A judge in Montana recently ruled in favor of landowners and ranchers fighting against a housing development project near Helena that could have put further stress on steadily declining groundwater reserves. Public defiance: Initially, the state and county governments had signed off on a developer’s plans to build 39 homes that would pull their water from […]
Read MoreCategory: Groundwater Impacts
Position on California Groundwater Management, Regulation & Legislation
North Coast Stream Flow Coalition The Coalition is strongly in favor of regulation for California Groundwater Resources. Groundwater and surface waters constitute a single resource (see: Thomas C. Winter, Judson W. Harvey, O. Lehn Franke, and William M. Alley, Groundwater and Surface Water: A Single Resource, U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1139, 2006). This means that […]
Read MoreThousands of domestic and public supply wells face failure despite groundwater sustainability reform in California’s Central Valley
Abstract Across the world, declining groundwater levels cause wells to run dry, increase water and food insecurity, and often acutely impact groundwater-dependent communities. Despite the ubiquity and severity of these impacts, groundwater research has primarily focused on economic policy instruments for sustainable management or the quantification of groundwater depletion, rather than assessing the impacts of […]
Read MoreSix Groundwater Sustainability Plans are Determined to be Inadequate
In March 2023, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) determined that the groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) for six critically overdrafted, high-priority groundwater basins in the Central Valley are inadequate. The six basins with inadequate GSPs, from north to south, are the Chowchilla, Delta-Mendota, Kaweah, Tulare Lake, Tule, and Kern County subbasins (please see map below). […]
Read MoreCalifornia orders bottled water company to stop ‘unauthorized’ piping from springs
By Ian JamesSept. 9, 2023 A spokesperson for BlueTriton Brands said in an email that the company and its predecessors “have collected water from Arrowhead Springs in Strawberry Canyon in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way for more than 125 years.” BlueTriton, based in Stamford, Conn., took over the operation when Nestlé Waters North America was […]
Read MoreUPWARD project: Bringing California water rights data into the digital domain
In January 2022, the State Water Resources Control Board launched a new project called Updating Water Rights Data for California (UPWARD California) to improve how the state collects and manages its water rights data and information. […]
Read MoreNapa Valley groundwater pumping exceeds sustainable yield
Napa County has work to do to get Napa Valley wine country groundwater supplies in balance for the long haul. Groundwater pumping in 2021-22 was 18,790 acre-feet, according to a new report. It was the third consecutive year that pumping exceeded the Napa Valley sub-basin’s sustainable yield of 15,000 acre-feet, coinciding with a three-year drought. […]
Read MoreHow California Could Save Up Its Rain To Ease Future Droughts
By Andrew Fisher, Resilience. January 15, 2023 Instead of watching epic atmospheric river rainfall drain into the Pacific. California has seen so much rain over the past few weeks that farm fields are inundated and normally dry creeks and drainage ditches have become torrents of water racing toward the ocean. Yet, most of the state remains in severe drought. […]
Read MoreThe Snow Deficit is Not Good for Streamflows
Plot maps from the monthly NOAA/NCEI U.S. Climate Division dataset including means, anomalies, and climatologies. Maps can be created for an average (“composite”) of different years.
Read MoreGroundwater: Ignore, and It Might Go Away
By Janny Choy and Geoff McGhee Groundwater is back in the spotlight. Largely invisible, lightly regulated and used by 85% of California’s population and much of the state’s $45 billion agriculture industry, groundwater is a crucial reserve that helps stave off catastrophe during drought periods like we’ve experienced over the past three years. Unheralded, Underregulated and Overused, […]
Read MoreCalifornia’s water emergency: satisfying the thirst of almonds while the wells of the people that harvest them run dry
Chloe Sorvino Forbes Staff Sep 22, 2022, 06:30am EDT Broiling heat in the middle of the worst drought in 1,200 years has strained the state’s underground water supply, pitting the Central Valley’s $20 billion agriculture industry against many of its own workers. Nature has a way of telling people when their wells are running dry. […]
Read MoreMapping Groundwater for Sustaining Water Supply
SmartWaterMagazine.com reports that as climate change increases extreme weather events, such as megadroughts, groundwater management is key for sustaining water supply. But current monitoring tools are either costly or insufficient for deeper aquifers, limiting our ability to monitor and practice sustainable management. Now, a new paper bridges seismology and hydrology with an application that uses seismometers […]
Read MoreVacaville can’t be held responsible for polluted water, court rules
A lawsuit accusing Vacaville of endangering its residents with tap water polluted with hexavalent chromium — the cancer-causing chemical made infamous in the film “Erin Brockovich” — was dismissed Friday by a federal appeals court, which said the city merely carried the water in its pipes and isn’t responsible for contamination caused by others. The city was […]
Read MoreCalifornia River Watch’s Response
River Watch chose to apply RCRA in the Vacaville case simply because the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) provided little protection for drinking water. The SDWA includes limits for only 94 water contaminants. The EPA has not added any chemicals to the list since 2006, and only added 4 chemicals between 1998 and 2006. In […]
Read MoreCalifornia’s drought means less water to go around. Who is winning the pursuit for water — and who is losing?
After three years of drought, the massive state and federal water projects that serve California’s cities and farms have less water to distribute, forcing water managers to increasingly ration supplies. This year, squeezed extra tight by the prolonged drought conditions, both the state and federal […]
Read MoreNASA Researchers Untangle Puzzling Patterns of Sinking and Rising Land To Monitor Underground Water Loss
By JET PROPULSION LABORATORY APRIL 9, 2022 Researchers have untangled puzzling patterns of sinking and rising land to pin down the underground locations where water is being pumped for irrigation. Scientists have produced a new method that holds the promise of improving groundwater management – critical to both life and agriculture in dry regions. The method sorts […]
Read MoreWetlands–Endangered!
