Water

California Republicans Fighting Again to Raise the Shasta Dam. Will State Law Prevent It?

July 18, 2023 By Gillian Brasil Leave a Comment

The Shasta Dam started to leak at the end of May after the snowpack from the wet winter started melting. To Californians who have suffered decades of drought, that was good news.

The Shasta reservoir, California’s largest, sends water to farmers and families in the Central Valley, where a third of the nation’s produce is grown. It almost reached capacity after years of not filling up. At its peak, Shasta Lake can hold more than 4.5 million acre-feet of water. (An acre-foot is the annual consumption for two average households.)

Raising the dam, located on the upper Sacramento River northwest of Redding, to increase Shasta reservoir’s capacity has long been on the list of some federal lawmakers. The 18.5-foot rise would provide 634,000 more acre-feet of water per year, legislators say, and help ensure Central Valley farmers have a steadier and fuller supply.

But that assumes there will always be enough precipitation to fill Lake Shasta, which historically has not been the case. At that, environmentalists say it would be a drop in the bucket for the cost — at least $1.4 billion, per outdated estimates. And raising the 80-year-old dam risks flooding sacred Native American lands and harming local habitats.

With the House of Representatives in Republican control, and Bakersfield Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker, there could be more federal funding for a taller Shasta Dam if a spending package passes.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, who is sponsoring legislation to fund the project, said it was “regarded as the most affordable, cost efficient expansion of water infrastructure for the state of California on the table right now.”

California itself has opposed the plan, and in a letter to congressional leaders, dozens of environmental groups wrote that a taller dam would “harm Native American Tribes, salmon fishermen, and the environment, as well as violate state law.”

CALIFORNIA LAW

The potential for new funding is the latest chapter in the project’s long, heavily-litigated history.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, part of the Interior Department which oversees federal water issues, first proposed raising the dam in the late 1970s, even though it appeared to be at odds with the California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, a law that protects the free flow of certain rivers.

Support picked up under President Donald Trump — whose administration claimed the project would not break the law — only to fizzle under lawsuits from environmentalists and the state’s attorney general.

The project stalled after legal challenges forced water distributor Westlands Water District to withdraw in 2019.

Local groups are required to pay half of the cost under federal rules. Westlands, which serves farmers and rural communities in Fresno and Kings counties, agreed to do an environmental review for the project which would seemingly benefit agricultural producers there.

Then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had been the district’s lawyer and lobbyist.

Westlands agreed to pull out in a 2019 settlement with then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and environmentalists, who sued contending that the district violated state laws that ascertain the free flow of rivers with “extraordinary scenic, recreational, fishery, or wildlife values.”

Alison Febbo, Westlands’ new general manager who was not there at this time, said the district supports bolstered water infrastructure in California, but not by breaking any state laws. A Shasta Dam raise would need to address the concerns of various groups and stakeholders.

The California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects the McCloud River and its wild trout fishery, which could be affected by raising the Shasta Dam. The act prevented the state group from helping the Bureau.

Several years later, the Bureau is still without local aid.

“There have been no recent actions to accelerate or progress the project given the lack of funding to support the project and therefore no updated information has been developed,” Tara Jane Campbell Miranda, a spokeswoman for the agency, wrote in response to questions about the project.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, meant to stimulate public works projects, blocked federal funds from going to the Shasta Dam raise.

“This sticks in Mr. McCarthy’s craw and no doubt Secretary Bernhardt’s craw who was telling the adoring crowds in Fresno that they were about to pull this one off,” said Ron Stork, the senior policy advocate at Friends of the River, a California conservation group that opposes the dam raise.

Click here to read the full article in the Fresno Bee

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Gavin Newsom, Shasta, Water

Colorado River Deal: What Does It Mean for California?

May 24, 2023 By Alastair Bland 1 Comment

After nearly a year of intense negotiations, California, Nevada and Arizona reached a historic agreement today to use less water from the overdrafted Colorado River over the next three years.

The states agreed to give up 3 million acre-feet of river water through 2026 — about 13% of the amount they receive. In exchange, farmers and other water users will receive compensation from the federal government.

The Biden administration has been pushing the states since last spring to reach an agreement to cut back on Colorado River water deliveries. The three-state deal is a historic step — but it is not final: The U.S. Interior Department must review the proposal. And everything will have to be renegotiated before the end of 2026.

In California, the agreement would mostly affect the water supplies of farmers in the Imperial Valley. Coming up with a plan to fairly cut water use has created tensions between farms and cities and between states, especially California and Arizona.

Here’s what you need to know about the new plan, how it will affect California and whether it will bring relief to the West’s vital water supply system:

Why was this agreement needed?

The Colorado River basin has been overdrafted for decades. Its major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have been steadily declining, threatening 40 million people in the West with a water supply crisis.

In response, last June, a top Interior official asked the seven basin states to reduce water use by 2 to 4 million acre-feet per year, or a 15% to 30% annual reduction. The states failed to meet their deadlines to come up with a plan. So the Interior Department presented its own proposed actions last month, including a controversial one that would cut into the senior water rights of Imperial Valley farmers.

Unhappy with those federal proposals, California, Arizona and Nevada doubled down on their negotiations and tried to come up with an alternative. Today’s agreement by the three states to cut water use through 2026 is considered a major, albeit temporary, step. At least half of the 3 million acre feet will be conserved by the end of 2024.

The Interior Department has now retracted its plan so it can add the states’ new agreement to the package of options it is considering.

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton called the agreement “an important step forward towards our shared goal of forging a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home.”

Who in California does this affect? Will they have to use less water?

The agreement would affect the water supplies of about 19 million Southern Californians in six counties who receive imported water from the Metropolitan Water District.

