ag water use – Enviro Updates

SuzanneAugust 28, 2024August 29, 2024Water, Wildlifeag water use, CEQA, endangered species, groundwater, Public Trust Doctrine, rural water users, stream dewatering, streams, well ordinance

Judge strikes down Sonoma County rules governing wells, groundwater use, siding with environmental groups

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The court decision is the latest turn in a yearslong legal fight between Sonoma County and environmental groups who contend the county is not doing enough to study and regulate heavy groundwater pumping and its impact on streams and aquatic wildlife.

Sonoma County violated state environmental law in its latest attempt to draft a controversial ordinance governing wells and groundwater use across a wide swath of the region, a Sonoma County judge has ruled.

Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo’s ruling throws the county’s 16-month-old rules into limbo and raises questions about how permitting for new wells may be affected for rural residents and farmers across more than 300 square miles, or nearly a fifth of the county.

The county has not outlined the immediate implications for those permit applications. A county spokesman said the ruling was still be reviewed.

The court decision is the latest turn in a yearslong legal fight between the county and environmental groups who contend heavy groundwater pumping is doing harm to streams and aquatic wildlife. The county, those groups say, must conduct deeper study of those impacts and craft stronger regulations to safeguard natural resources that belong to the public.

SuzanneApril 28, 2024February 17, 2025Water, Wildlifeag water use, agribusiness, fisheries, salmon season

Op-Ed: Politics is killing the salmon industry

Michael Hiltzik, PRESS DEMOCRAT

State and federal policies that favor farms have done far more damage to the fishery than drought.

Snapshots from an environmental and economic disaster:

Kenneth Brown, the owner of Bodega Tackle in Petaluma, reckons he has lost almost $450,000 in the last year.

“I haven’t taken a paycheck in seven or eight months,” he says. He has had to lay off all but one employee, leaving himself, his son and the one remaining worker to run the business.

James Stone, board president of the Nor-Cal Guides & Sportsmen’s Association, says more than 120 guides who serve recreational fishing customers in and around the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay have all but been put out of business, costing the economy as much as $3.5 million a year.

Sarah Bates, the owner of a commercial fishing boat in San Francisco, has seen 90% of her income washed away. She has watched a commercial fleet capacity of nearly 500 boats reduced nearly to zero.

The circumstance affecting all three is the shutdown of the crucial fall-run salmon fishing in California, which the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a governmental body, recently extended for 2024, the second year in a row.

SuzanneOctober 5, 2022October 5, 2022Waterag water use, drought, streams, sustainable water use, well ordinance, wells

Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approves temporary halt in new wells

Emma Murphy, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Supervisor James Gore, whose north county district includes some of the county’s most prolific wine grape growing areas, voted against the moratorium.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has imposed a six-month halt in all new wells countywide, a far-reaching move likely to impact residential and commercial property owners seeking to tap groundwater amid a historic drought.

The immediate drilling moratorium, which offers only a narrow exemption for emergency water needs, is meant to give the county more time to draw up a new set of well regulations aimed to safeguard surface and subsurface flows in the county’s major watersheds.

A 2021 lawsuit by the environmental group California Coastkeeper Alliance spurred the work toward new regulations, and the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on the new rules Tuesday.

Instead, after hours of deliberation over a proposed well ordinance that would have established new requirements reflecting updated state policy for well permit applicants, the board voted 4-1 to impose a moratorium, seeking to buy time for additional work.

Supervisors cited concerns including the potential impact the ordinance would have on agricultural users, and potential legal ramifications connected to California’s environmental quality laws. The new regulations could affect any wells countywide that come under a new application or are up for renewal.

SuzanneMay 23, 2022May 29, 2022Waterag water use, Geysers pipeline, recycled water, water supply

More severe droughts are looming. Could Santa Rosa’s pioneering water recycling program help stave off disaster?

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Homes and businesses across central Sonoma County generated more than 5 billion gallons of wastewater last year, enough to fill more than 7,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. That sewage flowed into Santa Rosa’s regional treatment plant south of Sebastopol, where it was cleaned up and nearly all of it put to a second use.

About 4 billion gallons of recycled water was pumped north from the Llano Road treatment plant in a 41-mile pipeline and up a steep slope into The Geysers geothermal fields southeast of Cloverdale. There it was injected into the ground to generate enough clean, renewable energy for about 100,000 North Bay households.

The system also sent 788 million gallons of recycled water to 61 farms covering 6,400 acres that produce milk, hay, grapes and vegetables, along with 386 million gallons for urban irrigation in Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa, the two largest cities in the wastewater system.

Every drop of the recycled irrigation water — safe for everything short of human consumption and sanitized to a degree that eliminates the COVID virus — replaces a drop of potable water from sources sure to be strained as California moves into its third year of worrisome drought.

SuzanneApril 18, 2022April 29, 2022Sustainable Living, Waterag water use, groundwater, rural water users, SGMA, water conservation, water supply, well water fees

Sonoma County unveils first-ever proposed well water fees under pioneering California groundwater law

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

In a dramatic shift from California’s history of allowing landowners to freely pump and consume water from their own wells, Sonoma County’s rural residents and many others will soon begin paying for the water drawn from beneath their feet.

In the sprawling 81,284-acre Santa Rosa Plain groundwater basin, the proposed regulatory fee for a rural resident is $18 to $25 a year, much lower than the rates in the more sparsely populated Petaluma and Sonoma valleys.

In the 44,846-acre Sonoma Valley basin, the fee would be $48 to $80 a year, and in the 46,661-acre Petaluma Valley basin, it would be $115 to $200 a year.

