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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Governors from six of the seven states that rely on the
dwindling Colorado River gathered in Washington on Friday to
try to resolve a two-year impasse over how to share its water.
There was no breakthrough — and whether they made progress was
unclear. Leaders in downstream Arizona and California expressed
optimism after the meeting that a consensus over a plan to
share water appeared “achievable.” But Colorado officials stood
firm in their reluctance to accept mandatory water use cuts — a
major sticking point that could remain in the way of a
compromise.
This month’s lingering dry spell has combined with warm winter
temperatures to take a toll on California’s mountain snow,
raising new questions about the durability of water supplies
this year. State water officials, who conducted the second snow
survey of the season Friday, reported that cumulative snowpack
across the Sierra Nevada, southern Cascades and Trinity
mountains measured 59% of average for the date. …
While snowfall has lagged, the good news is that rain has been
fairly robust. Despite several dry weeks recently, average
rainfall statewide is running about 120% of what it typically
is at this point in the water year.
California is weighing its first major rewrite of Bay-Delta
water rules in decades, considering changes to how much water
must remain in rivers and giving regional water agencies a more
flexible way to comply with those limits. On the second day of
a three-day State Water Resources Control Board hearing on
Thursday, stakeholders fell into three broad camps as they
continued to debate how California should manage the Bay-Delta
in the years ahead. They included state officials backing
adoption of the plan, environmental and tribal groups seeking
stronger protections, and water agencies that welcomed added
flexibility but pushed for major changes to the staff proposal.
Colorado’s expert on aquatic invasive species said Wednesday
the state has an “incredible fight ahead” as it works to
contain the spread of zebra mussels in the Colorado River. “I
wish I could tell you the story of zebra mussels has
concluded,” Robert Walters told a crowd of dozens of water
professionals at the Colorado Water Congress in Aurora.
… He said this year’s strategy includes ramping up
testing of hundreds of ponds in the Grand Junction area. “There
is vast network of canals, ditches and washes moving this
water,” he said. “Golf courses, people with ponds in their
backyards. Everyone who is receiving Colorado River water has
the potential to be harboring these highly invasive mussels.”
Residents of the Diablo Grande housing development in
Stanislaus County have four months to pony up $14 million or
the Kern County Water Agency (KCWA) will cut off their water,
according to a KCWA press release issued Wednesday. That’s how
much KCWA says it is owed in back water bills by the Western
Hills Water District, which serves the 600-home Diablo Grande
development in the foothills west of Interstate 5.
… KCWA’s press release blindsided Western Hills, which
has been in negotiations with KCWA to find a solution to the
complex, 25-year-long deal that soured after the 2008 housing
market crash.
… The [Round Valley Indian] tribal nation is confronting the
Trump administration over the [Eel] river’s future and fighting
some of its regional allies to reclaim water rights that have
been overlooked for a century. … The struggle is taking
place as the entity with a dominant stake in the river for
generations, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., seeks to give up in
Lake and Mendocino counties its network of Eel River dams and a
linked hydropower plant. The move has triggered a federal
review that has pitted the tribes, together with environmental
groups in favor of dam removal, against farming interests,
reservoir supporters and the Trump administration, which has
taken a dim view of dam demolition.
A Senate panel will convene Wednesday to hear from a
cybersecurity expert and two water utilities about threats
facing water infrastructure. The Environment and Public Works
Committee hearing will seek to identify strategies to make the
water sector more resilient against cyberattacks, which have
become more common in recent years. The meeting could be an
opportunity for bipartisan consensus, as lawmakers generally
agree on the need to protect water and wastewater
infrastructure against cyberattacks. The issue was a
priority under the Biden administration and remains so under
the Trump administration, which last year established an EPA
water office division that focuses on cyberthreats.
Last week, a district judge in San Francisco, California,
presided over a three-day trial brought by west coast fishers
and conservationists against US tyre companies. The fishers
allege that a chemical additive used in tyres is polluting
rivers and waterways, killing coho salmon and other fish. If
successful, the case could have implications far beyond the
United States. The case was initiated after the apparent
solving of a decades-old mystery: what was causing mass deaths
of endangered coho salmon in the Pacific north-west as they
returned to streams to spawn. The deaths happened after heavy
rain. Before dying, the fish would exhibit unusual behaviour,
swimming in circles, their mouths gaping, as if gasping for
air.
When the Eaton fire raged through neighborhoods in Altadena,
the flames leveled three-quarters of the homes served by the
tiny Las Flores Water Co. It also destroyed the roofs of two
covered reservoirs where the utility stored drinking water. The
company soon restored clean water to those homes left standing.
But the disaster has left it with costly repairs, and a sharp
drop in income since most of its 1,500 customers haven’t yet
rebuilt or reconnected their water. Attempting to avert
financial failure, the private water company’s board now plans
to start charging people a new “fire recovery fee” of about
$3,000 over the next five years, or about $50 a month.
Surging runoff from the high peaks of Rocky Mountain National
Park in 2025 overwhelmed the banks of Beaver Creek, a tributary
near the headwaters of the Colorado River, and flooded two and
a half football fields’ worth of surrounding
meadows. … Visible flooding in 2025 … meant the
surges in Beaver Creek were hitting artificial beaver dams and
lodges built to emulate past environmental conditions and
recreate historic wetlands. The flooding was proof that a
meticulously developed plan to restore Kawuneeche’s crucial
watershed over decades, among multiple government agencies and
nonprofits, paid for by a wide array of funders, is reporting
great progress after just a couple of years.
… Crystal Tobias is a longtime river cleanup volunteer in the
Sacramento region. She said e-scooters have become a recurring
problem during river cleanups she’s participated in. “Oh,
dozens and dozens of them,” Tobias said. “Maybe over a hundred.
