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.
The White House plans to pull back its nomination of a former a
veteran Arizona water official to lead the Bureau of
Reclamation, leaving the agency without permanent leadership
nine months into President Donald Trump’s second term. Ted
Cooke, a former top official at the Central Arizona Project,
told POLITICO’s E&E News on Wednesday that he has been
informed his nomination will be rescinded. … Although it
is not unusual for Reclamation to be without permanent
leadership until late in the first year of a new
president term, the Colorado River negotiations put more
pressure on the White House to fill the post.
Adding new snowpack monitoring stations at strategic locations
would be better at predicting water supply in the western U.S.
than basin-wide mapping — and it would be less expensive —
according to a new study. … On average, about half of
the water in western streams is driven by snowmelt.
… For the study, researchers analyzed more than 20 years
of snow estimates and streamflow data across 390 snow-fed
basins in 11 states. Their analysis found the location and
importance of “hotspots” — areas where snowpack isn’t currently
measured but is especially predictive of water supply.
It took half a dozen attempts but Kern water managers finally
came up with a groundwater plan that met with state approval.
The state Water Resources Control Board voted on Wednesday to
move the Kern subbasin out from under its enforcement purview
and back under oversight of the Department of Water Resources
(DWR). The move is a huge relief to area farmers and water
managers who had been facing the prospect of being put on
probation. Probation comes with severe sanctions including
requiring farmers to meter and register wells at $300 each,
report extractions to the state and pay $20 per acre foot
pumped.
California was supposed to kick off a new era of dam building
when voters passed a $7.5 billion water bond in 2014. But ten
years later, only one dam project from the list is still alive.
Sites, which would divert water from the Sacramento River into
an offstream reservoir capable of storing water for 3 million
homes annually, is the sole survivor, as of Wednesday, of a
batch of four new or expanded reservoirs that California
officials had envisioned would bolster supplies for cities and
farmers. … The string of project failures underscores an
inconvenient reality: even with the rare political alignment of
Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump in support of more
water storage, the numbers haven’t penciled out.
Wade Crowfoot and Brenda Burman lead an exciting line-up of
water and policy experts who will be speaking about
Embracing Uncertainty in the Westat our 2025
Water Summit on Wednesday, Oct. 1, in downtown
Sacramento. Now in its 41ˢᵗ year, the event will once
again gather leading experts and top policymakers from
California and across the West for engaging conversations
focused on how to move forward with critical decisions despite
myriad unknowns facing the West’s most precious natural
resource. Foundation members receive a $100 discount on
registration, but space is limited, so get your ticket to the
Water Summit here!
The nation’s leading scientific advisory body [the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine] issued a
major report on Wednesday detailing the strongest evidence to
date that carbon dioxide, methane and other planet-warming
greenhouse gases are threatening human health. … The
136-page report, assembled by a committee of two dozen
scientists, concludes that the original endangerment finding
was accurate. … Climate-driven changes in temperature
and rainfall patterns have also led to
negative effects on crops and less water
availability in some places, among other disruptions.
… The invasive golden mussel has been confirmed at
Silverwood Lake in San Bernardino County and Pyramid Lake in
Los Angeles County, according to the Department of Water
Resources, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and
California State Parks. The two lakes are now the southernmost
reservoirs in the State Water Project where the mussels have
been found. … The mollusk’s fast march across California
could spell trouble for the state’s vast network of canals,
reservoirs and pipelines, which shuttle water from the San
Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state.
A new pilot project to clean the Tijuana River using ozone
nanobubbles has sparked concerns from a UC San Diego researcher
who believes the experimental technology could pose health
risks to South Bay residents. The International Boundary and
Water Commission launched the 60-day project on Monday, testing
whether tiny ozone bubbles can help clean the polluted
waterway. However, Dr. Kimberly Prather from UC San Diego is
raising red flags about the untested approach. … [S]he
warns that when they pop, the ozone gas gets released into the
air, potentially putting more South Bay residents at risk.
A California court has ruled in favor of Ontario in the city’s
legal challenge to the Inland Empire Utilities Agency claiming
the Chino Basin Program violated state environmental law,
officials announced Tuesday. According to the San
Bernardino Superior Court’s Sept. 4 ruling, the IEUA in May
2022 violated the California Environmental Quality Act. The
court found that the agency: — “‘piecemealed’ the evaluation of
the effects of the CBP by failing to evaluate the effects of
the CBP and the Feather River Exchange outside of the Chino
Basin.”
Capitalizing on good weather and even better fishing, the 7,500
Chinook fall harvest guideline was reached during the Sept. 4-7
recreational ocean salmon fishery. The California Department of
Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) estimates that 12,000 Chinook salmon
were taken by 12,400 anglers in the brief fall season between
Pt. Reyes and Pt. Sur. The National Marine Fisheries Service
took in-season action on Sept. 17 to close the remaining 2025
fall dates. … The guidelines serve to ensure that
impacts from the fishery to stocks of particular concern -
Klamath River fall Chinook and Central Valley Spring and
Sacramento River Winter Chinook – are minimized.
