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 cache of government documents dating back nearly a century
casts serious doubt on the safety of the oil and gas industry’s
most common method for disposing of its annual trillion gallons
of toxic wastewater: injecting it deep
underground. Despite knowing by the early 1970s that
injection wells were at best a makeshift solution, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) never followed its own
determination that they should be “a temporary means of
disposal,” used only until “a more environmentally acceptable
means of disposal [becomes] available.” … The documents
show there may be little scientific merit to industry and
government claims that injection wells are a safe means of
disposal — putting drinking water and other mineral resources
in communities across the country at risk of contamination, and
jeopardizing local economies and public health.
The story in Planada remains in the frustrating phase of “two
steps forward, one step back” three years after many of the
small farmtown’s homes and businesses were flooded out when
Miles Creek busted its banks. Residents are starting to see
progress with homes being rebuilt. But even with millions of
extra state and federal dollars and widespread attention, the
process has been slow, cumbersome and confusing. … Work
is underway along Miles Creek. Vegetation removal has been
completed, and more is scheduled, North stated. Construction
has also begun on an emergency generator for the Planada
Community Services District, which will strengthen its ability
to maintain essential services during
emergencies. Planning is also underway for improvements to
local roads and other public infrastructure.
A measure to spend $8 million to assess what it would take to
fix aging wastewater and stormwater infrastructure sailed out
of the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water
Resources Committee on a unanimous vote. Senate File 69, “Waste
and storm water infrastructure study,” would tap the Strategic
Investments and Projects Account and support a four-year
statewide assessment to help town and state officials determine
exact needs and costs, according to the bill’s
proponents. Some estimate that upgrading municipal water
systems across the state (Wyo.) could cost billions of dollars.
California regulators are moving toward a long-awaited decision
on how much water can be taken from the Sacramento–San Joaquin
Delta — a choice that could reshape supplies for cities, farms,
and fragile ecosystems statewide. The Bay-Delta Plan, now
nearing final approval, would require more freshwater to remain
in rivers and estuaries, limiting how much can be pumped south
during much of the year. Recent public hearings underscored how
consequential the plan is: conservation groups say the Delta’s
ecological collapse demands urgent action; agricultural
districts and urban water agencies warn it could reshape supply
chains, decimate the ag industry, and raise household water
bills.
… The physical infrastructure that enables Colorado River
water management is on the verge of its own real and
potentially catastrophic crisis — and yet Reclamation has
barely acknowledged this, with the exception of an oblique
reference in an unposted technical memorandum from
2024. The falling reservoir levels reveal another, deeper set
of problems inside Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back the
Colorado and Lake Powell. The 710-foot-tall dam was designed
for a Goldilocks world in which water levels would never be too
high or too low, despite the well-known fact that the Colorado
is by far the most variable river in North America. …
Insufficient or no flows through Glen Canyon Dam would be a
disaster of unprecedented magnitude, affecting vast population
centers and some of the biggest economies in the world, not to
mention ecosystems that depend on the river all the way to the
Gulf of California in Mexico. –Written by Los Angeles-based historian Wade Graham.
The Trump administration on Thursday will revoke a scientific
finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the
White House announced. The Environmental Protection
Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009
government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That
Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. … It is
used to justify regulations, such as auto emissions standards,
intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by
climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves,
catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in
the United States and around the world.
The Central Valley is bracing for rainy weather and even snow
this week, though it’s expected to be just a taste of what the
rest of the state can expect to see starting this weekend.
Brian Ochs, a meteorologist based at the National Weather
Service office in Hanford, said the Central Valley will see
light showers Tuesday and Wednesday. … There will be
snow mainly at the highest peaks of the
Sierras. Places with elevations above 7,000 feet can
expect one to two feet of snowfall, Ochs said. Parts of Sequoia
National Park and the southern Sierras may see up to a foot and
a half of snow. … Additional rain is expected Sunday to
Tuesday, bringing with it a chance of heavy snowfall in
the Sierras. Next week’s storm system will impact the
Central Valley and coastline, though Ochs said Southern
California can expect to get the heaviest rains.
