A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation News & Publications Director Vik Jolly.
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The headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
After four years of contentious negotiations, the seven states
that rely on water from the Colorado River are racing against
the clock to reach agreement on a new long-term operating
strategy for the river’s dams and reservoirs …. But the
double whammy of climate change and a now-quarter-century-long
drought has strained relationships between the seven states
that share the dwindling river …. As a result, (the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) has quietly abandoned the
effort to rely on best guesses about the river’s future via
traditional modeling methods. Now, it’s bringing a radically
different style of thinking to the negotiating table: Decision
Making Under Deep Uncertainty, or DMDU.
Hoping to reduce flooding risk for thousands of people living
in low lying areas and expand habitat for fish and wildlife,
Silicon Valley’s largest water agency and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers on Thursday announced they have completed a $197
million project to build two miles of new levees along San
Francisco Bay’s southern shoreline. … The work,
officially called the South Bay Shoreline Project, also is the
key step toward plans for restoring 2,900 acres of former
Cargill industrial salt evaporation ponds near Alviso back to
tidal wetlands for fish and wildlife, and to expand waterfront
public trails in the South Bay.
A pipeline company with a long history of Bay Area safety
incidents will pay a penalty for spilling 40,000 gallons of
gasoline into a Walnut Creek waterway, the
U.S. EPA announced Tuesday. Kinder Morgan subsidy Santa Fe
Pacific Pipeline, or SFPP, agreed to pay $213,560 in its
settlement with the EPA, which claims that the company violated
the Clean Water Act. … The EPA said that Kinder
Morgan and SFPP also agreed to pay over $5 million for three
fuel spills in 2004 and 2005. … Those fines were over an
April 2004 spill of 123,000 gallons of diesel fuel in Suisun
Marsh … a February 2005 spill of about 76,000 gallons of jet
fuel into the Oakland Estuary; and a smaller
spill into the Donner Lake watershed.
Michael Kimmelman’s recent story on Los Angeles’s water needs
included a surprising fact: The city has been using less water,
even as its population has grown. … In a 2024 survey from the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, 90 percent
of respondents said they considered it important to conserve
water daily, even when the region is not in a drought. We asked
readers around the country what they thought of Los Angeles’s
approach to water conservation, and whether they had taken
similar actions. More than 500 wrote in to offer their
thoughts.
The Town of Windsor has reached a major milestone: 100% of
the community’s wastewater is now recycled and reused. …
[B]ecause the storage is now jointly managed [with Sonoma
Water], Windsor avoids having to discharge wastewater into Mark
West Creek and the Russian River Basin. Instead, they now
provide fully treated recycled water for irrigation of parks,
public spaces and golf courses, as well as water for power
generation at the Geysers.
Officials at Pyramid Lake say starting Oct. 1, watercraft
inspections will become mandatory for any craft using the lake.
The new regulation was approved by the Pyramid Lake Paiute
Tribal Council to strengthen protections against the invasive
mussels already seen in the Lake Tahoe area. The council says
the adaptability of the Golden Mussels makes them a serious
threat to the lake and its surrounding bodies of water.
Starting Oct. 1, all motorized and/or trailered watercraft must
be inspected prior to launch at the lake.
The Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI)
announced today the launch of an extensive plan to update
California’s Tribal Consultation Guidelines. The effort aims to
strengthen protections for Tribal cultural resources and
honor government-to-government relationships with Tribal
Nations and Native communities across the state. The
Tribal Consultation Guidelines, last revised in 2005, serve as
a critical resource for ensuring that Tribal governments have a
meaningful voice in land use decisions and environmental
planning.
Stockton City Council unanimously voted this week to oppose the
proposed Delta Conveyance Project, a massive tunnel that would
divert water to Southern California from the Sacramento River
before it reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The council
passed a resolution at its meeting Tuesday officially opposing
the project, which Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to fast-track
multiple times only to be blocked by state legislators. City
staff highlighted in agenda documents multiple concerns with
the proposed tunnel, saying the $20.1 billion project would
fail to benefit local residents.
A doctoral student and his professor at the University of
Nevada, Reno spend long hours at their computers, using
highly sophisticated satellite data to create a map of the
underground water resources in Nevada. … [A] specialist with
the University’s Extension unit supports alfalfa
farmers with new practices that use less water. … It’s all
part of efforts by researchers, students and outreach
specialists with the University’s College of Agriculture,
Biotechnology & Natural Resources to help the driest state in
the nation … by focusing on the discovery and implementation
of practices that ensure the best-possible uses of Nevada’s
limited water resources.
A significant knowledge gap exists in understanding the
post-fire soil chemical processes that lead to soil water
repellency and, consequently, increase the risk of post-fire
hazards such as floods and landslides. To help address this,
DRI Associate Research Professor Vera Samburova and
Postdoctoral Researcher Yan Wen were recently awarded a
National Science Foundation grant to study the chemistry of
post-fire soil water repellency. The research will address this
knowledge gap by identifying the dominant organic chemical
compounds and functional groups that cause post-fire soil water
repellency. The three-year project began this month.
