A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
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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 Potter Valley Project, a century-old hydropower complex in
Mendocino County, is on its way to the recycle bin. PG&E
filed last summer to surrender its federal license. Two dams —
Scott and Cape Horn — are coming down. The Eel
River water rights pass to the Round Valley Indian
Tribes for the first time in a century. Now a Riverside County
water district 600 miles to the south says it might want to buy
a piece. The Trump administration is backing the bid. What the
district actually wants — water, electricity, or both — is the
question. … PG&E’s surrender filing says only
one thing is still on the table for any third party: “certain
features of the project such as those for water conveyance.”
The federal hydropower license, the company says, is no longer
transferable. That’s the narrow opening the Riverside district
is reaching into.
… Los Alamos National Laboratory is facing its biggest
expansion since the World War II-era Manhattan Project, the
top-secret government effort to produce the world’s first
atomic weapons. The current expansion will require a colossal
use of resources, including one that New Mexico has in
short supply these days — water. Last month, the U.S.
Department of Energy projected that the Los Alamos
expansion would require around 504 million gallons of water
annually — about 1.4 million gallons of water per day — for at
least another decade. … Plans include building a new
100,000-square-foot facility dedicated solely to artificial
intelligence supercomputers, along with one or more
microreactors, a compact nuclear reactor designed to generate
small-scale power and facilities for staging nuclear waste.
The House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony
Wednesday on legislation aimed at giving local irrigators a
stronger voice in decisions affecting their water
use and the lands they depend on. H.R. 8259, the
Federal Water Projects Consultation Improvement Act of 2026,
was introduced April 14 in the U.S. House of Representatives in
Washington, D.C., by Oregon Rep. Cliff Bentz. The bill seeks to
improve transparency and ensure more direct input from local
water users in the operation of federal water projects.
“Federal agencies often make decisions without sufficient input
from local communities that depend on and operate irrigation
systems and water projects affected by Endangered Species Act
listings,” Bentz said.
Fifty years ago, Colorado realized it had made a mistake. Its
rivers, once alive with the movement of playful otters cutting
through currents and pressing their tracks into sandbars, had
gone quiet. “They were killed out,” said Colorado Parks
and Wildlife Species Coordinator for Wolverine, Lynx and River
Otter, Robert Inman. “That was largely due to no regulations
being in place on the taking of wildlife during the 1800s-1900s
and pollution from mining tailings affecting fisheries — and
therefore — otter food.” Now, through a new project on
iNaturalist, CPW is asking Coloradans to help document where
otters are showing up across the state.
For some 40 years, churchgoers at Our Lady of Victory Catholic
Church have enjoyed a grassy oasis tucked off Windmill Lane in
southeast Las Vegas. The towering trees and green grass keep
them cool in blazing summers. … The church is perhaps
the most unique plaintiff to join a high-profile
lawsuit against the water authority’s enforcement of the
state law. It is meant to rein in turfgrass irrigation — the
single-largest use of water from Lake Mead that cannot be
captured and recycled through Southern Nevada’s
robust wastewater purification and delivery systems.
An invasive species of mussel is becoming more of a concern in
California as it overtakes ecosystems and impacts
infrastructure, according to officials. Golden mussels, native
to China and Southeastern Asia, were first detected in October
2024 by California Department of Water Resources staff who were
conducting routine operations in the Port of Stockton. … On
Tuesday, San Joaquin County officials declared an emergency
over the threat posed by the golden mussel. All five county
supervisors voted in favor of the declaration during Tuesday’s
board meeting, including Supervisor Paul Canepa who described
the situation as “out of control.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the Los Angeles District
gave a presentation about the Salton Sea Aquatic Ecosystem
Restoration feasibility study during a community meeting on
Thursday, April 30. Miguel Hernandez, a public affairs
officer at the California Natural Resources Agency for the
Salton Sea Management Program, explained that the study “is
looking into future long-term restoration for the Salton
Sea.” He asked participants to take a survey ranking four
objectives in order of importance regarding the Salton Sea:
restoring habitat for birds and fish, creating jobs and
economic opportunities, improving recreational access and
reducing dust to improve air quality. Corrie Stetzel, the
planning lead from the Corps, explained that the state of
California has a 10-year plan to improve the Salton 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.
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.
