A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation News & Publications Director Chris Bowman.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Please Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing. Also, the headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
What sparked your passion for exploring California’s outdoors
and how did you find yourself drawn to the world of
fly-fishing? Being born in British Columbia and growing up in
California, the forested coastal woodland environment is in my
DNA. My family lived in the foothills of Los Angeles and nature
has always been a place where I find strength, peace, and
wonder. It recharges me. When I was growing up in LA, the air
quality was terrible and there seemed to be a concrete jungle
all around me. The riding and hiking trails around my home were
my refuge. My mom also had a big influence on how I see nature.
She appreciated and observed the natural world so closely, and
I first saw nature through her eyes – so full of curiosity and
wonder.
The removal of the last of four dams scheduled to be taken down
on the Klamath River began Monday as work crews descended on
Oregon’s 68-foot J.C. Boyle Dam. Located about 12 miles north
of the California border, the earthen dam with two turbines and
a power-generation plant produced hydroelectricity from 1958 to
earlier this year, when the reservoir behind the dam was
drained for the historic dismantling work. The dam is being
removed, like the others downstream in California, in a
monumental effort to help rewild the 250-mile Klamath River,
where fish, notably salmon, have been shut out of the river’s
remote upper watershed since the early 1900s because of the
power project. The $500 million demolition is the largest dam
removal in U.S. history.
The Colorado River provides water to more than 40 million
people. The Basin includes 30 federally recognized Indian
tribes and seven states (Colorado, Wyoming, California,
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada). Tribal nations in Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have been left out of key
agreements involving the Colorado River for well over a century
now. In April, the Upper Colorado River Commission – that’s an
agency at the nexus of many Colorado River discussions in the
Upper Basin – voted to back a new proposed agreement that would
make regular meetings with tribes be mandatory for the first
time in the group’s 76-year history. Mira Barney is a
Diné (Navajo) woman working at the National Wildlife
Federation. She is also pursuing a graduate certificate in
Environmental Justice at CU Boulder, and works as Program
Assistance with Indigenous Women’s Leadership Network.
They generate green energy. They save money. They slow
evaporation. They float. And the Sweetwater Authority wants to
put them on its Sweetwater Reservoir. General Manager Carlos
Quintero said the water agency is exploring the environmental
impact of a 9.5 acre floating solar array that would be placed
near the Sweetwater Dam. It would cover roughly 1.3% of the
reservoir, Quintero said, and could generate as much as
two-thirds of the energy needed to make the reservoir water
drinkable and decrease a small amount of evaporation.
… Water agencies in other states have deployed floating
solar panels on reservoirs. Sweetwater would be the first in
California …
San Francisco is poised to become the first city in the country
to issue a ban on firefighter clothing manufactured with
so-called forever chemicals. Local lawmakers are expected
to pass an ordinance on Tuesday prohibiting the use of
protective equipment made with per- and polyfluoroalkyl
substances, or PFAS. The long-lasting compounds do not break
down, allowing them to linger almost permanently in the
environment. PFAS can be ingested or absorbed into the skin and
have been linked to harmful health effects, including decreased
fertility, low-birth weight and developmental delays in
children, a higher risk of certain cancers and increased
cholesterol levels, according to the Environmental Protection
Agency.
Beyond a chain-link fence topped with spiraled barbed wire,
swaying coastal grasses conceal a cache of buried radioactive
waste and toxic pesticides from a bygone chemical plant.
Warning signs along the Richmond, Calif., site’s perimeter
attempt to discourage trespassers from breaching the locked
gates, where soil testing has detected cancer-causing gamma
radiation more than 60 times higher than background levels in
some places. For most of the 20th century, the former
Stauffer Chemical Co. disposed of thousands of tons of
industrial waste near its factory grounds along Richmond’s
southeast shoreline. … In a January letter to Albany and
Berkeley city officials, [the State Water Board] wrote
that the landfills “may have accepted industrial waste
materials that could present a risk to water quality, human
health, and the environment.”