But the impact will be minimal. The district will sacrifice 130,000 acre-feet per year that it usually receives through a transfer arrangement from farmers in the Palo Verde Irrigation District in Riverside and Imperial counties. That water, explained Metropolitan’s manager of Colorado River resources, Bill Hasencamp, will be left in Lake Mead instead. The federal government will reimburse the growers at the rate of $400 per acre foot.

Metropolitan will also voluntarily leave 250,000 acre-feet in Lake Mead this year. That water will be available for the district in the future.

These cuts will not affect Southern Californians this year, Hasencamp said. That’s because rains have greatly boosted supplies from the State Water Project. The state aqueduct delivered only about 100,000 acre-feet to Metropolitan last year, but will deliver 2 million this year. (An acre foot is roughly the amount that three households use per year.)

Still, Hasencamp said water conservation, both in communities and on farms, should remain a way of life.

“We need to be cognizant that the West is getting drier,” he said.

Farmers in the Imperial Valley are the biggest users of Colorado River water. The Imperial Irrigation District announced today that it will reduce usage at farms by roughly 250,000 acre-feet per year, about 10% of its average amount.

The district said it expects to receive $250 million from the federal government to reward the growers who cut back water deliveries. The money could be used to compensate growers who fallow crops.

Imperial Irrigation District General Manager Henry Martinez applauded the agreement, saying it is “is based on voluntary, achievable conservation volumes that will help protect critical Colorado River reservoir elevations, and in particular Lake Mead.”

With water from the Colorado River, arid Imperial County has become the ninth largest agricultural producer in the state, reporting $2.3 billion in sales in 2021, led by cattle and lettuce.

By acreage, alfalfa and other water-intensive crops used to feed dairy cows and cattle dominate in the Imperial Valley, covering more than half of its farmland. Imperial also produces two-thirds of the vegetables consumed in the U.S. during winter months.

The Interior Department said it would use the Inflation Reduction Act to pay farmers and other users for saving 2.3 million acre-feet of water. The remaining 700,000 acre-feet “will be achieved through voluntary, uncompensated reductions by the Lower Basin states.” The Interior Department did not release how much it will spend or who would get the money.

What does the Colorado River need in the longer term?

In most years, farms, cities and tribes use around 13 million acre-feet of the Colorado River’s water, which is significantly more than the 11 million acre-feet of rain and snow that feeds into the river system in an average year. Unless drastic cuts are made, these supplies — most importantly Mead and Powell, which together contain about 50 million acre-feet — could essentially run out of water within several years.

While the new agreement amounts to saving about 1 million acre-feet per year, that’s not enough. Experts say at least twice that much must be conserved.

Since the lower basin states use most of the Colorado River’s water, the onus is on them — especially the biggest user, California — to come up with the water savings.

A wet winter has eased the emergency. But the relief will probably be short-lived in the arid West, where population growth and worsening droughts are sapping water supplies.

Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, said the agreement represents progress, even though more action is needed.

“This is another step toward the long-term downward adjustment in how much Colorado River water we as a region can expect to take out of the system,” she said.

Porter noted that this plan, because it’s a voluntary one, “gets us toward our 2026 goals without risk of litigation.”

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Colorado River, Water

Cracks, Hacks, Attacks: California’s Vulnerable Water System Faces Many Threats

May 10, 2023 By Hayley Smith 1 Comment

On a February morning in 2021, a water treatment plant operator in Oldsmar, Fla., noticed something unusual: An unidentified user had remotely accessed the plant’s computer system and was moving the mouse around the screen.

The operator watched as the intruder clicked into various software programs before landing on a function that controls the amount of sodium hydroxide, or lye, in the plant’s water system. The hacker then increased the amount of lye — a potentially dangerous substance used to control acidity — from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.

The plant operator reversed the change almost immediately, and officials said there was never any threat to public safety. But the incident has highlighted the threats facing major drinking water systems across the country.

“Water systems, like other public utility systems, are part of the nation’s critical infrastructure and can be vulnerable targets when someone desires to adversely affect public safety,” Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, Fla., said at the time.

In California, where epic Sierra Nevada snowpack and “the big melt” have substantially increased the stakes for reservoir managers, officials say they’re taking steps to protect the state’s water systems from hackers, terrorist attacks and natural disasters, such as the flooding that temporarily severed the Los Angeles Aqueduct — the city’s water lifeline that connects to the Owens Valley.

But experts say the challenges are numerous. Many of the systems in California and nationwide are still operating with outdated software, poor passwords, aging infrastructure and other weaknesses that could leave them at risk.

“We’ve seen a steady rise in both the prevalence and the impact of cyberintrusions, as well as an extraordinary increase in ransomware attacks, which have become more destructive and more expensive,” said Joe Oregon, chief of cybersecurity for Region 9 of the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA.

Andrew Reddie, an assistant professor of practice in cybersecurity at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, said much of the problem is “driven by the fact that the infrastructure is really, really old, and ultimately predates the era that we find ourselves in now, where we actually bake cybersecurity into these … systems by design.”

“You can point to any number of critical infrastructure, including things like dams and water treatment plants, that are not terribly well-protected in terms of passwords,” he said.

A lot of older infrastructure is not “air gapped” from the internet, he said, referring to a separation between operational technology and internet technology. That could enable a bad actor to do things such as change chemical levels or open sluices to manipulate flows in water channels or dams.

Compounding the problem is a lack of central regulation or uniform protocols. Multiple agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the American Water Works Assn. and the Department of Homeland Security and CISA — provide some degree of risk management oversight, or offer frameworks and recommendations. But many of the day-to-day decisions are left up to individual operators.

“A lot of the responsibility does certainly fall on the stakeholders’ shoulders to manage their own information systems effectively to prevent any type of cyber compromise or cyber incidents,” said Oregon, of CISA.

