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.
Coastal communities across California face increasing threats
from flooding with changes in storm patterns and sea-level. Now
all coastal areas across the state have future flood hazard
projections from the USGS Coastal Storm Modeling System
(CoSMoS) to inform coastal planning and risk reduction.
… With the release of data in Mendocino County, CoSMoS
projections are now available across the entire state,
including San Francisco Bay and the Channel
Islands. CoSMoS is a dynamic modeling approach that allows
for detailed projections of coastal flooding due to both future
sea level change and extreme storms, integrated with long-term
coastal evolution (i.e., beach changes and cliff
retreat).
California’s single-largest solar energy project is scheduled
to come up for a vote next month by the Kern County Planning
Commission before going on for final consideration by the Board
of Supervisors. Proposed by San Diego-based developer Avantus,
the nearly 12,000-acre Buttonbush Solar and Storage project
would generate 2 gigawatts of electricity. … [Avantus Vice
President of Development Kevin] Brokish noted the project was
initiated in 2019 in an area where land is being pulled out of
production because of pumping limits imposed by California’s
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
For the eighth year in a row, the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife has found no Delta Smelt in their annual Fall
Midwater Trawl survey in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta in
September, October and November of 2025. The results for
December haven’t been compiled yet. The smelt, once the most
abundant fish in the entire Delta, is an indicator species
found only in the Delta. It’s decline to virtual extinction in
the wild is a symptom of s larger decline, the Pelagic Organism
Decline (POD), of the once robust open water fish
populations of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary.
The North Bay city of Clearlake has declared a local emergency
because of a massive sewage spill. It all started from a
ruptured pipe on Robin Lane around 8 a.m. on Sunday. But
the spill has not stopped, despite efforts to repair it,
because of multiple faulty valves.Raw sewage has flooded the
area and has spread into waterways and ditches. About 58
properties are impacted. The wastewater system is managed
by the Lake County Sanitation District. People in that
area are being urged to drink bottled water.
In less than a month, more than 100,000 people will descend on
the Tulare International Agri-Center to stroll through rows of
imposing tractors while smoke from grilled rib eye steaks and
hamburgers wafts through the air at the 59th annual World Ag
Expo. … This year there will be 12 seminars devoted to
water-related issues, including invasive golden mussels,
groundwater recharge, irrigation technology and land and water
conservation. Water seminars will take place each day of
the show with just a few highlighted below.
Longtime Eastern Municipal Water District Director Philip E.
Paule was seated Tuesday as the agency’s newest representative
on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California. Paule is currently chief of staff for a
Riverside County supervisor and has worked at various levels of
government, including leading the offices of both congressional
and county representatives. He has represented Division I on
EMWD’s board since 2007, during which time he has served
multiple terms as board president. He succeeds Jeff Armstrong,
who served on Metropolitan’s 38-member board since 2023.
Work on a major water line in Tijuana has been finished and
service has been restored to more than 1.5 million residents
affected during the repairs. … More than 690 colonias in
Tijuana and Rosarito lost potable water last Thursday when
repairs began. That’s roughly two thirds of residents in the
region. … García Castro told the El Sol Newspaper in
Tijuana that repairs were necessary on a line that’s more than
70 years old and brings water from the Colorado River, the
region’s primary source of water.
Impressions and information gathered during a visit to sites
along the undammed Klamath River by scientists and others last
year are shaping their thoughts on the impacts of dams. Eight
Mongolian scientists specializing in areas including aquatic
ecosystems, biology, chemistry, and construction engineering
participated in last October’s tour to see “what it looks like
to dam — and undam” the Klamath River, historically a salmon
river that begins in tributaries in the Upper Klamath Lake area
that feed into the Klamath River.
Farmers, municipalities and industry in southeastern La Paz
County, where Saudi-owned Fondomonte grows alfalfa for export,
will face new requirements on groundwater use and reporting.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources designated an
active management area in the Ranegras
groundwater basin on Jan. 9. With it, the area will become
the eighth AMA in the state and the second one initiated by
state mandate during Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration. Hobbs
also announced the designation in her Jan. 12 State of the
State address.
Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing LLC has filed a civil
rights lawsuit in the United States District Court, Southern
District of California, against the city of Imperial and
several senior officials, according to a press release from
IVCM. The litigation alleges a coordinated campaign of
administrative obstruction and targeted retaliation designed to
derail a permitted $10 billion AI data center project.
… The lawsuit further charges that the city sabotaged a
critical environmental initiative. The developer had secured an
agreement to purchase reclaimed water, treat it, and
release 5.25 million gallons of fresh water daily into
the Salton Sea watershed.
