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 Chris Bowman.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Please Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing. Also, 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.
United States water facilities, which include 150,000 public
water systems, have become an increasingly high-risk target for
cyber criminals in recent years. This rising threat has
demanded more attention and policies focused on improving
cybersecurity. Water and wastewater systems are one of the 16
critical infrastructures in the U.S. The definition for
inclusion in this category is that the industry must be so
crucial to the United States that “the incapacity or
destruction of such systems and assets would have a
debilitating impact on security, national economic security,
national public health or safety or any combination of those
matters.”
The council also approved a purchase order from Oneka
Technologies Inc. for the wave-powered desalination pilot
project. … The city relies on the Noyo River, Waterfall
Gulch, and Newman Gulch to provide water to residents. However,
in recent years, droughts have strained these water sources.
The city has focused on increasing water storage, such as
recent purchases like Summers Lane Reservoir. However, the city
is looking into alternatives, such as water desalination, to
ensure abundant water. Oneka’s desalination modules rely on
wave power to remove salt. These units are 20 feet in diameter
and can process 13,000 gallons of water daily. As they rely on
waves, they have a minimal greenhouse gas impact.
Water is, and will forever be, an essential resource to any
community. Its importance and emphasis on use and conversation
has been the subject of much conversation in the wake of
droughts that have plagued the state in recent years. However,
water supplied to each community can vary. Most tap water in
the United States comes from surface water or groundwater,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
website section on drinking water. Examples of surface water
include a lake, river, or reservoir, while examples of
groundwater include water from a well or an aquifer. Water can
also be recycled .However, water supply, and even quality, can
differ from community to community….
State, local and regional officials gathered Thursday to mark
the beginning of Palmdale Water District’s new water treatment
demonstration facility, a project that is expected to not only
bolster local water resources, but also make strives toward a
carbon-neutral reality. … Under the auspices of the
Palmdale Recycled Water Authority, the project will treat
recycled water — provided by PRWA, a joint powers authority
with PWD and the City of Palmdale — to a very high level, then
inject it into the underground aquifer to bolster local water
supplies. … The demonstration facility is intended to serve
as a model for a future full-scale treatment facility that will
be capable of producing an additional 5,000 acre-feet of water
per year for injection into the groundwater, increasing that
source of water for PWD customers.
The City of Pasadena’s drinking water once again meets or
exceeds all state and federal requirements, according to the
2024 Annual Drinking Water Quality
Report released Wednesday. The report, which covers
the 2023 calendar year, details the sources, treatment,
composition, and quality of the City’s water supply, as well as
information on contaminants and health effects. In
2023, Pasadena Water and Power provided approximately 23,800
acre-feet or 8.6 billion gallons of water to serve more than
160,000 customers. About two-thirds of this supply was
purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, which sources water from the Colorado River and the
State Water Project in Northern California. The remaining
supply came from the City’s groundwater wells in the
Raymond Basin aquifer.
Killed by algae blooms and dwindling from dams and droughts,
the largest freshwater fish in North America is at risk in
California. Today, wildlife officials took the first major step
toward protecting it under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
White sturgeon, which can live longer than 100 years,
historically reached more than 20 feet long and weighing almost
a ton. … California’s Fish and Game Commission unanimously
approved white sturgeon as a candidate for listing, which
launches a review by the Department of Fish and Wildlife to
evaluate whether it is in enough danger to warrant being
declared threatened or endangered. The review is expected to
take at least a year. … The Department of Water Resources,
which operates the major water project funneling water south
from Northern California rivers, will now need to apply to the
state wildlife agency for a “take” permit for operations and
fish screens at pumping facilities. … State officials working
on the proposed Delta tunnel project also are
evaluating impacts to white sturgeon and plan to investigate
how sturgeon respond to fish screens and river flows …
Efforts to stretch the overused Colorado River appear to be
working: The total amount of water used across Nevada,
California and Arizona is the lowest it’s been in 40 years.
That’s for myriad reasons, including a good snowpack year
allowing for more use of groundwater, increased conservation
efforts and millions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act
funding to incentivize farmers to use less water. … The
downward trend is reflected in a recent Reclamation
report, which takes into account water that’s
recycled and returned to Lake Mead and other reservoirs.
It shines some hope for a future adapted to the will of a
shrinking river that delivers water to 40 million people and
is battling water loss to climate change.
