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 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.
… A controversial plan that dramatically changes how the
state governs the pumping of water out of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta — the heart
of the state water system — was adopted by California
regulators late Thursday after two days of debate involving
more than 200 people. The plan adopted by the five-member State
Water Resources Control Board breaks from the
traditional approach of requiring all water agencies to limit
pumping to maintain required minimum levels of water
in rivers and the estuary. Instead, it allows
agencies the option of negotiated deals in
which they commit to ensuring certain river flows for the
environment and contribute funds for projects that restore
habitat for fish in the Delta.
The edges of the San Francisco Bay are flooding this week. …
And it’s just the beginning. “We have not seen the worst
coastal flooding this year that we’re likely to see later,”
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UC Agriculture and
Natural Resources, said. “This is probably, unfortunately for
those who are dealing with it, just a preview of what
is to come.” The National Weather Service extended a
moderate coastal flood advisory through Saturday for
nearly 2 feet of flooding in low-lying spots throughout the Bay
Area and Central Coast. Several factors are
driving the extra-high water, including the influence of the
full moon earlier this week and warming water caused by
El Niño expanding and pushing local and sea levels up.
Some of the state’s most powerful and influential people
huddled around tables in a conference room on Utah’s Capitol
Hill for a “war games” exercise over the Colorado
River. … Thursday’s tabletop exercise put
political leaders, experts, advocates and others in a room for
hours, working through scenarios for getting more water
into the Colorado River Basin in Utah. While the
Colorado River’s issues are multi-state, Thursday’s exercise
kept it focused on Utah. … Congresswoman Celeste Maloy,
whose congressional district includes the Colorado River, said
the war games exercise considered a whole gamut of ideas like
piping water into Utah, desalination exchanges with
other states, expanded conservation measures and water
re-use. She said it can have real-world policy
implications.
California voters considering Proposition 45 will decide the
fate of a sweeping infrastructure measure that opponents warn
could render the state’s brand-new data center laws
virtually toothless. … [S]ome legal scholars and
environmental advocates say that the proposition’s
technical language creates a loophole. By expediting
environmental reviews under the California Environmental
Quality Act for broad categories of projects … the measure
could quietly allow data centers to bypass recent state
safeguards and local scrutiny. … The debate
over Prop. 45’s data center impact comes at a pivotal moment in
California’s AI infrastructure boom. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently
signed seven landmark data center laws aimed at forcing
operators to disclose water usage, pay for their own
grid upgrades, and undergo environmental review.
A Clark County judge is considering whether water managers must
halt their enforcement of a 2021 law requiring the
removal of grass that they have deemed
“nonfunctional.” Judge Anna Albertson will decide,
too, if she will certify the lawsuit as a class action. …
Though attorneys argued two motions in court on Wednesday and
Thursday, the judge has yet to make a ruling. … The law
takes effect at the beginning of next year,
and the Las Vegas Valley Water District — one of the water
authority’s member agencies — has floated water
use fines for those who violate the law and continue to
water nonfunctional turf. … Outdoor landscaping
irrigation, water managers say, is the single largest
use of water from Lake Mead that cannot be captured and
recycled through Southern Nevada’s wastewater
capture and treatment systems.
San Joaquin County lawmakers are urging state and federal
officials to expand research and prevention efforts to
combat invasive golden mussels threatening the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and the region’s waterways. During a
discussion Monday at Hilton Stockton with water managers and
other stakeholders, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, D-Tracy,
and U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy, discussed state and federal
legislation aimed at addressing the infestation and the need to
identify effective solutions. … Both lawmakers
emphasized the need to share findings from research into
potential solutions. Harder said a centralized system
for collecting research findings could help agencies avoid
duplicating work and identify effective strategies. He
said developing a coordinated research plan involving
UC Davis is a priority for his proposed federal
legislation.
Utah’s run of moisture over the past three and a half months
continues to chip away at its drought. Over 90% of the
state remains in drought, but the percentage in severe
or worse drought slid from 62% to 51% over the past week, the
U.S. Drought Monitor reported on Thursday. Only 13.5%
remains in extreme drought. The ongoing reduction
comes as Utah’s mountain snowpack sites have, on
average, now collected more than 12 inches of precipitation
since July 15. … Higher soil moisture levels
can improve snowpack runoff efficiency in the spring, and
snowpack accounts for 95% of the state’s water
supply. … As for drought conditions, nearly 95%
of the state was in severe or worse drought by mid-July,
including almost 40% in extreme or exceptional drought. … So
why has it taken so long to chip away at drought conditions
with all this rain? The answer is both simple and incredibly
complex, the authors of the U.S. Drought Monitor explained, as
they pulled back their virtual curtain to explain
exactly how drought is calculated.
