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 Interim Director Doug Beeman.
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In a much-needed break after multiple years of severe droughts
over the past two decades, California’s statewide Sierra Nevada
snowpack, which provides nearly one-third of the state’s water
supply, was at 96% of its historical average on Tuesday, up
from 83% a month before. The April 1 reading, considered the
most important of the year by water managers because it comes
at the end of the winter season, follows two previous years
when the snowpack reached 111% of normal on April 1 last year
and 237% in 2023. Although Tuesday fell just short of a third
year in a row above 100%, together the past three years
represent most bountiful three-year period for the Sierra
snowpack in 25 years. The last time there was this much snow
three years in a row came in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
California isn’t recycling nearly enough water, according to a
new report by UCLA researchers, who say the state should treat
and reuse more wastewater to help address the Colorado River’s
chronic shortages. Analyzing data for large sewage treatment
plants in seven states that rely on Colorado River water, the
researchers found California is recycling only 22% of its
treated wastewater. That’s far behind the country’s driest two
states: Nevada, which is recycling 85% of its wastewater, and
Arizona, which is reusing 52%. The report, based on 2022 data,
found other states in the Colorado River Basin are trailing,
with New Mexico recycling 18%, Colorado 3.6%, Wyoming 3.3% and
Utah less than 1%.
The first major development in Imperial County’s vaunted but
stalled Lithium Valley may have nothing to do with lithium.
Instead, a massive data server farm could replace hay fields on
a 315-acre patch along Highway 111 at West Sinclair Road, the
“gateway” to the proposed industrial zone in the Southern
California desert. CalETHOS president and chief operating
officer Joel Stone told The Desert Sun that the publicly traded
start-up aims to break ground on a 200,000-square-foot data
center by 2026. … Data centers, the physical backbone of
the Internet, are notorious for using huge amounts of
water and often polluting electricity. That
concerns some in a county dependent on the dwindling
Colorado River for all its water. … But
Stone said they want to build a cutting-edge campus that uses
the geothermal reserve for clean power and will require little
water.
… How best to get rid of PFASs is now a multibillion-dollar
question. The EPA estimated that US utilities might have to
spend up to $1.5 billion annually for treatment systems; an
industry group that is suing the agency argues that costs could
be up to $48 billion over the next 5 years. Utilities must have
systems in place by 2029. … And although the EPA has
focused on drinking water, scientists want to stop PFASs from
ever reaching the water by removing them from other
environmental sources. … With looming deadlines,
academic researchers and companies are developing methods to
gather and destroy PFASs from these sources.
As Earth heats up, the growing frequency and intensity of
disasters like catastrophic storms and heat waves are becoming
a mounting problem for the people who grow the planet’s food.
Warming is no longer solely eroding agricultural productivity
and food security in distant nations or arid climates. It’s
throttling production in the United States. Farmers and
ranchers across the country lost at least $20.3 billion in
crops and rangeland to extreme weather last year, according to
a new Farm Bureau report that crowned the 2024 hurricane season
“one of the most destructive in U.S. history” and outlined a
long list of other climate-fueled impacts. … California
endured nearly all the same weather challenges as the
south-central U.S. and the upper Midwest, costing its
agricultural sector $1.4 billion.
New polling shows Americans view ensuring a reliable water
supply as their top issue, beating out inflation, healthcare
reform and others. The polling comes from the US Water
Alliance’s Value of Water Campaign, an effort to raise
awareness of the need to support water infrastructure, and is
the first time a reliable water supply topped the list of key
issues. Reducing water contamination came in third, behind
inflation. Most Americans polled also expect the federal
government to make investments to improve and maintain water
infrastructure, the polling found, with the majority of
participants going as far as supporting bond measures and
higher local water bills to do so.
The Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is surrendering
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license for the
Potter Valley Project (PVP). PG&E identifies this action as
a business decision because of the project’s failure to produce
revenues that offset its operating costs, even though PG&E
customers pay higher rates for delivered energy than just about
everywhere else in the United States. In our opinion, PG&E
wants to rid itself of the PVP for a different kind of economic
consideration, after determining that the Scott Dam represents
an economic liability that the company cannot afford. A key
factor in this determination is the increased understanding of
the seismic hazards represented by the Bartlett Springs Fault
Zone (BSFZ), which runs through Lake Pillsbury approximately
5000 feet east of Scott Dam. –Written by UC Davis alumni Chad Roberts (Ph.D.,
ecology) and Bob Schneider (B.S., geology)
One unique animal with a large task in the health of our local
creek and river systems. Along the Central Coast and the state,
beavers have become a vital source of assistance in protecting
against some of California’s biggest natural threats. …
Audrey Taub with the SLO Beaver Brigade invited KSBY to see the
work that beavers do right on the Salinas River, showing how
they thrive in riparian areas and ponds created due to the dams
formed by the local beaver population. Thanks to their dams
they help control and disperse the flow of water. Taub says the
rodents create resilient environments that can ward off the
spread of wildfires, decrease drought and in light of recent
storms, manage flooding.
The California Natural Resources Agency has submitted its 2025
Annual Report on the Salton Sea Management Program (SSMP) to
the State Water Resources Control Board. … CNRA said 2024 was
the largest single year for Salton Sea restoration and
management funding in program history. In the fall of 2024, the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation committed $175 million to accelerate
construction of restoration projects at the Sea, in addition to
$70 million previously committed, for a total of $245 million
in federal funding. California voters also passed the Climate
Bond (Proposition 4) in November 2024, which included $160
million for Salton Sea restoration and management projects, as
well as additional funding up to $10 million to create the new
Salton Sea Conservancy, which will focus on the long-term
operation and maintenance of the State’s restoration projects.
A mining company wants to dig hundreds of feet down on a site
along the San Joaquin River. With an environmental review of
the project released, the decision now lands on Fresno County
supervisors to approve or deny — and, if the project gets a
green light, decide how deep to allow the company to dig.
Mexico-based mining company CEMEX wants to dig a 600-foot hole
and blast hard rock from its quarry site about 200 feet from
the banks of the San Joaquin River, according to Fresno
County’s environmental impact report. The company already mines
aggregate at its quarry. A permit to operate expires in July
2026. However, a new California legislative bill may decide the
future of mining on the prime river land, bypassing the
supervisors. Assembly Bill 1425 from Joaquin
Arambula (D-Fresno) would ban dewatering from many sites along
the San Joaquin River — effectively killing the CEMEX proposal.
“If you’ve ever owned the same piece of land since 1972 the
year the Clean Water Act became law, you’ve operated under 14
different definitions of the Waters of the US,”
(says) National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Chief
Counsel, Mary Thomas-Hart. Lee Zeldin, who’s the new EPA
Administrator, made two pretty substantial announcements.
First, they dropped a guidance document that pulled back some
of the prior more aggressive enforcement activity from the
Biden administration and then opened up a Request for
Information docket for 30 days, so the agency is basically
seeking input from regulated stakeholders as they try to create
some finality in this WOTUS space. Thomas-Hart says that
questions remain for landowners and farmers trying to apply
WOTUS on their operations specifically what guidance they need
from the EPA to confidently make preliminary determinations on
whether a feature falls under federal regulation.
In early 1871, American shad was a popular food and sport fish,
and the California Fish Commission engaged Seth Green, regarded
as the father of fish culture in North America, to transport
more than 12,000 American Shad fry by train to California.
Green filled milk jugs with shad fry and took them onto a
transcontinental train. After a seven-day journey, he arrived
in California with 10,000 little fish still alive, and he
released them into the Sacramento River near the town of
Tehama. The project turned out to be more successful than Green
could have imagined. From Sacramento, shad colonized and were
introduced to rivers all along the West Coast. … They make
up over 90 percent of the recorded upstream migrants in some
years and raise concerns about their impact on diminished
salmon runs. … However, according to Thomas Quinn, a
salmon expert and professor emeritus at the University of
Washington, the impacts of shad on salmon may not actually be
as bad as some people think.
Los Angeles has long funneled masses of tourists to Las Vegas,
providing much of the fuel for the casino-heavy economy here.
But L.A. also has a more permanent foothold in Southern Nevada.
… The Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power runs a hilltop lodge in Boulder City and owns
another facility nearby for DWP crews who work on transmission
lines. It also owns at least 14 acres of land near Henderson’s
Lake Las Vegas community and a 2.5-acre plot next to a housing
tract in Henderson along Interstate 11, property records
indicate. Early last year, Boulder City’s then-City Manager
Taylour Tedder told the Review-Journal that he was aware of the
lodge but not the DWP operations outpost in his city. …
The city of L.A.’s real estate presence in Boulder City may
seem random but is far from it, given Los Angeles’ ties to the
iconic infrastructure project nearby: Hoover Dam.
Were we able to transport ourselves back in time 50 years and
into California’s Capitol, we would find a governor seeking and
enjoying massive attention by national political media as he
eyes some greater office. We’d also find a Legislature dealing
with conflicts among influential interests with heavy financial
impacts. In other words, the Capitol’s dynamics in 1975 were
pretty much what they are today. The resemblance even extends
to specific issues. For instance, then-Gov. Jerry Brown was
touting a “peripheral canal” in 1975 to carry water around the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Gavin Newsom was
seven years old then, but now as governor is waging the same
campaign for a tunnel to do the same thing and is facing the
same opposition. –Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters
Amid rising concerns about California’s water future, the fifth
largest reservoir in the state is primed for expansion. A
coalition of water agencies, from Silicon Valley to Fresno, has
agreed to partner with the federal government to raise the
382-foot-tall dam at San Luis Reservoir, the giant holding pool
that looms as a small sea along Highway 152 in the hills
between Gilroy and Los Banos. The dam’s enlargement would allow
the federally owned reservoir to take in 130,000 acre-feet of
additional water, equal to the annual use of more than 260,000
households. … While the proposed expansion hasn’t faced
significant opposition — no small feat for such a large
undertaking — a sticking point has emerged: a plan to move the
nearby highway, accounting for nearly half of the cost of the
$1 billion project.
Significant snow falling in the Sierra Nevada over the next few
days could be the region’s last big snow dump of the season,
showcasing a dramatic rebound for the snowpack that provides a
significant portion of California’s water
reserves through the rest of the year. Snow started
falling in the Sierra Nevada, the California mountain range
that straddles the state’s border with Nevada, on Sunday, and
plenty more is expected through Tuesday. Elevations above 4,000
feet are expected to record one to four feet of snow, while the
highest peaks over 8,000 feet could pick up five feet.
President Donald Trump’s vow to put “people over fish” in
Southern California by shifting water to the region’s farmers
could deal a new blow to struggling commercial, sport and
tribal fishermen who have coped for years with decimated salmon
populations. On the cusp of the anticipated third annual
closure for salmon fishing in California — with an official
decision due out next month from the Pacific Fishery Management
Council — many are raising concerns that Trump’s vow to divert
more water from the San Francisco Bay Delta and its watershed
could further cripple their industry.
As the possibility of legal battles on the Colorado River
grows, competing states could use water data to back up their
arguments, including claims that Arizona should bear the most
water cuts in future shortages The Upper Colorado River
Commission — a body that represents the four states in the
upper Colorado River basin — is in its third year beefing up
the measurement of stream flows, water consumption by
crops, and water diversions that its states use to regulate
their water use. Though the Trump administration is reviewing
the federal funding designated for the projects, the commission
says it has continued its work. … The new data will help
the Upper Basin fine-tune its water management, but it could
also play a role in lawsuits between Colorado River states if
ongoing negotiations break down.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have
made big promises to roll back environmental regulations — and
they’ve stacked the agency with appointees with prior
experience fighting a range of rules, including ones to rein in
chemical exposure. Several top EPA officials have spent the
past four years leading legal challenges or lobbying against
landmark environmental and public health regulations finalized
during the Biden administration. Among them is the agency’s ban
on cancer-causing chrysotile asbestos and a rule putting
polluters on the hook for “forever chemicals” cleanup costs. A
rundown of the Trump administration’s appointees in EPA’s
legal, chemicals, land and water offices could signal which
rules are most vulnerable to rollbacks.
From the southwestern U.S. to Minnesota, Iowa and even parts of
New Jersey, it seemed that winter never materialized. Many
communities marked their driest winters on record, snowpack was
nearly nonexistent in some spots, and vegetation remains tinder
dry — all ingredients for elevated wildfire risks. … A
new wildfire outlook will be released Tuesday. While
California isn’t among those areas facing significant potential
for wildfires at the moment, deadly fires in
January torched more urban area than any other fire in
that state since at least the mid-1980s.
