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 Scott River, which flows out of mountain
forests into a broad valley near the California-Oregon border,
provides vital habitat for salmon that swim
upstream from the ocean to spawn in the fall and winter. But
this year, portions of the river have been transformed into
stretches of dry sand and gravel, while
farmers have kept hayfields green by running their wells and
pumps. Environmental advocates are accusing regulators
at the State Water Resources Control Board of failing to do
enough to prevent the river from running dry. …
[C]ritics say the state should have ordered farmers to cut
groundwater pumping more drastically this year to save water in
the river. Farmers disagree, saying drought and other
factors are primarily to blame.
New rules for the Colorado River officially go into effect on
Thursday, but they won’t bring changes to Arizona’s water quite
yet. … Federal rules for the Colorado River and its major
reservoirs typically run on a different calendar than the rest
of the world. … So, starting Thursday, a
controversial federal plan will start changing the amount of
water sent from Lake Powell downstream to Lake Mead.
However, the amount of water delivered from Lake Mead to people
farther downstream — like cities in the Phoenix
area and huge farm districts in
California — is managed in line with the normal
calendar, from Jan. 1 to Jan. 1. So even though the amount of
water flowing into Lake Mead will be different this week,
the amount of water flowing out of it won’t change
until the beginning of 2027.
The California Supreme Court hearing on Kern River flows has
been changed from Redding to the justices’ home court in San
Francisco, according to the court’s website. The
hearing will still be held Oct. 7 at 9 a.m. The
California Attorney General’s office and Department of Fish and
Wildlife also accepted an offer from the Supreme Court
to make their own arguments in support of the
plaintiffs, Bring Back the Kern and Water Audit
California. This case has generated significant interest as
it hinges on a key statute used in numerous
conservation cases, California Fish and Game Code
5937.
Well, it’s official: we’re already observing the
strongest El Niño on record. … This Super El Niño
will no doubt significantly impact the Southwestern US
this winter, with effects from record-high sea levels
and coastal erosion to the potential for excessive
rainfall and consequent flash flooding throughout the
southern half of the country. And remember, what happens in the
ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean: we’re seeing this El Niño
impact weather patterns around the world, modifying
where precipitation—and lack thereof—occurs,
as I’ll discuss below.
Data centers can look like little more than large, windowless
warehouses. But the questions they create for a city can extend
far beyond where to put the building, or if beauty is indeed in
the eye of the beholder. … For Alison McNally, who teaches
geography and environmental resources at Stanislaus State, one
question immediately rises to the top in the San Joaquin
Valley: “Where would the water come from?” The
region already has competing demands from agriculture, homes,
businesses and environmental needs, while groundwater users are
adjusting to California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act. McNally said the impact of any particular data
center would depend heavily on its size, location and water
source.
… Adam Brice moves from one metal trough to the next with a
green hose, filling them with a commodity that’s going dry in
rural Chino Valley. He is a water hauler. The practice is not
unusual in this town 16 miles north of Prescott. Growth in the
region has caused lower water levels due to groundwater pumping
and inefficient recharge. … Local governments hope to mitigate
the overdraft through regional cooperation and stormwater
retention. But rural residents can’t wait. They have found some
relief in hiring water haulers and setting up their own
homemade storage methods.
San Diego Foundation (SDF) today announced $983,439 in
Binational Resilience Initiative (BRI) grants for 10 projects
bringing together 21 nonprofit organizations in the United
States and Mexico. Several projects directly address the
Tijuana River sewage crisis by reducing pollution and flooding,
improving wastewater treatment and making water quality
information easier for communities to understand, while others
will restore coastal habitats and support research and
education across the broader Cali-Baja region. The Tijuana
River sewage crisis affects water quality, public health and
communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Fort Bragg Vice Mayor Marcia Rafanan told the City Council on
Monday night that she went out to the city’s wave-powered
desalination buoy, which makes fresh water from ocean water, to
taste it. … The city’s 12-month pilot with Oneka
Technologies, a company based in Sherbrooke, Quebec, was
designed with pipelines carrying fresh water from the buoy to
the city’s wastewater treatment plant, according to the Coastal
Commission, which approved the project with conditions in
December 2025. The pipeline part of the project has since been
dropped. In an April memo to the Coastal Commission, which
the commission provided Wednesday, Oneka said the cost of
installing, surveying and removing the pipeline was
“disproportionate to the benefits” for a short pilot
project.
