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.
A bipartisan group of Central Valley House members urged the
Newsom administration Monday to reverse an environmental rule
governing operations in the state’s main water hub, arguing it
is unnecessarily limiting exports south to farms and
communities. Democratic Reps. Jim Costa and Adam Gray and
Republican Reps. David Valadao and Vince Fong wrote to Gov.
Gavin Newsom and top water officials in his administration
asking them “to reverse an ill-timed decision” to limit water
pumping in the sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
this month. Both Newsom and President Donald Trump have
sought to export and store more water this year — including by
relaxing environmental rules in the Delta and backing new
reservoir projects.
Multiple storms will spin southward along the Pacific Coast of
the United States next week. Each storm will bring abundant
rain and mountain snow and cause significant impacts on travel
and the potential for flooding and mudslides. … On
Sunday or [Monday], drenching rain is likely to spin into
coastal areas of Northern and Central California. From there,
low-elevation rain and mountain snow will expand southward and
eastward across California then into the interior West.
… “It is possible the series of storms next week
in California delivers close to an entire month’s worth of rain
and snow,” AccuWeather Chief On-Air Meteorologist
Bernie Rayno said. … Much of the interior West is in
desperate need of storms with ample moisture.
Other winter storm and snowpack news around the West:
The Colorado River Basin is in crisis. Climate change is
reducing its flow and its biggest reservoirs are shrinking. The
seven U.S. states that use the river are negotiating cutbacks
to their water use. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah,
Wyoming, and New Mexico are deadlocked with the Lower Basin
states of California, Arizona, and Nevada. But the federal
government has a big stake in the negotiations, too. …
Dwindling water levels hurt its ability to generate and sell
hydropower. Lower flows degrade the federally-managed national
parks the river flows through. Diminishing supplies threaten
the viability of the river’s core legal document, the Colorado
River Compact. With all of those layered interests, it’s led
some to ask: Why aren’t federal officials applying more
pressure to get a deal finalized?
Over the past decade, parts of California have plummeted by
multiple feet, according to satellite measurements. The San
Joaquin Valley saw the biggest drops, with parts of
the Tulare Basin sinking more than seven feet between
2015 and 2025. Although the most dramatic declines occurred
during drought years, subsidence did not stop when wetter
conditions returned: even from 2024 to 2025, sections of the
basin sank by as much as five inches. … Multiple
factors drive vertical land motion, but California’s subsidence
has largely been due to agricultural pumping for
groundwater, said Paul Gosselin, deputy
director for sustainable water management for the California
Department of Water Resources.
AI is driving a boom in data centers, and with it growing
demands on California’s water resources. Developers are
building more data centers alongside the hundreds already
operating in California. This report evaluates how to better
manage their water impacts on local communities and the
environment. Servers in data centers generate heat and
typically use water for cooling. Concern over data center water
use is growing. Yet, there is very little understanding of how
much water they actually use, where their water use may cause
negative impacts, and what measures the state, local leaders,
and the industry can take to manage it. To respond to this
growing challenge, our team reviewed current knowledge on data
center water use, mapped the policy and regulatory framework
for direct data center water use in California, and developed
recommendations.
This week, California Trout, Trout Unlimited and CalWild
announced that they would be working in partnership with the
the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (North
Coast Water Board) to designate Cedar Creek and Elder Creek —
two tributaries of the South Fork Eel River watershed —
Outstanding National Resource Waters. The ONRW designation, a
federal status established by the Clean Water Act, is “one of
the strongest legal mechanisms available to protect water
quality,” according to a joint news release issued Monday
morning. … The ONRW designation would extend throughout the
two creeks’ watershed to segments of Cedar Creek within the
Little Red Mountain Ecological Preserve (including Little Cedar
Creek, North Fork Cedar Creek and associated wetlands) and
Elder Creek’s tributaries, all important areas for salmonid
recovery efforts.
A pipeline used to send wastewater from Tijuana to the a
treatment plant in San Diego ruptured Feb. 10, the U.S.
International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) reports.
The rupture sent sewage into and through Stewart’s Drain, but
no wastewater reached the Tijuana River channel due to efforts
from the USIBWC and its contractors Veolia and INBODE. The
transboundary flow was stopped using portable pumps and vacuum
trucks, and ultimately lasted from approximately 5 a.m. until
6:30 a.m. The ruptured pipe was repaired by 9 a.m. The incident
occurred as the IBWC finalized repairs of Junction Box 1
(JB-1), which is part of a network of infrastructure that
carries wastewater from Tijuana to the South Bay International
Wastewater Treatment Plant (SBIWTP) in San Diego.
