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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A draft decision issued Monday on appeals to California’s Delta
Conveyance Project appears to hand the state a major win in its
battle to make the massive project a reality. However, while
discarding most of the appeals against the project, the
recommendation to the Delta Stewardship
Council calls for sending two issues about the project
back to the state Department of Water Resources for
reconsideration. It also wants yearly reports from the
department about its outreach efforts to tribes and various
agencies. … A formal vote on the decision by the council is
expected [Thursday]. …The project calls for two intake
facilities by the Sacramento River, near the town of Hood, that
could handle 6,000 cubic feet of water per second. A tunnel
some 45 miles in length would carry water south to the Bethany
Reservoir and ultimately to Southern California.
The nation’s second-largest reservoir will get a boost to keep
water levels from dropping too low, but the fix won’t last
long. Water levels in Lake Powell, which sits in southern Utah
and northern Arizona, are on course for historic lows after a
record-setting dry winter and a 26-year drought fueled by
climate change. The federal government announced a strategy to
prop up the reservoir and avoid infrastructure problems
at Glen Canyon Dam, which holds it back in Page,
Arizona. The Bureau of Reclamation will take water from Flaming
Gorge Reservoir in Utah and Wyoming and send it downstream to
Lake Powell. The agency, which manages major dams and
reservoirs across the Western U.S., will also ratchet back the
amount of water released from Lake Powell.
A looming storm is forecast to drop more than 2 feet of
snow in parts of the Sierra Nevada, prompting the
National Weather Service to issue winter storm warnings.
It’s the second round of winter storm warnings this month in
the Sierra, a rarity for April. … The heaviest snow is
expected Tuesday afternoon and evening above 5,000 feet in the
northern Sierra and above 7,000 feet in the southern Sierra.
… April storms are propping up a scarce Sierra
snowpack. California’s snowpack was just 18% of normal
as of Monday morning following the state’s warmest and driest
March on record.
… This year, New Mexicans are confronting record-low
snowpack, which is essential for supplying an even flow of
water into acequia systems. Record heat isn’t helping, as it
accelerates evaporation throughout New Mexico waterways and has
contributed to an early melt off of the already thin snowpack.
… New Mexico’s acequias date back to the late
16th century, when the Spanish colonized the region.
By 1700, what would become New Mexico had around 60 of these
community-managed irrigation ditches. Today, there are
more than 700 active acequias in the state, many of
them concentrated in Northern New Mexico.
At the Edmonston Pumping Plant in Kern County, giant pumps lift
water from an aqueduct near the Central Valley’s floor high up
over the Tehachapi Mountains — roughly 2,000 feet — through a
series of tunnels and tanks to the Southern California cities
below. It’s part of the State Water Project, a
sprawling state-run system of pumps, canals and reservoirs that
delivers water to 27 million Californians. It’s also the single
biggest electricity user in the state. The project’s massive
energy demand makes it an early testing ground for one
of California’s most aggressive climate targets: that
state agencies must run on 100 percent renewable and
zero-carbon electricity by 2035, a full decade ahead of the
state’s broader 2045 goal.
Two Arizona congressmen, one Democrat and one Republican, are
calling on the Trump administration to stop holding back
billions of dollars meant to fight the
historic drought choking the Colorado River. They warn the
money could disappear if it isn’t spent soon. Reps. Greg
Stanton and Andy Biggs, a Democrat and Republican respectively,
co-signed the letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and
budget chief Russell Vought on April 9, demanding the
government release unspent drought relief funds that
Congress set aside nearly four years ago. … The
problem, the lawmakers say, is that federal officials are using
the cash as leverage.
