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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President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Mexico of posing a
“true threat” to residents of California and Texas, warning
that the country must “immediately” address cross-border water
and sewage problems. The president posted on Truth Social,
“Mexico must take care of its water and sewage problem,
IMMEDIATELY. It is a true Threat to the People of Texas,
California, and the United States of America!” The post
was accompanied by a video that says that “Mexico is sending
millions of gallons of untreated sewage water into the Tijuana
River.”
Construction is complete on the first experimental levee along
the San Francisco Bay shoreline that will clean treated
wastewater and discharge it into the Bay. Now, all that’s
needed is for the levee to be plugged in to the source of
treated water. On Wednesday, officials invited press to visit
the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project, which sits
between the Regional Water Quality Control Plan and the upland
marshes of the Baylands in the lower south of San Francisco
Bay. What’s experimental is the way the levee is
engineered. The top layer is a thick, loamy clay soil covered
in native plants. Treated effluent, or cleaned wastewater from
the treatment plant, will flow from beneath the surface in a
dense layer of gravel and sand.
Those pushing for a controversial new AI data center in
Chandler … have made big promises about how it would save the
city water. … As Arizona approaches a water crisis —
with dwindling groundwater supplies and looming cuts to its
Colorado River allotment — the pitch sounded almost too good to
be true. The final development agreement, which is up for
a vote by the Chandler City Council on Thursday, tells a
different story. Namely, the agreement and internal city emails
obtained by Phoenix New Times via a public records request show
that the data center development … could suck much more water
out of Chandler’s pipes over the long run than is being used at
the site currently.
The City of Santa Barbara has released a Draft Wastewater and
Water Systems Climate Adaptation Plan the first of its kind in
California. It is seeking public comments through Feb. 10.
Jointly funded by the California Coastal Commission, California
Coastal Conservancy and the City. The plan lays out how Santa
Barbara will shield critical water and wastewater
infrastructure from rising seas, heavier storms and increased
flooding. City officials say the wastewater system is the
highest-priority risk. Heavy rain can push floodwater into
sewer pipes and manholes, overwhelming the system and causing
sanitary sewer overflows.
Policy professor and water consultant Randall Crane was seated
today as the Municipal Water District of Orange County’s newest
representative on the board of directors of the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California. Crane is a
professor emeritus at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs,
where he studied water governance, infrastructure planning,
transportation, and the economic development challenges of
cities. Through his career, he has advised the World Bank and
several countries on water access, environmental governance,
and regional infrastructure planning. He succeeds Larry Dick,
who served on Metropolitan’s 38-member board since 2003.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico struck a conciliatory
tone on Tuesday in response to President Trump’s threats of
additional tariffs over a long-running dispute between the two
nations over water. Mr. Trump said on Monday that he would
place an additional 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports if
Mexico didn’t release 200,000 acre-feet of water, or about 65
billion gallons, to the United States by the end of the year.
He said Mexico owed more than 260 billion gallons under a 1944
treaty mediating the distribution of water from the Rio
Grande, Colorado and Tijuana rivers. Ms. Sheinbaum
told reporters on Tuesday that … it was impossible to
immediately deliver the water Mr. Trump requested because of
physical constraints.
A new Tulare County water district is on a tight timeline to
balance an opportunity to buy water for its farmers with the
need to fund its operations long term. The board of the newly
formed Consolidated Water District voted Dec. 3 to buy 2,900
acre-feet of water from three private ditch companies, the
Persian, Watson and Matthews ditch companies. The timing is
both good and bad. Good because the district is preparing for a
Proposition 218 election in spring to assess new fees to
farmland and this purchase is a clear example of what that
money pays for. The timing is also bad because the district is
operating on a $500,000 loan from Consolidated People’s Ditch
Company while it gets established. The 2,900 acre feet purchase
will eat up $290,000 of that loan.
The Colorado River Basin, like much of the southwestern U.S.,
is experiencing a drought so historic—it began in 1999—that
it’s been called a megadrought. In the basin,
whose river provides water to seven states and Mexico, that
drought is the product of warming temperatures and reduced
precipitation, especially in the form of winter
snow. While the warming trend has been conclusively linked
to human activities driving climate change, the cause of the
waning precipitation wasn’t as clear. Now, however, Jonathan
Overpeck of the University of Michigan and Brad Udall of the
Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University are
convinced that anthropogenic climate change is the culprit as
well.
Federal fisheries officials on Monday rejected a bid to
designate West Coast Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered
under the Endangered Species Act. In response, one of the
conservation groups that petitioned for the listing, the Center
for Biological Diversity, says it is considering a legal
challenge. … The listing of the fish would have meant
stronger oversight of logging near rivers, new requirements for
dams to allow salmon to pass and to release colder water, and
an influx of restoration work that usually follows an
endangered species designation.
Early last year, the hydropower company Nature and People First
set its sights on Black Mesa, a mountainous region on the
Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. … Pumped-storage
operations involve moving water in and out of reservoirs, which
could affect the habitats of endangered fish and require
massive groundwater withdrawals from an already-depleted
aquifer. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which
has authority over non-federal hydropower projects on the
Colorado River and its tributaries, ultimately
denied the project’s permit. The decision was among the first
under a new policy: FERC would not approve projects on tribal
land without the support of the affected tribe. … Now,
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright wants to reverse
this policy.
