Key questions resurfaced Thursday at a conference of Colorado River water administrators and users from seven U.S. states, Native American tribes and Mexico who are served by the shrinking river stricken by drought and climate change. Who will bear the brunt of more water supply cuts, and how quickly?
About 15 miles north of Fresno sits Millerton Lake, a reservoir created in the 1930s when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River. The dam provides irrigation water for fields and groves in much of the San Joaquin Valley, but it wiped out the Chinook salmon migration that had existed on the river for tens of thousands of years.
It also threatened the rights of landowners to divert naturally flowing San Joaquin River water for their fields. Instead of losing their rights, though, farmers who had land near the river agreed to trade their water to the federal dam project in exchange for “substitute water,” delivered to them from the Sacramento River.
A few hundred farms in the southern tip of California, along the Mexican border, may hold the key to saving the drought-plagued Colorado River from collapse.
These farmers, in Imperial County, currently draw more water from the Colorado River than all of Arizona and Nevada combined. They inherited the legal right to use that water, but they’re now under pressure to give up some of it.
In a fast-paced trip through the evolution of California’s water rights, attorney Valerie Kincaid explained how the system has gone from the “wild, wild west” to one pervaded by ever greater government creep.
By expanding its authorities under what had been thought of as several limited court decisions, state government is now essentially dictating operations on several watersheds, has ignored priority rights and is on the verge of amassing even more control under the guise of “modernization,” Kincaid told a packed room during a Water Association of Kern County luncheon on Tuesday the Water Board.
California lawmakers are ratcheting up calls for “urgent action” by the U.S. Justice Department to investigate potential water crimes as the state battles “dire” supply shortages and drought.
The bipartisan group told U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland that, along with ongoing concern about possible “drought profiteering” and water theft, worry is building that “fraud and market manipulation” is constraining already severely limited water availability.
A plan is circulating among irrigation districts in Imperial Valley and Yuma to reduce Colorado River use by as much as 925,000 acre-feet.
This after federal officials demanded historic cuts in water use next year, on the order of 2 million to 4 million acre-feet.
One imperial valley grower says the Imperial Irrigation District holds more rights to Colorado River water than any other user in the basin.
American Canyon is making urgent calls for water conservation and suing Vallejo over a water disagreement as it tries to eke out every drop amid a historic drought.
The city’s water supplies are on the edge. Demand in recent years is about 2,800-acre feet of water annually. City officials estimate a potential 470 acre-foot deficit this year if demand remains the same.
As drought conditions persist and with the potential for another dry winter due to La Niña, some good news: the California State Water Resources Board learned Wednesday reservoirs in the northern and central parts of the state have more water than at this time last year.
State Water Project reservoirs across Northern and Central California remain below historical averages after three consecutive years of drought.
The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) issued a call last June to the public for assistance in developing long-term operations on the Colorado River. This announcement came within days of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton’s message to a Senate Committee that the seven states of the Colorado River Basin must come up with an emergency deal by mid-August to conserve between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water in the next year to protect the entire Colorado River system, according to the Family Farm Alliance (FFA) newsletter.
Californians are starting to save water, but not enough to meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for conservation in the face of one of the worst droughts in recorded history.
Urban water use fell 3.1% in May compared to the 2020 baseline set by the governor, according to figures released Friday by the State Water Resources Control Board.
While that’s well short of the 15% call issued by Newsom last July, it does show that Californians are beginning to heed the governor’s call for reduced consumption. Water use actually rose in March and April, according to water board data.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
