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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A judge won’t back down — even temporarily — from his
ruling that state water officials acted illegally in changing
the rules for home builders. In a new order, Maricopa
County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney rejected claims by Bo
Dul, an attorney for the Department of Water Resources, that
the ruling against a policy to prevent new home construction in
areas without a 100-year water supply was
likely to be overturned on appeal. … The new order
most immediately affects efforts by developers to build homes
in some communities on the edge of the Phoenix
area. But there are broader implications going
forward. The order reaffirms Blaney’s conclusion that
DWR is not free to make what he considered to be a significant
change in the rules about where residential development can
occur without going through the legal process, one that
requires public hearings and other input.
Although California lawmakers recently passed a suite of laws
intended to bring transparency to the development of new data
centers, local communities across the state are signaling that
disclosure isn’t enough. California currently ranks
third among U.S. states in overall data center
density, according to independent trackers like the US
Data Center Map, with the state home to 366 of such
facilities that are either fully operational, under
construction, or moving through the planning process.
Local elected officials are proposing data center moratoriums
to slow that momentum — if not stop it in its tracks.
… Opponents say these energy-hungry facilities strain
power grids, potentially deplete water
supplies and pollute the air, and contribute to
broader economic anxieties around AI-driven job
elimination.
… An area of cooler low pressure — an extratropical cyclone —
is spinning out off the coast of the Golden State. … For
Sacramento and Fresno, it will be the first good rain — not a
trace amount — since late spring. … As the cyclone moves
over land Thursday, showers that were moving out of the south
will flip and begin crashing in out of the north, this time
with less energy and moisture to keep rainfall sustained for
long. … Further up the mountains, several inches
of snow are expected to begin stacking up across the Sierra
above 8,000 feet, with the highest amounts between 3 to 6
inches. As temperatures continue to cool into the
coming months, setups similar to this will become increasingly
common as cool air from the north mixes with warm air from the
south.
… [Starvation Reservoir] was one of the first
reservoirs the Bureau of Reclamation built for the
Central Utah Project — an expansive system of
dams, diversions, tunnels and pipelines that takes water from
eastern Utah’s Colorado River Basin to western
Utah’s Wasatch Front. Starvation keeps water in the Uintah
Basin, though, compensating for water lost to the
state’s biggest cities. Most of that water goes to
irrigate fields and some fills taps across Duchesne County.
… The Central Utah Project and other transbasin
diversions have helped the Wasatch Front boom. But
Colorado River tributaries were left with less water,
harming habitat for fish. And while some farmers
benefit from Starvation Reservoir and other storage projects,
some promised reservoirs were never built,
leaving other areas of the Uintah Basin, including the Uintah
and Ouray Reservation, without adequate water storage, ongoing
bitterness and legal fights.
Are you an emerging leader ready to make a greater impact on
California water policy and management? Applications are now
being accepted for the Water Education Foundation’s
2027
California Water Leaders cohort, with submissions
due Dec. 3. Interested in learning more? Join our
exeuctive director, Jenn Bowles, and other members of the
Foundation team for a virtual Q&A session at 12:30
p.m. on Nov. 10. We’ll provide an overview of the
program and share tips for submitting a strong application.
Sign up here for the virtual Q&A.
Some California leaders who have spent years spearheading
changes to the state’s landmark environmental
protection law either haven’t taken a position on or
are opposing Proposition 45, which would take even
bigger chunks out of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality
Act. … Prop 45 — backed by the California
Chamber of Commerce, local chambers around the state,
developers and affordable housing advocates — aims to
expedite development by imposing strict deadlines on certain
categories of infrastructure projects described as
“essential”: housing, water, clean
energy, healthcare, public safety, wildfire mitigation,
broadband internet access, education and transportation. Yet
some key CEQA reformers are concerned about its unintended
consequences.
The snowpack that refills Folsom Lake, Lake Oroville and Lake
Shasta each spring — the reservoirs that supply roughly
two thirds of California’s population with water —
could shrink by about 40% within 25 years. As
temperatures warm, more of Northern California’s water is set
to arrive as rain instead of snow, with water running
downstream instead of melting slowly into reservoirs as a
stable water supply. It is one of a dozen projections
in California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment, released
Monday. The report estimates the state will warm to around 4
degrees by the 2050s, that heat waves will last far longer,
that whiplash between drought and wet periods will be
more extreme, and that wildfire smoke will kill more
people in California than in any other state.
