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 Interim Director Doug Beeman.
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A major winter storm, fueled by a renewed atmospheric river,
will bring heavy rain and mountain snow to both Northern and
Southern California on Wednesday and Thursday. … By
Wednesday evening and into Thursday morning, showers and
thunderstorms will linger locally, while the pulse of heavy
precipitation will shift southward, bringing several inches of
rain and mountain snow to Central and Southern
California. … Across the Sierra, snowfall levels will
start out above 6,000 feet when snow begins Wednesday morning.
As precipitation intensifies Wednesday evening, much colder air
will sweep in, dropping snow levels to around 2,500 to 3,000
feet.
The federal agency charged with managing the Colorado River
failed to do its job properly when it excluded a viable option
presented by Nevada, Arizona and California, according to
documents that surfaced Friday. The three states that make up
the Lower Basin are fighting a critical war for their rights to
water from the river. The future of growing cities is in the
balance, along with farms, businesses and everyone else in the
desert Southwest. On Friday, a Feb. 13 letter to incoming
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was obtained by 8 News Now,
along with a supporting document that argues the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation is making a big mistake by refusing to address a
known problem with Glen Canyon Dam, which creates the nation’s
second-largest reservoir, Lake Powell.
Twenty-five more Pacific Palisades residents who were affected
by January’s deadly brush fire have joined a lawsuit against
the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power over the disaster. A lawsuit filed on behalf of 23
residents in January accuses the city and department of having
a failed water supply system in the coastal community that was
ravaged by the blaze. On Wednesday, an additional 25 plaintiffs
were added to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges LADWP designed
a water supply system that would not have enough water pressure
to fight an urban wildfire. It also says the Santa Ynez
Reservoir, which is located atop Pacific Palisades, had been
empty since February of last year, leading to more difficulty
in accessing water during the firefight.
The new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency has seemingly responded to Imperial Beach Mayor
Paloma Aguirre’s letter urging federal action on the Tijuana
River sewage crisis impacting southern San Diego County. Lee
Zeldin, the 17th administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) since January 29, 2025, posted on X
Saturday evening that he was recently briefed on the large
amounts of raw sewage flowing into the U.S. from Mexico, which
is impacting the water and air quality for residents in San
Diego’s South Bay.
In California’s Central Valley, the value of farmland is
closely tied to agricultural production, which relies on water.
Cropland prices can range from less than $10,000 per acre to
over $60,000 per acre. … Land prices can also be
influenced by longer-term changes in water scarcity and
environmental factors. For instance, implementation of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), passed in 2014,
will likely require reductions of intense agricultural
production in areas of long-term groundwater overdraft. If less
irrigation water is available, how will cropland production and
acreage be affected? Are long-term regulatory changes already
getting incorporated into farmland values in the state? Parsing
out these influences from the many factors affecting farmland
values requires lots of data, especially to detect both spatial
and temporal trends.
U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff (both D-Calif.)
announced that the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs advanced
their legislation to formally recognize the Tule River Tribe’s
reserved water rights and quantify the Tribe’s water right of
5,828 acre-feet per year of surface water from the South Fork
of the Tule River (in the San Joaquin Valley). The bill passed
out of committee by voice vote and now moves to the Senate
floor for consideration by the full Senate. For decades, the
Tule River Tribe has worked with the federal government and
downstream water users to advance a settlement agreement,
avoiding costly and adversarial litigation for both the Tribe
and the United States government.
Millions of Californians are set to see significant water rate
hikes over the next few years, with prices for essential water
supplies jumping by double-digit percentage points. In one
large city, cumulative increases could see prices jump about
70% just in the next five years. San Diego County,
the second-largest county in California by
population, will see its water rates jump 14% for 2025,
according to the San Diego County Water Authority. The
utility blamed the rate hikes on increased costs to import
water, among other issues.
The sprawling estuary about 70 miles inland from San Francisco
feels distinctly out of place — more like the swampy Florida
Everglades than arid California. But from that confluence of
two great rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, 1,100
miles of webbed waterways and levees send upward of six million
acre-feet of freshwater a year to thirstier parts of the state,
from farms in the San Joaquin Valley to the Southern California
megalopolis. Known as the California Delta, the estuary is
among the state’s most important sources of water — and most
consistent flash points over environmental protection. –Written by Ryan Christopher Jones, a photojournalist and
doctoral student in anthropology at Harvard studying the local
politics of water transfers in the California Delta.
SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Inc. is violating the Clean
Water Act by discharging pollutants from fireworks displays and
wastewater into San Diego’s Mission Bay, according to a new
lawsuit from environmental groups. The complaint, filed
Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of
California, alleges that SeaWorld’s discharges violate its
General National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit
for Residual Firework Pollutant Discharges and its NPDES Permit
for wastewater discharges. The fireworks displays at SeaWorld’s
San Diego park discharge debris, toxic metals, and other
pollutants that harm water quality, ecosystems, and public
health in Mission Bay.
The Oroville Dam Citizens Advisory Committee met Friday to
address safety and flood concerns, as well as the next steps to
improve the Oroville levee. The levee that protects Downtown
Oroville from flooding is over a hundred years old and has
fallen into disrepair in recent decades. … The Army Corps
of Engineers will be inspecting the levee to determine what
needs to be done next to improve it. As for the cost to make
those repairs, for local leaders, the hope is to have DWR cover
it.
