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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President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Reclamation
has landed at the agency. Aubrey Bettencourt, a Western
water and agriculture expert, is listed as principal
deputy commissioner for the bureau on Interior Secretary Doug
Burgum’s most recent order delegating leadership authorities.
The order also taps her to perform the duties of the
commissioner. The Interior Department did not immediately
respond to a request for comment. Last week, a White House
official confirmed to POLITICO that Bettencourt will be
nominated to lead Reclamation, although it has not yet been
sent to the Senate for consideration. The White House did not
immediately respond to a request for comment on the
nomination’s status.
The Ninth Circuit delivered a victory to the Yurok Tribe and
fishing advocates on Wednesday, affirming a lower court’s
finding that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must comply with
the Endangered Species Act when operating the Klamath
Irrigation Project. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals panel
held the Endangered Species Act applies to the
government’s operation of the Klamath Irrigation Project and
that the rights of Klamath Project water users are subject to
the requirements of the ESA. The panel largely
focused on the applicability of Section 7 of the ESA — which
requires federal agencies to ensure that agency action “is not
likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered
species or threatened species or result in the destruction or
adverse modification of habitat of such species” — on the
Klamath Irrigation Project.
Building on years of progress, Governor Gavin Newsom today
announced that California is advancing the state’s Sites
Reservoir project with an additional $268.9 million funding
increase from the California Water Commission — strengthening
long-term water storage and helping prepare for a hotter, drier
future. … Sites Reservoir is a key component of the
Governor’s water strategy and will capture water from
the Sacramento River during wet seasons and store it for use
during drier seasons – holding up to 1.5 million
acre-feet of water, enough to supply over 4.5 million homes for
a year. … With this additional funding, the Sites
Project is eligible for a total of $1.363 billion in Water
Storage Investment Program (WSIP) funding from Proposition 1
and Proposition 4.
The Utah State Legislature took some initial steps to begin
regulating large-scale data centers in the state. On Wednesday,
the legislature’s Economic Development & Workforce Services
Interim Committee voted unanimously to open a bill file
to define in Utah State Code exactly what a large-scale data
center is. … Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s
plans for a massive data center in Box Elder County has sparked
significant public uproar. … “We want to make sure
there are clear guidelines to protect the environment,” Rep.
[Paul] Cutler told FOX 13 News. “To make sure that data
centers, especially in the Great Salt Lake Basin, the
Colorado River Basin, there are strict
guidelines on water use.”
NOAA scientists predict a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño
this fall and winter — but for Colorado, the drought
relief may be limited. El Niño is a buildup of warm
water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can bring wetter
conditions to the Southwest and warmer weather to the
North. Kris Karnauskas, an associate professor in the
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at CU Boulder,
says Colorado sits in an area where El Niño’s impact is
often less reliable. “So the southern part of Colorado
does reach into the part of the US that typically gets a little
bit more moisture to the southwest, and to the northwest, it
could be a little bit warmer. The problem is the headwaters are
not in the south, so the impact on Colorado’s water supply, for
example, is not very robust,” Karnauskas said.
Four golden mussels were tucked tightly beneath the
bolt of a screw, hiding behind metal plates and a small flap on
the back of the boat. The stowaways latched onto the boat in
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, securing themselves with
byssal threads as thin as hair but strong enough for a journey
more than 150 miles long, all the way to the Lake Tahoe
Basin. Each was as small as a sunflower seed, but don’t be
fooled: Golden mussels are like an aquatic invasive species on
steroids, officials say, with power to destroy ecosystems,
decimate local fish populations, overwhelm water
infrastructure, litter beaches with shells and fuel algae
growth. They could turn Tahoe’s blues into greens.
For the first time in Colorado, warm weather modification
experiments have begun. Colorado has been using cloud seeding
as far back as the 1950s, but an all-new project is taking
shape on the Eastern Plains. Located in Gill, in Weld County,
it’s not the kind of cloud seeding most people picture. There’s
no plane and no silver iodide flare. Rain Enhancement
Technologies is using a ground-based system called WETA, which
is short for weather enhancement technology array. … In
simplest terms, electricity generated by solar panels powers
the ground-based WETA station. The system electrically charges
naturally occurring particles near the ground, and wind
currents carry those charged particles higher into the
atmosphere.