The agency estimates that about 63% of the nation’s 91,000 dams are privately owned. Federal, state and local governments and utilities own 35%, and the remaining 2% have “undetermined ownership.”

Despite the risks, experts said it’s important for water systems to be networked in order to expedite maintenance and monitoring. In California, reservoirs are often intentionally spread far apart to maximize rainwater capture and other benefits, so sending physical crews to respond to every potential problem would be time-consuming and expensive, said Ethan Schmertzler, chief executive of Dispel, a cyberdefense firm.

“It all depends upon how water systems are connected, and most water systems in the United States are not — it’s not one national water system,” he said. “The good news is each community is divided into their own command and control systems. The downside is, they’re all divided into their own command and control systems.”

Though most standards are not mandatory, cybersecurity recommendations — and spending — have vastly improved in recent years, he said. Recent legislation through the National Defense Authorization Act will soon compel utilities to report cybersecurity threats to CISA, which will help the federal agency better spot trends, share information and render a response.

John Rizzardo, security coordinator with the State Water Project at the California Department of Water Resources, said the agency operates with an ethos of “layers upon layers of security,” for both physical and cyber threats. Because the agency is also an energy provider in the state, “we probably employ more security features than a lot of just the water industry,” he said.

That doesn’t mean it is immune, however. CISA pointed to the Oroville dam crisis of 2017 as an example of the nation’s need for “comprehensive oversight and guidance over dam resilience.” During that incident, hillside erosion on the dam’s emergency spillway threatened a major flood event and prompted the evacuation of about 200,000 people, though disaster was ultimately averted.

Rizzardo said the agency has since shored up the spillway and made significant security upgrades, and is working to implement the same standards across all State Water Project facilities. The Department of Homeland Security runs national security drills for the dam sector every two years, he said, which the agency also participates in.

But even with the best protocols in place, “there’s still going to be a risk of a cyber or physical attack,” Rizzardo said. “It could happen — we’re doing our best to prevent it — but if it does happen, we do practice our emergency action plans regularly so that we’re prepared if there is some kind of attack that we can try to mitigate, to reduce the consequences.”

Indeed, the Oldsmar incident was not a one-off. A few months later, a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline — a vital U.S. oil conduit between the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast — spurred fuel shortages, flight cancellations and a state of emergency declaration from President Biden.

Earlier this year, Biden unveiled a national strategy for cybersecurity that calls for a “more intentional, more coordinated and more well-resourced approach to cyberdefense.”

Similar attacks have threatened other water systems, including an Iranian attack on a New York dam in 2016, in which hackers tried but failed to take control of a sluice gate.

In January 2021, an unnamed water treatment plant in the San Francisco Bay Area also suffered a cyberattack, NBC News first reported. Hackers accessed the plant’s system through a remote access TeamViewer account and deleted programs used to treat drinking water. The programs were reinstalled the next day and no failures were reported. (The Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, which compiled a report on the incident, said it could not provide more details as an investigation is ongoing.)

One of the largest water providers in the country is the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a massive regional wholesaler that supplies 26 agencies serving 19 million people, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

General manager Adel Hagekhalil said in an email that America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 served as a “catalyst for utilities to evaluate their resilience to risk and create emergency plans for responding to all hazards.”

“We are constantly taking steps to ensure the security of our water supplies against physical and cybersecurity threats,” Hagekhalil said. He noted that community water systems serving more than 3,300 people are required to actively update their risk and resilience assessment and emergency response plans every five years.

Additionally, the MWD employs cybersecurity experts and constantly monitors network and computer activity to “detect unusual events quickly so they can be addressed,” he said. Computer and network access is tightly controlled, and employees are also required to take annual cybersecurity training. The agency also conducts periodic emergency management exercises at different facilities to simulate responses to physical threats such as earthquakes, floods, fires and terrorist attacks, which include first responders and law enforcement agencies, he said.

But the U.S. is home to more than 55,000 public water systems and 16,000 wastewater systems, said Jennifer Lyn Walker, director of infrastructure cyberdefense at the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center. One of her primary concerns was that there is often a “lack of awareness” about the potential for cyberthreats and other such vulnerabilities.

“Physical threats are so much more top of mind, or more easily identified or more easily understood than the cyberthreat,” she said. “The concern is a lack of preparedness.”

However, most large systems in California “are doing what needs to be done” when it comes to cybersecurity, she said. Small and medium-size systems, which often have fewer resources than major providers, may need assistance, however, and could benefit from the guidance of larger operators.

“A smaller system that just barely services 5,000 people — that’s still 5,000 people’s lives that could be at risk if something should happen, and that’s from physical or cyber [threats],” she said.

Reddie, of Berkeley, said more auditing would provide a better understanding of which systems are networked, as well as which systems follow best practices. He also recommended educating workforces about proper cyberhygiene.

Even with such steps in place, however, vulnerabilities remain. Ongoing investigations into the Oldsmar incident indicate that it may not have been the work of an outside hacker at all, but might have been caused by an internal employee. Should that prove to be the case, it would highlight that insider threats can also be cause for concern, Reddie said.

Click here to read the full article in LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Gavin Newsom, Water

Water windfall: Key California reservoir fills for just third time in 12 years

April 4, 2023 By Paul Rogers 3 Comments

San Luis Reservoir, between Gilroy and Los Banos, is the largest off-stream reservoir in the United States

Five months ago, San Luis Reservoir — the massive lake along Highway 152 between Gilroy and Los Banos — was just 24% full, an arid landscape of cracked mud and lonely boat ramps painfully far away from the dwindling water’s edge.

But today in one of the most visible signs that Northern California’s drought is over, San Luis is full. Since Nov. 8, the water level has risen 144 feet — roughly the equivalent of submerging a 10-story building.

The state’s fifth-largest reservoir, a key water supply for millions of people from Silicon Valley to San Diego that also irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of Central Valley farmland, is at 98% capacity and expected to reach 100% in a few days.

