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.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is putting his stamp on the powerful agency
overseeing California’s biggest water fights — and racing to
get his pet projects across the finish line before his term
ends. Jared Blumenfeld, Newsom’s former CalEPA
secretary, took his seat for the first time Tuesday on
the five-member State Water Resources Control Board days after
Newsom appointed him to replace Laurel Firestone. …
Blumenfeld’s arrival gives Newsom a deeply experienced ally on
the board right as the agency is preparing to make final
decisions on Newsom’s water priorities. These include a
long-delayed master plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Bay Delta, as well as water right permits for
the Sites Reservoir and the Delta
Conveyance Project, the controversial 45-mile long
tunnel to divert more water from Northern to Southern
California.
When the Colorado River first filled the country’s largest
reservoirs decades ago, it ushered in a century of optimism in
the West. We planned for abundance. Today, more than 40 million
people across seven states, 30 Tribal Nations and two countries
rely on this river. … We cannot accept a new set
of management rules that deepen hardship for the Upper
Basin while allowing unsustainable water use to continue
downstream. Water conservation cannot decimate Upper Basin
economies to bolster Lower Basin ones. When we use less water,
that water flows downstream to be used elsewhere. Colorado and
the other upper division states have lived on the front lines
of climate change for 25 years; it’s time for the lower
division states to do the same. –Written by Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner on the
Upper Colorado River Commission.
… The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced
last week that golden mussels were discovered in the Sacramento
River Deep Water Ship Channel and Washington Lake in West
Sacramento. … Because of the potential that golden
mussels clog up water infrastructure and affect
wildlife, Sacramento County declared a local emergency
last month, joining San Joaquin and Kern counties. In a news
release announcing the move, officials said it would allow the
county to work more closely with regional, state and federal
partners to confront the threat. Yolo County spokesperson Will
Arnold said the county is considering that option and will be
working with West Sacramento and the port to coordinate next
steps.
Despite firm opposition from the Havasupai Tribe, Arizona
regulators on July 6 permitted a higher level of
arsenic in groundwater under a uranium mine near the
tribe’s place of emergence. Before the approval, two
groundwater scientists submitted comments urging the state
Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to require the owner
of the Pinyon Plain uranium mine to give more proof that the
higher levels were naturally occurring and not due to mining
discharge or activities. Energy Fuels Resources, the mine
owner, says its investigation was thorough and that operators
aren’t at fault. It also disputed those scientists’
findings.
Mark your calendars! Registration will be opening soon for two
exciting Water Education Foundation events this fall. First,
join us Oct. 29 for the Water
Summit, the Water Education Foundation’s premier
event of the year, bringing together leading policymakers,
experts and stakeholders to discuss the most pressing water
issues facing California and the West. Then, we’re excited
to introduce our first-ever Kern River Tour Nov.
5-6, a unique opportunity to explore one of
California’s most important and complex river
systems. Among the planned stops are both upper forks of
the Kern River, Lake Isabella, lower Kern River canyon, the
Friant-Kern Canal, irrigated agriculture in the valley, the
Kern Water Bank and more. It will not be an annual tour, so
don’t miss this opportunity! Registration and
additional details for both events will be available
soon. Stay tuned!
Clark County commissioners heard from residents Tuesday calling
for a pause ondata center development in Southern
Nevada, as concerns grow over water use, energy
consumption and land use. Commissioners discussed the issue
during the meeting but did not articulate a clear path forward
for next steps. … The pause gives time for officials to
evaluate the water, energy and land use impacts of data
centers. … According to the Desert Research Institute,
data centers used 22% of Nevada’s electricity generation in
2024, a figure that could top 35% by 2030. Meanwhile, 12 of
Nevada’s more than 60 data centers are projected to use
11.9 billion liters of water per year by 2033.
A research project involving Arizona’s three public
universities aims to get a better sense of how much
water is in Arizona’s groundwater basins — and figure
out how to get more water into aquifers, rather than being lost
to evaporation. The Arizona Tri-University Recharge and Water
Reliability Project finds, among other things, that more than
95% of the precipitation that falls around the state is lost to
evapotranspiration. In the Phoenix Active Management Area
groundwater basin, the amount of evapotranspiration is about
equal to the amount of precipitation. … [T]he project’s
purpose is to help the Arizona Department of Water Resources
identify ways to capture water that’s currently being lost and
get it underground as recharge.
