A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
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A new study finds health care costs associated dust blowing off
a shrinking Great Salt Lake could cost as much as $2 billion a
year. Lena Harris, an assistant professor at Texas A&M,
wrote the working paper with researchers from Arizona State
University and University of California Davis. She said they
did a “back of the envelope calculation” that found just
factoring PM 2.5 and PM10 blowing off the lakebed at scale
could lead to significant costs for emergency room visits and
years off Utahns’ lives. … The study also explored health
benefits of getting water into the lake, factoring in acquiring
agriculture water (spending as much as $1,000 an acre-foot).
For every additional acre-foot of water in the Great Salt Lake?
One model finds Utahns would get on average about $1,295 per
acre-foot in health benefits.
A massive spill of raw sewage and untreated
wastewater into the Arkansas River in southeastern
Colorado continues to wreak havoc on the region. Water in the
river downstream of the spill, east of Pueblo, is still testing
high for dangerous nasties like the bacteria E. coli.
… And all of this is happening during one of the most
agriculturally important times for the Lower Arkansas Valley,
as watermelon, cantaloupe, chile peppers and other crops are
harvested. … These new water quality challenges pile on
top of earlier 2026 farming obstacles in the valley. Much of
the Colorado-famous melon crop from the area was devastated in
early season hail storms.
The state Legislature this week approved $158.2 million to
protect the Delta and the State Water Project
infrastructure. The Legislature approved $90.2 million
to fortify the Delta’s aging levees, along
with up to $68 million to safeguard the State Water
Project’s California Aqueduct and canals. … The
budget funding is only about half of the $300 million
that was initially requested. Moreover, that
request was for $300 million annually, divided equally between
the Delta levees and the State Water Project infrastructure.
… Also included in Tuesday’s budget approval was $5
million to acquire Jersey Island in the Delta and repair its
levees.
As major changes hang over the shape of the region’s water
supply, a group of agricultural landowners in northern Sonoma
County is advancing the latest attempt to create a new
water district for the area. … The proposal
comes at a pivotal moment for water users throughout
the Russian River watershed. … Pacific Gas and
Electric Co. last year surrendered its license for the
[Potter Valley] project, saying it is outdated
and costly, leaving the utility, local governments and federal
regulators to re-envision the future of the Eel and
Russian River watersheds without the Scott and Cape Horn dams
in Lake and Mendocino County. For Alexander Valley’s
agricultural landowners, the proposed water district is an
attempt to gain more control over how the valley prepares for
that future.
The Colorado River is on the brink of collapse because of
climate change and overuse of water. Reservoirs supplying water
to tens of millions of people in the southwest reached record
lows this summer.The nation is racing to
refill them with conservation measures so they can
still generate hydropower and reliably deliver water to users
downstream. Fish are struggling. Rafters are having
trouble navigating low water. Despite all this, the seven
states sharing the water supply remain at a yearslong
impasse over how to conserve the river. “The Colorado
River is in as bad a shape as it’s ever been,” said Doug
Kenney, chairman of the Colorado River Research Group at CU
Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center.
The summer’s deluge of monsoon rain has eased demand on local
water supplies, but it won’t be enough to pull Utah out
of a drought or refill the state’s shrinking
reservoirs, state water officials warn. That’s because monsoon
storms often hit lower elevations and come in short, intense
bursts, said Laura Haskell, drought coordinator with the Utah
Division of Water Resources. Much of that water rushes over the
ground instead of flowing into the streams that feed Utah’s
reservoirs. … At the end of August, Utah’s
reservoirs were at 52% of their total capacity
statewide, according to the state water division.
That’s 15% below what’s typical for this time of year — and 18%
lower than where reservoirs stood at this time last year.
Our 42ⁿᵈ annual Water
Summit, an engaging day of discussions addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West, will
be held on Thursday, Oct. 29, in Sacramento with the theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western Water. Speakers and
conversations will highlight emerging topics related to the
challenges and opportunities facing management of the
West’s most precious natural resource. As previously
announced, the day will open with a keynote address from
Tom Gibson, the new director of California’s Department
of Water Resources. See more recently announced
speaker names
hereand find out how to register.
