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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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.
Senate Democrats rebuked EPA on Wednesday for the sluggish pace
of loan closings under a popular water financing program,
accusing the Trump administration of putting up “red tape.” In
a letter to Administrator Lee Zeldin, the lawmakers said the
slowdown affecting the Water Infrastructure Finance and
Innovation Act (WIFIA) program is stunting water projects in
California, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska and other states. Led
by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) … “Our states and
municipalities rely on WIFIA loans to finance large-scale
projects to provide clean water to our constituents, and it is
imperative that EPA use the resources Congress has provided to
address the significant need for water infrastructure
improvements,” the lawmakers wrote.
California has reached a major milestone in understanding the
condition of its wastewater systems with the completion of
Phase 1 of the statewide Wastewater Needs Assessment (WWNA).
Led by UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation and partners, the
effort established a first-ever comprehensive baseline
evaluation of wastewater infrastructure performance, risks, and
unmet needs—creating a foundation for more equitable sanitation
policy and investment across the state. The WWNA was
conceived to help answer a simple yet critical question: how
well are California’s thousands of wastewater systems serving
people and communities, especially disadvantaged and
underserved areas?
A record 2,150 king salmon (or Chinook salmon) returned to
spawn in Putah Creek this fall. Timely water releases, habitat
creation and regional collaboration among various public and
private organizations are being credited with the successful
run. Putah Creek, which runs along the border of Yolo and
Solano Counties near Sacramento has historically supported a
small, but vital salmon population. Estimates in 2016 put the
salmon return at 1,700, but this year’s record-breaking number
is the result of a precise, individual count conducted by
biologists with UC Davis at the department of wildlife, fish
and conservation biology.
Colorado took a major step last week to protect
wetlands and streams by finalizing rules for a
new state-run permitting program. The new ‘dredge-and-fill’
rules address a gap by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sackett
decision two years ago, which drastically shrunk the number of
waterways eligible for federal protections. The ruling left
millions of acres of wetlands and miles of streams nationwide
vulnerable to pollution. Under the new rules, businesses or
landowners must obtain a state permit to dig ditches or fill
wetlands that no longer qualify for federal protection.
… New Mexico passed similar legislation this year and
its environment department expects to hold a rulemaking hearing
next summer.
More than 15 months after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a trio of
bills to bring clean drinking water to homes in East Orosi,
residents are still waiting for the project to break ground.
The 950 residents of the tiny northern Tulare County community
got a bit of good news last month when the Tulare County Board
of Supervisors voted to hire a contractor, West Valley
Construction Company, to build the $13.5 million water system
more than a decade in the making. But construction won’t
start until the state Water Resources Control Board first
issues a Notice to Proceed.
Valley groundwater agencies are continuing their push for
landowners to register wells, some by holding workshops and
others by extending deadlines. Landowners in the
Mid-Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) can get help
registering wells at two workshops on Friday, Dec. 19 and
Friday, Jan. 16 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. … The board of
directors of the North Kings GSA in northeast Fresno County,
recently voted to extend the deadline to register wells to Jan.
30. Nearly 6,000 wells were registered by the original
Nov. 30 deadline and the new grace period will allow well
owners to register without penalty. Approximately 1,000 more
wells need to be registered.
Three people have put their hats in the ring for a Kern County
Water Agency board seat that was left vacant when that board
member was hired as the agency’s General Manager. Tamara
Johnson, Director of California Water Service’s southern
region; Greg Wegis, longtime farmer and farm manager; and Mark
Mulkay, retired General Manager of the Kern Delta Water
District, all submitted letters of interest for the seat. The
board is expected to select the new board member at its meeting
on Wednesday.
Surging use of AI has led to a frenzy of construction activity
to build new data centres, particularly in the U.S. Estimates
put the total number of these facilities in operation worldwide
this year at 6,111, with upwards of 2,000 more set to come
online by 2030. There has been a lot of focus on the
implications for power grids, but less on the toll this
unbridled growth will take on a commodity that is in even
shorter supply: fresh water. … Periods of prolonged
drought, an over-allocation of water supplies from the
Colorado River, as well as dwindling
groundwater resources make Phoenix a “severely water-stressed
region”, according to the Ceres report. If all the data centres
now planned come online, the city will experience a 32%
increase in annual water stress.
… [M]etal concentrations in Colorado are increasing over time
as warming summer temperatures thaw previously frozen sites
containing acid-forming bedrock. This result is alarming from
an ecological perspective. If metal concentrations climb too
high, they can kill aquatic species, as evidenced by one
mountain lake that washed up hundreds of dead fish this
summer. But, these increased concentrations may also
present an opportunity. That’s according to Baolin Deng and Pan
Ni, two distinguished researchers at the University of
Missouri’s Missouri Water Center, who are now working to unlock
an efficient process capable of extracting rare earths from
acid rock drainage.
Western states are brawling over the future of the Colorado
River — with President Donald Trump looming in the background.
Talks kicking off Tuesday in Las Vegas will help determine
whether the Trump administration has to step in and take the
political heat of deciding how to divide the shrinking river’s
water supplies among powerful industries and more than 40
million people — a fight that includes the swing states of
Arizona and Nevada, politically influential farmers and
ranchers, and burgeoning semiconductor and artificial
intelligence companies. It’s the highest-stakes water
fight the U.S. has seen in more than a century.
