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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The Trump administration is preparing to take drastic action to
keep the West’s most important river flowing to cities, farms
and through hydropower turbines after a warm, dry winter has
forecasters warning of record low flows down the waterway this
year. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation is
planning to cut releases out of one of the Colorado River’s
biggest reservoirs — Lake Powell — to the lowest level that’s
legally permissible, while at the same time moving a massive
amount of water from upstream reservoirs to bolster Powell’s
water levels, according to an internal report from Arizona’s
top water officials obtained by POLITICO. The report says
Reclamation’s plans are not yet final but that the emergency
actions could begin as soon as [this] week.
California has launched the Salton Sea
Conservancy, a new state agency to oversee restoration,
manage habitat and improve air quality at the deteriorating
inland lake. On Friday Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the
appointment of a 20-member conservancy board, with members from
state agencies, Riverside and Imperial County governments,
local water districts, tribal groups and public organizations.
The new conservancy is the first created in California in more
than 15 years, since the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
Conservancy was established in 2010. The new body will direct
state resources toward what has long been a local problem in
the Southern California desert, Newsom said in a statement.
Commercial fishing crews will be permitted to catch salmon
along the California coast this year for the first time since
2022 as regulators end a three-year shutdown after
seeing an increase in the struggling salmon
population. The Pacific Fishery Management Council, a
body established by Congress that manages ocean fishing along
the West Coast, voted Sunday to approve a plan to reopen the
salmon fishing season under strict limits in California.
… Fishermen in the San Francisco region will be allowed
to catch a maximum of 160 Chinook per vessel during several
open periods in May and August, and 100 on additional dates in
September. … The plan also includes limits on the total
number of fall-run Chinook salmon that may be caught during the
season.
A spring Sierra storm dropped more than a foot of snow
in parts of the northern Sierra, according to a report
from the California-Nevada River Forecast Center. Snow totals
from automated gauges showed the heaviest snowfall in Alpine
County, where Leavitt Lake recorded 15 inches and Ebbetts Pass
measured 13 inches. Carson Pass and Monitor Pass each saw 9
inches. In Placer County, Palisades Tahoe reported 14
inches of snow, while the Central Sierra Snow Lab measured 12
inches. … The snowfall totals are based on provisional data
from automated gauges and have not yet been fully verified,
according to the forecast center.
In the months before Nevada’s top water regulator was fired,
major mining companies and others complained about him to Gov.
Joe Lombardo’s office, accusing him of “coercion” and
slow-walking communications as the state inched to a nuclear
option in water policy — curtailing rights in Nevada’s largest
basin. The complaints, which came in the form of nearly 200
emails, letters, attachments and meetings reviewed by The
Nevada Independent, largely centered around a draft
order to reduce groundwater pumping in the Humboldt River
Basin. It’s an overappropriated watershed in Northern
Nevada where the state is undertaking its first major,
large-scale application of conjunctive water management; a
strategy to coordinate surface and groundwater use.
The Trump administration is tightening its grip over EPA’s
scientific enterprise as it prepares to relocate employees from
its once esteemed research arm. The agency’s new, smaller
science office has laid out its policies on how EPA will
approve new research and publish its work for the public,
according to internal memos obtained by POLITICO’s E&E
News. Further, EPA’s remaining scientists from the
now-dissolved Office of Research and Development received
reassignments earlier this week, including many who will have
to move if they want to continue working at the agency.
… Research office staffers who remained at EPA were
expecting to be reassigned last month, as the agency officially
closed the program. Many had already been transferred into the
air, chemical and water programs.
… Research groups, news organizations and water officials
have been blaring warnings about the worst snowpack in
history and water supply concerns heading into the
summer. In some ways, conditions are so bad, the state
is headed into uncharted territory, experts said. In the face
of a worrisome year, farmers, reservoir operators and city
utilities are focused on getting the best data possible.
