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.
… [A] bill was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom that
would keep emergency flow regulations in place for two Klamath
tributaries. Supporters hailed the new law as essential for
protecting salmon habitat and tribal rights. The Scott and
Shasta rivers, major Klamath tributaries, have been under
emergency drought regulations for years. Siskiyou County
farmers, who pushed against the bill through lobbying
associations, were required to limit water take to keep minimum
flows in place after fish populations plummeted during a
drought from 2020 to 2023.
October 1 marks the start of Water Year 2026. Hydrologists and
water experts use October as the start of the water year,
especially in the Western United States, when the majority of
precipitation shifts from rain to mountain snow, and snowpack
begins accumulating. … Much of the Upper Colorado River
Basin will be entering Water Year 2026 in some state of
drought. On October 1, 2024, only 7% of the Upper Colorado
River Basin was experiencing drought conditions.
A pair of bills that arose out of the ongoing fight over
groundwater in eastern Kern County’s desert have come to very
different conclusions – one awaiting the Governor’s signature
and the other tabled indefinitely. Both bills address a process
known as groundwater adjudication, in which a judge decides how
much water is available in a basin and then assigns pumping
rights to various users. These cases can go on for up to
10 years as courts sift through rights going back more than 100
years and try to find and engage with every pumper in the
disputed region.
As San Diego council members prepare to vote on major water and
sewer rate hikes, the city’s independent budget analyst warns
that higher rates are all but unavoidable in order to keep the
Public Utilities Department afloat — and that not raising rates
would hurt customers in other ways. The City Council is
scheduled to vote on Tuesday on a proposal that could raise
water rates for San Diego customers by more than 60% and sewer
rates by more than 30% over the next four years.
… Without additional revenue, the IBA predicts that the
PUD will need to cut its expenses by slashing either its
operating costs — likely by cutting staff — or its spending on
capital improvements.
… Get ready for a partial federal government shutdown,
starting at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, that promises to be unlike
any other. … Go to the budget office’s website and
you’ll be referred to specific agencies, where some detail
their plans and some don’t. … Rep. Doris Matsui,
D-Sacramento, noted that, based on past shutdowns, the EPA will
suspend inspections at the “most hazardous waste sites, as well
as drinking water and chemical facilities.” She also warned
that efforts to address PFAS — often referred to as “forever
chemicals” that are linked to potential health risks, including
cancer — could face delays during the shutdown.
A number of Arizona cities have adopted rules restricting water
deliveries to users who use a lot of water. … The notion of
large water users is often thought to be targeted at data
centers, which are top of mind for many Arizonans at the
moment. But they can also include places like golf courses and
some manufacturing facilities. A new study looks at the kinds
of rules cities have imposed, and it found that cities have, by
and large, taken different approaches. Sarah Porter is director
of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State
University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. She joined
The Show to talk more about what the research shows.
Ecosystem restoration is an effective way to improve conditions
for recreation, wildlife, and more. Yet permitting—while
necessary for ensuring projects are well designed and
beneficial—has long slowed restoration projects across
California. Is that now shifting? We spoke with the State Water
Board’s Paul Hann and Sustainable Conservation’s Erika Lovejoy
about a new general order that’s changing the game.
… An ad hoc group of six Colorado River experts began
assembling reports in 2025. They have been dubbed the Traveling
Wilburys of the Colorado River Basin. … Big Pivots
convened a conversation with several of the report authors on
Sept. 18, a week after their latest report had been issued.
…That report delivered the numbers that collectively showed
dramatically increased risk during the upcoming two years of
the dams on the Colorado River becoming dysfunctional.
Gov. Gavin Newsom may greenlight a half-billion-dollar effort
to widen a North Bay highway [Highway 37] that Caltrans has
acknowledged is sinking under its own weight. … [T]he
sinking expressway was surrounded by sinking levees, which
could be overwhelmed by the more intense and more frequent
storms already occurring due to climate change. … The highway
blocks flows into and out of the wetland habitat, cutting off
healthy functions of the ecosystem. … Caltrans has
agreed to open up more channels under the roadway, raise the
bridge over Tolay Creek in Sonoma County and open the channel
underneath to allow more movement of water.
As US states increasingly pass laws to limit PFAS chemicals in
consumer products, a debate is heating up over a California
bill that proposes banning the sale of cookware with
intentionally added “forever chemicals” beginning in 2030.
intentionally added PFAS beginning in January 2028.
… The bill’s supporters argue that PTFE from cookware
adds to the flow of forever chemicals in household waste,
adding to the costly public burden of treating PFAS-tainted
wastewater. … A coalition of
cookware industry leaders, however, is pushing back against
similar proposed bans across the country.
