Proposed Federal Grant Program Could Bolster Lake Mead Water Levels
Water officials in Las Vegas are backing a federal bill that could help pay for a California project that would leave more water in Lake Mead.
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Historic Drought in the West is Forcing Ranchers to Take Painful Measures
On Andrew McGibbon’s 90,000-acre cattle ranch south Tucson, Arizona, the West’s punishing drought isn’t just drying up pastureland and evaporating water troughs.
“We’re having the death of trees like I’ve never seen in my lifetime. Thousands of trees are dying,” he says of species that have adapted to Arizona’s desert landscape, such as oak and mesquite.
Nearly 1,000 miles from McGibbon’s ranch, near Rio Vista, California, the drought on Ryan Mahoney’s ranch feels just as bad.
Drought Has Pitted Farmers Against Native Tribes Protecting Endangered Fish
Along the California-Oregon border, the Klamath Basin is in the midst of a record drought, pitting farmers against native tribes with historic water rights who are trying to protect endangered fish.
Report: Groundwater Overhaul Could Threaten Drinking Water Of More Than A Million Valley Residents
As drought settles over the San Joaquin Valley, a new report warns of other circumstances that could result in entire communities losing drinking water. More than a million Valley residents could lose their public water in coming decades under the sweeping groundwater legislation known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), according to the paper published earlier this month by the non-profit Pacific Institute. Signed into law in 2014, SGMA aims over the next two decades to reduce California’s groundwater deficit by balancing water pumped out of the ground with the amount replenished.
Ramona Water District Directors Discuss Water Rates, Rationing and Proposal for Meters on Wells at Forum
Ramona Municipal Water District Board Directors Jim Hickle and Jim Piva delved into water issues and touched on emergency services at a June 26 meeting sponsored by the American Liberty Forum of Ramona.
About 50 people who attended the forum at the Ramona Mainstage had the opportunity to ask questions on topics related to water rates and services, proposed indoor residential water rationing of 55 gallons per person per day, proposed water meters on wells, and the response to a call for a third ambulance in Ramona.
Opinion: San Diego County Must Not Suffer if Fallbrook and Rainbow Leave Water Authority
With nearly 100 years of combined experience working on important regional issues across San Diego County, we wanted to share some observations about a proposal currently pending among our region’s water providers.
The Fallbrook Public Utility District and Rainbow Municipal Water District have filed applications to leave the San Diego County Water Authority and instead get their water from an agency in Riverside County.
First and foremost, this is a regional decision that has regional implications. Rainbow and Fallbrook’s plan for leaving for Riverside will raise water bills on every family and business in San Diego County, all while our economy is trying to recover from a recession caused by the pandemic.
U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Hear Michael Abatti’s Colorado River Water Case Challenging IID
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously declined a petition by Imperial Valley farmer Michael Abatti claiming he and a handful of other agricultural landowners, not the Imperial Irrigation District, held senior rights to Colorado River water that nearly 40 million people across the West depend on.
The decision likely is the last stop for a torturous legal battle that dates back to 2013. As the law stands, farmers have a guaranteed right to water delivery but not a special claim above other users like homes and geothermal plants.
It’s Some of America’s Richest Farmland. But What Is It Without Water?
In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the most precious crop of all.
It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to actually grow rice. Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years.
Water Futures Market Fails to Make a Splash with California Farmers
Former bond trader Alan Boyce is just the type of California farmer expected to dive into the world’s first water futures contract.
Boyce is comfortable navigating financial tools, and he grows irrigated pistachios, tomatoes, alfalfa and other crops in California’s drought-prone Central Valley. But he says the water contract is still too illiquid to benefit him.
Financial exchange operator CME Group launched the contract late last year to help big California water users such as farmers and utilities hedge rising drought risk and give investors a sense of how scarce water is at any given time. The exchange and a United Nations report said this is the first water futures contract in the world.
Opinion: Is it Time to Start Thinking About the Worst-Case Scenario on Lake Mead?
It seemed like Colorado River basin states were ahead of the curve in 2007 when we enacted a 20-year set of guidelines that spelled out what would happen if Lake Mead were to ever fall into a shortage.
But a decade later, as water levels at the lake plummeted, it was clear that we hadn’t planned nearly enough for shortage. A “stress test” that better accounted for more recent drought conditions revealed that if we didn’t do more to prop up water levels, there was an unacceptably high chance of the lake tanking within a few years.
