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 headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
California’s biggest water districts presented their own
framework Tuesday for how to share the Colorado River’s
dwindling water supply, including a commitment to conserve
440,000 acre-feet of water per year – enough to meet the needs
of 1.5 million households annually. Last month, the seven
western states that rely on the Colorado River missed a
federally-imposed deadline to submit a preliminary agreement
for a plan to replace the river’s operating guidelines set to
expire at the end of 2026. Those negotiations continued Tuesday
during the annual Colorado River Water Users Association’s
conference in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. … California
is projected to cap water use at 3.76 million acre-feet in 2025
– the lowest annual use since 1949.
The board of California’s largest agricultural water district
approved a master plan Tuesday to convert over a quarter of the
land in its service area into solar farms, a sign that Central
Valley growers are looking for new business as their water
sources dry up. The board of the Westlands Water District
approved the plan to develop 136,000 acres on the west side of
the Central Valley into solar farms, complete with new
transmission lines and substations at a Tuesday morning meeting
in Fresno. The new master plan, called the Valley Clean
Infrastructure Plan, would allow for the development of up to
20 gigawatts of new solar farms, which taken together would be
the largest solar installation in the world.
If Mexicali farmers can’t cut a deal with Mexican President
Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, the city of Tijuana’s at
risk of losing its water supply from the Colorado River.
For generations, these farmers – known as Irrigation District
14 – sold river water the Mexican government ceded to them for
agricultural production to coastal cities like Tijuana and
Ensenada. The Colorado River flows through Mexicali, but
because of this deal, it’s diverted over 100 miles the coast
via an aqueduct. But Mexico’s president has taken a hard
stance on how the country’s constitution defines ownership of
water: It belongs to the nation and cannot be privatized.
… How did entire communities find themselves in the midst of
raging fires without enough water on hand to fight them? The
answers have exposed the weaknesses of Los Angeles’ water
systems and prompted widespread calls to redesign Southern
California’s water infrastructure. Water managers and experts
said the water systems in Pacific Palisades and Altadena were
never designed for wildfires that rage through entire
neighborhoods, or for infernos intensified by climate change.
In fact, their design effectively guaranteed that hydrants
would lose pressure and fail during a giant fire. … So
far, however, local officials in Los Angeles and L.A. County
appear to have taken few, if any, concrete steps toward major
changes.
As Tijuana River sewage has contaminated neighborhoods in
southern San Diego County, the federal government has pledged
two-thirds of a billion to clean it up. Now local
lawmakers are calling on California to step up the fight
against cross-border pollution, and one introduced a bill this
week to revisit air quality standards for noxious gas from the
river. … The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
on Monday announced a new agreement with Mexico to plan for
wastewater infrastructure to accommodate future population
growth in Tijuana. On Wednesday State Sen. Steve Padilla
introduced a bill to update state standards for hydrogen
sulfide, a noxious gas with a rotten egg smell that’s produced
by sewage in the river.
United States Representatives John Garamendi and Mike Thompson,
alongside five other California congressional representatives,
penned a letter to Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation Scott Cameron, blasting his plan to siphon
additional water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
… The letter, penned in response to the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation’s Dec. 2 Notice of Decision on Executive Order
14181, argues that the delta is too ecologically,
agriculturally and municipally important to convey for other
purposes. The delta is the hub for California’s water
supply, providing fresh water to approximately 30 million
Californians and six million acres of farmland,” the letter
reads.
Senate Democrats rebuked EPA on Wednesday for the sluggish pace
of loan closings under a popular water financing program,
accusing the Trump administration of putting up “red tape.” In
a letter to Administrator Lee Zeldin, the lawmakers said the
slowdown affecting the Water Infrastructure Finance and
Innovation Act (WIFIA) program is stunting water projects in
California, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska and other states. Led
by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) … “Our states and
municipalities rely on WIFIA loans to finance large-scale
projects to provide clean water to our constituents, and it is
imperative that EPA use the resources Congress has provided to
address the significant need for water infrastructure
improvements,” the lawmakers wrote.
California has reached a major milestone in understanding the
condition of its wastewater systems with the completion of
Phase 1 of the statewide Wastewater Needs Assessment (WWNA).
Led by UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation and partners, the
effort established a first-ever comprehensive baseline
evaluation of wastewater infrastructure performance, risks, and
unmet needs—creating a foundation for more equitable sanitation
policy and investment across the state. The WWNA was
conceived to help answer a simple yet critical question: how
well are California’s thousands of wastewater systems serving
people and communities, especially disadvantaged and
underserved areas?
A record 2,150 king salmon (or Chinook salmon) returned to
spawn in Putah Creek this fall. Timely water releases, habitat
creation and regional collaboration among various public and
private organizations are being credited with the successful
run. Putah Creek, which runs along the border of Yolo and
Solano Counties near Sacramento has historically supported a
small, but vital salmon population. Estimates in 2016 put the
salmon return at 1,700, but this year’s record-breaking number
is the result of a precise, individual count conducted by
biologists with UC Davis at the department of wildlife, fish
and conservation biology.
Colorado took a major step last week to protect
wetlands and streams by finalizing rules for a
new state-run permitting program. The new ‘dredge-and-fill’
rules address a gap by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sackett
decision two years ago, which drastically shrunk the number of
waterways eligible for federal protections. The ruling left
millions of acres of wetlands and miles of streams nationwide
vulnerable to pollution. Under the new rules, businesses or
landowners must obtain a state permit to dig ditches or fill
wetlands that no longer qualify for federal protection.
