The seven U.S. states (including California) that get their water from the Colorado River could be looking at severe water supply cuts, as the Colorado River is shrinking prodigiously, potentially setting up both a water crisis and an electricity crisis.

On a state of California level, this year’s practically biblical storms have meant the end of drought conditions in much of the state. But in the larger western U.S., the rains that hit the west coast were nowhere near enough to make up for what is now more than a 20-year drought.

That’s where the Colorado River comes in. The Colorado River is not just in Colorado, it stretches nearly 1,500 miles through the U.S. and part of Mexico,  and it’s a significant source for the water supply in California, as well as Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. The river also provides agricultural water to some five million acres of farmland. Additionally, the electricity generated by dams at Lake Mead (Hoover Dam) and Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam) relies on the flow of the Colorado River, and keeping the power on for millions of Americans relies on that river flowing. Right now, despite the winter's rains, the river's flow is down by a third, and turbines are at risk of being unable to generate electricity.

That’s why it’s major news that the U.S. Department of the Interior is proposing unilateral restrictions on how much water California, Arizona, and Nevada can take from the Colorado River, as the New York Times reports. All seven states could be rationed much less water than they’re used to getting, but the Times reports that California, Arizona, and Nevada could see their Colorado River water supply cut "by as much as one-quarter,” and that “The size of those reductions and the prospect of the federal government unilaterally imposing them on states have never occurred in American history.”

The Interior Department is "showing that they will tell the states what to do," University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center director Sharon Megdal tells the Times. "It will now be up to the states to say, well, we have a better idea — and here it is."

CNN adds that “major Western cities – including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix – would take the vast majority of the water cuts,” under one proposal being considered.

These are not final decisions, but instead a draft analysis that lays out different scenarios, and possible ways to effectively divvy up the reductions, water cuts, and general pain. According to CNN, “The Interior Department is expected to make a final decision on the cuts – and how and when they would be implemented – later this summer.”

In terms of established water rights, California has the most seniority among those states, and Nevada and Arizona has less seniority and fewer water rights. But the Interior Department argues, in the words of the Times, that “the shocks of climate change couldn’t have been predicted when those rights were agreed to decades ago.”

And there are political implications. Of the three states facing the most severe cutbacks (California, Arizona, and Nevada) California is completely in the bag for Democrats in every presidential election, while Nevada and Arizona are swing states. So that’s likely to come into the Biden administration’s calculus. Though the Times also points out that Arizona has a possible ace in the hole, because many of the Native American tribes there have water rights guaranteed by treaty. (And there may be some overdue scrutiny applied to the practice of selling water to Saudi Arabia.)  

California has the most senior rights to the river's water, and, arguably, Arizona has been allowing growth to happen in its cities without regard for future availability of water. (One local Arizona battle was afoot in January and made national news, as the town of Rio Verde Foothills was completely cut off from its water supply by the city of Scottsdale.) As the Times reported in January, the conflicts between the two states that rely most heavily on the river's water, Arizona and California, seem destined to land in the courts — and legally, California is on stronger footing, because of those water rights agreements from a century ago. Also, California is home to farms that produce a huge chunk of the nation's food supply, and they need the water.

The seven states could all ultimately come to some sort of an agreement, and the Interior Department may be floating drastic scenarios hoping to encourage that. Though it would not be surprising if this all does get hashed out acrimoniously in lawsuits.

And the federal government has been trying to facilitate that compromise, but two sentences in the Times report gives good insight into battle lines being drawn there.

As that paper notes, “Last fall, the [Interior] department again asked the states to come up with a plan. In January, six of the states — all but California — reached an agreement: They proposed that the bulk of the cuts come from California.”

Related: Newsom Declares Drought Emergency In Sonoma and Mendocino Counties [SFist]

Image: Charles Wang via Wikimedia Commons

The collective North Bay wildfires have moved on from emergency response to the investigation and cleanup phases, as displaced individuals return to their homes to assess the damage done. Chemists and biologists are concerned that the most far-reaching damage won’t be visible to the naked eye. Ash from the fire could be rich with cancer-causing toxins like copper, lead, aluminum, and mercury, and all of those toxic chemicals could infect the northern California’s water and marine life via ash runoff into rivers that empty into the San Francisco Bay.

