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.
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.
Agriculture and the Landsat program have a long history
together. The satellite Earth observations that began in 1972
provided a vital ability to monitor how crops were growing
around the world—and whether shortages might be looming that
would affect the food supply. When later Landsat
satellites carried thermal instruments to measure land surface
temperatures, scientists gained an important tool for
estimating how much water was being consumed by crops because
evaporation and transpiration (plant “sweat”), collectively
known as evapotranspiration (ET), cool down an area. Today,
U.S. farmers and water managers rely on past and current
Landsat data as the backbone of models that help them determine
how much water the crops are using.
The Tehachapi City Council took the next step toward finalizing
a water settlement agreement with Tehachapi-Cummings County
Water District Monday night. With all five members present, the
council unanimously approved a contract setting out how the
water district will sell the city imported State Water Project
water. Development Services Director Don Marsh told the
council that the contract — officially known as a “Term M&I
(municipal and industrial) Agreement — is for 10 years with an
automatic renewal clause every year unless either party objects
to the extension by giving at least 90 days’ notice. In a
staff report, Marsh said the city purchases imported water to
augment its native groundwater supplies. The city uses imported
water to irrigate some parks and school grounds and as recharge
water.
In just a few decades, summers in California
will not only be much hotter, but will also stretch for months
longer. Floods will become more widespread and
extreme. Exposure to wildfire smoke will kill
thousands more people every year. Those are the dire
projections of California’s Fifth Climate Change
Assessment, a report produced by California every few
years that analyzes the impacts of changing weather patterns on
the nation’s most-populous state. The future laid out in the
report, which was published on Monday, touches on familiar
warnings: more wildfires, bigger storms, longer
droughts. … At the same time, water
shortages could mean that the number of acres that
farmers irrigate could decline dramatically, including by up to
40 percent in the San Joaquin Valley, a major agricultural hub.
… At a roundtable discussion on Monday led by [Rep. Dina]
Titus at the Las Vegas Valley Water District, a diverse group
of Southern Nevadan experts laid out their vision for
solutions to the valley’s persistent water woes. While
doom-and-gloom headlines may be at an all-time high and Lake
Mead is setting all-time lows, they said tools exist to
remedy the crisis, albeit expensive ones.
… Titus’ conversation comes days after Arizona decided
to intervene as an interested party in Nevada’s lawsuit with
the Trump administration over its plan to manage the
Colorado River. The federal government, in the
face of record-low flows and no relief in sight, has asserted
its legal authority to slash Nevada’s water allocation
by up to 71 percent over the next 10 years.
Few cities in California last week felt the full brunt of the
climate crisis more than the small coastal town of San
Clemente. The beach city at the southern end of Orange
County for months has been dealing with widespread coastal
erosion from El Niño-related Pacific storms
that has threatened a crucial rail line and reshaped swaths of
its beaches. Then, as the waves were still pounding, a fire
broke out in the city’s bushy foothills Friday, quickly burning
toward hillside neighborhoods and destroying homes in nearby
San Juan Capistrano. San Clemente’s challenges
demonstrate what more of California will probably face
as the twin dangers of fire and coastal erosion converge this
winter. Southern California is just entering its traditional
fire season, and forecasters are predicting more coastal
flooding and erosion from what is expected to be a severe El
Niño winter.
San Diego County introduced former U.S. diplomat Bridget
Premont as its first Pollution Crisis Chief at
a news conference Monday, tapping her to lead its response to
the Tijuana River sewage crisis as preliminary
findings estimate the pollution costs the regional economy up
to $503.5 million a year. According to the county,
Premont will coordinate infrastructure planning across
agencies and pursue state and federal funding. She
will also coordinate emergency responses during sewage
spikes, chair a Sewage Crisis Interdepartmental Task
Force and maintain a public funding dashboard. In an interview
after the news conference, Premont said her immediate focus
will be on existing infrastructure, the county’s Capture and
Cleanup Initiative — constructing a wastewater
treatment plant of its own on the river — and data
showing what the region is risking.
Our 2026 Colorado River Water
Leaders cohort completed its seven-month
program recently with policy recommendations to
strengthen ”assigned water” programs across the Colorado
River Basin. “Assigned water” has become a key tool for
conserving Colorado River water and helping to
stabilize Lake Mead to prevent shortages. Originally
developed as “Intentionally Created Surplus” within the 2007
Interim Guidelines, it gives users the ability to store
conserved water earmarked for their own future use. The
cohort was tasked with assessing existing assigned water
programs and identifying opportunities across the Colorado
River Basin. Read
the full report.
Revisions to a pair of key Delta documents
were released last week – the outcomes from which remain
uncertain. Local water officials are still reviewing the latest
changes to the Bay Delta Plan released on
Friday, and as of Monday were not sure what the
amendments mean for Solano County water users.
… The Delta Stewardship Council has until Dec.
9 to decide whether to approve a revised Certification
of Consistency for the Delta Conveyance Project as applied to
the Bay Delta Plan. The council heard testimony and
received public comment on the Revised Certification of
Consistency filing from the Department of Water Resources.
… On the tunnel matter, the Delta Stewardship Council in
April remanded two parts of the certification back to the
Department of Water Resources to address concerns on potential
land use conflicts and golden mussels before refiling.
As the campaign team for Arizona’s attorney general crafted a
recent attack ad denouncing her opponent’s “extreme record,”
they weighed two options. They could zero in on their
Republican opponent’s stance on abortion — one of Democrats’
strongest and most impassioned issues in recent election
cycles. Or they could hit him on water policy, a
perennial snooze-inducer. The comments reflect
a deep concern about Arizona’s water crisis,
emphasizing the unsustainable use of water resources in a
desert environment.Many commenters criticize the continued
development and agricultural practices that consume large
amounts of water.
… This summer, outgoing Gov. Mark Gordon signed an executive
order titled “Data Centers the Wyoming Way” that he said would
“guide responsible development in Wyoming,” while keeping the
state an attractive landing spot for the enormous server
warehouses that power the AI industry. Data centers’
potential impacts on Wyoming’s precious water
supply, already-rising electricity prices and prized
public lands have rankled many corners of the state. Gordon
acknowledged those concerns in a statement accompanying the
release of the order, which is not binding. Environmental
groups in Wyoming agree that there need to be more guardrails
on data center development, but they are not fully aligned on
how to achieve that goal.
… To account for natural variability, CDFW uses functional
flows. Functional flows are the key parts of a river’s
natural yearly flow pattern that do a specific job for the
ecosystem. Instead of asking only, “how much water
does a river need?”, the approach also asks, “when, how fast,
and for how long?” Scientists have found that
California’s rivers and streams follow five main flow
patterns, each linked to a different part of the year.
The water year begins in fall with the fall pulse flow, a short
burst of water that flushes out the stream and signals fish to
migrate. This is followed by winter storms which bring peak
flows, moving gravel and sediment, reshaping the channel, and
moving water onto floodplains. Between storms, steady
wet-season baseflows keep the habitat connected, allowing fish
to move, feed, and grow.
