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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Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a strategy to save
declining salmon — spotlighting a historic partnership with the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe to reintroduce endangered winter-run
Chinook to the vital, cold waters upstream of Lake Shasta in
far northern California. Now, tribe officials say the
state is ending its support, potentially causing salmon
restoration efforts on the McCloud River to die
mid-stream. The tribe is now grappling with the sudden
loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the
culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral
waters. … State officials say the one-time funds were
tied to the state’s drought response and have now been used
up.
Drought is spreading fast in Colorado and major cities are
declaring their earliest water restrictions in history,
urging residents to cut back on the thirstiest water
user: the classic American lawn. The state is now
nearly half-covered by extreme drought conditions — even though
there was essentially no extreme drought there at the start of
2026. Now, extreme drought in Colorado is at its highest level
in five years, and at its highest level for April in more than
two decades. … City officials are warning people will
have to make changes, most notably, adjusting their
expectations for how their lawns will look this year. Those
changes could reshape the aesthetics of the region for the long
haul.
The Trump administration announced this week it will shut down
six of eight U.S. Forest Service research facilities in
California as part of a major national reorganization that
could leave the state underequipped to manage
escalating wildfire and drought threats. The closures
in Fresno, Chico, Fort Bragg, Mount Shasta, and Anderson and
Hat Creek in Shasta County are part of a broader
plan announced this week to shutter 57 of the
agency’s 77 research facilities across 31 states and move its
headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City. In
California, just two research facilities will remain,
in Placerville and Riverside.
For years, local officials and environmentalists in South San
Diego County — where sewage entering from Mexico has polluted
the shores for decades — have suggested that the state has not
deployed enough resources to address the soiled waters of the
Tijuana River. Nearly $700 million in federal money since 2022
has been sent to the U.S. International Boundary and Water
Commission, the national agency in charge of cross-border
rivers, to upgrade deteriorating American water treatment
plants near the border. … Some of the eight
Democrats running for governor have visited the site in recent
weeks with county officials to offer what they’d do about the
millions of tons of sewage sickening thousands of
residents.
A new statewide beaver management plan is in the works in
Colorado, with a focus on keeping more beavers on the landscape
and expanding tools to help people coexist with the animals
often dubbed “nature’s engineers.” The Upper Colorado Watershed
Environmental Team shared in a recent social media post that it
hopes to eventually establish a beaver quarantine and
relocation facility in Grand County. The facility would allow
wildlife managers to safely move beavers away from conflict
areas, such as roadways or golf courses, and reintroduce them
into more suitable habitats. One of the key coexistence tools
highlighted in beaver management is the “beaver deceiver,” a
flow device designed to prevent flooding without removing the
animals.
… The Berry family has logged various tracts of land in and
around Cazadero in the coastal mountains north of the Russian
River for about 85 years. … But, now, Berry is seeking a
different type of state approval that would allow logging in
perpetuity on Berry’s Knotfarm. Designed for smaller scale
operations on less than 2,500 acres, these permits require
environmental analysis of the entire property rather than
piecemeal reviews of the portions to be logged that they used
previously. … But the unlimited timeframe has stoked
concerns among local residents and environmental groups that
the plan, as proposed, doesn’t do enough to protect sensitive
fish habitat and drinking water for 123 households and
businesses in Jenner (whose water source crosses Berry’s
land).
The City of San Luis Obispo celebrated the completion of its
Mid-Higuera Bypass Project on Friday. The goal of the project
was to reduce the risk of flooding in flood-prone areas around
Higuera Street. Back in 2023, homes and businesses, like
Nautical Bean and Abbey Carpet and Floor, located near High
Street, were affected by flooding. … [T]he city installed two
flood bypass channels, added 20-foot-wide channels, bench
grading, and replaced the aging Bianchi Lane Bridge. All of
this in hopes of increasing flood capacity by 40 percent during
a 25-year storm event, reducing floodwater elevation by 6 to 18
inches, all while creating a healthy creek habitat.
Last summer, 28 Indigenous teenagers became the first in a
century to kayak the full length of the Klamath River —
traveling more than 300 miles from the river’s headwaters in
southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California.
Their journey follows decades of advocacy by Klamath River
tribes to remove a series of dams that had reshaped the river
since the early 1900s. … The teens — ages 13-20 —
embarked on a month-long expedition documented by producer and
Karuk tribe member Jessie Sears in the Oregon Public Broadcast
film First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath. Sears and paddler
Tasia Linwood spoke with The California Report Magazine about
what it took to make the journey — and what it means to move
through a river that is still finding its way back.
In the southeast corner of California, 300-foot-tall sand dunes
rise from a sunbaked landscape dotted with ocotillo and
creosote bushes. Summer temperatures here regularly exceed 110
degrees, and annual rainfall is comparable to that of the
Sahara Desert. Despite its unforgiving terrain, more than
180,000 residents live in Imperial County, one of the country’s
most productive agricultural regions and more recently a magnet
for data center development and lithium extraction proposals.
This has all been made possible by turn-of-the-20th century
canals that carve up the region, supplying it with more
than a million gallons of Colorado River water every
minute. … Communities across Imperial Valley
are now contemplating what dwindling water resources might mean
for their region.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the
world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an
immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these
reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries
production and management potential, indicates a study from the
University of California, Davis. The study, published
in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S.
reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of
fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems
could play major roles in food security and fisheries
conservation.
California has unveiled an ambitious plan to help combat the
worsening climate crisis with one of its invaluable assets: its
land. Over the next 20 years, the state will work to transform
more than half of its 100 million acres into multi-benefit
landscapes that can absorb more carbon than they release,
officials announced Monday. … The plan also calls for
11.9 million acres of forestland to be managed for biodiversity
protection, carbon storage and water supply protection by 2045,
and 2.7 million acres of shrublands and chaparral to be managed
for carbon storage, resilience and habitat connectivity, among
other efforts.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended
Alternative 3 – Salmon Closure during the final days of the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) meeting mirroring
the opinions of commercial and recreational charter boat
anglers. The department’s position is a significant change from
early March. The PFMC meetings are being held in Seattle from
April 6 to 11, and the final recommendations of the council
will be forwarded to the California Fish and Game Commission in
May.