The federal agency overseeing the water supply for tens of
millions of people in the West has published a list of options
for how it might manage the drought-stricken Colorado River in
the future. The five proposals range from taking “no action” to
a scenario that might result in water cuts to the lower basin
states of California, Nevada and Arizona. One alternative
developed in partnership with conservation groups would
incentivize states and water users to proactively conserve the
river. But the Interior Department is not identifying a
preferred option, and the scenarios outlined in hundreds of
pages of documents will only move forward if all seven states
that depend on the water fail to agree on their own
conservation plan soon.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California State Legislature have
given the Pure Water Southern California large-scale recycled
water project a potential boost by approving measures designed
to quickly resolve any legal challenges to its environmental
review. Metropolitan Water District and Los Angeles County
Sanitation Districts are jointly planning the Carson-based
project, which would purify and reuse cleaned wastewater
currently discharged to the ocean. … Gov. Newsom and the
State Legislature last week certified the project under SB 149,
the California Environmental Quality Act judicial streamlining
process.
Data from the Interactive California Reservoir Levels dashboard
shows nearly every reservoir in the state is above the
historical average capacity. … Those reservoirs are extremely
important to the state, especially to California’s agriculture
industry which exports tens of billions of dollars of products
every year. … [T]he high reservoir levels can also be
too much of a good thing. … If reservoir levels get too high,
there’s nowhere to hold extra water and protect parts of the
state from potentially disastrous flooding.
A new analysis says water rates in San Diego must go up another
44.2% between 2028 and 2031 even though the City Council agreed
in October to raise them a cumulative 31.3% this year and next.
If the council ends up approving additional hikes that large
when they come to a vote next year, the cumulative six-year
rate increase would amount to more than 90%. The 54-page
analysis, which was presented to the council Monday, also says
sewer rates must rise a total of 15% in 2030 and 2031. …
Council members and other city leaders vowed Monday to spend
the next 12 to 18 months searching for ways to boost revenue or
cut spending for the city’s water and sewer systems that could
prevent such large hikes.
… A study released in December by scientists at the U.S.
Geological Survey and the National Park Service said the main
driver for recent toxic harmful algal blooms in Blue Mesa [in
Gunnison County, Colo.] is low reservoir levels, which create
shallow and warm conditions favorable for algal
growth. … This year’s low snowpack and dismal
projections mean there could be more releases from Blue Mesa in
the future and, therefore, increased potential for more harmful
algal blooms. In December, officials from the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation said releases from the three reservoirs — known
as the Colorado River Storage Project Act reservoirs or the
Upper Initial Units — are one of the tools the federal agency
could use to prop up levels at Lake Powell to
protect the ability to make hydropower at Glen Canyon
Dam.
Holiday storms left the Sierra Nevada snowpack around Carson
City near average for this time of year, but other parts of
Nevada are languishing. “On Jan. 1, basin snowpack percentages
are split, with the eastern Sierra basins at 86-128 percent of
median snow, while the rest of Nevada and the Upper Colorado
basin have only 17-64 percent of median snow,” reads a Jan. 1
report from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
… As of Monday morning, snow water equivalent — how much
water content resides in the snowpack — was at 105 percent of
median in the Carson River Basin. The Lake Tahoe Basin was at
103 percent, the Truckee River Basin around 108 percent and the
Walker River Basin around 128 percent.
A peer-reviewed study from American Rivers and
Conservation Science Partners reveals that more than 80 percent
of U.S. rivers lack adequate protection. Roughly two-thirds of
the nation’s 4.4 million miles of rivers are currently
completely unprotected, according to the assessment, and
protections for another 17 percent are considered inadequate to
safeguard rivers from major threats including dams, pollution,
and loss of fish and wildlife habitat. … Alaska (9.4%)
and California (5.6%) have the highest
percentage of rivers protected by national parks.
… With a five-year, $3.7 million grant from the Heising-Simon
Foundation, the Pacific Coastal Fog Research project is poised
to lift the veil on the rather mysterious meteorological
phenomenon. The scientists will record the fog’s chemical
composition, examine how it helps support redwood forests and
other ecosystems, and look at the possible effects of climate
change and pollution from human activities. … Coastal
fog is a dominant provider of water during dry
seasons, supporting coastal vegetation, including
redwoods. In the past, fog research has mainly focused on how
it is affected by weather patterns, but the realization that
fog may be vulnerable to contamination from human activities
has sparked interest in more interdisciplinary research.
Manteca has been effectively removing TCP from municipal
well water over the past decade. Described by the state as a
“potent carcinogen”, it has been detected in a handful of city
wells over the years as the plume of contamination spreads
hundreds of feet below ground. Most of the city’s wells aren’t
impacted. The effective removal of the containment TCP —
1,2,3-trichloropapne — from municipal water has been a priority
for the city since it was first detected in a well in 2013. …
Extremely small traces of the chemical TCP used in pesticides
for orchard crops as well as in industrial solvents has been
detected in several Manteca municipal water wells over the
years.
Out in the fertile yet water-constrained farmlands of
California’s western Central Valley, a massive solar,
battery, and power grid project that could provide
a quarter of the state’s clean energy needs by 2035 has
taken a critical step forward. In December, the board of
directors of the Westlands Water District, the agency that
manages water delivery to more than 600,000 acres in
California’s agricultural heartland, approved the Valley Clean
Infrastructure Plan. VCIP calls for building up to
21 gigawatts of solar energy and an equivalent amount of
battery storage across up to 136,000 acres, along with
a series of high-voltage transmission lines to connect the
electricity generated to the state’s grid.
