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 Sacramento Valley Conservancy (SVC) is proud to announce
the launch of its Vernal Pool Stewardship Program, a
community-driven effort to protect some of the region’s most
rare and ecologically important landscapes through hands-on
stewardship, education and volunteer engagement. Sacramento
Valley Conservancy is entrusted with the protection and
stewardship of more than 8,000 acres of vernal pool preserves
in Sacramento County, including 3,300 acres of rare vernal pool
wetlands in Rancho Cordova and the surrounding area. These
seasonal wetlands support unique plants and wildlife found
nowhere else, and play a critical role in water quality, flood
management and regional biodiversity.
Every day, Santa Clara County relies on a mix of local and
imported water to meet our community’s water needs. As climate
change brings longer and more severe droughts, Valley Water is
exploring ways to strengthen our water supply. One key project
under evaluation is the State of California’s Delta Conveyance
Project. To plan for a reliable supply of safe, clean water now
and in the future, Valley Water follows the Water Supply Master
Plan 2050. This long-term plan guides investments that support
water reliability, sustainability, and resilience in the
decades ahead.
Heavy rain and snow has pounded California in recent weeks,
causing floods, power outages, mudslides and other disruptions.
But the storms have also filled reservoirs and deepened the
snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, easing drought
concerns in a state that is perpetually worried about not
having enough water. The near-constant pace of storms so
far this winter has brought the state above-average
precipitation, driving the storage level in most of
California’s water reservoirs to well above normal for this
point in the rainy season. Measurements show virtually no
drought in the state.
A California appellate court dealt a setback [late
last] week to the state’s Delta tunnel project, ruling
that the Department of Water Resources lacks the legal
authority to issue billions of dollars in bonds to dig the
controversial conveyance under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
to Southern California. In an opinion issued Wednesday,
the state’s 3rd District Court of Appeal said the bond plan —
first approved by water managers in 2020 — was too vague and
gave the department “unfettered discretion” to decide what to
build and how to pay for it. The court upheld a 2024 decision
by a Sacramento judge, siding with project opponents led by the
Sierra Club and several capital region counties, including
Sacramento.
… Data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shows that the
water elevation at Lake Mead’s Hoover Dam was
1,062.24 feet at the end of December. That’s the lowest it’s
been during this time of the year since 2022, when it was
1,044.82 feet. Before that, levels were the lowest in 1936,
when the region experienced a severe drought. Lake Mead stored
8.59 million acre-feet of water on Dec. 31, according to USBR
data. The lake can store about 26 million acre-feet of water,
meaning it was only about 33% full at the end of the
year.
Just a couple weeks ago, the Phillips Station site near Lake
Tahoe — the location where California officials conduct regular
manual snowpack surveys — was dry ground. But that’s changed.
On a sunny day near the end of December, the site was blanked
by a couple feet of snow. But officials say the state is
still below average. Researchers with the state’s
Department of Water Resources reported a snow depth of 24
inches at Phillips Station. That’s 50 percent of average for
this site. Statewide, snowpack levels are at 71 percent of
average for this date.
As salmon return to Klamath River headwaters for the first time
in over a century, the newly formed Klamath Indigenous Land
Trust announced the purchase of 10,000 acres in and around the
former reservoir reach of the river. The move is one of the
largest private land purchases by an Indigenous-led land trust
in U.S. history, according to the announcement. … With
the acquisition complete, the land trust’s next steps include
developing comprehensive land management plans using input from
area tribes, ensuring stewardship reflects both cultural values
and ecological priorities, the announcement said. Those plans
will address habitat recovery, cultural resource protection,
fire management and public access considerations.
The City of Camarillo filed a Writ of Mandate in Santa Barbara
County Superior Court, seeking an urgent review of a recent
groundwater ruling that city officials claim relies on outdated
science and could threaten the region’s water security for
decades. … City leaders argue the decision established a
“dangerously low” safe yield for the local basin— the amount of
water that can be pumped sustainably— by ignoring critical
evidence and modern modeling. … At the heart of the dispute
is Camarillo’s $70 million North Pleasant Valley Desalter. The
city alleges the court excluded evidence regarding the
facility’s role in treating salty groundwater and meeting state
mandates to reduce reliance imported water from the
Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.