The San Jose City Council has agreed to an ambitious plan to
move about 500 homeless people living along waterways to
sanctioned encampment sites throughout the city by the middle
of next year — but it’s already gotten pushback from community
members about its choice of locations. … The state agency
forcing the city to act is the San Francisco Bay Regional Water
Quality Control Board, which has recently increased pressure on
cities across the region to move encampments away from
sensitive waterways. After three rejections, the water board
recently approved the city’s plan to drastically reduce the
amount of trash and pollution flowing into its 140 miles of
creeks and rivers. If local officials fail to meet their
commitments to clean up the waterways by June 2025, the agency
could fine the city tens of thousands of dollars per day.
An Orange County court on Friday approved an injunction
mandating that Mojave Pistachios LLC pay $30 million in back
fees owed to the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority for
pumping groundwater without an allocation in Kern County’s
eastern desert. That $30 million is the accumulation of a
$2,130-per-acre-foot fee for non-allocated pumping that was
established by the authority in its groundwater sustainability
plan and approved by the state back in 2022. … Under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, groundwater agencies
are mandated to stem over pumping and maintain a balanced
aquifer, meaning more water isn’t perpetually taken out than
goes back in. The agencies are empowered to set fees and
enforce pumping allotments in order to achieve that balance by
2040. The Indian Wells Valley is severely overdrafted with only
about 7,600 acre feet of natural inflow every year and 28,000
acre feet of annual demand. Mojave Pistachios and others
dispute those numbers, claiming there’s far more water in the
basin than the authority has acknowledged.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 included
more than $50 billion in funding for drinking water, wastewater
and stormwater management projects. It was a welcome federal
investment for many communities that have struggled to keep
water infrastructure in good repair in recent decades. And it
anticipates a growing need for water infrastructure funding as
existing systems age and climate change causes more extreme
weather. … Some states, including many in the West and
Southeast, are making extra investments in water infrastructure
using flexible funding from an earlier bill, the American
Rescue Plan Act… States’ approaches vary widely. Some
states, including Idaho, South Dakota and South Carolina, have
spent about 60 percent of their (State and Local Fiscal
Recovery Funds) funding on water, while others, including
California, Texas, Minnesota and New York, have used none.
A new law, rooted in a contentious land dispute in southwestern
Colorado, says municipalities that want to annex land within a
reservation must get tribal approval first. While the
idea made good sense to Colorado’s lawmakers — it breezed
through this year’s legislative session — the law might pose a
problem for Durango. The city has contemplated plans to spur
economic growth and tap water stored in Lake Nighthorse, a
federal reservoir south of the city. … If Durango could
access that water, it would increase the city’s storage
capacity to over four months of water, according to a December
2023 analysis outlining three alternatives to draw water from
the federal reservoir. The Southern Ute Indian Tribe also has
rights to water stored in Lake Nighthorse but has not built a
pipeline system to access the supply in part because of costly
fees and infrastructure costs. The Ute Mountain Ute Indian
Tribe, which also has reservation land in Colorado, is also
working to access its water stored in the reservoir.
Earlier this year, alarm bells were ringing about Alberta’s
reservoirs running dry. Those fears have largely dwindled
— for now. The looming possibility of drought meant
Calgary’s water woes were already front of mind when a massive
water main broke in Calgary on June 6, but nobody was prepared
for such a sudden and drastic change in water fortunes.
Overnight, the city’s supply shrank by 60 per cent. Now,
the water is there, sitting in a reservoir. It just can’t be
delivered. It’s an unusual scenario for a city
experiencing a water shortage. Shortages, usually caused by
drought, can often be predicted — and cities can do what’s in
their power to prepare. The current crisis is serving as a
dress rehearsal.
… About a foot and a half of water had fallen across south
Florida — not the product of a hurricane or a tropical storm
but of a rainstorm, dubbed Invest 90L, a deluge that
meteorologists are calling a once-in-200-years event. It was
the fourth such massive rainfall to smite southeastern Florida
in as many years. … “Rain bombs” such as Invest 90L are
products of our hotter world; warmer air has more room between
its molecules for moisture. That water is coming for greater
Miami and the 6 million people who live here. … A massive
network of canals keeps this region from reverting to a swamp,
and sea-level rise is making operating them more challenging…
The majority of these canals drain to the sea during low tides
using gravity. But sea-level rise erodes the system’s capacity
to drain water — so much so that (South Florida Water
Management District) has already identified several main canals
that need to be augmented with pumps.
To keep pace with a growing demand for water, there is now a
pressing need for water recycling facilities that can remove
pollutants from wastewater. Recently, many synthetic materials
have emerged which can absorb pollutants very efficiently.
