In the latest chapter of California’s unfolding drought, state officials are planning to build a giant rock wall across a river in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to save the vital freshwater estuary from San Francisco Bay’s saltwater.
Even as California moves toward a full reopening from pandemic restrictions next month, many counties are still in danger.
From drought.
Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended emergency drought orders to 41 counties across the state. According to the United States Drought Monitor, 84 percent of the West is now in drought conditions, with 47 percent rated as “severe” or “extreme.” In California, 73 percent of the state falls into those categories. And if the recent Palisades fire in western Los Angeles is any indication, an active wildfire season could already be here.
Amid deepening anxieties over worsening drought conditions throughout California, Marin County officials declared a state of emergency Tuesday.
The unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors makes the county eligible for state funding and other resources as residents brace for a hot, dry summer.
Parched conditions are already “severely affecting” West Marin farms, the county said, where officials have described the situation as “grim and deteriorating.”
California lawmakers should take prompt action before drought conditions worsen by sending emergency drinking water to vulnerable communities in parched regions of the state, legislative advisers say.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report last week providing recommendations on how to address increasingly dry conditions throughout the state. Based on an analysis of the state’s previous efforts for the last major drought, from 2012 to 2016, analysts said lawmakers should start sending emergency water supplies to vulnerable communities in the San Joaquin Valley region, prepare to remove dead and dying trees that can increase the risk of severe wildfires, and hire additional staff, among other actions.
As more of California sinks into extreme drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked the Legislature to appropriate billions of dollars to address critical water needs. In the “May revise”—an update to the budget proposal he initially submitted to the Legislature in January—Newsom proposes to spend nearly $3.5 billion on water supply and resilience projects, with total investment reaching $5.1 billion over multiple years. The revised budget lays out a number of water-related priorities: providing access to safe drinking water; building water-supply reliability and improving flood protection; immediate drought support; enabling improved data collection and monitoring; and restoring fish and wildlife habitat, reconnecting wildlife corridors and removing barriers to fish passage.
A dangerous cyberattack on critical U.S. infrastructure this month has underscored the ongoing threat that these kinds of attacks pose to drinking water systems, and the president has taken notice.
The FBI has confirmed that hackers successfully forced the Colonial Pipeline, which provides gasoline and jet fuel to much of the East Coast, to shut down.
Lake Shasta this summer is facing possibly its lowest level in at least 44 years, and that could be bad news for the people who rely on it for drinking and irrigation water, as well as endangered salmon that depend on it to survive. Dam operators have to go all the way back to 1977 to compare how bad this year’s water situation is shaping up to be, said Don Bader, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam. “It’s dry. It’s second worst, so far. It’s probably going to exceed ’77. But the kicker is in ’77 we didn’t have all the requirements that we have now,” Bader said.
With very little water to spare this drought year, water districts struggling with limited or no supplies look to their counterparts in other districts to negotiate water transfers to add whatever flexibility they can.
Districts on the west side of the Central Valley, both north and south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, face the prospect of receiving no water from the Central Valley Project.
“Water transfers are absolutely critical to preventing a disaster on the west side of the Sacramento Valley this year. Other than groundwater, it’s the only water many of our folks have,” said Jeffrey Sutton, general manager of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority; the TCCA, a joint powers authority, serves 17 water districts in Tehama, Glenn, Colusa and Yolo counties.
A state appeals court has upheld California’s cleanup standards for a cancer-causing chemical that was added to pesticides and has polluted groundwater in the Central Valley, rejecting challenges by manufacturers that may have to pay the costs.
The State Water Resources Control Board’s 2017 mandate for removing nearly all TCP (1,2,3-trichloropropane) from drinking water was contested by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, representing Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Oil, which included the chemical in worm-killing fumigants widely used by farmers through the 1980s. They argued that the board’s criteria were not “economically feasible,” as required by state law.
More than a few dystopian fantasies depict a future in which humanity’s water supply derives from recycled human waste. As Frank Herbert imagined it in his 1965 novel “Dune“ — now a much-anticipated fall 2021 blockbuster — the humans inhabiting a dessicated, rainless planet must wear “stillsuits”— a rubbery second skin that captures sweat, urine and feces and recycles them into drinking water.
