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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Is climate change enough justification to stop the expansion of
a reservoir that will take more water from the dwindling
Colorado River? That’s the central question in a lawsuit
pitting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Colorado’s largest
water utility against a consortium of environmental nonprofits.
The environmentalists say the Colorado River has no more water
to give, while Denver Water, the utility whose Gross
Reservoir would nearly triple in capacity, argues it
is ensuring its customers can withstand droughts. The Corps
contends it is not required to consider climate change or the
downstream effects of its expansion of a dam to grow the
reservoir. The case in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
has the potential to ripple through Western water
management as states, tribes, cities and the federal
government struggle to find a compromise on how to steeply cut
water use.
A California Democrat’s proposal to enshrine Biden-era water
quality rules in state law to backstop potential rollbacks
under the Trump administration has died in the state
Legislature amid continued opposition from farmers and water
agencies. State Assembly Appropriations Chair Buffy
Wicks announced on Thursday that state Sen. Ben Allen’s SB 601
was held back, meaning it won’t be voted on this year. It’s the
second year in a row that Allen tried — and failed — to get his
bill through the committee. Sean Bothwell, the executive
director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, which
sponsored the bill, said in an interview that he had tried to
reach a deal with the governor’s office and the State Water
Resources Control Board on the bill over the past couple of
months, but ultimatelydid not agree to all the administration’s
proposed changes because they removed some of the environmental
protections in the bill.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has denied two late
requests to intervene in the decommissioning of the Potter
Valley Project sought by its owner, the Pacific Gas and
Electric Company, Mendocino County officials reported. In a
press release this week, the Mendocino County Inland Water and
Power Commission explained that Elsinore Valley Municipal Water
District of Southern California and Infrastruk Group LLC, a
company based out of Southern California and Spain, had both
sought “to intervene as formal parties in PG&E’s Potter
Valley Project license surrender proceeding,” and both
requests were denied by FERC, “allowing the federal process to
continue.” … With the facility no longer
cost-effective and its dams deemed a safety risk, PG&E is
now seeking to abandon the project while a locally-formed group
called the Eel-Russian Project Authority seeks to continue
water diversions.
The Yurok Tribe and other plaintiffs on Friday asked a San
Francisco federal judge to once again intervene in a
long-running conflict with the feds over water releases from
the Klamath Irrigation Project in Northern California after the
Trump administration said last year that irrigation should take
priority over threatened salmon species. The Klamath Project
supplies water to more than 225,000 acres of farmland and two
wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin along the
Oregon-California border. But critics say the project has
decimated the local Chinook and Coho salmon population.
… Senior U.S. District Judge William Orrick didn’t
indicate on Friday how he might rule on the tribe’s motion for
summary judgment.
… The Colorado drought map released Aug. 13 shows
99% of the state is some designation of drought status, a
percentage that has stayed steady the past three months. …
Making matters worse is the worst drought
conditions, mainly due to historically low
snowpack, are right where we, and millions of others,
can least afford to have drought. … [Colorado State
Climatologist Russ] Schumacher said when really strong El
Niños have formed like this year, which are rare, the Northern
Front Range has seen particularly wet falls. El Niño
winters have produced some above-average snowpack
years, but Schumacher said the correlation between big
snowpack years in the mountains and El Niño years is not as
clear.
Questions about artificial intelligence and jobs, ethics, even
the end of humanity may be swirling through the ethernet right
now but folks in the San Joaquin Valley want to know:
What about the water? Proposals for two “mini”
AI data centers on the fairgrounds in Tulare and Kings counties
recently generated a firestorm of questions and angry comments.
They are far from approval, but residents fear the notorious
power and water guzzling centers will drain already
stressed water supplies. Whether they would depends on
a lot of factors, including the size and type of data
center. One thing is certain, whatever water they use, it
must be accounted for, according to water managers.