A small “charm offensive” organized by a group suing the City
of Bakersfield over the Kern River was rewarded Wednesday with
news that current flows through town will continue through the
end of July. The city had estimated it would only have water
for flows through the July 4th holiday, but Bakersfield Water
Department Hydrographer Miguel Chavez reported that he
anticipates being able to squeeze a few more weeks out of this
year’s snow pack. “Overall, it was a pretty successful water
year,” Chavez said at Bakersfield’s Water Board meeting.
Chavez’ report came after two recent Stockdale High School
graduates asked the board, run by City Council members Bob
Smith and Andrea Gonzalez, to continue working toward a
solution to get water in the river more often.
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is at or near zero percent of
average across the state. And at Success Lake, large releases
have already started for irrigation. In all of the Northern
Sierra in the Lake Tahoe area as of Tuesday there was
officially no measurable snow. While patches of snow are still
visible at the highest levels in the Lake Tahoe area the State
Department of Water Resources reported on Tuesday the snowpack
level in the Northern Sierra for April 1 and June 16 were both
at zero percent of average. In past years it wasn’t uncommon to
see patches of snow in the northern Sierra Nevada until
mid-August. Locally the situation is a little better in
the Southern Sierra but not much. In the Southern Sierra Nevada
as of Tuesday the snowpack was at 3 percent of average for
April 1 and 15 percent of average for June 16.
A major restoration project in the lower Eel River estuary is
moving closer to construction after California Trout received a
$4 million grant to advance work on the Cannibal Island Unit.
The funding will support restoration of the 850-acre Cannibal
Island Unit in the lower Eel River estuary, an area that once
contained some of the most productive wetland habitat on
California’s North Coast. The award advances the California
Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future and Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s goal of conserving 30 percent of California’s lands
and coastal waters by 2030 to protect biodiversity and help
California adapt to the impacts of a changing climate.
A compounding environmental crisis is reshaping regional waters
across the Southwest, forcing rural communities to navigate the
dual realities of climate-driven ecological collapse and strict
new public health protections. This week highlighted the stark
contrast between Arizona’s river corridors: the Gila
River system nearly collapsed at San Carlos Lake,
while the Salt River used experimental tech to
address seasonal issues. … State biologists trace the
disaster to a destructive convergence of natural and human
pressures. Months of severe regional drought have drastically
restricted inflows, while mandatory, non-negotiable downstream
irrigation releases systematically drained the reservoir to a
fraction of its operational capacity.
A member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet on Monday
intensified her ongoing campaign to thwart PG&E’s plans to
eventually tear down a pair of century-old Eel River dams.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced in a social
media post that she and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had met
earlier in the day with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. CEO Patti
Poppe, along with representatives from the Elsinore Valley
Municipal Water District “to begin constructive negotiations on
the future of the Potter Valley Project.” The administration’s
“hope is clear,” she stated: to “keep the Scott and Cape Horn
Dams in place and working for the communities they serve.”
That goal stands in direct opposition to PG&E’s
long-held plan to decommission the century-old dams,
part of Potter Valley hydroelectric project that no longer made
financial sense, the utility concluded in 2019.
Sacramento County leaders have declared a local emergency over
the growing threat of golden mussels, an invasive species from
Asia that experts warn could harm waterways,
ecosystems, and infrastructure if it continues
spreading. California water managers have been working
to contain the invasive species, which reproduces rapidly and
has already spread from the Delta to Stockton.
… Sacramento County leaders declared the emergency on
Tuesday, citing fears that the mussels could harm the natural
ecosystem by affecting the food fish feed on and clogging
critical water infrastructure like water pipes and pumps.
… The department is urging anyone who boats, owns jet
skis, or kayaks to clean, dry, and drain their vessels to
prevent the spread of the mussels.
The developer of a proposed 330-megawatt data center near the
City of Imperial has filed a sweeping lawsuit against the
Imperial Irrigation District (IID), alleging the district
unlawfully denied its request for water service and
discriminates against industrial water users. Imperial Valley
Computer Manufacturing, LLC … is developing a data center
project on a 75-acre site at Aten and Clark roads in
unincorporated Imperial County.The lawsuit challengesIID’s May
1 denial of the company’s request for approximately 880
acre-feet of water annually for industrial cooling
purposes. The developer contends the water demand is
comparable to that of a typical 160-acre farm and represents a
small fraction of IID’s annual Colorado River
allocation. IID denied the application on grounds that the
project site lies within the City of Imperial’s sphere of
influence and is near municipal water infrastructure
Dead juvenile Chinook salmon have been found on sections of the
lower Klamath River and near the Oregon-California border.