The fate of one critically endangered natural resource – our precious wetlands – could spell either failure or success for all that we do to protect clean water.
Without healthy wetlands, our clean water goals would be nearly impossible to achieve.
- We depend on wetlands to help buffer against […]
Despite California groundwater law, aquifers keep dropping in a ‘race to the bottom’
Dec. 16, 2021 Harder and other lawyers in the group said they expect to face resistance but hope the unrelenting drought may help build support for changing California’s water laws. The group said in a 43-page report detailing their recommendations that they’re suggesting a “focused approach to updating existing laws, regulations, and funding.” They recently presented their recommendations during a webinar organized by the Planning […]
Read MoreCorporations are consolidating water and land rights in the West
With farms, ranches and rural communities facing unprecedented threats, a worrying trend leads to a critical question: Who owns the water? Eli Francovich, Columbia InsightDec. 15, 2021 Ghost cattle — 200,000 made-up heifers. A massive fraud rocking eastern Washington’s arid ranching communities, leading to criminal charges and bankruptcy. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and […]
Read MoreRiver Watch Wins Appeal on Hexavalent Chromium Contamination in Vacaville’s Water
Summary The panel vacated the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the City of Vacaville and remanded for further proceedings in a citizen suit brought by California River Watch under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. River Watch claimed that the City’s water wells were contaminated by a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium, which in […]
Read MoreWater board expands authority to curtail Delta water rights
08/04/21 By Brad Hooker The State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday approved a regulation granting it new authority to curtail senior water rights and ramp up enforcement for illegal diverters. The action is in response to one of the driest periods on record for California and the entire western U.S. The order targets more than 5,000 water right […]
Read MoreWithout Enough Water To Go Around, Farmers In California Are Exhausting Aquifers
California’s farmers are pumping vast amounts of water from underground aquifers this year to make up for water they can’t get from rivers. It’s unsustainable, and the state is moving to stop it.July 23, 2021
The next time you pick up some California-grown carrots or melons in the grocery store, consider the curious, contested odyssey of the water that fed them. Chances are, farmers pumped that water from underground aquifers […]
Defending California’s Precious Waters from Pollution Grantee Spotlight
June 28, 2021 Written by Communications Intern Sage Bachman As California enters another severe drought, residents are once again being asked to use water more judiciously so as to make it last longer. While it is indeed crucial for all of us to reduce our water usage, is also critical to investigate how California’s limited sources […]
Read MoreForests of the Living Dead
The highly engineered rivers that sustain California cities and farms upset streamside woodlands’ relationship with groundwater, a new study finds, jeopardizing their future in a changing climate.
California’s perennially drought-parched Central Valley bears little resemblance to the vibrant landscape of the pre-Gold Rush days, when wild rivers sustained lush woodlands and floodplains teeming with life.
Trees at the center of these biodiversity hotspots evolved in an arid landscape sculpted by finely tuned exchanges […]
Read MoreTHIS JUST IN … California Coastkeeper Alliance lawsuit challenges the County of Sonoma to protect public trust resources
MavenBreaking NewsJuly 1, 2021 From the California Coastkeeper Alliance: Today, California Coastkeeper Alliance filed a lawsuit in Superior Court to compel the County of Sonoma to consider and mitigate impacts to public trust resources caused by groundwater extraction in the Russian River watershed. As the Russian River watershed faces a drought emergency, California Coastkeeper Alliance is […]
Read MoreHow is California’s Landmark Groundwater Law Impacting Sonoma County?
GLEN MARTINFOR THE PRESS DEMOCRATJune 24, 2021 The drought is intensifying efforts to conserve all of Sonoma County’s water resources, including a supply that has eluded oversight until recently: groundwater. But even as plans for groundwater monitoring and sustainable use proceed, tensions are building over its management. The authority to evaluate and regulate groundwater comes […]
Read MoreHow ‘sustainable’ is California’s groundwater sustainability act?
Numerous issues around equity and the plan’s rollout loom. Nick BowlinMay 10, 2021 Beneath the almond and citrus fields of the San Joaquin Valley lies an enormous system of aquifers that feeds some of the world’s most productive farmland. Hundreds of miles north and east, along the Nevada border, is the Surprise Valley, a remote, […]
Read MoreThe Central California town that keeps sinking
The very ground upon which Corcoran was built is steadily collapsing, a situation caused primarily by agriculture. Lois HenryMay 25, 2021 In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using satellite technology to fully grasp. Corcoran […]
Read MoreCalifornia Officials Move to Stop Nestlé From Taking Millions of Gallons of Water From Public Streams
Emily DennyApr. 28, 2021 California water officials have accused Nestlé of draining more water out of southern California’s Strawberry Creek in the San Bernardino National Forest than permitted. The drafted cease-and-desist order, which was sent to the company on Friday, asked Nestlé to stop draining millions of gallons of water out of the forest every […]
Read MoreRestoring Water Systems: Top Priority for Biden Administration
The Biden-Harris transition team identified COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change as its top priorities. Rivers are the through-line linking all of them. The fact is, healthy rivers can no longer be separated into the “nice-to-have” column of environmental progress. Rivers and streams provide more than 60 percent of our drinking water—and a clear path toward public health, a strong economy, a more just society and greater […]
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