Category: Uncategorized

Hosted by Chery Glaser Feb. 09, 2023

Opinion column by Joe Mathews: 

Why do we still call it the Colorado?

Sure, the river begins in the Colorado Rockies. But in law and practice, the waterway making headlines is clearly the California River. And the first provision of any deal to save the river should rename it accordingly.

This condition wouldn’t be about Golden State pride. Instead, a name change would more accurately reflect the imperial role California plays in the movement of water, people, and power in the American West.

Right now, the Grand Canyon-sized divide over how to reduce the amount of water drawn from the rapidly diminishing river is being portrayed as a dispute between states. On one side, six states that rely on California-nee-Colorado water — Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — have come together to demand cuts in water use that would fall heaviest on California.

In response, California water officials have produced a plan emphasizing how our state’s rights to the water are more senior than those of our Southwest neighbors. Their newly released plan would cut less from California’s take, and more from Arizona and Nevada. In the Wild West of Water, this argument — We stole it first! We stole it fair and square! — is a strong legal position.

But such descriptions of the fight fail to capture the true dynamics of the situation — that California is less a state than an empire, and the six states challenging it over water are California colonies. California is by far the richest and most dynamic area in this half of North America. California has more residents and a bigger economy than all the other western states of the U.S. put together.

In recent generations, California, like other great empires through history, has grown so much that it has exported people, money, and culture to nearby territories. California’s investment has helped make the intermountain West the nation’s fastest-growing region

Many of the greater West residents are native Californians, or immigrants who came through the Golden State. Nevada is the most Californian state;  with nearly as many California natives (20%) as Nevada natives (25%), and more than 90% of its population living within 50 miles of the California border. But Californians have also provided sizable percentages of new residents to Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, where one out of every 10 residents was born here.

Moving to the colonies is so common that the Orange County Register business columnist Jonathan Lansner often builds spreadsheets for his readers examining which of these colonies are doing best. (His latest advice? “Move to Colorado.”)

Are these transplanted Californians, and other residents of the California colonies, grateful for our largesse? Of course not. Colonists don’t freely thank their emperors, which is why every so often, the LA Times or New York Times interviews some real estate agent in Phoenix or Las Vegas or Denver, who whines about how the California ex-pats are driving up housing prices.

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If the sun hits it just right, it looks like the ocean. Pelicans fly overhead, gently cawing and circling the horizon. The skies are a flat, dull blue. But once you walk along its spectral shoreline and feel the grit of translucent fish bones beneath your feet, you realize this cancerous body of water is anything but ordinary.

Spanning about 343 square miles and referred to as “an environmental catastrophe” by water experts, the Salton Sea is in a perpetual state of decay due to the 4 million tons of salt from agricultural runoff that flow into it each year. It’s a “terminal sea,” meaning that it has no outflow, and it has become a noxious brew that’s caused mass bird and fish die-offs over the years.

But before its fabled toxicity took hold, the Salton Sea was once a popular resort destination. It’s an unlikely icon, one that’s been featured in hundreds of films over the decades. Growing up in the confines of the suburban, sun-scorched Coachella Valley, I was always drawn to its dying waters.

In 2009, when I finally got to join my father on one of his photography trips to the area, one eerie landmark beckoned to us from a distance: an eviscerated, ghostly clubhouse near the shore. We captured its alluring decay with plastic Polaroid cameras, my eye drawn specifically to its rotting, graffitied interior. We continued through the empty building, navigating a maelstrom of trash, debris and caution tape, careful to avoid loose boards and nails. Apocryphal messages were scribbled on the walls and spray-painted inside dark closets. I distinctly remember walking past “Dead birds everywhere” and taking a photo of the dripping, blackened words “You’ll be the last one untied!!!”

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UC Riverside study has health implications for people living around California’s largest lake.

The Salton Sea, the body of water in Southern California’s Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley, is shrinking over time as the planet warms and exposing more lakebed and new sources of dust in the process. High levels of dust already plague the region, a situation likely to worsen as the sea continues to shrink due to climate change.

Not surprisingly, the communities surrounding the Salton Sea have high rates of childhood asthma (20–22.4%) — much higher than the California average of 14.5%.

A University of California, Riverside, mouse study, led by Dr. David Lo, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine, has found that dust collected at sites near the Salton Sea triggered lung neutrophil inflammation in mice. Neutrophils are a type of white blood cells that help fight infection.

“We now have an important direct demonstration that chronic exposures to Salton Sea dust may have a role in the asthma in residents closest to the Salton Sea,” said Lo, who directs the Bridging Regional Ecology, Aerosolized Toxins, & Health Effects, or BREATHE, Center. Housed in the UC Riverside medical school, the center addresses critical issues in air quality and health.

“What residents near the sea are breathing is dissolved material from the sea, with microbial components that can promote inflammation,” Lo said. “As the sea continues to dry up and expose more dust-producing lakebed, it could increase concern for the residents, especially as climate change drives chronic drought in the region.”