… As a biologist with Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources
[Kyle] Stone serves as the Project Leader for the Great Salt
Lake Ecosystem Program, which has been counting migratory birds
around the lake and its wetlands since 1997. “With these
low lake conditions, we’re seeing a lot of the birds that are
here are being artificially concentrated in the areas that are
left,” Stone said about the current spring migration. … As
other saline lakes decline, particularly in California, more of
the birds are being drawn to Great Salt Lake. “Used to be a lot
of those birds were going to the Salton Sea,”
Stone explained. “Now that the Salton Sea is mostly dry, that’s
no longer available to them.” Stone noted similar behaviors
happening with the decline of Mono Lake, just
east of Yosemite National Park.
You may recall a line of bravado from any number of action
movies, “That ain’t a threat, it’s a promise.” Sorry to say
this part out loud but, the invasive Limnoperna fortunei, also
known as the golden mussel, is no longer a hypothetical threat
– it’s here in the San Joaquin Valley. More importantly, these
mussels can clog pipes, damage pumps, and threaten the
reliability of California’s water delivery systems. First
detected in North America in 2024, golden mussels have rapidly
spread throughout California’s interconnected water system. …
According to the California Department of Fish & Wildlife
(CDF&W), golden mussels have been found from Martinez in
the East Bay to San Diego.
… In recent years, there has been an alarming rise in the
number of waterways polluted with cocaine, prompting scientists
to wonder how fish might be handling their highs. As it turns
out, fish indeed get wired when on cocaine. In a study
published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Dr. [Jack]
Brand and his colleagues show that coked-up salmon swim faster
and travel farther than their sober counterparts. This
study prompts additional questions about the effects
that human drug habits may be having on salmon and other
freshwater fish. … A 2016 study of
the salmon in the Puget Sound in Washington found Prozac,
Advil, Benadryl and Lipitor, as well as cocaine, in the tissues
of juvenile chinook salmon.
The Trump administration is still regulating federally
protected wetlands, despite recent remarks from a senior
official about the Army Corps of Engineers moving away from the
practice. Lee Forsgren, principal deputy assistant secretary of
the Army for Civil Works, said during a conference last month
that the administration was “getting out of the business of
regulating wetlands.” Reported by Bloomberg Law and other
outlets, the comment was later confirmed by the
agency. Yet Army Corps officials now say that the
statement was not meant as a total abdication of oversight over
wetlands. Rather, it reflects the agency’s limited authority
under the Clean Water Act, the top political appointee for the
Army Corps said in a brief interview last week.
On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series,
Indigenous rights and environmental advocate Amy Bowers
Cordalis discusses her new book, The Water Remembers: My
Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.
Cordalis chronicles a multigenerational struggle to protect
Indigenous cultural heritage and the Klamath River from
environmental damage, which led to the largest river
restoration project in history. She writes: “The lessons
from Klamath dam removal are critical now because the
relationship between humans and nature is out of balance across
the planet. Klamath dam removal proves that humans can work
with nature to create a thriving future on planet earth.”
The County of San Luis Obispo held a community engagement
meeting Monday to share their plans for a desalination project.
The “Desalination Executable Solution and Logistics Plan” is a
five-phase flood control and water conservation project. The
county is currently conducting a feasibility study to determine
whether to move forward with the project and where it would be
located. … According to the County of San Luis Obispo,
the feasibility study is funded by a United States Bureau of
Reclamation (USBR) WaterSMART grant.
In August 2025, the Groundwater Demand Management
Network launched a “California Groundwater Community
Needs Assessment Survey” (Survey) to identify priority
needs for the diverse community that manages and researches
groundwater. As the Network grows into this new year, our
next step is to use the survey results to inform programming to
meet these needs, establish partnerships across the state,
and create a comprehensive community of practice to manage
California’s critical groundwater resources. Almost 100
colleagues responded to the Survey and provided exceptionally
helpful and robust input. A comprehensive Survey
Report will be available later in 2026; in the meantime, here’s
an initial summary.
