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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With the Colorado River’s giant reservoirs declining toward
critically low levels, negotiators for California,
Arizona and Nevada announced a new water-saving plan
for the next two years. Representatives of the three states
said in a written statement Friday night that their plan aims
to “stabilize the Colorado River through 2028.” It will require
larger cuts in water use than they had pledged previously in
talks with other states and the federal government.
… The three states’ negotiators said their plan
identifies more than 3.2 million acre-feet of water cutbacks
through 2028, building on their previous proposal.
Representatives of the three states negotiated the short-term
deal after they deadlocked in talks with four other states on a
long-term plan for sharing the river’s diminishing water.
A thin snowpack is making Northern California and the
West vulnerable to major summer fires as forests dry
quickly. Fire activity is expected to be above normal
in June for the Bay Area, Sacramento Valley, northern Sierra
foothills, parts of the North Coast and much of northeast
California, according to a forecast released Friday by the
National Interagency Fire Center. By July and August, the fire
danger will expand to mountainous regions. … California got
plenty of rain this winter. But the weather was warm, and not
enough snow fell. California’s snowpack stood at just
21% of normal Friday, with less in the north and more
to the south. That means drier vegetation at high elevations as
summer kicks in.
For the first time since December 2021, all of Colorado is in a
drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor published
on Thursday. The Pikes Peak region was the only part of the
state that was not in a drought until this week, when parts of
El Paso, Fremont, Pueblo and Teller counties moved from
abnormally dry to experiencing moderate drought. The percentage
of El Paso County in moderate drought increased from 0% to 100%
from the beginning of April to the end of the month. The county
has not been entirely in a drought since March 2022, according
to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Those conditions were exacerbated
by prolonged above-average temperatures, causing the
lowest snowpack in Colorado’s recorded history
to melt earlier than usual.
The San Joaquin Valley is at a turning point, where
long-standing complex and interconnected water management
challenges are intensifying with climate change and creating
mounting pressures for communities, agriculture, and
ecosystems. To confront these growing pressures, the Department
of Water Resources (DWR) has developed A Vision for the
San Joaquin Valley, an integrated plan with near- and long-term
strategies to strengthen water management and climate
resilience. … A key focus is raising groundwater
levels to reduce damaging land subsidence, which is
currently reducing the capacity of key state and federal canals
to deliver water where it is needed.
The Potter Valley Project, a century-old hydropower complex in
Mendocino County, is on its way to the recycle bin. PG&E
filed last summer to surrender its federal license. Two dams —
Scott and Cape Horn — are coming down. The Eel
River water rights pass to the Round Valley Indian
Tribes for the first time in a century. Now a Riverside County
water district 600 miles to the south says it might want to buy
a piece. The Trump administration is backing the bid. What the
district actually wants — water, electricity, or both — is the
question. … PG&E’s surrender filing says only
one thing is still on the table for any third party: “certain
features of the project such as those for water conveyance.”
The federal hydropower license, the company says, is no longer
transferable. That’s the narrow opening the Riverside district
is reaching into.
… Los Alamos National Laboratory is facing its biggest
expansion since the World War II-era Manhattan Project, the
top-secret government effort to produce the world’s first
atomic weapons. The current expansion will require a colossal
use of resources, including one that New Mexico has in
short supply these days — water. Last month, the U.S.
Department of Energy projected that the Los Alamos
expansion would require around 504 million gallons of water
annually — about 1.4 million gallons of water per day — for at
least another decade. … Plans include building a new
100,000-square-foot facility dedicated solely to artificial
intelligence supercomputers, along with one or more
microreactors, a compact nuclear reactor designed to generate
small-scale power and facilities for staging nuclear waste.