The City of Fresno is making its second major legal offensive
against corporate polluters in two years, filing suit against
more than 40 companies it accuses of contaminating the city’s
groundwater with PFAS, the synthetic compounds
known as “forever chemicals.” Fresno’s groundwater is over 600%
EPA standards for forever chemicals — some of the worst
contamination in California, according to a 2024 investigation
from USA Today. An analysis from the Environmental Working
Group found contaminated sites across central and north Fresno,
from Old Fig Garden to Pinedale.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of
Engineers will hold public meetings this month on their revised
definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), according
to a regulatory alert from the Office of Advocacy within the
U.S. Small Business Administration. The WOTUS rule helps
determine which water bodies the federal government can
regulate under the Clean Water Act. The revised WOTUS
definition aims to bring the regulations in line with the
Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA and provide
clarity on the CWA’s regulatory scope, the Advocacy alert
stated.
… State, federal and local agencies recently established a
workgroup to explore creating a dredging
program for the South Delta’s clogged channels.
[Farmer Mary] Hildebrand is part of a surprising new coalition
called the Great Valley Farm Water Partnership that aims to
nudge the South Delta dredging program along. The Great Valley
Farm Water Partnership brings together growers from the Delta
and the San Joaquin Valley, which have historically clashed
over water, to find common ground. The Partnership identified
seven joint problems, including modernizing levees in the Delta
and boosting water exports from the Delta during wet years, and
prioritized tackling the build up of South Delta sediment.
November temperatures were four degrees above average
region-wide and much of Utah and Wyoming baked under mean
temperatures that were six to ten degrees above average. High
temperatures coupled with mostly below normal precipitation
caused low snow water equivalent (SWE) and worsening drought
conditions. November precipitation was much below average for
much of the region, especially in Wyoming, northern Colorado
and northern Utah, which received less than half of normal
precipitation. Much above average November precipitation was
observed in southern Utah and eastern Colorado.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
… Changing weather patterns, droughts and competing water
demands have led to the rapid shrinking of the Salton
Sea and have left large areas of the lake bed
exposed. Dr. Emma Aronson is a professor of environmental
microbiology at the University of California, Riverside. For
years, her team has been collecting and studying dust from the
dried-up lake bed to find out how it is impacting residents’
lungs. “The Salton Sea region has been becoming
incredibly prone to dust storms, and daily dust exposure is
causing problems for people’s health,” said Aronson.
Recently, her team was able to determine that the Salton Sea
dust has an impact on our lung microbiome.
The contentious Central Coast Blue recycled water project is
set to move forward in a new form in Grover Beach — but the
city won’t have any control over whether it ultimately gets
approved. … Once completed, the project is intended to
take wastewater from the Pismo Beach Wastewater Treatment
facility, clean it, and inject that water back into the
Northern Cities Management Area of the Santa Maria Groundwater
Basin, which supplies the Five Cities with water. Despite
Grover Beach withdrawing from the project, officials said some
of the water treatment and then injection would still have to
happen from a new facility within the city’s limits — a move
that left some Grover Beach residents concerned.
A Shasta County man is being sued by the California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protection for illegally swiping water
from the Pit River and diverting it to a storage pond on his
property in Montgomery Creek, according to the complaint.
… In an interview with the Record Searchlight on
Tuesday, Dec. 9, Borgna said he had not been served with the
lawsuit, that he does possess water rights and that he didn’t
build the ditch. ”That tributary has been there for 115
years,” Borgna said of the body carrying water from the river
to the storage pond on his nearly 18-acre property, which he’s
owned since 2003.
A 20-year study conducted by the University of California,
Berkeley in the Sierra Nevada has provided new evidence
supporting prescribed burns as an effective way to manage
forests and reduce wildfire risk. The study, released in
November, suggests that CAL FIRE’s ongoing use of prescribed
burns has been beneficial, not only in lessening the risk of
wildfire but also in helping forests recover and grow stronger
over time. The findings are giving fire officials additional
motivation to continue the practice, which could also improve
insurance costs for homeowners in mountain communities.
The federal government on Monday denied listing the Western
Coast Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the
Endangered Species Act. The decision came after what the
National Marine Fisheries Service called a comprehensive review
of the Oregon Coast and Southern Oregon and Northern
California Coastal Chinook salmon. The agency examined
the issue after a petition called for listing them as
threatened or endangered and designating their habitat as
critical. … While inadequate regulations persist, they
pose a low risk to the Chinook salmon’s viability, the service
said.
More money is headed to farmers in the Colorado River
Basin, paying them to not grow as many crops and send
the water they save downstream. During a special meeting on
Monday, the Colorado River Authority of Utah’s board voted to
approve almost $895,000 in funds to some agriculture producers
under the “Demand Management Pilot Program.” It is estimated
the funds would save as much as 2,500-acre feet of water. This
is the second year of the program, which has spent nearly $5
million total. … Politically, the program can be seen as a
goodwill gesture by the state of Utah as negotiations continue
over the future of the Colorado River.
