Conveyance Project should be made based on factual information, supported by science and data, not political and personal agendas. Here are a few foundational facts about the Delta Conveyance Project … ” Continue reading from the Department of Water Resources.
Newsom’s controversial California delta tunnel project endorsed by nation’s largest irrigation system
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s controversial push to fast-track the Delta Conveyance Project received a formal endorsement this week from the largest irrigation district in the nation. The Imperial Irrigation District (IID), which has more than 3,000 miles of canals in Southern California, announced its support Tuesday for the plan, which would reroute water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California through a massive underground tunnel system. The California Department of Water Resources claims the tunnel will provide clean and affordable water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland via an earthquake-resistant system buried 130 feet underground. … ” Read more from CBS News.
SEE ALSO: Colorado River’s largest water user endorses Delta Conveyance Project, from the Desert Review
Proposed Bay Delta water plan impacts supplies
“The California State Water Resources Control Board distributed a draft of a plan to update regulations relating to flows and water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the watersheds that feed into it. That is, the plan proposes regulations for the entire Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds. State Board staff believe there are insufficient in-stream flows to sustain native fish populations in the rivers, their tributaries, and in the Delta itself. Efforts to increase populations of native fish, particularly salmon, in the Central Valley have not been successful. State Board staff initially proposed that 40% of the unimpaired flow stay in the rivers to bolster flow from February through June. That would divert water from water rights holders to environmental uses. However, the State Constitution includes the following language: “the water resources of the State be put to beneficial use to the fullest extent of which they are capable,” and “(t)he right to water or to the use or flow of water in or from any natural stream or water course in this State is and shall be limited to such water as shall be reasonably required for the beneficial use to be served.” That is, it is unconstitutional to use more water to benefit fish than is necessary. … ” Read more from Valley Ag Voice.
Bay Delta Plan: Conservation groups request additional hearing dates and the comment deadline moved back to December
“Defenders of Wildlife, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Friends of the River, Golden State Salmon Association, and San Francisco Baykeeper, (“NGOs”) write to request an updated comment deadline of December 19, 2025, as well as the scheduling of additional hearing days before the State Board between November 3 and 21, 2025 to offer input on the State Board’s misguided draft July 2025 Bay-Delta Plan proposal. Given the amount of information released by the State Board on July 24 and supplemented on August 22, 2025, the current comment deadline and hearing schedule are inadequate for public participation in the adoption of a new San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed Water Quality Control Plan (“Draft Plan”). The requested extension and additional hearings would provide the necessary opportunity for meaningful engagement. … ” Read the letter here.
Farmers flip fields to wetland for Central Valley shorebirds
“The binocular sights came up short of the black-and-white markings Drake Stallworth spotted in the distance, somewhere atop the sun-soaked field of water. “I’ll see if I can get the scope on that black-bellied,” he said. … The Nature Conservancy’s two-man field crew took note of the black-bellied plover, one of more than a thousand birds wading and foraging through the inches-deep, 82-acre pool otherwise surrounded by the dry Central Valley. To anyone else driving Highway 45 beside the rural Yolo County property, the distant birds may have looked like dots against the water, akin to the sight of cattle grazing miles into an open pasture. When observed up close — and thought about too deeply — the scene of thousands of birds that hail from the Arctic making habitat of an unnaturally-occurring oasis on a triple-digit August day might strike you as unusual, if not outright bizarre. … ” Read more from the Sacramento Bee.
Feds get 9 months to determine if San Francisco Estuary white sturgeon is threatened
“A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to complete within nine months a delayed assessment of whether the San Francisco Estuary local population of white sturgeon should be listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros in San Francisco wasn’t persuaded by the agency’s arguments that it would need until 2029 to complete the so-called 12-month finding because of a backlog of pending petitions and staffing shortages from layoffs and a hiring freeze. The judge specifically rejected the agency’s contention that setting an expedited schedule for the white sturgeon assessment would disrupt the Fish and Wildlife Service’s ability to resolve other petitions on schedule. “The court finds that statement less than fully credible,” Cisneros said. “Defendants’ failure to meet statutory deadlines under the ESA appears to have resulted, in part, from adopting procedures that are inconsistent with those deadlines. Accordingly, any inability to meet other deadlines in light of this court’s order is at least in part a problem of defendants’ own making.” … ” Read more from the Courthouse News Service.