Scientists believe the deaths are caused by parasites
that are proliferating because of the low winter snowpack and
warm spring temperatures. “We’re seeing dead and dying
fish,” Sascha Hallett, a fish parasitologist and associate
professor at Oregon State University’s Department of
Microbiology, said. … Hallett said studies indicate the
die-offs are being caused by a parasite, Ceratonova shasta. She
said OSU researchers, in cooperation with state and federal
agencies, tribes, and other agencies, believe the low winter
snowpack and warmer than average spring temperatures
accelerated the proliferation of the parasites, which thrive in
warm, slow-moving water and attack the intestinal lining of
young salmon.
A new Colorado law requires water users that buy water tied to
farms in the Arkansas Valley to revegetate land before using
water elsewhere. For decades, cities along the Front
Range have expanded municipal water supplies by acquiring water
rights historically used for agriculture. In the Arkansas
Valley, more than 100,000 acres of irrigated farmland have been
permanently dried up, often to supply water to cities such as
Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Aurora.
… Revegetation involves restoring native plant
cover to the land to reduce erosion, maintain soil moisture and
manage noxious weeds. … Aurora Water would not
like to see the law expand to other parts of Colorado. “We
would have concerns with any future expansion of this type of
legislation into other regions of the state as it could
unintentionally harm existing dry land farming operations,”
[Spokesperson Shonnie] Cline said.
Despite May bringing near normal precipitation and temperatures
to the state, June has gotten off to a hot and dry start,
spiraling Colorado into drought conditions. Understanding
more about Colorado’s hydrology is critical to understanding
how the drought developed — and got bad enough that the state
declared it an emergency on June 4 — and why not even a “super
El Nino” can revive conditions this summer. Colorado’s
mountains give rise to four major U.S. rivers — the Arkansas,
Colorado, South Platte and Rio Grande — earning it the title of
“the headwaters state.” … The Colorado River alone has
12 major transmountain diversions that carry water east.
…Greg Fisher, Denver Water’s head of demand planning and
efficiency, said it serves about a quarter of the state’s
population using less than 2% of the state’s water. “We can’t
get through droughts without our customers saving water,” …
Fisher said.
Other drought and water conservation news around the West:
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for a newly built recharge basin in
Fresno is scheduled for Thursday, June 18, at 9 a.m. The Fresno
Irrigation District completed construction of the Carter Bybee
Groundwater Recharge Basin, a 35-acre basin that will sink an
average of 840 acre-feet of water annually. The basin is in the
North Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA).
… The $6 million project was funded through the
Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) funds, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s
drought program and the district’s land assessments. The basin
is expected to aid the district and the GSA by increasing water
supply and improving groundwater quality in the region as part
of SGMA, which mandates local entities bring aquifers into
balance by 2040.
A few miles down the Sacramento River from the small town of
Rio Vista lies a 6.5-mile stretch of undeveloped riverbank that
California Forever calls “the perfect location” for the
nation’s largest shipyard. … Yet even while California
Forever has pushed to skip new environmental reviews, it has
offered few or shifting details on what the infrastructure will
be and how it might impact the Delta’s delicate biodiversity,
Bay Nature has found. … While ecologists and advocates say
the shipyard site itself has minimal ecological value, it lies
less than two miles from the restored Montezuma Wetlands, as
well as Suisun Marsh, one of the largest remaining intact
marshes on the West Coast. “Placing industry next to one of the
last wildest areas in the San Francisco area, hands down, it’s
just a bad idea,” says John Durand, an ecologist at UC Davis
who has surveyed the river’s biodiversity for years. But what
kind of bad idea, Durand notes, “all depends on the
details.”
The Arizona Corporation Commission recently approved
significant rate increases for two small rural water systems in
Gila County, near Payson. The proceedings for Jake’s Corner
Water System and Tonto Creek Water Company are local regulatory
actions, but what they describe is playing out at water
utilities across the country: decades of kept-low rates that
deferred maintenance until the infrastructure failure became
unavoidable. … The Arizona cases illustrate a structural
problem that Pew Charitable Trusts research quantified in May
2026: small and rural water systems, defined as those serving
fewer than 3,300 people, make up 81% of all public water
systems in the U.S. but account for 93% of violations for
noncompliance with federal drinking water standards. Small
systems spend more than double what larger systems pay per
capita to address deferred maintenance.
