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.
For decades pesticide-intensive farming of Easter lily bulbs on
the Smith River Plain has contaminated groundwater and surface
waters of the Smith River estuary, threatening the health of
wildlife and humans along one of California’s healthiest, most
ecologically pristine rivers. Now the North Coast Regional
Water Quality Control Board is considering new regulations to
address this persistent pollution. Greg King, Executive
Director of the Siskiyou Land Conservancy, joins the program to
discuss an important upcoming townhall meeting … and what it
would take to effectively regulation pesticide pollution.
Disputes over water have been a constant in California history,
and San Diego is going through a particularly rough patch on
that front these days. … Last week, the San Diego City
Council delayed action until the end of this month on another
round of proposed increases in water and sewer rates — 63
percent and 31 percent, respectively, over four years. A city
budget analysis said there is no wiggle room and warns of dire
consequences if the rates are not raised, but council members
insisted it was too much. –Written by San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Michael
Smolens.
A year into an effort to prioritize protection of water
resources as part of its mission, the Colorado West Land Trust
is putting out some hard numbers on how it is doing on that so
far. Since the plan’s introduction, the land trust has
permanently conserved eight properties directly supporting
livelihoods tied to water security, it said in
a news release. … It also cites its completion of 13
weeks of on-the-ground restoration work, partnering with the
Western Colorado Conservation Corps, to improve
watershed function and resilience.
… Once rodents have settled in on one farm, they can spread
to neighboring properties, creating a pervasive — and expensive
— problem. The creatures chew through irrigation lines and
equipment wires, pull bark from trees and feast on ripening
fruit and nuts. Last month, the California Almond Board
said rodents had racked up more than $300 million in damages to
the state’s almond orchards between fall 2023 and fall 2024.
The main culprit was roof rats, a species that has also plagued
homes and restaurants in the South Bay. … [H]igher
rainfall could also be a factor, since it fosters the
low vegetation that gives the creatures shelter. A broader
theory posits that shorter, warmer winters associated with a
changing climate extend the rodents’ foraging and breeding
season.
… The corkscrew-shaped bacteria, leptospirosis, causes severe
abdominal pain in sea lions by damaging their kidneys and
inflaming their gastrointestinal tracts. … Since the end of
June, officials say nearly 400 animals have been reported
stranded or sickened along the Central Coast beaches. …
Hundreds more probably were washed away before anyone spotted
them, or died at sea. The historically large and long bacterial
outbreak is adding to an already devastating death toll for the
seals, sea lions, dolphins, otters and whales who live in and
migrate through the state’s coastal waters.
After a dismal snowpack, sustained drought conditions, and a
relatively weak monsoon season, southern Utah is preparing for
the possibility of a water shortage. A newly proposed
conservation plan outlines what the county will require
municipalities to do should reservoirs run low. … The
water shortage contingency plan, released
Wednesday, would require each city to decrease its water use by
a set percentage. … If municipalities fail to reach that
reduction rate, they could face punitive pricing, ranging from
a 300% to 500% increase from the standard.
… The shutdown may result in regulatory delays that included
new or pending permits, guidance documents and approvals.
State-submitted programs like NPDES permits and TMDLS won’t be
acted on during shutdowns. … Routine EPA inspections for
drinking water systems, wastewater facilities or stormwater
compliance are paused until a funding bill is passed.
Enforcement only continues if it is tied to imminent threats to
human health or property. No new EPA grants for water
infrastructure upgrades, stormwater resilience or research
partnerships will be awarded during the shutdown.
The Colorado River, which provides water across the Southwest,
has lost about 20% of its flow in the last quarter-century, and
its depleted reservoirs continue to decline. But negotiations
aimed at addressing the water shortage are at an impasse. …
[Great Basin Water Network Executive Director Kyle] Roerink and
leaders of five other environmental groups criticized the lack
of information about the stalled negotiations, as well as the
Trump administration’s handling of the situation during a news
conference Wednesday as they released a report with
recommendations for solving the river’s problems.
California salmon are as central to our historic identity as
the symbol on our state flag, the California grizzly. It is a
sad and ironic tragedy that the grizzly has been extinct for
generations. What does it say about us if salmon may soon
follow? … Losing salmon would be an ecological disaster
for our freshwater ecosystems, forests, riverbanks and other
native species if their links to the salmon were severed.
Healthy salmon runs mean jobs for Californians, but the
industry generating $1 billion is at risk, and is a historic
piece of California’s culture. –Written by Sacramento Bee columnist Tom Philp.
Bigger, hotter, and more severe wildfires are changing
Colorado’s fire seasons. They change the way watersheds work,
and can hurt drinking water resources across the state. Denver
Water, the state’s largest utility, provides water to more than
1.5 million people in the metro area. It attempts to address
some of these concerns in its From Forests to Faucets program.
… Madelene McDonald, a watershed scientist for the utility
oversees the program, and spoke with Rocky Mountain Community
Radio’s Caroline Llanes to share more.
