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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As Aurora city leaders consider reducing water usage, a closer
look inside the city’s purification system shows how reused
water from river basins is transformed into drinking water
through a multi-step process designed to remove contaminants
for more than 400,000 customers. … Aurora Water said
it’s able to reuse 90 to 99% of its water rights, meaning it
can be reused several times before traveling down the river.
… Binney is one of three purification facilities in
Aurora, but it is its most advanced and in-depth plant. Aurora
Water said on high demand days in the summer, 85 million
gallons of water can be purified across the three locations.
30,000, of which, get processed at Binney.
… [A] 2008 legal mandate means the Truckee Meadows Water
Authority (TMWA) is required to align regional growth with its
two main critical water resources: the vibrant, snow-fed
Truckee River and the deep, silent aquifers lying beneath the
valley floor. … Adam Sullivan, the former state engineer for
Nevada, confirms the scale of the problem. He notes that
about half of Nevada’s 256 groundwater basins are
“over-appropriated,” meaning more water rights exist on paper
than the land can yield, and 25% are already being
over-pumped. The fear that development will outpace the
aquifer isn’t hypothetical; other western cities have already
hit the wall.
Phragmites are a tall wetland grass that can grow up to 15
feet, but it’s actually an invasive species that uses up a lot
of water. In 2011, Becka Downard, a wetland ecologist with the
Utah Geological Survey, said phragmites were basically
everywhere there was water. In order to get established, the
invasive species needs to have a source of seeds, disturbance,
and sunlight. … She said they’ll have to spray
phragmites with herbicide, mow and trample it, and then do
follow-up treatments. … She said when they’re
drought-stressed, they can catch fire more easily, and the
three-year treatment won’t work.
… Scientists and officials are now preparing for not one
threatening storm, but a 30-day maelstrom of megastorms unlike
anything seen in the state [Calif.] for almost 200 years. Such
a scenario was always possible, but rising global temperatures
are making it more likely – and far more destructive. “It
was always a when, not if,” says Dr Daniel Swain, a climate
scientist at UCLA, who co-authored the study warning of the
coming storm. “Before global warming, that ‘when’ might have
been centuries away. Now it’s quite likely to be within my own
lifetime.” This storm system, dubbed ‘ARkStorm 2.0’, could
strike this year or in 60 years – no one knows for sure.
Whenever it does, it is likely to be one of the most costly
disasters in global history. The only question is whether
California can prepare in time.
A river access advocacy group is splintered. Landowners are
organized to protect a decades-old “float but don’t touch”
decree. And lawmakers, halfway through the legislative session,
have yet to take up any bill that would change that
state’s murky rules around recreational access to the state’s
waterways. As a short and dry river season takes shape
after a snow-starved winter, it appears the status quo will
hold. But passions are roiling at Colorado’s uniquely volatile
confluence of property rights, recreational pressures and river
safety. … The blend of three divergent arguments — the
right-to float, the right-to-wade and do nothing — seems to
have stymied any new laws.
What many would hope was an April Fool’s Day joke is anything
but, as Utah has recorded its lowest-ever snowpack conditions
as of April 1. In a special report issued Friday, the Natural
Resources Conservation Service said that at no point
since measurements began in 1930 has the snowpack been as low
in Utah. The report was issued ahead of what is
expected to be a dismal Water Supply Outlook Report. The
agency called the 2026 snowpack “truly unprecedented,” with the
next lowest having been recorded in 2015, but it was
approximately five times higher than the current snowpack
conditions.
… [A] group of residents is gathering signatures for a
potential November 2026 ballot initiative that would block data
centers in Imperial County altogether. They’re calling it the
“Imperial County Data Center Prohibition Act.” …
[Developer Sebastian] Rucci has proposed obtaining 6
million gallons per day of reclaimed water from
Imperial and El Centro to cool a massive data center, which
would use 750,000 gallons a day. Rucci said the unused
water would be funneled into the Salton Sea to
ameliorate environmental damage there. Reclaimed water from
both cities is already channeled into the sea, though at a
lesser level of treatment, so the project would ultimately
result in less water in the sea.
… For Colorado River Indian Tribes, one way to be good
stewards was to unanimously approve a resolution to give the
river personhood status under tribal law. The resolution
acknowledges the Colorado River as a living entity whose health
and well-being are linked to the well-being of tribal
members. CRIT’s water rights are some of the most
powerful in the Colorado River Basin. The tribe is
also near growing communities in Arizona looking for
predictable water supplies in the face of potential water cuts
and a changing climate. People have come to CRIT seeking
agreements to lease the tribes’ water. Now, with the
resolution, the tribal council can require them to acknowledge
the river’s personhood as part of the agreement.
Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a strategy to save
declining salmon — spotlighting a historic partnership with the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe to reintroduce endangered winter-run
Chinook to the vital, cold waters upstream of Lake Shasta in
far northern California. Now, tribe officials say the
state is ending its support, potentially causing salmon
restoration efforts on the McCloud River to die
mid-stream. The tribe is now grappling with the sudden
loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the
culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral
waters. … State officials say the one-time funds were
tied to the state’s drought response and have now been used
up.
Drought is spreading fast in Colorado and major cities are
declaring their earliest water restrictions in history,
urging residents to cut back on the thirstiest water
user: the classic American lawn. The state is now
nearly half-covered by extreme drought conditions — even though
there was essentially no extreme drought there at the start of
2026. Now, extreme drought in Colorado is at its highest level
in five years, and at its highest level for April in more than
two decades. … City officials are warning people will
have to make changes, most notably, adjusting their
expectations for how their lawns will look this year. Those
changes could reshape the aesthetics of the region for the long
haul.