“A lot of people are coming out to take photos of it,” said Arzan Kermani, a state park aide working at the lake’s south shore this week. “They’re really surprised. The happiest people are the boaters. Hopefully, it stays this way for a long time.”

Hillsides around the 9-mile-long reservoir’s shoreline have turned from parched yellow to pastoral green.

“It’s significant,” said Levi Johnson, an operations manager with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. “It’s a huge turnaround after three consecutive years of drought.”

The dramatic improvement is just the third time in the past 12 years that the reservoir, which was dedicated by John F. Kennedy in 1962, has been full. The bounty is part of the reason why Santa Clara County and other parts of the state have been told by state and federal water providers they will receive all the water they need this summer. Since 2012, only 2017 and 2019 saw similar conditions.

“It looks massive,” said Lars Kvarna of Mountain View, who visited for a hike on Wednesday. “And the hills are about as green as it gets. It’s impressive that the reservoir can fill up so quickly.”

The lake holds 2 million acre-feet, enough water for 10 million people for a year. A vast inland sea, it contains 12 times as much water as Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County, five times as much as Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy and 100 times as much as Lexington Reservoir in Los Gatos.

Unlike many dams, which are built on big rivers, San Luis’ 382-foot-high earthen dam holds back a reservoir that acts as a switching yard for California’s water system. The reservoir is filled not by blocking a river, but by people — officials from the state Department of Water Resources and federal Bureau of Reclamation. They pump water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta near Tracy, 65 miles to the north, into San Luis, where it is stored. Then it’s sent down canals to 600,000 acres of farms in the San Joaquin Valley and cities as far south as Los Angeles and San Diego.

A tunnel from the reservoir through the Diablo Range also sends the water into Silicon Valley, where it is a key part of the water supply for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which jointly operates San Luis Reservoir with the state Department of Water Resources, announced that cities south of the Delta will receive 100% of their water allocations through the Central Valley Project this summer — up from 25% last year and the year before. Farmers south of the Delta will receive 80%, up from 0% the past two years.

In fact, there’s so much water in California’s reservoirs and canals after a winter of atmospheric river storms, and the promise of much more when the record Sierra snowpack melts, that finding places with capacity to store it is becoming a challenge.

“It’s what happened in 2017,” said Jeffrey Mount, a professor emeritus at UC Davis and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s water center. “They’re running out of places to put water.”

On Monday, Metropolitan Water District, which serves 20 million people in Southern California, began refilling Southern California’s largest reservoir for the first time in three years. Now 61% full, Diamond Valley reservoir in Riverside County will go to 100% this year, they said, with the same Delta water that has filled San Luis.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom relaxed most water restrictions in California.

“Are we out of the drought?” Newsom said. “Mostly. But not completely.”

He noted that some parts of the state, particularly the Central Valley where farmers have overpumped groundwater for generations, still have overdrawn aquifers.

In March, Newsom signed an executive order to reduce red tape through June 1 to allow more water — particularly as the Sierra snowmelt — to be stored in underground aquifer recharging projects. Newsom has come under some criticism, however, for not constructing any new reservoirs during his more than four years in office.

The construction of San Luis is part of California’s water lore.

On Aug. 18, 1962, President Kennedy, in a well-tailored blue suit, after flying to California on Air Force One, took a helicopter to the construction site. He was met by Gov. Pat Brown, former Gov. Jerry Brown’s father, and a crowd of local officials, farmers and others.

It was a time when the elder Brown was pouring concrete across the state, building highways, universities, dams and other structures.

“It is a pleasure for me to come out here and help blow up this valley in the name of progress,” Kennedy joked.

Click here to read the full article in the Mercury News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Gavin Newsom, Water

California Releases Its Own Plan for Colorado River Cuts

February 2, 2023 By Kathleen Ronayne and Suman Naishadham 4 Comments

California released a plan Tuesday detailing how Western states reliant on the Colorado River should save more water. It came a day after the six other states in the river basin made a competing proposal.

In a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California described how states could conserve between 1 million and nearly 2 million acre feet of water through new cuts based on the elevation of Lake Mead, a key reservoir.

Its plan did not account for water lost to evaporation and during transportation — a move sought by the other states that would mean big cuts for California.

The 1,450-mile river (2,334-kilometer) serves 40 million people across the West and Mexico, generating hydroelectric power for regional markets and irrigating nearly 6 million acres (2,428 hectares) of farmland.

A multi-decade drought in the West worsened by climate change, rising demand and overuse has sent water levels at key reservoirs along the river to unprecedented lows. That has forced federal and state officials to take additional steps to protect the system.

California’s plan and the separate methods outlined by states Monday came in response to Reclamation asking them last year to detail how they would use between 15% and 30% less water. The federal agency operates the major dams in the river system.

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Biden admin report recommends major Alaska oil project US winter storm causes 3rd day of dangerous, icy conditions Monarch butterflies wintering in California rebound California has huge snowpack, but dry trend raises worries

All seven states missed that deadline last August. Six of them regrouped and came to an agreement by the end of January. California was the the lone holdout to that agreement, and responded Tuesday with its own plan.

Unlike the other states’ plan, California’s does not factor the roughly 1.5 million acre feet of Colorado River water lost to evaporation and transportation.

Instead, it proposes reducing water taken out of Lake Mead by 1 million acre feet, with 400,000 acre feet coming from its own users. The state previously outlined that level of cuts in October. Arizona would bear the brunt of bigger cuts — 560,000 acre feet — while Nevada would make up the rest. Those numbers are based on discussions from prior negotiations, California’s letter said.

An acre foot is enough water to supply two to three U.S. households for a year.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources said it was still reviewing California’s proposal and didn’t have an immediate comment.