A proposed sale of hundreds of acres of wetlands near the Great
Salt Lake that have been largely untouched by humans for
decades is now facing some pushback from bird enthusiasts who
would like to see it stay that way. The 950 acres of land,
owned by Salt Lake City International Airport, is slated to be
purchased by Utah’s Department of Natural Resources. Inside the
parcel is a mitigation area that was set aside in the 1990s
when the airport built a runway. Since then, the airport has
done some minimal work to battle the invasive plant phragmites
and keep birds from encroaching upon the airport and, after
being approached by the state, considered a sale. … The
plan is to fold the land into a larger waterfowl management
area.
For more than a century, water from the Eel River has flowed
through PG&E’s Potter Valley Project into the Russian River
watershed, filling Lake Mendocino, supporting farms in Potter
Valley, and supplying homes and businesses across Mendocino,
Sonoma, and Marin counties. PG&E has decided it no longer
wants to operate the Potter Valley Project and has filed a plan
to decommission it, including removing Scott Dam and Cape Horn
Dam. That wasn’t a decision made by Mendocino County or our
local water districts, but our responsibility now is to make
sure water continues flowing to our communities and that the
infrastructure controlling it stays in local hands, not in the
hands of an outside investor. – Written by Mo Mulheren, the Second District Supervisor
for the County of Mendocino and the county’s alternate
commissioner on the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power
Commission.
… This year, Ruby Ranch enrolled two alfalfa fields in Utah’s
Demand Management Program, which pays Colorado River
water users to temporarily and voluntarily send water
downstream. … Utah is betting that voluntary
conservation like this can help protect the state as the
Colorado River shrinks and the seven states that depend on it
fight over who should use less. … With no deal reached, the
Bureau of Reclamation moved forward with a plan that requires
the Lower Basin to conserve 1.25 million acre-feet of water
next year, with steeper cuts possible in the future. The plan
includes no mandatory cuts in the Upper Basin, just a
goal to conserve 200,000 acre-feet per year.
… New Mexico has a Strategic Water
Reserve Program, which includes leasing 20,000 acre-feet of
water per year from the Jicarilla Apache Nation.
Wyoming created a program similar to Utah’s
earlier this year, and Colorado just approved
a near-term water contribution program in mid-September.
A $40 million deal to sell more than 40% of Montecito’s
State Water Project rights to a massive North County
housing proposal passed a big test Tuesday. In a 5-0 vote,
directors of the Montecito Water District approved a
non-binding letter of intent in support of the transaction,
paving the way for a Spring 2027 purchase agreement with
developers of Solomon Hills, 4,000 homes planned between Orcutt
and Los Alamos. … The approval came over
objections and concerns raised by residents who recalled tight
years of water rationing. Some in the room questioned
whether relinquishing 1,400 acre feet, or 42.4%, of the
district’s annual State Water interests might weaken its
ability to deliver. More specifically, they questioned
whether the district’s increased reliance on desalinated water
from Santa Barbara in recent years might become a big
liability.
El Niño is arriving on the West Coast in a major way. In the
coming days, sea levels off Southern California are
expected to begin rising by half a foot or more and then stay
elevated for months, as an enormous pulse of wave
energy generated by El Niño travels up the coast, lifting the
water as it goes. … But this pulse is coming on top of
several other factors that are raising the seas off California
and increasing the threats from coastal flooding,
erosion and saltwater intrusion. … By unlucky
coincidence, the tidal cycle off California will also be
peaking in the coming months. And ocean swells are likely to be
amped up this fall and winter by El Niño-fueled storms.
