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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Dozens of the world’s major rivers are so heavily tapped, they
often run dry before reaching the sea. More than half of all
large lakes are shrinking, and most of the world’s major
underground sources are declining irreversibly as agricultural
pumping drains water that took centuries or even thousands of
years to accumulate. In a report this week, U.N. scientists
warn that the world has entered a new era of “global water
bankruptcy.” … The report points to the Colorado
River and its depleted reservoirs, on which California
and other western states depend, as symbols of over-promised
water. … These problems are compounded by climate
change, which is upending the water cycle and bringing more
severe droughts and floods.
… Adding groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)
has only multiplied the many cross connected lines, in some
cases creating conflicts. Joe Neves, who serves as a Kings
County Supervisor, as well as a director on both the Mid-Kings
River and South Fork Kings GSAs decided that was his case and
announced Jan. 15 he was offloading his position on the
Mid-Kings board. Serving on both boards was
“incompatible,” Neves said at South Fork’s Jan. 15 meeting. His
resignation came after Neves voted to approve a letter from
South Fork opposing Mid-Kings’ draft pumping allocation policy,
though he had approved the policy as a member of Mid-Kings’
board.
In a significant move to bolster California’s salmon
population, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
(CDFW) has allocated over $10 million in grants to 16 projects
aimed at restoring, enhancing and protecting salmon and
steelhead habitats across the state. … Among the funded
projects, the Upper Klamath River Design and Planning Project
was awarded $739,196 to the Mid Klamath Watershed Council. The
project will develop a 100% level fisheries restoration design
on 7 miles of Beaver Creek. … The FRGP is now accepting
concept proposals for the 2026 grant solicitation.
We’ve been following the ongoing pollution crisis in the
Tijuana River Valley, and today, we’re zeroing in on a spot
that’s drawing a lot of attention: Trash piled up in Smuggler’s
Gulch, just feet from where stormwater flows straight into the
estuary. … During heavy rain, the creek bed turns into a
roaring river. When that happens, trash gets swept downstream
and straight into the Tijuana River Estuary and, eventually,
the ocean. … This part of the Tijuana River Valley is a
complex network of streams and creeks all feeding into the
estuary. County officials say trash booms can only do so much,
especially when flooding moves fast and carries heavy debris.
Close to 100 community members impacted by a massive sewage
spill in the northern part of the city of Clearlake attended a
town hall on Wednesday evening to hear the latest about efforts
to test wells and help residents try to get back to normal.
Wednesday marked 10 days since a 16-inch force main operated by
the Lake County Sanitation District ruptured in the area of
Robin Lane in Clearlake, spilling an estimated 2.9 million
gallons during the 38-hour period of time in which repairs were
underway. … [Environmental Health Department Director Craig
Wetherbee] said monitoring will be long-term — for years — but
the response itself won’t last that long. If there is more
rain, he said it could cause more contamination, with the
bacteria mobilized in the soil.
Most of you have heard that California’s Salton Sea would not
currently exist were it not for the nearly 1 million acre feet
of agricultural runoff that’s drained into it every year.
… Meanwhile 132 miles south in Sonora another body of
water has formed from American-made runoff, and it’s also a
paradox. Ciénega de Santa Clara is technically a brackish water
wetland consisting of marshlands and lagoons, and its
classification as “anthropogenic” stems from the fact that it
was inadvertently created by, and entirely sustained by human
engineering. This “human engineering” began in 1965 after the
U.S.Bureau of Reclamation rerouted approximately 100,000 acre
feet of salty runoff from the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation
District away from the Colorado River and 13 miles into Mexico.
California Water Service has announced the recipients of its
seventh annual Firefighter Grant Program, awarding more than
$186,000 to nine fire departments across its service areas. The
grants aim to enhance rescue and emergency services by funding
critical resources and equipment. … The grants will
cover a range of needs, from laryngoscopes for pre-hospital
emergency care to ventilation fans and gas detection equipment.
… These grants are part of Cal Water’s philanthropic
giving program and do not impact customer rates.
The world has entered “an era of global water bankruptcy” with
irreversible consequences, according to a new United Nations
report. Regions across the world are afflicted by severe water
problems: Kabul may be on course to be the first modern city to
run out of water. Mexico City is sinking at a rate of around 20
inches a year as the vast aquifer beneath its streets is
over-pumped. In the US Southwest, states are
locked in a continual battle over the how to share the
shrinking water of the drought-stricken Colorado
River. The global situation is so severe that terms
like “water crisis” or “water stressed” fail to capture its
magnitude, according to the report published Tuesday by the
United Nations University and based on a study in the journal
Water Resources.
With just weeks to decide how to share the Colorado River’s
shrinking water supply, negotiators from seven states hunkered
down in a Salt Lake City conference room. … The states
moved forward on a deal for two-and-a-half days, then went back
by almost as far as they’d come, [Utah chief
negotiator Gene] Shawcroft said. … Shawcroft
reiterated Tuesday what he and his counterparts from the other
Colorado River states have said in recent months: They don’t
have a deal, but they do have a commitment to keep talking and
meet their upcoming February deadline.
