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.
… An ad hoc group of six Colorado River experts began
assembling reports in 2025. They have been dubbed the Traveling
Wilburys of the Colorado River Basin. … Big Pivots
convened a conversation with several of the report authors on
Sept. 18, a week after their latest report had been issued.
…That report delivered the numbers that collectively showed
dramatically increased risk during the upcoming two years of
the dams on the Colorado River becoming dysfunctional.
Gov. Gavin Newsom may greenlight a half-billion-dollar effort
to widen a North Bay highway [Highway 37] that Caltrans has
acknowledged is sinking under its own weight. … [T]he
sinking expressway was surrounded by sinking levees, which
could be overwhelmed by the more intense and more frequent
storms already occurring due to climate change. … The highway
blocks flows into and out of the wetland habitat, cutting off
healthy functions of the ecosystem. … Caltrans has
agreed to open up more channels under the roadway, raise the
bridge over Tolay Creek in Sonoma County and open the channel
underneath to allow more movement of water.
As US states increasingly pass laws to limit PFAS chemicals in
consumer products, a debate is heating up over a California
bill that proposes banning the sale of cookware with
intentionally added “forever chemicals” beginning in 2030.
intentionally added PFAS beginning in January 2028.
… The bill’s supporters argue that PTFE from cookware
adds to the flow of forever chemicals in household waste,
adding to the costly public burden of treating PFAS-tainted
wastewater. … A coalition of
cookware industry leaders, however, is pushing back against
similar proposed bans across the country.
Five individuals have been caught illegally mining along
several California waterways, state officials
announced. According to a Sept. 26 news
release from the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, the citations began in August of last year, when
authorities found someone operating a suction dredge — a
powerful tool that sucks materials out of underwater cracks and
crevices — on the Salmon River. … According to the CDFW,
this motorized equipment can harm fish and their native habitat
by releasing contaminants, causing erosion and potentially
creating more favorable conditions for the invasive signal
crayfish.
… [L]ast week, California Governor Gavin Newsom extended the
state’s cap-and-trade program until 2045. … [T]he [Yurok]
tribe has now received tens of millions of dollars in carbon
credit sales, boosting its economy and funding environmental
projects like recovery work on the Klamath River in the wake of
dam removal. But critics of carbon markets remain
staunchly opposed to the programs, alleging that the scheme
perpetuates colonialism, incentivizes the theft of Indigenous
resources, and allows companies to essentially pay to keep
polluting without having to change their activities.
The sugar industry and companies that make sweet drinks and
foods have spent nearly a century downplaying sugar’s role in
health problems and distorting the science around fluoride
— and the practice continues today, according to a new
study. The study, published in the journal Environmental
Health, adds to evidence that the industry promoted fluoride as
the solution to tooth decay to avoid scrutiny over sugar’s
role. … The findings come as two states — Utah and
Florida — and dozens of communities have banned fluoride in
public water.
After 35 years of working in organic pest control, serial
entrepreneur Pam Marrone is on a new mission to eradicate
invasive species using alternatives to terrible chemicals. In
particular, she’s on a quest for what she calls “the holy
grail” – an eco-friendly herbicide that will zap out non-native
weeds. “We have the team that can really execute it,” says
Marrone, whose 2-year-old startup, Invasive Species Corp.,
known as ISC, is already helping the state of California find a
sustainable way to deal with golden mussels,
which clog waterways and damage water treatment facilities.
“There’s nobody doing exactly what we’re doing with invasive
species.”
The first major Pacific storm of the wet season is forecast to
wallop the West Coast. … Some Bay Area cities could
record their wettest September day in decades. Showers will
remain in the forecast Monday through at least
Wednesday. … Rain showers are expected to linger
across Northern California on Tuesday, where
snow may mix in at the summits of Tahoe ski
resorts. … Although the rain probably won’t be enough to
completely end fire season in most places, it should moisten
vegetation considerably and lower fire risk significantly,
especially in the Coastal Ranges and northern Sierra.
Video captured a Chinook salmon successfully summiting the fish
ladder at an upper Klamath River dam this week, according to
the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife — the first known
instance since the removal of four lower dams last year.
The video comes from Keno Dam, located just southwest of
Klamath Falls. Salmon were previously spotted on the Keno Dam
fish ladders last year, but this is the first time one’s been
spotted passing the dam. The camera was installed just the day
before.
Data center companies want to triple Nevada’s energy capacity
to meet the power demands of a rapidly growing industry.
… But the new demand comes at an awkward time for
Nevada. Water access in the state is under severe threat by a
dwindling Colorado River. Water by the hundreds of
millions of gallons is commonly used by data centers to
effectively cool the hard working computers. While a law to ban
the most water wasteful centers — referred to as evaporative
cooling — was shot down in 2024, no such data centers
have been approved since February of last year.