A new article this weekend from Wired’s Adam Rogers documents the chemical hazards of the ash in great detail, but notes how we cannot predict the spread of the ash or how much risk it poses. “No one knows how much,” Rogers wrote. “It’ll be full of heavy metals and toxins—no one knows exactly how much, and it depends on what burned and at what temperature. The ash will infiltrate soils, but no one’s really sure how or whether that’ll be a problem. And eventually some of it—maybe a lot—will flow into the regional aquatic ecosystem and ultimately the San Francisco Bay.”

What makes the North Bay fire ash uniquely hazardous is the amount of non-organic material it contains. Normal forest fires create a simple and fairly predictable caliber of ash. But the North Bay fires covered much more residential acreage, ergo many more automobiles, electronics, and lead paint-covered surfaces, and so its ash is expected to be particularly toxic.

“For how many structures that were burned in fairly small areas in these fires, I think that's a first-of-its-kind event,” says Geoffrey Plumlee, associate director of environmental health for the US Geological Survey. “The concern is, can they get it cleaned up before the heavy rains come?”

But it will be quite some time before we have any scope of the risks posed and damage done. Oregon State University forest ecohydrologist Kevin Bladon notes the 2002 Hayman Fire in Colorado produced 765,000 cubic meters of ash, which was still found in drinking water reservoirs more than four years later. “We’re anywhere from five years to 100 years in terms of the longevity of effects,” Bladon told Wired. “That really depends on the severity of the fire and our ability to get some vegetation re-established on site.”

“If there are burned materials sitting on the roads, that’s going to move very rapidly into waterways,” Bladon added. “We have no handle on that at all.”

Debris cleanup is underway, a joint operation between the federal and state arms of the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers. But the arrival of the winter rains — seen as a helpful development when the fires were still burning — will likely foster water runoff that will introduce the toxins into our water systems.

“We’re all recognizing that this disaster was of such magnitude, the organization is unfolding,” Santa Rosa Water director Bennett Horenstein told Wired. “We’re approaching the wet weather season. There’s a small storm forecast for next week.”

Related: Vineyards And Cannabis Farms Destroyed In North Bay Fires, Wine Harvest Was Ongoing

This catchy commercial tune will be trapped between your ears all weekend. Direct from San Francisco-based production company Portal A, a new Brita water filter 2-minute and 39-second video-ad stars "social media sensation" King Bach singing about how he wishes Golden State Warriors player Steph Curry was his roommate.

The ad is described as "branded entertainment" by Portal A Managing Partner Zach Blume, which basically means that it's a commercial that you'd watch even if it wasn't trying to get you to buy water filters. "Branded entertainment" is now a thing and you should just accept that this is the way the world works now.

The video was launched yesterday on King Bach's social media accounts, so you really don't have to watch this branded entertainment unless you follow King Bach. (Do you follow King Bach? Should we? Tell us in the comments.)

San Francisco's newly verdant hilltops don't lie. According to a weekly national report from the US Drought Monitor issued yesterday, 12 percent of California had normal or better moisture and another 12 percent was unusually dry but not in drought. That's the first time since March 2013 that readings have been this favorable says the Associated Press. The wettest section of the state was its northwesternmost, i.e. South Oregon, and the three quarters of California that were arid remained extremely so — they are still in the most severe drought category.

The state declared a drought emergency nearly three years ago, and although unprecedented water conservation orders were enacted and then suddenly withdrawn earlier this year, the emergency declaration remains.

"We’ve still got a long way to go for the rest of the state,” Jay Lund, a UC Davis water policy expert, told the Sacramento Bee. That paper explains that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration along with the US Department of Agriculture and the University of Nebraska produced the monitor report.

