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.
The federal agency overseeing the water supply for tens of
millions of people in the West has published a list of options
for how it might manage the drought-stricken Colorado River in
the future. The five proposals range from taking “no action” to
a scenario that might result in water cuts to the lower basin
states of California, Nevada and Arizona. One alternative
developed in partnership with conservation groups would
incentivize states and water users to proactively conserve the
river. But the Interior Department is not identifying a
preferred option, and the scenarios outlined in hundreds of
pages of documents will only move forward if all seven states
that depend on the water fail to agree on their own
conservation plan soon.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California State Legislature have
given the Pure Water Southern California large-scale recycled
water project a potential boost by approving measures designed
to quickly resolve any legal challenges to its environmental
review. Metropolitan Water District and Los Angeles County
Sanitation Districts are jointly planning the Carson-based
project, which would purify and reuse cleaned wastewater
currently discharged to the ocean. … Gov. Newsom and the
State Legislature last week certified the project under SB 149,
the California Environmental Quality Act judicial streamlining
process.
Data from the Interactive California Reservoir Levels dashboard
shows nearly every reservoir in the state is above the
historical average capacity. … Those reservoirs are extremely
important to the state, especially to California’s agriculture
industry which exports tens of billions of dollars of products
every year. … [T]he high reservoir levels can also be
too much of a good thing. … If reservoir levels get too high,
there’s nowhere to hold extra water and protect parts of the
state from potentially disastrous flooding.
A new analysis says water rates in San Diego must go up another
44.2% between 2028 and 2031 even though the City Council agreed
in October to raise them a cumulative 31.3% this year and next.
If the council ends up approving additional hikes that large
when they come to a vote next year, the cumulative six-year
rate increase would amount to more than 90%. The 54-page
analysis, which was presented to the council Monday, also says
sewer rates must rise a total of 15% in 2030 and 2031. …
Council members and other city leaders vowed Monday to spend
the next 12 to 18 months searching for ways to boost revenue or
cut spending for the city’s water and sewer systems that could
prevent such large hikes.
… A study released in December by scientists at the U.S.
Geological Survey and the National Park Service said the main
driver for recent toxic harmful algal blooms in Blue Mesa [in
Gunnison County, Colo.] is low reservoir levels, which create
shallow and warm conditions favorable for algal
growth. … This year’s low snowpack and dismal
projections mean there could be more releases from Blue Mesa in
the future and, therefore, increased potential for more harmful
algal blooms. In December, officials from the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation said releases from the three reservoirs — known
as the Colorado River Storage Project Act reservoirs or the
Upper Initial Units — are one of the tools the federal agency
could use to prop up levels at Lake Powell to
protect the ability to make hydropower at Glen Canyon
Dam.
Holiday storms left the Sierra Nevada snowpack around Carson
City near average for this time of year, but other parts of
Nevada are languishing. “On Jan. 1, basin snowpack percentages
are split, with the eastern Sierra basins at 86-128 percent of
median snow, while the rest of Nevada and the Upper Colorado
basin have only 17-64 percent of median snow,” reads a Jan. 1
report from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
… As of Monday morning, snow water equivalent — how much
water content resides in the snowpack — was at 105 percent of
median in the Carson River Basin. The Lake Tahoe Basin was at
103 percent, the Truckee River Basin around 108 percent and the
Walker River Basin around 128 percent.
A peer-reviewed study from American Rivers and
Conservation Science Partners reveals that more than 80 percent
of U.S. rivers lack adequate protection. Roughly two-thirds of
the nation’s 4.4 million miles of rivers are currently
completely unprotected, according to the assessment, and
protections for another 17 percent are considered inadequate to
safeguard rivers from major threats including dams, pollution,
and loss of fish and wildlife habitat. … Alaska (9.4%)
and California (5.6%) have the highest
percentage of rivers protected by national parks.
… With a five-year, $3.7 million grant from the Heising-Simon
Foundation, the Pacific Coastal Fog Research project is poised
to lift the veil on the rather mysterious meteorological
phenomenon. The scientists will record the fog’s chemical
composition, examine how it helps support redwood forests and
other ecosystems, and look at the possible effects of climate
change and pollution from human activities. … Coastal
fog is a dominant provider of water during dry
seasons, supporting coastal vegetation, including
redwoods. In the past, fog research has mainly focused on how
it is affected by weather patterns, but the realization that
fog may be vulnerable to contamination from human activities
has sparked interest in more interdisciplinary research.
Manteca has been effectively removing TCP from municipal
well water over the past decade. Described by the state as a
“potent carcinogen”, it has been detected in a handful of city
wells over the years as the plume of contamination spreads
hundreds of feet below ground. Most of the city’s wells aren’t
impacted. The effective removal of the containment TCP —
1,2,3-trichloropapne — from municipal water has been a priority
for the city since it was first detected in a well in 2013. …
Extremely small traces of the chemical TCP used in pesticides
for orchard crops as well as in industrial solvents has been
detected in several Manteca municipal water wells over the
years.
Out in the fertile yet water-constrained farmlands of
California’s western Central Valley, a massive solar,
battery, and power grid project that could provide
a quarter of the state’s clean energy needs by 2035 has
taken a critical step forward. In December, the board of
directors of the Westlands Water District, the agency that
manages water delivery to more than 600,000 acres in
California’s agricultural heartland, approved the Valley Clean
Infrastructure Plan. VCIP calls for building up to
21 gigawatts of solar energy and an equivalent amount of
battery storage across up to 136,000 acres, along with
a series of high-voltage transmission lines to connect the
electricity generated to the state’s grid.
