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.
U.S. Sen Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) on Monday announced he’d
successfully pressured the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to
release $120 million for ongoing construction of the
Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, which, when completed,
promises to provide a sustainable water supply to more than
250,000 people in northwest New Mexico. The project to divert
water via a 300-mile pipeline from the [Colorado River
tributary] San Juan River to the Navajo Nation and areas nearby
was finalized in 2010 when the federal Interior Department and
the Nation finalized the latter’s water rights
settlement. Congress has authorized up to approximately
$1.8 billion for the project.
Managing the Salton Sea remains a thorny issue for California.
We spoke with Pacific Institute’s Michael Cohen and UC
Riverside’s William Porter about recent research that might
point toward cost-effective ways to protect public health.
… Michael Cohen: In the past three to four
years, there have been strongly worded news articles saying
that the Salton Sea is a toxic sump that’s killing people.
That’s exaggerating how bad the situation is. … This
report tries to synthesize what other reports are saying about
pollution sources in the region. We wanted to raise the
question of what’s the best use of limited public funds.
The City Council has adopted a resolution led by Councilwoman
Traci Park opposing a federal effort that could weaken
protections for wetlands and small waterways, adding the city’s
voice to a growing fight over environmental safeguards along
California’s coast. Park’s resolution pushes back against a
Trump administration proposal to redefine which waters and
wetlands are protected under the Clean Water Act. Local
officials and environmental advocates have argued the change
would strip federal protections from many wetlands and streams.
Park said those areas play an important role in filtering
pollution, protecting water quality and reducing flooding
during storms.
This time last year, the administration of President Donald
Trump tried to decimate one of the nation’s premier scientific
institutions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. … It is heartening that, through
tireless advocacy on Capitol Hill, multiple rallies and
litigation, those who understand how critical this organization
is to our daily lives have succeeded in pushing back on the
attack and persuading Congress to fund NOAA at a steady level.
… As we look to the future, we also have a chance to think
about how the agency should evolve, and consider critically
what works and what does not. – Written by Craig N. McLean, former assistant
administrator and chief scientist of NOAA Research.
Even though golden mussels were only detected in California in
October 2024, they pose a significant and immediate threat to
the state’s waterways. … Unfortunately, many of the common
inspection programs and methods—like boat inspections or
eDNA—can be costly, labor intensive, and slow. While these
methods offer comprehensive results, the rapid spread of golden
mussels requires tools that deliver immediate answers as
boaters enter waterways. Luckily, a new solution is on the
rise: dogs that can smell invasive species. From time on the
treadmill to weekly weigh-ins, golden mussel-sniffing dogs are
treated like star athletes at Mussel Dogs, an Oakdale-based
canine training and environmental consulting business.
Lake Mead is headed for an even more concerning, record-low
level near the end of 2027, according to projections from
federal forecasters released Friday. In November 2027,
the reservoir is likely to dip to 1032.76 feet above
sea level — nearly 8 feet below the previous record
low recorded in 2022, when receding levels began to reveal
skeletal remains. That’s a chilling number based on an
unseasonably warm winter and falling projections for
runoff into Lake Powell, the releases of which flow into
Lake Mead. … According to Friday’s projection, Lake
Powell could dip below so-called “minimum power pool” as soon
as January.
The warm winter has left very little snow in California’s
Sierra Nevada, and now an extreme heat wave is accelerating the
rapid melt in the mountains. The Sierra snowpack
measures 48% of average for this time of year,
according to state data, down from 73% of average in late
February. … California relies on the Sierra snowpack for
about 30% of its water, on average. But the extraordinary
warmth across the West this winter, which broke records in many
areas, brought more precipitation falling as rain instead of
snow. Scientific research has shown that human-caused climate
change is pushing average snow lines higher in the mountains
and changing the timing of runoff.
Landowners and farmers in the Tule and Tulare Lake subbasins
can now log onto the state’s groundwater reporting system
ahead of the May 1 deadline. The state Water
Resources Control Board announced that its groundwater
extraction annual reporting system, or GEARS, is open for
pumpers to begin reporting how much they pump and paying fees.
Pumpers are required to meter their wells, pay $300 per well to
register then with the state and pay $20 per acre foot of
groundwater pumped. … This is all part of the region’s
probationary designation for lacking an adequate groundwater
plan.
Arizona state lawmakers tend to vote in lockstep with their
party on water issues, but when it comes to proposed Colorado
River cuts, they may break ranks. Republicans hold majorities
in the state House and Senate. Members of each party usually
vote in blocs, but that seems likely to change. Arizona is in
the midst of Colorado River negotiations and will likely take a
serious water cut. Unlike other states in the Colorado River
Basin, the plan will need to be approved by Arizona’s 90 state
lawmakers. But some legislative districts will be hit much
harder than others. … For the time being, all Arizona
lawmakers are united in advocating for the best deal for the
state.
The legislator who wrote a law modernizing California’s water
infrastructure says there’s no concrete estimate for the cost
to respond to worsening drought conditions. In a press
conference held Friday at the San Luis Reservoir in western
Merced County, Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced County, author of
last year’s successful Senate Bill 72, said there is no way to
know the cost of developing 9 million acre-feet of
water by 2040. … Caballero added she’s proposing a
bond that could pay for implementing much-needed updates to the
state’s water plan. Meanwhile, certain water infrastructure
projects in California have already cost billions of dollars.
