Archive of posts filed under the California category.

Tensions around a wastewater reclamation collaboration in Southern California

Posted by on

There’s some fascinating tension around a proposed wastewater reclamation collaboration in Southern California. The project, if it goes forward, would provide some 150 million gallons per day (~170,000 acre feet per year) of treated effluent. Water now being discharged into the ocean would instead be available for aquifer recharge within Southern California. There are a …

Continue reading ‘Tensions around a wastewater reclamation collaboration in Southern California’ »

San Diego’s puzzling pursuit of a big new pipeline to the Colorado River

Posted by on

I’m puzzling over the San Diego County Water Authority’s pursuit of a new Colorado River pipeline. I’ve been puzzling for a while, given a that it would be really expensive and that a really big pipe (aqueduct) already exists to carry the water to San Diego. My puzzlement was goosed by a report that surfaced …

Continue reading ‘San Diego’s puzzling pursuit of a big new pipeline to the Colorado River’ »

“the market” doesn’t seem particularly worried about California’s groundwater law

Posted by on

New US Department of Agriculture report out this week shows the dollar value per acre of irrigated California cropland continuing to rise: Above is a quick plot of the data for six of the seven states included in the Colorado River Basin. THIS IS NOT COLORADO RIVER BASIN IRRIGATED ACREAGE. Large areas of many of …

Continue reading ‘“the market” doesn’t seem particularly worried about California’s groundwater law’ »

March 1985: when everything on the Colorado River changed

Posted by on

Brett Walton had a great bit of business in yesterday’s Circle of Blue story on 2019’s remarkable drop in Colorado River Lower Basin water use: The last time water consumption from the river was that low was in 1986, the year after an enormous canal in Arizona opened that allowed the state to lay claim …

Continue reading ‘March 1985: when everything on the Colorado River changed’ »

The risk of Southern California falling into “perfect drought”

Posted by on

Last year was, for Southern California water management, perfectly wet. By that I mean a good snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and the Colorado River Basin. I’m stealing a wonderful phrase here from a new paper by the University of Arizona’s Connie Woodhouse (the full paper’s behind a paywall): “A Long View of Southern California …

Continue reading ‘The risk of Southern California falling into “perfect drought”’ »

California’s 2019 use of Colorado River water lowest since 1950

Posted by on

While Colorado River water management eyes were focused elsewhere this year – on the big snowpack up north, or the chaos success of the Drought Contingency Plan – California has quietly achieved a remarkable milestone. Its use of Colorado River water in 2019 will be 3.858 million acre feet. The last time it was below …

Continue reading ‘California’s 2019 use of Colorado River water lowest since 1950’ »

Imperial Irrigation District’s line in the Salton Sea sand

Posted by on

The Imperial Irrigation District board will take up a resolution this afternoon drawing a sharp line. If action isn’t taken to deal with the Salton Sea, the historic early-2000s deal that attempted to untangle California’s Colorado River overallocation (the “Quantification Settlement Agreement” or QSA) “will have been breached”: The full text of the resolution and …

Continue reading ‘Imperial Irrigation District’s line in the Salton Sea sand’ »