The Bureau of Land Management has begun paving the way for new
oil and gas leases in California, concluding in draft
environmental analyses that new drilling would not
significantly harm public health or the environment. The
analyses — which BLM’s Bakersfield Field Office and Central
Coast Field Office released on Monday — cover potential leases
in large swaths of federal land in central and coastal
California. The draft supplemental environmental impact
statements conclude that future emissions from oil and gas
development in the area would be “minor.” BLM is considering
various leasing options after years of litigation over drilling
in the region.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Friday released a sweeping
report outlining five alternatives for managing the Colorado
River after current rules expire in 2026. The 1,600-page report
marks a pivotal moment in negotiations among seven states, 30
tribal nations, Mexico, and a host of stakeholders who rely on
the river’s dwindling supply. … California, which draws
4.4 million acre-feet annually from the Colorado River, faces
potential cuts of up to 3.9 million acre-feet per year under
some scenarios, according to the Bureau’s analysis. That could
hit Southern California cities and Imperial Valley agriculture
hardest.
It’s a rare site to see the U.S. Drought Monitor Map show
California without a drought, or even abnormally dry
conditions. That hasn’t happened for a
quarter-century. … State Climatologist Michael
Anderson said the state doesn’t use the U.S. Drought Monitor as
an “indicator, and it’s not an official drought-free
declaration.” … “As we’ve seen in past years,
California can go quickly from wet to dry conditions, and we
are expecting dry conditions to return through the rest of
January. This will have an impact on statewide rain and
snowfall averages, which are expected to decrease,” Anderson
said.
The world’s oceans absorbed more heat in 2025 than any year on
record, providing the fuel for extreme weather
that killed thousands of people across the globe, according to
researchers of a study published Friday in Advances in
Atmospheric Sciences. … Record-breaking rainfall
highlighted what scientists call “the escalating risks
associated with rapidly intensifying storm systems in a warming
climate.” These disasters are connected to warming oceans in a
direct way. Warmer water means more evaporation, which puts
more moisture into the air. When storms form over these
supercharged oceans, they carry that extra water and dump it as
extreme rainfall.
… With its 70 miles of coastline and 40 miles of bay shore,
Marin is one of the counties most vulnerable to sea
level rise in the Bay Area. … It will cost an
estimated $17 billion to protect Marin County from the 2 feet
of sea level rise expected toward the end of the century,
according to a recent study, and federal grants for climate
change projects have disappeared. The county has to balance
both long-term and immediate needs that are increasingly
overlapping, such as $25 million to fix an aging
levee in San Rafael that was damaged during the recent
flooding.
The fastest‑growing piece of America’s artificial intelligence
infrastructure is colliding with one of its most finite local
resources: water. As utilities, state regulators, and local
governments rush to accommodate a surge in data‑center
construction driven by AI and cloud computing, water is
emerging as a constraint that few permitting systems were
designed to manage. … In 2023, U.S. data centers
consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water, according to
federal and industry analyses compiled by the Energy Department
and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Hyperscale
facilities alone are projected to consume between 16 billion
and 33 billion gallons annually by 2028.
The Trump administration is following up on its pledge to try
to stop the removal of two dams on Northern
California’sEel River, a move that
gives farmers and rural residents opposed to the controversial
demolition a welcome ally. U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Brooke Rollins last month filed to intervene in the regulatory
proceedings over PG&E’s Potter Valley
Project. … Despite the high-profile intervention
and forceful language, however, the Trump administration’s
influence on the Potter Valley Project’s regulatory proceedings
is likely to be limited. Many legal experts say the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the independent agency
that oversees hydroelectric facilities, can’t require a private
company to keep a project running.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would
free about $50 million in funds for maintaining Hoover Dam.
House members approved the bipartisan Help Hoover Dam Act on
Thursday as part of a larger appropriations bill. It now moves
to the U.S. Senate for approval. Lawmakers say the measure will
allow the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Hoover Dam’s
operations, to access about $50 million in stranded funding
from an orphaned federal account. The bureau could then use the
money on operations, capital improvements and clean-up actions.
Attorney General Kris Mayes says her new agreement with a
mega-dairy company will cut groundwater pumping in Southeast
Arizona’s Willcox Basin by more than 100,000 acre-feet over the
next 15 years. “This is a real reduction in groundwater
pumping,” cumulative from 2026 to 2040, Mayes told a big crowd
in Cochise County Thursday. … The annual savings will be a
drop in the bucket compared to the current groundwater
overdraft in the Willcox Basin, which is estimated at more than
100,000 acre-feet every year. … But it’s an important first
step, officials say, adding that the reduction in groundwater
overpumping will be multiplied by additional measures.
In the United States, 54.9 million acres were irrigated in
2022, down slightly from 56.3 million acres in 1997. This
modest decline conceals significant regional changes in recent
decades. California’s irrigated acreage decreased from 8.8 to
8.2 million acres between 1997 and 2022. … The decrease
in irrigated area in the West—where a generally arid climate
means most crops require irrigation—primarily reflects
surface and groundwater shortages due to drought and
groundwater depletion in the face of competing demands
for water. In some areas, urbanization has also
contributed to this shift.
