A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
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Granite Construction announced July 22 that it has
received a $50-million contract from Pacific Gas & Electric
(PG&E) to replace the spillway at Northern California’s
Tiger Creek Regulator Dam, where construction began in May. The
work follows spillway assessments PG&E conducted
after the 2017 Oroville Dam spillway
failure prompted federal and California
dam-safety regulators to require hydroelectric operators to
reevaluate aging spillways using updated hydrologic modeling
and engineering analyses. At Tiger Creek, the review identified
deterioration in the existing spillway chute, uncertainty over
whether the dam’s three spillway siphons would activate as
intended and inadequate hydraulic capacity under probable
maximum flood conditions.
Federal lawmakers are considering whether to expand the
government’s authority to kill more sea lions and seals to
bolster salmon recovery efforts in the Pacific Northwest. The
region’s critical salmon runs are on life
support: Fourteen species and populations of salmon
and steelhead trout in Washington are deemed at risk of
extinction under the Endangered Species Act. … Rep.
Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Committee on
Natural Resources who represents one of California’s
northernmost districts bordering Oregon, said the bill
“goes too far” in greenlighting pinniped killings without
adequate safeguards.
Quitobaquito Springs in south-west Arizona has been called a
biological wonderland with few equals. The springs are an oasis
in the vast Sonoran desert along the US-Mexico border, held
sacred by the O’odham people, who call it A’al Vaipia. … The
spring, located within Organ Pipe Cactus national monument,
provides one of the only reliable bodies of water for
about 100 miles in any direction, making it vital for
wildlife in the area and for humans who have lived here for
millennia. But the spring is in trouble. In 2020, the
Trump administration completed a 30ft-tall (9 meters) border
wall in this remote area, during which time the spring flow
dipped to an all-time low, and the pond partially dried up
after its lining cracked. Now, plans are under way to build a
second massive section of the wall, just 90-150 feet north of
the existing one.
The plan to build California’s largest new reservoir in 50
years has hit a major snag, threatening to undermine
the $6 billion water-supply project and
prompting outcry from supporters, including Gov. Gavin Newsom,
who has called the enterprise vital for the state. Sites
Reservoir, proposed in rural Glenn and Colusa counties, secured
a key state approval earlier this year: a draft water
right that allows the facility to draw water from the
Sacramento River. Project officials, however,
have determined that the draws authorized by the state
could be too little to justify the reservoir’s
expense, as regulators seek to limit water diversions
to protect fish and other water users. … On
Friday, the State Water Resources Control Board is
holding one last hearing for supporters of the reservoir to
make their case …
As Lake Mead begins its nosedive toward historic lows, a
bipartisan group of 12 Western representatives in Congress is
calling for emergency funding to help fund solutions. One of
the officials who sent a letter to House leadership on
Wednesday is Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who said in a phone
interview that the measure is in direct response to a
record-low water year. … The letter comes days
after the Trump administration said it would pay a water
district in Southern California up to $65 million in
an effort to keep 3 feet of water in Lake Mead; the reservoir,
which provides about 90 percent of Southern Nevada’s drinking
water, will fall to record lows over the next
two years, according to federal projections.
Utah’s recent storms are bringing much-needed rain to
drought-stricken areas, but water experts say the precipitation
is doing little to replenish the state’s reservoirs. While the
rain has provided temporary relief and reduced the need for
outdoor watering, much of the water is absorbed before
it can reach streams and reservoirs, according to the
Utah Division of Water Resources. “It reduces demand, but it
doesn’t increase supply,” said Laura Haskell, drought
coordinator for the division. After extended dry conditions,
thirsty soils and vegetation soak up much of the rainfall
before it can contribute to water storage. … Some Utah
reservoirs remain at critically low levels despite recent
precipitation. Haskell pointed to Yuba Reservoir as being
“almost bone dry,” while water levels at Steinaker Reservoir
have also dropped significantly.
After 13 years, Texas and New Mexico have finally reached a
settlement in a Supreme Court case over Rio Grande water
management. Now comes the hard part. Texas sued New Mexico in
2013, arguing that its upstream neighbor was hogging water on
the river that millions depend on for irrigation and drinking
water. The settlement requires New Mexico to reduce the amount
of water drawn from wells that deplete the flow of Rio Grande
water to Texas. The agreement also introduces a new
accounting method to determine how much water New
Mexico owes Texas. And for the first time, the volume
of water flowing into Texas will be measured at the state
line.