Five alternative designs could reconnect the Klamath River and
Lower Klamath refuge, restoring water flows and improving
habitat for birds and fish. A project to reconnect the Klamath
River to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge has
completed its first design phase. The partners presented the
concept at a public meeting at Oregon Tech on Tuesday night.
“There’s been enough engineering, modeling, and ingenuity to
help us understand that this is a possibility, and we can move
forward,” said DJ Bandrowski, civil engineer and program
manager at the Yurok Tribe. The Lower Klamath Lake Reconnection
Project would allow water to ebb and flow between the river and
the refuge, emulating how the ecosystem functioned before it
was altered for agriculture. Partners say restoring the
connection would provide reliable habitat for thousands of
migratory birds.
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office is seeking
records from the Mexican government to determine whether
Tijuana-based industrial businesses might be contributing to
cross-border pollution, officials said Thursday. While billions
of gallons of sewage flow into the county via the Tijuana River
on an annual basis, jeopardizing the health of South Bay
residents, the D.A.’s Office cited a recent report from
nonprofit environmental organization San Diego Coastkeeper that
found industrial pollutants were also present in the water.
Among the chemicals detected were volatile and semi-volatile
compounds such as heavy metals, pesticides, PFAs, acetone,
phenols and benzoic acid. Coastkeeper’s report, the 2025
Tijuana River Valley Water Quality Report, stated that the
findings pointed to pollutants coming from Tijuana factories
known as maquiladoras.
Fresno Irrigation District growers can get help with up to 80%
of their costs for projects that improve groundwater
conservation and irrigation efficiency through a program run by
the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service and Bureau
of Reclamation. The fund helps pay for projects such as drip
irrigation or adding soil moisture sensors on farms. It also
pays water districts for large-scale work such as new recharge
basins. Applications are open until Nov. 6. Though
applications go directly to the federal agencies, Fresno
Irrigation District growers have a slight edge as the district
received a “priority area” designation four years ago,
according to Kassy Chauhan, special projects manager for the
district. That designation reduces the competition pool to
just other growers and districts within their geographic area,
she explained.
Seven western states, including Oregon, have lost more than
one-third of their glacial cover since 1950 and more than 300
glaciers in those states have disappeared entirely as the earth
has rapidly warmed, a first-of-its-kind inventory and analysis
confirms. Researchers at Portland State University and the
U.S. Geological Survey built their findings on
an earlier analysis that looked at the lost area and
volume among 612 federally recognized glaciers in California,
Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming since
1950. … The total glacier area in the West has shrunk by
35%, and volume has shrunk by 33%. The lost volume, if averaged
across all remaining glaciers, would be equivalent to each of
them dropping by 38 feet. … Snowpack in the
Northwest and in the Cascade Range, which acts as a reservoir
during the summer months when there’s little rain and many
communities rely on snowmelt, is sitting at some of the lowest
levels since record-keeping began in 1985.
People and agencies facing the effects of proposed changes to
a major California water plan spoke in waves
Wednesday, making their cases to the state’s water board. The
State Water Resources Control Board is proposing amendments to
the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water
quality control plan. The plan sets water quality goals
for the Bay-Delta, a massive watershed that provides drinking
and municipal water to some 30 million people, along with
irrigation water for 4 million acres. The law requires
periodic updates to the plan, leading to a multiyear process
that culminated in a two- to three-day meeting that began
Wednesday. The water board did not vote on the proposed
changes that day.
Leaders from three tribes in northeastern Arizona urged
Congress on Wednesday to pass legislation settling their water
rights, saying the agreement would ensure their access
to the vital resource and provide greater certainty for water
users across the Colorado River basin. The
legislation, known as the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water
Rights Settlement Act, was the focus of a panel discussion. …
It featured leaders from the Hopi Tribe, San Juan Southern
Paiute Tribe and Navajo Nation. A settlement would resolve the
tribes’ outstanding water claims, fund a pipeline from
Lake Powell to deliver water and create trust funds for the
three tribes. It would also establish a reservation
for the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe and allow the Navajo
Nation and Hopi Tribe to lease their Upper Basin
Colorado River water to other Arizona users — a
provision that Upper Basin states oppose.
