EL CENTRO — The Imperial Irrigation board Monday, ratified revising its 2019 water order to resolve a longstanding issue between the district and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation over the 2010 pre-delivery of water to the Salton Sea.
IID’s revised 2019 water order was submitted last week and now includes an additional 46,546 acre-feet of conserved water. This water will remain in the river to build elevation at Lake Mead to benefit all Colorado River water users.
On a warm November morning, John Durand squints over the stern of a small research boat, and gestures toward gray-blue water, and the chaotic tangles of tube-like tule reeds.
A rather quiet gathering of those who control the most precious resource in the West happened on the Strip last week.
It was the annual Colorado River Water Users Association Conference.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — States in the U.S. West that have agreed to begin taking less water next month from the drought-stricken Colorado River got praise and a push for more action Thursday from the nation’s top water official.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told federal, state and local water managers that abiding by the promises they made will be crucial to ensuring that more painful cuts aren’t required.
The river supplies 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming as well as a $5 billion-a-year agricultural industry.
To focus its efforts on future Colorado River negotiations, the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors has authorized its general manager and management team to work with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to resolve a longstanding issue over the district’s 2010 pre-delivery of mitigation water to the Salton Sea.
Nearly a decade ago, to satisfy mitigation obligations for 2011 and part of 2012, to meet existing permit requirements in support of the Quantification Settlement Agreement and to avoid associated financial risk, the district pre-delivered 46,546 acre-feet of its consumptive use entitlement to the Salton Sea.
The Trump administration is jump-starting a plan to repair a badly sinking canal in the San Joaquin Valley, a year after California voters rejected a bond measure that would have had them pay for the project.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday it will begin studying the environmental impact of fixing a 323-mile stretch of the Friant-Kern Canal — a critical water artery on the Valley’s east side. The federal agency said the repairs are needed to boost water deliveries to 1 million acres of farmland that have been dramatically reduced because of the sagging canal.
Coming off a summer of moderate drought with some crop losses, the five Cascade Mountain reservoirs serving irrigators in the Yakima Basin have less water than normal and the winter snowpack outlook is uncertain.
“We are in an El Nino neutral which would mean normal conditions and we would be fairly optimistic. No one has been calling for a dry or mild winter so we have no cause to think it will be,” said Chris Lynch, hydrologist for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Yakima. However, he added, a warm water body off the Gulf of Alaska, reminiscent of one there prior to the drought of 2015, could result in more moderate temperatures and less snow.
The Trump administration has retreated on a plan to push more water through the Delta this fall after protests from California officials on the harmful impacts on endangered Chinook salmon and other fish.
State officials had been worried that the proposed move, by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, also would have meant less water for Southern California cities that rely on supplies pouring out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