But Tom Buschatzke, the department’s director, said earlier Tuesday that water managers across the basin couldn’t reach agreement with California on cuts, even at the broader state level.

“The big issues are what does the priority system mean, what does the junior priority mean and how does that attach to that outcome of who takes what cut?” he said. “That was the issue over the summer, that was the issue over the fall, that’s still the issue.”

California has the largest allocation of water among the seven U.S. states that tap the Colorado River. It is also among the last to face water cuts in times of shortage because of its senior water rights.

That has given the state an advantage over others in talks that spanned months over how to cut water use.

California water officials have often repeated that any additional water cuts must be legally defensible and in line with western water law that honors its water rights.

JB Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California and a board member of the Imperial Irrigation District, indicated California may file a lawsuit if the federal government attempts to count for evaporative losses.

“The best way to avoid conflict and ensure that we can put water in the river right away is through a voluntary approach, not putting proposals that sidestep the Law of the River and ignore California’s senior right and give no respect to that,” he said.

Existing agreements only spell cuts when Lake Mead’s elevation is between 1,090 feet (332 meters) and 1,025 feet (312 meters). If it drops any lower than 1,025 feet, California’s plan proposes even further cuts based on the so-called Law of the River — likely meaning Arizona and Nevada would bear the brunt of them. Those cuts are designed to keep Lake Mead from reaching “dead pool,” when it could no longer pump out water to farms and cities including Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

The reservoir’s current elevation is around 1,045 feet.

In total, California’s plan could save between 1 million and 2 million acre-feet of water based on the elevation levels at Lake Mead, from which Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico draw their share of the river.

Adel Hagekhalil, general manager for the Metropolitan Water District of California, the nation’s largest water supplier, said it was important to protect key reservoirs “without getting mired in lengthy legal battles.”

Hagekhalil and other water managers pointed to numerous efforts the state has made to drastically reduce its water usage by making agricultural and urban water use more efficient.

“California knows how to permanently reduce use of the river — we have done it over the past 20 years, through billions of dollars in investments and hard-earned partnerships,” he said in a statement. “We can help the entire Southwest do it again as we move forward.”

The new proposals do not change states’ water allocations immediately — or disrupt their existing water rights. Instead, they will be folded into a larger proposal Reclamation is working on to revise how it operates Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams — behemoth power producers on the Colorado River.

Despite California’s inability to reach agreement with the other six states so far, the parties said they hope to keep talking.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California drought, Drought, Water

Emails Reveal Tensions in Colorado River Talks

January 31, 2023 By Kathleen Ronaynie and Felicia Fonseca 2 Comments

Competing priorities, outsized demands and the federal government’s retreat from a threatened deadline stymied a deal last summer on how to drastically reduce water use from the parched Colorado River, emails obtained by The Associated Press show.

The documents span the June-to-August window the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation gave states to reach consensus on water cuts for a system that supplies 40 million people annually — or have the federal government force them. They largely include communication among water officials in Arizona and California, the major users in the river’s Lower Basin.

Reclamation wanted the seven U.S. states that rely on the river to decide how to cut 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water — or up to roughly one-third — on top of already anticipated reductions. The emails, obtained through a public records request, depict a desire to reach a consensus but persistent disagreement over how much each state could or should give.

As the deadline approached without meaningful progress, one water manager warned: “We’re all headed to a very dark place.”

“The challenges we had this summer were significant challenges, they truly were,” Chris Harris, executive director of the Colorado River Board of California, said in an interview about the early negotiations. “I don’t know that anybody was to blame, I genuinely don’t. There were an awful lot of different interpretations of what was being asked and what we were trying to do.”

Scientists say the megadrought gripping the southwestern U.S. is the worst in 1,200 years, putting a deep strain on the Colorado River as key reservoirs dip to historically low levels. If states don’t begin taking less out of the river, the major reservoirs threaten to fall so low they can’t produce hydropower or supply any water at all to farms that grow crops for the rest of the nation and cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

The future of the river seemed so precarious last summer that some water managers felt attempting to reach a voluntary deal was futile — only mandated cuts would stave off crisis.

“We are out of time and out of any cushion to allow for a voluntary plan,” Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, told a Bureau of Reclamation official in a July 18 email.

As 2023 begins, fresh incentives make the states more likely to give up water. The federal government has put up $4 billion for drought relief, and Colorado River users have submitted proposals to get some of that money through actions like leaving fields unplanted. Some cities are ripping up thirsty decorative grass, and tribes and major water agencies have left some water in key reservoirs — either voluntarily or by mandate.

Reclamation also has agreed to spend $250 million mitigating hazards at a drying California lake bed, a condition of the state’s water users agreeing to cut their use by 400,000 acre feet in a proposal released in October.

The Interior Department is still evaluating proposals for a slice of the $4 billion and can’t say how much savings it will generate, Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau said in an interview.

The states are again trying to reach a grand bargain — with a deadline of Tuesday — so that Reclamation can factor it into a larger plan to modify operations at Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam, behemoth power producers on the Colorado River. Failure to do so would set up the possibility of the federal government imposing cuts — a move that could invite litigation.

Figuring out who absorbs additional water cuts has been contentious, with allegations of drought profiteering, reneging on commitments, too many negotiators in the room and an unsteady hand from the federal government, the emails and follow-up interviews showed.

California says it’s a partner willing to sacrifice, but other states see it as a reluctant participant clinging to a water priority system where it ranks near the top. Arizona and Nevada have long felt they’re unfairly forced to bear the brunt of cuts because of a water rights system developed long ago, a simmering frustration that reared its head during talks.

Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton’s call for a massive water cut in testimony to Congress on June 14 was a public bombshell of sorts. A week earlier, with a heads-up from the federal government, the Lower Basin states talked about collectively, with Mexico, cutting up to 2 million acre-feet during a meeting in Salt Lake City, the emails and interviews showed.