Since their introduction to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in
California in October 2024, golden mussels continue to be a
major concern for Lake Tahoe and other regional bodies of
water. … Senators and other lawmakers and leaders
addressed the threat multiple times at the 30th Tahoe Summit,
which recently took place at Sand Harbor State Park. In a
pull-aside at the summit with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto,
the Tribune inquired about federal action targeting golden
mussels. “Our fight right now is to stop the spread,”
Senator Cortez Masto said. “We have actually passed several
pieces of legislation because we see what’s happening.”
California lawmakers passed seven bills aimed at
increasing oversight of data centers in the final days
of the legislative session and sent the measures to Gov. Gavin
Newsom for consideration. Among the bills are proposals from
Bay Area Assemblymembers Diane Papan and Rebecca Bauer-Kahan
that would require greater disclosure of water and
energy use by data center operators. … Papan’s
legislation focuses on water use before and after a data center
begins operating. One bill would require developers to disclose
projected water use. “It requires data centers to inform
localities of how much water they’re going to use prior to
construction,” Papan said.
… The Trump administration is one step closer to repealing
the 2001 Roadless Rule and opening nearly 45 million acres of
national forests across the U.S. to possible development. …
Over 1 million people in the Intermountain region get water
directly from watersheds that include roadless areas, according
to the Forest Service. Water that flows through roadless areas
in the region also journeys downstream to larger waterways and
supports an additional 3.7 million people. … More road
construction and logging could increase sediment in creeks,
streams and rivers that run through the national forests and
degrade the water quality. Less trees in the forest after a
timber harvest could also lead to quicker snowmelt runoff in
the spring.
A new $27 million layer of technology at the city’s 32-year-old
southside water treatment plant will bring more efficient and
effective cleanup of PFAS compounds known as “forever
chemicals“ from that area’s long-polluted
aquifer, Tucson Water officials said. The newly installed
“ion exchange” treatment method will allow more
contaminated water to be treated every day, perhaps
twice as much, Tucson Water Director John Kmiec said. It will
allow the plant to treat water tainted with heavier
concentrations of PFAS compounds than are currently being
treated. … The construction was paid for mainly from a $25
million federal grant, distributed by the Arizona Department of
Environmental Quality, plus another $2 million from the city.
The public is invited to help maintain trails and clear
vegetation along the Kings River for National Public Lands Day
Sept. 26. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its partners
will host the event, which will be held at the Kings River
Wildlife Area, 27295 Pine Flat Rd. in Sanger from 8 a.m to
noon. … The program, a collaboration between the Kings
River Conservation District, Kings River Water Association and
California Department of Fish and Wildlife, holds various
volunteering opportunities along the Kings River including a
fish population survey and a trout incubating program.
When your given handle as a water taste-testing judge is “Trash
Panda,” crowd expectations are low. That was my strategy
as I faced 12 gleaming glasses of city water from around
Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Water Conference this week —
admit up front that my palate is hopelessly scorched from
decades of mouth-shredding Froot Loops and scalding coffee. And
acknowledge that even on a good day, my family claims I
couldn’t smell the ocean from a boat. They gave me a badge
and a score sheet anyway, because the bar for what passes as
late-day entertainment for 300 water engineers is equally low.
These experts in sewage lift pumps and ionizing water filters
were indeed diverted by me and my fellow handful of judges,
perhaps because they could sense our fear.
A bill that exemplifies the lack of water for farming in
California just passed the state Legislature. It makes
it easier for farmers to convert their fields to solar
panels. Decades ago, state lawmakers were concerned
about too many farms being turned into new subdivisions. So in
1965, the state started giving tax breaks to growers who agreed
to keep their land in farming. But now farmers who want to
switch to solar are finding the strict rules are like expensive
locks on their property, with high fees to get out of the
agreements. The bill adopted Monday night targets areas
where growers are now limited in how much groundwater they can
pump and are being forced to leave some of their land
dry and unplanted.
