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.
… Thomas Gibson, of West Sacramento, has been appointed
Director at the California Department of Water Resources.
Gibson has been Chief Deputy Director at the California
Department of Water Resources since 2024, where he was Chief
Counsel from 2021 to 2024. He held multiple positions at the
California Natural Resources Agency from 2014 to 2020,
including Deputy Secretary and Special Counsel for Water,
Undersecretary, and General Counsel. Gibson held multiple
positions at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
from 2007 to 2014, including General Counsel and Assistant
Chief Counsel. He held several roles at Best Best &
Krieger LLP from 2002 to 2008, including Partner and
Associate.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado River has been operated
under a set of guidelines negotiated between the seven states
that depend on the river. Those guidelines expire this year,
and after five years of grinding negotiations over a new
agreement, the upstream states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and
New Mexico remain deadlocked against the downstream states of
California, Arizona and Nevada. … That has set up a showdown
over a legal time bomb that’s been ticking away at the
heart of the Colorado River Compact since the river’s
guiding document was signed more than 100 years ago. The Lower
Basin states believe the Compact promised them a minimum
delivery of water sent down the river from the Upper Basin. The
Upper Basin states believe the Compact promised them a fixed
amount of water that they could rely on to meet future growth.
As the river’s flows have dwindled, those two supposed
guarantees are proving to be irreconcilable.
For the next five years, the Environmental Protection Agency
has indicated it will not require public water utilities to
test for microplastics or pharmaceuticals in drinking water,
according to a proposed rule published in the Federal Register.
On Friday, the EPA submitted a list of chemicals it plans to
test for under the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, a
mandatory testing program used to collect information about
concerning chemicals in drinking water that could be harming
human health. It did not include microplastics or
pharmaceuticals. The omissions come after
announcements by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this year
that his agency was designating microplastics and
pharmaceuticals priority contaminants for testing.
The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on a legal battle over
one of Colorado’s critical water sources as a
neighboring state seeks to use more water from the South Platte
River. The nation’s highest court on Monday announced it would
hear the case, in which Nebraska officials claim Colorado water
administrators are violating a century-old water
compact by failing to send enough of the river’s water
across the border. They also say Colorado officials are
interfering in the neighboring state’s efforts to build a canal
that would allow it to take more of the river’s water. Colorado
Attorney General Phil Weiser on Monday denied Nebraska
officials’ allegations that the Centennial State was violating
the 1923 South Platte River Compact.
When four dams were torn down along the
California-Oregon border two years ago, scientists were stunned
by the large numbers of salmon that moved so quickly
up the newly unobstructed Klamath River. This month brought
another striking development. A Chinook salmon was detected
going up the river in Oregon, past the former dam sites, and it
was not part of the fall run of fish that’s already
been racing up the Klamath in late summer and in early fall.
It was a much rarer fish: a spring-run salmon,
which migrates earlier in the year and has long struggled to
survive on the West Coast. … The success of the
run, on top of the fall run, stands to increase the prevalence,
diversity and resilience of struggling West Coast salmon.
A Kern County conservation district has announced it is
opposing the potential data center slated to be built in the
Ridgecrest and Inyokern area, citing low water levels. The
Eastern Kern County Resource Conservation District submitted a
letter of opposition to the California Energy Commission saying
the project would create “significant environmental impacts”
and would “undermine decades of local and state efforts to
achieve groundwater sustainability” in the area if built.
… If approved, the project — formally named the Inyokern
RB Data Center — would pull water from the Indian Wells
Valley Groundwater Basin to support its cooling
towers.
Northwest Colorado is no stranger to dry years, but 2026 is
shaping up to be one for the books. With a record-low snowpack,
rising temperatures and extremely limited runoff, the State of
Colorado, as of June 4, has declared a statewide drought
emergency, leaving ranchers across the Yampa-White-Green River
basin facing difficult decisions that affect both their
livelihoods and their way of life. … This year, the impacts
are already being felt across pastures, hay fields and water
systems. Many ranchers are reporting lower forage production,
dry stock ponds and reduced irrigation supplies. As a result,
some have made the tough choice to reduce herd sizes earlier
than planned, while others are hauling water long distances
just to meet basic livestock needs.