… New Mexico passed similar legislation this year and
its environment department expects to hold a rulemaking hearing
next summer.
More than 15 months after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a trio of
bills to bring clean drinking water to homes in East Orosi,
residents are still waiting for the project to break ground.
The 950 residents of the tiny northern Tulare County community
got a bit of good news last month when the Tulare County Board
of Supervisors voted to hire a contractor, West Valley
Construction Company, to build the $13.5 million water system
more than a decade in the making. But construction won’t
start until the state Water Resources Control Board first
issues a Notice to Proceed.
Valley groundwater agencies are continuing their push for
landowners to register wells, some by holding workshops and
others by extending deadlines. Landowners in the
Mid-Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) can get help
registering wells at two workshops on Friday, Dec. 19 and
Friday, Jan. 16 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. … The board of
directors of the North Kings GSA in northeast Fresno County,
recently voted to extend the deadline to register wells to Jan.
30. Nearly 6,000 wells were registered by the original
Nov. 30 deadline and the new grace period will allow well
owners to register without penalty. Approximately 1,000 more
wells need to be registered.
Three people have put their hats in the ring for a Kern County
Water Agency board seat that was left vacant when that board
member was hired as the agency’s General Manager. Tamara
Johnson, Director of California Water Service’s southern
region; Greg Wegis, longtime farmer and farm manager; and Mark
Mulkay, retired General Manager of the Kern Delta Water
District, all submitted letters of interest for the seat. The
board is expected to select the new board member at its meeting
on Wednesday.
Surging use of AI has led to a frenzy of construction activity
to build new data centres, particularly in the U.S. Estimates
put the total number of these facilities in operation worldwide
this year at 6,111, with upwards of 2,000 more set to come
online by 2030. There has been a lot of focus on the
implications for power grids, but less on the toll this
unbridled growth will take on a commodity that is in even
shorter supply: fresh water. … Periods of prolonged
drought, an over-allocation of water supplies from the
Colorado River, as well as dwindling
groundwater resources make Phoenix a “severely water-stressed
region”, according to the Ceres report. If all the data centres
now planned come online, the city will experience a 32%
increase in annual water stress.
… [M]etal concentrations in Colorado are increasing over time
as warming summer temperatures thaw previously frozen sites
containing acid-forming bedrock. This result is alarming from
an ecological perspective. If metal concentrations climb too
high, they can kill aquatic species, as evidenced by one
mountain lake that washed up hundreds of dead fish this
summer. But, these increased concentrations may also
present an opportunity. That’s according to Baolin Deng and Pan
Ni, two distinguished researchers at the University of
Missouri’s Missouri Water Center, who are now working to unlock
an efficient process capable of extracting rare earths from
acid rock drainage.
Western states are brawling over the future of the Colorado
River — with President Donald Trump looming in the background.
Talks kicking off Tuesday in Las Vegas will help determine
whether the Trump administration has to step in and take the
political heat of deciding how to divide the shrinking river’s
water supplies among powerful industries and more than 40
million people — a fight that includes the swing states of
Arizona and Nevada, politically influential farmers and
ranchers, and burgeoning semiconductor and artificial
intelligence companies. It’s the highest-stakes water
fight the U.S. has seen in more than a century.
After nearly four weeks without rain, Californians are finally
seeing precipitation return to the forecast. The wet pattern
arriving this week comes in pieces, and the Bay Area should see
significant rain from the final storm, while temperatures will
remain cool. … Unfortunately, neither of the first two
storm systems will provide much relief for the
snow-starved Sierra Nevada. Snow levels for
both systems will remain high, hovering near 8,000 feet,
meaning precipitation will fall as rain at most Sierra ski
resorts. Only the highest elevations are likely to see light
snowfall.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The United States and Mexico have signed a new binational
agreement known as Minute 333, establishing a detailed plan to
address the toxic sewage crisis that has polluted the
Tijuana River Valley and repeatedly closed
beaches in Imperial Beach and Coronado. … Under Minute 333,
Mexico will, by December 2028, build the Tecolote-La Gloria
Wastewater Treatment Plan, which will be able to process 3
million gallons per day. Mexico will also construct a new
sediment basin in Matadero Canyon — near Smuggler’s Gulch along
the border — before the 2026-27 rainy season to capture
polluted runoff. In addition, Mexico will develop a Tijuana
Water Infrastructure Master Plan within six months.
As firefighters battled catastrophic fires in Los Angeles last
January, one question reverberated across the country: Where
was the water? … A team of researchers, led by
Gregory Pierce, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, set
out to uncover whether the intense focus on water supply meant
that dry hydrants had uniquely hampered the Palisades
firefight, or whether this was a common occurrence. In a
policy brief published Monday, the researchers used media
reports to confirm that when fires burn urban areas, hydrant
flows often sputter out — the result of lost pressure as burnt
homes hemorrhage water and too many hoses simultaneously draw
on a limited supply.
The rusty observation tower at the edge of this wastewater-fed
marsh offers an osprey-eye view of two possible futures for the
parched and overworked Colorado River. To one side, the marsh
spreads across more than 20 square miles of pools and islands
choked with cattails and phragmites. … On the
tower’s other side, boundless flats of sand and cracked mud
spread to the horizon across what was, prior to the river’s
damming a century ago, one of Earth’s great green estuaries.
… The challenges are tremendous all along the Southwest’s
most critical river, one that supplies water to 40 million
people and feeds millions more. But here on the delta and
across the mountains and deserts and wetlands from source to
sea, people who refuse to watch the Colorado die are
prioritizing its care and nursing it back to health.