A potentially historic El Niño could bring some much-needed
benefits to California this winter, including increased
rainfall, improved reservoir levels, and a healthier mountain
snowpack after years of drought concerns.
… Forecasters predict much of California could see
above-average precipitation and temperatures this winter. It’s
unclear how the weather things will pan out this fall and
winter, but similar events in past El Niño years have brought
torrential downpours, coastal flooding, mudslides, power
outages, and giant waves. … “I’m not saying the
trade-off of having more rain outweighs the negative. But if we
are looking for some sort of positive reason for El Niño, we
can look towards the likelihood that we will see
higher-than-average seasonal rain, which, of
course, has been great,” KTLA meteorologist Henry DiCarlo said.
Endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout live and spawn in
habitats surrounded by human activity, such as the San
Francisco Bay area. During a recent storm, researchers found
high levels of the tire-derived pollutant 6PPD-quinone in
roadway outflows, creeks, and rivers. They report in ACS’
Environmental Science & Technology Letters that many samples
exceeded levels considered fatal to juvenile salmon. Treating
stormwater runoff and creating less toxic or non-toxic tire
materials could make healthier environments. … The
researchers collected water samples from six road outfalls, 14
creeks and rivers, and two estuaries around the San Francisco
Bay and the nearby coast in the peak of a rainstorm to provide
a snapshot of potential exposure. … The team found that
6PPD-quinone levels in 78% of the samples exceeded the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s value for the potential to
cause acute harm to aquatic organisms.
What does the Montecito Water District have to do with a
massive housing project proposed in North County? On September
29, the district voted to approve a nonbinding letter of intent
that would sell approximately 40 percent of its current state
water entitlement to Solstra Communities California, the group
aiming to build 4,000 homes on an expanse of rural land south
of Orcutt. The project, Solomon Hills, would build a new
community. … In a project description document submitted to
the County of Santa Barbara, Solomon Hills’ development team
says imported water will serve as the main domestic water
supply, including water from California’s state water project
and potentially the controversial Cadiz Water Project, which
seeks to extract groundwater from the Mojave Desert and pipe it
through a former oil pipeline. It also mentions a deal with the
Montecito Water District.
PG&E plans to start repairing a void at the base of Cape
Horn Dam by Nov. 20, according to a letter the utility filed
with federal dam-safety regulators Oct. 6. Cape Horn Dam holds
back Van Arsdale Reservoir on the Eel River in Mendocino
County. An intake 400 feet upstream of the dam sends Eel River
water into the Potter Valley Project’s tunnels. The water runs
to the Potter Valley powerhouse, which empties into the East
Fork of the Russian River. PG&E is obligated to deliver up
to 19,000 acre-feet of that water to the Potter Valley
Irrigation District, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission. The dam is also home to the Van Arsdale Fisheries
Station, where salmon and steelhead climb a fish ladder past
the dam.
California’s wet season is starting off with a bang. The first
significant storm of the season is forecast to bring heavy rain
to vulnerable burn scars near Big Sur, coastal tornado risk to
the Los Angeles area, and a half-foot of snow or more
to high-elevation areas in the Sierra. Wednesday is
expected to be the rainiest day along the coast, and
Thursday the snowiest in the
Sierra. … Ocean temperatures along the
California coast are up to 10 degrees above normal, which could
add heat and moisture to storms as they approach the
shore. With a historically strong El Niño in
place, downpours, waterspouts and tornadoes are more
likely along the coast this winter. … A winter
weather advisory is in effect for the central and
southern Sierra Nevada, where a half-foot of snow could fall
above 8,000 feet.
Arizona’s move to join Nevada’s lawsuit over the Trump
administration’s Colorado River cuts is inflaming tensions
among states and making it more likely the dispute will
end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. … Arizona
and Nevada both allege the Interior Department violated the
Administrative Procedure Act and the 1922 Colorado River
Compact. … If the case reaches the Supreme Court, the
justices would likely appoint a special master to administer
water allocations and river operations during the
litigation, [water law professor at the University of
Kansas School of Law Robin Kundis] Craig said. The court,
through the special master, would “have to provide some sort of
guidance on how to manage the river, especially with
regard to whether the Upper Basin has to take cuts, as well as
the Lower Basin,” she said.