Five individuals have been caught illegally mining along
several California waterways, state officials
announced. According to a Sept. 26 news
release from the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, the citations began in August of last year, when
authorities found someone operating a suction dredge — a
powerful tool that sucks materials out of underwater cracks and
crevices — on the Salmon River. … According to the CDFW,
this motorized equipment can harm fish and their native habitat
by releasing contaminants, causing erosion and potentially
creating more favorable conditions for the invasive signal
crayfish.
… [L]ast week, California Governor Gavin Newsom extended the
state’s cap-and-trade program until 2045. … [T]he [Yurok]
tribe has now received tens of millions of dollars in carbon
credit sales, boosting its economy and funding environmental
projects like recovery work on the Klamath River in the wake of
dam removal. But critics of carbon markets remain
staunchly opposed to the programs, alleging that the scheme
perpetuates colonialism, incentivizes the theft of Indigenous
resources, and allows companies to essentially pay to keep
polluting without having to change their activities.
The sugar industry and companies that make sweet drinks and
foods have spent nearly a century downplaying sugar’s role in
health problems and distorting the science around fluoride
— and the practice continues today, according to a new
study. The study, published in the journal Environmental
Health, adds to evidence that the industry promoted fluoride as
the solution to tooth decay to avoid scrutiny over sugar’s
role. … The findings come as two states — Utah and
Florida — and dozens of communities have banned fluoride in
public water.
After 35 years of working in organic pest control, serial
entrepreneur Pam Marrone is on a new mission to eradicate
invasive species using alternatives to terrible chemicals. In
particular, she’s on a quest for what she calls “the holy
grail” – an eco-friendly herbicide that will zap out non-native
weeds. “We have the team that can really execute it,” says
Marrone, whose 2-year-old startup, Invasive Species Corp.,
known as ISC, is already helping the state of California find a
sustainable way to deal with golden mussels,
which clog waterways and damage water treatment facilities.
“There’s nobody doing exactly what we’re doing with invasive
species.”
The first major Pacific storm of the wet season is forecast to
wallop the West Coast. … Some Bay Area cities could
record their wettest September day in decades. Showers will
remain in the forecast Monday through at least
Wednesday. … Rain showers are expected to linger
across Northern California on Tuesday, where
snow may mix in at the summits of Tahoe ski
resorts. … Although the rain probably won’t be enough to
completely end fire season in most places, it should moisten
vegetation considerably and lower fire risk significantly,
especially in the Coastal Ranges and northern Sierra.
Video captured a Chinook salmon successfully summiting the fish
ladder at an upper Klamath River dam this week, according to
the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife — the first known
instance since the removal of four lower dams last year.
The video comes from Keno Dam, located just southwest of
Klamath Falls. Salmon were previously spotted on the Keno Dam
fish ladders last year, but this is the first time one’s been
spotted passing the dam. The camera was installed just the day
before.
Data center companies want to triple Nevada’s energy capacity
to meet the power demands of a rapidly growing industry.
… But the new demand comes at an awkward time for
Nevada. Water access in the state is under severe threat by a
dwindling Colorado River. Water by the hundreds of
millions of gallons is commonly used by data centers to
effectively cool the hard working computers. While a law to ban
the most water wasteful centers — referred to as evaporative
cooling — was shot down in 2024, no such data centers
have been approved since February of last year.
More than half a million Californians live among waterways in
low-lying towns of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. …
[T]housands of homeowners in the region are insured against
flooding thanks to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),
which backs policies sold by private insurers. … But the
flood insurance program is administered by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, and the Trump administration says
that agency is in need of a major overhaul. … The flood
insurance program might even be eliminated, experts say.
… In July, the Legislature passed, and Governor Katie Hobbs
signed, an unprecedented law to authorize the transfer of
groundwater rights from agricultural to urban use within
Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties. This framework legislation –
called “Ag to Urban” – enables farmers in these three counties
to sell and transfer their groundwater rights to the home
building industry. … To gain the necessary majority for
passage, Ag to Urban contains a significant limitation: the
credits made available to home builders can be used only within
a one-mile radius of the farmland being retired from
production, thereby ensuring that local communities will retain
a continuing share in ongoing regional development. –Written by Bruce Babbitt, a former governor of Arizona
and former U.S. secretary of the interior under President Bill
Clinton.
Other groundwater regulation news around the West:
… Last summer, Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife, or CLAW,
and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority
purchased the approximately 2.5-acre parcel that’s home to
Laurel Spring for $1 million after two months of intense and
hurried fundraising. … The property near the corner of
Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue is home to
a spring and stream that flow year-round, providing a valuable
water source for species … which are dealing with increased
habitat fragmentation from development and roadways that can
make accessing the Santa Monica Mountains’ limited water
sources even more difficult.
