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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… On Thursday, state water regulators released a draft permit
for the highly anticipated Sites Reservoir,
outlining how much water the proposed $6 billion facility
in rural Glenn and Colusa counties can draw from the
Sacramento River and, importantly, when those draws can be
made. The project’s backers, who include Gov.
Gavin Newsom, criticized an earlier draft of the
permit as overly restrictive, saying it offered as little as
half the water needed and left the viability of what
would be California’s eighth largest reservoir in
question. Cities and farms across the state stand to
benefit from the new water supply, including in the Bay Area’s
South Bay and Tri-Valley, though opponents of the
project say it will dangerously deplete the Sacramento
River.
The Central Arizona Project’s board authorized its legal
counsel to take legal action “if necessary”
against a federal plan to cut Arizona’s share of
Colorado River water dramatically in coming
years. Board members went into a closed executive session
before the Sept. 3 vote to discuss certain “occurrences” that
could trigger a lawsuit or other legal filing, and did not
specify them when voting unanimously for the authorization.
Board member Alexandra Arboleda introduced the motion at the
meeting and prefaced it with a statement that the United States
Department of the Interior’s 10-year framework for
dealing with water shortage “contemplates operations
that are contrary to law and devastating to the water users of
the Central Arizona Project.”
The world’s leading weather organization is sounding the alarm
about this year’s super El Niño, issuing its most certain
forecast in the history of the organization. In an update
issued early Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization
predicted a “nearly 100% likelihood” that the El Niño
will last through February. … Daniel Swain, a
climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture
and Natural Resources, says this El Niño will be so big, “with
consequences that are so large, I’m not sure we fully
understand them.” The intensity of the El Niño, Swain says,
means that it may cause unexpected and extreme
weather, and he cautions against making certain
predictions about what, exactly, is going to happen over the
next year. But the impacts, he says, will almost
certainly be massive.
The Trump administration on Friday proposed further narrowing
protections for streams and wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of
Engineers issued a supplemental proposed rule that they said
would be likely to reduce the bodies of water that are
under the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction if its
changes are adopted. It would be expected to reduce the number
of waters subject to the Clean Water Act in the West. That
means development or pollution in these streams and wetlands
would no longer require a permit or potential
mitigation. The new changes come on top of an already
proposed rule by the agencies that is also expected to narrow
the Clean Water Act’s applicability.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to require data centers to
disclose how much water they use, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says
concerns over AI’s water use don’t hold “up to any
scrutiny.” On the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath
released Tuesday, Altman said that it takes 38,000 ChatGPT
queries to use as much water as producing a single almond in
California. … The problem, experts say, is that it’s
impossible to verify those numbers given what’s public about
the secretive industry. … Regardless of whether it takes
thousands of queries to match the water needed to produce a
single almond in California (a number that varies substantially
over time and space, according to a 2019 study), the
Congressional Research Service says data centers are using more
water than they used to.
After years of debate over how much freshwater should be
allowed to flow to the sea through the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta, the State Water Resources Control Board has released a
final draft of its regulatory plan. … In the draft
plan, water right holders can choose from two pathways to
compliance. They can provide a minimum rate of water flow from
Sacramento River tributaries, or they can voluntarily invest in
habitat restoration projects with specific flow volumes in lieu
of sustaining a minimum flow rate. Some stakeholders say that
part of the plan hands regulatory authority over to the very
groups the board is supposed to regulate.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unlocked
approximately $6 million in reserves and is planning to spend a
portion of that money on evaluating the first phase of a
project to build a new treatment plant, separate from the
existing South Bay plant, to capture and treat Tijuana River
sewage flows. On Sept. 1, the board established the Tijuana
River Capture and Cleanup Initiative with three phases to build
a new treatment plant near the U.S.-Mexico border, at a
starting cost of $1.8 million to evaluate options including
past proposals. A county board letter about the initiative
does not include a total price estimate nor where that money
would come from or the treatment capacity for the plant and
where it would be built. However, the letter says the first
phase will consider a 2021 river diversion study by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
The State Water Resources Control Board has recommended a
danger advisory, its highest warning for toxic algae, at Lake
Pillsbury after sampling ahead of the Labor Day weekend found
toxin levels above the state’s danger threshold, Lake County
Health Services said in a notice. The reservoir sits behind
PG&E’s Scott Dam on the upper Eel River and is the largest
lake in the Mendocino National Forest. It has 31 miles of
shoreline, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The county
said State Water Board staff collected a water sample at Lake
Pillsbury Resort on Aug. 24 as part of a pre-holiday assessment
and found high concentrations of cyanobacteria, the microscopic
bacteria also called blue-green algae, and 23.84 micrograms per
liter of microcystins and nodularins, the toxins the bacteria
produce.
