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.
Newport Beach’s Back Bay is a spot cherished for its hiking
trials, wildlife and even scenic views that lend themselves to
plein air painting. Yet, each year thousands of pounds of trash
make its way into the natural wetlands. Which is why OC Parks
and the Newport Bay Conservancy team up annually for Coastal
Cleanup Day at Upper Newport Bay. The two organizations are
seeking nearly 1,000 volunteers to help remove trash as well as
invasive plant species from the ecological reserve from 9 a.m.
to noon on Saturday, Sept. 20.
Dan Daher rolled out at 5 a.m. from the shaded parking lot
behind the Torres Martinez Tribal Community Hall in Mecca, as
he does every Sunday through Thursday. By day’s end, he’ll have
logged nearly 300 miles in his Kia Niro hybrid, crisscrossing
Southern California highways, dust-caked towns and badly
potholed roads encircling the Salton Sea and the rural Imperial
and east Coachella valleys. He’s driven through a cloud of
tractor smoke on Highway 86 so thick he couldn’t see the road,
and swarms of butterflies that coated his windshield in
Westmoreland.
… According to the University of California Agriculture and
Natural Resources, “landscape irrigation is estimated to
account for about 50 percent of annual residential water
consumption statewide.” In other words, half of California’s
water use is tied up in plants that do not naturally occur
here. Santa Barbara has a solution. Since 2009, the city’s
Sustainable Lawn Replacement Rebate has encouraged residents to
swap grass for drought-tolerant landscaping. More than 1,600
customers have participated. This spring, the city expanded the
program to include a new incentive: rain gardens.
Many rural communities across the United States face persistent
challenges in accessing safe, affordable, and reliable water
and sanitation. Climate change is worsening these already
serious challenges. This report brings a rural focus to our
previous report, Achieving Equitable, Climate-Resilient Water
and Sanitation for Frontline Communities: Water, Sanitation,
and Climate Change in the United States. It provides strategies
and real-world examples of equitable, climate-resilient rural
water and sanitation. In doing so, it highlights the unique
characteristics, challenges, and opportunities of rural
communities.
… Reducing wildfire risk also supports biodiversity,
regulates local climate, protects watersheds, and prevents soil
erosion – all benefits to advancing California’s NBS climate
targets. … When completed, the French Meadows Forest
Restoration Project will restore forest health to the upper
headwaters of the Middle Fork American River and help protect
communities, resources, and vital water infrastructure
including the French Meadows Reservoir, which supplies water to
Placer County, Folsom Lake, and feeds into the federal Central
Valley Project.
Wild pigs roam on the loose in 56 of California’s 58
counties. … [E]specially in warm weather, pigs love to hang
out in streams and ponds. “They’ll wallow in the water
sources, which is one of the types of damage they do,”
[Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority Natural Resource
Technician David] Mauk said. “[It] harms the sides of banks,
causes a lot of erosion, damages the vegetation in those
riparian areas and really destroys the habitat for other
animals that want to use those, like the California red-legged
frog.”
As reservoir levels continue to plummet at the end of another
dismal water year, some agricultural water users are asking
Colorado lawmakers to consider a bill next session that would
make it easier for them to get credit for conserving
water. It would be the next step in creating a
conservation pool in Lake Powell that the Upper Basin states
could use to protect against water scarcity. Over the past
decade, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have dabbled in
programs that pay willing participants to use less water on a
temporary basis. … Changes to state laws would be needed to
allow state officials to shepherd conserved water into a Lake
Powell pool.
… La Niña conditions are likely from September 2025 through
January 2026. NOAA’s official probabilistic ENSO forecast
indicates a greater than 50% chance for La Niña during this
period. Precipitation and temperature related to La Niña,
combined with the La Niña forecast and current drought
conditions, suggest drought persistence in the Southwest United
States. … La Niña conditions are forecast in late 2025
and early 2026, which increases the chances for below-average
precipitation and above-average temperatures in the Southwest,
Southeast, Southern California, and Texas.
As wildfires become increasingly intense and frequent in
California, particularly near reservoirs, experts say threats
to water resources will require more proactive preventative
measures. Massive swaths of land have burned annually across
the state, and rebuilding can take years after the ashes have
been swept away. Toxic chemicals linger in the scorched
soils even longer, and can make their way into water sources,
said Ann Willis, California regional director with American
Rivers, a nonprofit focused on protecting clean water
resources.
… On Sunday evening, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke
Rollins published a broadside on social media platform X in
which she accused the investor-owned utility of “cutting water
flows and pushing to tear down the Scott and Cape Horn Dams
which have been lifelines for farmers and over 600,000
residents for more than a century.” … Reached via phone
in Washington, D.C., this morning, Rep. Jared Huffman — who,
unlike Newsom, was extensively involved in multi-agency
negotiations to find a “two-basin solution” that satisfies
competing regional interests — said Rollins’s take is
misguided.
