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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.
We occasionally bold words in the text to ensure the water connection is clear.
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.
… In this intergenerational conversation, three writers who
carry Western rivers in their blood talk about their boating
lives, creative bents, and views of moving water, in their
earlier years and now. Zak Podmore, whitewater boater and
award-winning journalist, joins us from Bluff, Utah. His books
and articles attracted the notice of Rose McMackin, former
whitewater guide, freelance journalist, and pop culture writer
in Austin, Texas. She is also the daughter of our third guest,
Becca Lawton, an author, fluvial geologist, and pioneering
Grand Canyon boatwoman living in Northern California.
… On Nov. 11, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, Nevada and the Beehive state need to reach a
consensus on how to split up a dwindling river that supplies
water for nearly 40 million people. … Conserving water
in Utah is nothing new. During dry years, there’s often not
enough from rain and snowpack to meet everyone’s water rights,
so some people go without their share. Those cuts typically
happen on a small, localized basis. What makes potential
Colorado River reductions unprecedented … is that they
would happen basinwide. That’s why Utah has prepared for how
that might play out.
Board members of the nascent Tule East groundwater agency spent
their second meeting setting up basics but with an eye on the
clock and a sensitive ear to what didn’t work in the past. The
Tule East Joint Powers Authority Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA), will take over governance of so-called “white
lands” from the embattled Eastern Tule
GSA. … Meanwhile, Tule East board members are
facing a herculean task to get organized and come up with a new
groundwater plan to present to the Water Resources Control
Board, which placed the entire Tule subbasin on probation last
fall for lacking a plan that would stem subsidence, among other
deficiencies.
Northern California’s Siskiyou County took another hit Tuesday
when a federal judge denied its summary judgment motion in a
case over residents’ claims they’re not getting the water they
need. The putative class — many of whom are Asian American and
live in a part of the rural county called Shasta Vista — sued
in 2022. … They also claim officials have used water
ordinances to deprive them in an area with no public water
system. County officials have said the local ordinances
that prevent the transfer of water to the Shasta Vista
residents are needed to combat illegal cannabis grows. But the
plaintiffs contend they’re used against a minority population
that needs water.
Blue veins of ice streaked the snow this January in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Snow hydrologist McKenzie Skiles eyed the veins,
worried. … Studies from her lab and others find that less
snow is falling on mountains worldwide, and there’s more rain
in the forecast. … [C]limate models of California’s Sierra
Nevada Mountains predict that, at 3 degrees warming,
more than half the range’s precipitation will fall as rain, not
snow. That would be disastrous for the Golden State,
where snowmelt from the Sierras is a third of the water supply.
California simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to capture
all that water from rain. More rain will also change flood
risks. … Overall, less snow compromises drinking and
agricultural water storage in the West.
A new website, the San Francisco Bay State of the Birds,
created by the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture and Point Blue
Conservation Science, provides scientists, policymakers, and
the public with an up-to-date look at which Bay Area bird
populations are thriving and which are declining, and what that
says about the health of San Francisco Bay’s wetlands
and waters. The findings suggest that the populations
of Bay Area marsh birds and wetland ducks are doing well,
shorebirds and diving ducks are declining, indicating that some
habitats are rebounding from “rapidly evolving climate change
and biodiversity challenges,” according to the project
researchers, while others still need conservation attention.
Heavy autumn rains brought relief to drought-plagued portions
of the Southwest, but across the Colorado River basin ongoing
water supply concerns still linger amid tense policy
negotiations and near record-low reservoir storage. Even
after accounting for the heavy rain, 57% of the
Colorado River watershed remains in severe drought,
according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. More than 11% of the
basin is in extreme drought. … In response to extremely
low water conditions, it’s possible water from upstream
reservoirs in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico could be
released to support Powell’s hydropower turbines.
Other weather and water supply news across the West:
… Cloud seeding has been happening in Colorado since the
1950s, and state scientists say it’s one tool that can help
boost snowpack during our changing winters. … State
scientists say cloud seeding can increase snowfall by 8% to 12%
per storm when conditions line up. … Colorado currently
has seven state-permitted cloud seeding programs, mostly in
high-elevation mountain areas. … Western states like
Arizona, California and Nevada even help fund Colorado’s cloud
seeding efforts because they benefit, too.
Arizona’s tech boom has brought jobs, investment and innovation
to the desert. But as the number of data centers multiply
across the Valley, so does concern over what keeps their
humming servers cool: water. According to Data Center Map, 162
data centers now operate in Arizona, with many more planned or
under construction. These massive facilities, the digital
backbone of cloud computing, social media and artificial
intelligence, rely on enormous quantities of water to keep
thousands of servers from overheating.
During a brief storm last month, a trash boom in the Tijuana
River managed to stop 20 tons of trash and debris from entering
California. Historically, during rain events in the San
Diego-Tijuana region, water flows from south of the border into
the U.S. carrying tons of plastic, tires and other debris. Last
year, as a way to stop the pollution, a 1,200-foot trash boom
was strung across the river bed by Alter Terra, a binational
environmental group. Sections of the boom float according
to the level of the river — its fence-like partitions stop the
trash from flowing farther into the Tijuana River Valley and
the Pacific Ocean.
