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 Bureau of Reclamation announced Tuesday that it will
temporarily release more water from Keswick Dam into the
Sacramento River to help juvenile Chinook salmon safely
make their journey to the ocean. The move came about
two weeks after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released
more than 6.2 million young salmon from Coleman Hatchery into
Battle Creek, prompting conservationists to urge the agency to
increase dam-releases into Sacramento River that’s facing low
flows. … Meanwhile, the announcement also came as the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service announced its plan to release more
than 2 million salmon into Battle Creek on Tuesday.
We’re hosting our annual open house and reception on May 7 when
you can meet the team behind our Water Leaders programs, tours
and workshops, Project WET teacher trainings and Western Water
news. Visit our office anytime between 2 p.m. and 6
p.m. and enjoy happy hour refreshments and appetizers
while catching up on the latest Foundation news. We have much
to look forward to in 2026 as we gear up for the Foundation’s
50th anniversary in 2027. RSVP
now to let us know you’re coming and to get
directions. Everyone who attends will get their choice of a
water map or guide.
It was a record-smashing first quarter for the American West.
An astonishing heat wave smothered the region for weeks.
Mountain snowpack, already low in many states after a
rainy winter, melted quickly. Drought conditions
intensified. And it’s only early April. Scientists warn that
extreme conditions could continue and cause water shortages and
raging wildfires. Dwindling snowpack is a big warning sign,
climate experts say. Low snow levels in the spring often
foretell drought. Recent research suggests that “snow drought”
can worsen wildfires. A March 23 study in Environmental
Research Letters found that in years with earlier snow melt in
the West, wildfires generally burned more acres.
… National Weather Service forecasters expect a cold front to
move over the region, bringing cooler temperatures and rain
across the Bay Area, with potential snow in the Sierra
Nevada. By Wednesday, temperatures will drop to normal
springtime averages. Temperatures along the coast will be in
the 60s and 70s inland, said Rachel Kennedy, a meteorologist
with the weather service’s Bay Area office. … The cold
storm building from the Gulf of Alaska could also deliver about
a quarter inch of rain in low-lying areas and up to
three-quarters of an inch at higher elevations on Thursday and
Friday. … The frigid storm may add much-needed
snow to the state’s meager snowpack, sitting at 18% of
normal for this time of year.
… [T]here’s been a dramatic increase in investment in cloud
seeding across the Mountain West. Three years ago, the Nevada
legislature three years ago allocated about $600,000to support
DRI’s efforts. Surrounding states have invested even more. Utah
recently allocated $16 million for cloud seeding. And the
federal Bureau of Reclamation provided a nearly $2.5 million
grant for cloud seeding operations in Colorado, Utah
and Wyoming aimed at increasing the levels in Lake
Mead, which is fed primarily by the Colorado River.
… “We did a review of those [cloud seeding projects],
and we found that the vast majority of them had missing
information, incorrect information,” she [Karen Howard,
director of science and technology assessment at the Government
Accountability Office] said.
The explosive growth in data centers is fueling concerns in
California, as well as across the country, about water and
energy use. Some have gone as far as to propose a water usage
fee on data centers. However, others argue that data center
water use is just a drop in the bucket compared to other uses
or that most data centers are moving toward less
water-intensive practices, such as reusing water in closed-loop
systems. To help us understand what we do and don’t know about
California data centers and water use, we spoke with Dr. Marie
Grimm, an environmental policy research fellow at UC Berkeley’s
Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, about their new
report “Regulating Data Center Water Use in California.”
California’s climate is defined by extremes, and water year
2025 put that reality on full display. One month delivered
warm, dry conditions that can typically stress water supplies;
the next brought a surge of winter storms, only for January to
swing dry again. These whiplash shifts aren’t outliers — they
are becoming the new operating conditions for water managers,
communities, and ecosystems across the state. Against this
backdrop, the Drought Resilience Interagency and Partners
(DRIP) Collaborative continued its work to strengthen
coordinated drought planning. … Released in March, DRIP
Collaborative’s 2025 Annual Report highlights the activities,
discussions, and recommendations developed during the task
force’s third year.
A desalination startup company hopes to gain Arizona customers
as the state prepares for more cuts to its Colorado River water
supply. Desalination is the process of taking ocean water and
removing the salt to make it drinkable. California-based
OceanWell is developing a subsea system that is more energy
efficient than traditional onshore desalination. OceanWell is
three years into a five-year research and development phase to
create an underwater operation called Water Farm I about 4.5
miles off the coast of Malibu in Santa Monica Bay. It will
consist of large purification pods that sit on the ocean floor.
The system is designed to use natural ocean pressure to push
seawater through the pods’ reverse osmosis membranes for
desalination.
Lukins Brothers Water Company (LBWC) is aiming to be the first
water company in the basin that is Firewise certified. It’s
already joined the Fire Adapted Communities program and with
new legislation, owner and president Jennifer Lukins hopes it
could potentially lower insurance fees and water rates for the
community. … Lukins believes other water systems could
join Firewise as well, and it’s possible that once LBWC sets
the precedent, more water systems may follow suit—especially as
the water affordability crisis grows more critical in
California with rising wildfire risks and insurance costs.
Best Management Practices (BMPs) have become one of the most
important tools the golf course industry uses to care for the
land responsibly. While the term may sound technical, the idea
is simple: use proven science and practical experience to
protect the environment while keeping golf courses healthy and
playable. … I saw the value of BMPs firsthand while
redeveloping a golf course next to the American River in
Sacramento, Calif. The course sits in an environmentally
sensitive area that includes a major fishery and the 5,000-acre
American River Parkway. State regulations strictly prohibit
fertilizer from entering the river basin, making environmental
protection a top priority.
