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 developers of a new, massive Northern California reservoir
say they’ll have enough water to pursue their $6 billion
venture, laying to rest their previous concerns that
the project 70 miles northwest of Sacramento might not be
viable. The proposed Sites Reservoir, billed
as a remedy for the state’s chronic water shortages, appeared
to be at risk earlier this year when state regulators outlined
how much water the facility could draw from the
Sacramento River, and when those draws could
occur. … But two weeks ago, after pushback from Gov. Gavin
Newsom and other advocates, the State Water Resources Control
Board relaxed the conditions laid out in the
reservoir’s proposed water right. … On Friday,
officials with the Sites Project Authority, the agency leading
the ambitious endeavor, reported that their analysis of
the revised water right showed the reservoir would have
adequate water to make the project cost-effective.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes and the Central Arizona Water
Conservation District reached an agreement on Colorado
River, CRIT officials announced. The CRIT and CAWCD
agreement will deliver more than 9,000 acre-feet of
CRIT Intentionally Created Surplus, or ICS, water to the
district. … CRIT officials said the agreement
with the CAWCD represents the last remaining water CRIT
made available as part of a Drought Contingency Plan that was
agreed to in 2019. The surplus water was
previously conserved between 2020 and 2022 after requests from
the federal government. CRIT leaders conserved water to
help stabilize Lake Mead. … Under the
agreement, the CAWC District will compensate the CRIT at
$590 per acre-foot, for a total of
$5.3 million in two payments.
As the 2026-27 El Niño flirts with record territory, scientists
are increasingly confident it will have an
outsize influence on California precipitation.
That’s because there is a significant similarity between this
event and two prior very strong El Niños that drenched
California, and a difference from two that didn’t. The
key is the exact location of warm water: El Niños in
the far east — with the most unusually warm water near South
America — correlate more strongly with California
precipitation than a central-Pacific based El Niño,
according to John O’Brien, a climate scientist and a program
officer for science at the Heising-Simons Foundation.
… Despite El Niño’s outsize influence,
scientists note there’s a chance California ends up
relatively dry. Nothing is guaranteed.
Karla Nemeth spent eight years atop California’s water
bureaucracy, trying to make the state’s vast, creaky system
work in a hotter, more volatile climate. Now she’s
continuing the fight from outside government. …
Newsom is winding down his term, and Nemeth left her position
in July. Earlier this month, she took over as executive
director of the Association of California Water
Agencies, the state’s largest water trade group.From
that perch, she’ll be pushing the next administration
and the Legislature to do more about water storage, flood
protection, affordability and the Colorado River. In
an interview with POLITICO, she reflected on her time in the
executive branch and the challenges ahead for California and
its next governor.
A House Natural Resources Committee subcommittee held a
legislative hearing Sept. 16 on eight water, wildlife and
public-access bills, spanning California water, tribal
settlements, invasive species, Florida wildlife and
Yosemite access. … The bills included
the Yosemite National Park Equal Access and Fairness Act, the
Golden Mussel Eradication and Control Act of 2025, the
Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Water Rights
Settlement Act, and an amendment to the Aamodt
Litigation Settlement Act. The package also included the
Pechanga Band of Indians Water Rights Settlement
Technical Amendments Act. … H.R. 5935 would
authorize the Agua Caliente water-rights settlement and
establish a $500 million settlement trust fund for
water infrastructure and conservation. H.R. 8546 would
make technical updates to the Pechanga settlement, while H.R.
6869 would let parties extend the deadline for completing the
Pojoaque Basin Regional Water System.
Kearny, Ariz., is a town on the brink. Located at the foot of
the Dripping Spring Mountains in eastern Arizona, this small
community of 2,000 people sources its water from the Gila
River. … But in March, the snowpack feeding the
river had dropped to precipitous levels: It was just 1 percent
of its historic norm for that time of
year. … Kearny’s dilemma foreshadows a
crisis building across the American Southwest. Since 2000, the
region — which includes Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah,
Colorado and parts of northern Mexico — has endured a historic
“megadrought,” or a period of severe dryness that persists for
decades. Scientists say it’s the driest this region has been in
1,200 years. … [R]esearchers worry that the
megadrought may be locked in place for the foreseeable
future.