State seeks feedback on new subsidence guidelines at September workshops
“The public is invited to comment on new state subsidence guidelines at three workshops next week. The Department of Water Resources is holding meetings on Sept. 9 in Clovis, Sept. 10 in Delano and Sept. 11 in Willows. The workshops are focused solely on collecting feedback on a recently released draft document that supports one of the goals of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act — avoiding or minimizing subsidence, land sinking. The document outlines fundamental concepts of subsidence and explains what practices local groundwater agencies should use in their groundwater sustainability plans to halt or minimize subsidence. One overarching theme is the need for GSAs to adopt a regional approach to managing subsidence. … ” Read more from SJV Water.
New journal article highlights multibenefit land repurposing as an innovative approach to strengthen rural resilience
“A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to complete within nine months a delayed assessment of whether the San Francisco Estuary local population of white sturgeon should be listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros in San Francisco wasn’t persuaded by the agency’s arguments that it would need until 2029 to complete the so-called 12-month finding because of a backlog of pending petitions and staffing shortages from layoffs and a hiring freeze. The judge specifically rejected the agency’s contention that setting an expedited schedule for the white sturgeon assessment would disrupt the Fish and Wildlife Service’s ability to resolve other petitions on schedule. “The court finds that statement less than fully credible,” Cisneros said. “Defendants’ failure to meet statutory deadlines under the ESA appears to have resulted, in part, from adopting procedures that are inconsistent with those deadlines. Accordingly, any inability to meet other deadlines in light of this court’s order is at least in part a problem of defendants’ own making.” … ” Read more from the Environmental Defense Fund.
Humanity is rapidly depleting water and much of the world is getting drier
“For more than two decades, satellites have tracked the total amounts of water held in glaciers, ice sheets, lakes, rivers, soil and the world’s vast natural reservoirs underground — aquifers. An extensive global analysis of that data now reveals fresh water is rapidly disappearing beneath much of humanity’s feet, and large swaths of the Earth are drying out. Scientists are seeing “mega-drying” regions that are immense and expanding — one stretching from the western United States through Mexico to Central America, and another from Morocco to France, across the entire Middle East to northern China. There are two primary causes of the desiccation: rising temperatures unleashed by using oil and gas, and widespread overpumping of water that took millennia to accumulate underground. “These findings send perhaps the most alarming message yet about the impact of climate change on our water resources,” said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University who co-authored the study. “The rapid water cycle change that the planet has experienced over the last decade has unleashed a wave of rapid drying.” … ” Read more from the LA Times. | Read via Yahoo News.
From beaches to streams: Sunscreen’s impact on water quality
“Today’s beach outing is not the same as your grandparents’ beach outing: With intense summer heat waves now the norm due to climate change, and with the ozone layer still not fully healed, people need more and better sun protection when outdoors. Sunscreen offers proven protection from sunburn and skin cancer — but it’s also often comprised of a cocktail of ingredients including chemicals that scientists warn are a growing source of environmental pollution. Much of this concern focuses on a variety of ingredients known as ultraviolet (UV) filters. Sunscreens typically come in two forms: organic (using chemicals to absorb solar radiation), or inorganic (using zinc oxide and titanium oxide to reflect away solar radiation). An estimated 6,000 to 14,000 metric tons of UV filtering chemicals are released annually into coastal regions with coral reefs. And in recent years, scientific evidence of sunscreen chemicals harming sensitive marine ecosystems has accumulated, resulting in a series of local, regional and national bans of some chemical ingredients to protect living reefs. Experts now underline that these concerns go far beyond coral reefs. … ” Read more from Mongabay.