If you visit the Delta town of Walnut Grove during winter or
spring, look for a surprise in the Sacramento River just before
it meets Georgiana Slough. A steady stream of bubbles rises
from the river bottom, accompanied by flashes of bright yellow
strobe lights and low whooshing sounds. It looks like an art
installation, especially at night. But this barrage of
light, noise and bubbles is actually there to protect imperiled
baby salmon. F
Thanks to favorable weather conditions, California’s almond
crop for 2024 is expected to be 21 percent greater than last
year’s final output, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
reports. The almond crop should amount to about 3 billion
pounds, as opposed to the 2.47 billion pounds generated in
2023, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural
Statistics Service Pacific Regional Office, based in
Sacramento. … Mature almond trees in the southern
Sacramento Valley can consume 41 to 44 inches of water in an
average year when water use is unrestricted, while those in
Central California’s San Joaquin Valley can use as much as 50
to 54 inches, according to data from the University of
California, Davis.
An unusual surge in flu viruses detected at wastewater
treatment plants in California and other parts of the country
is raising concerns among some experts that H5N1 bird flu may
be spreading farther and faster than health officers initially
thought. In the last several weeks, wastewater surveillance at
59 of 190 U.S. municipal and regional sewage plants has
revealed an out-of-season spike in influenza A flu viruses — a
category that also includes H5N1. The testing — which is
intended to monitor the prevalence of “normal” flu viruses that
affect humans — has also shown a moderate to high upward trend
at 40 sites across California, including San Francisco, Oakland
and San Diego. Almost every city tested in the Bay Area shows
moderate to high increases of type A viruses.
A federal judge just added yet another layer to planning a
sustainable future for the region’s water resources. U.S.
District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled that the Army
Corps of Engineers violates the Endangered Species Act with
water released from Coyote Valley Dam into the Russian River.
Because of the way the 66-year-old dam is designed, a lot of
sediment gets mixed with the water and clouds the Russian
River. Salmon and other fish are accustomed to some natural
turbidity in the water, as the clouding is called, but not that
much. The good news is that the Corps of Engineers has a few
months to come up with at least a temporary plan to address the
judge’s concerns.
According to a new report by the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA), Lake Tahoe, situated on the
California-Nevada border, will reach it’s “full” level for the
first time since 2019, provided further evidence of
California’s water recovery. For the last 10+ years, California
has had mostly drought years. A mid 2010’s drought, lasting
from 2011 to 2017, covered virtually the entire state at its
peak. While a few average years followed, a megadrought formed
in 2020, once again covering almost the entire state. State
reservoirs reached critical lows, with some so depleted of
water that hydro-electric power turbines no longer generated
electricity. Natural lakes, like Lake Tahoe, also saw water
levels go down below its ‘full’ level in the summer of 2019.
Beachgoers at the lake had difficulty getting spots
because of the lower levels, and commentators during the 2021
NHL games played next to the lake even noted the size change.
Heavy rains this winter and spring sent torrential flows down
local creeks and rivers, and L.A. County managed to capture and
store a significant amount of that stormwater, officials say.
To be exact, they snared an estimated 295,000 acre-feet of
water since last October, or 96.3 billion gallons. That’s
enough water to supply about 2.4 million people a year — nearly
one-fourth of the county’s population. … The county,
working with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and
other agencies, was able to capture and store this amount of
water thanks in part to investments totaling more than $1
billion since 2001, Pestrella said. Some of the money has gone
toward raising dams and increasing the capacity of spreading
grounds, where water is sent into basins and then percolates
underground into aquifers.
A team of researchers has been hard at work in the Rocky
Mountains to solve a mystery. Snow is vanishing into thin air.
Now, for the first time, a new study explains how much is
getting lost, and when, exactly, it’s disappearing. Their
findings have to do with snow sublimation, a process that
happens when snow evaporates before it has a chance to melt.
Perhaps most critical in the new findings is the fact that most
snow evaporation happen s in the spring, after snow totals have
reached their peak. This could help water managers around the
West know when to make changes to the amount of water they take
from rivers and reservoirs.
In an effort to avoid the fate of their neighbors to the north,
Kern County water managers are putting the finishing touches on
a new groundwater plan they hope will stave off probation in
order to keep state bureaucrats from taking over local pumping.
