A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
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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.
Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir and a vital source of
water for more than 25 million people across the Southwest, has
dwindled to its lowest levels ever as the
region struggles through a punishing drought. The
record, first broken on Thursday night and then again on the
following days as the water level continued to fall,
is the latest warning of the Colorado River’s dire condition.
The river system, a lifeblood for much of the Western United
States, is threatened by rising temperatures and decades of
overuse. The seven states whose cities and farmers rely on it
are locked in tense negotiations over how to divvy up what
little water remains. Lake Mead’s milestone is a reminder that
the clock is ticking.
A strengthening El Niño could bring the highest sea levels ever
recorded to the California coast this year, raising the
risk of widespread and damaging flooding. It’s the
latest effect forecast for what’s expected to be an
historically strong event, one forecasters warn could also lash
Southern California with powerful rain and broil both land and
sea with punishing heat waves. … Sea level rise is
expected to increase in all sorts of areas, from the San
Francisco Bay to San Diego, Merrifield said, and impact
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … The
strength of this El Niño “is going to significantly shift the
odds in favor of a particularly wet winter, especially in
Southern California. But for an event this big, probably
Northern California as well,” [UC climate scientist Daniel]
Swain said.
A bitter legal battle has emerged over water availability in
Nevada’s technology epicenter, raising questions about whether
companies critical to diversifying the state economy have
enough water to survive into the future.For nearly two years,
the developer of the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) — a
sprawling complex east of Reno that houses Tesla’s
“Gigafactory” and Switch data centers — has traded legal barbs
with the quasi-governmental entity that provides water to
companies. It has included a lawsuit, countersuit and
myriad subpoenas, with a trial set for next
spring. The most notable parts of the case deal
with whether the developer of TRIC has been able to
deliver the amount of water it promised, and whether it’s
responsible to make up for alleged shortfalls.
As weather patterns change and the length of droughts
increase due to climate change, the county is
interested in pursuing desalination — a drinking water
source that doesn’t rely on rainfall. … The San
Luis Obispo County Water Resources Advisory Committee received
a presentation on Wednesday about a draft of the
county’s $1.2 million feasibility study that
evaluated where a desalination facility could be located, how
much it would cost and what communities could use the water.
Once the final report is ready in September, the county and
other local water providers can decide if they want to further
evaluate or even build a facility in one of the five areas
identified by the study.
A California appellate court this week ruled Sonoma County
failed to comply with the state’s bedrock environmental
law when officials in 2023 amended the local ordinance
regulating approval of new well permits outside city limits.
The ruling means the county will likely have to devote
closer study to the impact of its amended ordinance on
imperiled species like salmon and steelhead trout in the
Russian River watershed. … Russian Riverkeeper
and Coastkeeper Alliance also argued the county had violated
the common law public trust doctrine, which requires local
governments to protect certain waterways for public uses,
including commerce, recreation, navigation and species habitat.
The appellate court’s three-justice panel reversed the lower
court’s decision on those grounds.
The waters of Dutch Charlie Creek flow in northern Mendocino
County, west of Laytonville into the South Fork of the Eel
River. The peaceful area is now the subject of contention.
Friends of Dutch Charlie Creek has filed a lawsuit
challenging CAL FIRE’s approval of two timber harvest plans in
the Dutch Charlie Creek watershed, alleging that logging
authorized under the plans could damage habitat used by
state-listed endangered coho salmon. The organization is asking
the court to halt operations under the “Hot Tuna” and “Lincoln
Logs” timber harvest plans while the case is
considered. According to Friends of Dutch Charlie Creek,
surveys cited by the organization show that Dutch Charlie Creek
has the highest coho redd—or salmon nest—density among
tributaries to the South Fork Eel River.
A growing coalition of civic groups is lobbying San Diego to
accelerate efforts to rebuild Lake Hodges Dam and to raise the
dam’s existing water level — but city officials are limited by
state regulations and cost concerns. The lobbying effort comes
as city officials finalize two complex studies: one analyzing
whether a new dam should be built, another analyzing how to
handle the existing 108-year-old dam until
there’s a long-term answer. The civic groups say a new dam is
crucial to keeping downstream communities like Rancho
Santa Fe safe from flooding, securing a reliable local water
supply, supporting existing wildlife and limiting risks to
homes in the wildfire-prone area. The groups, which
include the Rancho Bernardo Community Council and the Friends
of Lake Hodges, also want the water level raised from 280 feet
to 295 feet during the roughly 10 years it will take to build a
new dam.
