A bruising battle pitting the two biggest players in Arizona water came to a pause late last week as the agencies announced a truce and promised to work together. On Thursday, the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Water Conservancy District dropped their swords and published a joint statement of cooperation.
As the Water Commission crept closer this week to actually spending the water storage money voters approved in 2014, things predictably got ugly. What the commission did this week is determined the public benefit of the 12 projects that were seeking the $2.7 billion in Proposition 1 that was earmarked for water storage. The problem is, it wasn’t just earmarked for water storage. It was earmarked only for water storage that provide five defined public benefits: ecosystem benefits, water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
The outlook for the most important river in the Southwestern U.S. remains grim this summer after April storms failed to produce much snow in the mountains that feed the waterway, forecasters said Monday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the Colorado River is expected to carry only 43 percent of the average amount of water into Lake Powell, one of two huge reservoirs that store and distribute the river.
In a vote that could give Gov. Jerry Brown’s $17 billion Delta tunnels plan new momentum, Silicon Valley’s largest water agency on Tuesday will consider changing course and endorsing the controversial project to make it easier to move water to the south.
Two nonprofit groups are accusing Gov. Jerry Brown of improperly working with Metropolitan Water District board directors behind the scenes to put pressure on a key vote for a massive water tunnel project. The groups claim board members violated open meeting laws as they pressed for a yes on a massive project to move water from tunnels under the Sacramento Bay Delta. The accusations potentially call , call into question a recent vote moving the project forward.
On May 8, phase two of reconstruction will begin on the Oroville Dam Spillway, but as more repairs take place, the bills are stacking up. Fixing the Oroville Dam Spillway is something everyone is in favor of, but how to pay for it is a different matter. Some politicians and residents from the Northstate have said they don’t want the federal government to “bail out” California for the cost of spillway repairs. Andrew Giles, a citizen of Oroville, says he doesn’t trust the state or local officials will use the money responsibly.
The final stretch of the McCloud River before it empties into the state’s largest reservoir is a place of raw beauty. On a recent morning, the river’s icy water, flanked by flowering dogwood trees and jagged rock formations, flowed fast and clean. This part of the McCloud is off limits to almost everyone except a few Native Americans and some well-heeled fly fishermen. Its gatekeeper is an unlikely one, an organization that also happens to be a hugely controversial player in California water politics.
The relatively dry 2017-18 winter in California resurfaced recent memories of drought conservation mandates. From 2013-16, urban water utilities complied with voluntary, then mandatory, water use limits as part of Executive Order B-37-16. Urban water utilities met a statewide 25% conservation target (24.9%), helping the state weather severe drought. Winter rains in 2016-17 led to a reprieve from mandatory conservation. Freed from statewide requirements, urban water agencies ended mandatory cutbacks by meeting “stress tests” that included several years of secured water supplies. A useful outcome of the 2013-17 drought period was long-needed reporting data on monthly urban water use and conservation.
These are difficult times on the Colorado River. Diminishing flows and population growth are exacerbating the already contentious Colorado River allocations among the Colorado River Basin states. To move forward, state-level legal frameworks will have to be strong and comprehensive to ensure that water from existing allocations is conserved, and that states are prepared for the inevitable climate-induced shortages. While efforts around these issues are in play in varying degrees among the Colorado River Basin states, there is still a lot of strengthening that can be done.
There is broad consensus that California’s water challenges are only going to get worse as climate change continues. We will have more drought, more major rain events with consequent flooding and more uncertainty. In this era of global warming, we need new approaches to help solve our water problems. The Trump administration proposal to raise the Shasta Dam by 18½ feet, along with the recent vote by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to support the delta tunnels, illustrate our complete and outmoded dependence on built infrastructure to provide water.
