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.
California unveiled a plan Tuesday to bring at least 7.5
million acres of land and coastal waters under the care of
Indigenous tribes. … The new policy, set by the
California Natural Resources Agency, aims to start healing the
harm caused by the state’s actions to bar tribes from their
homelands and criminalize their cultural and land management
practices. These actions not only harmed Native communities,
whose cultures and ways of life are intimately tied to the
plants, animals and landscape of their homelands, but also
caused well-documented harm to ecosystems through the loss of
biodiversity, takeover of invasive species, degradation
of water quality and increase in wildfire risk.
The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday voted to advance a major
water-management plan for the Lower American River, marking
another green light the region’s key water supply partnership
needs before the agreement is fully approved. Tuesday’s
decision made Sacramento City Council the 21st member to give
the agreement a thumbs up, with about 10 more boards and
councils still to go for the powerful partnership, or the Water
Forum. … The pact was designed to last through 2030 and
updated then. But it soon ran up against the direct impacts of
climate change, prompting the members to accelerate the
timeline and push to adopt an updated plan years earlier than
originally planned.
As invasive mussel species continue to spread across the state,
both local and national agencies, such as the US Bureau of
Reclamation (BOR), are exploring every avenue to stop them.
Now, they’re offering up some serious money for the right idea
to help stop the spread of these shellfish. The three-phase
‘Halt the Hitchhiker’ program is offering up $200,000 for the
winning proposal, with cash prizes offered at each phase for
winning ideas. The push stems from continued concern about
invasive shellfish such as the Quagga, Zebra and more recent
Golden Mussels.
For more than two decades, the Colorado-born photographer Pete
McBride has documented the overwhelming beauty and the
gathering threats to the Colorado River. Now with the lowest
snowpack on record in his home state and the basin’s reservoirs
approaching historic lows, McBride is stepping out from behind
the camera to write a book detailing a lifelong love affair
with his “backyard river.” Part memoir and part travelogue from
his National Geographic and other magazine assignments, Witness
to Water is a cry from McBride’s heart about a river ecosystem
being strained to the breaking point.
For the first time in four years, salmon fishing seasons will
open in California for both commercial and recreational use
this spring. … The sport fishing season will open first,
on April 11 in ocean waters south of Pigeon Point, about 30
miles north of Santa Cruz. The commercial season, which has
been closed in the state since 2023 due to low stock numbers,
is set to open in California in mid-May, with a final date and
regulations to be set in mid-April. The recreational fishery
had only limited openings in 2025 following closures in 2023
and 2024 for the same reason. … The goal of the
restrictions is to ensure plenty of adult fish return
to the spawning grounds [in rivers] and hatcheries this
fall, said the CDFW.
Has Colorado’s snowpack peak already come and gone? Maybe – and
if so, it would be the earliest snowpack peak on record with
records dating back to 1987. Those who have been following
along with the state’s snowpack since the start of the season
already know that the winter of 2025-2026 has brought
record-setting dryness to the Centennial State
[location of Colorado River
headwaters]. … On March 8, statewide snowpack
hit a snow-water equivalent of 8.4 inches – and it hasn’t
managed to climb to 8.5 inches since. In fact, as of March 14,
the state was at 8.2 inches, showing a snowpack decline that
hasn’t been seen yet this year.
… [T]he [Colorado] river’s 46 reservoirs, including the
enormous man-made Lake Powell and Lake Mead, now stand more
than two-thirds empty, according to a recent report by the
Colorado River Research Group. … “We are not running out
of water,” said Rhett Larson, professor of water law at Arizona
State University and one of the [Colorado River Water Users
Association] conference’s keynote speakers. “We are running out
of cheap water.” … Amid this ongoing tussle, a
few lonely voices, including a right-wing Arizona state
representative named Alexander Kolodin, have been proposing a
seemingly radical solution: What if we just … gulp … let
the market decide?
California’s Department of Water Resources
has released its most comprehensive groundwater
report to date. The Bulletin 118 Update 2025 covers
groundwater conditions, use, and management across the state
from 2020 to 2024, offering the most detailed assessment yet of
a resource that supplies around 40% of California’s total water
demand in average years. … Structured around four strategic
themes: maximizing groundwater infrastructure for climate
adaptation, accelerating SGMA implementation, strengthening
equity for frontline communities, and improving data and
monitoring tools, the report amounts to a call for California
to move from reactive groundwater management to treating it as
the cornerstone of its long-term water strategy.
The Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has
selected Joe Cacioppo as Nevada’s next state engineer,
officials announced Thursday. Cacioppo, a licensed civil
engineer, served as the Deputy Administrator at the Nevada
Division of Water Resources for a month before being promoted
as Nevada’s top water regulator following the abrupt departure
of his predecessor in December. … The appointment of Cacioppo
has attracted criticism from several conservation groups who
question his ties to a firm involved in numerous water rights
applications across the state.
U.S. Sen Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) on Monday announced he’d
successfully pressured the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to
release $120 million for ongoing construction of the
Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, which, when completed,
promises to provide a sustainable water supply to more than
250,000 people in northwest New Mexico. The project to divert
water via a 300-mile pipeline from the [Colorado River
tributary] San Juan River to the Navajo Nation and areas nearby
was finalized in 2010 when the federal Interior Department and
the Nation finalized the latter’s water rights
settlement. Congress has authorized up to approximately
$1.8 billion for the project.