A House Natural Resources subcommittee this week will take up
two aspects of forest management — clean water and reliable
electricity — at risk in an era of worsening wildfires. The
Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will hear
testimony on efforts to step up forest thinning and related
work, highlighted in the “Fix Our Forests Act,” H.R. 471,
that’s awaiting further action in Congress. The legislation —
which is bipartisan thanks mainly to a Democratic push from
California — would ease certain environmental
reviews of forest projects aimed at removing vegetation from
utility rights of way or protecting vital watersheds, among
many other provisions.
… A major escalation to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the state
[Colo.] came on Tuesday, when he used the first veto of his
second term to kill a pipeline project to provide clean
drinking water to the state’s eastern plains, a largely
conservative area. … The bill would have helped to fund
a 130-mile pipeline to bring water from a reservoir near
Pueblo, Colo., to small farming and ranching towns on the
state’s eastern plains, where groundwater is contaminated with
salt and even naturally occurring radioactive elements. The
project has been in the works since the 1960s.
2025 is the year for salmon success in California’s Yuba River.
A nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring
the watershed has positive results to share this year.
… The South Yuba River Citizens League, or SYRCL, is
leading the charge when it comes to salmon restoration in the
Yuba watershed. … And for 2025, they’ve recorded 6,200
adult chinook salmon and counting, the most they’ve seen in
more than a decade. … Restoration science is being
implemented around the state, with many other streams and
waterways seeing similar results. And being a keystone species,
salmon play a critical role in our ecosystems and represent
healthy waterways.
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a rule delaying
by five years deadlines for stricter wastewater treatment
standards for coal-fired power plants, a move that will allow
continued releases of toxic pollutants into waterways that
supply drinking water for more than 30 million Americans. The
delayed standards would have required coal plants to
significantly reduce discharges of wastewater containing
arsenic, mercury, bromide, and other hazardous pollutants.
Under the new rule, power plants will have additional time
before being required to install more advanced treatment
technologies.
The recent rainstorms are putting the Tijuana River Trash Boom
Project to the test, and so far, it’s proving its worth.
The trash boom was installed about a year and a half ago to
stop waste from spreading through the Tijuana River Valley and
into the Pacific Ocean. The barriers, stretching roughly
700 feet across the beginning of the Tijuana River Valley, are
designed to catch debris flowing from Tijuana before it reaches
the ocean. Oscar Romo, the director of the project, told
CBS 8 that during last year’s rain season, the system collected
about 500 tons of trash. Now, just two months into this
rain season, the boom has already trapped nearly that same
amount.
… Point Buckler Island, a 50-acre, boat-only island in Suisun
Bay, has been purchased by the John Muir Land Trust, which
plans to restore the island to its original tidal
marshland. The acquisition follows years of legal
disputes tied to unauthorized development that altered the
island’s natural flows. Located just east of the Carquinez
Strait in Solano County, Point Buckler sits at a critical
transition zone where saltwater from San Francisco Bay meets
freshwater from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
This brackish habitat plays an outsized role in supporting
migrating waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway and helps young
salmon and steelhead adjust as they move from river to ocean.
The Salton Sea Bird Festival will return on Saturday, Jan. 17,
2026, offering birdwatchers and outdoor enthusiasts a rare look
at one of the Pacific Flyway’s most critical stops during the
peak of winter migration. The daylong event, organized through
a partnership of state, federal, and nonprofit organizations,
features a diverse lineup of field trips and educational
activities designed to showcase the ecological significance of
California’s largest inland lake. Among the day’s highlights is
a guided public tour of the Species Conservation Habitat (SCH)
project. Hosted by the Salton Sea Management Program (SSMP),
the tour provides a behind-the-scenes look at the 9,500-acre
aquatic restoration site located at the southern end of the
sea.
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.
