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.
… As warm and dry conditions continue in the West, the
forecasts for the amount of water flowing through the
Upper Colorado River Basin keep dropping.
… And to top it off, the [Drought Response Operations]
agreement that outlines how Upper Basin states, including
Colorado, can help out in drought years expired Dec. 31, and
it’s not yet clear from a legal standpoint what that means for
this year. … The agreement, called the DROA by the water
wonks, aimed to keep Powell’s elevation above 3,525 feet above
sea level. … It’s one of several agreements that expire this
year and must be replaced, including Mexico’s Colorado River
agreement and reservoir operation rules from 2007.
… Colorado’s mountains harbor a vital water
supply that melts and runs through four major rivers and 19
downstream states each year.
A federal courtroom in San Francisco is becoming the latest
battleground over the future of West Coast salmon. On Jan. 26,
a case brought by commercial fishing groups went before a
judge, accusing major tire manufacturers of using a chemical
additive that can be lethal to endangered fish once it washes
into rivers and streams. … At the center of the dispute is
6PPD, a compound used to prevent tires from breaking down when
exposed to air and ozone. According to the plaintiffs, that
same chemical transforms into a toxic byproduct known as
6PPD-quinone once tire particles are washed off roads during
storms. They argue this runoff can devastate salmon
populations along the California and Alaska coasts.
Things have been really dry in many parts of
Wyoming this winter but it’s not as dry as
Utah, where it’s record-breaking. As of Jan.
27, only a tenth of an inch of snow has fallen on Salt Lake
City, Utah, this winter. That’s the lowest snowfall on record,
by a significant margin. … The latest records show the
statewide snowpack is currently at 59% of the median, close to
a new historic low. … If the mid-February pivot comes to
pass, Wyoming should do well. Many of its basins are in dire
need of more snowpack, and [Cowboy State Daily meteorologist
Don] Day believes there’s a decent chance they’ll get it.
… The situation in the south isn’t as promising.
Colorado and Utah have
already reached a deficit that wouldn’t be impossible to
overcome, but it would take a lot.
Sacramento remains one of the most flood-prone areas in
the country, with significant development and
construction taking place in historic floodplains despite
ongoing efforts to shore up protections. For decades, many
people living in these high-risk areas in California and across
the country have turned to a federal program for coverage in
case of disaster — the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),
managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA). The program has provided policies to millions,
but faces a looming deadline amid a potential government
shutdown. Without Congressional reauthorization or amendments
the NFIP could lapse at the end of the month, putting the
brakes on new insurance contracts and reducing the NFIP’s
authority to borrow funds from the U.S. Treasury.
On Tuesday, Jan. 27, U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto
(D-Nev.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to deliver more
funding to protect the Lake Tahoe Basin. … Senator
Cortez Masto’s Santini-Burton Modernization Act would allow
U.S. Forest Service to once again use S-B Act funds to manage
public lands in the Tahoe Basin, with an emphasis on protecting
lake clarity, reducing wildfire risk, and addressing recreation
impacts, all of which were outlined in the original law [the
Santini-Burton Act of 1980]. The bill would also expand the
Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California’s authority to manage
lands in the Basin.
President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin
Newsom are so in sync on California water that they’re in
a race to capture as much of it as possible — possibly even at
each other’s expense. Trump and Newsom’s relative
alignment on water issues has been good news all around
for farmers and cities that draw from both sides of the state’s
main water hub: the federally run Central Valley
Project and the aptly named State Water Project, which
is state-run. Water deliveries have ticked up, mostly as a
result of back-to-back wet years but also as a result of
loosened environmental rules on both sides, much to the chagrin
of environmental groups concerned about the collapse of
endangered fish populations in the sensitive Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta. But the feds have been steadily squeezing out
more water over the course of the past year — to the point
where state customers are getting worried that their own
supplies could be in jeopardy.