The drought has not just drained the state's supply of water, but also, to an extent, its coffers. A UC Davis study estimated the drought's cost to the state's economy for the year 2015 to have been $2.7 billion. Water was trucked in to some rural locales, while urban water districts spent widely on water-saving steps from replacement toilets to lawn removal. One drunk man who slashed an inflatable dam was even able to waste 50 million gallons of water all by himself. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

And let's everyone calm down and stop making this sound like the drought is actually close to over with a rash of these headlines, because this was just two days ago:

Related: California Lifts Mandatory Water Restrictions Though Drought Continues

Three men who damaged an inflatable dam on Alameda Creek in May of last year, wasting just shy of 50 million gallons of water in the process, will be forced to pay a fine as part of their restitution. KQED News reports that the men, one of whom told police they were drunk and stoned at the time of the vandalism, now owe the city of Fremont $100,000.

Drake Elkhouri, Dylan Jeffery, and Zackory Morton are required to pay the Alameda County Water District $55,000 for various costs relating to security, and Elkhouri has to pay an additional $22,000 for the wasted water and $23,000 to the district’s attorneys office.

For those of you keeping track at home, that comes out to .2 cents per gallon.

A fourth man involved in the vandalism, Gavin Palmon, was not included in the agreement.

While at the time it appeared the slashing of the dam was the work of idiot vandals, more of the story has come out in the intervening year. According to KQED, one of the aforementioned idiots told police that he and the other men were drunk and stoned, and jumped on the dam because "they thought it felt like a trampoline.”

“This crime against our water supply was serious and prosecuted accordingly,” said Robert Shaver of the Alameda County Water District. “It’s a settlement… while significant, reflects a restitution amount that we feel will actually be paid.”

Elkhouri, who Palmon fingered from his jail cell as the one who did the actual slashing, pleaded guilty to a charge of felony vandalism and will spend a year in in county jail. The other three served 40 days in county jail.

It cost more than $2,000,000 to replace the dam. The water, of course, was wasted — it washed down Alameda Creek and eventually made its way into the bay.

Previously: Some Jerk Wasted Almost 50 Million Gallons Of Water In The Middle Of A DROUGHT

As you may or may not be aware, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is made up of a series of levees, all of which protect a freshwater source that supplies water to two-thirds of the state of California, or some 25 million people, as well as farmland. And on this tenth anniversary week of Hurricane Katrina, Wired sounds the alarm bells of how these levees could be vulnerable to breaching — if not by a hurricane, which would be rare, then by an earthquake or other disaster — potentially impacting the water resources of a huge number of people for years to come.

They explain that since the 1960s, a couple of large pumps have been responsible for dispensing water for the State Water Project, which feeds into the municipal water systems of towns from San Jose to San Diego.

Every drop of water that passes through those those pumps first passes between many miles of levees. If a levee breaches, water rushes in. If enough levees breach on enough islands — or on a large enough island — the volume of fresh water in the Delta is insufficient to fill the void that was once an island. That brings in water from the Bay. Salty, Pacific Ocean water. “If you have ten or 15 levee failures and a big slug of salt water comes in, the salinity goes way up and you have to shut down the pumps,” says Mraz. Engineers call this scenario the Big Gulp.

The levees, also, are just piles of silt and dirt, almost none of which are built to Army Corps of Engineers standards using concrete foundations.

Thankfully, the chances of an earthquake on the nearby Concord Fault are relatively low, with the USGS putting it 3 to 4 percent for a 6.7 or higher earthquake in the next 30 years. But add to that the possibility of a storm-borne levee breach, especially one during a drought, and the state could be equally screwed, and not just temporarily.

The worst case scenario would happen during a drought, when freshwater pressure is lowest. Fifty breaches across many islands would flood the Delta with about 1.2 million acre-feet of Pacific Ocean water. Getting the salinity levels back to drinking quality could take years. First, engineers would have to rebuild the levees and pump out the submerged islands. Then, they’d have to wait for enough fresh water to flow through the Delta to flush out the salt.

So, just add this to your list of impending disaster scenarios about which you can do little or nothing.

A major water pipeline ruptured last night in San Bruno, spilling millions of gallons of water and remaining open into this morning NBC Bay Area reports. According to the San Francisco Public Utilities commission, regional water utilities are seeking backup supply plans.

The break, the Daily Journal reports, occurred in Junipero Serra County Park at the entry to the park on Crystal Springs Road. No property damage has been reported as the water is flowing back through the park and into a creek that runs to the Bay.