… Help may now be on the way for boat owners, farmers and
water company managers eager for a solution to ward off the
quickly propagating bivalves. A Davis-based company is readying
a test in Stockton of a biodegradable treatment that
kills golden mussels without damaging surrounding aquatic
wildlife. The biobased product, Zequanox, is already
being used on quagga and zebra mussels, two other invaders that
have bedeviled the nation over the past few years. … To
show what it can do against golden mussels in the Delta,
the product will be tested in the local marina
that’s home to the Stockton Sailing Club on Buckley Cove Way
this fall.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority extended an
agreement with the U.S. Navy to drill groundwater
monitoring wells in a specific location while it works
to get data from the Indian Wells Valley Water District that
already has monitoring wells in that same location. The
agreement, which involves funding from the Navy-Coso Royalty
fund, was set to expire Aug. 31, 2026. That fund is made up of
payments from geothermal companies that operate on Navy land.
Under the agreement, the Navy-Coso Royalties fund will pay up
to $300,000 for the authority to drill two groundwater
monitoring wells and the authority is to pay Stetson
Engineering $75,000 in related project costs.
… At its core, “low-tech, process-based restoration” — the
name bestowed on the process — entails simply letting creeks
and streams do what they’ve done for millions of years: Go with
the flow. When water bodies are confined within their
banks, they cut deep channels in the ground. … That, in turn,
increases the flow rate and reduces opportunities for the water
to seep into the ground. … In 2021, [stream
ecologist Rose] Smith and group of Sageland employees and
volunteers placed human-made beaver dams along
McLeod Creek. These “analog dams” are obstacles that
force the stream to break out of its rut. … In
an interview Friday, [Utah Rep. Doug] Owens said the House
Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee
has agreed to hear a presentation on beaver dam analogs
during its fall interim committee meeting.
Golden State Water customers in Los Angeles and Orange counties
were hit with a hefty increase in their water bills last year,
and now, if the state approves the company’s latest request,
those bills could climb 30% more by 2030. That’ll mean about
$25 more per month for the average residential customer. Those
customers aren’t alone, however. Such increases have become
increasingly common in Southern California as utilities and
water districts grapple with the broader economy, climate
change, higher import and treatment costs and a never-ending
battle against aging infrastructure, experts say. Last year,
researchers at UCLA found the water bill for an average
household in L.A. County jumped nearly 60% from 2015 to 2025.
… The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the West’s
reservoirs and dams, has plans to pay cities from
Gilbert to Glendale to use less of the Colorado River.
In recent years, sweeping cuts to water allocations in Arizona
and some other states that use the Colorado River have been
made possible with big chunks of federal money. The Biden
administration set aside $4 billion from the Inflation
Reduction Act for Colorado River work. Beginning in
2022, hundreds of millions of dollars from that pool have been
used to pay cities, farms and tribes to temporarily use less
water. Those supplies are left behind in Lake Mead, the
nation’s largest reservoir. Propping up the reservoir, which
straddles the Arizona-Nevada border, has become a federal
priority in recent years. Its water levels are now the
lowest they’ve been since the reservoir filled about 90 years
ago.
Even on chilly January days in years past, it was possible to
see and hear more than 100 kinds of birds at the Vierra
Wetlands in the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge. But
last winter, dozens of species like the snowy egret, northern
shoveler and the strikingly colorful wood duck did not
appear. The seasonal wetlands, which are part of a larger
pit stop for migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway,
were nearly bone dry — and not because of a drought.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service simply didn’t have
enough employees dedicated to opening the levees that flood the
wetlands. It’s a reality playing across many of the
national wildlife refuges in the country, including the 35 in
California. Labor shortages at the federal government’s various
land management agencies — which have intensified in President
Donald Trump’s second term — have left departments with less
capacity to manage the refuges.
The already strong El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean
continue to grow stronger, federal scientists said Thursday,
with a 69% chance that this year’s event will be the strongest
since modern records began in 1950. Scientists at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in College Park,
Maryland announced there is a 90% chance of a very
strong El Niño through this fall and winter as
water temperatures along the equator off South America continue
to rise. But while El Niño increases the odds of wet winters in
California, it doesn’t mean what many people assume:
That flooding is imminent later in the year for
residents who live along rivers and creeks.