… [S]cientists from across the state and as far away as
Norway published a study tracking the long-term collapse of
salmon age diversity, finding that today’s Chinook salmon
populations in the Central Valley are all-in on a single bet.
Three-year-olds dominate the group, while 5-year-olds are rare
and 6-year-olds are mostly absent. The study was focused on the
Feather River and its tributary, the
Yuba River. … The loss of age diversity
helps explain why modern salmon runs swing so wildly from
abundance to collapse.
… [A] public lands access group has proposed an eye-poppingly
ambitious plan to build eight massive desalination plants off
the California coastline, turning ocean water into fresh for
farming, and reducing demand on the ailing Colorado
River. To meet the energy demand, the plants might
have to be powered with nuclear reactors. … The plan’s
authors at the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition say their $40
billion proposal offers a viable long-term solution at a time
when President Donald Trump is slashing environment-based
regulatory delays and encouraging the country to think big.
There’s been levee breaks over the years all over the delta,
according to San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency executive
director Darren Suen. … Democratic state Senator Jerry
McNerney introduced SB 872 that would direct $300 million
annually in greenhouse gas reduction fund (GGRF) dollars to
levee repairs in the delta and to shore up SWP’s canals to
prevent interruptions in essential water deliveries.
… The bill would include, according to Suen, fixing
their levees to prevent subsidence and saltwater intrusion.
… Suen also said these levied systems were started
during the Gold Rush and a lot of them haven’t been maintained
up to “federal standards.”
… Escondido and surrounding environs are the center of the
San Diego region’s avocado industry. The cities and towns of
the avocado belt, especially Escondido, also have some of the
priciest water in San Diego County, a region notorious for its
high water costs. For growers of a water-intensive crop like
avocados, those high costs are exceptionally burdensome. On
average, 60% of operating costs for Escondido avocado groves go
just to water, according to a 2024 report from the California
Avocado Commission. … Escondido water officials have no
plans to secede. But like the districts that did, they also
blame their high costs on the county water authority.
… [L]onely as it may be, Mono [Lake] has
revolutionized environmental law in California, the American
West, and the U.S., bringing about important changes to water
use and air quality regulations in recent decades and showing
the way ahead for tribal resource rights today. … Now
the Mono Basin could be part of making water history again. In
2017, California began using so-called Tribal Beneficial Uses
(TBUs)—water quality standards keyed to protecting traditional
tribal fisheries and cultural practices—as a way to incorporate
long-ignored tribal needs into state environmental management.
The first regional board to incorporate the definitions of TBUs
into a watershed management plan was the Mono Basin, in
2020.
A proposal to build a hydroelectric power plant near the Red
Rock Canyon National Conservation Area won preliminary approval
from federal regulators earlier this month. The Desert Bloom
Project is a large-scale, closed-loop pumped storage proposal
that promises to produce 1,170 gigawatt-hours of power
annually. … Pumped storage projects require massive
amounts of water to generate hydroelectric power. … The
proposed project would require 9,800 acre-feet of water stored
across two reservoirs. … The Las Vegas Valley Water
District, which serves the area, said the project is out of
step with Southern Nevada water conservation policy.
The ongoing debate over a state plan to construct a 36-foot
underground tunnel below the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
to carry water to a reservoir in Alameda County has now been
given the novelization treatment. Santa Cruz author Victoria
Tatum, who swam in the Delta in her youth, tells a fictional
story of a farmworker family’s fight over the tunnels in “More
Than Any River.” The book will be published March 24.
… Tatum said she emerged as “a water nerd” by the end of
the research. “More Than Any River” focuses on farming families
along the Delta standing their ground against the agribusiness
owners of the Delta tunnel project.
Three weeks after Tahoe’s biggest snowstorm in decades, Donner
Summit has as much dirt as snow. Feet of powder quickly
disappeared, as rain and unusually warm temperatures depleted
gains from the February blizzard that had been cheered at the
time as a potential season-saving event. California’s
snowpack is already its lowest since 2015, and
record-shattering March heat arriving next week will make it
worse. The rate of melting is “unprecedented,” said Tim
Bardsley, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office
in Reno. The entire snowpack, he said, has been wiped away
along sunny parts of the Lake Tahoe shoreline.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
… Information from the Golden State Salmon Association and
the Pacific Fisheries Management Council forecasts a current
adult salmon ocean population of 392,349 in 2026 — more than
double last year’s ocean abundance estimate. The
Klamath River forecast also jumped to 176,233,
up from 82,672 in 2025. For comparison, the upper
Sacramento River saw a return of over 60,000 adult
salmon to natural spawning areas in 2025 compared to just over
4,000 in 2024. … The number of returning jacks is key to
forecasting the adult salmon population in the ocean now, which
informs how many salmon fishery managers will allow to be
caught this year. Both some commercial and sport fishing are
expected to be approved later this spring by the Pacific
Fishery Management Council.
In the midst of historic drought in the Rocky Mountains, many
water managers are looking for ways to get more moisture into
the environment. Some are considering things like cloud
seeding, which is meant to create more precipitation
in certain areas. It’s a technique that has been used for
decades in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Rain
Enhancement Technologies, a company that’s operated in Oman,
doesn’t use traditional cloud-seeding methods, which are
characterized by putting silver iodide particles into the
atmosphere. Instead, they do what they call “ionization cloud
seeding,” which uses high-voltage rays to ionize naturally
occurring aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are necessary
for cloud formation, and therefore, precipitation.