The Trump administration announced this week it will shut down
six of eight U.S. Forest Service research facilities in
California as part of a major national reorganization that
could leave the state underequipped to manage
escalating wildfire and drought threats. The closures
in Fresno, Chico, Fort Bragg, Mount Shasta, and Anderson and
Hat Creek in Shasta County are part of a broader
plan announced this week to shutter 57 of the
agency’s 77 research facilities across 31 states and move its
headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City. In
California, just two research facilities will remain,
in Placerville and Riverside.
For years, local officials and environmentalists in South San
Diego County — where sewage entering from Mexico has polluted
the shores for decades — have suggested that the state has not
deployed enough resources to address the soiled waters of the
Tijuana River. Nearly $700 million in federal money since 2022
has been sent to the U.S. International Boundary and Water
Commission, the national agency in charge of cross-border
rivers, to upgrade deteriorating American water treatment
plants near the border. … Some of the eight
Democrats running for governor have visited the site in recent
weeks with county officials to offer what they’d do about the
millions of tons of sewage sickening thousands of
residents.
A new statewide beaver management plan is in the works in
Colorado, with a focus on keeping more beavers on the landscape
and expanding tools to help people coexist with the animals
often dubbed “nature’s engineers.” The Upper Colorado Watershed
Environmental Team shared in a recent social media post that it
hopes to eventually establish a beaver quarantine and
relocation facility in Grand County. The facility would allow
wildlife managers to safely move beavers away from conflict
areas, such as roadways or golf courses, and reintroduce them
into more suitable habitats. One of the key coexistence tools
highlighted in beaver management is the “beaver deceiver,” a
flow device designed to prevent flooding without removing the
animals.
… The Berry family has logged various tracts of land in and
around Cazadero in the coastal mountains north of the Russian
River for about 85 years. … But, now, Berry is seeking a
different type of state approval that would allow logging in
perpetuity on Berry’s Knotfarm. Designed for smaller scale
operations on less than 2,500 acres, these permits require
environmental analysis of the entire property rather than
piecemeal reviews of the portions to be logged that they used
previously. … But the unlimited timeframe has stoked
concerns among local residents and environmental groups that
the plan, as proposed, doesn’t do enough to protect sensitive
fish habitat and drinking water for 123 households and
businesses in Jenner (whose water source crosses Berry’s
land).
The City of San Luis Obispo celebrated the completion of its
Mid-Higuera Bypass Project on Friday. The goal of the project
was to reduce the risk of flooding in flood-prone areas around
Higuera Street. Back in 2023, homes and businesses, like
Nautical Bean and Abbey Carpet and Floor, located near High
Street, were affected by flooding. … [T]he city installed two
flood bypass channels, added 20-foot-wide channels, bench
grading, and replaced the aging Bianchi Lane Bridge. All of
this in hopes of increasing flood capacity by 40 percent during
a 25-year storm event, reducing floodwater elevation by 6 to 18
inches, all while creating a healthy creek habitat.
Last summer, 28 Indigenous teenagers became the first in a
century to kayak the full length of the Klamath River —
traveling more than 300 miles from the river’s headwaters in
southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California.
Their journey follows decades of advocacy by Klamath River
tribes to remove a series of dams that had reshaped the river
since the early 1900s. … The teens — ages 13-20 —
embarked on a month-long expedition documented by producer and
Karuk tribe member Jessie Sears in the Oregon Public Broadcast
film First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath. Sears and paddler
Tasia Linwood spoke with The California Report Magazine about
what it took to make the journey — and what it means to move
through a river that is still finding its way back.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee
Zeldin announced new initiatives to tackle
microplastics in the human body and drinking water on
Thursday. Kennedy said the government will create a
$144-million program called STOMP, for the systematic targeting
of microplastics. … Zeldin said the environmental agency
will add microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its list of
concerning chemicals in drinking water. … In 2022,
California became the first government in the
world to require that drinking water be tested for
microplastics. The state has not yet begun reporting its
results.
… Denver Water spokesperson Todd Hartman said via email that
the agency will use a portion of its cash reserves to offset
the lower water sales and other costs associated with the
drought. It has also taken steps to reduce other costs, such as
leaving job vacancies open longer. Colorado experienced
record-low mountain snows this year and a scorching hot spring,
which has the thin snowpack melting sooner than normal.
Reservoir storage is stable for this year, at roughly 80% of
average across the state. But heavy water use could drain those
reservoirs too quickly, potentially causing major shortages
next year if this winter is as dry as last winter’s was,
officials have said. To protect reservoir storage,
cities want customers to reduce water use by 10% to
20%. They’re hoping surcharges will help them
reach those goals.
Other water supply and drought news around the West:
Every year, as winter winds down into April, officials with
California’s Department of Water Resources perform their
snowpack measurements for the last time. … March’s
record-breaking warmth left the state’s snowpack at a mere 18%
of its April 1 average. State officials and scientists are
warning of strained water resources throughout the
state and an earlier-than-usual fire season. The
atypical heat was part of a larger wave of warm temperatures
that swept through the continental U.S during March. The
National Weather Service reported that from March 15
through the 26, more than 1,100 records for warm temperatures
were tied or broken.
What some see as a water grab for a fast-growing metro in Utah
could have implications for the groundwater flows that support
Nevada’s only national park and surrounding farm land. On
Wednesday, a broad coalition of farmers, county and city
governments and environmentalists filed an appeal to the Bureau
of Land Management after it approved permits for a
pipeline that would contribute to the drain of
aquifers in the name of growth in Iron County, Utah, which
includes Cedar City. … Advocates say, without a
doubt, that tapping those water sources will draw down aquifers
near Great Basin National Park in Baker and into western Utah.