The county’s 20 groundwater agency boards began approving final
changes to the plan, which is actually six identical plans,
last week in expectation of submitting them to the state Water
Resources Control Board by May 28. The goal is to stay out of
probation, which is where the Tulare Lake subbasin ended up
after a hearing before the Water Board on April 16. Tulare Lake
covers almost all of Kings County. Now, under probation, most
Kings County growers will have to register their wells at $300
each and report extractions starting July 15.
A few weeks ago, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology declared
that the Pacific Ocean is no longer in an El Niño state and has
returned to “neutral.” American scientists at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been more hesitant,
but they estimate that there is an 85% chance that the Pacific
will enter a neutral state in the next two months and a 60%
chance that a La Niña event will begin by August. … As
an El Niño phase begins, [the trade winds] winds weaken, so
that warm sea surface temperatures move east toward South
America. This can cause climatic shifts across the globe:
landslides in Peru, drought in Australia, fish die-offs in the
eastern Pacific and more frequent atmospheric rivers in
Southern California. These changing weather patterns also
weaken the trade winds further, leading to more warm water off
the coast of South America, which in turn weakens the winds,
and so on.
The Scott and Shasta Rivers were once salmon strongholds, but
over-allocation of water has made these rivers nearly
uninhabitable for coho and chinook. The State Water Resources
Control Board established emergency regulations that set
minimum streamflows during the most recent drought. But those
will likely expire soon. Without new permanent instream flows,
both rivers could run dry. A coalition of tribal governments,
fishermen and environmental nonprofits are asking the State
Board for new permanent instream flow dedications. And new
legislation, if passed, will strengthen the ability of the
state to protect those instream flows. Karuk Vice-Chairman
Kenneth Brink, Cody Phillips of the California Coastkeeper
Alliance, and Klamath advocate Craig Tucker join the EcoNews to
talk about what’s needed to save California’s salmon.
With Lake Oroville creeping toward capacity, concerns over
emergency spillage loom. The California Department of Water
Resources, however, said this won’t happen because of
controlled outflows and monitoring. DWR Spokesperson Raquel
Borray said the dam is being watched closely. … As of
Tuesday, Borrayo said, total releases into the Feather River
come out to 10,000 cubic feet per second with the majority —
9,350 cfs — going through the Thermalito Afterbay Outlet and
the remaining 650 cfs pouring through the low-flow channel. She
added that DWR is making adjustments as they are necessary.
Flooding is a natural phenomenon that we humans keep assuming
can be controlled with enough effort and engineering. But
this simply is not possible, as floods across the globe
repeatedly demonstrate. People continue to be surprised when
landscapes become waterscapes. This brings loss of life and
enormous costs of repairing damaged infrastructure and
constructing bigger levees and dams for flood control. As Tim
Palmer says in his new book (2024) local to global
failures of current flood management practices: “The age
of denial is over. The time has come to take a different
path (p 140)”.
Those stunning warnings in 2021 that the Marin Municipal Water
District was within months of running out of water led voters
to demand change. In the 2022 election, that frustration was
evident as voters elected three new directors. The historic
drought has taken a toll on the district’s chain of reservoirs,
the capacity of which it relies to meet the water needs of the
communities MMWD serves. The Lake Sonoma reservoir, which MMWD
relies on to import about 25% of its supply, was also depleted
by the drought and its releases restricted. The drought was a
huge test of the district’s long held policy of maintaining its
supply through conservation. The prolonged drought proved that
conservation, while vitally necessary, wasn’t enough — and the
district was caught in a crisis.
When Dos Rios Ranch opens to visitors next month in the San
Joaquin Valley, California will have 280 state parks — making
it one of the nation’s largest systems, as well as one of its
most popular, with about 70 million visitors a year. Who knew?
The short answer is: hardly anyone. Over the past 20 years
I’ve asked several thousand Californians to name five state
parks. Fewer than 5% can do so. And most of these baffled
respondents are outdoorsy folks — the kind of people I meet on
the trail or at my talks about hiking. This lack of awareness
is more than surprising right now. It’s dangerous. If
Californians can’t name a handful of state parks, they won’t
recognize the threat when Sacramento defers investment in the
system or — as is inevitably happening again — attempts to cut
funding. -Written by John McKinney, author of “Hike
California’s State Parks” and two dozen other hiking-themed
books, has visited all 280 state parks.