Managing the Salton Sea remains a thorny issue for California.
We spoke with Pacific Institute’s Michael Cohen and UC
Riverside’s William Porter about recent research that might
point toward cost-effective ways to protect public health.
… Michael Cohen: In the past three to four
years, there have been strongly worded news articles saying
that the Salton Sea is a toxic sump that’s killing people.
That’s exaggerating how bad the situation is. … This
report tries to synthesize what other reports are saying about
pollution sources in the region. We wanted to raise the
question of what’s the best use of limited public funds.
The City Council has adopted a resolution led by Councilwoman
Traci Park opposing a federal effort that could weaken
protections for wetlands and small waterways, adding the city’s
voice to a growing fight over environmental safeguards along
California’s coast. Park’s resolution pushes back against a
Trump administration proposal to redefine which waters and
wetlands are protected under the Clean Water Act. Local
officials and environmental advocates have argued the change
would strip federal protections from many wetlands and streams.
Park said those areas play an important role in filtering
pollution, protecting water quality and reducing flooding
during storms.
This time last year, the administration of President Donald
Trump tried to decimate one of the nation’s premier scientific
institutions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. … It is heartening that, through
tireless advocacy on Capitol Hill, multiple rallies and
litigation, those who understand how critical this organization
is to our daily lives have succeeded in pushing back on the
attack and persuading Congress to fund NOAA at a steady level.
… As we look to the future, we also have a chance to think
about how the agency should evolve, and consider critically
what works and what does not. – Written by Craig N. McLean, former assistant
administrator and chief scientist of NOAA Research.
Even though golden mussels were only detected in California in
October 2024, they pose a significant and immediate threat to
the state’s waterways. … Unfortunately, many of the common
inspection programs and methods—like boat inspections or
eDNA—can be costly, labor intensive, and slow. While these
methods offer comprehensive results, the rapid spread of golden
mussels requires tools that deliver immediate answers as
boaters enter waterways. Luckily, a new solution is on the
rise: dogs that can smell invasive species. From time on the
treadmill to weekly weigh-ins, golden mussel-sniffing dogs are
treated like star athletes at Mussel Dogs, an Oakdale-based
canine training and environmental consulting business.
Lake Mead is headed for an even more concerning, record-low
level near the end of 2027, according to projections from
federal forecasters released Friday. In November 2027,
the reservoir is likely to dip to 1032.76 feet above
sea level — nearly 8 feet below the previous record
low recorded in 2022, when receding levels began to reveal
skeletal remains. That’s a chilling number based on an
unseasonably warm winter and falling projections for
runoff into Lake Powell, the releases of which flow into
Lake Mead. … According to Friday’s projection, Lake
Powell could dip below so-called “minimum power pool” as soon
as January.
The warm winter has left very little snow in California’s
Sierra Nevada, and now an extreme heat wave is accelerating the
rapid melt in the mountains. The Sierra snowpack
measures 48% of average for this time of year,
according to state data, down from 73% of average in late
February. … California relies on the Sierra snowpack for
about 30% of its water, on average. But the extraordinary
warmth across the West this winter, which broke records in many
areas, brought more precipitation falling as rain instead of
snow. Scientific research has shown that human-caused climate
change is pushing average snow lines higher in the mountains
and changing the timing of runoff.
Landowners and farmers in the Tule and Tulare Lake subbasins
can now log onto the state’s groundwater reporting system
ahead of the May 1 deadline. The state Water
Resources Control Board announced that its groundwater
extraction annual reporting system, or GEARS, is open for
pumpers to begin reporting how much they pump and paying fees.
Pumpers are required to meter their wells, pay $300 per well to
register then with the state and pay $20 per acre foot of
groundwater pumped. … This is all part of the region’s
probationary designation for lacking an adequate groundwater
plan.
Arizona state lawmakers tend to vote in lockstep with their
party on water issues, but when it comes to proposed Colorado
River cuts, they may break ranks. Republicans hold majorities
in the state House and Senate. Members of each party usually
vote in blocs, but that seems likely to change. Arizona is in
the midst of Colorado River negotiations and will likely take a
serious water cut. Unlike other states in the Colorado River
Basin, the plan will need to be approved by Arizona’s 90 state
lawmakers. But some legislative districts will be hit much
harder than others. … For the time being, all Arizona
lawmakers are united in advocating for the best deal for the
state.
The legislator who wrote a law modernizing California’s water
infrastructure says there’s no concrete estimate for the cost
to respond to worsening drought conditions. In a press
conference held Friday at the San Luis Reservoir in western
Merced County, Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced County, author of
last year’s successful Senate Bill 72, said there is no way to
know the cost of developing 9 million acre-feet of
water by 2040. … Caballero added she’s proposing a
bond that could pay for implementing much-needed updates to the
state’s water plan. Meanwhile, certain water infrastructure
projects in California have already cost billions of dollars.
… [S]cientists from across the state and as far away as
Norway published a study tracking the long-term collapse of
salmon age diversity, finding that today’s Chinook salmon
populations in the Central Valley are all-in on a single bet.
Three-year-olds dominate the group, while 5-year-olds are rare
and 6-year-olds are mostly absent. The study was focused on the
Feather River and its tributary, the
Yuba River. … The loss of age diversity
helps explain why modern salmon runs swing so wildly from
abundance to collapse.
