After the West’s warm winter and fast spring thaw, reservoirs that many communities depend on are entering summer with little margin for error.
With reserves already thin, water managers in places such as Utah and Idaho are warning that summer could bring stricter conservation rules and heightened wildfire danger.
Summer is just around the corner, but our recent hot weather makes it feel like it’s already here. So, if you’re thinking about hitting the lake to go fishing, boating, or just relaxing… how full is that lake? And how about the water temperatures in the local rivers?
We’ve been talking about how the Sierra Nevada snowpack started it’s Spring melt-off early this year for a while now, so now it’s time to take a look at how our reservoirs are doing as we near Summer. And while the snowpack news has been bad, the reservoir news is pretty good. Most major reservoirs around the state are 75% to 95% full – great news! Because the Sierra snowpack is just about done, this will likely be their peak for the year – they likely won’t see any significant inflow until next November, at the earliest.
While the future of the Colorado River remains uncertain, officials from Nevada, California and Arizona are looking at other options to increase water stability in the southwest.
This week, the three states agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding to explore the legal and policy framework of possibly exchanging shares of Colorado River water and explore the potential need for federal funds to facilitate interstate exchanges.
San Diego signed a deal Tuesday to start talking about something that’s never been done before: Sell water to other thirsty states in the Southwest.
The San Diego County Water Authority received a lot of national press recently because it’s probably the only water agency in this Colorado River-dependent region that has claim over more water than its people and industries use. Even The New York Times showed up Tuesday to catch the Water Authority’s general manager, Dan Denham, raise a glass of desalted water with top Colorado River negotiators celebrating their shared interest in creating an interstate water market.
For years, Arizona has explored the possibility of turning seawater into drinking water as a way to help offset shortages on the Colorado River.
Now, state water leaders say a new partnership with California could move that concept one step closer to reality.
Water leaders from California, Nevada and Arizona gathered at the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant on Wednesday, June 3, to sign an agreement aimed at exploring interstate water exchanges as a way to strengthen long-term water reliability across the Southwest.
The memorandum of understanding was signed June 3 at the plant by officials from the San Diego County Water Authority, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Southern Nevada Water Authority, Arizona Department of Water Resources, Central Arizona Project and Salt River Project.
Negotiators for some of the seven states competing for dwindling Colorado River water supplies say they’re disappointed in a federal plan to adopt only short-term fixes in the coming years, and they think going to mediation could help reach a longer-lasting agreement.
The Trump administration’s Bureau of Reclamation has said that, lacking a seven-state agreement to guide operations and cutbacks to arrest the loss of reservoir storage, it intends to create a 10-year “framework” with new rules to be imposed every two years. The lead negotiators for Colorado and Nevada appeared on stage at a June 5 conference and both said such a plan lacks the certainty that their water users need when deciding on investments.
Even as California is offering to take less water from the drought-shrunken Colorado River, one of the state’s biggest cities that’s long been the most dependent on it curiously now has excess water to sell.
In a good year, San Diego gets barely 8 inches of rain. And not too long ago, the picturesque coastal city was staring down major water supply shortages. It’s notoriously at the end of the line of the Colorado River “straw,” a good three-hour drive from the shrinking river itself. But today, thanks in part to aggressive water recycling and urban and agricultural conservation programs and a big bet made on salt water, San Diego has a surplus and other thirsty nearby cities and states are eager to tap it.
San Diego’s regional water agency is proposing modest rate increases in the coming years. That’s not a description usually associated with the San Diego County Water Authority.
Just a few years ago, the beleaguered agency was charging double-digit increases in wholesale water rates. Last year’s increase was 8.3%, which was whittled down from a much higher proposal.
San Diego could sell some of its rights to Colorado River water to Arizona and Nevada under a deal struck Wednesday that could help parched inland states fill a widening gap between water supply and demand.
The San Diego County Water Authority now has a water surplus thanks to a desalination plant the utility opened a decade ago after facing shortages of its own. Water wouldn’t physically move inland, but the utility wouldn’t draw as much from the river as it’s entitled to.