Data center developer Beale Infrastructure says it is moving
forward with Project Blue, this time promising a greener
proposal that will use a new low-water air-cooling technology.
… According to the Beale letter, the new design “will
consume no water, potable or otherwise, for industrial
cooling.” … It’s unclear what water sources exist at the
site without Tucson Water. Arizona Department of Water
Resources spokesperson Doug MacEachern told Luminaria the final
user would have a few options, which could include groundwater
at the site, access through a municipal water provider, or the
use of long-term storage credits.
Moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Mario is bringing
a risk of thunderstorms, heavy rain, flooding and strong winds
across the Southwestern United States this week, forecasters
warned. … Thunderstorms are more likely to occur in Southern
California than Northern California. In the south, the storms
are likely to be wet, while there’s a risk for dry lightning in
Central and Northern California. … Rainfall is also expected
across the Sierra Nevada Range with 0.25 inch to 1 inch
possible in the Tahoe Basin and north and higher amounts, up to
2 inches, likely in the southern Sierra.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors approved more than $5.8
million in grants and $2.3 million in loans to fund flood risk
reduction and water supply projects in Yuba County. A
Yuba Water representative reported Tuesday that three flood
risk reduction projects were approved for funds: The city of
Wheatland will receive a $650,000 grant funding a Stormwater
Master Plan. … Reclamation District 817 will receive a
$400,000 grant that will cover administrative costs and
interest accrued while completing the Bear River Setback Levee
project. … The Marysville Levee Commission was approved
for a $300,000 loan, which will increase an existing line of
credit to support the Marysville Ring Levee.
Dozens of residents at Pleasant Grove Mobile Home Park have
been living without running water since Aug. 29, a crisis that
Butte County Supervisor Bill Connelly says has rendered the
park “uninhabitable.” Residents said the two wells supplying
the park’s water were shut down because the property owner
failed to pay the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bill. Connelly
confirmed that account, adding that the issue has persisted for
years without meaningful intervention from the state.
For almost six years, Dr. Scott Bartell has been investigating
the effects that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
have on the health of Orange County residents after high levels
of PFAS were detected in drinking water supplies.
… Bartell says some of the results from the UCI study
contradict previous findings on PFAS health. “We have some
findings on obesity, which is one of the endpoints people have
been wondering about, PFAS might be an obesogen and then cause
more weight gain if people are exposed,” Bartell said. “But
we’re not actually seeing that.”
… Nowhere in the country is turf use growing faster than in
California — on school athletic fields, in city parks and on
residential lawns. Exact numbers are not known, but it’s
estimated that 1,100 acres of the material, or the equivalent
of some 870 football fields, are being installed across the
state each year. … “The fields do not require water,
pesticides or fertilizers” … said Laura Chalkley, director of
communications for San Mateo Union High School District. But a
growing number of health experts, environmentalists and parents
say the fields are harming children’s health and heating up the
environment — and they’re pushing their cities, counties and
school districts to ban them.
A water line was damaged Wednesday in Benicia, leading the city
to call for an immediate reduction in water use. … The city,
meanwhile, will rely on its secondary water source, Lake
Herman. Water from the lake “may occasionally have a natural,
earthy taste or odor due to organic compounds,” but it is safe
to drink and “meets all state and federal water quality
standards,” the city said.
The California Department of Water Resources on Tuesday asked a
state appellate court to lift a preliminary injunction on
geotechnical investigations for the controversial Delta
Conveyance Project. … Last year, Sacramento County
Superior Court Judge Stephen Acquisto agreed with a group of
local counties and water districts, as well as environmental
and tribal organizations, that the preliminary work is a
“covered action,” and the state agency must certify that the
entire project complies with the requirements of the California
Delta Reform Act. The hourlong hearing … Tuesday revolved
around the question of whether the proposed preliminary work
itself, as opposed to the tunnel itself, is in fact a covered
action.
Western Slope water officials are asking for more time to
negotiate before the state decides whether influential Colorado
River water rights can be used to help the environment. A
state water agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, is
scheduled to make its final ruling Thursday on the future usage
of a pair of water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant, owned
by an Xcel Energy subsidiary called Public Service of
Colorado. On Tuesday, the Xcel subsidiary and Colorado
River District — the Western Slope water entity leading the
effort to use the rights to help the environment — filed an
11th-hour extension to delay the ruling to November.
Ferocious overpumping that has caused huge swaths of the San
Joaquin Valley to sink, damaging key water arteries including
the Friant-Kern Canal and California Aqueduct must stop,
according to the Department of Water Resources (DWR). It’s one
of the main reasons the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA) was passed in 2014. After 11 years, though, not much has
slowed the sinking, other than a few good, wet years, prompting
the state to issue proposed subsidence guidelines that leave no
doubt how serious DWR is about the issue.