The time to act on golden mussels is yesterday. If not
yesterday, then now, an expert on invasive mollusks told
attendees at the World Ag Expo in Tulare Wednesday. … These
things are “quagga mussel on steroids” said David Hammond, a
senior scientist at Earth Science Labs. He urged irrigation and
water district managers at the seminar to enact immediate
preventative measures, or their entire conveyance systems would
be at risk of being overrun by the tiny, rapidly multiplying
mussels. … Golden mussels, native to Southeast Asia and
a cousin to quagga and zebra mussels, were first discovered in
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in 2024. And in less than a
year, have traveled the length of the state, clogging
infrastructure as they rapidly multiply.
A cache of government documents dating back nearly a century
casts serious doubt on the safety of the oil and gas industry’s
most common method for disposing of its annual trillion gallons
of toxic wastewater: injecting it deep
underground. Despite knowing by the early 1970s that
injection wells were at best a makeshift solution, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) never followed its own
determination that they should be “a temporary means of
disposal,” used only until “a more environmentally acceptable
means of disposal [becomes] available.” … The documents
show there may be little scientific merit to industry and
government claims that injection wells are a safe means of
disposal — putting drinking water and other mineral resources
in communities across the country at risk of contamination, and
jeopardizing local economies and public health.
The story in Planada remains in the frustrating phase of “two
steps forward, one step back” three years after many of the
small farmtown’s homes and businesses were flooded out when
Miles Creek busted its banks. Residents are starting to see
progress with homes being rebuilt. But even with millions of
extra state and federal dollars and widespread attention, the
process has been slow, cumbersome and confusing. … Work
is underway along Miles Creek. Vegetation removal has been
completed, and more is scheduled, North stated. Construction
has also begun on an emergency generator for the Planada
Community Services District, which will strengthen its ability
to maintain essential services during
emergencies. Planning is also underway for improvements to
local roads and other public infrastructure.
A measure to spend $8 million to assess what it would take to
fix aging wastewater and stormwater infrastructure sailed out
of the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water
Resources Committee on a unanimous vote. Senate File 69, “Waste
and storm water infrastructure study,” would tap the Strategic
Investments and Projects Account and support a four-year
statewide assessment to help town and state officials determine
exact needs and costs, according to the bill’s
proponents. Some estimate that upgrading municipal water
systems across the state (Wyo.) could cost billions of dollars.
California regulators are moving toward a long-awaited decision
on how much water can be taken from the Sacramento–San Joaquin
Delta — a choice that could reshape supplies for cities, farms,
and fragile ecosystems statewide. The Bay-Delta Plan, now
nearing final approval, would require more freshwater to remain
in rivers and estuaries, limiting how much can be pumped south
during much of the year. Recent public hearings underscored how
consequential the plan is: conservation groups say the Delta’s
ecological collapse demands urgent action; agricultural
districts and urban water agencies warn it could reshape supply
chains, decimate the ag industry, and raise household water
bills.
… The physical infrastructure that enables Colorado River
water management is on the verge of its own real and
potentially catastrophic crisis — and yet Reclamation has
barely acknowledged this, with the exception of an oblique
reference in an unposted technical memorandum from
2024. The falling reservoir levels reveal another, deeper set
of problems inside Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back the
Colorado and Lake Powell. The 710-foot-tall dam was designed
for a Goldilocks world in which water levels would never be too
high or too low, despite the well-known fact that the Colorado
is by far the most variable river in North America. …
Insufficient or no flows through Glen Canyon Dam would be a
disaster of unprecedented magnitude, affecting vast population
centers and some of the biggest economies in the world, not to
mention ecosystems that depend on the river all the way to the
Gulf of California in Mexico. –Written by Los Angeles-based historian Wade Graham.
The Trump administration on Thursday will revoke a scientific
finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the
White House announced. The Environmental Protection
Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009
government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That
Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. … It is
used to justify regulations, such as auto emissions standards,
intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by
climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves,
catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in
the United States and around the world.