But as the weeks passed and proposals were exchanged, the Lower Basin states barely reached half that amount, and the commitment was nowhere near firm, the emails showed. Adding to the difficulty was not knowing what Mexico, which also has a share of the river, might contribute.

In a series of exchanges through July, Arizona and California each proposed multiple ways to achieve cuts, building on existing agreements tied to the levels of Lake Mead, factoring in the water lost to evaporation or inefficient infrastructure, and fiercely protecting a priority system, though it was clear negotiators were becoming weary.

The states shared disdain for a proposal from farmers near Yuma and southern California to be paid $1,500 an acre foot for water they conserved. Former Central Arizona Project general manager Ted Cooke responded by suggesting the farmers make it work at one-third of the price, which still was higher but closer to going rates.

In late July, Harris, of California, emailed a proposal to the Bureau of Reclamation outlining scenarios in the range of 1 million acre feet in cuts, saying it was imperative negotiators be able to “declare some level of victory.”

“Otherwise,” he wrote, “I genuinely believe that we are at an impasse, and we’re all headed to a very dark place.”

But ultimately, Arizona and Nevada never felt that California was willing to give enough.

“It was futile, it wasn’t enough. We did not trust that California was going to come through on their piece of it,” Cooke said in an interview.

By then, Reclamation privately told the states — but didn’t acknowledge publicly — that it backed away from the supposed mid-August deadline, officials involved in the talks said. Beaudreau, the deputy Interior secretary, said in an interview the deadline was never meant to create an ultimatum between reaching a deal and forced cuts.

But state officials said when it became clear the federal government wouldn’t act unilaterally, it created a “chilling effect” that removed the urgency from the talks because water users with higher-priority water rights were no longer at risk of harsh cuts, Arizona’s Buschatzke said in an interview.

“Without that hammer, there was a different tone of negotiations,” he said.

Today, the Interior Department’s priority remains ensuring Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam have enough water in them to maintain hydropower, and the department will do whatever is necessary to ensure that, Beaudreau said.

The Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado — which historically haven’t used their full supplies — are looking toward the Lower Basin states to do much of the work.

Reclamation is now focused on weighing the latest round of comments from states on how to save the river. Nevada wants to count water lost to evaporation and transportation in water allocations — a move that could mean the biggest volume of cuts for California — and some Arizona water managers agree, comment letters obtained by the AP show.

But disputes remain over how to determine what level of cuts are fair and legal. California’s goal remains protecting its status while other states and tribes want more than old water rights taken into account — such as whether users have access to other water sources, and the effects of cuts on disadvantaged communities and food security.

Click here to read the full article at AP News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Water, Water storage

Could the Pacific Ocean be California’s Savior?

December 14, 2022 By Dan Walters 8 Comments

From the earliest exploration by European explorers of what became California, its position on the western coast of the North American continent has been its most important attribute.

Its coastline allowed that exploration and the development of outposts while most of the continent was still a mysterious wilderness. It fostered the 1849 gold rush that hastened California statehood. Its beaches drew millions of visitors. It made California the arsenal and staging point for World War II’s Pacific Theater and, finally, it became a focal point of global oceanic trade.

Could California’s coastal waters now become its savior, ending ever-increasing shortages of water and electrical energy that threaten the state’s economic and societal future?

Yes it could, but only if California’s political and civic leaders overcome their tendency to muff big public works — as symbolized by the bullet train’s history of over-spending and under-performing, decades of foot-dragging on much-needed water storage projects, and crippling bottlenecks at the state’s ports.

Finally, after decades of dithering, California’s Byzantine bureauracy is finally warming up to desalination of seawater as a vital piece of the state’s water supply, although it still resists big projects that could have real impact on shortages as it does in other water-short nations.

Meanwhile, California is just beginning to grasp the potential of offshore windmills to generate huge amounts of renewable electrical energy that would help close the state’s current supply gap, fill enormous new demands, and meet the state’s ambitious goals for ending its dependence on fossil fuels.

Last week, the federal government conducted auctions for windpower development rights on two oceanic sites, one 20 miles west of Morro Bay and the other off Humboldt County.

Advocates believe the sites could generate up to 8 gigawatts of electrical power, about one-sixth of the state’s current peak power demand on hot summer days and about a third of the state’s goal of 25 gigawatts of offshore windpower by 2045.

“Offshore wind is a critical component to achieving our world-leading clean energy goals and this sale is an historic step on California’s march toward a future free of fossil fuels,” Newsom said in a statement.

However, given the state’s sorry record on big-impact projects, will it really happen? Will we, as state plans now suggest, really see offshore power begin to flow into the grid within 10 years?

Don’t count on it.

The floating platforms to support the immense windmills, anchored in more than 2,000 feet of water, face critical attention from environmental groups and a phalanx of federal and state regulatory hurdles. They also would require onshore support facilities in coastal communities where resistance to development is culturally ingrained, plus cables to bring the power to shore and extensive expansions of transmission facilities to tie into the grid.

The time frame to make all of this happen, as the state assumes in its overall plan to shift California to renewable electric power, is very short. We’re now 22 years into the 21st century and supposedly all of this would occur in just 23 more years — simultaneously with many other elements of decarbonization, such as shifting to battery- or hydrogen-powered cars and trucks and eliminating natural gas in homes, business and industry.

It would take an immense cultural change in the state’s governing apparatus to make it all happen by the designated deadline, a sense of urgency, a unity of purpose, and much more managerial competence than California has mustered in the last half-century.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Water, Water storage

California Wells Run Dry as Drought Depletes Groundwater

October 5, 2022 By Terry Chea Leave a Comment

As California’s drought deepens, Elaine Moore’s family is running out of an increasingly precious resource: water.