… In 2023 the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically narrowed the
1972 Clean Water Act in Sackett v. EPA. … The Sackett ruling
effectively shifted more clean water oversight to states. About
half already had their own wetland protections on the books,
according to the Environmental Law Institute. Arizona and
Wyoming state laws provided some clean water protections. But
in the rest of the Mountain West, states relied on federal law
to limit pollution. … So, Colorado
stepped in. It became the first state after the Supreme
Court decision to create a new permitting program for waters
that lost federal protection. … Colorado
lawmakers eventually reached a bipartisan compromise in 2024.
It includes expanded protections for isolated wetlands and
requirements to offset harmful impacts but also includes
exemptions for agriculture.
Tijuana River cleanup efforts led by the federal government are
suddenly in limbo after the Trump administration announced it
will not re-sign the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The
president’s decision now triggers an annual review of the trade
deal, and San Diego leaders are now arguing
that any renegotiated agreement should include
stronger, enforceable requirements for Mexico and the federal
government to address decades of sewage and toxic
pollution flowing through the Tijuana River into California.
… In 2020, the USMCA included a $300 million U.S.
commitment to find and develop infrastructure solutions for the
ongoing, decades-long, river crisis. … But now,
officials say there is an opportunity to require more than was
previously laid out in the original USMC Agreement.
The City of Bakersfield will be shutting off water to the Kern
River through town as of July 31, according to a press release
issued Wednesday. The city has kept the river flowing to the
Park at Riverwalk since April using its river rights above what
has been needed for drinking water and other contractural
deliveries. … The city had been making deliveries to other
parties, which bolstered the city’s flows. Those deliveries
ended, so flows dropped. Then Wednesday, the city was moving
water for another party, bringing the river back up again.
Unless other river interests continue getting water deliveries
through the river bed, though, the river will go dry shortly
after July 31.
Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing (IVCM) is suing the
Imperial Irrigation District (IID) after the utility denied the
company’s request for about 260 million gallons of Colorado
River water per year, or roughly 750,000 gallons per day, to
cool a planned 330 MW AI data center in Imperial County. The
case tests whether water historically used for agriculture can
be redirected to industrial projects envisioned in the county’s
emerging Lithium Valley plan. … To support future
growth, Imperial County’s plan proposes a regional backbone
water conveyance system, 12 water storage facilities, and a
special district to build and manage new infrastructure.
California is experiencing major changes in how farmland is
used as recent policies seek to protect groundwater resources.
These changes are reshaping both the landscape and the lives of
rural residents, especially in communities like Fairmead in
Madera County, which is surrounded by water-intensive almond
orchards. In Community Science’s special collection on
Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Sustainable Agriculture,
Katrak-Adefowora et al. [2026] describe a project that engaged
Fairmead residents and farmers in redesigning a small almond
farm into a landscape that reflects multiple community
priorities. The new landscape includes a basin that captures
stormwater to reduce flooding and help replenish groundwater,
native plants that improve habitat, and a walking path for
community recreational use.
… Although cases of cyclosporiasis have reached a new high
this year, the parasitic infection has spread in recent
summers, too, abetted by warmer weather and higher consumption
of fruits and vegetables. The cyclospora parasite reproduces in
the human gut, and infected people shed the parasite in their
feces. The parasite then ends up in produce typically through
contaminated irrigation water. … There are no quick or
easy solutions to this problem. But the most obvious place to
start is on farms by cleaning up irrigation water. Even though
fresh produce emerged as a significant cause of food-borne
illness in the United States in the late 1990s, it remains
difficult for farmers and even scientists to figure out how
clean this water is or how clean it needs to be. –Written by Timothy D. Lytton, a law professor at Georgia
State University and the author of “Outbreak: Foodborne Illness
and the Struggle for Food Safety.”
