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.
A pair of data centers proposed for Tucson would use more water
than four golf courses when fully built out, and be energized
with more power than any other TEP customer, according to city
documents released Monday. … The initial project, on the
Southeast Side, will require annexation into the city to
procure the massive amounts of water required to cool the
planned operation. Another associated data center is being
planned for a different location somewhere within the city
limits, officials said. A third site is being studied for yet
another data center in the region, but outside of the city
limits, the city’s newly released documents said. The city
posted the documents and a message from Thomure on a “Project
Blue — Facts and Information” section of its website Monday
afternoon. Just the first two sites combined would require
nearly 2,000 acre-feet of water per year, making them Tucson
Water’s largest customer.
Algae are nutritious organisms that lie at the base of many
marine food chains. But there seem to be more stories about
harmful algal blooms (HABs) sickening both people and animals
in recent years. We asked Dr. Raphael Kudela of UC Santa Cruz
to explain what’s going on. … “A nice meta-analysis a few
years ago took global datasets and looked for an increase in
HABs. It showed that globally, there has not been a consistent
increase. But if you break it down by region and organism, some
regions are seeing increases, some are flat, and some are
decreasing. We’re interested in where HABs are happening more.
We see problems where we’re putting extra nutrients into the
water, for instance through wastewater discharge. Urea,
ammonia, and other forms of nitrogen pose particular problems.
We also suspect that climate change is having an effect.”
Unsustainable groundwater overpumping in
California has triggered the need to transition hundreds of
thousands of acres of irrigated agricultural land into less
water-intensive activities to make water use
sustainable. … After years of work done by our
community of practice and scientists, we just published a much
needed and comprehensive framework for best practices in
cropland repurposing that can benefit everyone involved. This
community of practice includes community leaders, farmer and
farmworker advocates, scientists, and practitioners across
California’s agricultural regions. … In addition to our
recent Roadmap for a Just Land Transition, our team of 54
coauthors (with the help of many collaborators and participants
in public events) published a paper introducing a framework for
best practices in cropland repurposing in the journal Frontiers
in Water. In the next sections of this blog I will briefly
summarize some of the most important takeaways from this work.
Cloud seeding has been conducted off and in the central Sierra
— including the north fork of the Stanislaus River — since the
1950s. … There have been some groups, including the
National Park Service responsible for the 1,169 square miles
within Yosemite National Park, seeking to end the practice due
to concerns the chemicals used can cause damage to ecological
systems. The California Department of Water Resources’ latest
published study on “precipitation enhancement resource
management” references previous research that notes winter
orographic cloud seeding can improve precipitation between 4
and 15 percent. Orographic cloud seeding is where wind blows
over a mountain range causing clouds and rain or snow to fall
by lifting the air. It is an entirely different process than
what is used in areas such as Central Texas. –Written by Dennis Wyatt, editor of the Manteca
Bulletin.
The Bureau of Land Management is planning two large geothermal
lease sales in the next two months that will advance the Trump
administration’s public lands agenda backing this particular
renewable energy source. The two planned lease sales — the
first in August in California and the second
in Idaho in September — will cover nearly 50,000 acres of
public lands and cumulatively could result in power plant
development capable of powering about 70,000 homes. … It was
part of the massive tax and energy bill Congress approved, and
President Donald Trump signed into law this month, that also
set the stage to end wind and solar project tax credits in the
next two years. … The Trump administration has made it
clear that geothermal power — which generally involves pumping
up naturally heated water from deep underground to produce
steam that runs electric generators — is its preferred
renewable energy sector on public lands.
This month, the California Tahoe Conservancy, in cooperation
with the California Department of General Services, will begin
demolishing the former Motel 6 on the Conservancy’s Upper
Truckee Marsh South property in South Lake Tahoe. … The
Upper Truckee Marsh South property was one of the most
consequential environmental acquisitions in years for the Lake
Tahoe Basin. In joining with partners to acquire the property
in 2024, the Conservancy gained the opportunity to remove
development from ecologically valuable floodplain along the
Upper Truckee River. … The Conservancy has preserved the
mountain meadow and wetlands that surround the
former motel site, and has begun engaging the public on future
wetland habitat restoration and enhanced recreation and access.
In response to escalating threats to public health, first
responders, and the environment, the Siskiyou County Board of
Supervisors has unanimously declared a local emergency due to
the pervasive use of illegal, foreign-labeled pesticide
fumigants at illicit cannabis cultivation sites throughout the
unincorporated areas of Siskiyou County. The resolution cites a
disturbing rise in the use of highly toxic and unregistered
pesticide products, most of which are labeled in Chinese and
imported illegally. These substances, found routinely at
illegal grow sites, include dangerous mixtures of insecticides
(such as organophosphates, carbamates, pyrethroids, and
chlorinated hydrocarbons), fungicides, and herbicides. Many of
these chemicals are classified as carcinogens under
California’s Proposition 65, toxic air contaminants, or
groundwater pollutants.
