Record water flow this year has propelled the Kings River region closer to groundwater sustainability.
After multiple years of drought, the Kings River ended the 2023 water year with a record breaking 4.5 million acre-feet of runoff.
A solution to help bolster Southern California’s water outlook during future droughts is taking shape in the Mojave Desert. Water transported in canals and pipelines has begun flowing into a series of basins carved into the desert, filling a large underground reservoir that will be available to draw upon in dry times.
The Biden-Harris administration October 25 announced next steps in the efforts to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System and strengthen water security in the West. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation released a revised draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) as part of the ongoing, collaborative effort to update the current interim operating guidelines for the near-term operation of Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams to address the ongoing drought and impacts from the climate crisis.
The Biden-Harris administration October 25 announced next steps in the efforts to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System and strengthen water security in the West. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation released a revised draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) as part of the ongoing, collaborative effort to update the current interim operating guidelines for the near-term operation of Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams to address the ongoing drought and impacts from the climate crisis.
In order to protect Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam operations, system integrity, and public health and safety through 2026 – at which point the current interim guidelines expire – an initial draft SEIS was released in April 2023. Following a historic consensus-based proposal in partnership with states – which committed to measures to conserve at least 3 million-acre-feet (maf) of system water through the end of 2026 enabled by funding – Reclamation temporarily withdrew the draft SEIS to allow for consideration of the new proposal.
The revised draft SEIS includes two key updates: the Lower Basin states’ proposal as an action alternative, as well as improved hydrology and more recent hydrologic data. The release of the revised draft SEIS initiates a 45-day public comment period.
“Throughout the past year, our partners in the seven Basin states have demonstrated leadership and unity of purpose in helping achieve the substantial water conservation necessary to sustain the Colorado River System through 2026,” said Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau, who led negotiations on behalf of the Administration. “Thanks to their efforts and funding, we have staved off the immediate possibility of the System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production.”
“The Colorado River Basin’s reservoirs, including its two largest storage reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead, remain at historically low levels. Today’s advancement protects the system in the near-term while we continue to develop long-term, sustainable plans to combat the climate-driven realities facing the Basin,” said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. “As we move forward in this process, we are also working to ensure we have long-term tools and strategies in place to help guide the next era of the Colorado River Basin.”
Reclamation conducted updated modeling analyses using June 2023 hydrology for the No Action Alternative, Action Alternatives 1 and 2 from the initial draft SEIS, and the Lower Division proposal. The results of that modeling indicate that the risk of reaching critical elevations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead has been reduced substantially. As a result of the commitment to record volumes of conservation in the Basin and recent hydrology, the chance of falling below critical elevations was reduced to eight percent at Lake Powell and four percent at Lake Mead through 2026. However, elevations in these reservoirs remain historically low and conservation measures like those outlined by the Lower Division proposal will still be necessary to ensure continued water delivery to communities and to protect the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River System.
Based on these modeling results, Reclamation will continue the SEIS process with detailed consideration of the No Action Alternative and the Lower Division Proposal. The revised SEIS designates the Lower Division Proposal as the Proposed Action. Alternatives 1 and 2 from the initial SEIS were considered but eliminated from detailed analysis.
Investing is key in the efforts to increase near-term water conservation, build long term system efficiency, and prevent the Colorado River System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production. Because of this funding, conservation efforts have already benefited the system this year.
This includes eight new System Conservation Implementation Agreements in Arizona that will commit water entities in the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas to conserve up to 140,000-acre feet of water in Lake Mead in 2023, and up to 393,000-acre feet through 2025. Reclamation is working with its partners to finalize additional agreements. These agreements are part of the 3 maf of system conservation commitments made by the Lower Basin states, 2.3 maf of which will be compensated through funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests a total of $4.6 billion to address the historic drought across the West.
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Reclamation is also investing another $8.3 billion over five years for water infrastructure projects, including water purification and reuse, water storage and conveyance, desalination and dam safety.
To date, the Interior Department has announced the following investments for Colorado River Basin states, which will yield hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water savings each year once these projects are complete:
The process announced October 25 is separate from the recently announced efforts to protect the Colorado River Basin starting in 2027. The revised draft SEIS released today would inform Reclamation’s ongoing efforts to set interim guidelines through the end of 2026; the post-2026 planning process advanced last week will develop guidelines for when the current interim guidelines expire.
(Editor’s note: The San Diego County Water Authority supports a consensus-based approach for long-term solutions to water supply issues in the Colorado River Basin. The content of the USBR news release has been edited by WNN.)
The first stage of a new groundwater storage project in the Antelope Valley is now up and running after three years of construction.
The High Desert Water Bank, which is through a partnership with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency (AVEK), has the capacity to store and withdraw enough water to serve about 210,000 Southern California homes each year.
A wet year and major conservation efforts are paying off in the short term for the Colorado River, with California, Arizona and Nevada on track to conserve a record 1 million acre-feet of water or more by the end of 2023, officials announced last week.
Since almost completely running out of water in 2015, and again in 2021, the City of Fort Bragg is working to make sure it stays ahead of any future droughts by investing in desalination.
“We stopped allowing people to wash dishes and had them use paper products and things like that, just disposable plates and things like that. So it was very serious at that time,” Director of Public Works for the City of Fort Bragg John Smith said.
Water is hard to come by on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation, and it has been for a long time. The Chippewa Cree tribe members who live on this reservation in north-central Montana get most of their water from a thin underground aquifer that is insufficiently replenished by occasional rainfall, and they’ve been under some form of water restriction for several decades.
For insight into the numerous atmospheric rivers that brought impressive precipitation accumulations to California this Water Year and how it compares to previous years, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes provides this end of water year 2023 summary.
• Water Year 2022 experienced a total of 61 landfalling ARs over the U.S. West Coast, 15 more than Water Year 2023.
• While WY 2022 experienced more ARs, a much larger majority of the ARs only impacted the Pacific Northwest.
• Water Year 2023 was dominated by a more southerly storm track, bringing stronger and more frequent ARs to California compared to the WY 2022
• This variation in storm track and AR distribution resulted in the Pacific Northwest experiencing below normal precipitation and California experiencing well above normal precipitation during WY 2023, a reversal of WY 2022
Analysis by Chad Hecht, Julie Kalansky, & F. Martin Ralph. This analysis is considered experimental.
Legislation signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom earlier this year ensures the state has the science and weather forecasting tools it needs for more flexible reservoir operations. The bill, AB 30, makes breakthrough water management technology standard for the California Department of Water Resources.
The legislation was introduced by San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward and co-sponsored by the Sonoma County Water Agency and the San Diego County Water Authority. The bill was supported by the Water Authority’s partner, UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The strategy is called forecast-informed reservoir operations, or FIRO, and it complements Gov. Newsom’s California Water Supply strategy released in August 2022 calling for more reservoir storage capacity to capture runoff from big storms, often fueled by atmospheric rivers. The governor and Legislature have already provided funding for state water managers to integrate the strategy.
(Editor’s Note: The San Diego County Water Authority has partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego to better predict atmospheric rivers and improve water management before, during, and after those seasonal storms.)
The Biden-Harris administration October 19 announced next steps in the formal process to develop future operating guidelines and strategies to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River system and strengthen water security in the West. The guidelines under development would be implemented in 2027, replacing the 2007 Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which are set to expire at the end of 2026.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