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s two largest
reservoirs, have fallen to their lowest combined levels on
record, a grim marker in the deepening water crisis across
seven states that depend on the Colorado River. The two
reservoirs are now lower than the previous record in
2023. … U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met with
governors of the seven states virtually Tuesday and said his
agency will release a plan to deal with water shortages
next week. … After the meeting Tuesday, Burgum
said he was grateful to the governors for their “leadership and
commitment to finding solutions to address drought conditions
in the Colorado River Basin.” The Trump administration is
focused on “establishing a new operating framework and
continues to work with the states and 30 tribes to get closer
to consensus,” he said.
El Niño is coming. Of that, scientists seem sure as ocean
temperatures continue to heat up. Warmer ocean water fills the
atmosphere with moisture, which can ride the jet stream into
California as massive storms. Or not. Weather is such a tricky
beast. Regardless of whether this pattern becomes a “monster,”
“Godzilla,” “Jurassic,” or just plain vanilla “super” El Niño,
Fresno Engineer John Ennis has found an historic quirk thathe
believes can result in a very specific outcome in the
San Joaquin Valley. There is a nearly
100% correlation between a Relative Oceanic Niño Index
of level 2 and flooding on the old Tulare Lake
bed, according to a paper Ennis wrote.
Other weather and water forecast news around the West:
This year’s devastating snow drought in the Upper Colorado
River Basin was made 14 times more likely by years of
global climate change, according to a new study by
Colorado School of Mines researchers, who are increasingly
linking short-term weather disasters to decades of
warming. … Warmer temperatures in the West have
also intensified the impacts of the worst drought winters such
as 2025-26, according to the research published in the
“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The
currentsnowpack drought, coming amid climate change,
robbed 25% more moisture from snowpack than a
similar-scale drought occurring before the Industrial
Age advent of heavy fossil fuel use and global warming.
The statewide drought is prompting water restrictions across
Colorado. La Veta, a Southern Colorado town of less than 1,000
residents at the base of the Spanish Peaks, is among
the most severely affected areas in the state. …
Residents are not allowed to use outdoor watering tools
including hoses and sprinklers. La Veta diverts its water
from the Cucharas River into two reservoirs on the edge of
town. “The lake water at this point could, without any further
moisture, cover the town for 150 days (from
July 13),” said [Town Clerk Heather] Hillis. “It needs to start
snowing like September 1.” … The latest U.S. Drought
Monitor shows the area in some of the worst conditions in the
state.
After a marathon of almost seven hours – split between two
separate meetings that morphed into each other – Tehama County
Supervisors voted to take a step back in approving the proposed
fee structure for residential and agricultural groundwater
fees. … The first hearing, which involved every
homeowner or ‘groundwater extractor’ in the managed sub-basins
of Corning, Los Molinos, Antelope, Red Bluff and Bowman, was
about the possible imposition of a $2.70 fee per
assumed acre-foot of water. The second hearing was for
ag-zoned land in the Corning, Los Molinos, and Red Bluff
sub-basins and involved a potential $2 per-assumed
volumetric acre-foot used per crop
type. According to Deputy Director of Public
Works Justin Jensen, every effort was made to contact property
owners with addresses that were provided to him. But those who
spoke against the fees – and most of the elected board – agreed
that there was a failure in the rollout.
Federal wildlife officials are loosening protections for a
native fish in the Colorado River. The razorback
sucker was downlisted from “endangered” to
“threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The move
suggests progress in protecting the fish, but environmentalists
say the species still struggles to survive in much of its
habitat, and stronger protections were needed. The razorback
sucker, which can grow up to 3 feet long and live for 40 years,
is on a relatively short list of fish that live nowhere else in
the world besides the Colorado River basin. Of the roughly 25
species on that list, four are protected under the endangered
species act. Those fish face multiple threats in a
river system that is getting drier and has been thoroughly
altered by human activity.
Recreational activities are temporarily restricted along a
1.25-mile stretch of the Klamath River because of an upcoming
river restoration project, according to the Klamath National
Forest. The restoration project, led by the Yurok Tribe and its
partners, covers the area from the confluence of Humbug Creek
downstream to the Klamath River’s confluence with Brushy
Creek. The work is intended to repair damage caused by
historic mining practices and the 2022 McKinney Fire. Heavy
rainfall after the fire triggered flooding and debris flows
that carried large amounts of sediment into the Klamath River,
reducing water quality, degrading fish habitat and limiting
river access.