After nearly four weeks without rain, Californians are finally
seeing precipitation return to the forecast. The wet pattern
arriving this week comes in pieces, and the Bay Area should see
significant rain from the final storm, while temperatures will
remain cool. … Unfortunately, neither of the first two
storm systems will provide much relief for the
snow-starved Sierra Nevada. Snow levels for
both systems will remain high, hovering near 8,000 feet,
meaning precipitation will fall as rain at most Sierra ski
resorts. Only the highest elevations are likely to see light
snowfall.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The United States and Mexico have signed a new binational
agreement known as Minute 333, establishing a detailed plan to
address the toxic sewage crisis that has polluted the
Tijuana River Valley and repeatedly closed
beaches in Imperial Beach and Coronado. … Under Minute 333,
Mexico will, by December 2028, build the Tecolote-La Gloria
Wastewater Treatment Plan, which will be able to process 3
million gallons per day. Mexico will also construct a new
sediment basin in Matadero Canyon — near Smuggler’s Gulch along
the border — before the 2026-27 rainy season to capture
polluted runoff. In addition, Mexico will develop a Tijuana
Water Infrastructure Master Plan within six months.
As firefighters battled catastrophic fires in Los Angeles last
January, one question reverberated across the country: Where
was the water? … A team of researchers, led by
Gregory Pierce, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, set
out to uncover whether the intense focus on water supply meant
that dry hydrants had uniquely hampered the Palisades
firefight, or whether this was a common occurrence. In a
policy brief published Monday, the researchers used media
reports to confirm that when fires burn urban areas, hydrant
flows often sputter out — the result of lost pressure as burnt
homes hemorrhage water and too many hoses simultaneously draw
on a limited supply.
The rusty observation tower at the edge of this wastewater-fed
marsh offers an osprey-eye view of two possible futures for the
parched and overworked Colorado River. To one side, the marsh
spreads across more than 20 square miles of pools and islands
choked with cattails and phragmites. … On the
tower’s other side, boundless flats of sand and cracked mud
spread to the horizon across what was, prior to the river’s
damming a century ago, one of Earth’s great green estuaries.
… The challenges are tremendous all along the Southwest’s
most critical river, one that supplies water to 40 million
people and feeds millions more. But here on the delta and
across the mountains and deserts and wetlands from source to
sea, people who refuse to watch the Colorado die are
prioritizing its care and nursing it back to health.
A Trump administration plan to pump more water to Central
Valley farmlands is facing vehement opposition from Democratic
members of Congress who represent the Sacramento–San Joaquin
River Delta and the Bay Area. A group of seven legislators led
by Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) said pumping more water
will threaten the availability of water for many Californians,
disrupt longstanding state-federal cooperation and put the
Delta’s native fish at risk. … Federal officials
have said the changes, adopted this month following an order by
President Trump earlier this year, represent an effort to
balance the needs of communities, farms and ecosystems.
Two U.S. lawmakers representing Colorado are advancing a bill
in Congress to update the country’s snowpack tracking
technology and more accurately predict water supply. The 2025
Snow Water Supply Forecasting Reauthorization Act is sponsored
by Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican, and cosponsored
by Rep. Joe Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat. … Their bill,
which passed the U.S. House on Wednesday and now heads to the
Senate, would renew and update the country’s forecasting system
for snowpack melt. In statements, both lawmakers said the
measure is important for their rural and mountain communities,
which rely on snowpack data for irrigation planning, drought
management and annual water allocation.
Water officials in Pinal County experimented with cloud seeding
technology to boost rainfall over the summer, just months after
bills that would have banned the practice failed to gain
traction at the state legislature. … Joe Singleton, the
authority’s executive director, told lawmakers at a Dec. 11
meeting of the Arizona House Committee on Natural Resources
that the test took place between July 1 and Sept. 30.
… According to the final report on the Pinal County
experiment, the three-month test may have resulted in an
additional 0.47 inches of rainfall and in 134,192 acre feet of
water. … But news of the new cloud seeding project in
Pinal County didn’t sit well with the Republican lawmakers who
represent the area.
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the “comeback” of coho
salmon after state officials spotted juvenile fish in the
Russian River’s upper basin — the first such sighting in more
than 30 years. As the state celebrated the news, however,
federal fisheries officials announced that they would not
designate Chinook salmon as endangered or threatened under the
Endangered Species Act, prompting disappointment from
conservation groups. The two salmon species face different
challenges and are at different stages of recovery, one salmon
expert said. But climate change is increasingly shaping the
fate of both.
Groundwater agencies in the beleaguered Tulare Lake subbasin in
Kings County have released a region-wide pumping allocation
model – but disagreements continue. The proposed methodology
was discussed at the Dec. 9 El Rico Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA) meeting where representatives from four of the
five GSAs were in attendance. The proposed methodology is based
on historical groundwater use within the subbasin. Using a
coordinated methodology for figuring out how much each GSA can
pump is critical to earning approval from the state Water
Resources Control Board, which has already put the subbasin on
probation. … Still, the GSAs found fault with the
proposed method.
During Arvin-Edison Water District’s winter maintenance workers
confirmed detection of golden mussels in their
systems. The golden mussel is an invasive species from
China that was first detected in California in October 2024. It
has been spreading throughout the state with more and more
locations reporting findings of the invasive species. The small
mussels form massive colonies, clogging infrastructure. The
district has been power washing, which hasn’t been successful,
and manual scraping, which is effective, but time
consuming. Samuel Blue, resource manager for the district,
said chemical treatments would have to be done for a long
period of time, between 12 to 30 days.