… Imperial County is trying to fast track industrial projects
on the southern end of the Salton Sea through what’s called the
Lithium Valley Specific Plan. The concerns are as sprawling as
the scope of the project. A coalition including Los Amigos de
la Comunidad, Audubon and Lideres Campesinas en California
submitted a letter claiming the report does not sufficiently
account for public health impacts from air pollution stemming
from the receding Salton Sea which the project would worsen,
and that its assessment of water and energy use is vague and
unsupported. Among other concerns are that the document fails
to account for cumulative impacts of all the potential
projects, to distinguish between exposed playa and wetland
habitats and to analyze how the effects of climate change and
rising temperatures will be worsened by the plan.
The Monterey Park Tract has two main streets and fewer than 200
residents, almost exclusively Black and Latino. Like many areas
of rural Stanislaus County, it relies on
septic systems and has no gutters or sidewalks. … When
county leaders applied for a grant in the early 1980s to help
Monterey Tract residents get access to clean water, they did
not do enough to prevent long-term contamination.
… Decades later, in 2011, both wells drilled to address
previous contamination of nitrate and bacterial coliform became
tainted with nitrate and arsenic. … In response,
residents were connected to the city of Ceres municipal water
system about five miles north in 2015. [T]he pipes installed to
run the water to the community are defective and could not
handle the chlorinated water. … Despite issues with
Ceres’ water, Monterey Tract residents pay, on average, 50%
more than what Ceres residents pay to access the city’s
water.
In one of the driest years in Colorado’s recorded history,
water use and conservation are becoming more important topics
than ever. As such, many industries, individuals and
organizations are looking for ways to conserve as much water as
possible. One method that’s been used for thousands of years,
from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to helping feed American
soldiers in the harsh climates of World War II’s Pacific
Theatre, has been gaining renewed interest as of late:
hydroponics. … [T]hese systems can operate year-round
since they are built within greenhouses, allowing for farms to
produce scalable amounts of produce consistently without having
to break for seasons or worry about degrading soil health. Both
qualities which prove especially useful in Eagle County due to
our short growing season and unpredictable, high elevation
climate.
Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest in Colorado and an
emergency savings bank for Lake Powell, has been on a
crash course with critically low water levels this summer, the
kind that halt power production and keep dam managers up at
night. Officials have stepped in to cut dam releases and
restrict water use, but they’re still facing grim
possibilities if more rain doesn’t start falling soon.
The expansive federal reservoir stretches for nearly 30 miles
between the city of Gunnison and Black Canyon of the Gunnison
National Park. But it’s not just a scenic lake — it’s part of
the plumbing of the West. Water experts say Blue Mesa
serves as a proxy for Colorado’s water conditions and
conditions in Lake Powell, an immense reservoir on the
Utah-Arizona border. This year, it’s a clear demonstration of
the record dry conditions straining water and renewable
power supplies across the West.
… Increased temperatures earlier in the year followed by
other weather-related phenomena are causing much of the western
United States to experience what scientists are calling
“snow-eater” heat waves. A new study, published Wednesday in
the journal Science Advances, analyzes the weather events using
a method developed to identify the heat waves. Snow-eater heat
waves are pretty much like they sound — abrupt snowmelt
triggered by rain-on-snow and followed by several days of
unseasonably high temperatures. … The authors
noted that in the spring and early summer in the West, heat
waves occur regularly. But they have nearly doubled in
frequency and intensity since the mid-1990’s. And with
those extreme temperatures comes increased snowmelt,
which in turn can cause severe floods.
Federal officials said Thursday they will not release cool
water this year from one of the Colorado River’s major
reservoirs, which would have protected a threatened native
fish downstream but put more strain on already struggling
hydropower production. In an email obtained by The Associated
Press, the Bureau of Reclamation told various groups that water
from Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona would
not be released “due to significant hydropower generation
concerns under already strained system conditions.” As the
Colorado River and its once massive reservoirs shrink from
overuse and climate change, officials were faced with a
decision that pits conservation of the humpback chub — a
threatened fish native to the river — against ratepayer costs
for electricity.
