For eight days last summer, a group of about 80 California ranchers and farmers took more than half the Shasta River’s flow during severe drought conditions, violating state requirements designed to protect salmon. The state’s water regulator couldn’t stop the illegal diversion but fined the group the maximum penalty it could — $4,000. The fine translated to about $50 per person.
Democrats leading California’s Senate and Assembly on Monday announced a legislative state budget deal, but they remain at odds with Gov. Gavin Newsom over his sweeping plan to streamline major infrastructure projects and reduce environmental litigation delays. Newsom introduced a series of budget bills related to infrastructure last month after lawmakers had already wrapped up committee hearings on spending proposals.
The biggest rivers in the U.S. are the lifeblood of the regions they flow through. They provide drinking water, irrigation for agricultural lands and a habitat where important ecosystems can thrive.
But as climate change worsens, some of the nation’s most important rivers are in serious trouble because of the drought gripping several regions.
The results are in: As California endured its three driest years on record, urban water users made a significant effort to conserve water, but fell far short of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request to reduce their use by 15%.
Between July 2021, when Newsom first called on water users to voluntarily cut back, and March of this year, when he rescinded that request amid a very wet winter, statewide savings were 7%, or about half of what was requested. That amounts to about 9 fewer gallons per person per day, a Los Angeles Times analysis has found.
In a warm, overstuffed auditorium at the University of Colorado on Thursday, tribal representatives from around the Colorado River Basin had a message for their federal and state counterparts: Tribes won’t be cut out of key water talks that will decide the future of the basin.
“As we develop a post-2026 plan, it’s no longer acceptable for the U.S. to meet with seven basin states separately, and then come to basin tribes, after the fact, with a post-hoc explanation or rationalization of what was discussed, or even worse, what was decided,” said Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.
When California imposed its first-ever regulation on the extraction of water from underground aquifers in 2014, it gave environmental groups a landmark victory in their decades-long effort to overhaul water use laws.
It was also a political setback for farmers, who are California’s major water users and have depended on wells to irrigate their crops as increasingly frequent droughts reduce surface water in rivers and reservoirs.
In the long sweep of human history, water has always played a central role in determining the geography of civilizations, and eons ago it influenced the migration of our early ancestors out of Africa and across the world. The ability to manage water contributed to the success or failure of empires along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of the Middle East, the Indus in southern Asia, and the Yangtze in China. This First Age of water saw the earliest efforts to manipulate water with dams, aqueducts and intentional irrigation, and also the first water laws, institutions and water conflicts.
An early bird El Niño has officially formed, likely to be strong, warp weather worldwide and give an already warming Earth an extra kick of natural heat, meteorologists announced.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Thursday issued an El Niño advisory, announcing the arrival of the climatic condition. It may not quite be like the others.
El Niño conditions are present and are expected to gradually strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2023-24. An #ElNino Advisory is now in effect. https://t.co/5zlzaZ0D9Z pic.twitter.com/KEkExCC3Hc
— NWS Climate Prediction Center (@NWSCPC) June 8, 2023
Hot on the heels of a short-term agreement to cut back on Colorado River water use, states are looking ahead to talks about more permanent cuts. The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency which manages the West’s water, announced that those negotiations will formally begin next week with a notice in the Federal Register.
The announcement came at an environmental law conference in Boulder, Colorado on Thursday, where scientists, state and federal governments, and tribes met at the University of Colorado’s law school.
Early data shows the greatest net gain of water over the winter in nearly 22 years, but the state’s groundwater levels still suffer from the effects of years of drought.
After years of intense drought and diminishing groundwater, California just saw its greatest year-over-year water gains in two decades, according to data from the GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On) satellite mission, a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). This past winter’s bonanza of atmospheric rivers alleviated some of the water deficit that the state incurred during periods of drought over the last 10 years, which included the three driest years on record in California.