One of the most picturesque and affluent communities along Lake
Tahoe is dealing with a nasty problem: potential raw sewage
contamination. A boil water notice was sent Monday to residents
of Incline Village, situated on the north end of Lake Tahoe in
Nevada, after a water main break resulted in a loss of pressure
in the water distribution system. In the notice, officials with
the community’s general improvement district said the loss of
pressure could cause backups through cracks and joints in pipes
and pose a “high potential that fecal contamination or other
disease-causing organisms could enter the distribution system.”
… [E]very positive development in the embattled Klamath basin
seems to come with a catch, and the catch this time is ominous:
The Trump administration has shown disregard for the salmons’
well-being, cutting already allocated funding for needed
ongoing river restoration, fish-monitoring and fire-prevention
projects, and firing the federal officials who helped
facilitate them. Even worse, in the event of drought — which
has plagued the basin for most of this century — the
administration has signaled that it intends to drastically
reduce the river flows that salmon need so that upper-basin
farmers get full water allocations. –Written by author Jacques Leslie.
The EPA has begun cleanup work at the Lukachukai Mining
District Superfund Site on the Navajo Nation, where uranium
mining left decades of contamination. The agency said crews
will remove thousands of cubic yards of uranium-contaminated
waste rock from the Mesa V complex and place it in a newly
built engineered repository designed to prevent further erosion
or groundwatercontamination.
The project is expected to take about a year to
complete. Officials said the area is used for grazing and
other activities by Navajo families, and the cleanup will help
reduce risks from exposure to radioactive materials.
… [S]tate and local water managers are battling to keep
golden mussels from reaching uninfested
lakes and reservoirs. They’re racing to keep them from damaging
the pumping facilities that send Delta water to farms and
cities in Central and Southern California. … In the
urgency to stop the spread, state agencies have
prioritized protecting the rest of the state from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, over protecting the Delta itself.
Residents and local leaders feel overlooked. And they fear that
the stigma of a golden mussel infestation will drive visitors
and boaters away from one of the country’s largest
estuaries.
The Utah Division of Water Rights is reviewing an application
to repurpose a Green River–basin water right for municipal use
that could draw from the Colorado River near
Cisco, where a new residential community is proposed off
Interstate 70 about an hour from Moab. The San Juan Water
Conservancy District filed the change application July 1,
requesting permission to convert Water Right 91-5233 from power
generation — originally allocated for a nuclear power plant
that was never built — to municipal use.
The Bay Area is in for another atmospheric river storm this
week, and forecasters expect the North Bay to receive the bulk
of the wet weather. … While the rain will mostly be
beneficial, localized nuisance flooding is possible. Minor
coastal flooding could also occur Tuesday through Saturday due
to spring tides. … The warm storm will push snow
levels in the Sierra Nevada to above 7,500 feet,
resulting in the bulk of the snowfall at higher elevations.
Lassen National Park and the highest peaks of the Sierra could
see some snowfall, and snow levels could dip below 7,000 feet
on Wednesday night if temperatures fall.
A new University of California San Diego study uncovers a
hidden driver of global crop vulnerability: the origin of
rainfall itself. Published in Nature Sustainability, the
research traces atmospheric moisture back to its source.
… They discovered that when more than about one-third of
rainfall originates from land, croplands are significantly more
vulnerable to drought, soil moisture loss and yield declines –
likely because ocean-sourced systems tend to deliver heavier
rainfall, while land-sourced systems tend to deliver less
reliable showers, increasing the chance of water deficits
during critical crop growth stages.
More data centers may be built in the Tucson area as well as
the controversial Project Blue. … But just like Project
Blue, these projects are also raising still-unanswered
questions about their projected energy and water use — and
facing opposition from many of the same activists who have
fought Project Blue. … If the Davis-Monthan data center
requires the drilling of new wells for its water supply, the
Arizona Department of Water Resources will require that the
center operator demonstrate its water use won’t cause
significant declines in any neighboring wells.
A team of UC Riverside researchers has uncovered a potential
breakthrough in solar desalination that could reduce the need
for energy-intensive saltwater treatment. Led by Luat Vuong, an
associate professor of mechanical engineering in UCR’s Marlan
and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, the team has
demonstrated for the first time how the highest frequencies of
sunlight—specifically invisible ultraviolet (UV) light—can
break the stubborn bonds between salt and water.
In the continuing effort of the New River Improvement Project
to improve the local ecosystem, volunteers from far and near
joined the Imperial Irrigation District’s Community Action Day
to plant more than 1,000 native plants in local wetlands on
Saturday, Nov 1. … These native plants will help the
wetland grow stronger to serve its natural function of
filtering the water of the New River, aiding in erosion and
waste control. … [T]hose same contaminants would end up
polluting the Salton Sea as well. Now, with
the New River Improvement Project completed, any polluted water
has its physical debris separated and is treated before
entering the New River.