In Silicon Valley’s biggest city, residents and environmental
groups are organizing against a wave of proposed data center
projects that officials have courted in a bid to position the
city as a hub for AI infrastructure. The clash highlights a
challenge confronting policymakers nationwide: how to support
an industry viewed by government and business leaders as
critical to economic competitiveness while responding
to growing public concerns about the electricity, water and
pollution impacts of the infrastructure required to
power it. … The fight comes as California Governor Gavin
Newsom weighs a package of bills intended to
protect state residents from the costs of powering data centers
and increase transparency around their energy and water
use.
The Great Salt Lake is grabbing national attention as it hovers
barely a foot above its record low. … For about a
century, water law was seen as sacrosanct in the West. Trying
to change it meant lawmakers put their political careers on the
line. In Utah, that changed in 2021 when the Legislature
recognized the lake was on the verge of collapse. The
state overhauled concepts like “use it or lose it” to allow
water right holders to keep their water in-stream to benefit
the environment. They created a water leasing program. They
doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to improve
conservation and repair the lake’s ecosystem. … Farmers
and large water rights holders need to trust that the new
system will work, though, and many feel like their way of life
is under attack.
On this week’s EcoNews Report, we dive into Prop 45, the ballot
initiative forwarded by the California Chamber of Commerce
that would significantly alter the California
Environmental Quality Act by rolling back protections in the
permitting for projects like dams, data centers, and freeway
expansions. Many of the proposed changes are going to be
directly felt by rural areas like ours who don’t have the
planning staff to meet new stringent deadlines for project
approval, meaning a choice will have to be made: skimp on
environmental analysis and public engagement or risk litigation
from developers. Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat of the Center
for Biological Diversity joins the program to discuss why her
organization is opposed and is urging voters to vote no.
Right now, water is being released from Trinity River
reservoirs to aid struggling salmon on the Klamath River. This
federal action, part of the Lower Klamath Long Term Plan, and
coordinated with the Hoopa and Yurok Tribes, should help avoid
an otherwise imminent fish kill from low flows and warm
temperatures. … Governor Newsom says this is the type of
action that California supports. Working with Tribes, counties,
and the federal government to protect rebounding salmon runs
after a major dam removal project is a win-win. However these
types of flow releases are threatened by California’s Bay Delta
water quality decisions. If California’s Water Quality Control
Board does not act to protect the Trinity River, and/or deny
the Bay Delta Voluntary agreements, this water may not be
available in future years. – Written by Regina Chichizola, a co-founder and
director of Communities United for Water Protection.
The state water board has given the green light to a one-year,
state-run water conservation program. On Wednesday, the
Colorado Water Conservation Board unanimously
approved the application review process and criteria for what
state officials are calling Colorado’s near-term
contribution program for 2027. … The
contribution program aims to use $100 million in funding from
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to pay water users in
the Upper [Colorado River] Basin states (Colorado, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) to voluntarily cut
back. … The approval comes at a
pivotal moment, as the federal government has taken
over operations for the Colorado River and the
nation’s biggest reservoirs after the seven states that share
the river failed to find agreement after years of negotiations.
For the first time, scientists have found a direct link between
the snow that falls on California’s mountains and the
groundwater that lies beneath Central Valley farmlands.
Analyzing two decades of measurements from NASA satellites, the
researchers discovered that after a snowy winter in the Sierra
Nevada, the melting snow that runs off the mountains
substantially raises water levels underground. The
study documents just how important years of heavy snow are for
recharging California’s groundwater aquifers. It also reveals
that a year with rain but little snow doesn’t benefit
the state’s underground water nearly as much.
… The study backs up something farmers have noticed for
years: that the water in their wells sometimes rises in the
months after heavy snows in the mountains.
California Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments on a
key piece of the ongoing lawsuit over Kern River flows
Oct. 7 at a special session of the court to be held in
Redding. … The last time justices ruled on a case involving
the Kern River was 140 years ago. That 1886 ruling set the
basis for California’s water rights system. This time
around, the outcome could be just as weighty. The
justices are looking at whether the 5th District Court of
Appeal erred when it overturned a temporary injunction
by Kern County Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp issued in
fall of 2023 after an epic water year filled the mostly dry
river bed through town – bringing fish with it. That
injunction had required the City of Bakersfield, which
operates the river, to keep some water in the
river based on California Fish and Game Code Section
5937, which requires dam owners to let enough water run
downstream to keep fish in good condition.
