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.
… [T]he Walker River Paiute Tribe was awarded $20 million in
funding from the EPA’s Community Change
Grant. … The grant would also fund the last leg of
a water infrastructure project that would
support dozens of new fire hydrants on the reservation and
secure reliable clean water for 425 existing homes and over 100
future homes. … [O]n May 1, the $20 million Community Change
Grant was officially terminated by EPA Administrator Lee
Zeldin, along with more than 780 other environmental
justice grants as part of Trump’s executive order to eliminate
DEI across the government.
The Kings River Fisheries Management Program is gearing up for
its annual fish “check in.” The program is seeking volunteers
over 18 to assist biologists Nov. 18, Dec. 2 and Dec. 3 to
conduct its annual fish population survey. … The survey
provides critical insight into the balance, biodiversity and
health of the fish in the lower Kings River and ensures the
ecosystem is thriving. Biologists and volunteers will use
electrofishing equipment, which shocks but does not harm the
fish, to collect and examine fish, collecting data such as
size, density, the fish’s condition and the variety of fish in
the river.
On October 29, 2025, the Fifth District Court of Appeal in
Kings County Farm Bureau v. State Water Resources Control Board
reversed a broad preliminary injunction that had barred the
State Water Resources Control Board from imposing regulatory
fees and mandating groundwater extraction monitoring and
reporting in the San Joaquin Valley’s critically overdrafted
Tulare Lake Subbasin. … The Kings County Farm Bureau opinion
provides guidance to help GSAs and stakeholders use Periodic
Evaluations to make the case for protecting sustainable
subbasins, or portions of subbasins, against the potential for
probation when other subbasins or portions of subbasins are
failing to show progress toward achieving sustainability.
… Both the city and state are upgrading their respective
[water] systems. The state is undertaking a high-mountain
project to reconstruct the Comstock-era dam at Marlette Lake,
which FEMA found could fail in a 6.5 earthquake or larger.
Estimated to cost more than $23 million, with $10 million in
FEMA grant funding, that project is expected to be completed by
autumn 2026. Meanwhile, the city is upgrading the Quill plant
off Kings Canyon Road to increase treatment of surface water
from the Marlette system and nearby creeks to 4 million gallons
a day.
A former Biden administration official who led water protection
efforts along the U.S.-Mexico border is now working at a major
engineering firm. Maria-Elena Giner, the former U.S.
commissioner of the International Boundary and Water
Commission, joined Black & Veatch last week as a portfolio
leader. She is on the firm’s water resources and community
planning team, working with federal agencies, state and local
governments, utilities and private companies, including tech
firms. Giner said her new role will focus on environmental and
infrastructure challenges affecting the water sector.
With state negotiators in the Colorado River Basin still at
odds ahead of a key deadline, the Trump administration could
soon be tasked with deciding where to cut water use across the
West and appears to be weighing options like draining
reservoirs or curbing senior water rights. … Without a
deal, the Interior Department and its Bureau of Reclamation
have threatened to step in to wield federal authority — a
largely untested power — and potentially tap reservoirs in the
Upper Basin and reduce flows to the Lower Basin.
After a warm, dry weekend across Northern California, wet
weather is forecast to return this week. Widespread rain and
the strongest winds so far this season are predicted in the Bay
Area, North Coast, Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada as an
atmospheric river-fueled storm sweeps through
the region. … Because of the warm wind direction, this
week’s storm isn’t anticipated to be a big snowmaker in the
Sierra Nevada. … Several inches of rain is forecast
around the headwaters of the Sacramento and Feather rivers,
which is important for water supply early in
the wet season.
Two neighboring groundwater agencies in Kings County are
preparing for a showdown over how much farmers can pump even as
the state Water Resources Control Board restarted probationary
sanctions for farmers in the Tulare Lake subbasin. Farmers will
be required to report how much they pumped from July 14, 2024
through Sept. 25, 2025 by May 1, 2026, according to a Water
Board press release issued Friday evening. Fees of
$20-per-acre-foot pumped won’t be far behind.
… Zebra mussels are bad news for western waterways.
Spread mainly by hitching rides on watercraft, the
fast-reproducing mollusks clog water infrastructure, cling to
marinas and docks, and outcompete native species. Colorado has
taken costly measures to keep its lakes and rivers free of the
mussels, but recorded the first official infestation in the
state’s portion of the Colorado River this year. Quagga
mussels, zebra mussels’ close relatives, and other aquatic
nuisance species, have made their presence known at reservoirs
in the Colorado River Basin, like Lake Powell and Lake
Mead.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) plans to
inject 350,000 Chinook salmon eggs into the North Yuba River
this fall as the state government looks for new ways to help
struggling salmon populations recover. This is the second year
CDFW has taken this approach, collecting eggs fertilized at the
Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville and then hydraulically
injecting them into the river’s gravel substrate in November.
… Salmon populations have struggled in California rivers
as they face rising temperatures and fish passage blockages
like dams.
The U.S. says it wants to revive its atomic power industry, but
it barely produces any nuclear fuel. Thanks in part to new
technology, mothballed mines have restarted, potentially
carrying fewer environmental and human health risks than older
mines. But this uranium boom could unfold near some of the
U.S.’s most cherished landscapes, where communities fear
groundwater pollution and other threats.
… [Pinyon Plain Mine, Ariz.] and others like it
pose threats to the region’s network of interconnected aquifers
that stretches across the Grand Canyon region, according to
research published last year.
Is the water in San Francisco Bay safe for swimming? Are the
fish safe to eat? … These are some of the questions addressed
at the State of the San Francisco Estuary Conference, which was
held this week at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center.
… Changes in the amount of cool fresh water that flows
into the Bay from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta are one of the strongest indicators of overall
health. “Based on the amount of fresh water that actually flows
into the bay each year, the estuary has been for decades
experiencing chronic man-made drought conditions,” said
independent consultant Christina Swanson.
The complex web of federal, state and local water-quality rules
has recently become even more stringent, as was on display at a
roundtable Wednesday in Santa Rosa that brought together more
than two dozen local regulators, municipal officials and
construction industry professionals to tackle what’s changed
and what’s posing problems. The event, hosted by the Northern
California Engineering Contractors Association and the North
Coast Builders Exchange, revealed an evolving regulatory
landscape for protecting streams, creeks and rivers from runoff
of sediment, oils and other pollutants from construction sites.
In a recent article in the Journal of Exposure Science &
Environmental Epidemiology, researchers examined blood chemical
levels in adults exposed to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS) through public drinking water systems. Their findings
suggest that even in areas without industrial PFAS
manufacturing, people can be significantly exposed to these
“forever chemicals” through contaminated drinking water,
requiring ongoing monitoring.
The Marin Municipal Water District is preparing for a
scaled-back upgrade to a key pump station at the Sonoma County
line. The pump station is between Kastania Road and Highway 101
in Petaluma. … The district needs flexibility because it
is also developing a separate project to collect more Russian
River water to replenish Marin reservoirs during
droughts. … When completed, it could yield 3,800 to
4,750 acre-feet of water a year to store during droughts.
Over three sunny-but-cool October days, a team of scientists
and volunteers dug up and hauled away the root crowns of trees
along the Crystal River, a first step toward a potential
strategy to protect flows on one of the last
free-flowing rivers in Colorado.
… Environmental and recreation advocates and local
municipalities, as well as many residents of the Crystal River
Valley, have long sought to protect the river from future dams
and diversions — infrastructure projects that have left many
other Western Slope rivers depleted.
When buying property in Arizona, water is often an important
part of the decision, particularly in rural areas. The way real
estate agents address questions like how secure the water
supply is can influence a buyer’s confidence in their purchase.
As Arizona continues to navigate long-term water challenges,
ensuring that agents are informed and equipped to communicate
accurately about water is critical for their clients and
communities. That’s the motivation behind REAL Water Arizona —
Improving Water Education for Real Estate Professionals.
… [T]he program is reimagining how water education is
taught in the state’s mandatory continuing education course for
licensed real estate professionals.
In a plan that will reverberate more than 300 miles north at
Mono Lake, Los Angeles city leaders have decided to nearly
double the wastewater that will be transformed into drinking
water at the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van
Nuys. Instead of treating 25 million gallons per day as
originally planned, the L.A. Board of Water and Power
Commissioners voted to purify 45 million gallons, enough water
for 500,000 people. Board President Richard Katz said this
will enable the city to stop taking water from Sierra streams
that feed Mono Lake …. He added one caveat: L.A. doesn’t
plan to relinquish its rights to water around Mono Lake and
still may need that water during a severe drought or other
emergency.
With the removal of four dams on the Klamath
River, salmon are making tremendous
progress on their migration upstream, reaching new,
previously inaccessible waters along the California-Oregon
border. In some cases, however, they may be making too much
progress. This month, workers at the Klamath Drainage District
observed chinook salmon in their irrigation complex, a grid of
canals and ditches that forks off the river near Klamath Falls,
Ore., nearly 250 miles from the river’s mouth. The fear is that
these far-roaming fish will get caught in the irrigation water
as it’s doled out to farms and swept onto dry land amidst the
alfalfa, potatoes and grains.
EPA is on track to speed up construction projects aimed at
ending a decades-long sewage pollution crisis along the
Mexico-San Diego border, Administrator Lee Zeldin announced
Thursday. The U.S. and Mexico will complete two wastewater
projects along the Tijuana River faster than anticipated, EPA
said in a news release. They will replace deteriorating,
leaking wastewater pipes six months ahead of schedule and
rehabilitate a backup sewage pump station three months ahead of
schedule.