They’re turning to scientists and pilots with newfangled
snowpack measurement methods — plus the tried-and-true
measurement methods used since the early 1900s. Their
goal: Figure out how to use a scant water supply as effectively
as possible.
… Nutria, a creature with the body of a small beaver, webbed
feet like a platypus, and the tail of a rat, reappeared in the
state’s wetlands a few years ago, nearly four decades after it
was considered eradicated. California has been battling the
rodent ever since, and recent research by wildlife officials
suggests the rodent’s sudden return may have been
intentional. The study, released Tuesday by the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, found that the state’s nutria
populations share a close genetic match with nutria from
Oregon. The distance between the states makes it nearly
impossible for them to have migrated on their own, according to
researchers, which means they were likely transported here
intentionally.
… [Khara] Boender is the senior manager of state policy for
the Data Center Coalition, the industry group that represents
data centers owners and their interests. She’s been extremely
busy in recent weeks, wading through the many, many new
proposals targeting their members. The bevy of new bills is
linked to the explosion of artificial intelligence, which has
spurred a nationwide race to build out the digital
infrastructure needed to support new AI models. And while data
centers are nothing new — they expanded in lockstep with the
growth of the internet — state officials expect them to use
huge amounts of electricity and water in
coming years. … POLITICO caught up with Boender to hear
more about why her industry is against the proposals, and its
ideas on how regulations should work.
Efforts to strengthen water storage and delivery
systems in California’s Central Valley are gaining
momentum, as federal and local leaders emphasize the need for
groundwater recharge projects and long-overdue infrastructure
upgrades. For communities like Arvin and Lamont, water largely
comes from underground sources, making stable groundwater
levels essential. … [T]he Arvin Community Services District
is partnering with the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District on a
$2 million project to expand groundwater recharge capacity. The
project is funded through federal dollars secured by Rep. David
Valadao and is one of several water infrastructure efforts
across the 22nd Congressional District.
After two winters of La Niña, an official “El Niño Watch” is
underway, the National Weather Service Climate Protection
Center said Thursday. In its latest ENSO Alert System Status
report, the Climate Protection Center said there’s a 61% chance
that an El Niño is “likely to emerge” between this May and
June, and “persist through at least the end of 2026.” The
agency’s outlook also notes there’s a 25% chance that the
Pacific seasonal variation could develop into a “strong” or
“very strong” El Niño this winter. … [I]t’s hard
to predict if the emergence of El Niño this year will lead to a
wet winter. … [O]ne of California’s worst drought years
occurred during an El Niño in 1976-1977, but then the following
year, still during an El Niño, the state had more than double
its average rainfall with nearly 31 inches of rain.
Gov. Mark Gordon joined fellow governors from other Colorado
River headwater states Thursday to announce that a significant
extra water release from Flaming Gorge is imminent. Dire water
conditions in the region will likely require reducing water
use, he warned. “Because of such diminished runoff,
existing state laws in the Upper Division States
[Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico]
require water users to face cuts to water rights dating back to
the 1800s — these cuts are mandatory, uncompensated, and will
have significant impacts on water users, including Upper Basin
tribes, and local economies,” Gordon said Thursday afternoon in
a joint press release with Govs. Spencer Cox of Utah, Michelle
Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and Jared Polis of Colorado.
Flush with water supplies amid dry conditions statewide, the
San Diego County Water Authority‘s board on Thursday voted to
approve the second long-term sale to customers in Riverside
County. Last month, the Water Authority signed 21-year deal
with Western Municipal Water District in southwest Riverside
County to supply 10,000 acre-feet of water — enough for 30,000
households — for $13 million annually. Now the Water Authority
has approved a similar deal with Eastern Municipal
Water District of Southern California, which serves nearly 1
million residents in Perris, Hemet, San Jacinto and
the Elsinore Valley. … Thanks to three decades of
investment in aqueduct improvements, increased dam capacity and
desalination, the Water Authority projects ample supply through
2050.