The House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony
Wednesday on legislation aimed at giving local irrigators a
stronger voice in decisions affecting their water
use and the lands they depend on. H.R. 8259, the
Federal Water Projects Consultation Improvement Act of 2026,
was introduced April 14 in the U.S. House of Representatives in
Washington, D.C., by Oregon Rep. Cliff Bentz. The bill seeks to
improve transparency and ensure more direct input from local
water users in the operation of federal water projects.
“Federal agencies often make decisions without sufficient input
from local communities that depend on and operate irrigation
systems and water projects affected by Endangered Species Act
listings,” Bentz said.
Fifty years ago, Colorado realized it had made a mistake. Its
rivers, once alive with the movement of playful otters cutting
through currents and pressing their tracks into sandbars, had
gone quiet. “They were killed out,” said Colorado Parks
and Wildlife Species Coordinator for Wolverine, Lynx and River
Otter, Robert Inman. “That was largely due to no regulations
being in place on the taking of wildlife during the 1800s-1900s
and pollution from mining tailings affecting fisheries — and
therefore — otter food.” Now, through a new project on
iNaturalist, CPW is asking Coloradans to help document where
otters are showing up across the state.
For some 40 years, churchgoers at Our Lady of Victory Catholic
Church have enjoyed a grassy oasis tucked off Windmill Lane in
southeast Las Vegas. The towering trees and green grass keep
them cool in blazing summers. … The church is perhaps
the most unique plaintiff to join a high-profile
lawsuit against the water authority’s enforcement of the
state law. It is meant to rein in turfgrass irrigation — the
single-largest use of water from Lake Mead that cannot be
captured and recycled through Southern Nevada’s
robust wastewater purification and delivery systems.
An invasive species of mussel is becoming more of a concern in
California as it overtakes ecosystems and impacts
infrastructure, according to officials. Golden mussels, native
to China and Southeastern Asia, were first detected in October
2024 by California Department of Water Resources staff who were
conducting routine operations in the Port of Stockton. … On
Tuesday, San Joaquin County officials declared an emergency
over the threat posed by the golden mussel. All five county
supervisors voted in favor of the declaration during Tuesday’s
board meeting, including Supervisor Paul Canepa who described
the situation as “out of control.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the Los Angeles District
gave a presentation about the Salton Sea Aquatic Ecosystem
Restoration feasibility study during a community meeting on
Thursday, April 30. Miguel Hernandez, a public affairs
officer at the California Natural Resources Agency for the
Salton Sea Management Program, explained that the study “is
looking into future long-term restoration for the Salton
Sea.” He asked participants to take a survey ranking four
objectives in order of importance regarding the Salton Sea:
restoring habitat for birds and fish, creating jobs and
economic opportunities, improving recreational access and
reducing dust to improve air quality. Corrie Stetzel, the
planning lead from the Corps, explained that the state of
California has a 10-year plan to improve the Salton Sea.
Utah’s water landscape doesn’t look good. After an
abysmally low winter for snow, 100% of the state is already in
drought. Plus, negotiations on the future of the
Colorado River are still going nowhere. Gov.
Spencer Cox thinks that grim reality could actually lead to
more cooperation on the future of the Colorado River.
… He’s hopeful that last winter’s record-low snow could
bring the states that share the river together after months of
deadlock and the failure to reach an agreement by a February
deadline. The upstream states of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming
have butted heads for years with Arizona, California and Nevada
over who should cut back their water use as the West has faced
a megadrought for the last quarter century.
… For more than half a century, California’s leaders have
debated rerouting water around, rather than through, the
network of rivers, farmland and marshes of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta. Newsom’s version would pipe Sacramento River
water through a 45-mile bypass to a reservoir on the California
Aqueduct. … [T]he Delta Stewardship Council weighed
opponents’ many challenges to the project and last week voted
six-to-one to require the Department of Water Resources to
address just two of them. … Far bigger obstacles
loom: court rulings that have upended California’s financing
plans, critical water rights decisions still to come from state
regulators, and water agencies that have yet to decide whether
the tunnel’s water will be worth the cost.