The Central Valley almond growers had two wells go dry this summer. Two of her adult children are now getting water from a new well the family drilled after the old one went dry last year. She’s even supplying water to a neighbor whose well dried up.

“It’s been so dry this last year. We didn’t get much rain. We didn’t get much snowpack,” Moore said, standing next to a dry well on her property in Chowchilla, California. “Everybody’s very careful with what water they’re using. In fact, my granddaughter is emptying the kids’ little pool to flush the toilets.”

Amid a megadrought plaguing the American West, more rural communities are losing access to groundwater as heavy pumping depletes underground aquifers that aren’t being replenished by rain and snow.

More than 1,200 wells have run dry this year statewide, a nearly 50% increase over the same period last year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. By contrast, fewer than 100 dry wells were reported annually in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The groundwater crisis is most severe in the San Joaquin Valley, California’s agricultural heartland, which exports fruits, vegetables and nuts around the world.

Shrinking groundwater supplies reflect the severity of California’s drought, which is now entering its fourth year. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 94% of the state is in severe, extreme or exceptional drought.

California just experienced its three driest years on record, and state water officials said Monday they’re preparing for another dry year because the weather phenomenon known as La Nina is expected to occur for the third consecutive year.

Farmers are getting little surface water from the state’s depleted reservoirs, so they’re pumping more groundwater to irrigate their crops. That’s causing water tables to drop across California. State data shows that 64% of wells are at below-normal water levels.

Water shortages are already reducing the region’s agricultural production as farmers are forced to fallow fields and let orchards wither. An estimated 531,00 acres (215,000 hectares) of farmland went unplanted this year because of a lack of irrigation water, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As climate change brings hotter temperatures and more severe droughts, cities and states around the world are facing water shortages as lakes and rivers dry up. Many communities are pumping more groundwater and depleting aquifers at an alarming pace.

“This is a key challenge not just for California, but for communities across the West moving forward in adapting to climate change,” said Andrew Ayres, a water researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

In Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, supervisors on Tuesday approved a six-month moratorium on drilling of new groundwater wells. It follows a lawsuit alleging the county wasn’t appropriately managing groundwater.

Madera County, north of Fresno, has been hit particularly hard because it relies heavily on groundwater. The county has reported about 430 dry wells so far this year.

In recent years, the county has seen the rapid expansion of thirsty almond and pistachio orchards that are typically irrigated by agricultural wells that run deeper than domestic wells.

“The bigger straw is going to suck the water from right beneath the little straw,” said Madeline Harris, a policy manager with the advocacy group Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. She stood next to a municipal well that’s run dry in Fairmead, a town of 1,200 surrounded by nut orchards.

“Municipal wells like this one are being put at risk and are going dry because of the groundwater overdraft problems from agriculture,” Harris said. “There are families who don’t have access to running water right now because they have dry domestic wells.”

Residents with dry wells can get help from a state program that provides bottled water as well as storage tanks regularly filled by water delivery trucks. The state also provides money to replace dry wells, but there’s a long wait to get a new one.

Not everyone is getting assistance.

Thomas Chairez said his Fairmead property, which he rents to a family of eight, used to get water from his neighbor’s well. But when it went dry two years ago, his tenants lost access to running water.

Chairez is trying to get the county to provide a storage tank and water delivery service. For now, his tenants have to fill up 5-gallon (19-liter) buckets at a friend’s home and transport water by car each day. They use the water to cook and take showers. They have portable toilets in the backyard.

“They’re surviving,” Chairez said. “In Mexico, I used to do that. I used to carry two buckets myself from far away. So we got to survive somehow. This is an emergency.”

Well drillers are in high demand as water pumps stop working across the San Joaquin Valley.

Ethan Bowles and his colleagues were recently drilling a new well at a ranch house in the Madera Ranchos neighborhood, where many wells have gone dry this year.

“It’s been almost nonstop phone calls just due to the water table dropping constantly,” said Bowles, who works for Chowchilla-based Drew and Hefner Well Drilling. “Most residents have had their wells for many years and all of a sudden the water stops flowing.”

His company must now drill down 500 and 600 feet (152 to 183 meters) to get clients a steady supply of groundwater. That’s a couple hundred feet deeper than older wells.

“The wells just have to go deeper,” Bowles said. “You have to hit a different aquifer and get them a different part of that water table so they can actually have fresh water for their house.”

In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to slow a frenzy of well-drilling over the past few years. The temporary measure prohibits local agencies from issuing permits for new wells that could harm nearby wells or structures.

California’s groundwater troubles come as local agencies seek to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2014 to prevent groundwater overpumping during the last drought. The law requires regional agencies to manage their aquifers sustainably by 2042.

Water experts believe the law will lead to more sustainable groundwater supplies over the next two decades, but the road will be bumpy. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that about 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) of agricultural land, about 10% of the current total, will have to come out of production over the next two decades.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Water, Water Drought

Tidal Marsh or ‘Fake Habitat’? California Environmental Project Draws Criticism

September 12, 2022 By Ian James 1 Comment

Southwest of Sacramento, the branching arms of waterways reach into a patchwork of farm fields and pastures. Canals and wetlands fringed with reeds meet a sunbaked expanse of dry meadows.

These lands on the northwestern edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Deltahave now been targeted for restoration following the widespread destruction of estuary marsh habitats that began over a century ago.

But one habitat restoration project funded by a large agricultural water district is drawing criticism from environmental advocates. They say that while the project is based on claims of ecologically important marsh habitat, a large portion of the land is a high-and-dry former cattle pasture that does little to benefit endangered fish.

The dispute over the roughly 2,100-acre property centers on questions about which lands should be counted as tidal marsh habitat in the delta, one of California’s primary water sources. State and federal agencies that operate the two major water projects pumping from the delta have been supporting a series of habitat restoration projects as they work toward a requirement to restore at least 8,000 acres of tidal marshes to mitigate the ecological harm caused by water diversions.

