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 an extremely warm, dry summer on the Western Slope,
recent rainfall is beginning to chip away at the worst of
Colorado’s drought conditions. In mid-August,
“exceptional” drought conditions — the most severe among the
national drought monitor rankings — developed across nearly 7%
of the state in northwest Colorado for the first time since May
2023. … “Fortunately, the exceptional drought that we
had in early to mid-August is over in western Colorado with the
persistent rains of the last few weeks,” said Russ Schumacher,
Colorado’s state climatologist, at September’s Colorado Water
Conditions Monitoring Committee meeting on Tuesday.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a waiver Tuesday
allowing the federal government to bypass environmental laws in
order to fast-track construction of more barriers along the
U.S.-Mexico border in the San Diego area. … The waiver will
allow the federal government to bypass more than two dozen laws
including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water
Act and the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act. … Environmentalists and advocacy
groups say the waiver is inhumane and will further harm
migratory species and damage sensitive habitat.
Volunteers took to the Santa Ana River to clean up trash as
part of the 41st Annual California Coastal Cleanup
Day. More than 25 people joined to collect more than 145
pounds of trash during the Saturday, Sept. 20, effort at Martha
McLean-Anza Narrows Park in Riverside. The Santa Ana River
runs through the park. The event was organized by Caltrans and
the Inland Empire Waterkeeper and was one of hundreds across
the state that day at beaches, rivers, creeks, bays and
wetlands, a news release states.
Yuba Water Agency is set to increase the water flows on the
Yuba River below the New Bullards Bar Dam starting September
29. Officials say the change is part of the Colgate Tunnel and
Penstock Improvement Project. … Parker explained that
due to taking the powerhouse offline, the water flow will be
higher than normal. Yuba Water Agency urged local recreators to
avoid the area or exercise extreme caution. … Starting
Monday, the flow will increase to about 900 cubic feet per
second.
California’s largest drinking water supplier is trying to turn
the page. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, which imports and sells water to 19 million people
in Los Angeles and the surroundings, earlier this month zeroed
in on Shivaji Deshmukh, the current general manager of the
Inland Empire Utilities Agency, to replace retiring General
Manager Deven Upadhyay. … The impending changeover comes
as the agency faces a series of pivotal decisions on how to
handle shrinking supplies and growing costs — and after years
of instability at the top of LA’s water world.
Colorado saw a record fiscal year in sports betting last year,
resulting in over $36 million in tax revenue after over $6.3
billion in bets were made, according to the Colorado Department
of Revenue. Of that, over $33 million will go to Colorado’s
Water Conservation Board, the department said. … About
93% of revenue from the tax on casinos helps fund the
implementation of Colorado’s water plan, according to Water for
Colorado, a coalition of nonprofits that work on water
conservation throughout the state. Water for Colorado calls the
agreement “a win for Colorado’s water.”
A new study, led by federal agencies in collaboration with the
University of Colorado Denver, shows that the whitebark pine
tree—an iconic, high-elevation tree that stretches from
California’s Sierra Nevada through the Cascades and
Rockies and into Canada—could lose as much as 80
percent of its habitat to climate change in the next 25 years.
… The threatened whitebark pine tree is a crucial food
source for squirrels and grizzly bears. It also acts as a
natural snow fence, holding snowpack in place
and releasing meltwater slowly throughout the summer. That
runoff supports entire watersheds, which
farmers and ranchers depend on.
… Once considered a relic of the 1930s Great Depression era,
dust storms are once again a growing challenge across the
western United States. … One contributor to these dust
events is the slow-motion drying of the massive inland lakes
across the western U.S. caused mainly by climate change and
intensive water use. Among them is Imperial Valley’s Salton
Sea. … Under pressure from intense water use and climate
change-fueled drought, the vast lake is steadily receding. …
[T]he Salton Sea is also laced with decades of agricultural
chemicals, pesticides and the remnants of military bomb testing
— which researchers have warned may be making it into the air
as well.
OpenAI is scouring the U.S. for sites to build a network of
huge data centers to power its artificial intelligence
technology, expanding beyond a flagship Texas location and
looking across 16 states to accelerate the Stargate project
championed by President Donald Trump. … The company’s
request for proposals calls for sites with “proximity to
necessary infrastructure including power and
water.” … Data centers also typically
draw in large amounts of water for cooling. … The other
states where OpenAI is actively looking include
Arizona,California, Florida,
Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Utah, Virginia,
Washington and West Virginia.
Many parts of the world are predicted to endure “day-zero
droughts,” periods of extreme and unprecedented water scarcity,
which could happen as soon as this decade in certain hotspots
including parts of North America, the Mediterranean and
southern Africa, according to a new study [in Nature
Communications]. … Day-zero droughts arise from the
confluence of various factors, including a prolonged dearth of
rain, low river levels and shrunken reservoirs, as well as
rocketing water demand to supply people, farms and industries.