The U.S. Department of the Interior approved a major
California water project on Friday, clearing a key obstacle for
a massive new reservoir. The proposed 1.5 million
acre-foot Sites Reservoir would store water from the
Sacramento River and distribute it during droughts to several
parts of California, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin
valleys, Southern California and the Bay Area. Stretching
about 4 miles across and 13 miles north to south, it’s
meant to provide water to approximately 24 million people, and
it would mark California’s first major reservoir project since
1979. … The next steps in the project are
securing water rights from the state and getting local agencies
to officially sign off on funding.
… Complicating BOR’s mission, the Western States have
experienced ongoing historic drought over the last two decades.
Our work has identified multiple challenges in this area. For
example, we audited BOR’s cost allocation and ratesetting
processes for the Central Valley Project and
determined that BOR did not have internal controls sufficient
to ensure the accuracy of those processes, which is necessary
to ensure that costs are accurately allocated and that
construction and operations costs are recouped by the Federal
Government as appropriate.
The San Francisco Bay and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta Estuary
(hereafter, Bay-Delta) is the largest estuary on the West Coast
of the United States. The Bay- Delta covers more than 1,600
square miles and drains a watershed of more than 75,000 square
miles, which is greater than 40 percent of California. The
region surrounding the Bay- Delta is home to about 10 million
people, and its habitats (fig. 1) support more than 800 plant
and animal species. The waterways of the Bay- Delta are the
central hub of California’s extensive freshwater delivery
system, supplying water to more than 27 million Californians
and 4 million acres of farmland in the Central Valley.
… This fact sheet focuses on research conducted by the
USGS in the Bay- Delta region, mostly within the past 5 years.
Utah has successfully bid to seize control of the defunct US
Magnesium plant, and it plans to donate the massive volume of
water it evaporated each year to benefit the Great Salt Lake.
The company declared bankruptcy in September following years of
insolvency, a catastrophic equipment failure in 2021 and after
it fell short on an environmental cleanup contract with federal
regulators. State regulators, meanwhile, denied the company’s
attempts to extend intake canals in 2022 and continue siphoning
away the Great Salt Lake’s record-low water. … US
Magnesium pumped more than 52,000 acre-feet of lake brine and
groundwater in 2024, according to state information.
A groundbreaking water research facility is taking shape along
the San Diego River, giving scientists access to something
they’ve never had before: real water, in real time. The
project, called the One Water Lab, is being developed by San
Diego State University. … What makes it unique is direct
access to multiple water sources, including the San Diego
River, stormwater runoff, and even wastewater. A dedicated
sewer line will allow researchers to work with wastewater
onsite before safely returning it to the system. Next door, a
massive biofiltration basin is already quietly doing critical
work. The system collects stormwater and treats it through
layers of specialized media, helping remove pollutants before
they reach the river.
I have been attending a series of four lectures at the Imperial
Valley College (IVC) about a dying Salton Sea, the largest lake
in California, and the potential catastrophic and environmental
threat it presents to the health and welfare of Imperial County
residents and communities. … One of the most salient and
distressing lectures were by UCR researchers whose ongoing
studies of the lake, and contaminants contained in the surface
water and in the middle of the lake bed obtained through sample
cores clearly show that in the near future if solutions are not
implemented soon, this region will experience dire health
consequences. –Written by Calexico Chronicle guest columnist Victor
Zazueta.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is again calling on people of all faiths
to pray for precipitation, as the state’s snowpack nears a low
point in the modern era of snowpack collection tracking.
… His call comes as Utah’s snowpack remains at 5 inches
of snow water equivalent, or 60% of the median average for the
final week of January. It’s also only about one-third of the
median average for any given year, with only about two months
left before the normal peak. … Cox’s call for prayers
comes less than a week after federal hydrologists
released a discouraging first water supply outlook for the
year, where they pointed out that the state might see
equally below-average streamflows by the time the snowpack
melts this spring.