A large portion of that requirement could be satisfied by the property southwest of Sacramento — called the Lower Yolo Ranch Tidal Habitat Restoration Project — if federal wildlife officials agree with claims by state and federal water agencies that much of the property should receive credit as tidal marsh that benefits endangered delta smelt.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2MFYt

The Westlands Water District bought the property in 2007 and has done restoration work at the site by grading the land, removing concrete infrastructure and digging new tidal channels and swales. Thomas Birmingham, general manager of Westlands, has said the district bought the property because it was “an ideal location for restoration of tidal marsh habitat.”

The state Department of Water Resources has claimed that more than 1,700 acres, or about 80% of the property, benefits delta smelt. If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirms this and grants full credit for the acreage as tidal marsh habitat, Westlands is set to receive nearly $41 million from the state.

But environmental advocates argue that only about one-fourth of the property should receive credit as tidal marsh habitat, while the rest of the land is too high above sea level to get wet during high tides. They have pointed to documents indicating that much of the property lies 6.5 feet or more above sea level.

“They’re paying Westlands for fake habitat,” said Patricia Schifferle, director of Pacific Advocates, an environmental consulting firm. “Much of the area is upland habitat and will not support fish. … They’re selling cow pasture as if it was tidal habitat.”

The property is in the southern portion of the Yolo Bypass, a floodplain on the north side of the delta.

The delta smelt, a finger-length fish, has been spiraling toward extinction despite decades of rescue efforts.

Schifferle pointed out that the Department of Water Resources’ request to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to certify credit for 1,713 acres of tidal marsh habitat, includes lands as much as 7.7 feet above sea level. Schifferle said that is too high to benefit fish.

“Delta smelt better grow legs, because there’s no way that’s tidal habitat for delta smelt,” Schifferle said. At $23,815 per acre, she said, “that’s a lot of money for cow pasture.”

A coalition of environmental groups raised concerns about the deal in a letter to state agencies in July. The groups, which included the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, said documents show “that there generally is no tidal influence on lands at elevations above 6.5 feet above sea level in this part of the delta, and therefore these lands are not ‘tidal’ marsh, ‘tidal wetland,’ or ‘intertidal’ habitat” and should not be credited toward meeting environmental mitigation requirements for the State Water Project.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Water

Dirty Water, Drying Wells: Central Californians Shoulder Drought’s Inequities

September 5, 2022 By HAYLEY SMITH 3 Comments

On a hot morning in August, the pressure gauge on Jesús Benítez’s well read about 10 pounds per square inch — barely enough for a trickle.

The 74-year-old has been living just outside of Visalia, in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley, for about 14 years, ever since he decamped from Downey in search of bigger skies and more space. But the once-green three-acre property that was meant to be his retirement haven is now dry, brittle and brown.

Like a growing number of Central Californians, Benítez is bearing the brunt of the state’s punishing drought, which is evaporating the state’s surface water even as a frenzy of well drilling saps precious reserves underground. As a result, the number of dry wells in California has increased 70% since last year, while the number of Californians living with contaminated drinking water is at nearly 1 million.

The majority of those people live in low-income communities and communities of color, state data show — and experts say heat, drought and climate change are only making those inequities worse.

“We’re fighting an uphill battle due to climate change,” said Gregory Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at UCLA. “Even with the progress we’re making, there are other losses that few people anticipated when it comes to heat impacts on water quality … and the pace at which people, and even larger systems, are at risk of running out of water entirely.”

Benítez is one of the unlucky people dealing with both. His sputtering well — the only source of water on his property — is polluted with nitrates, uranium and hexavalent chromium, which are becoming more concentrated as the water draws down. He and about 60 other residents in the area are trying to get connected to the water system that services the city of Visalia, but officials have told them the work may not be complete until 2024.

“I hope I don’t die without water by then,” Benítez said. The nearest municipal pipeline ends just about 100 feet from his property.

His story is becoming increasingly common in California, where an audit last month found that the State Water Resources Control Board “lacks the urgency necessary to ensure that failing water systems receive needed assistance in a timely manner.” The audit also noted that more than two-thirds of the water systems that have fallen below basic quality standards are in disadvantaged communities of significant financial need.

“California is one of the largest economies in the world, and yet this is happening here,” said Pedro Calderón Michel, a spokesman with the nonprofit group the Community Water Center. All too often, he said, “the browner your skin, the browner your water will be.”

The problem is multifaceted. On the surface, climate change-fueled heat and drynessare contributing to a thirstier atmosphere that is sapping the state’s water, while a persistent lack of rain and snowpack means mounting deficits are not getting replenished. More than 97% of the the state is under severe, extreme or exceptional drought, and officials have said the first half of the year was the driest it’s ever been.

But much of the problem is happening underground, where California’s aquifers have long served as a reliable source of water, especially during dry times. In 2014, the state passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a historic law intended to address the overpumping of those supplies. But the act laid out a timeline that spans more than two decades, and set off a rash of well drilling among those trying to beat the deadline, particularly in agricultural areas where wells are the lifeblood of the industry.

Residents who rely on domestic wells are increasingly paying the price. Benítez’s well, for example, dried up after a neighbor installed a new, deeper well to help water 25 acres of silage corn, or corn used to feed dairy cows and other livestock.

That neighbor, Frank Ferreira, said he spent $160,000 on the well, and he may need to dole out even more to dig deeper when it dries up. When asked whether the state has placed any limits on how deep he can go, Ferreira said, “not yet.”

While agriculture is a leading factor in groundwater depletion and contamination, the added layer of drought is exacerbating the problem, according to Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board.

Click here to read the full article at the LA Times

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Drought, Water