Lo explained that dust can cause several pulmonary diseases. In the Salton Sea, contaminants such as pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, and microbial toxins may be enriched in the dust. To examine the potentially harmful effects of this dust, the study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, used an environmental exposure chamber at UC Riverside.

FULL ARTICLE

Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) released the Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and proposed Letter of Permission procedures for the State of California’s Salton Sea Management Program Phase 1: 10-Year Plan (SSMP 10-Year Plan). For more information and to view the official Corps documents please visit:  https://www.spl.usace.army.mil/Missions/Regulatory/Projects-Programs/.

As the federal lead agency, the Corps has prepared the Draft EA to analyze and disclose the effects of implementing the SSMP’s 10-Year Plan, pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The SSMP 10-Year Plan proposes to implement a total of 29,800 acres of dust suppression and aquatic habitat restoration projects around the perimeter of the Salton Sea. At least 50 percent of the project acreage will be created as habitat for fish and wildlife that depend on the Salton Sea ecosystem and the remainder will be projects to suppress dust. Additionally, the Draft EA includes and evaluates actions by several federal agencies.

Public comments can be submitted on the Draft EA and proposed Letter of Permission procedures electronically to: splregssmp@usace.army.mil until 5:00pm (PST) on July 21, 2022.

In addition, the Corps will host three virtual public meetings to receive comments on the Draft EA and the Letter of Permission Procedures on the following dates and times:

July 7: 1 to 3 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m.

July 12: 6 to 8 p.m.

Each of the three meetings will be the same and allow community members and stakeholders to provide input and official comments that will help shape the federal decision as to which projects are implemented, what community amenities are included, how potential environmental effects are addressed, and the proposed alternatives to be considered.

This vitally important comment period is your opportunity to help shape the projects coming to the Salton Sea as part of the SSMP’s 10-year Plan.

Spanish interpretation will be provided. Habrá interpretación al español.

Please click the link below to join the webinar:

Zoom Link: https://ca-water-gov.zoom.us/j/81408174164

Or join over the phone by dialing:

Teleconference Dial In: 888-278-0296

Access Code: 596019

Meeting ID: 81408174164

Facebook Live in Spanish: @SaltonSeaCOEE page

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BY DAN WALTERS

IN SUMMARY

Federal officials are warning California and other states that use Colorado River water to sharply reduce diversions or the government will act unilaterally. California would take the biggest hit.

One must wade through a thicket of bureaucratic jargon to find it, but on Friday federal officials issued what appears to be a serious warning to California and other states that use water from the highly stressed Colorado River:

If they cannot agree on sharp reductions in diversions of the Colorado’s water, the feds will impose them unilaterally.

It’s the latest wrinkle in decades of interstate squabbling over the river, which has become more heated as the river’s flows continue to decline and conditions in its two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, reach the crisis stage.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation wants California, Arizona and Nevada to reduce diversions by at least 2 million acre-feet a year and as much as 4 million, but negotiations have been fruitless. California, which takes the most water from the river, by far, has offered just a 400,000 acre-foot reduction. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.

With talks stalemated, the bureau said it will begin planning for unilateral action “to address the serious operational realities facing the system…” due to “the likelihood of continued low-runoff conditions across the (Colorado River) basin.” It would implement cuts by reducing releases from the two reservoirs.

“The Interior Department continues to pursue a collaborative and consensus-based approach to addressing the drought crisis afflicting the West. At the same time, we are committed to taking prompt and decisive action necessary to protect the Colorado River system and all those who depend on it,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

The Bureau of Reclamation is telling the states “that this is kind of their last opportunity for consensus-building, for voluntary action,” Jaime Garcia, a water fellow at the University of Colorado Law School’s Getches-Wilkinson Center, told the Los Angeles Times.

“The fundamental issue is, whatever solution people come up with is going to hurt,” Garcia said. “The river is overallocated. It’s drying up. And we have to find a way to sort of spread out the pain evenly.”

Because California is the largest user of Colorado River water, cutbacks — either voluntary or imposed — would have their greatest impact on the state. However, while the Colorado is a major source of water for Southern California’s more than 20 million residents, the region has other sources for municipal users.

Rather, about two-thirds of the Colorado’s water diverted into California goes to farming, particularly the Imperial Irrigation District in Imperial County. The district takes more water from the river, at least 2.5 million acre-feet a year, than Nevada and Arizona combined. Therefore, if there are major cutbacks, as the feds demand, the Imperial Irrigation District would have to give up the most.

Imperial gets the most because it was the first entity to tap the Colorado more than a century ago, thus establishing its senior water rights. The Imperial Dam and All-American Canal allow the Imperial Valley to have a 12-month growing season, making it a major producer of winter produce as well as a source of alfalfa to feed cattle and milk cows.

The Interior Department has $4 billion from the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act to compensate those who would lose water by flow reductions. But the money and the latest warning may not produce agreement among the affected states.