The Sierra Nevada Conservancy announced they have approved
nearly $1.5 million for new projects that will boost
sustainable recreation and tourism in the Sierra-Cascade from
Proposition 68. … According to the Sierra Nevada
Conservancy, the new recreation and tourism grants went to
projects in Alpine, Butte and Inyo counties. … Inyo
County received a $498,610 grant for its Owens River Water
Trail project, which will help create a 6.1-mile paddling route
for non-motorized watercraft and the addition of both a
durable, ADA-accessible, public access launch site and take-out
site on the Lower Owens River. The new facilities will be
located on land owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power but will be managed under a long-term lease by Inyo
County.
A new study finds health care costs associated dust blowing off
a shrinking Great Salt Lake could cost as much as $2 billion a
year. Lena Harris, an assistant professor at Texas A&M,
wrote the working paper with researchers from Arizona State
University and University of California Davis. She said they
did a “back of the envelope calculation” that found just
factoring PM 2.5 and PM10 blowing off the lakebed at scale
could lead to significant costs for emergency room visits and
years off Utahns’ lives. … The study also explored health
benefits of getting water into the lake, factoring in acquiring
agriculture water (spending as much as $1,000 an acre-foot).
For every additional acre-foot of water in the Great Salt Lake?
One model finds Utahns would get on average about $1,295 per
acre-foot in health benefits.
A massive spill of raw sewage and untreated
wastewater into the Arkansas River in southeastern
Colorado continues to wreak havoc on the region. Water in the
river downstream of the spill, east of Pueblo, is still testing
high for dangerous nasties like the bacteria E. coli.
… And all of this is happening during one of the most
agriculturally important times for the Lower Arkansas Valley,
as watermelon, cantaloupe, chile peppers and other crops are
harvested. … These new water quality challenges pile on
top of earlier 2026 farming obstacles in the valley. Much of
the Colorado-famous melon crop from the area was devastated in
early season hail storms.
The state Legislature this week approved $158.2 million to
protect the Delta and the State Water Project
infrastructure. The Legislature approved $90.2 million
to fortify the Delta’s aging levees, along
with up to $68 million to safeguard the State Water
Project’s California Aqueduct and canals. … The
budget funding is only about half of the $300 million
that was initially requested. Moreover, that
request was for $300 million annually, divided equally between
the Delta levees and the State Water Project infrastructure.
… Also included in Tuesday’s budget approval was $5
million to acquire Jersey Island in the Delta and repair its
levees.
As major changes hang over the shape of the region’s water
supply, a group of agricultural landowners in northern Sonoma
County is advancing the latest attempt to create a new
water district for the area. … The proposal
comes at a pivotal moment for water users throughout
the Russian River watershed. … Pacific Gas and
Electric Co. last year surrendered its license for the
[Potter Valley] project, saying it is outdated
and costly, leaving the utility, local governments and federal
regulators to re-envision the future of the Eel and
Russian River watersheds without the Scott and Cape Horn dams
in Lake and Mendocino County. For Alexander Valley’s
agricultural landowners, the proposed water district is an
attempt to gain more control over how the valley prepares for
that future.
