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.
… La Niña conditions are likely from September 2025 through
January 2026. NOAA’s official probabilistic ENSO forecast
indicates a greater than 50% chance for La Niña during this
period. Precipitation and temperature related to La Niña,
combined with the La Niña forecast and current drought
conditions, suggest drought persistence in the Southwest United
States. … La Niña conditions are forecast in late 2025
and early 2026, which increases the chances for below-average
precipitation and above-average temperatures in the Southwest,
Southeast, Southern California, and Texas.
As wildfires become increasingly intense and frequent in
California, particularly near reservoirs, experts say threats
to water resources will require more proactive preventative
measures. Massive swaths of land have burned annually across
the state, and rebuilding can take years after the ashes have
been swept away. Toxic chemicals linger in the scorched
soils even longer, and can make their way into water sources,
said Ann Willis, California regional director with American
Rivers, a nonprofit focused on protecting clean water
resources.
… On Sunday evening, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke
Rollins published a broadside on social media platform X in
which she accused the investor-owned utility of “cutting water
flows and pushing to tear down the Scott and Cape Horn Dams
which have been lifelines for farmers and over 600,000
residents for more than a century.” … Reached via phone
in Washington, D.C., this morning, Rep. Jared Huffman — who,
unlike Newsom, was extensively involved in multi-agency
negotiations to find a “two-basin solution” that satisfies
competing regional interests — said Rollins’s take is
misguided.
… Last month the International Boundary and Water Commission,
which oversees a wastewater treatment facility along the
U.S.-Mexico border, awarded Ohio-based Greenwater Services an
estimated $2.5 million to test their “nanobubble technology”
method to capture contaminants in the Tijuana River. The
process involves pumping ozone bubbles into water.
… However, according to the IBWC’s own project
description, deploying this method on the Tijuana River has yet
to be tested. Scientists, local leaders and environmental
advocates are concerned that the project has been given a
greenlight by the IBWC despite a lack of data on its
effectiveness or risks.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is making changes to a popular
conservation program in ways that have some environmental
groups crying foul. In a secretarial order, Burgum is
limiting how much money from the Land and Water
Conservation Fund can be used. The order prioritizes
acquisitions for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National
Park Service, which will have the result of discouraging land
acquisition for the Bureau of Land Management. It also calls
for the selling of federal lands to states, requires a state’s
governor and local leaders to agree to any federal LWCF
acquisitions, and would limit the ability of non-profits to
participate.
After a spectacular two-day salmon season in the San
Francisco/Half Moon Bay area in June, a second window with a
7500-fish quota opened from September 4-7 from Point Reyes
south to Point Sur with similar incredible fishing. … The
Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA), a major force in the
restoration of California’s salmon populations, viewed the
short season as “A welcome glimmer of hope – albeit
briefly,” adding … “Salmon populations remain
dangerously low. … While recreational anglers prepare their
gear, California’s commercial salmon fleet faces a third
consecutive year of closure.”
Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation are urging
Republican leaders to prioritize the funding of tribal water
settlements, even as President Donald Trump is proposing little
to no funding to honor the nation’s longstanding treaty
obligations. In a letter to House and Senate leaders last
week, New Mexico’s delegation — all Democrats — and their
Republican colleagues in Montana called on House and Senate
leadership to prioritize the passage of 10 water settlements,
six of which are in New Mexico.
Residents around the Salton Sea have long complained of
respiratory ailments from particulate pollution that wafts from
its shoreline. Now UCLA researchers have identified another air
pollutant that could be sickening people in communities near
the inland lake: hydrogen sulfide. That’s a gas from decaying,
organic matter that produces a rotten egg smell and is
associated with eye irritation, headaches, nausea and other
symptoms. In a pair of reports released last week, the Latino
Policy & Politics Institute at UCLA described how algal blooms
produce the gas in the water, and how it wafts across nearby
neighborhoods.
Dismantling San Diego’s biggest water broker could be what
local boundary referees recommend later this year in the face
of ever-rising water rates. That’s just one of a menu of
options that San Diego’s Local Agency Formation Commission,
known as LAFCO, will analyze in what’s known as a municipal
service review of the San Diego County Water Authority. Reviews
like this can inspire further action by the commission, endowed
with legislative powers to break up or consolidate cities and
government services.
Expansion of the nation’s only operating lithium mine would
likely have only a modest impact on its remote Nevada desert
location, according to a draft environmental review that looks
like a green light for a project the Trump administration wants
to streamline. … “Since no new water rights are being sought
as part of the proposed action, and since pumping at the
facility would not change with construction and implementation
of the [proposal], impacts on groundwater resources are
expected to be negligible, long-term, and regional,” the EIS
states.