… Last month the International Boundary and Water Commission,
which oversees a wastewater treatment facility along the
U.S.-Mexico border, awarded Ohio-based Greenwater Services an
estimated $2.5 million to test their “nanobubble technology”
method to capture contaminants in the Tijuana River. The
process involves pumping ozone bubbles into water.
… However, according to the IBWC’s own project
description, deploying this method on the Tijuana River has yet
to be tested. Scientists, local leaders and environmental
advocates are concerned that the project has been given a
greenlight by the IBWC despite a lack of data on its
effectiveness or risks.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is making changes to a popular
conservation program in ways that have some environmental
groups crying foul. In a secretarial order, Burgum is
limiting how much money from the Land and Water
Conservation Fund can be used. The order prioritizes
acquisitions for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National
Park Service, which will have the result of discouraging land
acquisition for the Bureau of Land Management. It also calls
for the selling of federal lands to states, requires a state’s
governor and local leaders to agree to any federal LWCF
acquisitions, and would limit the ability of non-profits to
participate.
After a spectacular two-day salmon season in the San
Francisco/Half Moon Bay area in June, a second window with a
7500-fish quota opened from September 4-7 from Point Reyes
south to Point Sur with similar incredible fishing. … The
Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA), a major force in the
restoration of California’s salmon populations, viewed the
short season as “A welcome glimmer of hope – albeit
briefly,” adding … “Salmon populations remain
dangerously low. … While recreational anglers prepare their
gear, California’s commercial salmon fleet faces a third
consecutive year of closure.”
Residents around the Salton Sea have long complained of
respiratory ailments from particulate pollution that wafts from
its shoreline. Now UCLA researchers have identified another air
pollutant that could be sickening people in communities near
the inland lake: hydrogen sulfide. That’s a gas from decaying,
organic matter that produces a rotten egg smell and is
associated with eye irritation, headaches, nausea and other
symptoms. In a pair of reports released last week, the Latino
Policy & Politics Institute at UCLA described how algal blooms
produce the gas in the water, and how it wafts across nearby
neighborhoods.
Dismantling San Diego’s biggest water broker could be what
local boundary referees recommend later this year in the face
of ever-rising water rates. That’s just one of a menu of
options that San Diego’s Local Agency Formation Commission,
known as LAFCO, will analyze in what’s known as a municipal
service review of the San Diego County Water Authority. Reviews
like this can inspire further action by the commission, endowed
with legislative powers to break up or consolidate cities and
government services.
Expansion of the nation’s only operating lithium mine would
likely have only a modest impact on its remote Nevada desert
location, according to a draft environmental review that looks
like a green light for a project the Trump administration wants
to streamline. … “Since no new water rights are being sought
as part of the proposed action, and since pumping at the
facility would not change with construction and implementation
of the [proposal], impacts on groundwater resources are
expected to be negligible, long-term, and regional,” the EIS
states.
… As late as the 1980s half of the economy of Mineral County,
including the nearby town of Hawthorne, was based on visitors
taking advantage of the fishing and other recreational
activities at Walker Lake. But a problem was brewing. More and
more water was being used upstream for agricultural purposes
and less water was reaching Walker Lake. … The
Walker Basin Conservancy has the ambitious goal of bringing the
lake level in Walker Lake up to the level it was in the year
2000. … [W]hen the Conservancy purchases the right to
water they also have been able to provide recreational
opportunities.
In 2020, haunting images of corroded metal barrels in the deep
ocean off Los Angeles leapt into the public consciousness. …
[N]ew research from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of
Oceanography reveals that the barrels with halos contained
caustic alkaline waste, which created the halos as it leaked
out. Though the study’s findings can’t identify which specific
chemicals were present in the barrels, DDT manufacturing did
produce alkaline as well as acidic waste. Other major
industries in the region such as oil refining also generated
significant alkaline waste.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins took to social media
over the weekend to raise concern about dam removal on
California’s Eel River, even suggesting that the Trump
administration may intervene to stop or revise the project.
Rollins, on X, cited the loss of water for cities and farms
that would come with plans to remove two dams in Mendocino and
Lake counties while also invoking well-worn Republican
criticism about California “putting fish over people.” … In
the post, the agriculture secretary said she was working with
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to bring “real solutions” for
securing Northern California water supplies.
Continued disagreement over which states must absorb the pain
of future cuts to water supplies drawn from the
drought-stricken Colorado River could upend negotiations just
two months before a federal deadline, key state officials are
warning. Top Arizona water officials are demanding that the
four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and
Wyoming — commit to future reductions in their own water use in
any agreement on a new long-term operating plan for the river.
The divisive warnings come in the wake of some progress this
summer, in which all seven states coalesced around a plan known
as “natural flow.”