Last month’s devastating fires in Los Angeles brought attention
to the need for California to build needed water storage
facilities throughout the state. Case in point is the proposed
expansion of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which was halted in
November after the Contra Costa Water District (CCWD) withdrew
from the plans. The CCWD board explained: “Beyond the
significant cost increase, there were several other significant
factors that led to this project – including decreased benefits
for partners, increased benefit uncertainty and insufficient
guarantees of backup water supplies for CCWD customers while
the reservoir is demolished and reconstructed.”
According to the NOAA California Current Integrated Ecosystem
Assessment’s annual report, the California Current
Ecosystem pulled out of a strong El Niño pattern in 2024.
That El Niño delayed the onset of the annual spring upwelling
of nutrient-laden water that, was nevertheless strong enough to
fuel the rich West Coast ecosystem and improve environmental
conditions for salmon. NOAA Fisheries scientists
presented the report to the Pacific Fishery Management Council
to inform upcoming decisions on fishing seasons. The report
provides a snapshot of ocean conditions, fish population
abundance and habitat, and fisheries landings and fishing
communities’ conditions.
A new multi-million dollar trash-collecting water wheel was
unveiled in Newport Beach Friday, the first-of-its-kind in the
state, to collect floating trash before it contaminates the
local harbors and beaches. City leaders said every year,
hundreds of tons of floating trash and debris enter Newport Bay
through San Diego Creek. The garbage eventually makes its way
to the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve, Newport Harbor and
beaches. The $5.5 million Newport Bay Trash Interceptor will
supplement other cleaning efforts including trash booms, catch
basin collection systems and floating skimmers, city officials
said.
Rural Kings County residents concerned about their drinking
water may sign up to have their wells tested for free at an
event to be held at 5:30 p.m. March 18. The Kings Water
Alliance is hosting the informational event for residents to
apply to have their wells tested for nitrate contamination. The
event will be held at the Kings Cultural Center, 14054 Front
Street, Armona. The well testing program is free for Kings
County residents who rely on wells for drinking water. The
alliance has offered its free program to residents in portions
of Fresno and Tulare Counties and a small northeast portion of
Kings County.
Folsom Lake might be our primary water source, but diversifying
our supply is essential for long-term resilience—and
Roseville’s groundwater program is making impressive strides.
Last year, we introduced two new Aquifer Storage and Recovery
(ASR) wells in West Roseville. These wells add to the
constellation of existing facilities, allowing us to capture
and store water underground during wetter periods and providing
a critical backup during droughts and dry summers. In 2023
alone, our ASR wells stored 2,134 acre-feet of water—enough to
supply over 6,400 households. That’s a massive leap from the 96
acre-feet stored in 2022.
The Army Corps of Engineers colonel responsible for releasing
water from two California reservoirs at President Donald
Trump’s direction in January knew that it was unlikely to reach
the southern part of the state as Trump had promised, according
to a memo obtained by The Washington Post. The agency carried
out Trump’s directive, which came in the wake of catastrophic
wildfires in Los Angeles County, on short notice on Jan. 30,
though it would normally require days to coordinate. A memo
written four days after the release, obtained by The Post
through a public records request, shows how federal officials
rushed ahead with the plan to release irrigation water despite
objections from the state’s elected officials and some local
farmers.
… The next 10 days or so will feature what is known as a
“progressive” pattern across the northeastern Pacific. This
means that there will be an alternating sequences of troughs
and brief/transient ridges in between, with an overall
active/unsettled pattern. In many ways, this is quite a
beneficial winter precipitation-generating pattern as there
will likely be notable breaks between storms (reducing flood
risk) but each individual storm could bring fairly substantial
rain and mountain snow (bolstering water supply/snowpack). At
the moment, it looks like the precipitation from this upcoming
active period should be pretty widespread and well-distributed
statewide, with SoCal likely to see 2 separate events with at
least widespread moderate (locally heavy) rain during this
period.
Residents and businesses in Pacific Palisades will be able to
safely use water this week, Mayor Karen Bass announced
Thursday, touting the milestone as a sign of the speed of
efforts to rebuild the devastated neighborhood. The “do not
drink” notice will be lifted Friday, the two-month anniversary
of the deadly Palisades fire, after engineers and experts at
the L.A. Department of Water and Power confirmed the absence of
contaminants in the water supply. Bass credited DWP crews for
working seven days a week to restore and flush out toxic
substances from the water supply, drawing a comparison to the
November 2018 wildfire in Paradise, where the do-not-drink
advisory remained in place until May 2020.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is moving quickly to
advance Indian Country legislation amid a dramatically changed
political environment. … (Sen. Lisa Murkowski) said
that 10 are water rights settlements, meaning
that the United States, in carrying out its trust and treaty
responsibilities to tribes and their communities, would have to
contribute potentially billions of dollars. … “Indian
water rights settlements are expensive,” Murkowski continued,
“and that’s largely because it costs a lot to build a new
infrastructure to physically access and develop water rights so
that there is actual wet water for tribal citizens.”
The Trump administration’s layoffs continue to careen
down a path of destruction through federal agencies — last week
touching down on a critical National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration office on the Monterey Peninsula that
is on the front lines of tracking and helping to mitigate the
effects of climate change. … The cuts didn’t just
affect Monterey-based NOAA employees. Last week’s culling,
which was an estimated 5% of the agency’s workforce,
included a scientist who specialized in tsunami alerts, a
flight director who tracked hurricanes and a researcher who
studied communities that are most likely to flood during storm
surges.
Other water and natural resource funding and job news:
