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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California is on the cusp of adopting a sweeping plan to manage
the ecologically stressed Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a
move that Gov. Gavin Newsom deems “critical” to protecting
state water supplies but critics are calling a major
environmental setback. The state’s Bay Delta Plan, years in the
making, aims to moderate the amount of water that cities and
farms take out of rivers and creeks, from Fresno to the Oregon
border, to ensure enough is left to flow downstream to the
delta. … Last week, at three days of public hearings in
Sacramento, scores of conservationists, fishermen, delta
residents and Native Americans blasted the plan as doing too
little to rein in water users, saying struggling fish, wildlife
and water quality would not see the improvements they
need.
Arizona officials have a blunt message to other states in the
protracted fight over the Colorado River: Give up more water or
we’re going to take it from you. More than two years of
negotiations between the seven states that share the
drought-stricken Colorado River — and countless meetings,
including Interior Department officials waving the threat of
federal intervention — have failed to produce a deal about how
to share the waterway, including who must use less of it. With
less than two weeks before a last-ditch federal deadline on
Feb. 14, the states are still attempting to come up with at
least a short-term, five-year agreement.
Mexico and the United States have agreed to a plan for Mexico
to deliver the water it owes to Texas under a 1944 treaty. The
U.S. State Department and Department of Agriculture said in a
joint statement Tuesday that Mexico will deliver a minimum of
350,000 acre-feet of water per year to Texas, which is the
amount it owes annually under the water-sharing agreement.
Mexico has been behind on its deliveries of water after years
of drought, delivering only about half of the water it owes
Texas from the Rio Grande during a five year
cycle that ended in October. In exchange for water from the Rio
Grande, the United States promises water deliveries from the
Colorado River to Mexico under the treaty.
Over 60 Colorado water groups want a seat at the table to weigh
in on a historic Western Slope bid to purchase powerful water
rights tied to a small power plant on the Colorado River.
Cities, irrigation districts, hydroelectric companies and other
groups submitted filings Friday to have a say in a water court
case that will decide the future of Shoshone Power
Plant’s rights to access water. The rights are
old and large enough to shape how Colorado River water flows
around the state. A proposed change to the legal rights has
sparked concerns from big dogs in water, like Denver Water,
Colorado’s oldest water utility, over possible impacts to their
water supplies and a debate that continues decades of
west-versus-east water fights in Colorado.
Federal water managers and the local agencies they serve
usually gather every January in Reno, Nevada, to swap wish
lists, from higher dams to new reservoirs to changes to
endangered species rules. This year, at the Mid-Pacific Water
Users Conference, the focus was more basic: whether the federal
water system has enough people left to keep it running. …
President Donald Trump has made Western water a priority,
maintaining close ties with farm districts that receive federal
deliveries — including Westlands Water District — and ordering
agencies like Reclamation to move more water, faster. Yet
a year into his return to office, talk of marquee projects like
raising Shasta Dam to store and deliver more water to Central
Valley farmers (overriding longstanding environmental and
tribal opposition) was largely absent.
The Southwest Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA)
held its first meeting in six months and covered a lot of
ground including setting a policy to fine landowners $1,000 a
day for not registering their wells and vowing to sue a
neighboring GSA. … [Southwest’s chair John] Vidovich also
said landowners with wells that are within 1,000 feet of
Southwest’s boundaries would be required to register those
wells with the GSA and report their pumping or face a
$1,000-per-day fine as well. … Engineering consultant
Amer Hussain said neighboring GSAs have already enacted well
registration policies and it may be easier for Southwest to ask
for that data from them instead of having farmers register
wells a second time.
Nevada Irrigation District’s (NID) first snow survey of the
year found the mountain snowpack well below average, even as
District reservoirs remain near full following strong
early-season storms. Surveyors measured only 47 percent of the
historical snowpack across NID’s five snow courses. The average
snow water content was 9.5 inches. By comparison, the
historical average water content is 20.2 inches. Despite the
low snowpack, reservoir storage remains well above average,
largely due to heavy precipitation in December.
Keene residents are facing the possibility of water bills
skyrocketing as the Union Pacific Railroad subsidiary that
operates their water system seeks dramatic rate increases or
permission to abandon service entirely. The Keene water system,
originally built to supply steam locomotives, has been
maintained under a legacy agreement since trains were phased
out. Union Pacific has been trucking in water to supply the
small community, but now says the operation is financially
unsustainable. … The water system has petitioned the
California Public Utilities Commission for permission to either
dramatically increase rates or abandon the system altogether.
The Center for Biological Diversity notified the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service today that it intends to sue the agency for
failing to finalize Endangered Species Act protection for the
Clear Lake hitch — a rare fish found only in Lake County,
California. … Each spring, adult Clear Lake hitch
migrate into tributary streams to spawn before returning to the
lake. … The main threat to the hitch is a lack of
water flowing in spawning tributaries, driven by chronic
over-withdrawal, both legal and illegal, and worsening
climate-driven drought.
A recycling system that’s capable of simulating a free flowing
fire hose — without wasting water — will be the main feature of
a Riverside Fire Department drill Tuesday attended by the
mayor, fire chief and other officials. The agency’s new
“PumpPod” will be unveiled during a demonstration exercise
scheduled for Tuesday morning at the city’s Emergency
Operations Center on Saint Lawrence Street. The recirculation
system was acquired by the fire department thanks to a $3
million California Department of Water Resources grant
administered by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California.
