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.
The world has entered “an era of global water bankruptcy” with
irreversible consequences, according to a new United Nations
report. Regions across the world are afflicted by severe water
problems: Kabul may be on course to be the first modern city to
run out of water. Mexico City is sinking at a rate of around 20
inches a year as the vast aquifer beneath its streets is
over-pumped. In the US Southwest, states are
locked in a continual battle over the how to share the
shrinking water of the drought-stricken Colorado
River. The global situation is so severe that terms
like “water crisis” or “water stressed” fail to capture its
magnitude, according to the report published Tuesday by the
United Nations University and based on a study in the journal
Water Resources.
With just weeks to decide how to share the Colorado River’s
shrinking water supply, negotiators from seven states hunkered
down in a Salt Lake City conference room. … The states
moved forward on a deal for two-and-a-half days, then went back
by almost as far as they’d come, [Utah chief
negotiator Gene] Shawcroft said. … Shawcroft
reiterated Tuesday what he and his counterparts from the other
Colorado River states have said in recent months: They don’t
have a deal, but they do have a commitment to keep talking and
meet their upcoming February deadline.
Colorado’s snowpack is at a record low, and the longer that
continues, the harder it will be to make up the deficit before
the end of winter, water managers say. … This year, the state
has about 58% of its normal snowpack — the lowest on record for
this time of year. … The northwestern combined
basin is part of the larger Colorado River
Basin, which spans the Western Slope and extends
across six other states and into northern Mexico. If critically
dry conditions continue, one of the basin’s massive reservoirs,
Lake Powell, could drop so low that it would
not be able to generate hydroelectric power by December,
according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
Starting nearly 118 years ago, arsenic-laced groundwater and
dry wells all but killed the hopes of California’s only town
founded and governed by African Americans, many of them
formerly enslaved. On Tuesday, residents of Allensworth
celebrated a new well that will finally bring clean, abundant
water to the town that was beset by water troubles soon after
it was founded 1908 by Col. Allen Allensworth. … The new
well, along with an arsenic treatment system and 500,000-gallon
storage tank, are being paid for through a $3.8 million grant
from the Water Resources Control Board’s Safe and Affordable
Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) program.
Democrats in Congress are demanding that the Trump
administration investigate a top official at the Interior
Department who is accused of violating ethics standards with a
$3.5 million water deal for a Nevada lithium
mine. In a Tuesday letter to the Office of the Inspector
General, Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Maxine Dexter,
D-Ore., referenced new evidence that they feel could implicate
Karen Budd-Falen, the Interior Department’s third in command.
The House Committee on Natural Resources and Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations ranking members are focused on the
Budd-Falen family’s water sale to the controversial
Thacker Pass lithium mine in Northern Nevada in 2018.
As President Donald Trump pledges to help lower costs for
Americans, his administration’s plan to reduce protections
under the Clean Water Act is fueling new concerns about water
affordability. The administration is racing to finalize a rule
that will chip away at federal oversight for millions of acres
of streams and wetlands. Those resources play an important role
in filtering pollutants out of drinking supplies and absorbing
rainwater during floods — at no direct cost to consumers. Trump
administration officials say their proposal will provide
clarity for farmers and landowners and ease costs for
businesses. Yet local officials who oversee sewer systems and
water treatment plants say the changes could shift costs to
them, putting pressure on water bills at a time when millions
of Americans struggle to pay them.
… The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has awarded
more than $10 million to 16 projects aimed at restoring,
enhancing, and protecting salmon and steelhead habitat across
the state. The grants are part of Governor Gavin Newsom’s
broader Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future, which
focuses on rebuilding fish populations as climate pressures
intensify. Funding was distributed through CDFW’s long-running
Fisheries Restoration Grant Program, supported by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Together,
those programs target migration barriers, degraded rivers, and
lost rearing habitat throughout California watersheds.
After millions of gallons of raw sewage spilled into San Diego
through the Tijuana River, federal officials said Monday the
toxic flows had stopped. The U.S. International Boundary and
Water Commission (IBWC), which oversees the treatment of some
of Tijuana’s wastewater north of the border, said the spill
began Thursday night. The cause: a major sewage pipe collapse
in eastern Tijuana. … Last week’s spill is the latest of
many over the past decade and amid infrastructure repairs
happening on both sides of the border. But those who live and
work in the South County communities affected by the sewage
pollution said they feel like reprieve is far from coming.
… Arizonans are watching it [AI] transform their desertscape
firsthand, especially in newly-minted tech hubs like Phoenix,
where previously empty, dusty lots have turned into data
centers. But developers are clashing with neighbors who don’t
want them next door. Residents of this water-strained state
worry their wells will run dry. … AI uses water in two
primary ways: on-site for cooling computer servers and off-site
at the power plants that provide data centers with electricity.
… In Arizona, a hotter climate that relies on intensive
cooling, facilities processing GPT-3 requests used the same
amount of water as in a 17-ounce water bottle per 16 queries,
more than the national average.
Marin County supervisors voted Tuesday to ratify a local
emergency proclamation over the widespread flooding early this
month. “The proclamation provides for and preserves eligibility
for state and federal funding and supports our ongoing
recovery, reimbursement and mitigation efforts,” County
Executive Derek Johnson told supervisors during their first
meeting of the year. Johnson said the county is still assessing
the cost of the damage in the unincorporated areas, but the
preliminary estimate is about $3.5 million. “Our major cost
drivers are impacts to levees, roads and bridges as well as
damage to park and recreation facilities,” Johnson said.
