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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.
We occasionally bold words in the text to ensure the water connection is clear.
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.
In mountain regions like the Rockies, headwater streams make up
more than 70% of the river network and support the downstream
waterways and communities. … While these sources are crucial,
very few are monitored, and aspects of their hydrology are not
well understood. A team of researchers, including UConn
Department of Earth Sciences assistant professor Lijing Wang,
are working to determine what influences how and when water
moves through these streams, and what hidden source sustains
them long after the rush of snowmelt. Their findings are
published in Water Resources Research.
A recent change in the Bay Area’s tap water has some residents
noticing a different taste, but officials have said it’s
completely normal. The East Bay Municipal Utility
District, which supplies water to 1.4 million
people, said it is going through “seasonal
adjustments,” which might be why the tap water tastes a little
off for some people. … [T]he utility district is blending
more local sources with the Pardee Reservoir on the Mokelumne
River, Andrea Pook, a spokesperson for the utility district,
told SFGATE. … This shift happens regularly, Pook said,
and it occurs when the water needs to be pulled from different
treatment plants and local reservoirs based on operational
needs.
Northern Kings County residents and landowners are being asked
to have a say in how a local groundwater agency responds to
domestic wells going dry. At its Nov. 6 special meeting, the
South Fork Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) board
approved releasing a draft of its $1.5 million well mitigation
program for public comment for 30 days beginning Nov.
10. The draft program will aid domestic well owners, well
dependent-communities and industrial well owners whose wells
have gone dry or whose water quality has suffered due to
excessive pumping.
Droughts in California don’t just strain water
supplies. They strain relations between people and wildlife. A
study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances found
that conflicts between humans and animals, be it a bear
break-in at Lake Tahoe, a mountain lion eating a sheep in
Sonoma County or a coyote toppling trash cans in San Francisco,
have been significantly higher during the state’s dry spells.
… Losing just one inch of annual precipitation, the
authors found, has meant, for some carnivores, as much as a 3%
increase in clashes with humans – an amount that adds up
quickly in years with substantially less rain.
Environmental organizations supporting the removal of the
Potter Valley Project dams will host a virtual and an in-person
workshop this month to help residents craft comments for
submission to the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission. Friends of the Eel River, Save California
Salmon, the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter and California Trout
are hosting the two-hour workshops, which will explain the
groups’ reasons for supporting the removal of the Scott Dam and
the Cape Horn (also known as Van Arsdale) Dam.
Hyacinth, an invasive and seasonal plant, is once again
invading Stockton waterways. This year’s bloom came into
downtown Stockton from the Tuolumne River, breaking off during
the last storm. … ”If you can’t have a bar pilot enter
the ship from San Francisco Bay and come upstream because their
radar is showing large mats of hyacinth, they pretty much call
Stockton and West Sacramento saying we’re gonna have to drop
anchor because we cannot distinguish between land and the
weeds,” California State Parks Boating and Waterways
Environmental Program Manager Edward Hard explained. Hyacinth
also brings mosquitoes [and affects] water
conveyance.
After years of back and forth, new flood maps with major
implications for property owners’ land values, insurance rates
and building costs along a watershed stretching from Santa Rosa
to Rohnert Park are in a final phase of review and approval.
Sonoma County challenged maps produced by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency that come with flood insurance requirements
and added building restrictions for those deemed in higher-risk
flood areas of the Todd Creek watershed. After the federal
agency rejected its appeal, the county launched its own flood
study in 2023, completed earlier this year. The results
showed a different flood hazard designation for 289 — nearly
one-third — of the 964 parcels affected, with more than half
removed from a flood zone.
“If we take care of that water, we know that water is going to
take care of us,” stated Lorelei Cloud, who has spent a
lifetime advocating for water conservation and access. Cloud, a
former vice chairman of the Southern Ute tribe, was also the
first tribal member on record to serve on the Colorado Water
Conservation Board. On Thursday, Nov. 6, The Arts Campus
at Willits (TACAW) hosted Cloud and a fellow trustee of The
Nature Conservancy (TNC) Colorado, Johnny Le Coq, for a
presentation on their respective backgrounds and water
conservation work.
Northern Water will further delay an initial partial filling of
its new Chimney Hollow reservoir into next year to allow time
for expanded groundwater tests in the area to make sure
unexpected uranium leaching inside the planned pool would not
migrate to other supplies. … Filling of a small portion
of the reservoir had been planned for this month, but now is
“expected in early 2026,” according to the agency. … The
project was meant to “firm” or store water rights Northern
Water owns in the Windy Gap project near Granby, which collects
and pumps Colorado River water into the Adams Tunnel for Front
Range buyers.
The Colorado River states are still divided — so much so that
they could not reach a broad agreement on how to manage the
river by their federal deadline. The Department of the
Interior gave seven Western states, including Colorado, until
Tuesday to indicate whether they can reach any level of accord
on how the water supply for 40 million people
should be managed in the future. The current agreement, which
has governed how key reservoirs store and release water
supplies since 2007, expires Dec. 31. … In a joint
statement Tuesday, the seven states and federal officials said
they recognize the seriousness of the basin’s challenges as
drought and low reservoirs have put pressure on the river’s
water supplies.