Following more than five years of environmental analysis,
outreach and public input, Metropolitan’s Board of Directors
voted unanimously Tuesday to certify the Final Environmental
Impact Report for Pure Water Southern California – marking a
major step toward the potential development of what would be
one of the world’s largest water recycling programs. The board
action formally completes the project’s environmental analysis
under the California Environmental Quality Act, clearing the
way for future decisions on the project’s implementation,
including phasing, funding, design, and construction. The board
is expected to consider whether to move forward with Pure Water
Southern California as part of its Climate Adaptation Master
Plan for Water evaluation process and its biennial
budget.
Legislation based around “chemtrail” conspiracy theories was
killed by lawmakers, although there’s still a narrowing window
for it to resurface. Meanwhile, state funding for cloud
seeding, which is at the root of the conspiracies, is moving
forward. On the first day of the Legislature’s budget session,
lawmakers reviewed dozens of bills. Some didn’t make the cut,
including HB 12 Clean Air and Geoengineering Prohibition Act.
After being introduced to the House floor Feb. 9 by Rep. Mike
Schmid (R-La Barge), the bill failed 24 to 38. … The
chemtrail conspiracy theory gained momentum in the Wyoming
Legislature during the 2025 session. Several lawmakers,
including Schmid, sponsored similar bills that also failed. But
they successfully ended Wyoming’s aerial cloud seeding and
nixed state funding for ground operations, leaving other
Colorado River states to largely foot the bill. … This
year’s Omnibus water bill-construction, SF 70, would reinstate
some of that funding.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has issued a tentative order
that would excuse 115 small-scale landowners in California’s
Cuyama Valley from a 2021 groundwater rights
adjudication. The case was filed by land management
companies linked to Grimmway Enterprises Inc. and Bolthouse
Farms. Judge William F. Highberger said at a February 2 hearing
that he wanted to give “minor extractors,” or small-scale water
users, “as much of a free pass as possible.” He indicated he
did not want to subject these growers to mandatory pumping
reductions and legal costs that larger farming operations may
face. The tentative order would also allow small-scale users to
pump more water annually than their historical use, up to five
acre-feet per year, subject to a collective cap of 400
acre-feet. Historically, this group has used about one
acre-foot per user per year, or 132 acre-feet
collectively.
… Over the past few years, mining proponents and companies
have been working on new technologies to help extract lithium
from the Salton Sea. But calls for rapid lithium development
have revealed competing views of what that extraction could or
should look like. … For the relatively impoverished
area surrounding the Salton Sea, the rush for lithium comes
amid water woes, disputes about labor conditions, and concerns
over tribal sovereignty. … In the Salton Sea region,
companies plan to use what they say is an innovative mining
method called “direct lithium extraction.” The process is akin
to treatment methods used to remove metals from water supplies,
where the water is pumped through a device called an ion
exchange column. … What this means for the Imperial
Valley is unclear, but any strain to the freshwater there could
threaten the region’s limited water supply.
A 4.5-acre site in Novato that was set to become an 87-room
hotel might end up a pump station as part of a drought
resiliency effort. The Marin Municipal Water District
has signed an agreement to purchase the property on Wood Hollow
Drive at Redwood Boulevard from the developer, Navin LLC. The
utility announced the $4.8 million deal as it gears up to begin
public outreach on an environmental study called the
“atmospheric river capture” project. The initiative involves a
proposed pipeline that would replenish Marin reservoirs with
Sonoma County rainwater during droughts. The purchase of the
property is contingent upon clearance of an environmental
impact report, an analysis mandated under the California
Environmental Quality Act to clear the way for construction.