… As late as the 1980s half of the economy of Mineral County,
including the nearby town of Hawthorne, was based on visitors
taking advantage of the fishing and other recreational
activities at Walker Lake. But a problem was brewing. More and
more water was being used upstream for agricultural purposes
and less water was reaching Walker Lake. … The
Walker Basin Conservancy has the ambitious goal of bringing the
lake level in Walker Lake up to the level it was in the year
2000. … [W]hen the Conservancy purchases the right to
water they also have been able to provide recreational
opportunities.
In 2020, haunting images of corroded metal barrels in the deep
ocean off Los Angeles leapt into the public consciousness. …
[N]ew research from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of
Oceanography reveals that the barrels with halos contained
caustic alkaline waste, which created the halos as it leaked
out. Though the study’s findings can’t identify which specific
chemicals were present in the barrels, DDT manufacturing did
produce alkaline as well as acidic waste. Other major
industries in the region such as oil refining also generated
significant alkaline waste.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins took to social media
over the weekend to raise concern about dam removal on
California’s Eel River, even suggesting that the Trump
administration may intervene to stop or revise the project.
Rollins, on X, cited the loss of water for cities and farms
that would come with plans to remove two dams in Mendocino and
Lake counties while also invoking well-worn Republican
criticism about California “putting fish over people.” … In
the post, the agriculture secretary said she was working with
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to bring “real solutions” for
securing Northern California water supplies.
Continued disagreement over which states must absorb the pain
of future cuts to water supplies drawn from the
drought-stricken Colorado River could upend negotiations just
two months before a federal deadline, key state officials are
warning. Top Arizona water officials are demanding that the
four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and
Wyoming — commit to future reductions in their own water use in
any agreement on a new long-term operating plan for the river.
The divisive warnings come in the wake of some progress this
summer, in which all seven states coalesced around a plan known
as “natural flow.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune took the first steps Monday
to change the Senate rules so that large groups of lower-level
administration nominees can be confirmed by simple majority.
The process, which will play out in the coming days, could mean
President Donald Trump will soon see picks for EPA and the
departments of Energy, Interior and Agriculture approved after
weeks or months of delay. The list includes Jessica
Kramer to lead EPA’s water office and Katherine
Scarlett to lead the White House Council on Environmental
Quality. Both have garnered bipartisan support.
… The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the
dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged the lack of a Clean
Water Act permit for an agricultural drainage project in
California. Agricultural organizations feared that if the
lawsuit’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act prevailed,
irrigated agriculture across the West would face a tremendous
new regulatory burden. Originally filed 14 years ago by
fishing and environmental organizations, the complaint alleged
the Grassland Bypass Project has violated the Clean Water Act
because it discharges non-agricultural pollutants into a
wetland along with runoff from irrigated farmland.
California relies on federal satellites to understand and
manage its water resources every day. Data from these
satellites are used to estimate irrigation use, manage
groundwater, predict storms, assess flooding, and track water
quality, among many other applications. … What may not be as
well known is that Landsat—along with other federal
satellites—also plays a key role in California water
management. While it would take too much time to catalogue all
the ways California uses federal satellite data to manage our
water resources, a few examples illustrate the importance of
these data.
Water is a driving force in the American West, and today it’s
at risk more than ever. Not just from overuse, not just from
megadrought, but from minuscule invaders that pose a nearly
unstoppable threat to the region’s rivers, lakes, dams and
reservoirs. …The mollusks’ westward sweep recently crossed a
feared Rubicon when Colorado discovered zebra mussels in its
portion of the Colorado River system, an imperiled lifeline to
40 million people.
The days of huge, unused swaths of public and commercial lawns
appear to be numbered in California and the Metropolitan Water
District is offering an incentive to hasten their demise, at
least in Southern California: A whopping $7-per-square-foot
rebate to businesses, schools and other public institutions
that replace their thirsty lawns with sustainable landscapes
containing native and/or drought-tolerant plants …. thanks to
a $30-million grant from California’s Department of Water
Resources and $96 million from the federal Bureau of
Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin System Conservation and
Efficiency Program.
In the more than four decades since I started at the L.A.
Times, we’ve never had a reporter cover water with the depth
and persistence of Ian James. California’s story is often the
story of water — who’s got it, who doesn’t and who will find
our next acre-foot. Ian is a former foreign correspondent who
has written about everything from novel water solutions like
reclaiming sewage, to the intersection of H2O with wildlife and
farms. Essential Cal talked to Ian about his work.