A lawsuit brought by two out-of-state investment firms could
make it harder for Arizona to protect vulnerable groundwater
basins, threatening one of the state’s few tools for
safeguarding rural water supplies. The companies, tied
to real estate developers in Utah and Nevada, sued after the
Arizona Department of Water Resources designated northern
Mohave County’s Hualapai groundwater basin an Irrigation
Non-Expansion Area in 2022. Under the designation, no
new farmland can be irrigated, though existing farms can keep
pumping. The investors argue ADWR should have used the
state’s standard rulemaking process in creating the INA. A
Maricopa County Superior Court judge agreed with the investors
in January, rejecting ADWR’s position that state law allows it
to use a separate procedure. The agency has appealed.
The looming El Niño could bring one of the wettest winters on
record to California, according to renowned climatologist
Daniel Swain. In a social media post shared Thursday,
Swain, a climate scientist with the California Institute for
Water Resources, shared an update from the European Centre for
Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the gold standard for weather
forecasting, which predicts a “genuinely extraordinary to
extreme” El Niño that could impact California for months. Swain
says that the ECMWF prediction indicates 70% to 100% odds of
above-average winter precipitation in the Golden State, and 70%
to 100% odds of the coming winter, from December to
February, being among the top 20% of wettest California winters
ever recorded.
A major restoration effort on the Eel River estuary near
Ferndale drew attention today as Rep. Jared Huffman hosted a
press tour of the Russ Creek and Centerville Slough Restoration
Project, a large-scale environmental and climate-resilience
undertaking spanning more than 1,400 acres west of Ferndale.
… Huffman said the work is also aimed at protecting
ranch land threatened by sea level rise and saltwater
intrusion. … The project is led by the Humboldt County
Resource Conservation District and the Wildlands Conservancy.
Key elements include reconnecting tidal flows by
re-establishing the Centerville Slough tidal network and
lowering levees to bring full tidal cycles back to hundreds of
acres of marshes.
A 16-year effort to hold a McKinleyville-area property owner
accountable for polluting Little River hit a major turning
point today [Aug. 6] after the North Coast Regional Water
Quality Control Board unanimously voted to refer the case to
the state Attorney General’s Office for review. Now the case
will play out in the courts. Since December 2010, state
agencies and environmental advocacy groups have sounded the
alarm over allegations of unpermitted solid waste disposal and
unauthorized grading at the 226-acre property, which is just
upstream from Moonstone Beach. Water board staff assert that
“poorly managed livestock grazing” and abandoned cow and horse
carcasses have contaminated Little River with bacteria,
specifically E. coli and fecal coliform, putting beachgoers and
threatened salmonid species at risk.
For months, the Trump administration has sought to open the
California coast to a radically industrialized future:
large-scale desalination plants, floating
nuclear reactors, more rocket launches and expanded offshore
oil drilling along the state’s most iconic beaches. Holding the
line against all this is a little-known but longstanding
federal law, the Coastal Zone Management Act, which grants
coastal states like California the right to review and object
to any project in federal waters that clashes with state
policy. Now, citing California’s “environmental extremism,”
Trump officials are attempting to decertify the state’s power
under this law. Framed as a performance review of the
state’s coastal management practices, this challenge begins in
earnest Monday during a public hearing in Santa Monica.
The California Water Plan is the state’s long-range strategic
roadmap for managing water resources. Updated every five years,
it helps guide decisions by state, regional, and local water
managers. Development is now underway for California Water Plan
(CWP) 2028, the first under a new planning approach established
by Senate Bill 72 (Chapter 210, Statutes of 2025). Initial
public engagement efforts and early technical work are laying
the foundation for a more actionable CWP that will help guide
water decisions for years to come. During the first
meetings of the CWP Advisory Committee, Tribal Advisory
Committee, State Agency Team, and Technical Working Group,
participants shared their insights and concerns. DWR will use
this information to develop the most significant modernization
of the CWP in decades.
Over the past week, a growing number of municipalities across
the United States have reported that their water systems were
hacked. The Times has found that the attacks were most likely
perpetrated by Iran. Today, Dustin Volz, a cybersecurity and
intelligence correspondent for The New York Times, explains how
the hacking exposes yearslong failed efforts to shore up
vulnerabilities in U.S. infrastructure, and how Iran may be
seeking a new kind of leverage that could extend the war’s
reach to within U.S. borders and affect something as elemental
as the water we drink.