What if Colorado gets exactly what everyone is hoping for this
winter? Weeks of heavy snowstorms blanketing the mountains. A
deepening snowpack. A spring runoff that sends water
rushing into rivers and replenishing depleted
reservoirs. Well, according to experts, it still might
not be enough. After a record-low snowpack last winter and an
exceptionally dry summer, Colorado’s water system is
starting the winter with a deficit that can’t be erased in a
single season, according to state water officials and
snowpack experts. And right now — despite the promise of a
strong El Niño and plenty of optimism about the water it could
bring — forecasters can’t say whether this winter will
even deliver the above-average snowpack that Colorado
needs.
… [Iron] county has been developing a new ordinance for
approving such projects and other large developments like
natural gas plants or solar farms. The proposed rules
would cap water use for most data centers at 50,000
gallons per day, set limits on noise and light
pollution, require more efficient cooling systems and give the
county more control over where those projects can be built.
… Developers would have to meet criteria governing where
projects could be built and how close they can be to homes,
show that water, power and transportation are available
nearby, and minimize impacts on the environment or
agriculture. … If a project needs more than 56 acre-feet
per year, a developer could acquire more water
rights, retire them and use that as credit for more
water use, according to the draft ordinance.
New research examining more than eight decades of wildfire
activity found that fires are burning more land in Western
watersheds that supply water to millions of people. The study
published in Communications Earth & Environment
[September/2026] analyzed wildfire trends from 1940
through 2024 across approximately 17,000 watersheds in 11
Western states. Led by Dalston J. Karto, a San Diego State
University computational science doctoral student,
and Alicia M. Kinoshita, the study was conducted in
collaboration with researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey. The researchers
found that some of the watersheds most important for generating
runoff and supplying downstream drinking water are experiencing
significant increases in burned area.
A bipartisan water bill passed by the U.S. House of
Representatives includes $208 million for Colorado projects and
would revive federal financing for a pipeline that
was vetoed by President Donald Trump late last
year. The House voted 415-9 Wednesday night to
pass the Water Resources Development Act,
with all eight of Colorado’s representatives joining in
support. The bill is a biennial measure that authorizes studies
and projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local
communities. The office of Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat
from Lakewood, said the bill incorporates provisions
from a bill led by Pettersen and co-sponsored by most
of the state’s delegation earlier this year. It would
add Colorado to a federal program that supports rural water
projects in western states. The bill passed Wednesday
would allow up to $150 million for water
projects in Colorado under that program.
Former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, a longtime Republican lawmaker from
Arizona who shaped landmark water policies in the U.S.
West and guided the confirmation of Supreme Court
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has died. He was 84. … Before being
elected for the first of his four terms in the House in 1987,
Kyl was a key participant in shaping Arizona’s 1980
groundwater code as a lawyer representing a large
water utility. The first-of-its-kind code created a
regulatory framework for managing groundwater in the
drought-stricken state, largely centering on the state’s
population centers, including Phoenix and Tucson. In
2004, Kyl authored legislation that provided one of the
largest tribal water rights settlements, which, after
a decades-long battle, gave the Gila River Indian
Community enough water to fill nearly 313,500
Olympic-sized swimming pools annually.
Today is the last day to tell federal regulators what they
should study before two century-old dams come off the Eel
River. The comment window on the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission’s scoping document closes September 18, capping a
week of public sessions in Eureka. The commission took
comments at the Wharfinger Building on Tuesday and Wednesday,
following an earlier round in Ukiah in June. The sessions were
one-on-one with a stenographer rather than open mic, a format
FERC says is less intimidating, though some advocates missed
the energy of the packed Klamath hearings. The dams in question
are Scott Dam, which created Lake Pillsbury in 1922, and Cape
Horn Dam downstream near Potter Valley. Together they make up
PG&E’s Potter Valley Project, which has not generated
electricity since equipment failed in 2021.
Foreign actors gained access to two small water utility systems
in Colorado late last month, state officials confirmed, just
weeks after hackers with suspected links to Iran had attempted
to access similar systems elsewhere in the United States. It’s
unclear who the actors were or if the attempted interference
was related to the July hacking attempts that affected at least
seven states. Gov. Jared Polis’ office told The Denver Post
that the computer systems for two Colorado utilities — both of
which are private and serve fewer than 200 people — were
targeted in late August. But his office said that, to the
state’s knowledge, “treatment processes and water quality were
not impacted at either provider,” similar to the outcome in of
reported hacking efforts in other states.