The pipeline is part of the Hetch Hetchy Water System and supplies the peninsula. And SFPUC spokesperson called the loss "easily millions of gallons."

Related: Famed Nudist Colony Arraigned On Charges Of Siphoning Water Amidst CA Drought

San Francisco's Public Utilities Commission sees your drought-conscious "Ugliest Yard In SF" competition, Department of the Environment. And now they're ready to raise you, with the disquieting slogan "Brown is the new Green."

In this case, the drought-related "brown" isn't the kind that you're still encouraged to flush down even as your yellow mellows. Instead, reports KCBS, this is the PUC's way to make your water conservation a publicly-visible virtue, by allowing your green landscaping to die off — that is, go brown.

“In order to stay with the times and be the greenest San Francisco citizen that you can be, we want you to let your front yard, if you have one, your patch of green to go brown,” SFPUC VP Francesca Vietor announced from a "patch of brown grass at Marina Green."

San Francisco certainly didn't create this slogan or yard sign campaign: a quick Google image search shows that signs like SF's have been in use in drought-stricken areas for years. But now it's our turn, and Vietor is urging residents to pick up signs emblazoned with the slogan from the PUC and to display them "as a badge of honor."

According to the PUC's site, you can nab the signs, free of charge, at the SFPUC Customer Service Center (525 Golden Gate Avenue, 1st Floor). If you want a whole bunch, email them at landscape@sfwater.org to set that up.

Oh, and SF residents aren't the only ones who will proudly hit the brown note, Vietor says. Per KCBS, "the city will do more too; starting with more responsible watering of parks, meadows and street medians. The effort won’t exactly kill off plant life, but things are expected to look a little shabbier."

Read all SFist coverage of the California drought here

It's kind of scary that when many of us see a person in an "official" looking vest, we assume that the person is actually "official." (Remember this guy?) But that trust is what a trio of scammers is relying on, as they present themselves as San Francisco Public Utility workers to innocent homeowners, then rob the place.

Back on December 18, the PUC says, three men talked their way into a Sunset District home by donning vests and claiming they were with SF's Water Department. Instead, two of the men distracted residents while a third stole cash and valuables.

While police seem confident that these miscreants will be caught — according to Bay City News, as the men robbed the home on 19th Avenue between Moraga and Noriega Streets, the video camera on a passing Muni bus caught the suspects and their vehicle on tape — officials are taking the opportunity to remind San Franciscans that just because someone says they're with a utility agency doesn't mean that they are.

This certainly isn't the first time something like this has happened. As you might recall, back in 2013, similar such grifters swiped $5,000 worth of loot from an elderly Oakland couple. And then there's the chilling take of Gary Scott Holland, who told a Russian Hill woman he was with PG&E, then killed her when she let him into her home.

At a press conference earlier this week, city officials told residents not to be afraid to ask to see ID, and to confirm that the worker arrived in an official agency vehicle.

"It's easy to fake because everybody out there has safety vests, you see guys riding around in their cars in safety vests,"Water Department Lead Plumber Mike Broussard told KTVU.

People who work with a city agency will have an official identification badge with the agency and city logo on it, and will arrive in either a department vehicle with green striping and the San Francisco seal or a plain white city vehicle with the seal and an ID number. Officials also say that it's incredibly rare that workers arrive at your home without an appointment, and that if you have any doubts, you can call their agency or 911.

"We're here to help. Look for ID's, look for vehicles," Steve Ritchie, SFPUC assistant general manager, said at the press event, SF Weekly reports.

"If you don't see those things and somebody claims to be part of the Water Department or the Public Utilities Commission, they're not."

We've been lulled into thinking this past year that San Francisco's precious, Sierra Nevada-borne water supply at Hetch Hetchy was under no threat of depleting despite the dought-related suffering that's happening all across the state. But no, we are being affected too.

As we warned you back in April, the SF Public Utilities Commission is moving forward with a plan to start blending a small percentage of local groundwater into the pristine Hetch Hetchy supply that feeds into homes and businesses in the western part of the city.

