When the Colorado River Compact was signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
A storm blanketed the Sierra Nevada in heavy snow and soaked much of California with rain, bringing a wet start of winter weather after three years of record drought. The storm brought 3 to 4 feet of fresh snow in parts of the Sierra Nevada over the weekend. From the San Francisco Bay Area to Southern California, between 1 inch and 4 inches of rain fell in many areas.
As climate change continues to shrink the Colorado River’s largest reservoirs, a group of four states that use its water are set to lay out plans to reboot a conservation program. The Upper Colorado River Commission – comprised of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico – plans to announce details of an extended “System Conservation Pilot Program” through which water users could be paid to cut back on their use.
The soon-to-be-launched program aims to use a pool of $125 million from the Inflation Reduction Act for payouts to “mitigate the impacts of long-term drought and depleted storage,” according to presentation slides obtained by KUNC.
As drought and climate change ravage California’s once-reliable supply of drinking water, officials in Los Angeles are setting their sights on a relatively new, almost untapped resource for the city’s 4 million residents: the Superfund site in their own backyard. Nearly 70% of the city’s 115 wells in the San Fernando Valley groundwater basin — the largest such basin under the purview of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — have been sitting unused for decades after dangerous contaminants seeped into the aquifer.
A decision to demolish four dams and restore the Klamath River, which crosses the California-Oregon border, was celebrated Thursday by officials from both states, Native American tribes and the federal government. The plan approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will open up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat. It will be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world.
The odds that the drought-enhancing La Niña will fade by the end of California’s rainy season are rising, offering some hope of an easing of parched conditions across the US West. The Pacific Ocean has a 71% chance of returning to normal temperatures between February and April, bringing an end the La Niña weather pattern that has persisted for three years, the Climate Prediction Center said in a Thursday forecast.
December kicked off with a parade of storms across California, and while the plentiful precipitation is likely good news for California, data shows storage levels at the state’s major water supply reservoirs have not budged much. “We are just now moving into the rainy season,” said Jeanine Jones, interstate resources manager for California’s Department of Water Resources, referring to the months between November and March when much of California’s precipitation is recorded.
New predictions by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show that Lake Powell’s water levels may fall below the level needed to produce power as soon as July 2023. The Bureau of Reclamation issues two-year predictions for the water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead and revises those predictions every few months. It uses multiple projections to come up with expected, worst, and best probable outcomes.
Approximately 100 concerned Delta residents gathered at a public forum in the community of Hood Tuesday to express concern with the Delta Tunnel proposal. Among the speakers was State Senator Bill Dodd, Attorney Osha Meserve, State Assemblymember Lori Wilson and State Assemblymember Carlos Villapudua.
For almost four decades, water flowed faithfully from Fred and Robin Imfeld’s private well here in rural Tehama County, a region where thirsty orchards of walnuts, almonds, plums and olives stretch across thousands of acres. But that reliable supply of household water began to sputter last year, and then ceased completely this summer amid California’s driest three-year period on record.