However, their high costs place them out of reach for many
developing nations. In research published in Applied Surface
Science Advances, O P Pandey and colleagues at Thapar Institute
of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, India, present an
in-depth analysis of how natural biosorbents could provide an
affordable alternative for treating wastewater. With the right
approach, the team shows that these eco-friendly materials
could be produced from agricultural waste, making them far more
accessible in developing countries. … Pandey’s team hope
their findings … could pave the way for new approaches to
treating agricultural waste products for use as biosorbents for
wastewater treatment. Through this, they could one day help
millions of people in the developing world to gain easier, more
affordable access to clean water.
The U.S. oil industry has a double-edged problem: It’s running
out of fresh water in one of the most productive U.S. regions
while being overwhelmed by chemical-laced liquids. In some
areas of the Permian Basin, nearly five barrels of briny water
comes out of the ground for every one barrel of crude. Until
recently, operators in the prolific region in Texas and New
Mexico relied almost exclusively on reinjecting that liquid
back into the ground or pumping it into open air waste pits.
But after earthquakes were linked to reinjenctions — and water
officials warned of dwindling freshwater and groundwater
supplies in drought-stricken areas — states, oil companies and
critics have been looking at ways to reuse this so-called
produced water. That is raising concerns, however, of the
long-term impacts of reusing produced water and its potential
impact on groundwater.
Ramona Municipal Water District directors approved water rate
increases for customers starting July 1 and will decide whether
to continue raising rates each year through fiscal year
2028-29. The rate increase was approved at the water district’s
June 11 meeting by a 4-1 vote with Director Gary Hurst opposed.
The new rates for the 2024-25 fiscal year are based on volume
of water used, monthly service charges and water pumping costs,
according to a staff report. The average water bill will
increase from roughly $129 per month to $142, an increase of
about $13.68, said the water district’s Chief Financial Officer
Joe Spence. But the actual charges on a water bill will vary
depending on the volume of water used each month and the size
of the customers’ water meter.
The College Lake Water Supply Project will significantly
increase our ability to combat seawater intrusion while also
supporting the Pajaro Valley’s job-creating agricultural
sector, helping it to remain strong to help feed the people of
this region and beyond. … Following winter rains, PV Water
will store water in College Lake while ensuring that ample
in-stream flows continue beyond the new facilities to preserve
bird habitat and protect endangered steelhead. PV water
operators will disinfect diverted water at a water treatment
plant along Holohan Road and then pump it to PV Water’s
existing coastal distribution system, which serves over 6,000
acres of farmland most affected or most threatened by seawater
intrusion. … The project will improve water quality in
the valley by supplying approximately 700 million gallons of
fresh water annually (2,200 acre-feet) to growers along the
coast, to supplement our already existing recycled water and
recovered water from Harkins Slough. —Written by Amy Newell, chair of the board of directors of
PV Water.
On Thursday, June 6 the Pacific Gas and Electric Company
(PG&E) informed federal regulators that it would like a
6-month extension to submit its Final License Surrender
Application and plan to decommission two Eel River dams that
block access to hundreds of miles of prime salmon habitat.
… In announcing the delay, PG&E expressed support
for the still vague proposal for the New Eel-Russian Facility
and stated that its six-month delay was to allow proponents of
that proposal to have more time to work out the details. The
proposal would build a dam-free diversion facility to continue
transfer of some Eel River water to the Russian River. As
proposed, the diversion facility would be constructed
concurrently with dam removal and managed by the newly formed
Eel Russian Project Authority. … The Eel River was once
one of the most productive salmon producing rivers in the state
with runs of up to a million fish in good years supporting
robust tribal, recreational, and commercial fisheries. But a
number of factors have degraded habitat and reduced populations
to a fraction of their historic numbers, resulting in the
listing of many native fish populations as Threatened or
Endangered. Experts agree that dam removal would be beneficial
in efforts to recover Chinook salmon and steelhead.
As work proceeds to remove four dams along the Klamath River,
more than the salmon runs will be restored: The lands long buried
by the now-drained reservoirs will be reclaimed by the people who
were robbed of them more than 100 years ago. The Shasta Indian
Nation will celebrate Tuesday as California Gov. Gavin Newsom
returns about 2,800 acres of the tribe’s most sacred and
culturally important lands that were drowned by the Copco I dam
in the early 20th century. The date also marks the fifth
anniversary of a historic apology made to California tribes by
Newsom. It’s the latest chapter in the nation’s largest-ever dam
removal.
California Forever released a report Tuesday addressing one of
the biggest questions surrounding its billionaire-backed push to
build a new city on Solano County farmland: where exactly they
are getting the water to sustain a community of up to 400,000
people? Leaders say this initial review found they have secured
enough water for the first stage of buildout at 100,000 residents
and laid out the company’s plan for how they say they will scale
their water usage for when the community grows by four times.