As the Chron and CBS report, reacting to the drought and the potential for water shortages in the coming years and the current lowered supply in Hetch Hetchy — it is at 52 percent of capacity right now and it's normally at 80 percent at this time of year — the SFPUC will begin this blending of up to 15 percent groundwater into the supply in late 2016. The water will be taken from a 45-square-mile basin that extends from below Golden Gate Park down the Peninsula, and from where SF used to get its water before the Hetch Hetchy system was built in the 1930s. Unfortunately, on its own, the water has unsafe nitrate levels in it, but blended at 15 percent or below it's apparently just fine to drink.

60 percent of the city will ultimately get this blended water, roughly on the west side of town, but in drought years all of the city will be getting it.

And as part of the PR effort, the SFPUC has gone around having blind tastings of the water, including one with the Chronicle food team.

Wine guy Jon Bonné, restaurant blogger Paolo Lucchesi, and writers Sarah Fritche, Jonathan Kauffman, and Tara Duggan all participated in the tasting, which involved comparisons of the existing Hetch Hetchy water, the blended water with 13.5% local groundwater, and Arrowhead bottled water. In the end the panel was split, with some people liking the new blended water better because it had a few more minerals in the after-taste. Jon Bonné told the PUC what they wanted to hear, though: "It tastes like what you want spring water to taste like."

Update: SFist has received official word from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission that the whole emergency-drinking-water-from-hydrants program was discontinued in recent years due to fears about backflow of unsafe water into the system following an earthquake. It had sounded like designer Scott Kildall, who had been mapping the the hydrants, had done a fair amount of research, but apparently not. Our bad.

Below, the official statement from the SFPUC:

The biggest concern [about getting emergency water from hydrants] is public health and safety. First of all, tapping into a hydrant is dangerous as many are high pressure and can easily cause injury. Some are very high pressure! Second, even the blue water drop hydrants from our old program in 2006 (no longer active) can be contaminated after an earthquake due to back flow, crossed lines, etc. We absolutely do not want the public trying to open these hydrants and they could become sick from drinking the water. They could also tap a non-potable hydrant and become sick if they drink water for fire-fighting use. After an earthquake, we have water quality experts who will assess the safety of hydrants and water from the hydrants before providing it to the public.

AND of course, no way should ANYONE be opening hydrants except SFFD and SFWD; if people are messing with hydrants, this could de-pressurize the system when SFFD needs the water pressure to fight fires, and also will be a further distraction for emergency workers to monitor.

We are in the process of updating our emergency water program... We are also going to be training NERT teams to help assess water after an emergency.

Original text:

In today's earthquake-preparedness lesson, we teach you about the network of fire hydrants all over San Francisco that have been tied into water mains suitable for drinking, and which you probably didn't know existed. And for everyone (like me) whose earthquake kit does not currently contain the recommended three-days' supply of drinking water, you might want to pay attention.

Designer and Creative Code fellow Scott Kildall has been working on something he's called Water Works, which is an ongoing project to mine data about San Francisco's different water systems, and create visual maps and models from the data. What appears to be his first contribution is this useful map of the 67 hydrants that were connected to S.F.'s potable water supply as part of a 2006 citywide initiative. This is most useful to you personally if you invest in a fire hydrant wrench (which Kildall already did), but it's good nevertheless to know where you might find drinkable water after a natural disaster if the pipes to your house or apartment get severed from the system.

But not every fire hydrant is going to give you potable water as Kildall explains:

The Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS) was built in 1908 just after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. [Editor's Note: We mentioned it recently after its use in fighting that Mission Bay fire.] It is an entire water system that is dedicated solely to firefighting. 80% of the city was destroyed not by earthquake itself, but by the fires that ravaged the city. The fires rampaged through the city mostly because the water mains collapsed. Just afterwards, the city began construction on a separate infrastructure for combatting future fires. It consists of reservoirs that feed an entire network of pipes to high-pressure fire hydrants and also includes approximately 170 underground cisterns at various intersections in the city. This incredible separate water system is unique to San Francisco.

As part of Kildall's project, he's been trying to create visual models of the cisterns, but the potable water system is separate, and only connected to 67 of the city's hydrants. These hydrants are supposed to be distinguished with a blue teardrop symbol, as shown above, but as Kildall has found, not all of them are.