… Where Govs. Gavin Newsom of California
and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania are slamming the gas
price spikes stemming from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran,
[Ariz. Gov. Katie] Hobbs is touting Arizona defense
contractors’ work on Tomahawk missiles that the U.S. military
deploys in the conflict. Her aim: to get Trump to
intervene on behalf of the state in the West’s biggest water
war. … Hobbs’s pitch to Trump on the river is
garnering a wide base of support within Arizona. A phalanx of
state and local officials from both parties, business leaders
and even her electoral challengers are joining in the effort.
Aurora City Council members unanimously passed a Stage I Water
Shortage declaration in Monday night’s meeting, putting
restrictions on outdoor water use starting
immediately. The shortage declaration imposes
restrictions on outdoor watering for residents and businesses
and reduces commercial user allocations, such as that for golf
courses, by 20%, according to Aurora Water General Manager
Marshall Brown. With the passage of the shortage declaration
Monday night, Aurora Water officials will also start to ramp up
enforcement. In the past, enforcement was gentle, water
officials said. This year, officials will issue one
warning.
Wyoming has seen a decent amount of snow in the first
week of April, but meteorologists says it’s officially too
little, too late to save the state’s historically low snowpack,
which has been melting for weeks. The spring storm brought
much-needed moisture to several dry spots across the Cowboy
State. … Tony Bergantino, the director of the Water
Resources Data System and the Wyoming State Climate Office,
finally said the word that describes this past winter’s
miserable snowpack. “I guess you could say that it’s
‘unprecedented,’” he said. … Bergantino added that Wyoming
could already be primed for a disastrous fire season.
In Aurora, data center proposals run through a simple filter.
City officials compare total water use against how much of that
water won’t come back—lost to evaporation. If either number
gets too high, the project doesn’t move forward. When a
developer wants to build in Denver, there is no matrix. That
gap—two cities, two standards, nothing statewide connecting
them—is the center of a question Colorado has avoided
answering: who is responsible for knowing how much
water AI data centers use, and when does that become too
much? The question got harder to ignore this spring.
On March 16, Governor Jared Polis activated Phase 2 of the
state’s Drought Response Plan—the first activation in nearly
six years—after federal water managers ranked this year’s
snowpack 45th out of 46 years on record.
Beneath California’s Salton Sea, there is so
much metal essential to rechargeable batteries that Gov. Gavin
Newsom calls the vast lake “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.” An
estimated $500 billion worth of lithium here could help power
our smartphones, electric cars and electricity grids. … But
not everyone is eagerly welcoming the lithium industry. The
Salton Sea is already an environmental disaster zone. It’s
shrinking, and as it does, it spews plumes of pesticide-laden
dust throughout Imperial County, home to 182,000 people.
Extracting lithium requires a steady supply of fresh
water, and locals worry the process will deplete the
region’s scarce water resources.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that
Monterey Bay—part of the Central Coast region, which spans from
Pigeon Point south to the Mexico border—will open to
recreational salmon fishing on April 11. For the first
time in four years, the region is also expected to reopen to
commercial fishing sometime in May. It’s highly
anticipated news following years of consecutive closures tied
to low population counts. The commercial fishing season for
Chinook has been closed since 2022. … As part of a
broader plan called California Salmon Strategy for a Hotter
Drier Future, which aims to protect native salmon from
extinction, officials will be closely monitoring catch numbers,
especially in a year that is unusually hot and dry.
The White House seeks to slash the Environmental Protection
Agency’s budget from roughly $8.8 billion down to $4.2 billion.
… More than $1 billion would be cut from categorical
grant programs that assist states in enforcing federal
environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water
Act. The EPA’s Superfund Program, responsible for cleaning
up contaminated sites, would face funding reductions as well.
This is troubling for environmental groups that fear the cuts
will disrupt projects slated to clean up the Tijuana River
Valley, which has been plagued for decades by raw sewage,
chemicals and trash that enter the United States from south of
the border on a daily basis.
As Aurora city leaders consider reducing water usage, a closer
look inside the city’s purification system shows how reused
water from river basins is transformed into drinking water
through a multi-step process designed to remove contaminants
for more than 400,000 customers. … Aurora Water said
it’s able to reuse 90 to 99% of its water rights, meaning it
can be reused several times before traveling down the river.
… Binney is one of three purification facilities in
Aurora, but it is its most advanced and in-depth plant. Aurora
Water said on high demand days in the summer, 85 million
gallons of water can be purified across the three locations.
30,000, of which, get processed at Binney.
… [A] 2008 legal mandate means the Truckee Meadows Water
Authority (TMWA) is required to align regional growth with its
two main critical water resources: the vibrant, snow-fed
Truckee River and the deep, silent aquifers lying beneath the
valley floor. … Adam Sullivan, the former state engineer for
Nevada, confirms the scale of the problem. He notes that
about half of Nevada’s 256 groundwater basins are
“over-appropriated,” meaning more water rights exist on paper
than the land can yield, and 25% are already being
over-pumped. The fear that development will outpace the
aquifer isn’t hypothetical; other western cities have already
hit the wall.
Phragmites are a tall wetland grass that can grow up to 15
feet, but it’s actually an invasive species that uses up a lot
of water. In 2011, Becka Downard, a wetland ecologist with the
Utah Geological Survey, said phragmites were basically
everywhere there was water. In order to get established, the
invasive species needs to have a source of seeds, disturbance,
and sunlight. … She said they’ll have to spray
phragmites with herbicide, mow and trample it, and then do
follow-up treatments. … She said when they’re
drought-stressed, they can catch fire more easily, and the
three-year treatment won’t work.
