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.
Following more than five years of planning and construction,
the San Mateo Wastewater Treatment Plant, on the shoreline of
San Francisco Bay, has undergone a $552 million upgrade and
expansion, becoming the largest public works investment in the
city’s history. The facility is now one of the most advanced
and sustainable wastewater treatment plants in the nation. The
comprehensive five-year project, carried out in three phases,
has significantly increased the plant’s capacity to handle
major storm events and prevent sewer system overflows that
threaten both public health and San Francisco Bay.
San Diego business and political leaders sought to strengthen
the economic relationship with their Mexican counterparts
Monday during the Regional Chamber of Commerce‘s 19th annual
cross-border trade mission. The delegation includes more
than 110 people from both San Diego and Baja California,
including the mayors of multiple cities and Mexican economic
development specialists. … [San Diego Mayor Todd] Gloria
said he views the mission as an “opportunity to advocate for
trade policy that benefits our businesses, as well as to press
for additional, substantive action to address the
Tijuana River Valley sewage crisis.”
Rancho California Water District announces that its Board
Member, Carol Lee Gonzales-Brady, has been elected Vice
President of the Association of California Water Agencies
(ACWA), the nation’s largest statewide coalition of public
water agencies. Gonzales-Brady will begin her two-year term on
January 1, 2026. Gonzales-Brady, who has served on the Rancho
Water Board of Directors since 2017 and completed two terms as
Board President, brings a wealth of experience to her new
statewide leadership role.
… As sea level rises and storms intensify, flooding on
Highway 37 is becoming a regular occurrence, which is a primary
reason why Caltrans is planning a major overhaul, raising
portions of the 21-mile stretch between Vallejo and U.S.
Highway 101 in Marin County. But the area is home to
several protected species. … So,
Assemblymember Lori Wilson introduced AB 697, which would allow
Highway 37 to avoid the environmental restrictions in certain
places at certain times. … It was just last Monday
that Governor Newsom signed another bill, AB 454, establishing
permanent protections for migratory birds.
A recent report estimates that New Mexico has the
potential to produce substantial power from its geothermal
resources. But what will it take to tap into this substantial
energy source underneath our feet that could reduce emissions
and curb climate change? Geothermal energy comes from deep
within the Earth’s crust. … This heat is key for
generating electricity – usually from tapping into a
hot water aquifer – which can directly heat
buildings or spin a turbine’s rotor. This process emits no
pollutants and, unlike solar or wind, can be available around
the clock.
Fresno County Board of supervisors will decide over the next
year to decide whether or not global materials distributor
CEMEX can extract out of the river near Woodward Park. The San
Joaquin River runs through Woodward Park, and CEMEX, which is
the largest distributor of concrete globally, proposes to have
a 100-year mining contract. Currently they want to use
explosives to extract a large amount of gravel from the river.
The San Joaquin River is one of the two major river systems in
the Central Valley, including the Sacramento River. –Written by opinion editor Juan Muratalla.
What if everything you thought you knew about desalination
brine was wrong? Despite widespread fears of environmental
harm, decades of scientific evidence and real-world monitoring
reveal a far more nuanced – and often surprising – reality.
Modern desalination, guided by advanced engineering and
evidence-driven policy, is quietly reshaping the future of
water security while protecting our oceans.
A cold and dynamic storm is forecast to soak much of California
early this week as a strong low-pressure system drops south
from the Pacific Northwest. It’s the first major Pacific storm
of the season and expected to bring widespread rain,
heavy Sierra snow and a chance of severe
thunderstorms — along with flood risks near
recent burn scars in Southern California. From Monday morning
into Wednesday, winter storm warnings blanket the Sierra
Nevada, where 1 to 3 feet of snow is expected.
In a move to bolster local control over California’s critical
water resources, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill
709 into law. The legislation, authored by Assemblyman Jeff
Gonzalez (R-Indio), clarifies the authority of local
Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) to adapt their
management plans in response to new data and changing
conditions. The bill addresses a key component of the state’s
landmark 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
…[T]he law lacked explicit clarity on whether the legally
binding coordination agreements between these agencies could be
amended after receiving an official assessment from the state’s
Department of Water Resources (DWR).
With rising tensions over a dwindling supply of water from the
Colorado River, Wyoming and six other states have until Nov. 11
to hammer out a deal for water allocation or the federal
government will step in and settle it for them. The main point
of conflict is between the river’s Upper Basin states, Wyoming,
Colorado, Utah and New Mexico – and the Lower Basin states;
Arizona, Nevada and California. In a nutshell, the Upper
Basin states claim that the Lower Basin states are hogging
water, leaving them with too little for their own pressing
needs.
The Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency
(SVBGSA) on Thursday outlined a multi-hundred-million-dollar
plan to halt worsening seawater intrusion by treating and
pumping water back into the basin to create a protective
barrier. No vote was taken, but the presentation put a
spotlight on the project’s price tag — estimated between $700
million and $1 billion — and the unresolved question of who
pays. … Agency leaders said recent studies show
intrusion is more severe than previously understood,
threatening municipal supplies and the region’s agriculture if
left unchecked.
Several flood safety projects in the Central Valley will get
$21.5 million in state funding, about half of what proponents
had hoped for. It’s not known yet which projects that money
will pay for, though the enacting legislation states $5 million
must be spent on flood protection in the Miles and Bear creeks
in Merced County. Those creeks caused serious damage in the
2023 floods, nearly destroying the entire town of Planada. How
the remaining $16.5 million will be used is still to be decided
but McFarland Mayor Saul Ayon said work on Poso Creek
“…absolutely must be the top priority.”
The data-center economy is booming in California, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to slow it down. The governor vetoed
a bill on Saturday that would have provided more transparency
around the water usage of data centers, which regularly require
millions of gallons of fresh water to cool their computers.
… The bill, AB 93, would have required data centers
applying for business licenses to disclose to their water
supplier how much water they expected to use. For existing data
centers, it would have required a disclosure of annual water
use to renew a business license.
When fire hydrants ran dry in the first hours of the Palisades
fire, firefighters faced confusion and costly delays in getting
vital water trucks into the area to help fight the destructive
blaze, new city documents revealed. It took some time for
officials to secure so-called tender trucks and when they
finally arrived, the fire was so intense they needed escorts to
get to the front lines, according to the Los Angeles Fire
Department’s after-action report released this week.
… The revelations underscore how scarce water
supplies hampered the Palisades fire fight.
California will halve its production of steelhead trout and
chinook salmon at a major fish hatchery this fall because the
federal government hasn’t increased its funding, a state
official said Thursday. The Bureau of Reclamation is
providing $2.5 million in the current fiscal year to the state
of California to run the Nimbus Fish Hatchery on the American
River in Northern California — less than the $3.16 million
state wildlife officials estimated would be necessary to run at
full capacity.
For more than a century, a canyon along the Klamath River — its
riverbanks and striking rock formations — was closed to the
public, seen only by a few. But now, for the first time in
generations, rafts once again glide through its waters.
… For decades, reservoirs drew people to live and
recreate along the Klamath. Now, the river and its new
surroundings are being rediscovered in a different way.
… With the dams and diversion pipes gone, water now
flows freely through the canyon, revealing its distinctive
geology — visible now to anyone with a paddle.
… Jointly managed by the Resource Conservation District of
Greater San Diego County and the County of San Diego, this
community garden is the largest of its kind in the region.
Located amidst horse ranches in the city’s southernmost
stretch, the garden spans the Tijuana River Valley Regional
Park with more than 200 plots, including 10 quarter-acre farms
leased for $324 to $1,600 per year. But after news broke late
last month that the Resource Conservation District (RCD)
decided to terminate its lease, citing ongoing concerns about
health and safety in the area based on the ongoing
Tijuana River sewage crisis … gardeners are
now facing the possibility of losing their plots after a 60-day
grace period.
After seven years of planning, permits and construction,
Antioch’s new water desalination plant will provide East
County’s largest city with enough drinking water for
generations to come. It is the first desalination plant for the
Delta and only the second desalination plant in the Bay Area,
along with a plant located in Newark. … The facility
will produce up to six million gallons per day of treated
drinking water — an important boost to regional supply
reliability amid rising salinity in the San Joaquin River, the
state said in a press release.
Beneath the beauty of the San Francisco Bay, a silent toxin has
infiltrated the complex ecosystem: mercury. Mercury’s
effects are everywhere in the food chain. The toxin has
detrimental impacts across the entire ecosystem, from marine
life to land animals. A study by the San Francisco Estuary’s
Regional Monitoring Program found high mercury concentrations
in the South Bay caused lowered hatchability in the eggs of
double-crested cormorants and Forster’s terns.
Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services lifted
harmful algal bloom advisories in Humboldt County and recapped
the year’s toxic growths — with eight recorded HAB incidents
between late July and Mid-September in waters people swim and
play in. This year’s blooms are believed to have caused one
dog’s death and one possible human illness. … Health
advisories this summer at Big Lagoon (the only water body
routinely monitored for harmful toxins via the Big Lagoon
Rancheria) were issued after water was found with
concentrations exceeding state safety standards at three
separate locations on July 22.