Homes in California use less water than other states, according to a new study of a subset of US cities
“A new study on water usage inside U.S. homes found toilets led the way for the highest water use, followed closely by showers, while dishwashers used the least. The new research also comes with some surprises, including the strong association of humidifiers to high water usage, while other findings may be less surprising, such as that heavily regulated cities in California having the lowest water usage in the study. With data from more than 26,000 single-family homes across 39 cities, the study had a larger data pool than previous research. It is one of the first and largest snapshots of how households in the United States use water inside their home, with previous research not distinguishing between indoor and outdoor water use. This study was published in Earth’s Future, AGU’s journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants. Landon Marston, an author on the study, said research into indoor water use was difficult before this study. … ” Read more from AGU.
‘The forgotten forest’: how smashing 5.6m urchins saved a California kelp paradise
“On an overcast Tuesday in July, divers Mitch Johnson and Sean Taylor shimmy into their wetsuits on the back of the R/V Xenarcha, a 28ft boat floating off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, south of Los Angeles. Behind them, the clear waters of the Pacific are dotted with a forest of army-green strands, waving like mermaid hair underwater. We are here to survey the giant Pacific kelp, a species that once thrived in these ice cold waters. But over the past two decades, a combination of warm ocean temperatures, pollution, overfishing and the proliferation of hungry sea urchins that devour the kelp has led to an 80% decline in the forest along the southern California coast. In recent years, scientists have staged a comeback – mounting one of the largest and most successful kelp restoration projects in the world. To do so, they’ve recruited an army of hammer-wielding divers to smash and clean up the voracious urchins. Today’s trip is a chance to see that success up close. … ” Read more from The Guardian.
In commentary this week …
Coalition urges legislature to reject Newsom’s water power grab: Trailer bills would gut CEQA, override courts, and fast-track $100 billion Delta tunnel
“A broad coalition of environmental justice organizations, Tribes, Delta advocates, and taxpayer groups today sent a letter to the California Leadership — President Pro Tem McGuire, Speaker Rivas, Senator Wiener, Assemblymember Gabriel, and Members of the Budget Committees — urging them to reject Governor Newsom’s proposed Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) and Water Quality Control Plan CEQA Exemption trailer bills. The letter, signed by 40 organizations, warns that the trailer bills would: Bypass CEQA to push forward the outdated Bay-Delta Plan without full environmental review; Override judicial oversight and hand the Department of Water Resources (DWR) unlimited bond authority for a project estimated to cost between $61 and $116 billion; Strip landowner protections by weakening constitutional rights to fair compensation; and Silence public participation by restricting the ability of Tribes, Delta residents, and environmental justice communities to protest harmful water diversions. … ” Continue reading from Restore the Delta.
C-WIN: Mirroring the Trump Playbook: Eliminating CEQA review for water quality control plans would weaken California’s democratic integrity
“In California we are fortunate to have both state and federal law to protect our rivers, streams, lakes, and bays. It might seem redundant, then, to subject our water quality control plans to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). But CEQA is the mechanism that provides for the transparent assessment of the tradeoffs involved in water quality regulations. Only through responsible analysis can we understand how rules for river flows, wastewater treatment, stormwater management and forest management affect communities, industries, and the environment. Without CEQA, water quality rules could be proposed and adopted without an assessment of whether they protect communities located near contaminated water bodies; whether they balance the needs for urban housing with the necessity of reducing urban stormwater pollution; and whether river flows would create substantive fish population improvements to benefit tribes, disadvantaged communities, and the commercial fishing industry. … ” Read more from C-WIN.
Protecting tribal water uses requires rejecting the Delta Conveyance Project
Regina Cuellar, Chairwoman of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, writes, “For over 50 years, California law and regulations have designated beneficial water uses that require water quality protection. However, tribal water uses have never been included, which is why our tribe, the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, has authored legislation to mandate designation and protection of tribal beneficial water uses, such as water-based ceremonies, plant collection, and fishing. We have also been outspoken opponents of the proposed Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) and Voluntary Agreements (deceptively branded as the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program), which would deprive our rivers and Delta of freshwater flows necessary to sustain our cultural practices. Our tribal water uses can only be realized if we improve the flows in our rivers and Delta ecosystem. Last week we were alarmed to learn that DCP proponents are trying to appropriate language from our bill (AB 362) and merge it into trailer bills aiming to fast-track the DCP and Voluntary Agreements. We are not fooled by this cynical maneuver; and we call upon the legislature to reject these trailer bills just as it did in June when Governor Newsom tried to pass them as part of the state budget. … ” Continue reading this commentary.
