A coalition of California tribes and environmental justice groups filed a civil rights complaint Friday against the State Water Resources Control Board, charging it with discriminatory water management practices that it says have led to the ecological decline of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Chinook salmon haven’t spawned in the McCloud River for more than 80 years. But last summer, thousands of juveniles were born in the waters of this remote tributary, miles upstream of Shasta Dam.
For decades the San Francisco Estuary, which includes San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has been routinely described as “the largest estuary on the west coast of North America.” This appeared in publications of all types, presumably to emphasize the importance and unique nature of the estuary. But this claim is wrong. While the San Francisco Estuary is quite large, with many unique features, the Salish Sea Estuary is the largest by far.
As parched California receives much needed rain and snow this winter, some local water officials are calling on state leaders to invest in new infrastructure projects that will store freshwater for inevitable dry times to come. The worst megadrought in 1,200 years is devastating the water supply in the Western United States.
The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs stand nearly three-quarters empty, and federal officials now say there is a real danger the reservoirs could drop so low that water would no longer flow past Hoover Dam in two years. That dire scenario — which would cut off water supplies to California, Arizona and Mexico — has taken center stage at the annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas this week, where officials from seven states, water agencies, tribes and the federal government are negotiating over how to decrease usage on a scale never seen before.
There weren’t any smiles coming from panelists while addressing attendees at the Colorado River Water User Association’s annual conference at Caesars Palace on Thursday. The depletion of water in the Colorado River Basin has water officials alarmed, and they shared the facts.
Utah saw a snowy start to December, which is an encouraging sign for a state experiencing ongoing drought. But experts say it’s still early, and even if Utah has an above-average winter, it’ll take several strong years to make up for a multi-year water deficit.
Key questions resurfaced Thursday at a conference of Colorado River water administrators and users from seven U.S. states, Native American tribes and Mexico who are served by the shrinking river stricken by drought and climate change. Who will bear the brunt of more water supply cuts, and how quickly?
The annual conference of the Colorado River Water Users Association was founded and is held in Las Vegas, at Caesars Palace. This year, it sold out for the first time, but there’s no question why: the Colorado River is in trouble. The conference focuses on use of the river by the seven states, Mexico and tribes —all of whom take more water from the river than is refilled each year.
As Western water managers are gathering in Las Vegas this week, a long-sought deal to curtail water use along the cratering Colorado River still seems a ways off. Nearly six months have passed since Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton first asked the Western states to come up with a plan to cut back on water use from the river next year by as much as 30 percent, but a cohesive proposal from the seven states that pull from the Colorado that supplies water to some 40 million people has yet to emerge.
