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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It has been more than two weeks since a major environmental
incident broke out in the Yuba County foothills. A penstock
pipe at the new Colgate Powerhouse suffered a catastrophic
failure on Feb. 13, flooding the facility located south of New
Bullards Bar Reservoir and forcing workers to evacuate. The
14-foot-diameter pipe carried water from the reservoir through
a tunnel into the powerhouse for hydroelectric power
generation. … As of March 3, the state Office of Spill
Prevention and Response reported nearly all large, oily debris
has been recovered from Englebright Lake, totaling about 1,440
cubic yards. But much work still remains.
Salmon in Battle Creek will soon benefit from a $1.85 million
habitat restoration project. According to the North State
Planning and Development Collective at Chico State, the project
is part of more than $59.6 million in grants awarded by the
California Wildlife Conservation Board to enhance wildlife
habitats. Chico State says that the restoration aims to reverse
habitat fragmentation and improve floodplain connectivity.
Crews will construct a new perennial side channel and remove
about 1,700 feet of abandoned levee to support salmon rearing
and spawning.
More than a decade after efforts began to protect land along
the lower Eel River, the Fortuna City Council unanimously voted
Monday to approve moving forward with the purchase of more than
200 acres of undeveloped property. …The council approved the
process for purchasing two plots of land: a 7.2-acre parcel at
1320 Riverwalk Drive and a 236-acre property along the Eel
River, which will be returned to the Wiyot Tribe. … [City
Manager Amy] Nilsen said the purchase has been in the works for
more than a decade and would secure both parcels from the
landowners, with funding from the California River Parkways
Grant Program and forthcoming grant funding from the California
Coastal Conservancy.
Responding to residents who waged a social media campaign
against the spraying of herbicides in local creeks, Orange
County officials announced they will halt the practice in
waterways near Doheny State Beach. Members of the community
group Creek Team OC are calling the decision a huge victory.
After three weeks of nonstop Instagram posts demanding the
county stop using plant-killing chemicals in San Juan and
Trabuco creeks, officials held a town hall in Dana Point on
Monday. … County officials have long used the chemicals
in waterways to clear out vegetation and maintain the
water-carrying capacity of flood control channels.
A Fresno County supervisor says he’ll introduce an ordinance to
halt a type of human composting he recently learned has been
used near the San Joaquin River, but advocates
say he’s jumping the gun unnecessarily. The soil made from
human remains in question was placed in a field at the Sumner
Peck Ranch, land on Friant Road owned by the San Joaquin River
Parkway and Conservation Trust less than 3 miles south of Lost
Lake. Supervisor Garry Bredefeld said he was recently made
aware of the composting, which includes a process that turns a
person’s body into soil. He said he was not familiar with the
process, but said using the compost on trust land was “stupid.”
Every day, hundreds of thousands of drivers travel Phoenix-area
freeways lined with desert trees, shrubs and cactuses. Few
likely consider what it takes to keep those landscapes alive,
or how much water it requires. A new partnership between
Arizona State University and the Arizona Department of
Transportation is taking a closer look. Led by Harry
Cooper, director of water conservation innovation for
the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative … the ADOT Urban
Freeway Landscape Water Use Efficiency Project aims to better
understand how much water is used to irrigate freeway
landscapes, and how to use less while keeping plants healthy.
Leaders of California, Arizona and Nevada are criticizing the
Trump administration’s proposals for water cutbacks along the
Colorado River, urging it to take a different approach and
avoid a court battle. The three downstream states said in
letters to the Interior Department this week that the agency’s
preliminary outline of five options for cuts ignores the
foundational “Law of the River” that has underpinned how seven
western states operate for more than a century. Federal
officials have so far failed to examine whether their options
comply with the 1922 Colorado River Compact, and this is “a
fundamental deficiency that must be corrected,” JB Hamby,
California’s lead negotiator, wrote in a letter to the Trump
administration.
The Ninth Circuit on Tuesday nixed the Environmental Protection
Agency’s recommendation to relax criteria for toxic cadmium
levels in fresh water, compelling the agency to revisit its
guidance under the Clean Water Act. A
three-judge panel — upholding a lower court order vacating the
guidance — found the agency violated the Endangered Species Act
by failing to consult with either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service before it
issued new recommendations in 2016. … The panel accepted
the center’s evidence that cadmium exposure at the agency’s
recommended levels are harmful to numerous marine
animals like salmon, sturgeon and sea turtles.
With little snow in the forecast, California’s meager
snowpack — at just 59% of normal for this time of year — could
be in dire trouble. And that’s a big deal for winter
sports enthusiasts who want to bag peaks or hit the slopes in
Lake Tahoe this winter. This winter hasn’t been a dry one, but
it has been a tale of warm storms bringing rain, a few big cold
winter systems dropping multiple feet of snow and then warm
temperatures prematurely melting some of the cold white layer
blanketing the Sierra Nevada. “The full three-month period,
winter 2026, was in fact record warm throughout a majority of
the Sierra Nevada,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with
UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
Arizona Water Company became the first water provider in more
than 20 years to receive a 100-year water supply designation in
Pinal County’s Active Management Area, officials announced
today. The company received the designation through Governor
Katie Hobbs’ new Alternative Designation of Assured Water
Supply (ADAWS) program. The ADAWS program aims to conserve
groundwater while enabling housing development. Arizona Water
Company’s designation will provide water supply
protections across its service area and support construction of
more than 80,000 new homes, according to the
governor’s office.