Will the Sites Reservoir ever get built?
Edward Ring, Director of Water and Energy Policy at the California Policy Center, writes, “The short answer is no. Never. What is happening with the Sites Reservoir is a case study in why, if the people running California today were in charge in the 1950s and 1960s, the California Water Project would never have been built. This reservoir, approved by voters in 2014, could have been built by now. As it is, the proposal is beset by ongoing and escalating challenges. Between oblivion and realization, the best odds for Sites are probably no better than even. Most prominent recent news about Sites is the latest official cost estimate, which has risen to $6.8 billion. This should come as no surprise, but it changes the cost/benefit equation. While we offered some ROI data on Sites in early July, it’s useful to revisit this not only in light of the new costs, but to explore in further depth the other primary variable affecting ROI, which is how much water will actually end up in the hands of water contractors for agricultural and urban consumption. It’s true of course that a cost increase from the officially recognized estimate of $3.9 billion to $6.8 billion is significant. For any calculation anyone has previously made, bump the numbers by 74 percent. That’s huge. … ” Read more from Edward Ring.
Your grocery cart depends on California’s water — and right now, it’s in trouble
“If you’ve strolled through the produce section, you’ve seen California’s handiwork. Fresh strawberries in January. Crisp lettuce in March. Pistachios, tomatoes, grapes, lettuce — the list goes on. What most shoppers don’t realize is that much of this abundance comes from one place: the San Joaquin Valley. And that bounty depends on one thing above all else — water. After three straight years of healthy Sierra Nevada snowpack and full reservoirs, you might assume farmers here are finally getting the water they need. They’re not. Many San Joaquin Valley growers who depend on the Central Valley Project (CVP) or State Water Project (SWP) are getting only about half of the water they’ve contracted for — in some areas, even less. It’s not because there’s no water. It’s because of outdated infrastructure and rigid, decades-old environmental rules that limit how much can actually be delivered to farms. In wet years, these policies prevent us from storing enough for the dry ones. That gap between supply and need is more than a headache for farmers — it’s a looming threat to your grocery basket. … ” Read more from the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley.
Who controls California farmland? The hard-to-find answer is disturbing
Meredith Song, a master’s student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a student fellow with the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, and Adam Calo, an assistant professor of environmental governance and politics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, write, “Within the next decade, 40% of U.S. farmland is expected to change hands, a statistic often interpreted as an opportunity for a new generation of farmers. In reality, it masks a troubling reality: Farmland is being snapped up by investment firms, corporate agribusiness and opaque holding companies, leaving farmers who could deliver a truly sustainable and resilient food system competing with Wall Street. With colleagues at the University of San Francisco, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and I have combed through thousands of parcel records to answer a simple question: Who controls California’s farmland? What we found makes it clear that if we want a resilient food system, we need public tools to bring transparency to land ownership and to act on that information. Today, ownership of the land that feeds us is increasingly hidden behind layers of shell companies and trusts, making it nearly impossible to know who controls these resources. Access to transparent land ownership information has long been a goal of small farm advocates. … ” Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Westlands CEO: Land subsidence is a statewide threat that must be addressed
Allison Febbo, the general manager of the Westlands Water District, writes, “The vital cornerstone of California’s water system and fresh, safe food, the San Joaquin Valley, is at the center of a crisis: land subsidence. The consequences are severe: sinking land, cracked infrastructure and severely reduced capacity in the California Aqueduct, which delivers drinking water to millions of homes while sustaining farms and communities statewide. As general manager of Westlands Water District — the nation’s largest agricultural water district, serving hundreds of family farms across western Fresno and Kings counties — I’ve witnessed how this imperils our region, state and nation. Rural communities throughout the Valley, including many disadvantaged communities, depend on a robust agricultural economy to support local jobs, essential services and economic stability. This isn’t just a Valley problem, however. … ” Read more from the Fresno Bee. | Read via Yahoo News.