You’re going to hear a lot about El Niño this year. The term
refers to warmer-than-average waters along the equatorial
Pacific that can influence weather across the globe,
raising the odds of searing drought in some regions and
torrential rain in others. Indicators increasingly
suggest such an event will develop later this summer, and it’s
possible it could be the strongest of the century to affect
Southern California. … In Southern California, strong El
Niños increase the likelihood of wet winters that replenish
water supplies and tamp down wildfire risk but can also unleash
flooding, debris flows and coastal erosion. Still, the exact
effects are impossible to predict.
… Glenn Merrill, hydrologist with the National Weather
Service’s Salt Lake City office, can sum up this year’s spring
runoff, which peaked on March 9 about a month early, with one
four-letter word: weak. … One bright spot in the
otherwise cheerless forecast is the summer monsoon season. Due
to the lack of snowpack … the season is expected to arrive
early and be more active than normal due to warm surface
temperatures in the Gulf of California in the Baja region of
northwestern Mexico.
Attorneys for conservation and Indigenous rights groups filed
an appeal Wednesday in the effort to stop an open-pit
lithium-boron mine from being built on the only known habitat
of an endangered wildflower. … The Western Shoshone
Defense Project, who are represented in the appeal by the
Western Mining Action Project, said the mine’s water use could
also potentially dry out Cave Spring, a sacred site less than a
mile from the proposed mine quarry. According to the project’s
final environmental review, if Cave Spring is fed by
groundwater the mine could potentially decrease the amount of
water discharged from the spring.
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed weakening rules
for the disposal of ash produced by burning coal that
can contain hazardous heavy metals and contaminate
groundwater. Those regulations were strengthened under
the Biden administration as part of a wider crackdown on
pollution from coal-fired power plants. The Trump
administration proposed easing standards for monitoring and
protecting groundwater near some coal ash sites, and rolling
back rules that require the cleanup of entire coal properties
rather than just the sites where ash was dumped. The revisions
would also make it easier to reuse coal ash for other purposes.
The sewage runoff affecting the Tijuana River is the result of
repair work being carried out by the United States, not Mexico,
according to Víctor Manuel Amador, head of Baja California’s
Secretariat for Water Management, Sanitation, and Protection
(Seproa). Speaking during the state government’s morning
conference, Amador explained that the runoff stems from repairs
to the JB-1 gate, which began in November. The gate is located
on the U.S. side of the border. Over the weekend, U.S.
authorities issued an alert regarding high concentrations of
hydrogen sulfide in the Tijuana River Valley. That gas, which
is associated with the decomposition of wastewater, has been
linked to structural issues involving discharges into the river
basin.
A newly published study by California Department of Fish and
Wildlife scientists offers the clearest picture yet of how
nutria — a destructive, invasive rodent —
reappeared in California after being declared eradicated
decades ago. Using advanced genomic analysis, researchers
determined that nutria discovered in Merced County in 2017 are
most closely linked to a population in central Oregon, rather
than descendants of animals believed wiped out in California in
the 1970s. … Nutria can eat up to 25% of their body
weight in plants each day, and their feeding often destroys far
more vegetation than they consume, leading to erosion that can
permanently convert marshland into open water.
The fallout and potential exposure from Iran’s state-backed
targeting of U.S. critical infrastructure extends to more than
5,200 internet-connected devices, researchers at Censys said in
a threat intelligence brief Wednesday. Of the programmable
logic controllers manufactured by Rockwell
Automation/Allen-Bradley that Censys identified
as potentially exposed to Iranian government attackers,
nearly 3,900, or about 3 out of every 4, are based in the
United States. The cybersecurity firm identified the
devices based on details multiple federal agencies shared in a
joint alert Tuesday. … The operational technology
devices are deployed across the energy sector, water
and wastewater systems, and U.S. government services
and facilities.