More than half a million Californians live among waterways in
low-lying towns of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. …
[T]housands of homeowners in the region are insured against
flooding thanks to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),
which backs policies sold by private insurers. … But the
flood insurance program is administered by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, and the Trump administration says
that agency is in need of a major overhaul. … The flood
insurance program might even be eliminated, experts say.
… In July, the Legislature passed, and Governor Katie Hobbs
signed, an unprecedented law to authorize the transfer of
groundwater rights from agricultural to urban use within
Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties. This framework legislation –
called “Ag to Urban” – enables farmers in these three counties
to sell and transfer their groundwater rights to the home
building industry. … To gain the necessary majority for
passage, Ag to Urban contains a significant limitation: the
credits made available to home builders can be used only within
a one-mile radius of the farmland being retired from
production, thereby ensuring that local communities will retain
a continuing share in ongoing regional development. –Written by Bruce Babbitt, a former governor of Arizona
and former U.S. secretary of the interior under President Bill
Clinton.
Other groundwater regulation news around the West:
… Last summer, Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife, or CLAW,
and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority
purchased the approximately 2.5-acre parcel that’s home to
Laurel Spring for $1 million after two months of intense and
hurried fundraising. … The property near the corner of
Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue is home to
a spring and stream that flow year-round, providing a valuable
water source for species … which are dealing with increased
habitat fragmentation from development and roadways that can
make accessing the Santa Monica Mountains’ limited water
sources even more difficult.
… Peatlands — fens and bogs — are key climate regulators.
(Bogs are maintained by precipitation, but fens, which, in
North America, occur in the Northeast, Midwest and Mountain
West, depend on groundwater.) … In relatively dry southern
Colorado, they also provide a secondary round of water storage.
The first round is Colorado’s snowpack, which, as it melts,
feeds groundwater that fens’ spongy peat captures and later
releases to dwindling waterways and drying landscapes after the
snow is gone. But the steep and degraded bare patch at
Ophir Pass no longer functions.
Amid handwringing at San Diego City Hall over next week’s vote
to hike water rates, city analysts dropped a harrowing report
revealing how easily the department that handles water and
wastewater could collapse without them. … The analysts’
report says that if councilmembers refuse to raise rates at
all, the Public Utilities Department would still have to make
an immediate almost 30 percent cut to its budget. That would
likely come in the form of staff layoffs and disruptions in
water or wastewater service, which could be anything from
unanswered customer service calls to more frequent water pipe
breaks.
After more than five years of construction, San Mateo’s
upgraded Wastewater Treatment Plant was unveiled in a
ribbon-cutting ceremony. It is the largest infrastructure
project in San Mateo’s history, and developers say it’s one of
the most sustainable wastewater treatment facilities in the
country. … The plant is part of San Mateo’s $1 billion
Clean Water Program, an initiative that was launched in 2015 in
response to a cease and desist order the city received
mandating sewer system improvements to prevent overflow into
the San Francisco Bay.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has cited
five individuals in Siskiyou County for illegally using suction
dredge equipment in state waterways, a practice banned due to
its harmful impacts on native fish and wildlife. On August 20,
2024, wardens discovered a man actively dredging the Salmon
River near Cecilville in search of gold. … Although the case
was initially dismissed due to a clerical error, prosecutors
have since refiled charges, with arraignment set for October 7,
2025, in Siskiyou County. Since July, four others have been
cited for unlawful dredging on the Klamath River and Elk Creek.
In his first public comments since facing allegations of water
theft, Modesto Irrigation District Director Larry Byrd said
during Tuesday’s board meeting that the claims are a conspiracy
to hurt him politically. An independent investigation into
Byrd’s water use at an almond orchard near La Grange, first
reported Sept. 15 in The Modesto Focus, is moving forward,
MID General Manager Jimi Netniss said Tuesday. Byrd said, “I
completely support (it) and will fully cooperate.”
Albuquerque’s South Valley is surrounded by brown desert and
towering red mesas. But, inside the valley, the land is
sprouting lush trees and green fields. Here, the Rio Grande
spills into irrigation ditches called acequias. They wind
through the landscape of this small Hispanic community,
carrying rain and snowmelt straight to crops. … For
hundreds of years, Hispanic communities across the Southwest
have relied on these networks of hand-dug irrigation ditches to
water their crops and feed their families. But now, these
ancient traditions are under pressure from a changing climate
and shrinking water supplies.
The white sturgeon sport fishing season opens Oct. 1, 2025,
through June 30, 2026, for catch-and-release fishing in the
ocean, San Francisco Bay, Delta and lower Sacramento and San
Joaquin rivers. … Though recent results from white
sturgeon monitoring surveys by CDFW suggest the white sturgeon
population has continued to decline, science indicates that
non-lethal take via a catch-and-release fishery will not harm
the long-term viability of the white sturgeon population.
Factors such as harmful algal blooms, poaching, poor river and
Delta conditions and historical overharvest have been shown to
have significant negative impacts on the population.