… Aspen Snowmass has become the first resort in Colorado to
adopt Snow Secure, a Finnish snow storage system designed to
preserve snow through the summer months. …Colorado ski
areas typically use about 3,582 acre-feet of water, or
1.2 billion gallons, of water in snowmaking, according
to Colorado Division of Water Resources director Jason Ullmann,
who cited stats based on data collected from 2001 to 2020.
Aspen’s average use over that same period is about 300
acre-feet per year. Shoring up early season water supplies
by investing in snow storage could help keep ski resorts out of
the intensifying battles for water as climate change diminishes
available supply.
… Recent reporting by the Lost Coast Outpost on public
records from Elsinore Valley provided to the Friends of the Eel
River has suggested that a series of correspondences between
EVMWD director Darcy Burke and its director Greg Thomas may
have employed an AI tool like ChatGPT to help hatch a plan to
take possession of the Potter Valley Project’s assets and run
them at a profit. “It’s a good characterization because those
memos are written with such authoritative bravado,” Huffman
said. “And yet, they’re so full of holes and errors.” Huffman
also said that his office had filed a similar request for
public documents regarding the Potter Valley Project but was
never furnished with those documents, saying “it’s amateur
hour” out at the EVMWD.
New permanent fences could soon be placed across a long-planned
levee trail in Sacramento after the permit applications of two
property owners were approved Friday by state board. Some local
residents voiced opposition at the meeting of the California
Central Valley Flood Protection Board, saying cross-levee
fences conflict with the city’s vision for a mixed-use trail
along the levee. Nevertheless, the board adopted the staff
recommendation to approve construction on the basis that it
will not hinder flood control. “The standard for us and
the only standard for us is the effect on the flood performance
of the levee,” said board secretary Brian Johnson after the
meeting. Others say the decision interferes with the planned
Sacramento River Parkway.
California State Parks is excited to announce the release of
“(Re)Turning to the River,” a new podcast exploring powerful
connections between people and water within the San Joaquin
Watershed from its Sierra Nevada headwaters out to San
Francisco Bay. The State Parks’ Watershed Interpretive
Program developed the eight-episode podcast series in
collaboration with American Conservation Experience interns
Daniela Morales of Clovis and Jesus Valdez and Amanda Kaminsky
of Merced. The interns traveled throughout the watershed,
interviewing scientists, farmers, tribal leaders, community
advocates, and artists – including Fresno’s Poet Laureate,
Aideed Medina – to better understand how water connects
landscapes, cultures and communities across the San Joaquin
region.
A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American
communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack
running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught
up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.
The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history —
the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the
Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe —
was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being
codified by Congress. “We have significant unresolved concerns
with the legislation that may affect each of our states’ rights
to and interests in Colorado River water,” negotiators for
Utah and Wyoming wrote in March to the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs in a previously unreported letter.
… SGMA is California’s first ever attempt to regulate
groundwater use to protect the state’s aquifers. The San
Joaquin Valley — where almost the entire region is considered
“critically” overpumped — is ground zero for how SGMA
is playing out. Nearly a million acres, or one fifth
of the San Joaquin Valley’s irrigated land may have to be idled
to achieve SGMA’s goals, according to research by the Public
Policy Institute of California. But that economic hit will not
be delivered equally. SGMA’s goal is to stop damage caused by
excessive pumping — vast areas of subsidence, dried up domestic
wells and worsening water quality — by 2040. But the lawdoes
not distinguish between smaller, groundwater-dependent farmers
… and gigantic corporate-owned farms with seemingly unlimited
resources.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed
Saturday that golden mussels have been found in and around the
Port of West Sacramento, the northernmost detection of the
invasive species to date. … Golden mussels attach to
nearly all underwater surfaces, including boats, ropes and
buoys. They can alter the marine food web and diminish water
quality by clogging pipes and drains. The mussel
population in the Port of West Sacramento is believed to have
stemmed from a source population within the vicinity, according
to a press release from the Department of Fish and
Wildlife.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee proposed
bipartisan legislation Friday that would authorize
infrastructure and studies addressing flood risk and
other water challenges, but the package is slimmer on
new projects than past versions. The Water Resources
Development Act of 2026 includes 10 project authorizations and
131 new studies to be conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Four of the projects in the bill are new, while the other six
are alterations of projects previously approved by Congress.