With the ultimate goal of preserving historic and environmental
treasures along the Monterey Bay and surrounding areas, the
Monterey Bay National Heritage Area Study Act has been authored
and reintroduced by Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, which
could also see the designation strengthen local economies and
communities. This legislation would direct the National Park
Service to initiate a comprehensive study on whether the
coastal communities surrounding the Monterey Bay National
Marine Sanctuary qualify for designation as a National Heritage
Area.
… A dismal snowpack followed by a warm spring with short
bursts of precipitation put the aspens and other trees in
distress, dimming the glow of Colorado’s seasonal color show in
many parts of the state. … If there’s enough sugar
trapped in the leaves, some will turn a purplish-red. This
year, that wasn’t the case for many aspen strands because the
trees were stressed for water and struggling to keep the
metabolic process going. … Farther west, where the extreme
drought conditions persisted through the summer, more leaves
have browned edges.
A new report commissioned by Wilderness Workshop identifies 10
landscapes across western Colorado where wildlife habitat,
migration corridors and clean water are at
risk. The Crystal River, Thompson Divide, Red Table Mountain
Ridge and the Colorado River Valley … made the list. In the
10 areas, rivers, forests and open spaces that supply
drinking water, sustain wildlife and anchor
the state’s outdoor economy are facing increasing threats by
“extractive development and short-sighted policy decisions,”
according to the Wild for Good report, officially released
today on the eve of National Public Lands Day, which is
Saturday.
On a gloomy Saturday morning in Pacific Beach, Friends of Rose
Creek executive director Karin Zirk awaited participants for
the California Biodiversity Day BioBlitz. As locals trickled
in, the Sept. 13 morning’s activities got underway, with
cameras out, snapping images of birds and plants. … With
participants hailing from Pacific Beach and across San Diego
County, Friends of Rose Creek’s primary goal is to connect
those involved with the natural environment and inform the
public on the importance of clean water systems. … Using
the mobile app iNaturalist, participants snapped images of
birds, plants, trees and shrubs along the salt marsh section of
the creek and uploaded them to the app.
… Colorado treats the [right-to-float] issue differently
than many other states. In some, rivers and streambeds are
considered public land, but in Colorado and several others, the
waters belong to the people while streambeds belong to adjacent
landowners. … So, in Colorado the water is public, but not
the land under it. Thus, wading, anchoring, and portaging
around obstructions on private land may be
trespassing. Public access for floating is well
established in Colorado. … This creates an uneasy balance
between that public right and the rights of private property
owners that can only be addressed through a case-by-case
mediated process, which was formalized in 2010.
… If signed into law, Assembly Bill 93 will require data
center operators to share with their water supplier how much
water they estimate they will consume when they apply for or
renew a business license or permit. It also directs state
agencies to develop water use efficiency guidelines and best
practices for data centers. … The same Big Tech groups
that are fighting the consumer cost bill are also opposed to
the water legislation, saying sharing water use data could
divulge trade secrets and harm the competitive edge of
businesses. … Roughly 17 data center projects
planned in California as of May are in areas where
water stress is high or extremely high, according to reporting
by Bloomberg.
Now that Colorado’s zebra mussel problem has been confirmed in
the Colorado River, the strategy for fighting
the invasion has started to shift. Colorado Parks and Wildlife
said it won’t try chemical treatments on the river as they’ve
done in the past with Highline Lake, one of the first spots CPW
found the mussels. It believes the risks that could bring to
native fish, along with the sheer scale of the waterway make
that impossible. Instead, the focus now is on containing the
spread and keeping mussels out of other lakes and reservoirs.
Farmers in southeastern Tulare County left hanging after their
old groundwater agency disintegrated have new leadership but
their path forward will not be easy. … The new Tule East
GSA was created from lands left behind as water districts fled
the Eastern Tule GSA. The exodus began after the state Water
Resources Control Board put the region on probation in 2024 and
specifically called out Eastern Tule for continued subsidence
and what it said were “alarming” groundwater accounting
methods. … As Eastern Tule fell apart, a new
organization had to take on responsibility for those white
lands. [Mike] George, a representative of Ducor Water District,
was sworn in as chair of the new GSA Sept. 15 with about 20
landowners in attendance.
When wildfires scorch a landscape, the flames are just the
beginning. NASA is helping communities across the nation
foresee and prepare for what can follow: mudslides, flash
flooding, and contaminated surface water supplies. A new online
tool called HydroFlame, built with support from NASA’s Earth
Science Division, relies on satellite data, hydrologic
modeling, and artificial intelligence to predict how wildfires
could affect water resources, from tap water to the rivers and
streams where people fish.
The composition of fish populations in streams and rivers
across the U.S. has been severely altered as a result of
changing water temperatures and human-driven introductions of
fish, according to new research. Cold-water streams have
experienced disproportionate impacts, experiencing more than a
50% decrease in fish abundance over the last three decades,
according to a study published Wednesday in Nature. Some of the
largest threats include climate change and fish introductions
— both by invasive species or game fish stocking, scientists
say.