In regional water news this week …
‘Short-sighted,’ ‘dangerous’: PG&E dam removal sparks wildfire fears in NorCal
“In late July, PG&E officially submitted its plans to tear down the Potter Valley Project, a century-old piece of water infrastructure built to siphon flows from the Eel River into the Russian River. The utility’s pending abandonment of the project has led to fierce debates over agriculture, tourism and healthy river ecosystems, as the residents of the affected Northern California counties disagree on what and whom to prioritize. Yet as California enters the height of its now never-ending fire season, one more consequence of letting the Eel River run free looms: the seasonal drying of the Russian River and the dissolution of Lake Pillsbury, two water sources that fire chiefs in the region have argued are crucial for wildfire-fighting efforts. … ” Read more from SF Gate.
Marin abandons proposal to expand its second-biggest reservoir
“Marin Municipal Water District officials abandoned a controversial proposal to expand the Nicasio Reservoir, the county’s second-biggest, citing a sharp rise in project costs. For the past year, the water district, which serves over 191,000 residents in central and southern Marin, promoted the expansion as a cost-effective option to boost its water supply. The plan involved installing a 280-foot-long, 4.4-foot-high inflatable gate on Seeger Dam, which would have increased the reservoir’s capacity by 3,700 acre-feet, or about 16.6%. At the district’s Aug. 19 board meeting, staff revealed in an updated analysis that the original project cost estimate of about $15 million had surged to between $37 and $54 million. That was enough for the district board to direct staff to halt the project’s environmental review and withdraw the proposal, though no formal vote was taken. … ” Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Some San Francisco fishers suffer amid efforts to save whales, salmon
“It’s been a tough and divisive time of late for commercial fishers on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, where their ability to make a living using some traditional methods is under pressure from wildlife regulators and controversy simmers over emerging technology aimed at preventing whale entanglements in lines attached to pots set to trap Dungeness crabs. John Mellor, for one, projected a sense of gloom in the summer sun recently as he stood near his boat, the High Hopes, docked with other craft at a nearly silent Pier 45. “It’s hard to be at this point in my life and then see my livelihood kind of go down the drain,” said the 62-year-old Emeryville resident, who said he specializes in Dungeness crab and has been ocean fishing professionally since his teens. “I’ve been making pretty much 100% of my income from fishing my whole life.” … ” Read more from the SF Examiner.
Can S.F.’s weather measurements be trusted? One expert says the city’s record is ‘contaminated’
“In 1983, San Francisco’s notoriously mild temperatures suddenly spiked. The average daily high that summer was measured at 71.6 degrees, smashing the city’s previous record. But it wasn’t just the balmy weather that triggered the new high mercury mark. That spring, officials moved San Francisco’s “downtown” weather station from Civic Center to the Mission Dolores neighborhood — the warmest part of the city. Fourteen years later, when the station moved again, to Duboce Park, temperatures dropped. Since 1874, the U.S. government — first the Army then the National Weather Service — has recorded temperatures at nine different locations across the city, from the Financial District to Pacific Heights to the Mission District. In January 2007, the official weather station was relocated to the U.S. Mint building at the corner of Hermann and Buchanan streets, where it remains today. … ” Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Solutions for Salinas Valley groundwater contamination exist, but adoption is slow
“The Salinas Valley produces more than half of the country’s lettuce. In one of the many fields, Huntington Farms pest control and crop advisor Mark Mason points to a large hose attached to metal cylinders. “We have a filter station set up here where we can track irrigation volume, pressures, flow rate,” he says. Huntington farms covers about 5,000 acres in the Salinas Valley. It’s all conventional rather than organic, meaning they use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Fertilizers add nutrients to the soil that plants need. Nitrogen is one of the most important. “Plants use nitrogen, just like we do, to build proteins,” says University of California Cooperative Extension water advisor Michael Cahn. … ” Read more from KAZU.