It’s every waterway… Steelhead Creek, Arcade Creek, the
American River, Discovery Park. It’s just rampant.” … She
said lithium-ion batteries attached to e-scooters and other
components contribute to water pollution. She says this is
especially a concern in Sacramento’s waterways that are salmon
and steelhead habitats.
Officials on Friday said they have expanded the incident area
for a massive sewer spill in the northern part of Clearlake as
a precautionary measure. Sunday will mark three weeks since a
Lake County Sanitation District-owned force main rupture
triggered the Robin Lane sewer spill, which released nearly
three million gallons of raw sewage into streets and across
private properties. On Monday, the city of Clearlake began
managing the recovery phase of the incident in unified command
with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services.
… By Friday, the unified command said that, based on
continued evaluation of groundwater conditions related to the
spill, the incident area was expanded as a precautionary
measure to ensure the protection of public health.
“In the West, water flows uphill towards money,” Marc
Reisner writes in “Cadillac Desert.” His observation rings even
truer today. Just south of Tijuana, for example, plans are
underway to build a $600 million ocean desalination plant that
will increase Tijuana’s water supply by a whopping 50%. While
Tijuana arguably needs more water to feed its growing
population and to counter cuts from the Colorado River, the
project raises an important question: Will that additional
supply of drinking water result in more sewage coming across
the border? –Written by Doug Liden, a retired engineer from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency who spent the last two decades
working on Tijuana River issues from EPA’s San Diego Border
Office, the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana and the U.S. Embassy in
Mexico City.
… Flanked by the Wassuk Range, Walker Lake is stunning,
shrinking — and very near dead. It is fed more in theory than
reality by the Walker River, which winds from the Sierra Nevada
east through some of the state’s increasingly corporate farming
communities. Thanks to more than a century of
over-appropriation and ever-increasing demand, the damaged
river exhausts itself in what’s been described as “an ooze of
mud” as it seeps into a terminal lake whose waterline has
dropped more than 150 feet in little more than a century.
… I’m on the side of those who believe there must be a
way to balance the interests of a greater good with expanded
farming and long neglect. –Written by Nevada Independent columnist John L.
Smith.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today conducted the
second snow survey of the season at Phillips Station. The
manual survey recorded 23 inches of snow depth and a snow water
equivalent of 8 inches, which is 46 percent of average for
this location. The snow water equivalent measures the amount of
water contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s
water supply forecast. Statewide, the snowpack is 59 percent of
average for this date. Three weeks ago, the snowpack was 89
percent of average after a series of atmospheric rivers
provided relief from a slow start to the snowpack. A dry
January, which is historically the wettest month of the year in
California, has now eroded the gains made at the start of the
year and forecasts currently show no major precipitation in the
next two weeks.
[Thursday], the Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced
an increase to the State Water Project (SWP) allocation for
2026. The allocation is now 30 percent of requested supplies,
up from the initial allocation of 10 percent on December 1.
Storms in mid-December have made it possible for the SWP to
increase the expected amount of water deliveries this year to
the 29 public water agencies served by the SWP. … In
December, all of California benefited from winter storms.
However, January has been unseasonably dry and warm and, as a
result, snowpack and precipitation are below average for this
time of year.
Governors in the Colorado River basin and their negotiators are
meeting with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in Washington on
Friday. … On the eve of the high-stakes summit, negotiators
from both the upper and lower river basins are not sounding
confident they can reach an agreement before a fast-approaching
Feb. 14 deadline. … “Some in the lower basin wanted some sort
of guaranteed supply, irrespective of hydrologic conditions,”
[Colorado negotiator Becky] Mitchell said. “And I think asking
people to guarantee something that cannot be guaranteed is a
recipe that cannot get to success.” … California’s water
negotiator, J.B. Hamby, was talking to roughly 600 people on a
webinar about his take on the state of negotiations. … He
largely focused on his desire to still find a compromise among
the seven states in the river basin.
… By Jan. 6, with umbrellas and snow shovels getting a
workout, the statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack was a respectable
93% of its historical average. But in the three weeks since,
the switch has flipped. Sunny and warm weather has been the
norm throughout most of California. On Thursday, the Sierra
snowpack had fallen to just 59% of its historical average. …
But it’s not as bad as it seems, experts said Thursday.
… Between mid-December and early January, the state’s
largest reservoir, Shasta — a massive 35-mile-long lake near
Redding — rose by 36 feet. The second-largest, Oroville in
Butte County, rose 69 feet over the same three weeks. They have
even more water in them now, and are still rising.
A judge has ordered the Southern Nevada Water Authority to halt
its grass removal efforts across Las Vegas Valley residential
communities and homeowners associations pending a hearing next
week. It’s the latest development in a lawsuit against the
agency for its enforcement of a 2021 state
law intended to remove decorative grass in the name of
preserving the Colorado River. The definition
of “nonfunctional turf” was established by a committee, and
three plaintiffs allege that the ban has killed trees in three
neighborhoods in Las Vegas and Henderson. … Albertson
has scheduled a Wednesday hearing on whether to extend her
temporary restraining order.
Putah Creek, the 85-mile long stream that forms the border
between Solano and Yolo counties, just had a record breaking
year for salmon. 2,100 Chinook returned to the waters of
Putah Creek to spawn in 2025. A decade ago scientists estimated
about 1,700 salmon returned to the stream. That may sound
like a modest increase but compared to three decades ago when
salmon were extinct in the waterway, this represents a complete
turnaround for the once struggling Putah Creek. … Robert
Lusardi is a UC Davis assistant professor and Max Stevenson is
the Putah Creek Streamkeeper. They both joined Vicki Gonzalez
on Insight to talk about the creek and its record breaking
salmon run.
