Bringing more certainty to an unruly and unpredictable Colorado River system was a common theme among water managers speaking at the Colorado River District’s annual seminar September 15. Although the drought that has gripped much of the Colorado River Basin for the past 16 years has eased up a bit, population growth and the long dry spell have pushed the river’s supplies to the limit, with every drop of water in the system now accounted for.
Can the city of excess teach the world to thrive on less water? That’s the new goal. In 2015, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval and his office of economic development dedicated $1.8 million to launch WaterStart, a think-tank and startup incubator organized to lure new businesses that would push the envelope on water-related technology. This year, the state doubled down on that investment with another $1.6 million awarded in July. And the strategy has worked. WaterStart, with offices in Las Vegas, has lured 11 companies to the state through a competitive application process.
After enduring the driest stretch of years in our history, and then logging the wettest spell on record this past winter, befuddled Californians have one question on their minds these days: What’s next? In two words: La Niña. But whether the water temperature pattern hatching right now in the Pacific Ocean will leave the Golden State high and dry this winter as it’s often done in the past is anyone’s guess. Particularly since it’s quite similar to the pattern we saw last year, and we know how that turned out.
Federal water storage among California’s Central Valley Project (CVP) reservoirs started the 2017 water year with 8.9 million acre feet, nearly twice held in the same six key reservoirs scattered about the state a year earlier. This is 145 percent of the 15-year average carryover of 6.2 million acre feet, still a “safe level” with respect to flood control or the possibility of a dry winter, according to David Murillo, regional director for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
A Northern California water agency has voted for a stripped down, less costly version of Gov. Jerry Brown’s $16 billion project to build two massive water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The Santa Clara Valley Water District’s board voted 7-0 Tuesday to adopt a set of principles endorsing a project with just one tunnel. The San Jose Mercury News says the vote further throws the future of one of Brown’s major construction priorities into doubt.
The reconstruction of Oroville Dam’s flood control spillway is likely to cost as much as $500 million, state officials said Thursday, as design changes and unexpected additional work has inflated the cost of the project. Originally budgeted at $275 million, the repair has grown to cover a greater level of protection for the dam’s emergency spillway – whose near failure in February sparked the evacuation of 188,000 downstream residents – as well as unforeseen problems in the bedrock beneath the main spillway, said Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Water Resources.
Last week, the Interior Department sent a letter to Cadiz Inc. that the company long had hoped to receive. For years, the renewable resource company had been trying to build a drinking-water pipeline between land it owned over an aquifer in the Mojave Desert and thirsty residents of Southern California. To help get the go-ahead from the federal government, it hired the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to help grease the wheels in Washington.
Like just about everything else that involves water, the Cadiz Inc. Mojave Desert aquifer project saga has been one of many ebbs and flows. There were two new developments in this situation recently. The federal government reversed itself this month and gave its blessing to the massive project to transfer as much as 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater per year from beneath the desert floor near ecologically sensitive public lands to thirsty urban communities via a long pipeline.
The $17 billion “California WaterFix” project reached a tipping point Tuesday after a Silicon Valley water district voted against Gov. Jerry Brown’s approach in favor of a less expensive, scaled-back version. The San Jose-based Santa Clara Valley Water District agreed to “conditionally support” California WaterFix – a plan to divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta through a pair of 40-foot-wide, 35-mile-long tunnels – but said the state will have to consider cheaper alternatives before the district can commit hundreds of millions to the water project.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District says it voted to support the California WaterFix today. But did it? The Mercury News describes the vote as a rejection of the Fix, because Santa Clara’s board conditioned its approval on “considering an approach” that incorporates one tunnel instead of two tunnels. The Sacramento Bee also describes the vote as a rejection of Brown’s plan, though not prominently in the headline as the Merc did.