Conservationists sued the Trump administration Tuesday to
challenge the expansion of a heavy metal mine they say will
carve up one of Arizona’s ecologically important mountain
ranges. In consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, the U.S. Forest Service approved the expansion of
Australian company South32 Hermosa’s mineral extraction
operations to 52,438 acres in the Patagonia Mountains
of southern Arizona. … The plaintiffs claim the
Forest Service also violated the National Environmental Policy
Act by failing to provide an adequate analysis of the project’s
threats, including its effects on groundwater and other public
resources. … Groundwater pumping would draw down
the water table by as much as 250 feet and may reduce
or even eliminate surface water flows.
In the wide-open plains of northern Colorado, just about 12
miles from the Wyoming border, construction crews are digging
underground as part of a project designed to store
water and help communities prepare for drought.
FrontRange H2O is building the infrastructure for the Vita H2O
Project, which will store and supply water to customers
in Northern Colorado. Brent Waller, CEO of FrontRange
H2O, describes the aquifer as a massive underground reservoir.
… Waller said the aquifer is more than 50 times
the size of Colorado’s Blue Mesa Reservoir, providing
a large potential storage resource. … “It is a
drought-resilient tool as well,” Waller said. “So in good wet
years, we can reverse the system and bring the water back to
the aquifer for storage and recovery later.”
As former Hurricane Polo weakened over northwestern Mexico on
Tuesday evening, the storm’s remnants battered the U.S.
Southwest, flooding roadways and forcing residents in
small New Mexico towns to evacuate over concerns about a dam
failing. … By Tuesday evening, the New Mexico
Department of Transportation reported flooded roads and debris
on highways across the state, while parts of Arizona had become
especially drenched, leading to several water rescues. That is
after storms rolled through parts of the U.S. Southwest
overnight Monday, saturating the ground, which can make
flooding worse. … The potential failure of the
dam in south central New Mexico prompted evacuations in three
small communities with hundreds of residents along
the Rio Grande.
As the Trump administration seeks cuts to federal weather
research and changes to disaster response, lawmakers are
examining whether artificial intelligence, satellites, and
other emerging technologies can improve the nation’s ability to
predict floods, wildfires, and other disasters and deliver
timely warnings to communities. The House Science Committee
heard from disaster-response technology companies on Sept. 15
as the Trump administration seeks deep budget cuts to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and
other federal weather programs. The hearing, titled “Innovation
In Disaster Prevention: Advancing Technology For Prediction And
Response,” featured disagreement over federal disaster
policy.
The corporate technology giants building data centers to power
the artificial intelligence boom are changing America’s natural
landscape. Although data centers long predate generative AI,
hundreds of massive, or “hyperscale,” facilities are now
sprouting up around the country. Many of these data centers are
going up in areas that were once farmland or desert.
… The surge in data center construction has sparked
significant public backlash, with communities citing concerns
about their impact on local water and power supplies, among
other issues. … Thirty states have introduced or adopted
legislation or taken other actions to address some of these
concerns, including the impact of data centers on utility
costs.
The newly signed California state budget includes $5 million
for a Los Banos groundwater treatment project. … The
funding is intended to help the city address hexavalent
chromium, also known as chromium-6, in its groundwater supply
and comply with drinking-water requirements. The project
predates the new state budget allocation. State Water Resources
Control Board funding documents identify the City of Los Banos’
“Hexavalent Chromium Treatment Projects” as a drinking-water
project and classify the city’s water system as serving a
disadvantaged community. Those state documents list an
estimated population of 48,896 and 12,069 service connections
associated with the Los Banos water system.
… A few years ago, local farmers partnered with the State,
local water agencies and community organizations through
LandFlex to reduce groundwater pumping where those reductions
could make the greatest difference. … Since its launch
in late 2022, the California Department of Water Resources
(DWR) reports that LandFlex has awarded $23.3 million to six
Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and helped save more than
100,000 acre-feet of groundwater while protecting approximately
16,500 drinking water wells. The program also reduced
over-pumping, supported recharge and helped protect critical
water infrastructure from land subsidence. Those results should
matter as California decides how to continue investing
Proposition 4 funding. –Written by Frank Mendonsa, dairy farmer and board member
of Western United Dairies.