A new tool allows researchers to probe the metabolic processes
occurring within the leaves, stems, and roots of a key citrus
crop, the clementine. The big picture goal of this research is
to improve the yields, flavor and nutritional value of citrus
and non-citrus crops, even in the face of increasingly harsh
growing conditions and growing pest challenges. To build the
tool, the team — led by the University of California San Diego
— focused on the clementine (Citrus clementina), which is a
cross between a mandarin orange and a sweet orange. The effort
is expected to expand well beyond the clementine in order to
develop actionable information for increasing the productivity
and quality of a wide range of citrus and non-citrus crops. The
strategy is to uncover – and then make use of – new insights on
how plants respond, in terms of metabolic activities in
specific parts of the plant or tree, to environmental factors
like temperature, drought and disease.
In the contentious talks over how states will split the
shrinking Colorado River, negotiators are reaching consensus on
one point: Just go with the “natural flow.” The concept is a
somewhat simple one. Instead of negotiating future cuts across
the entire seven-state region, the process would rely on recent
water records — the amount of water flowing from the Colorado
River headwaters in the Upper Basin to a point in Arizona
marking the boundary of the Lower Basin states. Negotiators
recently heralded the move as a potential breakthrough in the
long-stalled talks: It could help end a stalemate over how to
share the pain of future water reductions and at the same time
respond to the impacts of climate change. But that belies a set
of lingering questions. For one, just determining the
water in the river will require complex calculations relying on
evolving research. Even more critically, there’s no indication
negotiators are close on the particularly difficult issue of
deciding how big a share of water each group of states can
claim. Still, observers say it could mark an important change.
As Congress starts work on the next government funding bills,
President Trump is proposing eliminating a key water
conservation program that’s sent more than $3.2 billion to
Western states since 2010. The program, known as WaterSMART and
run by the Bureau of Reclamation, provides federal dollars to
local governments and organizations in the West to address
worsening drought and water scarcity. WaterSMART grants,
combined with state and local dollars, have funded more than
2,350 projects addressing water conservation, habitat
restoration, water recycling, drought preparedness and
more. … The budget proposal strips the Bureau of
Reclamation of around $600 million from its current budget of
around $1.86 billion, according to an analysis by the
Association of California Water Agencies, a policy and trade
group. The proposal zeroes out funding for WaterSmart, as well
as other water programs at BOR.
Every spring, tens of thousands of California gulls, some from
the Bay Area, leave their home on the coast for a lengthy
flight over the Sierra Nevada to summer at Mono Lake. There,
the next generation of birds is born. Last year, however,
long-simmering problems with the gull population exploded into
view. The number of chicks that hatched at Mono Lake dropped to
its lowest level on record: just 324 birds, down from about
11,000 chicks the prior year, according to a new report by the
research group Point Blue Conservation Science. The dramatic
decline is not only raising questions about the future of the
gulls, but it’s rekindling concern about how the iconic lake
200 miles from San Francisco is being
managed. … Those working to protect the lake see
the record-low gull numbers as a sign that the water
restrictions haven’t gone far enough and need to be revisited.
… There are two ways to better predict the weather: Measure
it more accurately, or describe how it works in more
excruciating scientific detail. Enter WindBorne, a start-up in
Palo Alto, Calif. … The good news is that we may be poised to
enter a new golden age of A.I.-enabled weather prediction. …
There’s a catch, though. These new deep learning forecasts are
built on data provided for free by public science agencies. In
the United States, that relationship is threatened by the Trump
administration’s heavy cuts to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which houses the National
Weather Service. … For now, weather forecasting models
based on deep learning remain dependent on data releases from
the physics-based models at the public weather agencies.
After the thirtieth consecutive month without rain, the
townsfolk of San Francisco de Conchos in the northern Mexican
state of Chihuahua gather to plead for divine intervention. …
Under the terms of a 1944 water-sharing agreement, Mexico must
send 430 million cubic metres of water per year from the Rio
Grande to the US. … Following pressure from Republican
lawmakers in Texas, the Trump administration warned Mexico that
water could be withheld from the Colorado
River unless it fulfils its obligations under the
81-year-old treaty. … Since then, Mexico has transferred
an initial 75 million cubic metres of water to the US via their
shared dam, Amistad, located along the border, but that is just
a fraction of the roughly 1.5 billion cubic metres of Mexico’s
outstanding debt. … Farmers on the Mexican side read the
agreement differently. They say it only binds them to send
water north when Mexico can satisfy its own needs, and argue
that Chihuahua’s ongoing drought means there’s no excess
available.
