As California grapples with worsening cycles of drought, a proposal to create a new water district in Butte County has sparked fears of a profit-driven water grab by large-scale farmers and outside interests.
As part of the historic Lower Basin Plan between Arizona, California and Nevada to conserve 3 million acre-feet of water by 2026 to protect the Colorado River system from extended drought, the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors on Friday, Dec. 1 unanimously approved the 2023 System Conservation Implementation Agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
It might seem hard to imagine, but there’s a connection between water supplies in Northern California’s Sacramento region and distant cities such as Las Vegas. We may be separated by deserts and mountain ranges, but these very different places could actually share water. And with a little cooperation, all of us could survive the challenges of climate change, whether it’s a shrinking Colorado River or declining Sierra Nevada snowpack.
Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.
A decade later, his property is now dotted with thousands of what he and others hope is a promising new crop for the state following years of punishing drought and a push to scale back on groundwater pumping.
WATER PRICE LINE RISING: Who could forget last May, when Arizona, California and Nevada made a three-year pact to conserve water from the Colorado River? Many thought it couldn’t be done, but with Lake Mead reservoir levels at a historic low, and the federal government poised to wrest control of the process, the states agreed to conserve 10 percent of their water — nearly a billion gallons — between now and 2026.
Noah Cross, the sinister plutocrat of the movie
“Chinatown,” remarked that “politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
He might have added public works projects to that list: If they get talked about long enough, sometimes they acquire the image of inevitability. That seems to be the case with the Sites Reservoir, a water project in the western Sacramento Valley that originated during the Eisenhower administration.
An important milestone was reached Friday for the construction of another reservoir in California. The Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Sites Reservoir was certified and the Sites Reservoir Project was approved by the Sites Project Authority, the lead agency under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Next up for the Sites Project Authority is to move the project through the final planning stages. After getting through the final stages, crews will begin building the reservoir.
Snowfall forecasts for the West’s mountains are critically important this winter after last year’s unusually heavy snow helped improve the region’s long-simmering water crisis, including conditions at Lake Powell and downstream Lake Mead outside Las Vegas.
Another heavy snow year could help reduce the need for water restrictions and help farmers continue producing irrigated crops such as melons, lettuce and almonds.
After decades of unrestricted pumping in the rain-starved northwestern corner of the Mojave Desert, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin Authority has the distinction of managing one of the most critically overdrawn aquifers in California.
California is drought-free for the first time in more than three years because of a remarkably wet, snowy winter and a rare tropical storm over the summer. The last remaining traces of drought disappeared in October, as autumn rainstorms grazed the northwestern corner of the state.