For the first time in more than a year, the House and Senate
produced compromise spending bills that could lay the
groundwork for a broader deal to fully fund the government. …
The legislation contains about $1.4 billion to support the
“revitalization of aging water and wastewater
infrastructure,” according to a summary. USDA’s
Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations budget would get $50
million under the negotiated proposal. An additional $3 million
would be set aside “for the rehabilitation of aging dam
infrastructure.” … Lawmakers added language to
increase by $2.6 million the statutory funding ceiling on the
Bureau of Reclamation’s Calfed Bay-Delta
program, which supports ecosystem restoration, water
supply management and levee integrity.
A fast-moving atmospheric river is heading toward California
this week and could pack a punch, threatening periods of heavy
rain and possible flooding and debris flows in recently burned
areas. After arriving in Northern California on Wednesday, the
storm system is expected to land in Southern California on
Thursday, where it could remain all the way through Saturday.
… The storm could also bring heavy snow to the Sierra
Nevada, and meteorologists were already discouraging travel
between Thursday morning and Friday morning. Donner Peak
could get 12 to 18 inches of snow.
The Valley’s two largest water providers will connect their
systems, allowing water from the Salt River Project into the
Central Arizona Project canal system. The project would give
SRP and CAP the flexibility to move water through the Valley.
Combined, the two providers serve the vast majority of
Arizonans. SRP water comes from the Salt and Verde Rivers. CAP
water comes from the Colorado River and is in danger of taking
cuts. SRP and CAP have different service areas. The proposed
SRP-CAP Interconnection Facility (SCIF) would allow water
users, like some central Arizona cities and towns with rights
to SRP water to access it.
Thanks to their use of a unique methodology, a McGill-led
research team has obtained new insights into how boulders
affect snow melt in mountainous northern environments, with
implications for local water resources. The team found
that snow near boulders melts faster, not only because rocks
radiate heat, but also due to subtle processes that reshape the
snow’s surface. This information will help researchers
understand how small-scale processes affect downstream water
resources. … The paper is published in the journal Cold
Regions Science and Technology.
When Amazon proposed building its Project Blue data center in
Tucson, Arizona, the company faced intense pushback. Residents
raised concerns about the enormous amounts of water and
electricity that the data center would need—two major ways such
projects impact the environment, especially in a desert
city. … A study published this week in the journal
Nature Sustainability makes that connection even clearer. Led
by researchers at Cornell University, the study analyzed the
environmental impact that data centers could have in the U.S.
as their growth continues, and created a state-by-state look at
where those data centers should go to avoid the worst effects.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) have taken a huge leap
forward in their ongoing efforts to protect and preserve their
namesake. Last week, the tribal council voted to acknowledge
legal personhood status for the body of water. The Nov. 6 vote
follows similar actions other tribes have taken to safeguard
natural resources. However, CRIT has made history as the first
community to ever bestow personhood status on the Colorado
River. The move came in response to overuse of water resources,
according to a Tuesday announcement from the tribes.
… As a legal person, the Colorado River has the right to
be protected under tribal law.
Last month, a trash boom strung across the Tijuana River
channel just inside U.S. territory stopped 40 tons of materials
during a one-hour rain event – as the trash gets removed and
sent to area landfills, another environmental issue has
surfaced. Dumps north of the border are having to take in the
additional trash coming in from Mexico compounding a critical
shortage of landfill space, according to Oscar Romo, director
of Alter Terra, a binational environmental group. All of it has
to go into a landfill in San Diego.
This month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is
accepting public comments on PG&E’s surrender and
decommission plan for the Potter Valley Project, which would
remove the Scott and Cape Horn dams from the lower Eel River
and replace the utility’s water diversion facility with a New
Eel Russian Facility. Friends of the Eel River and Save
California Salmon, alongside other partners, have teamed up to
host a series of events along the North Coast to update the
public on the dam removal process and help community members
navigate FERC’s public commenting process.
President Donald Trump nominated a former lawmaker from New
Mexico on Wednesday to oversee the management of vast public
lands that are playing a central role in Republican attempts to
ramp up fossil fuel production. The nominee for the Bureau
of Land Management, former Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico,
must be confirmed by the Senate. … The Sierra Club said
in a statement that Pearce was “an opponent of the landscapes
and waters that generations of Americans have
explored and treasured.” … The National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association and Public Lands Council said in a joint statement
that Pearce “understands the important role that public lands
play across the West.”
Negotiators for seven Western states are under mounting
pressure to reach an agreement outlining how they plan to share
the Colorado River’s dwindling water. The Trump administration
gave the states a Tuesday deadline to agree on
the initial terms of a plan for cutting water use to prevent
the river’s reservoirs from declining to dangerously low
levels. Because California uses more Colorado River water
than any other state, it will play a central role in any deal
to take less from the river.