A 4.3-magnitude earthquake struck near the Salton Sea
early Friday morning, jolting residents and triggering a series
of smaller quakes in the seismically active region. The
temblor, centered approximately 7.5 miles west-northwest of
Calipatria, occurred at 2:55 a.m. PDT at a depth of 6.5 miles,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). …
Interestingly, recent research suggests that the shrinking
Salton Sea may be delaying a major quake. As the lake—formed
[refilled] in 1905 by a breach in the Colorado River—dries
up due to drought and reduced runoff, the reduced water weight
is easing stress on the San Andreas Fault. A 2023 study by San
Diego State University and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution
of Oceanography found that when the basin filled with water
historically, it increased seismic activity by lubricating
faults. The current drying trend may be stabilizing the fault,
though it could also mean greater stress accumulation for a
future rupture.
The journey is over. The 310-mile First Descent paddle from the
headwaters of the Wood River to Requa, where the Klamath Rivers
pours into the Pacific Ocean, ended Friday when a group of
teenaged kayakers from tribes living along the the river and
its tributaries arrived at a spit at the river’s end. A
gathering of relatives, friends and other watched as the
kayakers broke through the fog and into
view. … Along with congratulating the young
paddlers and giving them words of encouragement, a recurring
theme was celebrating the removal of four Klamath River dams
and the return of salmon. Fittingly, the ceremonies, which
moved from the spit to the road in Requa, were adjacent to what
was intended to be a fish processing plant but is not operating
because of the lack of salmon. Speakers also noted that weeks
after the removal of the dams, salmon were seen beyond the John
C. Boyle Dam near Keno.
In the wake of disastrous floods in Texas, concerns about cloud
seeding technology have run rampant. The technology sounds
fantastical—like the doings of a comic book villain—but
scientists say the real impact of the technology is less than
nefarious. Today, cloud seeding is most common throughout
the western United States. Research programs in mountainous
states such as Wyoming and Colorado are focused on studying how
seeding clouds can increase the odds of snowfall. … A
2017 research program, dubbed SNOWIE and funded by the National
Science Foundation, was the first to quantify the effect of
cloud seeding. It found that cloud seeding could successfully
generate snow that might not have otherwise fallen.
… Scientists remain adamant that this controversy is
spurred by a misunderstanding of what particles introduced into
clouds can do.
Building and maintaining a healthy water supply for Butte
County happens quite literally from the ground up. …
Maintaining and planning for water storage and water usage is a
sizable task that is overseen not only by the Butte County
Department of Water Resource Conservation, but also individual
agencies that work in tandem on local water management. Kamie
Loeser, director of Butte County’s Water and Resource
Conservation Department, said the majority of groundwater
within the county is used both for agriculture and by
municipalities such as the city of Chico. … Loeser and her
team of hydrologists spend a significant amount of time every
year checking water levels at different points of the three
subbasins. The department recently provided an annual report on
groundwater conditions to the Butte County Board of
Supervisors.
New research from Maplecroft has confirmed the common suspicion
– data centers are tied closely to global warming, with their
high energy and natural resource demand compounding effects,
while simultaneously being at risk of climate change. More than
half of the world’s top 100 data center hubs are already at
high or very high risk from rising temperature, with cooling
demands set to increase significantly, ultimately leading to
higher energy and water usage. … In the short and medium
terms, Maplecroft believes shutdowns due to overheating, such
as the ones seen across the UK and US in 2022, could become
more frequent. The report also explains how increased water
demands could spark social and political conflict in certain
communities, with more than half (52%) of data center hubs
expected to be in high and very high water stress areas by
2030.
… While earning her graduate degree in environmental systems
at the University of California, Merced, Brittany Barreto
Martinez, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the Disturbance
Hydrology Lab at San Diego State University, saw an opportunity
to improve HAB monitoring, which has typically relied on
shoreline water samples. … To get a better idea of
how algae starts to accumulate away from shore, Barreto
Martinez decided to look up — way up. Together with her
doctoral advisor, Erin Hestir, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering and director of CITRIS at UC Merced,
she decided to explore the use of satellite remote sensing to
detect HABs within the San Luis Reservoir, across the lake’s
full surface. … Barreto Martinez’s work made
strides toward closing a striking data collection gap and
promoting a greater degree of public safety. Moving forward,
data from satellite sensing can help the DWR decide where to
take ground samples, while allowing the agency to issue more
accurate public health alerts even more quickly.
… Advertised as the “jewel of the San Bernardino National
Forest,” Big Bear Lake snagged first place on USA Today’s list
of the best lakes in the United States. … “Whether you
visit during peak summer or the most frigid depths of winter,
there’s a massive array of activities to enjoy across Big Bear
Lake,” USA Today said, ranging from skiing and snowboarding to
boating, jet skiing and paddleboarding. “Summer brings top-tier
fishing opportunities, with anglers gathering to search for
rainbow trout,” the publication said. … Only one other
lake with a link to the Golden State made USA Today’s top 10
list. Lake Havasu hugs the border between California and
Arizona along the Colorado River. It was ranked No. 10 by the
publication. Formed by the construction of the Parker Dam in
the 1930s, the massive reservoir is a “popular destination for
bass fishing,” USA Today said.