California’s dairy industry sued a state regulatory agency this
week over a new order aimed at protecting Central Valley
communities from nitrate pollution caused by spreading
cow manure on local farmland. The suit filed Monday in
Tulare County Superior Court says the order adopted last month
violates state law by requiring expanding dairies to
abide by the new rules as soon as they are finalized
by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board,
which has five years to do so. Most existing dairies, by
comparison, will have 35 years to come into compliance
with the rules. Board staff have said that extended
timeframe was offered because the industry expressed concerns
the new rules are too burdensome financially to be instituted
immediately. The lawsuit against the State Water Resources
Control Board follows a decade-long discussion of how to
regulate dairies’ use of manure as a soil amendment.
A decade after Arizona rejected local farmers’ effort to rein
in agricultural development they feared would drain the San
Simon Valley’s groundwater supply, applications for
large-scale wells have surged, and the region’s
already strained aquifer is being depleted faster than it can
recover. Since farmers first petitioned the state
for groundwater protections in 2015, landowners or
companies tied to them have submitted 154 applications for
high-capacity wells in the southeastern
Arizona sub-basin. … Water officials estimate the
sub-basin is losing about 50,000 acre-feet more
groundwater than is naturally replenished each year.
… Now, local farmers are trying again to protect what’s left
of San Simon’s groundwater supply. In September, the Arizona
Department of Water Resources formally acknowledged
their petition for an Irrigation Non-Expansion
Area, or INA, opening the door to a permanent ban on
irrigating new farmland.
With California bracing for a wet winter, the state auditor
warns that nearly a third of local agencies maintaining
vital flood control levees in parts of the Central Valley have
been performing “unacceptable routine maintenance” —
some of them, for years. The audit says the state’s
Department of Water Resources “has not followed state law
requiring it to take over the maintenance of levees” when local
agencies fail to do so — and urged it to start. But state
water managers at the department pushed back, saying the audit
“portrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the
complexities of flood management” and draws too direct
a link between routine maintenance and flood
risk. Taking over maintenance can cost
tens of millions of dollars up front “that must be
weighed against other investments that may yield greater
risk-reduction benefits,” the department said in a letter
responding to the audit.
… [T]he long-awaited and contentious eminent domain case
between the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District and
California-American Water Company officially kicked off
yesterday, Monday, Oct. 19. The trial will determine whether
the district has the legal authority to take over Cal Am’s
water system. The private utility provides water to roughly
100,000 people with a network of more than 680 miles of
pipeline and over 100 storage tanks, regularly touted by Cal Am
as one of the most complex water systems in California. …
[T]he district is expected to point to its existing role in
managing public water supplies; the trial may even revisit
broader disagreements over water management, including Cal Am’s
proposed desalination plant and projections of future water
demand.
As ocean levels rise, waves crash farther inland and the coast
continues to crumble, Southern California is on track to lose
30 to 70% of its beaches over the next several decades. …
Those are just some of the dire findings in California’s Fifth
Climate Change Assessment, a state-commissioned report that
comes out every several years and details how climate change is
expected to affect everything from public health to animal
habitat to central touchstones of the California way of life.
… Climate change is not expected to change average
precipitation overall, but it will become even more skewed and
sporadic, so wet and dry years both will become more frequent
in California, and droughts will last longer. The increased
heat means the state will lose about 40% of its snowpack by
mid-century, an important water source from the Sierra Nevada
on which Southern California relies.
Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s massive data center project
in northern Utah has refiled an application for water, the Utah
Division of Water Rights confirmed to FOX 13 News. The
application was filed on Oct. 15, seeking 1,712 acre-feet of
water a year on the property purchased in Box Elder County. It
will be reviewed, and the Utah State Engineer will determine if
it can be granted the water based upon state statute.
… The last time the Stratos Project, as it’s known,
sought a water rights application, the state engineer was
besieged with formal protests. Hundreds were lodged before the
water rights application was withdrawn. Environmental and
community groups opposed to the data center project are
expected to lodge more formal protests again.
The land in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is
sinking rapidly. And in the process, it’s releasing a lot of
climate-warming carbon dioxide. … Starting in the 1800s,
levees were installed and much of the land was drained to
create islands where farmers could grow crops such as
corn. “When you take water off of peat soils, processes in
the soil cause it to release carbon dioxide, which is a
greenhouse gas, and makes the land subside or sink,” [says
Sydney Chamberlin of the Nature Conservancy.] But she says
rewetting the land can help slow that process.
So the Nature Conservancy has purchased one of the islands in
the Delta and turned thousands of acres of it into rice
paddies, which are flooded part of the year. And
they’re restoring other parts of the island back into wetlands.