Colorado officials are failing to require legally mandated
water quality monitoring near concentrated animal feeding
operations, allowing for widespread water contamination with
animal waste, conservation groups allege in a new legal
challenge to the state. The Center for Biological Diversity and
Food & Water Watch say the state permits for the animal feeding
operations, commonly called CAFOs, lack the type of water
monitoring needed near lagoons where massive amounts of animal
manure and waste are stored. … CAFO waste can contaminate
water with bacteria like E. coli, antibiotics and hormones,
heavy metals and excess nutrients, such as phosphorus and
nitrogen, all of which can be harmful to human and
environmental health. A report released last week found that
industrial animal farming is responsible for about half of all
of the country’s nutrient pollution.
The Tahoe Fund has announced the first million dollars of
private funding to help restore the former Motel 6 site has
been raised by its donors as part of the “Million for the
Marsh” campaign. Launched in November, the campaign set out to
raise the first $1 million of private funds to help
secure the public funds the
California Tahoe Conservancy will need to restore the
Upper Truckee Marsh in South Lake Tahoe. … The
whole Upper Truckee River Marsh area is over 600 acres,
spanning on each side of Lake Tahoe Blvd. They have already
completed 250 acres of the marsh on the south side of the road
by restoring natural river flows and increasing its capacity to
filter pollutants.
A coalition of farmers in Central Valley sent a letter to
President Trump on Monday, urging advancement of the
controversial Shasta Dam enlargement plan. The development
follows a series of letters sent late last year by local water
agencies, state Republican lawmakers and water contractors,
where they called the administration to fund the Shasta Dam
raise project using money from Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill
budget. The project is estimated to cost between $1.4 billion
and $2 billion. … Meanwhile, state officials and tribes
and environmental groups have argued the project would threaten
an already struggling salmon population and increase flood
risks.
Federal forecasters dramatically cut their estimates Friday for
how much water will flow down the Colorado River this year —
projections that now thrust the Trump administration into
politically contentious decisions about how to operate the
river’s dams. The Feb. 1 forecast the Colorado Basin Forecast
Center released last week projects the amount of water flowing
from the river’s headwaters into Lake Powell this year will be
one-third less compared with its already grim Jan. 1 forecast.
… The new forecast comes at a critical moment for the
management of the drought-riddled waterway, which serves 40
million people from Denver to Los Angeles to Phoenix. The
Interior Department’s deadline for a major new
water-sharing deal is less than one week away.
The Trump administration wants some of the world’s largest
technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact
governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to
two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss
private conversations. A draft of the compact obtained by
POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure data centers
powering the AI boom do not raise household electricity prices,
strain water supplies or undermine grid
reliability — and that the companies driving power demand also
carry the cost of building new infrastructure. The proposed
pact, which is not final and could be subject to change …
could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent
Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy,
water and community principles.
… For over a decade, [ecologist Greta] Wengert and her
colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows …
dangerously pollute California’s public lands and pristine
watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems,
water and wildlife. … In recent work they
published with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the
team found that illegal grows pulsed pollutants from plastic,
painkillers, personal care products, pot and pesticides into
the soil that could be detected months or even years later.
Some contaminants also showed up in nearby streams.
… Force-feeding waterways the excess nutrients in
fertilizer can upend entire ecosystems and spur algae blooms.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is
inviting the public to its annual Salmon Information Meeting on
Feb. 25, 2026, at 1 p.m. The hybrid event will take place at
the California Natural Resources Agency Auditorium in
Sacramento and will be livestreamed online. The meeting will
provide an outlook for this year’s ocean salmon fisheries and
review last year’s salmon fisheries and inland spawner returns.
… The meeting marks the start of a two-month public
process to develop annual sport and commercial ocean salmon
fishing seasons.
The Westlands Water District Board of Directors has certified
the environmental review for the Valley Clean Infrastructure
Plan (VCIP), a master-planned renewable energy project that
aims to transform up to 136,000 acres of fallowed farmland into
clean energy infrastructure. The board voted unanimously on
December 16, 2025 to certify the Final Programmatic
Environmental Impact Report and approve the project. With no
lawsuits filed during the 30-day challenge period, the
certification is now final and cannot be contested.
… The project has been strategically sited on impaired
or fallowed agricultural land in areas affected by reduced
surface water supplies, groundwater depletion, and Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requirements.