The residential fees are based on an assumption that rural residents typically pump a half-acre foot of well water a year. Most homes do not have water meters and none will be installed under the fee program.

Large groundwater water users — including ranches, cities, water districts and businesses — would pay fees based on the volume of water drawn from their wells.

Fees in the Santa Rosa basin would be $35 to $50 per acre foot, in Sonoma Valley $95 to $160 per acre foot and in Petaluma Valley $230 to $400 per acre foot.

SuzanneFebruary 2, 2022Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Water, Wildlifeag water use, dams, Eel River, endangered species, hydroelectric, Russian River, water diversion, water supply

Plan to acquire Mendocino County power plant unravels

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Plans to acquire an aging power plant in Mendocino County to ensure continued flows of Eel River water into Lake Mendocino and Sonoma County have unraveled.

A coalition of organizations from Sonoma, Humboldt and Mendocino counties abandoned their quest to acquire the century-old Potter Valley hydroelectric plant, saying it could not meet an April 14 deadline for submitting a federal license application.

The plant, about 80 miles north of Santa Rosa, is owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, which in 2019 announced plans to abandon it and surrender its license.

Water users downstream maintained the plant was critical because Eel River water is diverted through its turbines into Lake Mendocino and the Russian River. That, in turn, supplies users as far south as Sonoma and northern Marin counties.

Without the option of acquiring the plant, stakeholders predict years of uncertainty, quarreling and, ultimately, higher costs to water users.

SuzanneOctober 4, 2021October 8, 2021Waterag water use, groundwater, Russian River, wells

Lawsuit urges tighter regulation of well drilling

Carol Benfell, SOCONEWS

A Sacramento-based environmental group is suing to stop well drilling in the Russian River watershed until Sonoma County determines if the wells will steal underground water flows from the Russian River or its tributaries.

The lawsuit brought by California Coastkeeper says the county is failing its “public trust” duty to preserve and protect the Russian River for the common good. It asks the court to order a ban on the drilling until the county adopts the appropriate regulations.

“The county has to get squared away on how to keep water flowing in the Russian River,” said Drevet Hunt, an attorney for California Coastkeeper.

The county is taking the issue seriously, said Daniel Virkstis, a county spokesperson.

“The county is taking a hard look at the issues raised in Coastkeeper’s suit and knows they are of significant concern to the community and land owners,” Virkstis said.

There are more than 40,000 rural wells in Sonoma County. About 400 were drilled in the past two years alone, with no examination of their impact on the Russian River watershed, according to county records.

“Over-pumping groundwater has had and continues to cause significant harmful effects on the flow of the Russian River and its tributaries,” said Sean Bothwell, executive director of California Coastkeeper.

“The current drought only makes this problem worse, and restricting surface diversions alone merely drives more groundwater pumping,” Bothwell said.

SuzanneAugust 2, 2021August 5, 2021Agriculture/Food System, Waterag water use, drought, endangered species, Lake Mendocino, Russian River, urban water, water diversion, water rights, water storage

State cuts off hundreds of Russian River growers, ranchers and others in drastic bid to save water

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A day long dreaded by hundreds of ranchers, grape growers, farmers, water providers and towns arrived Monday as the state ordered them to stop diverting water from the Russian River watershed or be fined $1,000 a day.

State regulators issued orders effective Tuesday prohibiting about 1,500 water rights holders in the upper river — including the cities of Cloverdale and Healdsburg — from diverting water in an effort to preserve rapidly diminishing supplies in Lake Mendocino.

The State Water Resources Control Board also announced plans to curtail another 310 claims in the lower river watershed as early as Aug. 9 to try to slow the drawdown of Lake Sonoma. Another 500 or so rights in the lower river region between Healdsburg and Jenner remain subject to curtailment as conditions deteriorate.

The order is enforceable by fines up to $1,000 a day or $2,500 for each acre foot diverted. Violations also could draw cease-and-desist demands that could result in fines of up to $10,000 per day, according to the State Water Board.

The restrictions are part of a sweeping, unprecedented attempt to confront a historic drought that water managers fear could extend into a third dry winter.

That would leave the region to struggle through another year using only the water already captured in the two reservoirs. That water is not just for basic human health and safety. It also must be used to keep the river flowing for fish and other wildlife and provide for water rights holders along the way.

SuzanneJune 27, 2021July 4, 2021Agriculture/Food System, Waterag water use, groundwater, Russian River, vineyards, water diversion, water supply

Russian River on the brink: Lifeblood of North Coast imperiled by deepening drought

Mary Callahan, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Two winters ago, the Russian River was a swollen, chocolate-brown mass, full from bank to bank as it surged toward the Pacific Ocean, gathering runoff from sodden hillsides and frothing creeks amid torrential rains.

The floods of late February 2019 were the worst in two decades. They sent roiling water into communities along the river’s lower reaches in Sonoma County. Thousands of residents were displaced, restaurants were damaged and inns shuttered mere months before the summer tourist season. The losses would amount to tens of millions of dollars.

Now, shriveled by another historic drought, the same river cuts a languid, narrow path through a parched landscape — a slender ribbon of water stretching from inland Mendocino County to Healdsburg, where it is widened with a shot of cool reservoir water from Dry Creek before winding west to the sea.

The lifeblood of Sonoma, Mendocino and northern Marin counties, the river provides drinking water for more than 600,000 people. It is a refuge for imperiled fish and supports a thriving recreational economy. Much of the region’s $12-plus billion wine industry wouldn’t be here without it.

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Tag: ag water use