Colorado’s snowpack is at a record low, and the longer that
continues, the harder it will be to make up the deficit before
the end of winter, water managers say. … This year, the state
has about 58% of its normal snowpack — the lowest on record for
this time of year. … The northwestern combined
basin is part of the larger Colorado River
Basin, which spans the Western Slope and extends
across six other states and into northern Mexico. If critically
dry conditions continue, one of the basin’s massive reservoirs,
Lake Powell, could drop so low that it would
not be able to generate hydroelectric power by December,
according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
Starting nearly 118 years ago, arsenic-laced groundwater and
dry wells all but killed the hopes of California’s only town
founded and governed by African Americans, many of them
formerly enslaved. On Tuesday, residents of Allensworth
celebrated a new well that will finally bring clean, abundant
water to the town that was beset by water troubles soon after
it was founded 1908 by Col. Allen Allensworth. … The new
well, along with an arsenic treatment system and 500,000-gallon
storage tank, are being paid for through a $3.8 million grant
from the Water Resources Control Board’s Safe and Affordable
Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) program.
Democrats in Congress are demanding that the Trump
administration investigate a top official at the Interior
Department who is accused of violating ethics standards with a
$3.5 million water deal for a Nevada lithium
mine. In a Tuesday letter to the Office of the Inspector
General, Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Maxine Dexter,
D-Ore., referenced new evidence that they feel could implicate
Karen Budd-Falen, the Interior Department’s third in command.
The House Committee on Natural Resources and Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations ranking members are focused on the
Budd-Falen family’s water sale to the controversial
Thacker Pass lithium mine in Northern Nevada in 2018.
As President Donald Trump pledges to help lower costs for
Americans, his administration’s plan to reduce protections
under the Clean Water Act is fueling new concerns about water
affordability. The administration is racing to finalize a rule
that will chip away at federal oversight for millions of acres
of streams and wetlands. Those resources play an important role
in filtering pollutants out of drinking supplies and absorbing
rainwater during floods — at no direct cost to consumers. Trump
administration officials say their proposal will provide
clarity for farmers and landowners and ease costs for
businesses. Yet local officials who oversee sewer systems and
water treatment plants say the changes could shift costs to
them, putting pressure on water bills at a time when millions
of Americans struggle to pay them.
… The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has awarded
more than $10 million to 16 projects aimed at restoring,
enhancing, and protecting salmon and steelhead habitat across
the state. The grants are part of Governor Gavin Newsom’s
broader Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future, which
focuses on rebuilding fish populations as climate pressures
intensify. Funding was distributed through CDFW’s long-running
Fisheries Restoration Grant Program, supported by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Together,
those programs target migration barriers, degraded rivers, and
lost rearing habitat throughout California watersheds.
After millions of gallons of raw sewage spilled into San Diego
through the Tijuana River, federal officials said Monday the
toxic flows had stopped. The U.S. International Boundary and
Water Commission (IBWC), which oversees the treatment of some
of Tijuana’s wastewater north of the border, said the spill
began Thursday night. The cause: a major sewage pipe collapse
in eastern Tijuana. … Last week’s spill is the latest of
many over the past decade and amid infrastructure repairs
happening on both sides of the border. But those who live and
work in the South County communities affected by the sewage
pollution said they feel like reprieve is far from coming.
… Arizonans are watching it [AI] transform their desertscape
firsthand, especially in newly-minted tech hubs like Phoenix,
where previously empty, dusty lots have turned into data
centers. But developers are clashing with neighbors who don’t
want them next door. Residents of this water-strained state
worry their wells will run dry. … AI uses water in two
primary ways: on-site for cooling computer servers and off-site
at the power plants that provide data centers with electricity.
… In Arizona, a hotter climate that relies on intensive
cooling, facilities processing GPT-3 requests used the same
amount of water as in a 17-ounce water bottle per 16 queries,
more than the national average.
Marin County supervisors voted Tuesday to ratify a local
emergency proclamation over the widespread flooding early this
month. “The proclamation provides for and preserves eligibility
for state and federal funding and supports our ongoing
recovery, reimbursement and mitigation efforts,” County
Executive Derek Johnson told supervisors during their first
meeting of the year. Johnson said the county is still assessing
the cost of the damage in the unincorporated areas, but the
preliminary estimate is about $3.5 million. “Our major cost
drivers are impacts to levees, roads and bridges as well as
damage to park and recreation facilities,” Johnson said.
A novel idea to both conserve water and generate power surfaced
on Capitol Hill earlier this month. Rep. Hoang Nguyen, D-Salt
Lake City, joined representatives with Utah-based Water Wise
Solar Solutions, advocating for floating solar panels across
Utah water bodies. The panels could help slow evaporation on
lakes and reservoirs while also supplementing the grid with
some much-needed electricity, Nguyen said. … The company
seeks not just to conserve water with solar panels, which could
shade waterbodies from the summer heat, but to conserve land
for other economic and environmental uses other than sprawling
solar farms.
Nevada’s interim Legislative Committee for the Review and
Oversight of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and the
Marlette Lake Water System meets in Carson City on January 23
at a moment when funding is scarce, policy decisions carry
outsized consequences, and TRPA’s regulatory capture has
allowed private interests and their lobbyists to shape the
basin’s priorities more than the public they’re supposed to
serve. Two-thirds of Lake Tahoe, one of the deepest lakes
in the world, lies within California’s borders, yet when it
comes to oversight of the lake and the bi-state TRPA, Nevada
consistently punches above its weight. –Written by Nevada Current columnist Pamela Mahoney
Tsigdinos.
Feather River Land Trust and Sierra Nevada Journeys, a leading
outdoor science education nonprofit serving youth across
Northern California and Northern Nevada, recently announced a
transformative conservation milestone: the permanent protection
of 1,025 acres of forest, meadow and wildlife habitat in Plumas
County. … The land is part of the Big Grizzly Creek
Corridor, which connects Lake Davis and the Wild and Scenic
Middle Fork Feather River, a critical source of water to the
State Water Project serving downstream agriculture and drinking
water to millions of Americans.