The bill would also direct the agency to prioritize various
issues and studies that have been sidelined by the Trump
administration, with provisionsseeking to promote nature-based and nonstructural flood
solutions.
… A few years ago there was clamor from environmental
advocates urging California officials to save it [the Salton
Sea]. Like the Great Salt Lake and its Great Basin sister
lakes, it had become an important ecosystem supporting birds
traveling across the Pacific Flyway. Its drying playa had also
created a major public health hazard, with studies showing dust
was taking a toll on the lungs of children and low-income
communities living nearby. … [F]or the first time
in a long time, there are reasons to feel hopeful about the
Salton Sea. State officials began work last year on a
2,000-acre wetland pond that will both provide bird habitat and
keep the dust down. A year and a half ago, the California
Legislature created the Salton Sea Conservancy to find and fund
projects preserving the lake. The board held its first meeting
last month.
Every morning Marisol Winfrey Herrera’s
three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Jo reminds her to turn off
the tap while washing her hands and brushing her teeth.
… It is what prompted Herrera to join No Desert Data
Center, a residents’ group that opposes two large data centres
coming up on either side of Tucson – the $3.6bn project on the
city’s southeast edge and a $5bn project on its northwest side
in the town of Marana, together known as Project Blue. The
group believes these would consume more water and power
than the city set in the Sonoran Desert can afford.
… “Water was a unifying theme in our campaign. The
Colorado River cuts are looming, and this project would take
water away,” Herrera told Al Jazeera.
The Golden State Salmon Association rang the alarm that the
Bureau of Reclamation intends to manage Shasta Dam this fall in
a way that could once again cook the Sacramento River’s next
generation of Chinook. The dispute centers on cold
water. Salmon eggs need it to survive the fall
spawning season, and a federal biological opinion requires the
Bureau to hold enough behind Shasta Dam to keep temperatures
safe. The State Water Resources Control Board rejected the
Bureau’s management plan on June 10, ruling it would violate
both that opinion and state temperature law. According to
the association, the Bureau has signaled it will proceed
anyway, draining extra water to boost summer deliveries to
Central Valley farms.
Subpar snowfall has turned Utah into a minefield for wildfires
— and recent weather conditions are fanning the flames. As of
June 25, over 140,000 acres had already burned in 354 fires
across the Beehive State. … Areas of Utah that are
3,500 feet and higher — that’s most of the state — could be set
up for a particularly big fire season because of the earlier
snow melt and heavier fuels in forested areas. … This
year is also an El Nino year, which means warmer waters cause
the Pacific jet stream winds to move south — leading to weather
that tends to be warmer and drier in the northern U.S. and
wetter in the southeast. … [I]t can occasionally bring
lots of moisture to the state and help with Utah’s dire
snowpack conditions come winter time.
Water resiliency issues have dominated political discourse in
Cloverdale, where concerns about drought, water rights
and the future of the Russian River loom large,
regularly shaping City Council discussions and election
campaigns. Now, the city is putting another voice at the table,
authorizing Council member Andrés Marquez to represent
Cloverdale in meetings related to a new proposed entity, the
Alexander Valley Water District, as regional conversations over
the area’s water future move forward. … [T]he
authorization marks a notable shift, and it came just two weeks
after a tense exchange on the dais between Marquez and
Vice Mayor Todd Lands over Lands’ role representing the
city on matters involving the fate of two PG&E
dams on the Eel River and related water
diversions into the Russian River. The Cloverdale council
has lodged its opposition to PG&E’s plans to remove those
dams.