Reliable access to water remained a dominant factor in
agricultural land valleys in Kern County over 2025, according
to data compiled by brokerage and appraisal company Alliance
Ag. Sales data from the past 21 years clearly show a “SGMA
effect” that has driven prices down overall since the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was
passed in 2014. The good news is that it appears land values
dropped less steeply in 2025 and may even have bottomed out in
some water category districts. … So-called “white
lands,” meaning land outside of water district boundaries that
rely almost exclusively on groundwater, have lingered at
between $2,000 and $3,000 an acre for the past three years.
A program designed to get farmers to switch to new water-saving
technologies is showing signs of success, lawmakers on Utah’s
Capitol Hill were told during a budget hearing. During a
hearing of the Utah State Legislature’s Natural Resources
Appropriations Committee, Utah’s Department of Agriculture &
Food reported the agriculture water optimization program, which
helps farmers buy new irrigation equipment that’s more
water-efficient, has resulted in roughly 100,000 acre-feet per
year of savings. … On Utah’s Capitol Hill, lawmakers
have passed dozens of bills and spent roughly $1 billion on
water conservation measures to help the [Great Salt]
lake and the Colorado River.
… Through a series of blog posts, we will explore how
California might leverage AI to better manage our water
resources, while mitigating the risks of this rapidly evolving
technology. … One of the most popular types of AI for
water is machine learning, in which models learn and adapt
without explicit instructions. In California, the Department of
Water Resources and the State Water Resources Control Board
have applied machine learning models to a range of topics, from
modeling salinity to predicting drought impacts. … Perhaps
the most thorny challenge is that no one knows how AI reaches
its answers, including those who built the systems. Building
the data infrastructure, quality control, and trust in AI
outputs is critical, especially as its use in the water sector
becomes more commonplace.
… A measly 1% of Earth’s freshwater is on the surface, where
it can be seen and measured with relative ease. But beneath
that, measurements vary massively depending on water table
depth and ground porosity we can’t directly see. …
But a new groundwater map by
[Princeton University hydrologist Reed] Maxwell and colleagues
offers the highest-resolution estimate so far of the amount of
groundwater in the contiguous United States: about 306,500
cubic kilometers. That’s 13 times the volume of all the Great
Lakes combined, almost 7 times the amount of water discharged
by all rivers on Earth in a year.
Governor Spencer Cox (R-Utah) is traveling to Washington this
week for a high-stakes meeting on the future of the Colorado
River. Cox will meet on Friday with leaders from the seven
Colorado River states and Secretary of the Interior Doug
Burgum. … “Federal intervention will be necessary if the
states do not agree on a solution, and it will have winners and
losers, with Utah almost certainly on the losing side. The only
new Colorado River water available for Utah to divert is if
water users on the Wasatch front cut their water supplies or
Uinta basin farmers cut their water use more than they already
have,” [Utah Rivers Council Executive Director Zach] Frankel
said.
The Tahoe Water for Fire Suppression Partnership today
celebrated the enactment of the Fiscal Year 2026 federal
appropriations “minibus” funding package, marking a major
milestone for Lake Tahoe’s wildfire resilience and emergency
preparedness efforts. Included in H.R. 6938, the Commerce,
Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior &
Environment Appropriations Act, 2026, this legislation provides
more than $20 million in federal funding for long-standing Lake
Tahoe Restoration Act (LTRA) priorities, including watershed
protection, forest health, aquatic invasive species mitigation,
water infrastructure improvements, and climate resilience
projects that reduce wildfire risk and protect water quality.
San Diego County supervisors will vote Wednesday on a $4.75
million funding proposal aimed at studying health impacts and
reducing toxic emissions from the ongoing Tijuana River
pollution crisis. The proposal, presented by the Ad Hoc
Subcommittee on the Tijuana River Sewage Crisis, includes
funding for epidemiological studies and a temporary
infrastructure fix at Saturn Boulevard, identified as a major
hotspot for airborne pollutants. … The funding, which
would be drawn from county reserves, includes $2 million for a
long-term health study, contingent on $4 million being raised
from other sources such as state and federal partners.