For the first time, growers in one of California’s most acutely
water-stressed areas have to reveal how much
groundwater they are pumping. For generations, they’ve been
free to take water from wells on their own land without
reporting to it the state. The State Water Resources Control
Board ordered landowners in parts of the San Joaquin Valley
around Corcoran and Pixley to submit detailed reports by
Friday. The Tule and Tulare Lake groundwater subbasins were put
on probation by the board in 2024 because they weren’t doing
enough to control excessive pumping, which has caused levels to
plummet. By collecting the data, the agency is preparing to
charge landowners fees — $300 for each well plus a usage fee of
$20 for each acre-foot of water.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced the completion of California’s
first solar-covered canal in the Central Valley [Turlock],
launching a first-of-its-kind pilot project aimed at
saving water, generating renewable energy and
reducing maintenance costs. Known as Project Nexus, the $20
million initiative places solar panels directly over irrigation
canals to test whether the approach can help California better
manage water resources while expanding clean energy
production. State officials say the project is designed to
evaluate whether covering canals with solar infrastructure can
reduce water lost to evaporation before it reaches farms, homes
and businesses.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approved a plan to refill
Truckee reservoirs early. The approved plan would temporarily
modify operations at Prosser Creek, Stampede and Boca dams. The
change is considered a major deviation from the 1985 Truckee
Basin Water Control Manual, and allows reservoirs to begin
refilling in mid-March, around a month earlier than usual. The
Bureau of Reclamation says the earlier refills enable
the capture of additional spring runoff without increasing
flood risk under current conditions. They say that as
a result, reservoirs are more likely to fill completely, or to
reach higher levels than under standard operations.
Across the country, data centers are drawing backlash from
across the political spectrum as Americans raise
concerns over drained water supplies and spiking energy
costs. The recently unveiled Stratos data center in
Box Elder County, backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary,
shows many Utahns share the same sentiment. Days after a
crowd packed the historic courthouse in Brigham City to decry a
potential vote that would allow the project to proceed, the
Utah Division of Water Rights received a deluge of protests
over a water rights application submitted by the developer for
the project, totaling nearly 400 as of Thursday evening.
For the first time in four years, commercial salmon boats are
heading back out on the California coast. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that both commercial
and recreational ocean salmon fishing have officially reopened
for 2026 after three consecutive years of closures. The
shutdown, which began in 2023, was driven by historically low
Chinook salmon populations linked to drought, poor river
conditions and habitat degradation. The reopening was
made possible by significant improvements in Sacramento River
fall-run and Klamath River fall-run Chinook stocks.
The Klamath River runs in particular have benefited from the
removal of four dams, the largest dam removal project in
American history.
Before the Pacific Coast Highway,
before Malibu and before
multimillion-dollar beachfront homes, Topanga Creek flowed
freely down through the Santa Monica Mountains. The water,
swelling and subsiding with the seasons, eventually dumped out
into a large lagoon, which in turn drained out to the Pacific
Ocean. Historically, the lagoon covered 30 acres of
coastal wetlands. But over time, the brackish water slowly gave
way to homes, beach parking lots and the Pacific Coast Highway.
Today, less than 1 acre of the lagoon remains.
… In Malibu, a last-ditch effort is underway to
save and expand the Topanga Lagoon, which contains
some of the last remaining coastal wetlands in the state.
Despite demands from San Diegan officials that Gov. Gavin
Newsom declare a state of emergency for the
Tijuana Rivercrisis, the governor’s position stands —
the crisis remains a federal issue. … On April 9,
Aguirre took to Instagram to plead with the governor to declare
a state of emergency over the worsening sewage crisis in the
Tijuana River. The long-brewing problem is part of a broader
crossborder watershed in which untreated wastewater, sediment
and trash regularly flow into California from Mexico, impacting
public health and the environment, the California State Lands
Commission has said. But Newsom’s office has long argued
that the federal government is responsible.