The Central Valley is bracing for rainy weather and even snow
this week, though it’s expected to be just a taste of what the
rest of the state can expect to see starting this weekend.
Brian Ochs, a meteorologist based at the National Weather
Service office in Hanford, said the Central Valley will see
light showers Tuesday and Wednesday. … There will be
snow mainly at the highest peaks of the
Sierras. Places with elevations above 7,000 feet can
expect one to two feet of snowfall, Ochs said. Parts of Sequoia
National Park and the southern Sierras may see up to a foot and
a half of snow. … Additional rain is expected Sunday to
Tuesday, bringing with it a chance of heavy snowfall in
the Sierras. Next week’s storm system will impact the
Central Valley and coastline, though Ochs said Southern
California can expect to get the heaviest rains.
Following more than five years of environmental analysis,
outreach and public input, Metropolitan’s Board of Directors
voted unanimously Tuesday to certify the Final Environmental
Impact Report for Pure Water Southern California – marking a
major step toward the potential development of what would be
one of the world’s largest water recycling programs. The board
action formally completes the project’s environmental analysis
under the California Environmental Quality Act, clearing the
way for future decisions on the project’s implementation,
including phasing, funding, design, and construction. The board
is expected to consider whether to move forward with Pure Water
Southern California as part of its Climate Adaptation Master
Plan for Water evaluation process and its biennial
budget.
Legislation based around “chemtrail” conspiracy theories was
killed by lawmakers, although there’s still a narrowing window
for it to resurface. Meanwhile, state funding for cloud
seeding, which is at the root of the conspiracies, is moving
forward. On the first day of the Legislature’s budget session,
lawmakers reviewed dozens of bills. Some didn’t make the cut,
including HB 12 Clean Air and Geoengineering Prohibition Act.
After being introduced to the House floor Feb. 9 by Rep. Mike
Schmid (R-La Barge), the bill failed 24 to 38. … The
chemtrail conspiracy theory gained momentum in the Wyoming
Legislature during the 2025 session. Several lawmakers,
including Schmid, sponsored similar bills that also failed. But
they successfully ended Wyoming’s aerial cloud seeding and
nixed state funding for ground operations, leaving other
Colorado River states to largely foot the bill. … This
year’s Omnibus water bill-construction, SF 70, would reinstate
some of that funding.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has issued a tentative order
that would excuse 115 small-scale landowners in California’s
Cuyama Valley from a 2021 groundwater rights
adjudication. The case was filed by land management
companies linked to Grimmway Enterprises Inc. and Bolthouse
Farms. Judge William F. Highberger said at a February 2 hearing
that he wanted to give “minor extractors,” or small-scale water
users, “as much of a free pass as possible.” He indicated he
did not want to subject these growers to mandatory pumping
reductions and legal costs that larger farming operations may
face. The tentative order would also allow small-scale users to
pump more water annually than their historical use, up to five
acre-feet per year, subject to a collective cap of 400
acre-feet. Historically, this group has used about one
acre-foot per user per year, or 132 acre-feet
collectively.
… Over the past few years, mining proponents and companies
have been working on new technologies to help extract lithium
from the Salton Sea. But calls for rapid lithium development
have revealed competing views of what that extraction could or
should look like. … For the relatively impoverished
area surrounding the Salton Sea, the rush for lithium comes
amid water woes, disputes about labor conditions, and concerns
over tribal sovereignty. … In the Salton Sea region,
companies plan to use what they say is an innovative mining
method called “direct lithium extraction.” The process is akin
to treatment methods used to remove metals from water supplies,
where the water is pumped through a device called an ion
exchange column. … What this means for the Imperial
Valley is unclear, but any strain to the freshwater there could
threaten the region’s limited water supply.
A 4.5-acre site in Novato that was set to become an 87-room
hotel might end up a pump station as part of a drought
resiliency effort. The Marin Municipal Water District
has signed an agreement to purchase the property on Wood Hollow
Drive at Redwood Boulevard from the developer, Navin LLC. The
utility announced the $4.8 million deal as it gears up to begin
public outreach on an environmental study called the
“atmospheric river capture” project. The initiative involves a
proposed pipeline that would replenish Marin reservoirs with
Sonoma County rainwater during droughts. The purchase of the
property is contingent upon clearance of an environmental
impact report, an analysis mandated under the California
Environmental Quality Act to clear the way for construction.