Hotter, drier weather threatens to double water bills by
mid-century in some cities, according to a
Stanford-led study. The research, published July 8
in Nature Sustainability, is the first to comprehensively
model how climate change, infrastructure investment, and
household water demand can combine to compound an already
growing affordability crisis. … To understand how
predicted changes in temperature and rainfall over the next two
decades are likely to affect local water supplies and costs,
the research team analyzed data from Santa Cruz, California.
… Using a modeling framework developed with data from Santa
Cruz’s water department, the researchers linked plausible
future climate scenarios with utility adaptation decisions. …
Among the results: measures taken to adapt to less water
availability could lead to a near doubling of median water
bills in Santa Cruz by mid-century.
An effort to find common ground in the waters of the Kern River
ran into a bar late last month at the Kern County Water Agency
meeting, specifically Board President Marty Milobar. Members of
Bring Back the Kern have been visiting the boards of entities
with rights to the Kern River to applaud the currently flowing
river through town, note the resurgence of wildlife and remind
board members how the water brings families to its banks.
… “Several of our member units (agricultural water
districts) have Kern River water rights that go back to 1880s,”
Board President Milobar said. … “Those rights support
hundreds, or thousands of families that work in ag. To take
that water away from farms so you can see a toad or something
is pretty tough on these Kern River rights districts.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is now taking public
comment on the plan to decommission the Potter Valley
Hydroelectric Project. The Potter Valley Project, which
PG&E has owned since 1930, consists of the Scott Dam and
the Cape Horn Dam, as well as the Potter Valley powerhouse, the
80,000-acre-foot Lake Pillsbury in Lake County, the Van Arsdale
Reservoir, a fish passage structure and salmon and steelhead
counting station at the Cape Horn Dam, and and 5,600 acres of
land. On May 22, the agency, or FERC, issued a notice of
scoping meetings and request for comments on Pacific Gas and
Electric Co.’s proposed application to surrender, decommission
and non-project use of project lands for the Potter Valley
Hydroelectric Project, which is located on the Eel
River and East Fork of the Russian River in Lake and
Mendocino counties, California.
… At low water levels, more air from the reservoir’s [Lake
Powell] surface can be mixed into the water, ideal conditions
for bubbles to implode with destructive force as the water
travels through tubes and turbines. And this year, the
[Colorado River] reservoir’s water level is extremely low.
Federal reports show that the dam might have to stop
hydropower generation before the end of the year to avoid
catastrophic damage caused, in part, by the
small-but-mighty bubbles. The Bureau of
Reclamation has spent millions of dollars adding protective
layers to some of the dam’s water release valves. State and
federal officials are debating how to manage around the dam’s
limitations as part of high-stakes negotiations this
year.
A state lawmaker on Wednesday paused her bill extending the
state Department of Water Resources’ water rights permit after
it got caught up in a controversy over a proposed
tunnel diverting water from Northern California to
Southern California. Assemblymember Lisa Calderon withdrew her
bill, AB 2215, from its scheduled hearing in the Senate Natural
Resources and Water Committee, according to her chief of staff
Mike Dayton. He said the committee’s proposed changes to the
bill “weren’t consistent with our intentions.” Calderon’s bill
would have given the Department of Water Resources
until 2046 to build more infrastructure to use more of its
State Water Project water rights. The State Water
Project is the massive system of pumps and aqueducts that
transports water around the state to 27 million people.
Phoenix-area cities say they want answers about plans for a
pool of water that’s stored underground as a backup during dry
times on the Colorado River. City leaders say the Arizona Water
Banking Authority is keeping them in the dark about how they
might share that water, making it hard for cities to plan for a
dryer future. The Water Bank is holding a special meeting
Tuesday morning to address some of those questions. The Water
Bank was created in 1996 to store excess Colorado River water
underground. … Now, the Colorado River is dry enough to cause
shortages, and cities say the Water Bank isn’t telling them how
much water they can expect to get back.
California is investing $7.5 million to slow the spread of
invasive golden mussels, including $6 million in one-time
funding and $1.5 million in ongoing annual support to
protect the state’s waterways and water
infrastructure. … Its tendency to rapidly
reproduce, forming dense colonies on underwater surfaces, can
clog pipes, pumps and critical water infrastructure while
disrupting local ecosystems. Its spread has raised
resulting alarm across California: over the past two months,
the Sacramento, Kern and San Joaquin counties have declared
local emergencies in response to the invasive species threat.
