A major ocean temperature index in the North Pacific has plunged to record low levels signaling a shift that tends to lock in coastal fog, delay California’s rainy season and reroute storms to the north.
This summer already bears the stamp of this setup. Around the Bay Area, mornings have been trapped in gray, afternoons unusually breezy, and inland heat has arrived in short, erratic bursts.
The most important water job in this region, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, is in flux.
Three people have held the position over the past five years, including two since the end of January. Now, Met Water is in the process of hiring yet another new leader, with district officials saying their goal is to find a general manager who will stay on the job for several years.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has pre-deployed more fighting crews and equipment to the San Diego area and four other counties, in case the current heat wave leads to wildfire in a region that is critically dry.
Newsom said a total of 47 fire engines, nine water tenders, nine bulldozers, five helicopters, 10 hand crews, 14 dispatchers and two incident management teams are now in place across Southern California.
A UC Davis study is highlighting what it calls inequities in California’s water management, showing underrepresentation of women and people of color in positions on water boards.
Sponsored by the nonprofit group Water Education for Latino Leaders (WELL), the study was unveiled at the State Capitol, revealing that women occupy only about 27% of water board positions, Latinos hold 15% of board seats, and other people of color account for just 5% of board positions.
The effort to build California’s largest new reservoir in decades has received a welcome commitment of cash — nearly $220 million — which will help keep the project on track to break ground as soon as next year.
Planned for 70 miles northwest of Sacramento, the proposed Sites Reservoir won the bulk of the funding because plans to expand the Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County fell through, freeing up money in the state’s 2014 water bond. The remainder of the money for Sites came from last year’s state climate bond.
Most mornings, I walk my dog at Hahamongna Watershed Park in Pasadena, pausing by the reservoir to watch grebes and ducks glide across the water. It’s a quiet routine, but since the fire tore through Eaton Canyon in January, the silence feels louder, like this place has something to say.
As an urban planner, I’ve spent years working on land use and water policy. When I walk through my Altadena neighborhood, I don’t see a freak disaster. I see a moment of reckoning, in a much older story about the quest to control nature and consequences that echo across generations.
A dry summer in Colorado and across the Colorado River Basin is ratcheting up the pressure to cut back on water use, fast, but one federal conservation program has been stalled in Congress since June.
The reason why isn’t clear to U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
The program, called the System Conservation Pilot Program, pays people in four Western states, including Colorado, to voluntarily and temporarily cut back on their water use. Officials re-launched it in 2022, with $125 million in federal funds, as a two-decade drought tightened water supplies across the basin. It initially ran from 2015 to 2018 and restarted in summer 2023.
Those of us following water politics and the water industry have become familiar with the most common units of water volume and water flow. Professionals in the industry make constant use of terms, often reduced to acronyms, forgetting that the rest of us may have no idea what they’re talking about.
When it comes to encouraging meaningful discussions over water policy, understanding these terms is mandatory. But whether it’s politicians who rely on staff members who are themselves usually spread too thin to become expert anyway, or journalists who often just grab a quote with a number in it to give their story a whiff of verisimilitude, water numeracy is unusual.
California has made history by imposing permanent water restrictions on cities and towns for the first time.
This move is part of a broader trend affecting several states across the western United States, including Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. Even states like Florida and Texas have implemented water restrictions.
Last year, the California State Water Resources Control Board approved a policy requiring hundreds of urban water suppliers to reduce their water provision over the next 15 years.
When two of every three Californians pay their water bills each month, they pay for reservoirs and aqueducts that were designed for them a half century ago. The State Water Project was conceived in the mid-1950s, when California’s population had doubled in the previous 15 years. Floods had recently ravaged Northern California towns. The concept was as simple as it was bold – bring water from the wetter parts of the state to the cities and agricultural operations that were outgrowing water supplies in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California.
Fast-forward decades, and the State Water Project has helped resolve groundwater problems in the Santa Clara Valley, South Coast, and elsewhere. In the San Joaquin Valley farm belt, groundwater overdraft persists, but by law irrigation districts must bring aquifers into sustainable conditions by 2040. The 27 million Californians who pay for the State Water Project have become a $2.3 trillion economic engine, the equivalent of the eighth-largest economy in the world.