… More than a third of these regions, including the
western United States, could face this situation as early as
the 2020s or 2030s.
A Utah State University team says that the Colorado River is
experiencing low water levels and may be headed for a crisis.
Utah State University’s Colorado River Studies team released a
new report that shows that water storage levels in Lake Powell
and Lake Mead is significantly reduced. … [Utah State
University (USU) Director of Colorado River Studies Jack]
Schmidt added that USU’s team is calling for water cuts across
all seven basin states that draw from the Colorado river,
saying that voluntary conservation alone won’t be enough.
Developers of the Sites Reservoir project are proposing an
off-stream reservoir to enhance California’s water storage
capacity. Representatives from the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and the Sites Project Authority met at the Tehama
Colusa Canal Authority building to continue public negotiations
for a partnership. The proposed reservoir aims to stabilize
water deliveries for agriculture, cities and environmental
purposes. The Sites Project Authority, which will own the
reservoir, is in formal negotiations with the Bureau of
Reclamation to define its participation.
… During the department’s first Water Resources Science
Symposium held on September 23, the third annual Sierra Nevada
Phillips Award was presented to Ellen Hanak, Ph.D. For almost
25 years, Dr. Hanak has adeptly navigated between science and
policy on controversial and difficult water management
challenges in California, including groundwater recharge, water
affordability, and drought. Currently, Dr. Hanak is an adjunct
fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)
and is a founding director of PPIC’s Water Policy Center.
As anticipated, the recent 4-day ocean salmon season from Point
Reyes south to Point Sur surpassed the 7500-fish quota, leading
to in season action by the National Marine Fisheries Service on
September 17 to close the remaining 2025 fall dates of Sept
29-30, October 1-5, and October 27-31. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) estimated that 12,000
Chinook salmon were taken by 12,400 anglers in the brief fall
season. … Captain James Smith of California Dawn Sport
Fishing said … “I think we have only reached 7,500 fish
four times since 1994 during a much longer open period. It just
shows how many salmon are in the system.”
… The Delta Conveyance Project, which is designed to improve
water supply reliability for the State Water Project (SWP) and
the 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland throughout California
that depend on it, has been carefully planned to minimize its
impact on Delta farmland. Some agricultural land will be used
for the Delta Conveyance Project. However, the Department of
Water Resources (DWR) and Delta Conveyance Design and
Construction Authority (DCA) are taking significant and genuine
steps to limit these impacts, involve local farmers in the
planning, and compensate fairly for any losses.
An abandoned speedboat that once protruded vertically from Lake
Mead National Recreation Area has been displaced to the great
dock in the sky. … The boat’s removal is part of a
larger clean-up effort at the cove, located about 40 minutes
from the Las Vegas Strip, where park officials hauled away over
20,000 pounds of rubbish over the last year. … Water levels
have plummeted at Lake Mead for several years and the
reservoir’s 2025 level is the third lowest it’s seen in a
decade. … The Park Service noted that as water levels
declined, some visitors moved into the expanding dry area for
long-term stays.
On August 26, 2025, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors
(“Board”) adopted an urgency ordinance (Urgency Ordinance
(“UO”) No. 1576) that imposes a 45-day moratorium for the
issuance of new or modified agricultural groundwater
well-permits in designated “Focus Areas” (see Figure 1 below).
In addition to preventing the issuance of new permits, the
moratorium will prevent Yolo County from approving eleven
pending well permit applications that were submitted before the
moratorium was put in place. The Board scheduled another public
hearing for October 7, 2025, where it will consider extending
the moratorium for an additional 10 months and 15 days.
Workers in Del Mar are finalizing an elaborate drainage system
along the cliffs to prevent erosion that threatens a vital rail
corridor. Like many coastal areas in California, the cliffs in
Del Mar have been eroding at an average rate of six inches per
year, with urban runoff and rain contributing to the
problem. During wet and stormy periods, as much as six
feet of the cliffs can crumble onto the beach below, posing a
risk to the rail tracks that carry thousands of passengers and
freight daily. The drainage system is designed to capture and
redirect water from urban runoff and rain, which are the
primary causes of erosion from the top down.
Companies that run data centers are facing increasing scrutiny
for guzzling water in the dry western U.S. as artificial
intelligence fuels a boom in the industry. California
legislators passed a bill this month that would require the
facilities to report their projected water use before they
begin operating and thereafter certify how much they use
annually. The bill is now awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
signature. … The California legislation requires
companies to submit water information for both new and existing
facilities.
The Interior Department gained three new leaders last week when
the Senate approved a group of President Donald Trump’s
political nominees, filling out what has been a thin bench of
confirmed top brass for the more than 60,000-strong agency that
oversees public lands and energy. William Doffermyre will
become the Interior Department’s top lawyer, Andrea
Travnicek will take over as assistant secretary for water and
science, while Leslie Beyer assumes the role of
assistant secretary for land and minerals management.
