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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.
We occasionally bold words in the text to ensure the water connection is clear.
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.
Governor Gavin Newsom has made significant strides in securing
and enhancing water supplies, including improving the state’s
ability to capture stormwater. Fortified by state investment to
strengthen and expand California’s local water infrastructure,
eight major, state-funded projects completed or broke ground
across California this fall—including water recycling,
wastewater treatment and desalination facilities—that benefit
over 1 million people. Collectively, the projects add about 2.9
billion gallons annually to the state’s water supplies, enough
water for roughly 20,000 homes per year.
Colorado River water negotiations are ongoing as the basin
states now face a Feb. 14 deadline to submit a final agreement
to the U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of
Reclamation. At the Western Governors Association winter
meeting in Paradise Valley, Gov. Katie Hobbs accused the upper
basin states of running out the clock by not putting proposals
on the table as the previous Nov. 11 deadline passed without a
deal. … In the meantime, Hobbs said she will continue to
fight for the water Arizona needs. … “Our users will not
accept a deal where we are waiving our rights to the water that
the upper basin owes us,” Hobbs said.
A new study shows that during drought, it’s not how hot or how
dry it is that determines gas emissions from plants—but how
quickly conditions change. This discovery reshapes our
understanding of the relationship between drought,
vegetation, and air pollution. The research …
reveals a striking phenomenon: when the weather shifts
rapidly—for example, a sharp increase in humidity or a sudden
drop in temperature—vegetation responds immediately by changing
the rate at which it emits naturally occurring biogenic
volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) into the air. … The paper
is published in the journal Science of The Total Environment.
Residents who frequent Loveland Reservoir are again raising
alarms about water being drained from the area’s largest public
open-space reservoir. The concerns come three years after the
reservoir was lowered to deadpool levels, killing off the fish
population and severely impacting
recreation. … Anglers say the fish population was
just beginning to recover from the previous draining.
… Residents also worry the lower water levels will
affect firefighting resources. … A spokesperson for
Sweetwater Authority confirmed the agency is conducting
controlled water transfers to “continue providing safe and
reliable water to our South Bay ratepayers.”
A gadget capable of extracting evaporation from tomato pulp is
producing 120,000 gallons a day of “new water” clean enough to
drink in Los Banos in Merced County. The “water harvesting”
unit was developed by Australian company Botanical Water
Technologies, which moved to the United States around five
years ago. The Ingomar Packing Company in Los Banos processes
tomato products such as tomato paste and diced tomatoes. …
Greg Pruett, Ingomar CEO, says in a promotional video about the
program that the company had a large volume of condensate water
from the tomatoes that was “…not being used in a valuable way.”
So when it learned about Botanical and its work extracting and
purifying such water, it was a good fit.
… From small, rural regions to low-income urban communities,
those with the fewest resources are supported by some of the
smallest water systems with limited resources. This year,
however, brought some welcome relief. Thanks to Governor Newsom
and legislative champions like Assemblymember Blanca Rubio,
California passed Assembly Bill 428, a new law tackling one of
the most painful, and familiar, cost pressures Californians
face: skyrocketing insurance premiums. … The
measure now allows water corporations to join with mutual water
companies and public water agencies to pool resources and buy
insurance together. – Written by Adán Ortega, executive director of
CalMutuals.
The invasive pest spotlight focuses on emerging or potential
invasive pests in California. In this issue we are covering
nutria. The nutria is a large semi-aquatic rodent
introduced to California in the early 1900s to be farmed for
their fur. … Nutria have since spread into waterways
within the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Central
Valley. … Nutria severely damage the environment,
roads, levees, and crops. They burrow into banks of waterways,
weakening or collapsing them. As they feed, they damage the
native plant communities and soil structure of wetlands. Nutria
feeding and burrowing damage both increase the risk of erosion
and flooding.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the
world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an
immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these
reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries
production and management potential, indicates a study from the
University of California, Davis. The study, published
in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S.
reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of
fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems
could play major roles in food security and fisheries
conservation.
California has unveiled an ambitious plan to help combat the
worsening climate crisis with one of its invaluable assets: its
land. Over the next 20 years, the state will work to transform
more than half of its 100 million acres into multi-benefit
landscapes that can absorb more carbon than they release,
officials announced Monday. … The plan also calls for
11.9 million acres of forestland to be managed for biodiversity
protection, carbon storage and water supply protection by 2045,
and 2.7 million acres of shrublands and chaparral to be managed
for carbon storage, resilience and habitat connectivity, among
other efforts.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended
Alternative 3 – Salmon Closure during the final days of the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) meeting mirroring
the opinions of commercial and recreational charter boat
anglers. The department’s position is a significant change from
early March. The PFMC meetings are being held in Seattle from
April 6 to 11, and the final recommendations of the council
will be forwarded to the California Fish and Game Commission in
May.
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But
demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital
water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the
region – particularly from the Colorado River – was top of mind
at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference, an
event organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West
that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars
to discuss solutions to urgent problems facing rural Western
regions.
Today, Congresswoman Norma Torres and Congressman David Valadao
– members of the House Appropriations Committee – announced the
introduction of the bipartisan Removing Nitrate and Arsenic in
Drinking Water Act. This bill would amend the Safe Drinking
Water Act to provide grants for nitrate and arsenic reduction,
by providing $15 million for FY25 and every fiscal year
thereafter. The bill also directs the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to take into consideration the needs of
economically disadvantaged populations impacted by drinking
water contamination. The California State Water Resources
Control Board found the Inland Empire to have the highest
levels of contamination of nitrate throughout the state
including 82 sources in San Bernardino, 67 sources in Riverside
County, and 123 sources in Los Angeles County.