Denver Water is throwing its weight behind a proposed ballot
initiative that would ask voters to redirect a portion of state
sales tax revenue on sleeping bags, hiking boots and
skis to help fight wildfires, reduce risk of additional blazes,
and restore mountain watersheds already damaged by
fire. It’s a rare move for the state’s largest water
provider, which serves 1.5 million customers in the metro area,
and has been hard hit by major blazes, with thousands of acres
of land scorched and reservoirs filled with debris.
… For the past 20 years, as deep droughts have
periodically gripped the state, wildfires have emerged
as a major threat to the mountain watersheds that deliver fresh
water across the state, from Durango, to Aurora,
Denver and Fort Collins.
Crayfish have joined the list of non-native
species massing below Glen Canyon Dam for a potential
invasion of Grand Canyon, raising alarms from conservationists
who want to protect pristine tributary streams in the national
park. National Park Service biologists … netted more
than 3,000 so far this year in a short stretch of the Colorado
River where last year they found just over two
dozen. … The Park Service also reported a boom
in non-native fish, including bluegills and sunfish. These
invaders and the crayfish, all thought to have slipped through
the dam’s hydropower turbines, may benefit from the warming
water that the dam releases as long-term drought and water
demands push Lake Powell’s warm surface closer to the power
plant’s intakes.
… The McCumber reservoir, often called “Lake McCumber,” is a
small body of water created by the McCumber Dam, which sits at
the North Fork of Battle Creek in Shasta County. It’s
part of the broader Battle Creek Hydroelectric
Project currently owned and operated by PG&E. …
PG&E’s license for the hydroelectric project, which
originally generated power using dams, canals and pipes,
expired this year. The company has decided not to
renew its license. Since no group or entity has volunteered to
take over ownership of the project, the McCumber Dam, along
with the North Battle Creek Dam, could be removed in the years
to come — quickly draining the existing reservoir and
fundamentally changing the community that surrounds it.
A new CRS report on federal water infrastructure programs
examines the Trump administration’s proposed fiscal year 2027
budget cuts and their collision with decades of unmet
infrastructure needs, proposing steep reductions to programs
that have long underpinned American water systems. The nation
faces a combined 20-year need for wastewater and drinking water
infrastructure exceeding $1.2 trillion, yet the budget would
slash core funding mechanisms by roughly 79 percent for the
Clean Water State Revolving Fund and 63 percent for the
Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, calculated against the
elevated Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding
levels of $2.603 billion annually through 2026 for each
revolving fund. These cuts threaten to reverse gains made by
the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Small farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are struggling with
groundwater regulations to the point that 85% of 170
farmers surveyed for a recently released report said they were
concerned they would have to shut down. Others
said they are “cutting their farms in half, or more,” said
Alyssa DeVincentis, one of the report’s authors, with the
California Alliance with Family
Farmers. … California enacted SGMA to
prevent aquifers from drying up in the state’s most overtapped
groundwater basins. It mandates that local agencies,
Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs), develop plans to
stop six “undesirable results” associated with withering
aquifers. … The report argues the loss of small farms
is a seventh undesirable result.
EPA is turning to local governments as the Trump administration
pushes to build data centers required to win the global race
for artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, the agency named 22
state and municipal officials as members of its Local
Government Advisory Committee, which included 13 new members
and nine returning members. On the panel’s agenda for its
public meeting in September is discussion about what local
governments face when siting and developing data centers in
line with the environment. The infrastructure necessary for AI
has become a hot topic in politics, as voters protest data
center projects over worries about high electricity costs as
well as growing air and water pollution.
… [A] recent study, published in the journal Science Advances
… attempted, for the first time, to identify what
conditions exactly make for a “snow eater.” Compared to normal
warm spells or heat waves, the researchers determined that
these events happen when temperatures stay above freezing
through both day and night for multiple days, typically three
to five. These events can roughly double the rate at which snow
melts, causing flooding and making it challenging to manage
water resources. “Snow eaters” appear to be occurring
earlier in the year and becoming more widespread in the Western
United States as the climate warms. Since the 1850s, the study
found, the area affected by snow eaters has increased by an
average of about 40,000 square miles per century, and the first
snow eater of the season has been arriving about one month
earlier per century.