Tulare County Judge sifts through barrage of arguments from groundwater agency
“Lawyers for the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) recently fired a fusillade of legal arguments against Friant Water Authority’s contention that the GSA shorted its obligation to help pay for repairs to the sinking Friant-Kern Canal. The arguments, essentially, boil down to Eastern Tule’s belief that the settlement agreement its board negotiated and signed in 2021 agreeing to pay Friant $200 million toward repairing the canal is illegal and unenforceable. Friant sued Eastern Tule in 2024, saying the GSA violated that 2021 agreement. Friant says Eastern Tule was supposed to charge its landowners enough in pumping fees to both pay Friant a minimum of $200 million and disincentivize excessive pumping, which is what sank the canal in the first place. But after four years, Friant collected only $23 million because of what it says were Eastern Tule’s lenient use of groundwater credits. … ” Read more from SJV Water.
State pinning hopes for Kern River rainbow’s survival on hatchery, despite its checkered history
“The state is poised to spend a little more than $7 million to get the fish hatchery near Kernville back up and running in order to protect the endemic Kern River rainbow trout. The plan is to find pure Kern River rainbow DNA to start a broodstock at the hatchery and stock only those fish in the upper reaches of the north fork of the river. Somewhere above Fairview Dam, about 16 miles upriver from Kernville. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which owns the hatchery, has the funding and a construction timetable that anticipates project completion some time in 2027, according to Jennifer Benedet, a department spokesperson. The hatchery has been deemed vital to the maintenance of the species, already listed as “of concern” by CDFW and the U.S. Forest Service. But past, recurring problems with heat and bacteria, intermittent shuttering and concerns about the department’s future stocking plans, have river advocates and anglers feeling cautious, at best. … ” Read more from SJV Water.
Redlands OKs $369K contract to test groundwater after landfill leachate mishandling
“On Sept. 2, the Redlands City Council approved a $369,750 contract with Rincon Consultants, Inc. to investigate potential groundwater contamination after landfill leachate was improperly disposed of at the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant. Leachate — the liquid that forms when water filters through waste in a landfill — can carry toxic substances including heavy metals, pesticides, petroleum products and PFAS, which are manmade synthetic chemicals found in many consumer products. In 2020, city staff discovered that leachate from the Redlands California Street landfill had been intermittently dumped into an unlined sludge drying bed at the Wastewater Treatment Plant instead of being sent through a dedicated pipeline. This practice, used by both city staff and contractors, had been in place for roughly six years prior to the discovery. … ” Read more from Redlands Community Forward.
UCLA: New briefs reveal continuing public health and environmental crisis at the Salton Sea amid gaps in oversight
“Two new expert issue briefs—one on air-quality and the other on water-quality—published today by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute document how gaps in monitoring and enforcement have contributed to ongoing toxic conditions at the Salton Sea placing nearby residents at continued risk. Drawing from over a year of high-frequency data collected since August 2023 by the Salton Sea Environmental Timeseries (SSET), the briefs reveal widespread nutrient pollution, dangerously low oxygen levels in the lake, and frequent episodes of hydrogen sulfide emissions that exceed California’s health standards—conditions occurring among residents in areas that rank among the most burdened by pollution in the state. These environmental hazards have persisted even as state and federal agencies work under a legal obligation to restore the Salton Sea. … ” Read more from UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.
A new lens on the Colorado River: Why future projections will look bleaker
“The Bureau of Reclamation is currently preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to establish new operational guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead beyond 2026. As part of this effort, they have developed updated hydrology datasets to evaluate how different management alternatives might perform. These new datasets differ significantly from those used to create the 2007 guidelines and the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan. During the August meeting of the Metropolitan Water District’s Imported Water Subcommittee, Senior Engineer Laura Lamdin provided an in-depth explanation of how the Bureau of Reclamation is integrating climate change considerations into its planning for post-2026 Colorado River operations. … ” Continue reading at Maven’s Notebook.
Announcements, notices, and funding opportunities …
NOTICE: Reclamation announces public scoping meetings for California’s North-to-South Water Transfers
NOTICE: CDFA to host webinar on Regulatory Alignment Study Draft Recommendations
