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Joining 6 States, Arizona Agrees to Use Less Water From Colorado River

/in , /by /Governing Magazine (Washington D.C.)by Tony Davis

“Everyone will feel pain” was the mantra emanating from supporters of Arizona’s drought plan for the Colorado River as it wound through the Legislature. It is true that under the plan, now embedded in state law, the major water users served by the $4 billion Central Arizona Project — cities, tribes and farms — will all take a hit. But some users will be hurt more, and some will be hurt sooner, than others. Cities will lose the least amount of water and those cuts will not be noticed by their customers.

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With Colorado River Water Shortage Looming, U.S. Threatens to Impose Cuts

/in , /by /SF Gateby Bettina Boxall

The federal government has moved closer to imposing water delivery cuts along the drought-depleted Colorado River after California and Arizona failed to meet a deadline for inking a broad agreement on how the seven states that depend on the river would cope with shortages. The federal official who manages the lower Colorado River had set Thursday as the deadline for the states to agree on a drought plan. Without a deal, the Interior Department would step in and begin to develop its own shortage plans, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman had warned.

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California Lawmakers Push for Oversight of Delta Tunnels Project

/in , /by /Courthouse News Service (Pasadena)by Nick Cahill

A group of Northern California lawmakers seeking more sway over a mammoth $17 billion water project introduced a proposal Friday that would require new construction contracts to be reviewed by the Legislature. The Legislative Delta Caucus says because of the scope of the California WaterFix, the project should require more scrutiny from both the public and lawmakers now that former Gov. Jerry Brown has left office. Brown fiercely advocated for the expensive public works project that he and supporters believe will both update the state’s aging water delivery infrastructure and protect it against sea level rise and other effects of climate change.

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Federal Government Steps In to Handle Colorado River Drought Crisis

/in , /by /KQED (San Francisco)by Lauren Sommer

Despite a last-minute frenzy of deal-making, the federal government announced that it will begin taking “protective actions” on the Colorado River, where a long-running drought has put the water supply for 40 million people at risk. The seven states that use the river had been trying to broker their own solution, a collective water-sharing deal, with a Jan. 31 deadline to get it done. While most states had agreed, California and Arizona couldn’t finalize the agreement in time.

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Second Snow Survey To Measure California Water Supply

/in , /by /KDRV TV (Medford, Ore.)by Alicia Rubin

Officials will trek into the mountains on Thursday to measure California’s snowpack again, in the hopes that recent storms have added to the state’s water supply. The California Department of Water Resources will perform the second survey of the season in the Sierra Nevada. Winter snow provides drinking water for much of the state as it melts in the spring and summer and flows into reservoirs for storage. The Sierra snowpack was 67 percent of normal in this winter’s first manual measurement earlier this month. The amount of snow is measured monthly through the winter at more than 260 locations to help water managers plan for how much they can deliver to customers later in the year.

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California Snowpack At 100 Percent Of Average As January Ends, State Officials Say

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Michael McGough

The Department of Water Resources conducted California’s second manual snow survey of the year Thursday at Phillips Station, which offered some good news for the state. DWR water resource engineer John King announced that snow water content doubled since the start of the month at the survey site near Echo Summit. “The snow depth today is 50 inches and the snow-water equivalent is 18 inches, which results in 98 percent of average to date and 71 percent of the April 1 average at this location,” King said. “This is a significant increase since the last survey, where we had just measured 25.5 inches of depth and 9 inches of snow-water equivalent.”

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Arizona Legislature Passes Historic Colorado River Drought Plan Hours Before Deadline

/in , /by /The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)by Dustin Gardiner, Andrew Nicla and Ian James

Arizona lawmakers passed a historic Colorado River drought deal Thursday afternoon, about seven hours before a midnight deadline set by the federal government. Gov. Doug Ducey promptly signed the legislation, clearing the way for Arizona to join in the three-state Drought Contingency Plan together with California and Nevada. “There’s a lot more work to be done to ensure that Arizona is prepared for a drier water future,” Ducey said as he signed. A crowd of policy advisers and lawmakers applauded in the old state Capitol building. He said the deal represented “the culmination of years of discussions” and called it a “historic bipartisan achievement.”

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Dusty Agency Gets Sharp Elbows Under Trump

/in , /by /E&E News (DC)by Jeremy P. Jacobs

The Bureau of Reclamation, the Interior Department’s Western water bureaucracy that saw its dam-building heyday in the 1960s, has risen in stature once again in the Trump administration. Reclamation has flexed its muscles on Colorado River drought management plans, setting a deadline for today for states to act and threatening to step in if they don’t. And it has been the administration’s key player in trying to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to deliver more water to California farmers, squeezing the state and forging ahead on a dam project California says it doesn’t want and is illegal. To key water players, the bureau is more active now than it has been in decades.

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New Measurements Show Sierra Snow Levels At Long-Term Average. And That’s A Big Deal

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Peter Fimrite

New snow measurements to be taken Thursday are expected to confirm that snow levels in the Sierra Nevada are on par with the long-term average, thanks to a series of storms that thrashed California in January. Those results may sound pretty ho hum, but getting to average is a pretty big thing in today’s topsy turvy world of snow analysis, where the absence of pending disaster due to too little snow is something to celebrate.

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Why We Can’t Stop Talking About California’s Sierra Snowpack

/in , /by /KQED (San Francisco)by Peter Arcuni

It’s not just skiers who have been whipsawed this season between fear of another dry winter and delight over the epic January snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. Also paying close attention: water wonks. Why? Because melting Sierra snow provides somewhere between one-third and one-half of California’s water supply. What determines just how much water is derived from that snow is called the “snowpack.”

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