San Diego has unveiled its long-awaited plan to prevent
a major flood at Lake Hodges Dam: spend $30 million to $50
million to structurally shrink the unsound dam by
lowering its spillway from 315 feet to 280 feet. The proposed
project, which will take an estimated seven years to complete,
is unpopular with civic groups near the 108-year-old
dam, who prefer a higher water level for recreational
and wildfire-prevention reasons. City officials say
the seven-year project is considered an “interim solution” and
that they are still pursuing a nearby replacement dam
that might start being built shortly after the existing dam’s
spillway is lowered. Civic groups, including Friends
of Lake Hodges, are questioning the financial sensibility of
pursuing the interim spillway-lowering project when a long-term
solution might be built so quickly afterward.
… A historically strong El Niño is poised
to raise water levels higher than ever [in San
Rafael]. … It’s a particular concern for San
Rafael’s Canal District, where nearly one-fifth of city
residents are already living largely below sea
level. City officials are warning that muddied
seawater could fill neighborhood streets and take hours or even
days to recede. Since the only two evacuation routes
are at risk of flooding, emergency responders would have to
rescue stranded residents by boat. … Earlier
this month, the city declared a local state of emergency. It
set aside $500,000 in city funds and secured $3 million from
the county for flood preparedness and
response. These funds will go toward more water
pumps and community outreach, but it may not be enough.
Buried in the language of Proposition 45, the initiative that
would overhaul California’s powerful law on environmental
review, are provisions that would mean government
agencies have to consult only with certain tribes in the
state, and not others when they develop major
projects. … Proposition 45 on the Nov. 3 California ballot
would create a streamlined environmental review process
for projects deemed “essential” — including most
housing, transportation, water, health,
wildfire mitigation, education, internet access and clean
energy projects. The streamlining would mean stricter deadlines
for review and court challenges, would bar local governments
from requesting repeated analyses and allow developers to
propose a single alternative with less environmental impact
rather than several.
Days after historic flooding swept through southwestern
Colorado, the scope of the destruction is still coming into
focus. Emergency responders shared early statistics at an
Archuleta County community meeting Tuesday. Transportation
officials are requesting millions of dollars in federal aid. As
new information comes to light, it offers a glimpse into the
devastating impacts of the floods. But these facts and
figures are changing quickly, and they don’t fully capture the
losses, strain and sense of community caused by the flooding.
… From staggering rainfall totals to the hours county
crews have spent repairing roads so far, and the millions of
dollars requested to rebuild state roads, here’s a look at the
flooding and its aftermath, by the numbers.
City of San Diego water customers will see changes to their
bills starting in January, when a new billing structure for
single-family homes takes effect alongside a previously
approved water rate increase. The changes stem from a lawsuit
filed in 2015 challenging the city’s tiered water pricing
system. Under the new structure, customers who use less water
are expected to see their monthly bills increase, while those
who use more water could pay less. The city estimates the
average monthly bill for a low-use customer in a single-family
home will increase by about $6, while the bill for a high-use
customer is expected to decrease by $20. The San Diego
City Council voted 6-2 on Tuesday to approve the modified water
rate structure. City leaders said they disagreed with the
court’s decision but were legally required to comply.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday advanced a
$2.5 million project meant to reduce toxic air pollution at
Saturn Boulevard, the South County hot spot where cascading
Tijuana River flows release hydrogen sulfide into nearby
neighborhoods. The board voted to adopt a memorandum of
agreement with the city of San Diego, authorizing the county to
advertise and award a construction contract. At the crossing,
in the Nestor area near Imperial Beach, polluted river water
flows during dry weather through two to three culvert pipes and
spills into a downstream pond. … The project will attach
high-density polyethylene pipe to two of the existing culverts.
The extensions will run about 40 to 60 feet into the pond so
the flow discharges below the water’s surface. The report says
the extensions are designed so they will not raise flood
levels.
This year’s salmon count is expected to be the best we’ve seen
in years, and a significant event is planned in Roseville to
celebrate the arrival of this year’s fish after their long and
treacherous journey to our local waterways. A significant event
is being organized in the Roseville area for the salmon
arrival: the Dry Creek Conservancy and Placer Group-Sierra Club
announced the first-ever Salmon Homecoming event in
anticipation of the especially strong salmon run this year.
… Sean O’Brien, Director of Dry Creek Conservancy said
this year’s salmon run is looking good. “During our 2025 salmon
survey, volunteers counted 254 King/Chinook salmon, our best
count in 11 years,” said O’Brien.
