News Roundup #1: Past and present
News Roundup #1: Past and present
From the Owens Valley to the Amargosa Valley to the Colorado River.
Good morning, and welcome to Western Water Notes.
Back at my computer today after a day of reporting in the Sweetwater Mountains yesterday, on the backside of Topaz Lake. This is a beautiful time of year. The weather is good and the creeks are full of rushing water. As much as I enjoy writing, I wish I were still out there today!
I have a full Friday news roundup, breaking down some of developments this week. Hope it’s useful before heading into this nice weekend. Stay safe, stay hydrated and see you here soon.
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-Daniel
I’ve been thinking a lot about how much the past informs the present and how much the past echoes into the present. With water rights and so much else. Every new story, it seems, grapples with history and complex systems created over time, in one way or another. Last week, I drove from Reno to Southern California to visit family, and I had a lot of time (too much time?) to think about all this during my drive. The landscape along U.S. 395 looked wet and green after this winter. There is water in Owens Lake. But a good year can be deceptive; It can mask systemic issues that lie near the surface.
1/ I was thinking more about this today after reading this piece by Teresa Cotsirilos for the KQED/Food & Environment Reporting Network about the Nüümü (Owens Valley Paiute) people’s fight for water rights in Payahuunadü, which means “the land of flowing water,” and was renamed the Owens Valley by white settlers. U.S. 395 cuts across the valley, where the L.A. Aqueduct runs nearby, infrastructure built by a city that diverted (and still diverts) water from the valley and other parts of the eastern Sierra. The story raises key questions about the legacy (and future) of a legal system that “can still quietly determine who has power in California and who does not.”
2/ There is a lot of demand to sell back groundwater rights in Nevada. That’s the takeaway from an article by the Nevada Current’s Jeniffer Solis on a pilot program to buy back water rights in groundwater aquifers where there are more rights to use water than water to around. “While the program is only available to landowners in about half of Nevada’s counties, water rights sellers have offered to sell a total of $65.5 million in water rights in a matter of months — about $40 million more than available funding,” Solis wrote. Declining groundwater tables have prompted hard choices and tough conversations about the economics of continuing to drill deeper and what the future of agriculture looks like. In many ways, the program is a reflection of the past catching up with a drier present. All across the state (and in other places in the West), water officials granted more paper rights to water than there was water to go around. Buying back water rights is one of the potential options for addressing the problem.
3/ This imbalance between supply (actual water) and demand (paper water rights) is nowhere as evident as on the Colorado River. The stakes on the Colorado are always deep and widespread. The Colorado River supports millions of acres of farmland, 40 million people, two countries, 30 tribal nations, seven states and 40 million people. Right now, negotiators are working to address the gap between supply and demand, preparing for climate change and a smaller river. On my drive back from reporting yesterday, I started listening to and highly recommend this excellent podcast by Emily Guerin on the power dynamics at play, the shadow conferences that shape Colorado River policy and a Gen Z negotiator for California who has a lot of influence in what happens next. One thing I loved from the first episode was an observation about one of the conference attendees who wore a lapel pin that read “We Are One,” as though they were trying to convince themselves of a new reality about water, and make it so.
4/ California released an updated cost analysis of a major infrastructure project to build a tunnel underneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the Los Angeles Times’ Ian James reported. The price tag: $20.1 billion. Proponents of the plan, who say it is needed to bolster reliability with climate change and sea-level rise, argued the cost-benefit analysis showed that the project pencils out. But opponents are skeptical and argued the analysis did not fully include impacts on communities, tribes and the environment. The executive director of Restore the Delta had this to say: “Instead of foisting the costs of this boondoggle project onto Californians, the state should invest in sustainable water solutions that promise to restore the delta ecosystem, not destroy it.”
5/ “For Indigenous Nations in the Southwest with a desire to sell their water, the process is so convoluted, it may take years before tribes, or non-tribal communities to see any financial benefit or much needed water,” Grist reporter Taylar Dawn Stagner reports. The Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes have the ability to lease water but many tribes face difficult challenges in participating in water markets, with the lack of a uniform system and barriers to their water rights.
6/ In Nevada, a Canadian-based miner, Rover Critical Minerals, filed ~400 claims in the town of Amargosa Valley outside of Death Valley. The mining claims represent a total of 8,000 acres (though it’s hard to know how many claims are out there because of a delayed reporting process), Las Vegas Review-Journal water journalist Alan Halaly writes. This comes after the company pushed a controversial project to explore and drill for a proposed lithium mine near Ash Meadows, a national refuge dedicated to protect endemic species and their sensitive spring habitat. Both nearby residents and environmentalists say drilling in the area could worsen existing groundwater issues, a reminder that water and mining are often tied together, especially in the Great Basin.
7/ This paragraph is one that stood out: “Under the General Mining Act of 1872, the company is able to establish ownership on public land for a mere $165 per 20-acre parcel. Miners also can disturb up to 5 acres in each parcel without going through a federal environmental review, drilling holes in the sand that advocates say could alter the flow of groundwater.” Exactly how the ~400 claims are governed has everything to do with a law dating back to 1872. For years, administrations have looked at ways to reform the law, one of the West’s legal “lords of yesterday,” a phrase credited to law professor Charles Wilkinson. It was also in the news recently with a bipartisan group of Nevada lawmakers behind an effort to pass an industry-backed bill to reverse the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ stricter interpretation of the law, the Nevada Current’s Jacob Fischler and Jeniffer Solis reported. That legislation will likely not become law (the Biden administration has pledged to veto it). But it is significant in the broader context of efforts to reform the old law, something the White House had pushed.
8/ This one hit home for me. A new report from UCLA and Duke University found a link between strong local journalism, government accountability and willingness to support local infrastructure projects. “The study, published this month in the journal Political Behavior, found that reading fictionalized samples of news coverage with specific local details about infrastructure maintenance requirements led to as much as 10% more electoral support for infrastructure spending compared to reading bare-bones reporting. Just a few extra paragraphs of context in the mock news stories not only increased support for spending, but also increased voters’ willingness to hold politicians accountable for infrastructure neglect by voting them out of office.” (Heard about the study through Water Education Foundation’s Auqafornia, a great resource!)
9/ A narrow bill is moving through the California Legislature that would allow water officials in the Imperial Valley to “take” endangered fish and birds, though everyone involved says they want to avoid species population loss, the Desert Sun’s Janet Wilson reports. The bill, which is not opposed by environmental groups, would pave the way for a roughly $800 million conservation deal for the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest single user of the Colorado River. But conserving water could result in less water running through agriculture drainage, harming or killing “taking” rare pupfish and two birds — California black rails and Yuma Ridgeway’s rails — that have come to rely upon the manmade infrastructure. Water officials and environmentalists note that there are plans to build new habitat to support species recovery in the area.
10/ “This bill allows us to begin to site and build these solar projects sooner.” That’s what Fresno lawmaker told Los Angeles Times’ columnist Sammy Roth about a bill in California that he sponsored to make it easier to construct solar on farmland in places where water is being overused and producers are considering whether to take land out of production. So why is the bill not gliding through the California Legislature? This column tries to answer that question, as it explores many of the political and social dynamics — as well as some of the land law issues — around building solar on farms.