Gavin Newsom, the California governor, is facing intense
pressure from industry, and even some celebrity chefs, as he
weighs whether or not to sign a bill that bans the sale of
cookware made with Pfas or “forever chemicals”. … The
industry pressure is part of a broader attack that aims to
derail similar bans on Pfas in cookware in other states, public
health advocates say. … [Clean Water Action Legislative
Director Andria] Ventura noted the California water and sewer
utility trade group endorses the ban because utilities are left
with the cost of trying to remove PFAS pollution from
drinking water.
… The city [Palo Alto] broke ground in September on Bay
Area’s first horizontal levee, a gently sloped expanse next to
the Regional Water Quality Control Plant that officials hope to
finish by next spring. Once completed, landscaped levee will
incline from the tide toward Embarcadero Road. The area will be
filled with marsh plants that will be treated with treated
wastewater from the wastewater plant through an underground
pipe. The levee will serve as yet another filtering system for
the effluent as it goes from the treatment plant to the Bay.
Snow levels could drop to 7,500-8,000 feet by Friday morning,
which might bring some snow to the higher peaks of the Sierra
Nevada. “Two-day … totals have a majority of the Sierra between
a Trace to 1-inch, with localized amounts of up to 2-4 inches
in Mono County (Tioga Pass, Sonora Pass), and 1-2 inches for
Mount Rose,” said National Weather Service Reno Meteorologist
Colin McKellar. “It’s not a big snow event by any means, but
the first decent snowfall this fall.”
… [T]here’s only about 3,000 sea otters in California. The
playful predators’ voracious appetite for destructive species
like green crabs and purple urchins has transformed
Elkhorn Slough, the state’s second-largest
estuary, into an aquatic Serengeti and makes the
central coast’s carbon-sequestering kelp forests more resistant
to climate change. … The US government determined in
2022 that reintroducing sea otters on California’s North Coast
and Oregon would be a boon to biodiversity and climate
resilience. … But as the Trump administration moves to slash
funding for wildlife programs, a nonprofit co-founded by a
Silicon Valley entrepreneur is stepping in.
… The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake—and, many
say, its greatest environmental blunder. Born of periodic
floods from the Colorado River, it is not a lake that is meant
to last. For millions of years, the river would breach its
banks, fill the Salton Sink, then change its mind and meander
back into the Gulf of California. Left without inflows and
outflows, the water that remained would evaporate. That was the
rhythm of this place: flood, shrink, repeat. Eventually, humans
broke the pattern. Farmers arrived in the early 1900s, when the
lake basin was dry. They claimed the fertile floodplain and
tried to tame the river. They put bottles in the banks to mark
their water claims. They dug canals and levees. Then came the
biblical flood.
… The County of Mendocino is updating the 2020 Hazard
Mitigation Plan, in collaboration with local municipalities,
districts, and other community organizations. … In
March, the county was awarded funding to improve flood
emergency response capabilities throughout Mendocino County by
the Department of Water Resources (DWR), Safe Drinking Water,
Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Bond
Act of 2006. The county is in the process of locating a vendor,
with the goal of creating a Flood Response Plan, identifying
communications needs, purchasing communications equipment and
placing flood response supplies in strategic areas countywide.
… Valley fever is endemic to southern Washington, Oregon,
California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of
Central and South America, but nowhere are cases of the disease
more common than in Arizona. … [R]esearchers across the West
who study the fungus think another factor may be driving the
trend: supersoaker winter monsoons followed by
scorching summer heat and drought, a cycle
made more intense by climate change.
… “The main driver for us is certainly this very clear
association for coccidioides between heavy precipitation cycles
followed by drought,” said George Thompson, a professor of
medicine at the University of California, Davis, School of
Medicine who specializes in fungal diseases.
San Diego County will consider options to co-manage El Capitan
Reservoir with the city of San Diego after getting the green
light from the Board of Supervisors this week. On Wednesday,
supervisors unanimously voted to spend up to $600,000 annually
– as part of a four-year pilot program, beginning in the
2026-27 fiscal year – for the county Department of Parks and
Recreation to operate and maintain recreation at the reservoir.
The total amount of $2.4 million will also cover expanding
hours and staffing costs, along with possible facility
upgrades, according to information on the county agenda.
… The California Department of Housing and Community
Development sent a Sept. 22 letter to [Patterson] city leaders
after the council voted in April to reject the Keystone Ranch
project, a 95-acre development within the Zacharias Master Plan
area. … The letter said Patterson failed to make the
required findings under the state Housing Accountability Act
before denying the project. The city, however, argues its
decision stemmed from new restrictions imposed by state water
regulators. The Department of Water Resources ordered Patterson
to cut groundwater pumping by 10% after
rejecting the city’s sustainability plan, triggering new
environmental review requirements under the California
Environmental Quality Act.
A new study from the University of Arizona reveals how
historical tree-ring data can help predict extreme summer
weather events. Researchers, led by Ellie Broadman, analyzed
tree rings to understand locked jet stream wave patterns, often
preceded by La Niña winters, which can result in severe weather
impacting agriculture and public health. … The study,
published in AGU Advances, presents the first-ever
reconstruction of historical jet stream patterns over the last
1,000 years. … The findings suggest that La Niña winters
often lead to locked wave patterns in summer, offering a
valuable tool for forecasting extreme weather.
