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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After nearly 90 years, Lahontan cutthroat trout have made a
historic return to Lake Tahoe. This milestone is part of a
long-term effort led by the Nevada Department of
Wildlife to restore this native species,
which disappeared from the lake in 1938 due to overfishing,
habitat destruction, and the introduction of non-native
species. In 2014, NDOW began studying non-native rainbow trout
in Lake Tahoe to identify suitable spawning areas for the
Lahontan cutthroat trout. … Over the past several years,
Lahontan cutthroat trout have been gradually reintroduced, with
100,000 fish stocked in Lake Tahoe this year alone.
It now appears San Benito County Water District customers could
be on the hook for more than $730,000—or its roughly equivalent
in stored water under a proposed deal—in sunk costs for the
ill-fated, multibillion-dollar Pacheco Reservoir Expansion
Project. … On Oct. 29, the county water district board
of directors is set to consider a proposal to cover the
district’s share of environmental review costs through December
2021, set at 2.5%, for the $3.2 billion Pacheco expansion,
which was dropped by the Santa Clara Valley Water District last
month.
Just months after the federal government closed on a land
exchange with a billionaire, a proposal to institute a permit
system on the Blue River has ignited a conversation about river
access and fishery health in Colorado. … Blue Valley
Ranch, a more than 2,000-acre property owned by billionaire
Paul Tudor Jones II, and the nonprofit Friends of the Lower
Blue River say a permit system is necessary to manage the
negative impacts of increasing fishing pressure. … As
part of the exchange, the ranch has agreed to cover the costs
of river restoration work for a three-quarter-mile stretch of
the Blue River near its confluence with the Colorado
River. … Anglers who opposed the land swap because
they felt it was tilted toward private interests, said they see
the proposed permit system as the continuation of an effort by
a landowner to restrict public access to the river.
A publicly traded company announced Tuesday that it has secured
$51 million in financing from Lytton Rancheria of California,
marking the first tribal investment in the Mojave Groundwater
Bank, a water supply and groundwater storage project planned as
the largest groundwater bank in the Southwest. Cadiz Inc., a
Los Angeles-based water solutions company, reported it is
raising the capital through Mojave Water Infrastructure Company
LLC, a special-purpose entity formed to construct, own and
operate the project. The federally recognized tribe’s
investment represents the first tranche of approximately $450
million in total equity capital the company is raising for the
project.
The board of the L.A. Department of Water and Power voted
Tuesday to nearly double the amount of water it recycles for
drinking at the Donald C. Tillman Wastewater Treatment Plant in
Van Nuys. The city has been retrofitting one of its
wastewater treatment plants in Van Nuys to recycle water for
drinking in order to boost water supplies in the face of
long-term water shortages driven by climate change and overuse.
Now, if approved by City Council, the plant will be able to
recycle water to its full capacity, producing enough water for
a half-million Angelenos as soon as 2028.
There’s good news for farmers and ranchers in the northern
Rockies, with optimistic weather predictions for expected
precipitation this winter. And, the Climate Prediction Center
continued issuing forecasts during the government shutdown with
the official release of their early winter weather outlook on
Oct. 16, 2025. … Heavy precipitation is expected across
coastal portions of southern Oregon and Washington into
northern California. … As for precipitation [in
Colorado], there is an equal chance of below, near or above
normal precipitation through the winter months, except for a
very small sliver in southwest Colorado of below normal.
San Joaquin County is launching a task force to combat the
spread of golden mussels, an invasive species threatening the
local ecosystem and infrastructure, with the help of $20
million in state funding. Deep beneath the
Delta hides a threat to the ecosystem, as
golden mussels, discovered in the area for the first time last
year, are known for clogging pipes and harming native species.
… The new funding aims to establish infrastructure for
education, tagging, and inspections.
California law requires the Department of Water Resources (DWR)
to create, promulgate, and update every five years the
California Water Plan (Plan). The Plan is intended to provide a
comprehensive strategy for the sustainable management and
stewardship of California’s water resources. However, the Plan
has not had significant revisions responsive to increasing
climate unpredictability. On October 1, 2025, Governor Newsom
signed Senate Bill (SB) 72 into law, significantly expanding
the requirements of the Plan to provide a more forward-looking,
actionable roadmap to secure water resources across the state.
The City Council received an update Tuesday on a two-year
feasibility study proposing to transform 250 acres of
underutilized parkland along the Santa Ana River into a
“vibrant public realm”—building on a vision first conceived
more than 20 years ago to “put the river back in Riverside.”
… The California State Coastal Conservancy supported the
feasibility study, conducted by Economic Consultants Oregon,
Ltd. under a $199,335 contract Council approved in October
2023. The draft study is now available online for
public comment before finalization.
The El Dorado Water Agency (EDWA) held its first-ever regional
plenary on Thursday, October 23 to hear from water experts in
Tahoe about what the issues are and what can be done to solve
them. … One of the major points of discussion was
tetrachloroethylene pollution, also called PCE pollution, which
affected wells at the Y in past years, and continues to affect
other systems through a 400-yard plume. While the drinking
water in Tahoe is safe, controlling and preventing PCE
contamination is something that water suppliers are
prioritizing.