A novel idea to both conserve water and generate power surfaced
on Capitol Hill earlier this month. Rep. Hoang Nguyen, D-Salt
Lake City, joined representatives with Utah-based Water Wise
Solar Solutions, advocating for floating solar panels across
Utah water bodies. The panels could help slow evaporation on
lakes and reservoirs while also supplementing the grid with
some much-needed electricity, Nguyen said. … The company
seeks not just to conserve water with solar panels, which could
shade waterbodies from the summer heat, but to conserve land
for other economic and environmental uses other than sprawling
solar farms.
Nevada’s interim Legislative Committee for the Review and
Oversight of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and the
Marlette Lake Water System meets in Carson City on January 23
at a moment when funding is scarce, policy decisions carry
outsized consequences, and TRPA’s regulatory capture has
allowed private interests and their lobbyists to shape the
basin’s priorities more than the public they’re supposed to
serve. Two-thirds of Lake Tahoe, one of the deepest lakes
in the world, lies within California’s borders, yet when it
comes to oversight of the lake and the bi-state TRPA, Nevada
consistently punches above its weight. –Written by Nevada Current columnist Pamela Mahoney
Tsigdinos.
Feather River Land Trust and Sierra Nevada Journeys, a leading
outdoor science education nonprofit serving youth across
Northern California and Northern Nevada, recently announced a
transformative conservation milestone: the permanent protection
of 1,025 acres of forest, meadow and wildlife habitat in Plumas
County. … The land is part of the Big Grizzly Creek
Corridor, which connects Lake Davis and the Wild and Scenic
Middle Fork Feather River, a critical source of water to the
State Water Project serving downstream agriculture and drinking
water to millions of Americans.
Negotiators for the seven states that share the shrinking
Colorado River met in Salt Lake City but could not agree on a
deal to split up the water, Arizona’s lead negotiator said.
… Talks that ran through most of the week don’t seem to
have improved the outlook for a water pact. “I didn’t see
enough progress,” Arizona Water Resources Director Tom
Buschatzke said on Friday, Jan. 16, “or any major progress”
suggesting a deal is imminent. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum
has invited all seven governors and their negotiators to meet
in Washington in late January, Buschatzke said.
… Interior officials declined to comment or confirm a
date for the meeting.
For decades Sacramento Valley farmers and water agencies
throughout California have championed the need for another
reservoir to bolster the state’s water supply. But deciding who
should build it, as of late, has become more controversial,
complicated by pushback from local labor unions. … Surrounded
by protesters, the Sites Project Authority board and Reservoir
Committee members voted [Friday] to finalize a contract with
Barnard Construction Company to build dams, roads and bridges
for the reservoir expected to hold 1.5 million acre feet of
water for residents throughout the state.
The entire state is in a snow drought, with conditions expected
to deepen due to record-breaking warm winter temperatures.
Colorado’s snowpack is the lowest on record for this time of
year, and major river basins are running at about 50 percent to
75 percent of normal. Much of the northwestern part of the
state, including Pitkin, Eagle, Grand and Summit counties are
in deep drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which
forecasts the dry spell to deepen across the Western Slope in
the coming weeks. … Still, the state [of Colorado] is faring
better than surrounding states when it comes to winter
precipitation. Nevada, Arizona and New
Mexico have received only about 20-30 percent of the
average snowfall by this time in January.
The same week politicians in Congress and the State House
announced progress on a decades-old pollution crisis in the
Tijuana River Valley, officials also announced a major new
spill. The U.S. International Water and Boundary Commission
notified the public Friday morning that Mexican officials
reported a failure at the Insurgentes Collector wastewater
system Thursday night that will cause 11.5 million
gallons of sewage and chemicals to spill into the
Tijuana River daily, pending repairs. … Alex Padilla
said [Thursday] they had arranged nearly $3.5 million in
federal aid for a dredging project to remove sediment, trash
and debris from Smuggler’s Gulch to reduce pollution and
flooding in local communities.
In what the Klamath Water Users Association is calling “a major
step toward securing the future of the entire Klamath Basin,”
the Bureau of Reclamation has completed a reassessment of how
the Endangered Species Act is applied to the Klamath Project.
“Following bipartisan federal legislation in early 2025 and
updated guidance from the Department of the Interior, this
reassessment takes a detailed look at over 150 water supply
contracts and analyzes where Reclamation does and does not have
discretion over water deliveries under existing contracts,” the
KWUA stated in a news release.
The long-term health of the ocean off the coast of Southern
California, and the health of the region’s freshwater streams
and rivers and lakes, soon could hinge on the Trump
administration’s definition of a single word: ditch. The
Environmental Protection Agency is in the midst of sorting out
which of the “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS – the
creeks, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, wetlands, oceans, and,
yes, in a few cases, ditches – should still be protected from
pollution by the Clean Water Act of 1972. At least some of the
proposed new rules could result in more pollution in Southern
California’s vast network of paved flood control channels,
which soon could be viewed by the federal government as
“ephemeral ditches.”
… As of Jan. 1, California is mandating that underground
fuel tanks have two protective shells to prevent soil
or groundwater contamination. The single-walled
cylinders at the Bay Farm station are considered archaic and
possibly hazardous, prone to leaks like the one that recently
caused a major road closure in
Burlingame. … According to the State Water
Resources Control Board, California has fewer than 650
single-walled tanks left in the ground. … In due time,
state water board leaders assure that all of California’s
underground gas supply will be doubly secured, their outer
layers girded for earthquakes, extreme weather or natural
deterioration.