The money will establish five Delta-based
decontamination sites to inspect boats and equipment for
invasive mussels and remove them before they spread to
other waterways.
Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities isn’t accepting industrial
wastewater associated with data center systems until further
notice after a contractor for Meta Platforms
contaminated the city’s wastewater system, prompting
months of cleanup. The announcement was made by the
Board of Public Utilities (BOPU) on Thursday in conjunction
with naming the Meta company as the source of the initial
contamination. It also comes more than four months after the
Meta company — which is building a huge $800 million data
center in south Cheyenne — disrupted the city’s reclaimed
wastewater system with a rare bacterial contaminant. Goat
Systems LLC was in “significant noncompliance” with the city’s
industrial pretreatment regulations after discharging
wastewater contaminated with Cupriavidus gilardii.
Lookout Slough, a 3,400-acre wetland on the edge of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in central California, is ringed
with aquatic plants, pulsing with tides from San Francisco Bay,
and home to dozens of species of fish, amphibians, reptiles and
birds. Until two years ago, it was parched former farmland, cut
off from the Sacramento River’s floodplain by a 26-foot-tall
levee. This transformation, the delta’s largest tidal
restoration project, was prompted by the decline of the Delta
smelt, a fish barely as long as an index finger. Adapted to the
delta’s brackish tides over thousands of years, the smelt is
considered a strong indicator of ecological
health. … The question now is whether
restoring wetlands like Lookout Slough can revive the Delta
smelt.
… California is the top milk producer in the U.S., with more
than 1.7 million cows generating over $8 billion worth of milk,
according to the latest state tally, in 2024. But residents in
Merced County say that windfall comes at a cost that’s
difficult to quantify. Families say dairies are not required to
strictly monitor the air nearby. Instead, air quality concerns
are handled based on complaints to local agencies and
self-monitoring practices. Documentation of negative impacts to
water quality depends on when inspections occur and how dairies
report waste discharges, so incremental impacts to drinking
water remain opaque, residents complain. … Runoff from
large-scale farms “can impair both surface and ground water
beneficial uses” by producing “significant amounts of coliform,
ammonia, nitrate and total dissolved solids contamination,” the
Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board wrote in a
2019 water quality control plan.
A new UC Riverside study that examined air quality and
respiratory health in the Salton Sea shows dust storms are
creating environmental harms and inequality for families. The
Salton Sea, California’s largest inland lake, has been
shrinking as temperatures rise and water decreases. Dust from
the exposed lake bed blows inside the homes of people near the
Coachella and Imperial Valleys. UCR researchers placed air
quality monitors inside the homes of 15 mothers, who documented
their experiences through personal narratives.
… Communities around the Salton Sea have high rates of
childhood asthma that are higher than the California average.
Experts also say contaminants like pesticides and heavy metals
may be concentrated in the dust.
Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District (“CAIDD”) and
Cadiz, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDZI, CDZIP) today announced execution of
a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) for the purchase and sale
of up to 10,000 acre-feet per year (“AFY”) of new water supply
from Cadiz’s Mojave Groundwater Bank in San Bernardino County,
California. … Under the proposed terms, CAIDD would
secure rights to purchase up to 10,000 AFY of conserved
groundwater for an initial 50-year term with renewal
opportunities. Initial pricing would include a volumetric
charge of $850 per AFY (2025 dollars) plus operations,
maintenance, and pro-rated power costs for conveyance to the
Colorado River Aqueduct, and a one-time prorated capital charge
per acre-foot for dedicated pipeline capacity.
California’s Water Year runs from October 1 of the previous
calendar year through September 30. California’s “wet”
season is traditionally October 1 – April 1. The rest of
the year (and often parts of the “wet” season) is usually
dry. We can get major storms into April, but often not.
So nearly all this Water Year’s precipitation has fallen
already. … For water stored instate for California,
storage levels are about the same as last year and are pretty
good. Because the last three years have not been dry,
California retains an unusually large amount of water in its
reservoirs. … California’s 2026 water year has had a
good “wet” season overall. Neither floods nor droughts
overall. Even in statistically average years, California water
will usually be weird in places and at times. As we work
to improve water management, we need to improve our data
management, and water accounting.