If the Bureau of Reclamation acts unilaterally to reduce diversions, it will likely result in high-stakes litigation that tests Imperial district’s water rights. In a sense what’s happening along the Colorado could be a forerunner of legal showdowns over water rights in other regions of the state, if drought conditions continue.

SOURCE

The Interior Department outlined a path for unilateral cuts last week, upping the pressure on western states. source: Grist.org

In theory, the federal government can unilaterally cut water deliveries from the Colorado River’s two main reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which release more than 2 trillion gallons of water to farms and cities across the Southwest each year. In reality, this has never happened: Previous cuts have always been negotiated between the federal government and the seven states that use the river.

Late last week, however, the federal government sent its strongest signal yet that it is willing to single-handedly impose water cuts on the Colorado for the first time in history, as the U.S. West stares down the consequences of a climate-change-fueled megadrought that has parched the river.

The Department of the Interior, the federal agency that manages water in the Colorado River basin, announced on Friday that it would look into changing the rules for how it operates Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which are located in southern Utah and southern Nevada, respectively. This would pave the way for the department to impose sharp cuts on major water users in Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico, which receives water pursuant to a 1944 treaty.

In effect, the letter is a formal warning to the river states, telling them that if they fail to make the major cuts necessary to prevent the reservoirs from bottoming out, the feds won’t hesitate to unilaterally cut their water deliveries to do so.

The Interior Department said in its Friday letter that it would conduct an environmental review before changing the rules to impose new cuts on the states. This will give states one more chance to come up with their own voluntary reductions before the government enacts its own. According to John Fleck, a professor of water policy at the University of New Mexico, the upshot of all this is that unprecedented water reductions are all but guaranteed next year.

“Whether those cuts are imposed by a government action, or voluntary action by the states, or the fact that the reservoirs are fucking empty, they will happen,” he told Grist.

The new review comes after months of tense negotiations between the federal government and the seven basin states: California, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona. Earlier this year, as water levels in Lakes Powell and Mead fell to historic lows, officials at the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation ordered states to reduce their water consumption. The Bureau wanted a total reduction of between 2 and 4 million acre-feet — roughly a third of all water usage on the river.

Full Article

By Zoya Teirstein, Grist 

www.hcn.org/

Climate change, megadrought and agricultural needs have transformed the ‘jewel in the Californian desert’ into a toxic place.

This story was originally published at Grist and is republished here by permission.

In the spring of 1905, the Colorado River, bursting with seasonal rain, topped an irrigation canal and flooded the site of a dried lake bed in Southern California. The flooding, which continued for two years before engineers sealed up the busted channel, created an unexpected gem in the middle of the arid California landscape: the Salton Sea. In the decades that followed, vacationers, water skiers, and speed boat enthusiasts flocked to the body of water. The Beach Boys and the Marx Brothers docked their boats at the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club, which opened in 1959. At the time, it seemed like the Salton Sea, and the vibrant communities that had sprung up around it, would be there for centuries to come.

But the sea’s heyday was short-lived. Cut off from the life source that created it — the Colorado River — and sustained mainly by limited agricultural runoff from nearby farms, the landlocked waterbody began to evaporate. The water that remained became increasingly salty and toxic. Tourism dried up. The scent of rotten eggs, from high levels of hydrogen sulfide in the sea, filled the air. Fish died in droves from lack of oxygen, their bones washing up on the beach like sand.

By the 1980s, the rich, white vacationers had fled. Today, the community is made up of predominantly Latino agricultural workers who labor in nearby fields in Imperial County, among the poorest counties in California, and Indigenous tribes that have called the region home for millennia. They suffer from a unique cocktail of health threats that stem from the Salton Sea.

The waterbody is fed by about 50 agricultural channels, carrying limited amounts of water infused with pesticides, nitrogen, fertilizers, and other agricultural byproducts. As a result, the briny lake’s sediment is laced with toxins like lead, chromium, and DDT. Climate change and the prolonged megadrought gripping the Western United States are only compounding these problems. The Salton Sea is projected to lose three quarters of its volume by the end of this decade; declining water levels could expose an additional 100,000 acres of lake bottom. The sea’s surface has already shrunk roughly 38 square miles since 2003.

As the sea dries and more shoreline is exposed, the strong winds that plague this part of California kick up chemical-laced dust and blow it into nearby communities, where roughly 650,000 people live. Residents complain of headaches, nosebleeds, asthma, and other health problems.

“It’s a huge environmental justice issue,” Jenny Binstock, a senior campaign representative at the Sierra Club, told Grist. “It leads to increased asthma attacks, bronchitis, lung disease.” Hospitalization rates for children with asthma in facilities near the sea are nearly double the state average.

Beyond dust, Ryan Sinclair, an environmental microbiologist at the Loma Linda University School of Public Health in California, is concerned about bioaerosols — tiny airborne particles that come from plants and animals — that can develop from algae or bacteria in the sea’s shallow, tepid waters.

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