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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Climate change is making the Colorado River drier, and the
cities and farms that use it need to make big changes to their
demand for water. Negotiations about the future of sharing the
river have stalled, and the promise of sweeping, long-lasting
changes to water use in the Southwest are seeming less likely
as the weeks pass by. Now, a short-term fix may be on the
horizon. Negotiations have been at an impasse for months, and
officials are wringing their hands about the possibility of a
big multi-state court battle. Given the circumstances, some
experts say a short-term agreement might be a useful, albeit
imperfect, solution for the Colorado River.
… The states are currently staring down a Feb.
14 deadline to hand an agreement to the federal
government, but it seems unlikely that they will have a deal by
then.
After a run of spring‑like warmth and stubborn high pressure,
forecasters say California could finally see a shift toward
cooler, wetter conditions by mid‑February — a welcome sign for
skiers, water managers, and anyone hoping for more snow in
California. Meteorologists with the National Weather Service
(NWS) in Reno say the ridge that has kept storms away since
early January is beginning to show cracks. NOAA’s Climate
Prediction Center is now leaning toward a colder,
wetter stretch for the Sierra and parts of Northern
California later this month, though exact timing and
snow totals remain uncertain.
In a significant move for the Coachella and Imperial Valleys,
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has agreed to visit the
New River and Salton Sea to
witness firsthand the decades-long pollution crisis affecting
the region. The commitment came during a high-level roundtable
discussion in Coronado on Thursday, where Assemblyman Jeff
Gonzalez (R-Indio) joined Zeldin, SBA Administrator Kelly
Loeffler, and regional leaders to address cross-border
water contamination. While the meeting primarily
focused on the Tijuana River, Gonzalez pivoted the conversation
toward the East Desert, arguing that the New River presents an
even more severe and enduring threat to public health.
… The rapid growth of data centers across Nevada, and their
enormous energy and water demands, took center
stage at the annual Nevada Water Resources Association
conference last week. Rapid growth also means data centers need
large plots of available and scalable land, leading tech
companies and data center developers to eye rural
landscapes. … Much of Nevada has suffered through
severe drought conditions for years. More than half of the
state’s groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,”
meaning farmers and communities are drawing down groundwater
reservoirs faster than they can be
refilled. Despite the lack of water in Nevada,
there are several benefits that have attracted developers to
build in the driest state in the union.
It’s a pivotal time for water in Southern California — and
Shivaji Deshmukh is at the center of it.
Deshmukh took over last month as general manager of the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a
sprawling, aging system that pipes water hundreds of miles to
19 million people in Los Angeles, Orange County, the Inland
Empire and San Diego. … Deshmukh must figure out how to
keep this delicate water puzzle together, all while dealing
with the politics of a 38-member board and regional power
struggles both inside and outside of California. He spoke with
POLITICO about the balance between affordability and
reliability and his early priorities in the wake of leadership
tumult at the agency.
A Superior Court judge is weighing whether greater regulation
in La Paz County undermines or intensifies the state’s legal
claim over whether Fondomonte Arizona, a Saudi-owned
alfalfa farm, is illegally pumping excessive
groundwater. Yet while Attorney General Kris Mayes pursues
Fondomonte on public nuisance charges, the Arizona Department
of Water Resources implemented a new active management area for
groundwater in the Ranegras Plain Basin. Now, ADWR is tasked
with assessing current groundwater use, exempting existing
users, blocking new irrigation and implementing water reporting
and management plans to protect an area’s water supply — all of
which could impact a decision on whether Fondomonte’s
agricultural operations constitute a public nuisance.
A Native American tribe and coalition of environmentalists are
challenging the Trump administration’s approval of a mine
expansion that could threaten one of Nevada’s most
delicate ecosystems. In a federal lawsuit filed
Wednesday, the Timbisha Shoshone tribe, Center for
Biological Diversity and Amargosa Conservancy allege that the
Bureau of Land Management failed to fully consider
environmental harm when it greenlit St. Cloud
Mining to drill 43 holes adjacent to its existing Ash
Meadows mine. … St. Cloud Mining intends to drill 200 feet
into the ground and is expected to hit the groundwater
table at about 100 feet, according to company plans
cited in a Wednesday news release issued by the plaintiffs.
The Sierra Club California has raised concerns about one of the
two new water bills introduced by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla,
warning that “loopholes” in the current language could allow
federal funding to be steered toward large water conveyance
projects the group opposes, including California’s
controversial Delta tunnel. The MORE WATER Act, which Padilla
unveiled in a news release on Wednesday, would reauthorize
federal funding for large-scale water recycling projects and
create a new Water Conveyance Improvement Program to benefit
existing water conveyance infrastructure across the West.
The Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission will
hold a meeting Thursday to discuss water storage options as the
county prepares for PG&E’s plan to shutter the Potter
Valley Project. The meeting will be at 5 p.m. Thursday at the
Mendocino County Administration Center in Ukiah. … The
Inland Water and Power Commission is a joint powers authority
that works to protect the Russian and Eel river watersheds and
ensure Mendocino County’s water sources are safeguarded. The
board is working to find solutions, such as creating water
storage, once the Potter Valley Project is decommissioned.
If the golden mussel invasion that already is
expanding throughout much of California hits the Eastern
Sierra, the damage it will bring will ripple far beyond
recreational fishing, according to state officials. Nick
Buckmaster, an environmental specialist with the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Inyo County Board of
Supervisors Tuesday that the invasive species is “amazingly”
resilient and that its adaptability makes it effectively
impossible to eradicate.