… They’re technically called beaver dam analogues — since
with their complex patterns of sticks and mud, they’re supposed
to imitate real beaver dams. … [F]ake beaver dams aren’t
meant to last forever. They’ll be maintained annually for about
five years (unless real beavers take over earlier), but the
result when established in the right place can be remarkable,
restoring and rejuvenating wetlands, replenishing the water
table, keeping water higher up in systems longer in the year,
and providing habitat for everything from insects, frogs and
toads to elk and moose, and yes, even beavers.
The Merced River flows for 145 miles, from the spectacular
beauty of Yosemite Valley all the way to Hills Ferry west of
Livingston, where the Merced meets the San Joaquin. But how and
when did the river did it get its name? Today on KVPR’s Central
Valley Roots we look back at the names that have graced this
waterway. We have Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga to
credit for giving us the river’s modern name, and we’ll get to
that in a moment. But this story begins much earlier.
Nevada’s growing reliance on groundwater for irrigation and
drinking water has led to significant declines in thousands of
wells across the state, according to a recent study. The study,
published in Hydrological Process, analyzed data from about
6,500 wells across Nevada and found that about 40% had
significant declines over the last three decades amid
intensifying drought and rising water demand – a
decline that is expected to put groundwater dependent
ecosystems in the state at serious risk.
The original 50-year license for facilities at the Oroville Dam
[anchor dam of the State Water Project] expired in 2007,
leaving operations running on a year-to-year basis. …
Oroville Mayor David Pittman explained that the facilities
bring in about $200,000 annually to the local community.
However, a pending 50-year deal could bring a billion dollars
in recreational investments and additional annual benefits. The
delay in re-signing the license lies with the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission or FERC, according to
Pittman. … Despite the hold-up, Congressman Doug
LaMalfa defended FERC’s actions, explaining that they must seek
sign-off from environmental committees.
Mexico failed to deliver millions of gallons of water to South
Texas farmers, in defiance of a 1944 treaty. Now, members of
Texas’ congressional delegation are calling on the Trump
administration to make Mexico’s failure a part of upcoming
trade negotiations. … The 1944 treaty requires
Mexico to deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet of water to the U.S. from
six [Rio Grande] tributaries in Mexico every
five years, or 350,000 acre-feet per year. In exchange, the
U.S. gives Mexico 1,500,000 acre-feet of water from the
Colorado River every year. However, Mexico
ended the five-year cycle Friday with a debt of 925,000
acre-feet, according to preliminary numbers from the Texas
Commission on Environmental Quality.
The San Diego City Council will be returning to the topic of
hiking water rates, just a few weeks after dropping the topic
in the face of public backlash and reluctance to raise rates
yet again. … The item will return this week at 2 p.m. on
Tuesday, October 28. … “The main driver of the water rate
increase is higher costs to purchase water from the San Diego
County Water Authority, which are passed on to the city’s
customers,” a statement from the city read. … Other reasons
for the proposed hike include increasing costs of maintenance,
rising energy rates, Pure Water Phase 1 operations and more.
The government shutdown has not had much effect on the human
visitors at the Cosumnes River Preserve, but it may have a
lasting impact on sandhill cranes and other birds that pass
through this fall: Federal water bird counts in October were
canceled. … So far, the two water bird surveys planned
for October have been canceled. That means the three sandhill
cranes that landed in the managed wetland on Sunday (Oct. 26) a
little after noon were only counted informally this month; it
also means that staff could have a harder time pinpointing when
different migrating species arrived in the area. The surveys
help inform water management in the
park.
… Colorado’s snowpack has been growing slowly since the water
year began Oct. 1. Currently the Natural Resources Conservation
Service has Colorado’s snowpack at 41% of median average for
the date Oct. 27 and 0.2 inches of snow water
equivalent. The 1991-2020 median average snowpack for Oct.
27 is 0.5 inches of snow water equivalent. … It is still
early in the season, but overall, October has recorded
below-average snowfall since the beginning of the water year.
Other weather and water forecast news across the West:
As California faces growing water challenges, some say it’s
time to rethink where our infrastructure dollars are going. The
Kern County Water Agency is pushing for more investment in
water projects rather than the high-speed rail. The Water
Agency says federal funding should be shifted away from
California’s high-speed rail project and instead be used to
modernize the State Water Project’s Delta Conveyance
Project. … Water Agency leaders claim the Delta
Conveyance Project would secure reliable water supplies for
decades to come — while the high-speed rail continues to face
cost overruns and delays.
Southern Arizona politicians joined representatives of the
Sierra Club by the banks of the Colorado River on Oct. 27 to
call on Washington to protect the waterway by taking action
against climate change. The officials, including Democratic
U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, were demanding an end to what
they called major rollbacks in climate protections, most
prominently the Trump administration’s plan to overturn the
endangerment finding that enables the Environmental Protection
Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
