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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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.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee
Zeldin announced new initiatives to tackle
microplastics in the human body and drinking water on
Thursday. Kennedy said the government will create a
$144-million program called STOMP, for the systematic targeting
of microplastics. … Zeldin said the environmental agency
will add microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its list of
concerning chemicals in drinking water. … In 2022,
California became the first government in the
world to require that drinking water be tested for
microplastics. The state has not yet begun reporting its
results.
… Denver Water spokesperson Todd Hartman said via email that
the agency will use a portion of its cash reserves to offset
the lower water sales and other costs associated with the
drought. It has also taken steps to reduce other costs, such as
leaving job vacancies open longer. Colorado experienced
record-low mountain snows this year and a scorching hot spring,
which has the thin snowpack melting sooner than normal.
Reservoir storage is stable for this year, at roughly 80% of
average across the state. But heavy water use could drain those
reservoirs too quickly, potentially causing major shortages
next year if this winter is as dry as last winter’s was,
officials have said. To protect reservoir storage,
cities want customers to reduce water use by 10% to
20%. They’re hoping surcharges will help them
reach those goals.
Other water supply and drought news around the West:
Every year, as winter winds down into April, officials with
California’s Department of Water Resources perform their
snowpack measurements for the last time. … March’s
record-breaking warmth left the state’s snowpack at a mere 18%
of its April 1 average. State officials and scientists are
warning of strained water resources throughout the
state and an earlier-than-usual fire season. The
atypical heat was part of a larger wave of warm temperatures
that swept through the continental U.S during March. The
National Weather Service reported that from March 15
through the 26, more than 1,100 records for warm temperatures
were tied or broken.
What some see as a water grab for a fast-growing metro in Utah
could have implications for the groundwater flows that support
Nevada’s only national park and surrounding farm land. On
Wednesday, a broad coalition of farmers, county and city
governments and environmentalists filed an appeal to the Bureau
of Land Management after it approved permits for a
pipeline that would contribute to the drain of
aquifers in the name of growth in Iron County, Utah, which
includes Cedar City. … Advocates say, without a
doubt, that tapping those water sources will draw down aquifers
near Great Basin National Park in Baker and into western Utah.
Homeowners across Sonoma County could soon be paying more for
their sewer rates as rising operating costs and decades-old
infrastructure continue to strain wastewater systems
countywide, officials say. Sonoma Water, the agency that
manages many of the county’s wastewater sanitation zones and
districts, has proposed increases in all eight of its
operational areas spanning from Penngrove to the Russian River
and Sea Ranch Sanitation Districts. … Aging
infrastructure and an overwhelmed system led to the largest
spill of untreated sewage at the Guerneville wastewater
treatment plant in January in more than four decades, prompting
officials to scramble to identify urgent upgrades to the
treatment plant and its collection system.
The Friant Water Authority has settled a lawsuit involving two
other local agencies over groundwater pumping. The agency
announced the settlement on Thursday. Friant Water
Authority and Arvin-Edison Water Storage District (AEWSD) filed
a lawsuit against Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (ETGSA) in 2024. … Under the settlement, Friant
Water Authority has the right to collect 100% of all balances
owed to ETGSA for transitional pumping penalties. In turn,
ETGSA will pay any amounts it receives from landowners to
Friant, and the agency will also assign all its liens and
invoices on landowner properties for unpaid penalties to
Friant.
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.
City officials began weighing whether to allow data centers in
the City, with discussion focusing on the facilities’
significant demands on electricity and water infrastructure as
well as how they should be defined and regulated. The
Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee on Wednesday
received a staff presentation outlining what data centers are,
how they operate and the potential impacts they could have
if permitted locally. … Officials underscored
the scale of resources required to operate such facilities. A
10-megawatt data center can consume roughly the same amount of
electricity as 8,000 households and use water equivalent to
about 120 households annually, depending on cooling methods.
The desalination project at Marina State Beach was originally a
pilot study in 1996 – one that proved successful, though
more expensive than pumping groundwater at the time. So, it was
put on pause. In mid-March, after more than two decades and
increasing pressure on local aquifers, the Marina Coast Water
District (MCWD) began reviving that same desalination plant to
help reduce reliance on groundwater. Now in Phase 1, parts of
the plant infrastructure are being restored, and water quality
tests are underway. Once online, the plant will add 300
acre-feet annually – enough to supply around 900 homes.
Colorado’s long-standing balance between public recreation and
private property along rivers is now under renewed pressure.
But changing stream access law would impose significant fiscal
and legal costs for relatively limited new recreational
benefit. The state of Colorado itself may not be able to afford
a redrafting of river access laws, and the state’s property
owners certainly will not be able to afford it.
… Changing these laws would not only be a legal
headache. It would be an enormously expensive proposition for
landowners, county governments, and the state of Colorado, and
one with limited demonstrable value. –Written by Greg Walcher and Mike King, former executive
directors of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.
Both chambers of Congress introduced the Cooperative
Watershed Management Program Reauthorization Act of 2026
in March. The bipartisan bill—sponsored by Sen. Steve
Daines (R-Mont.), Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Rep. Juan
Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.)—would extend
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s (Reclamation) Cooperative
Watershed Management Program (CWMP) through 2031 and improve
funding accessibility to maximize watershed impacts. The CWMP,
part of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program, supports communities
in forming watershed groups to identify, plan, design, and
implement projects that address local water needs.
Advanced technology can help farmers get to the root of a
growing problem ¾ overwatering in an era of increasing drought
and water scarcity. A new UC Riverside system can map soil
moisture tree by tree, so growers water only where and when
it’s needed. This system, detailed in the journal Computer
and Electronics in Agriculture, was led by the research group
of Elia Scudiero. … The new system replaces limited
sensor data and guesswork with detailed maps. A robot moves
through an orchard measuring a property of the soil called
electrical conductivity. These readings, combined with data
from the fixed moisture sensors already in the ground, allow
researchers to build a statistical model that predicts water
content across the entire field.
Facing an abysmal snowpack and spring runoff, the state’s
largest Front Range water provider has enacted an agreement
that lets it take more water from the Western Slope for a
limited time. On March 18, Denver Water put the Shoshone call
reduction agreement into effect with water rights owner Xcel
Energy, which allows Denver Water to divert more water
from the headwaters of the Colorado River in an
attempt to alleviate shortages. The agreement reduces the call
at the Shoshone hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon by half,
from 1,408 cfs to 704 cfs.
Other Colorado River management and Western drought news:
