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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How democratic is your water utility? Does everyone who is
registered to vote get to choose their leaders in elections? Or
do only property owners get to vote for the managers? Maybe the
public has no say at all in selecting the people who make
decisions that determine safe and affordable drinking water?
“We see significant differences based on democracy,” said
Kristin Dobbin, a researcher at UC Berkeley. “It really does
influence the outcomes of a water system.” In a new study she
led, it turns out that water utilities where all voters have a
say in choosing leaders tend to perform better.
If you’re a steelhead trout wanting to start a
family, it’s a long swim from San Francisco Bay to the
sheltered breeding grounds of Alameda Creek. But now, for the
first time in nearly three decades, that winding 40-mile path
from Union City to the rolling foothills of Sunol is finally
flowing free. “The flows get really high here,” says California
Trout Regional Director Claire Buchanan, pointing to the
running creek. The environmental group helped push through the
final removal of a structural barrier allowing migrating fish
to reach the shaded banks.
The Utah Supreme Court has rejected a project that proposes to
take water from the Colorado River system in Utah, pump it
hundreds of miles across Wyoming into Colorado. In a unanimous
decision, the state’s top court sided with the Utah State
Engineer, who rejected Water Horse Resources application to
take 55,000 acre-feet of water from the Green River, a
tributary of the Colorado River, and pump it to the Fort
Collins, Colo., area. … The ruling hit during a
particularly delicate time for Utah and other states who rely
on the Colorado River.
The Trump administration has paused more than $11 billion in
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers water infrastructure projects
across 12 states, citing the ongoing federal government
shutdown and budget constraints. The projects—spanning
California, New York, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, New Mexico,
New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island,
Delaware and Colorado—are now under review by the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB). According to OMB Director Russ
Vought, the decision stems from what he described as the impact
of the shutdown on the Corps’ ability to manage its project
portfolio.
… [W]hile Angelenos must curtail their water use, California
data centers won’t even be forced to disclose their water
consumption. Earlier this month, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a
bill that would have required the facilities, which can guzzle
millions of gallons in a single day, to report their water
usage. … The Data Center Coalition, an industry lobbying
group, opposed the California disclosure bill—the one that
Newsom then vetoed. In 2021, a city in the neighboring state of
Oregon sued a local newspaper to prevent it from reporting on
Google’s water use. … After the case was finally settled,
news reports revealed that Google’s data centers accounted for
more than a quarter of local water consumption.
… [N]utria are distinctly rat-like in appearance, with long
naked tails and vivid orange buck teeth. And they are big – up
to 20 pounds. They can consume 25% of their body weight in
vegetation daily and despoil up to 10 times that quantity.
They’re vectors for a variety of diseases and parasites, and
they burrow incessantly, posing a significant risk to
levees. … Agency [California Department
of Fish and Wildlife] staffers have trapped thousands over
the past seven years, but the doughty animals have maintained a
steady, seemingly inexorable expansion in range: north to the
Suisun Marsh and perhaps beyond, east up the
drainages of at least two rivers that feed into the San Joaquin
Valley.
… Although the Interior Department has a large presence in
Wyoming — a state that’s half federal land — the legal filing
only revealed two clearly in-state positions that are being
eliminated. Both those “abolished” positions are with the
Bureau of Reclamation’s Wyoming Area Office. The filing does
not specify which jobs are being removed from the office, which
manages irrigation, flood control infrastructure and associated
land in river basins west of the Continental Divide in Wyoming
and parts of Colorado and Montana.
A 24-year-old woman nearly died after she swallowed water
tainted with sewage flowing from a pipe that dumped about
85,000 gallons of raw waste into Lake Tahoe’s azure waters,
according to documents and the victim. The woman, who requested
anonymity to protect her medical privacy, enjoyed wakeboarding
and surfing near Carnelian Bay and Dollar Point on a trip with
family friends, from July 19-21, 2024. But she soon began to
feel sick, remained unconscious for days and hospitalized for
weeks. She still has not recovered and lost much of her memory
after the trip, the woman stated.
Drying soils in northern Mexico can trigger simultaneous
drought and heat wave episodes in the southwestern United
States, including Arizona and states like Texas and New Mexico,
according to a new study involving an Arizona State
University professor. Co-authored by Enrique Vivoni, a senior
global futures scientist with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global
Futures Laboratory, the research underscores the increasing
persistence of “hot droughts,” which extend across consecutive
days and nights, hindering recovery and posing significant
risks to the region. A hot drought is described as droughts
intensified by extreme temperatures that amplify evaporation,
plant stress and the loss of moisture in the soil.
It seems like just about everyone has a plan for the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … Now, an effort called Just
Transitions in the Delta aims to make planning for the region
more equitable by inviting everyone to have a voice. Launched
in 2023, the four-year project hosts participatory workshops
for natural resource researchers and managers; environmental,
boating and fishing interests; and underrepresented groups and
communities. The Just Transitions in the Delta team will
present their work and hold a participatory planning session
and an interactive exhibition at the State of the San Francisco
Estuary Conference in late October.
A group of recreation advocates are hoping Colorado lawmakers
will settle the state’s legal gray area surrounding public
river access. The Colorado Stream Access Coalition is fighting
for the public’s right to use the state’s waterways for
recreation, a right they say is guaranteed in the Colorado
Constitution. … Members of the coalition, including
Kestrel Kunz, southern Rockies protection director at American
Whitewater, testified at the Water Resources Committee in
August, asking legislators to guarantee public access to rivers
for all Coloradans, while respecting landowners’ property
rights.
California water regulators formally unveiled a revamped online
depository for water rights records Tuesday as they try to get
a better handle on how water is divided up and used in the
state. The State Water Resources Control Board showcased a new
online portal at its Tuesday meeting that aims to be a one-stop
shop for individual water rights holders in the state to report
their annual use and for regulators — and the public — to see
who has a right to how much water and where. The portal
includes digitized copies of documents that are sometimes over
a century old and were previously only accessible in an
in-person vault.
The Utah Supreme Court ruled on a controversial pipeline
project in Eastern Utah last Friday. In January 2018, Water
Horse Resources, LLC proposed a pipeline project that would
send 55,000 acre-feet of water every year from the Green River
to the state of Colorado. However, on Nov. 7, 2020, the Utah
State Engineer rejected the application. The proposal
sought to pipe water to be used for “beneficial use in
Colorado.” However, a district court found Water Horse failed
to establish evidence that the water can be put to beneficial
use in Colorado. … Water Horse appealed the district
court’s decision, leading to a years-long legal battle. On
Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, the Utah Supreme Court reaffirmed the
initial decision of the state engineer to reject the project.
… This week, after years of advocacy and
experimentation, officials at Lake Mendocino will celebrate the
reservoir’s status as the first reservoir in the nation to get
the go-ahead to adopt a flexible, forecast-based operations
policy. The lake’s new water control manual, reliant on
modern-day weather models, and notably an understanding of
atmospheric rivers, gives dam managers the ability to stash
additional water, which could boost reserves sometimes 20% or
more when the conditions are right.
Wildfires can negatively impact water quality,
even after they’re extinguished. And new research shows those
negative impacts can last for up to eight years. Carli Brucker
led the study of 100,000 samples from 500 watersheds across the
western U.S. Their findings: Contaminants like nitrogen,
phosphorus and carbon were in that water and, in some cases,
stayed in it for years. … She says there’ve been a
number of studies looking at the post-wildfire impacts on water
quality but that this is one of the first showing those impacts
can last as long as eight years after a fire.
The Monterey Peninsula Water Management District voted Monday
to ask the State Water Resources Control Board to relax parts
of a long-standing cease-and-desist order that restricts how
much water can be drawn from the Carmel River. The order dates
to 2009, when state regulators found California American Water
(Cal-Am) was over-pumping the river, triggering strict caps
that have shaped development and conservation on the Peninsula
for years. … General Manager David Stoldt told the board
that, thanks to aggressive conservation and new supply from
projects like Pure Water Monterey, the Peninsula currently has
enough water to meet existing demand.
It will soon be legal to hunt and kill mute swans anywhere in
California, after Governor Gavin Newsom signed state
legislation into law earlier this month. … Mute
swans are territorial and extremely aggressive, and do not mix
well with other waterfowl species native to the area. They do
not generally migrate and prefer to feed on primarily submerged
aquatic vegetation in wetlands, which are
limited across California, and are essential for many
wetland-dependent birds, native to the state. … Mute
swans were first found in the Suisun and Napa
marshes during the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s annual Waterfowl Breeding Population Survey in
2007.
A wide-ranging letter from J.G. Boswell Company Vice President
Jeof Wyrick accuses SJV Water of misrepresenting the farming
giant’s plan to deal with subsidence. … Wyrick is also the
chair of the El Rico Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA).
… El Rico doesn’t plan to sink Corcoran by another 10 feet,
according to Wyrick’s Aug. 12 letter. Just six feet. It
may be relevant to note that El Rico’s plan would possibly
lower the Corcoran levee, which protects the town and two state
prisons, to a height of 186 feet.
The Trump administration is seeking to lay off nearly 200
Coloradans who work for the Department of the Interior managing
public lands and conducting ecological research. The planned
cuts were outlined in a filing made public Monday in an ongoing
federal court case stemming from a lawsuit by two labor unions
seeking to halt the layoffs. In total, the department plans to
eliminate more than 2,000 jobs across the Bureau of Land
Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of
Reclamation, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological
Survey and the department’s administrative offices.
Although the Bay Area won’t be directly hit by an atmospheric
river this weekend, we will still be impacted by some rain.
According to ABC7 News Meteorologist Sandhya Patel, spotty
showers will move in late Wednesday night with a chance of an
isolated thunderstorm. … As for those to the North, the
National Weather Service says there’s a more than 60% chance of
heavy rain and snow near the California-Oregon border later
this week.
