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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In January, when crews fighting the fast-spreading Palisades
fire were hampered by low water pressure and dry hydrants, Gov.
Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation. After a 10-month review,
California officials concluded in a report that the water
supply in Southern California was “robust” at the time of the
fire and that the water system isn’t designed to handle
such large, intense wildfires. The state’s findings,
released Thursday, also address an issue that has been a point
of frustration and anger among residents in Pacific Palisades:
the fact that Santa Ynez Reservoir, which can hold 117 million
gallons of drinking water, was empty for repairs at the time of
the fire.
About 30 ranchers and residents sat quietly in the Cuyama
Valley Family Resource Center recently, hanging on every word
from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Highberger
as he succinctly laid out the history, the status and the
substantial stakes of an ongoing groundwater
adjudication started by mega carrot farming companies
Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms in
2022. … Highberger has already determined the safe
yield for the Cuyama basin, which is the amount that can be
pumped without causing problems such as land sinking or
groundwater levels continuing to drop. … Current pumping is
between 42,000 and 44,000 acre feet per year, or more than
double what can be extracted without putting the basin into
overdraft. Highberger must now determine which pumpers will be
allotted how much of that 20,370-acre-foot pie.
A yearslong effort to purchase two of the most powerful water
rights on the Colorado River has cleared another hurdle after
the state water board agreed to manage the rights alongside
Western Slope water officials. The Colorado Water Conservation
Board voted unanimously Wednesday night to accept the two water
rights tied to the Shoshone Power Plant into its environmental
flow program. The approval is a critical piece in the Colorado
River District’s $99 million deal with the owner of the aging
plant in Glenwood Canyon — Xcel Energy — but the deal has faced
pushback from Front Range water providers that fear the change
could impact their supplies.
When it rains, it pours, and that’s a good thing when it comes
to water supply levels in California, especially in Southern
California. Statewide, reservoir storage is now about 114% of
the historical average, marking a significant improvement in
water availability. … The improved storage arrives just
as drought conditions across California continue to diminish. A
newly released drought map shows more than 70% of the state is
now free from any drought designation. That’s a dramatic shift
from August, when nearly three-quarters of the state was
experiencing drought – including a small area categorized in
the most severe level.
After an atmospheric river dumped heavy rain and strong winds
on parts of Southern California earlier this month, more
weather woes were on the way to the region on Nov. 21 with
forecasters warning of additional rain and flash flooding. Two
back-to-back low pressure systems are set to impact Southern
California and the Desert Southwest on Nov. 21 and 22, the
National Weather Service said. … The second system will
come right on the heels of the first, keeping most of the heavy
rain over Mexico but creeping up into Arizona and New Mexico by
the end of the weekend, the weather service said.
Utahns hoping for clarity on the government’s next move to keep
the Colorado River from drying up and still supply plenty of
water to the state will have to wait. Utah and six other states
along the parched river haven’t reached a deal on how they’ll
share the water supply a year from now, but they agree enough
to keep talking. That progress means they don’t have to turn
the job over to the federal government yet, Utah’s negotiator
said Wednesday. … The federal government set a Nov. 11
deadline for a broad agreement, but gave the states approval to
keep talking as they work toward a February cutoff to reach a
firm deal, [Utah Colorado River Commissioner Gene] Shawcroft
told reporters in a brief conference call.
Power plants. Sewage treatment facilities. Fossil fuel ports.
Radioactively contaminated sites. These are just a few of the
249 hazardous sites across the Bay Area that could flood as
seas rise in the coming decades in the worst-case scenario,
according to a new report published Thursday in the journal
Nature Communications. The researchers project that 5,500
hazardous sites across the nation could be at risk of coastal
flooding by the end of the century. Around two-thirds of these
facilities are at risk of coastal flooding within the next 25
years, during 100-year flood events.
Arizona will provide taxpayer money to help private companies
develop plans for at least two and possibly three desalination
plants in California or Mexico under proposals approved by a
state agency’s board. The three projects are among seven that
the board of the Water Infrastructure Finance Agency decided to
move ahead on developing new water supplies for Arizona.
… [A]gency officials and board members stressed that the
water garnered from the augmentation projects is not expected
to compensate for all the cuts the state’s cities and farms
will have to take in CAP and other Colorado River-based water
deliveries.
The California Department of Water Resources announced on
Thursday that they will be hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony
for the Big Notch Project at the Fremont Weir. This project
aims to aid in the recovery of endangered fish species and is
one of the largest salmon-rearing habitat projects in the
state’s history. … The gated passages will open
seasonally when the Sacramento River’s water levels are high
enough to utilize the Yolo Bypass as a floodplain. This will
allow water to enter through the notch at Fremont Weir,
creating a shallow water floodplain for fish migration and
providing a food-rich habitat for juvenile salmon.
… [T]he San Francisco Estuary Institute and Estuary
Partnership have just released a detailed report card, called
the State of our Estuary. … On the positive side are the
years of restoration work. Nearly 60,000 acres of Tidal marsh
now surround the Bay shoreline, benefiting several key species
of shore birds. Conditions at most Bay beaches also boasted
positive water quality. … But traveling inland to the
Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, the report points to man-made
changes having the opposite effect. … [F]reshwater flow
through the Delta has been cut nearly in half. This is mainly
the result of deliberate diversions for farming, drinking water
and other human uses.
Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to
lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean
Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across
the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states
face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s
proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run
when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the
desert Southwest. The EPA proposed Monday a reduced scope of
federal jurisdiction over waterways and wetlands as waters of
the US, or WOTUS. The proposal appeared in the Federal Register
pre-publication notices Wednesday and is open for public
comment for 45 days.
… Today, the Rio Grande-Bravo water basin is in crisis.
Research published Thursday says the situation arguably is
worse than challenges facing the Colorado
River, another vital lifeline for western U.S. states
that have yet to chart a course for how best to manage that
dwindling resource. Without rapid and large-scale action on
both sides of the border, the researchers warn that
unsustainable use threatens water security for millions of
people who rely on the binational basin. They say more
prevalent drying along the Rio Grande and persistent
shortages could have catastrophic consequences for farmers,
cities and ecosystems.
… EBRPD [East Bay Regional Park District] changed its boat
inspection and banding policies back in May to help protect its
waterways from the golden mussel, instituting new color-coded,
lake-specific, tamper-proof bands and no longer accepting
EBMUD’s [East Bay Municipal Utility District] bands. Boats
without a band for that specific waterbody had to go through a
full inspection and pay a fee, each time. … The change
seems to have largely worked, with an asterisk in Antioch. …
[T]he critter was found in Contra Loma Reservoir, so boats that
have been in that lake must stick there only or complete a
30-day quarantine. Meanwhile, a half-inch-long juvenile
golden mussel was recovered at Zone 7’s Patterson Pass Water
Treatment Plant this year.
In a momentous decision for the Western Slope, state water
officials unanimously approved a controversial proposal to use
two coveted Colorado River water rights to help the river
itself. Members of the Colorado Water Conservation Board
voted to accept water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant into
its Instream Flow Program, which aims to keep water in streams
to help the environment. The decision Wednesday is a historic
step forward in western Colorado’s yearslong effort to secure
the $99 million rights permanently. But some Front Range water
providers pushed back during the hearings, worried that the
deal could hamper their ability to manage the water supply for
millions of Colorado customers.
… The Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona drew
17 proposals for public-private partnerships and advanced four
of them at a Nov. 19 board meeting. They include schemes to
build desalination plants on the California
coast or in the Gulf of California, to produce water
that can be traded for shares of Colorado River water.
… Several people, including representatives of the
Sierra Club and the Chemehuevi Tribe, viewed the board’s
meeting remotely and delivered pleas that the state not finance
a plan to tap groundwater under the Mojave
Desert in California. … WIFA board members said they
had rejected it as part of Arizona’s solution.
After a brief reprieve from storms, another rainmaker is set to
hit California on Thursday and soak parts of the state that
have already set November precipitation records.
… Rainfall is generally expected to remain below a
quarter of an inch in the Bay Area, but locally higher totals
are possible, especially if showers are stronger than
forecast. Showers are expected to reach Southern
California by Thursday afternoon and stick around through
Friday. … The system, once again, won’t bring
much snow to the Sierra Nevada. The bulk of the
precipitation is expected to remain along the coast, but any
moisture that does reach the Sierra will probably fall as rain
rather than snow below 7,000 feet.
Other weather and water supply news around the West:
As we wrap up our year at the Water Education Foundation,
we are busy looking ahead to our 2026 slate of
engaging tours, workshops and conferences on key water
topics in California and across the West.
And don’t miss the return of our Lower Colorado River
Tour March 11-13, on which we take you from Hoover
Dam to the U.S.-Mexico border and through the Imperial and
Coachella valleys. Registration opens Dec. 10.
Plus, Giving Tuesday is right after
Thanksgiving and a national day to support nonprofits. You can
support water education across California and the West on Dec.
2 or anytime by donating
here!
… Known as the Nestor Tract, all 105 acres or so were once
prime habitat for species native to the Central Valley,
including giant garter snakes, and relatively abundant in the
Natomas Basin. This is, historically, a flood-prone swath of
wetlands along the Sacramento River, running from the southern
rice fields of Sutter County down to the north of Sacramento.
… That balance, made possible by greater levees and flood
protections, has existed for more than 20 years, as bartered by
Sacramento and Sutter County, and orchestrated by The Natomas
Basin Conservancy. But proposals from Sacramento County now
threaten to upend that arrangement, leaving the capital city,
Sutter County and dwindling species like the giant garter snake
with uncertain fates.
President Donald Trump’s administration moved Wednesday to roll
back protections for imperiled species and the places they
live, reviving a suite of changes to Endangered Species
Act regulations from the Republican’s first term that
were blocked under former Democratic President Joe Biden. The
proposed changes include the elimination of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service’s “blanket rule” that automatically protects
animals and plants when they are classified as
threatened. … [E]nvironmentalists warned the
changes could cause yearslong delays in efforts to save species
such as the monarch butterfly, Florida manatee, California
spotted owl and North American wolverine.
As the threat of wildfires looms larger each year, the Bureau
of Reclamation’s California-Great Basin Region is proactively
igniting a regional initiative to protect water
infrastructure, ecosystems, and
communities. Leading this effort is John Hutchings, the
Regional Wildland Fire Coordinator. … Walking along the
thinning foliage of the hillside at Shasta Dam in northern
California, Hutchings explains that the major aspect of the
Fire Program includes strategic proactive removal of overgrown
vegetation. Hutchings emphasizes that his role diverges from
traditional fire initiatives; he does not manage a fire
suppression force but focuses on watershed and
resource management tailored to combat the growing wildfire
risk.