Federal and state officials have proposed severe drought
response actions, like drastically cutting water releases from
Lake Powell, in face of a historically dry year and worsening
conditions in the Colorado River Basin. The Bureau of
Reclamation announced Friday it will likely reduce Lake Powell
water releases to 6 million acre-feet, the lowest amount in
decades. It also intends to release additional water from
Flaming Gorge, an upstream reservoir, to help elevate the water
level in Lake Powell. The decisions could
raise the specter of forced water cuts in states including
Colorado, impact endangered fish populations and affect
communities and economies.
As most Western communities expect to grapple with water
shortages this summer and fall, one is looking to share its
unlikely surplus. San Diego County in California spent nearly
$1 billion on a desalination plant after a 1990s drought left
it with scarce supply. Now, with the seawater-to-tap water
plant running at just one-third of capacity, its water utility
is shopping around deals to sell its water across the West.
… It’s not yet clear how interstate transfers of water
could occur — likely by Arizona or other states paying San
Diego for its Colorado River water rights.
Such transfers have never occurred and could require new
federal laws or regulations.
Local king salmon will be on menus in California for the first
time in four years after federal fishery managers voted
[last] week to reopen the state’s coastal waters to salmon
fishing. Since 2022, commercial fishing fleets have
been barred from catching the celebrated fish in the state
because of a frightening plunge in their numbers. A forecasted
bump in the population prompted federal regulators to change
course this year, albeit cautiously: They approved a limited
commercial season, which begins in
May. … Scientists pin the plight on a combination
of dammed rivers, too much water drawn off for cities and
farms, climate shifts such as intensifying droughts and warming
temperatures, and increasingly unfavorable ocean conditions.
Colorado’s weather modification program is seeing an increased
interest in cloud seeding technology after the record-low
snowpack this past winter. … The ability of cloud
seeding to add to Colorado’s snowpack was limited this year
compared to past years due in large part to the lack of
suitable storms that rolled through the state, [Weather
Modification Program Manager Andrew] Rickert said. He noted,
however, that the technology still likely added small amounts
of extra precipitation to the storms it did seed. In Colorado,
Rickert said all seven wintertime cloud seeding programs use
ground-based generator systems and operate from Nov. 1 to April
15, with contractors able to get an extension to the end of
April if conditions allow.
The Nevada Supreme Court reversed a previous decision that
could have taken water rights away from the nation’s only
operational lithium mine. In doing so, the court
affirmed the broad power granted to the state’s top water
regulator to make technical decisions about water
rights. In Nevada, water rights must be put to
“beneficial use” or be surrendered to the state. … The
dispute between two mining companies stems from a rush to
extract lithium in Esmeralda County, the state’s least
populated county with about 1,000 residents roughly halfway
between Reno and Las Vegas. It is home to Albemarle Corp.’s
Silver Peak mine, which remains the only producing lithium mine
in the country.
The Bureau of Reclamation is investing $6.3 million in
10 tribal water projects, including several projects to
ensure clean, reliable drinking water. … The funding
comes through Reclamation’s Native American Affairs Technical
Assistance Program, which is aimed at increasing opportunities
for federal recognized tribes to manage, develop and protect
their water and related resources. Since 2016, Reclamation has
invited tribes in the 17 western states to submit project
proposals as part of Reclamation’s Indian Trust
responsibilities. Projects funded range from drinking water
system installation and rehabilitation, well installation,
wastewater and lagoon construction to water quality testing and
workforce development.
… [S]cientists are deploying a new tool on the frontlines to
find and contain the invaders. Enter the environmental DNA
autosampler. At first glance, it looks like an unglamorous
silver storage trunk with a hose coming out of it. It’s hard to
tell it’s actually a $29,595 sophisticated robot. The machine
autonomously takes water samples to find microscopic traces of
organic matter, like scales and skin cells, to determine if
invasive species have been present in the water. U.S.
Geological Survey fish biologist Kimberley Dibble has recently
been using the tech to search for invasive smallmouth bass in
the Colorado River near the Glen Canyon Dam. The
predators are devouring native species like razorback
suckers and humpback chub.