What has SGMA meant for water managers and users across the
state, and how exactly does it change the way groundwater is
managed? Tina Cannon Leahy, who helped draft SGMA as
the former principal consultant for the California Assembly’s
Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, will address these
questions at our Water
101 Workshop on March 26 and give a
behind-the-scenes look at how the consequential legislation was
passed. Besides SGMA, speakers will address efforts underway by
California Departent of Water
Resources to identify 9 million acre-feet of
additional water supply by 2040 as part of
the recently
announced 2028 California Water Plan update. Space
is running out, so register
now!
The head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is
stepping down to become chief executive of an electric company
in her native Puerto Rico. … [Janisse] Quiñones faced
criticism during the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades fire, when a key
reservoir was empty as firefighters battled the blaze. Some
said the lack of water in the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which had
been drained as part of repairs to its cover, hampered the
fight against the fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and
left 12 people dead. The DWP pushed back, saying the
repairs were necessary to protect public health and that even
if the reservoir had been full, there still would have been
water pressure issues.
… When the dams were built, Putah Creek’s runs of Chinook
salmon could no longer access the upper reaches of the creek,
cutting them off from their traditional spawning grounds. …
By the late ’80s and ’90s, so much water was being diverted
that the creek below the diversion dam on Lake Solano almost
totally dried up during drought years. In response, the
council, UC Davis and the city of Davis sued the Solano County
Water Agency and, nearly a decade later, the Putah Creek Accord
was signed. Among other things, the agreement regulated how
much water the SCWA needed to release to sustain fish
populations. … Year by year, the fish repopulated the
creek and grew in size.
A tiny mollusk, native to China and southeast Asia, made its
way to California in 2024. Its potentially disruptive effects
to water systems are now in Kern County. The golden
mussel threatens to disrupt California’s surface water
delivery system, from the Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta
all the way to farms in Kern County. This week the Water
Association of Kern County is holding its annual Water Summit
and that tiny mollusk is becoming a bigger focus at this year’s
event. The golden mollusk, by all accounts, is a prodigious
progenitor colonizing beneath the water’s surface and anchoring
itself to just about anything it can latch on to.
When people find out I’m a journalist who covers AI, they often
ask about the drastic energy consumption of AI data centers.
Are these centers using up all of our drinking water?
… Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently faced
criticism after calling some of these concerns, particularly
those around water, “totally fake.” … OpenAI said in a
January announcement that it is “prioritizing closed-loop or
low-water cooling systems” to minimize water use. This does
lend credence to Altman’s recent claims that OpenAI’s water use
is not as high as the 17 gallons per query estimate, but we
don’t yet have exact figures for OpenAI’s 2025 water use.
Eight years ago, a milestone law for climate adaptation took
effect to ensure California could maintain adequate water
supplies for generations to come. The Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, created a 25-year
roadmap by which local agencies would begin modeling, implement
sustainability plans and enforce compliance. While still early
in the overall timeline, 2026 marks a significant decision year
as the Salinas Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency brings
together feasibility studies, modeling and economic analysis to
formulate a set of projects and management actions to carry
forward.
A new online dashboard shows PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” are
turning up in some drinking water systems across New
Mexico. While PFAS has often been linked to military bases
and airports, officials say it’s also being detected in urban
and rural areas. … The dashboard, released in February,
is part of a federally funded program for small and
disadvantaged communities. Testing for 580 water systems has
been underway for about a year and a half and will continue
through this year. It includes not only cities, but also other
public water systems such as schools and senior centers on
their own wells.
It’s been three years since the Pajaro River levee crumbled and
the river flooded the town of Pajaro, displacing hundreds of
people and causing untold amounts of damage to homes and
businesses. Decades in the making, a project to bolster the
levee in Pajaro and Watsonville is at last expected to begin
construction in earnest this week, but first in Watsonville.
Pajaro residents will have to spend a few more winters with the
current levee, as the portion that breached and was repaired in
2023 may not begin construction until 2029 or 2030.
… The cost of the $599 million project is shared by the
state and federal government.
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors recently approved
setting aside $500,000 to support the Inland Water and Power
Commission’s efforts to secure water supply for the region in
the wake of pending Potter Valley Project
decommissioning, though one supervisor suggested that most of
the funds might better be spent on roads instead. “When I hear
from constituents across the county, I hear they would like to
see more road work done, so I would be inclined to reduce that
(amount for water to) $50,000, (especially since) we don’t even
know what it is for at this point,” said Fourth District
Supervisor Ted Williams.
With desert cities like Phoenix and Tucson bracing for their
allotments of Colorado River water to be slashed dramatically,
San Diego County’s water agency could for the first time sell
some of its water to other states by drawing on its ample
supplies from the nation’s largest desalination plant.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s board
unanimously approved an initial agreement last week to consider
selling some of its water to Arizona and Nevada, where
cities that depend on the over-tapped Colorado River are
expected to face substantial cuts in water supplies. The
approach would not involve sending desalinated water to other
states, but rather selling some of San Diego County’s allotment
of Colorado River water, which in turn would generate funds to
increase output at the Carlsbad desalination plant.