As El Niño continues to strengthen, data is increasingly points
to a clear pattern this upcoming snow season: a wet winter for
California, and a warm winter for the Pacific Northwest. …
With models projecting an inch or three or extra snowfall for
the first month of 2027, a below-average snow year is looking
increasingly unlikely. … There are, of course, a few
caveats. First, this is only modeled snowfall, not
standing snowpack. Warmer temperatures
brought on by El Niño’s extra heat could work to melt
additional snowfall even at higher elevations. Indeed,
both the climate prediction center’s new seasonal outlook and
our suite of climate models point to
warmer-than-average temperatures across Northern
California this winter.
California lawmakers will spend up to $125 million in state
funds to help buy and turn Golden Gate Fields, the 161-acre
former horse racing track along the East Bay shoreline, into a
public park — a priority of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s. The
funding will come from Proposition 4, the
voter-approved $10 billion bond for climate projects such as
drinking water, wildfire prevention and land
conservation, despite concerns from environmental
advocates and lawmakers that diverting the money would
drain limited resources from those other priorities.
… Newsom’s proposal is now included in Assembly
Bill/Senate Bill 113, which lawmakers are poised to
adopt by Tuesday.
One of the most striking signs of the low snowpack and
drought that has plagued Colorado this year can be
found by driving by Green Mountain Reservoir in Grand County.
The reservoir, first filled in the 1940s, sits at its lowest
level since the 1960s, when it was drained for maintenance
work. Low snowpack is driving this summer’s low levels. The
reservoir has dropped so far that people can cross it on foot
without getting their feet wet. But that’s proving to be a bit
of an advantage, as Northern Water is using that low
level to make critical repairs to the reservoir that will save
both time and money. Notably, the spillway apron for
the dam is 80 years old and in need of repair.
Water use for data centers across New Mexico could soar in the
coming years, an analyst told state lawmakers Monday.
Currently, data centers in the state use just more than
500 million gallons of water annually, accounting for
one-half of 1% of the state’s total water use, Houston Advanced
Research Center Vice President of Water and Community
Resilience Margaret Cook told legislators on the interim Water
and Natural Resources Committee. If every data center planned
for the state was up and running, that figure would
jump to 23.6 billion gallons per year, she said. The
lion’s share of that water would go toward “indirect
use,” such as cooling the power plants that fuel the data
centers, Cook said. A lack of transparency from data
center developers makes it difficult to accurately predict
future water use numbers, she added.
Last weekend, monsoon rains sent a flash flood rushing through
the Grand Canyon. The massive surge of roiling brown water
carried trees, rocks and debris into the Colorado River,
leaving at least two people dead and damaging bridges and
plumbing. … Floods happen throughout the canyon fairly
often. It stretches across 277 miles and includes many side
canyons, which spider out from the main channel of the Colorado
River. The amount of rain that caused the recent flood, Crossey
said, probably wasn’t particularly extraordinary. The place
where those rains fell, though, is what makes Saturday’s
flooding so unique. The heavy monsoon rains fell on the burn
scar left behind by the 2025 Dragon Bravo Fire, which scorched
nearly 150,000 acres.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to
launch a new phase of the county’s fight against Tijuana River
pollution, approving funding to plan a new treatment
system to capture sewage from the river itself and to
advance a permanent fix at a toxic air pollution hot spot in
South County. … The capture and cleanup measure directs the
county’s chief administrative officer to begin an 18-month
project development and engineering analysis, funded by $1.8
million from the county’s Unlocked Reserves Framework,
according to a county staff report. … A separate measure
allocates $4 million to advance design, environmental review
and permitting for a permanent box culvert
project at Saturn Boulevard, where hydrogen sulfide
levels have reached 16 times the state air quality
standard.