Salmon in Santa Cruz County live on the edge. Quite literally:
Monterey Bay marks the southern extent of the range for several
salmon species in California, where naturally warmer water,
smaller creeks that run low or dry in summer and fewer cool
places to shelter leave local populations more vulnerable than
their counterparts farther north. Recent years have brought
cautious optimism about a rebound statewide, with scientists
and restoration groups saying salmon here are still “hanging
on,” sustained by decades of monitoring and an expanding web of
restoration efforts.
The Center for Watershed Sciences is excited to share our first
annual report. In our report, you will find a letter from our
new Director, Dr. Karrigan Börk, meet the CWS researchers and
their teams, learn about new science shaping water management,
and explore some of the events we host to bring people together
around water and water issues. Our report also shares
CWS’ finalized 2025 Strategic Plan, which explains our goals
and priorities for the upcoming several years. We also report
on the most read blogs from the California Waterblog of 2025,
highlight major grants supporting CWS, and more.
With the leaders of seven states deadlocked over the Colorado
River’s deepening crisis, negotiations increasingly seem likely
to fail — which could lead the federal government to impose
unilateral cuts and spark lawsuits that would bring a complex
court battle. … In a meeting this week, Arizona
officials seemed to be anticipating failure. They pointed out
that the amount of water flowing into Lake Mead, the nation’s
largest reservoir, could soon fall to a trigger point —
a legal “tripwire” that would allow Arizona to demand
cuts upriver and sue for a violation of the compact.
… The water reaching the Lower Basin will probably fall
below that point later this year or next, which has never
happened.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin convened national and local
elected officials on Thursday at the Coronado Community Center
to discuss progress on the Tijuana River sewage crisis, marking
his second visit to San Diego since April. … Zeldin
presented several key projects in various stages of completion,
with completion dates scheduled for 2026, 2027 and 2028. …
The Tijuana River Gates, a collection pipe project, emerged as
a centerpiece of the discussion. Mexico funded the first phase,
which began construction in September 2025. Zeldin expects
construction to conclude in six months and to remove 5
million gallons of sewage per day once operational.
The American West’s snowpack is valuable for many reasons.
Snowmelt supplies much of the water flowing through the
region’s streams, rivers, irrigation canals and household
faucets—a vital role that has taken on new urgency this winter
as much of the West struggles with scant snow cover.
… But in the economic realm, researchers have attempted
to put a dollar figure on the region’s snow, and the numbers
they’ve generated are huge. “This stuff’s worth trillions,
not billions” of dollars, said snow scientist Matthew Sturm,
lead author of a widely cited 2017 paper in Water Resources
Research that estimated the value of the water embedded in the
West’s snowpack.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The groundwater in parts of western Kern County is salty and,
generally, considered a bit crummy, longtime farmer Brad
Kroeker admits. But that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned to
wholesale pollution as Kroeker believes will happen if a
“de-designation” recently approved by the Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board gains final approval from
the state Water Resources Control Board. The regional board
voted 5-1 at its Dec. 12, 2025 meeting to “de-designate”
groundwater for municipal and agricultural uses under a
six-square-mile area north of McKittrick. … The
de-designation action was the end result of a lawsuit filed
against the regional board by Valley Water Management Company,
which has operated two large, unlined oilfield produced water
percolation ponds in the area since the 1960s.
California doesn’t have a water scarcity problem. It has a
distribution problem, according to Nícola Ulibarrí. … In a
report commissioned by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab, Ulibarrí
argues that California’s existing water infrastructure already
collects enough water to sustain all state residents. The real
crisis, says the UC Irvine associate professor of urban
planning and public policy, is that thousands of Californians
remain disconnected from that abundant supply.
… Thousands of households, particularly in rural areas,
remain unconnected to the state’s large-scale water
infrastructure system. These residents depend on groundwater
wells. … Nearly a million California residents who are
connected to the water system receive water that fails to meet
federal Safe Drinking Water Act standards.
California American Water Co. is asking state regulators to
deny an application to lift a moratorium on new hookups from
Carmel River water that has left the Monterey Peninsula for two
decades without the ability to construct badly needed housing.
Cal Am is saying other water supplies, such as Pure Water
Monterey and its expansion, are not stable enough to lift a
cease-and-desist order regulators placed on pumping a specified
amount of water out of the Carmel River aquifer. … The desist
order was slapped on the Peninsula because Cal Am was pumping
significantly more water than could sustain a steelhead
fishery, a protected species. The order was put in
place following lawsuits filed by the Sierra Club and
others.
The golden mussel, an invasive species that is making its way
across the delta, through waterways and pipes, is now
reaching as far south as Riverside County. … On
top of concerns that farmers won’t be able to pump water during
the dry months, it also poses a flooding threat to urban areas.
… Action is already being taken at the county and state
levels. The San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors created a
local golden mussel committee to help communicate better with
state and affected areas in the county. The state has also
secured $20 million in this year’s budget to combat the spread
and support local prevention efforts. In the meantime, these
small invaders are here to stay.
An Arizona bill would prohibit the use of fluoride in state
public water systems. State Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise,
introduced Senate Bill 1019, which would prevent people
and political subdivisions from adding fluoride or
fluoride-containing compounds to Arizona’s public water system.
The Senate Committee on Government recently advanced SB 1019 to
the floor for a full Senate vote. … If SB 1019 becomes
law, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality would
enforce it, Shamp told The Center Square. … If Arizona were
to pass SB 1019, it would join Florida and Utah as the only
states that prohibit fluoridation of their water systems.