The Colorado River is on the brink of collapse because of
climate change and overuse of water. Reservoirs supplying water
to tens of millions of people in the southwest reached record
lows this summer.The nation is racing to
refill them with conservation measures so they can
still generate hydropower and reliably deliver water to users
downstream. Fish are struggling. Rafters are having
trouble navigating low water. Despite all this, the seven
states sharing the water supply remain at a yearslong
impasse over how to conserve the river. “The Colorado
River is in as bad a shape as it’s ever been,” said Doug
Kenney, chairman of the Colorado River Research Group at CU
Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center.
The summer’s deluge of monsoon rain has eased demand on local
water supplies, but it won’t be enough to pull Utah out
of a drought or refill the state’s shrinking
reservoirs, state water officials warn. That’s because monsoon
storms often hit lower elevations and come in short, intense
bursts, said Laura Haskell, drought coordinator with the Utah
Division of Water Resources. Much of that water rushes over the
ground instead of flowing into the streams that feed Utah’s
reservoirs. … At the end of August, Utah’s
reservoirs were at 52% of their total capacity
statewide, according to the state water division.
That’s 15% below what’s typical for this time of year — and 18%
lower than where reservoirs stood at this time last year.
Our 42ⁿᵈ annual Water
Summit, an engaging day of discussions addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West, will
be held on Thursday, Oct. 29, in Sacramento with the theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western Water. Speakers and
conversations will highlight emerging topics related to the
challenges and opportunities facing management of the
West’s most precious natural resource. As previously
announced, the day will open with a keynote address from
Tom Gibson, the new director of California’s Department
of Water Resources. See more recently announced
speaker names
hereand find out how to register.
Since their introduction to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in
California in October 2024, golden mussels continue to be a
major concern for Lake Tahoe and other regional bodies of
water. … Senators and other lawmakers and leaders
addressed the threat multiple times at the 30th Tahoe Summit,
which recently took place at Sand Harbor State Park. In a
pull-aside at the summit with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto,
the Tribune inquired about federal action targeting golden
mussels. “Our fight right now is to stop the spread,”
Senator Cortez Masto said. “We have actually passed several
pieces of legislation because we see what’s happening.”
California lawmakers passed seven bills aimed at
increasing oversight of data centers in the final days
of the legislative session and sent the measures to Gov. Gavin
Newsom for consideration. Among the bills are proposals from
Bay Area Assemblymembers Diane Papan and Rebecca Bauer-Kahan
that would require greater disclosure of water and
energy use by data center operators. … Papan’s
legislation focuses on water use before and after a data center
begins operating. One bill would require developers to disclose
projected water use. “It requires data centers to inform
localities of how much water they’re going to use prior to
construction,” Papan said.
… The Trump administration is one step closer to repealing
the 2001 Roadless Rule and opening nearly 45 million acres of
national forests across the U.S. to possible development. …
Over 1 million people in the Intermountain region get water
directly from watersheds that include roadless areas, according
to the Forest Service. Water that flows through roadless areas
in the region also journeys downstream to larger waterways and
supports an additional 3.7 million people. … More road
construction and logging could increase sediment in creeks,
streams and rivers that run through the national forests and
degrade the water quality. Less trees in the forest after a
timber harvest could also lead to quicker snowmelt runoff in
the spring.
A new $27 million layer of technology at the city’s 32-year-old
southside water treatment plant will bring more efficient and
effective cleanup of PFAS compounds known as “forever
chemicals“ from that area’s long-polluted
aquifer, Tucson Water officials said. The newly installed
“ion exchange” treatment method will allow more
contaminated water to be treated every day, perhaps
twice as much, Tucson Water Director John Kmiec said. It will
allow the plant to treat water tainted with heavier
concentrations of PFAS compounds than are currently being
treated. … The construction was paid for mainly from a $25
million federal grant, distributed by the Arizona Department of
Environmental Quality, plus another $2 million from the city.