[WaterWorks]
[KilDall.com]

To deal with this year's record drought in California, which may be a 100-year or a 500-year drought depending on who you talk to, the State Water Resources Control Board is deciding next week whether to impose mandatory, statewide restrictions on water use that would come with $500 fines for non-compliance. Restrictions for urban users aren't going to be that drastic, but they would be in effect for nine months.

Just last week, state regulators announced stiffer restrictions for farmers and others who have been pumping water from specific slow-moving streams and lakes. And the New York Times penned one of their schadenfreude pieces like the ones they do during fire season, this one about how Californians have only reduced water consumption by five percent so far this year, and about how neighbors around the state are tattling on each other for running their sprinklers too much.

Next week, the Water Resources Control Board will meet again to decide whether to impose restrictions on all California residents and impose those $500 fines, which would have to be enforced by police or other public employees. Those restrictions would include:

• No watering lawns to the point of causing runoff
• No using water to wash hard surfaces such as sidewalks and driveways,
• No washing cars or use of an outdoor hose unless the hose "is fitted with a shut-off nozzle or device attached to it that causes it to cease dispensing water immediately when not in use"
• No use of potable water in a fountain or other decorative water feature, except where the water is part of a recirculating system

You can read the full proposed restrictions here. But if you ask me, given Californians' poor performance on the conservation front so far, it seems like a broader campaign with more talk about 2-minute showers is in order.

As discussed earlier, San Franciscans are doing a slightly better job at this than the rest of the state, but it's still not good enough. We've so far managed to cut back water consumption 8 percent over last year, and the Public Utilities Commission has set a 10-percent cutback goal for us and the Hetch Hetchy. Statewide, Governor Brown has been asking for 20-percent cutbacks overall.

[CBS 5]
[Reuters]
[NYT]

According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, San Franciscans have done little to change their water habits in the face of a record-setting drought affecting all of California. It's almost like San Francisco doesn't even know there's an entire arid state out there, slowly shriveling up and disappearing into a handful of dust.

Despite repeated pleas from officials to cut back on the long showers and excessive lawn watering, water usage in the Bay Area is at or above normal levels this year, the Examiner reports. If things don't change by the summer months, when water usage usually increases even further, the SFPUC may be forced to impose mandatory water rationing measures for the first time in 20 years.

"Generally, people have been using less after it rains and using more when it warms back up. That’s of concern to us that there’s not a consistent decrease in usage that we’re seeing out there," an SFPUC rep told CBS5/KPIX. If the water rationing measures do go into effect, the SFPUC will allot an amount of water to the city itself and the rest of their customers around the Bay Area. If a locale goes over their water budget, they will be charged extra for the excess water, which will most likely get passed on to the landlords and customers in a completely different sort of trickle-down economy.

The commission is expected to meet in mid-June to decide whether the current water situation is bad enough to impose the water restrictions. Although San Francisco is unique in that we pipe our pristine tap water down from Hetch Hetchy, the rest of California stands to lose about $1.7 billion and thousands of farm jobs. In the meantime, it wouldn't kill you to cut back on those luxurious baths.

Previously: Tips On How To Start Conserving Water During The Drought
[SFEx]
[CBS5]

Your Britta water filter, if I may, is vile. Little back specks. Green algae forming around the bottom. The plastic-ness of it all. Gross. Which is why San Franciscan and innovator Mike Del Ponte went about to create a minimal, sleeker water carafe and filter. And what a beauty it is. It's called Soma (not to be confused with the neighborhood) and it does more than just clean your drinking water.

Soma formed a partnership with charity: water to provide clean and safe drinking water worldwide (i.e., for the "the 'bottom billion' who live in slums and impoverished rural areas and survive without access to safe drinking water"). And seeing as how tomorrow, March 22, is World Wide Water Day, this might be the perfect time to change that nasty thing you call a water filter.

"When we first started to design the Soma carafe we absolutely knew we had to make it from glass," Ponte tells SFist. "Anything else would have been a compromise we were not willing to make."

If you buy Soma this week, which you really should because it's downright gorgeous, they'll donate an extra $5 to charity: water. The carafe and filters (100% compostable, by the way) come to your door.

Find a plan that works for you here. Learn more here.