Ultrarunner Mina Guli says she doesn’t actually love running.
The Thirst Foundation nonprofit CEO is somewhat of a living
contradiction, after running 200 marathons in 2022 across 32
countries to bring awareness to the world’s water crises that
are being roiled by warming temperatures. … This summer,
Guli plans to run the 1,800-mile span of the Colorado River,
all the way from the headwaters in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains
to the Colorado River Delta outside of Mexicali, Mexico, before
finishing in Los Angeles. … She hopes her run will sound
alarm bells for the rapidly drying, beating heart that keeps
taps flowing in Las Vegas and throughout the American West: the
Colorado River.
Not everyone with a stake in the future of Arizona’s access to
Colorado River water feels as “cautiously optimistic” about
water usage negotiations among the seven Colorado River Basin
states. The governors of six of the seven states,
including Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, said they were cautiously
optimistic that the states would reach a deal after they met in
Washington D.C. last week to hash things out.
… Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis,
whose community relies on CAP water, shared a particularly
pessimistic message about an agreement, but called for unity
among Arizonans and the Lower Basin states. “The prospects
for success, I think we all know, seem pretty dim at this
point,” Lewis said.
The Bay Area’s warm, dry stretch has spilled into
February. Aside from a paltry 0.13 inches of rain on Jan.
27–28, the region has gone weeks without meaningful
precipitation. … Just three weeks ago, the statewide snowpack
stood at 89% of its historical average after a burst of late
December and early January atmospheric rivers. Since then, it
has collapsed to 59%. … The issue is timing and
temperature. January, typically one of California’s wettest
months, was dominated by warm, dry weather that steadily melted
what the Christmas and New Year’s storms delivered. No
significant precipitation is expected for at least the next two
weeks.
U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, has co-introduced
bipartisan legislation to extend a federal $450 million water
recycling grant for Western states until 2032. The federal
grant, signed by former President Joe Biden in 2021, has
already allocated roughly $308 million on water recycling
projects in Colorado River
states. … The Large-Scale Water Recycling
Project Grant Program funds are available to all Western
states, but have only been granted to five programs in
Utah and Southern California, totaling roughly
$308 million. If the program were not extended, it would expire
at the end of the U.S. government’s 2026 fiscal year on Sept.
30.
Nevada lawmakers are working to revive a bill that would
require state water regulators to take a closer look at how
geothermal operations impact groundwater during the permitting
process. Farmers and hard-rock mining companies that pump
groundwater are required to apply for permits under Nevada law,
but current statutory framework exempts some industrial
groundwater users from the permit process as long as they
return the water they pump back into the ground. Assembly Bill
109 would close a “loophole” that allows developers to
pump water without a permit from the state engineer if the
operation is considered “non-consumptive.”
Meghan Hertel, of Sacramento, has been appointed
Director of the Department of Fish and
Wildlife. Hertel has been the Deputy Secretary of
Biodiversity and Habitat at the California Natural Resources
Agency since 2024. She was the North American Director of the
Land Life Company from 2022 to 2024. Hertel held several
positions at Audubon California from 2010 to 2022, including
Director of Land and Water Conservation, Interim State
Co-Director, Director of Working Lands, Associate Director of
Public Policy, and San Joaquin River Project
Manager. [Hertel is an alum of the Water
Education Foundation's Water Leaders program].
The Green River doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance.
The Colorado River’s largest tributary flows
through a nearly 2,300-foot-deep canyon inside of northeastern
Utah’s Uinta mountain range. But at almost 2.5 miles high, the
massive, 50-million-year-old rock formation hypothetically
shouldn’t have even yielded to the nearby Green River, which
itself began to form less than eight million years ago.
… According to the coauthor of his team’s study
published on February 2nd in the Journal of Geophysical
Research: Earth Surface, the region is “enormously significant”
to the overall landmass. “The merging of the Green and Colorado
Rivers millions of years ago altered the continental divide of
North America,” he [geologist Adam Smith] explained in a
statement.
Attention Western Slope pond owners: Colorado Parks and
Wildlife is on the hunt for hungry, fast-reproducing, invasive
mussels — and that they might be hiding in your pond.
State and federal agencies, plus water districts, are fighting
to track and contain zebra mussels in and around the Colorado
River in Colorado. Officials are hiring new staff, doing
sampling blitzes and catching mussel-bearing motorized boats at
the state’s borders, but the populations of zebra mussels keep
popping up. This year, the state is taking its search beyond
public waters and irrigation systems. Colorado Parks and
Wildlife staff hope to survey as many as possible of the
thousand-plus ponds on private property in the Grand Junction
area during summer 2026.
The salmon recovery effort on Putah Creek was highlighted as an
early example of a Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program
success story at the recent California State Water
Resources Control Board hearings. The control board is updating
the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, with Solano
County agencies joining the State Water Contractors and a host
of others in favoring the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes option.
Many upset Adelanto residents demanded a clean water solution
from their elected officials in early December, detailing hair
and skin problems due to the city’s “brown, cloudy,
foul-smelling” water. Less than two months later, Adelanto City
Council has taken action to secure a qualified firm that will
provide home water filtration systems at no cost to residents.
The announcement came at the Jan. 28 Adelanto City Council
meeting, three years after the synthetic chemical
Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS) was first detected in
Adelanto water.
