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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.
We occasionally bold words in the text to ensure the water connection is clear.
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.
A Utah State University team says that the Colorado River is
experiencing low water levels and may be headed for a crisis.
Utah State University’s Colorado River Studies team released a
new report that shows that water storage levels in Lake Powell
and Lake Mead is significantly reduced. … [Utah State
University (USU) Director of Colorado River Studies Jack]
Schmidt added that USU’s team is calling for water cuts across
all seven basin states that draw from the Colorado river,
saying that voluntary conservation alone won’t be enough.
Developers of the Sites Reservoir project are proposing an
off-stream reservoir to enhance California’s water storage
capacity. Representatives from the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and the Sites Project Authority met at the Tehama
Colusa Canal Authority building to continue public negotiations
for a partnership. The proposed reservoir aims to stabilize
water deliveries for agriculture, cities and environmental
purposes. The Sites Project Authority, which will own the
reservoir, is in formal negotiations with the Bureau of
Reclamation to define its participation.
… During the department’s first Water Resources Science
Symposium held on September 23, the third annual Sierra Nevada
Phillips Award was presented to Ellen Hanak, Ph.D. For almost
25 years, Dr. Hanak has adeptly navigated between science and
policy on controversial and difficult water management
challenges in California, including groundwater recharge, water
affordability, and drought. Currently, Dr. Hanak is an adjunct
fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)
and is a founding director of PPIC’s Water Policy Center.
As anticipated, the recent 4-day ocean salmon season from Point
Reyes south to Point Sur surpassed the 7500-fish quota, leading
to in season action by the National Marine Fisheries Service on
September 17 to close the remaining 2025 fall dates of Sept
29-30, October 1-5, and October 27-31. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) estimated that 12,000
Chinook salmon were taken by 12,400 anglers in the brief fall
season. … Captain James Smith of California Dawn Sport
Fishing said … “I think we have only reached 7,500 fish
four times since 1994 during a much longer open period. It just
shows how many salmon are in the system.”
… The Delta Conveyance Project, which is designed to improve
water supply reliability for the State Water Project (SWP) and
the 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland throughout California
that depend on it, has been carefully planned to minimize its
impact on Delta farmland. Some agricultural land will be used
for the Delta Conveyance Project. However, the Department of
Water Resources (DWR) and Delta Conveyance Design and
Construction Authority (DCA) are taking significant and genuine
steps to limit these impacts, involve local farmers in the
planning, and compensate fairly for any losses.
An abandoned speedboat that once protruded vertically from Lake
Mead National Recreation Area has been displaced to the great
dock in the sky. … The boat’s removal is part of a
larger clean-up effort at the cove, located about 40 minutes
from the Las Vegas Strip, where park officials hauled away over
20,000 pounds of rubbish over the last year. … Water levels
have plummeted at Lake Mead for several years and the
reservoir’s 2025 level is the third lowest it’s seen in a
decade. … The Park Service noted that as water levels
declined, some visitors moved into the expanding dry area for
long-term stays.
On August 26, 2025, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors
(“Board”) adopted an urgency ordinance (Urgency Ordinance
(“UO”) No. 1576) that imposes a 45-day moratorium for the
issuance of new or modified agricultural groundwater
well-permits in designated “Focus Areas” (see Figure 1 below).
In addition to preventing the issuance of new permits, the
moratorium will prevent Yolo County from approving eleven
pending well permit applications that were submitted before the
moratorium was put in place. The Board scheduled another public
hearing for October 7, 2025, where it will consider extending
the moratorium for an additional 10 months and 15 days.
Workers in Del Mar are finalizing an elaborate drainage system
along the cliffs to prevent erosion that threatens a vital rail
corridor. Like many coastal areas in California, the cliffs in
Del Mar have been eroding at an average rate of six inches per
year, with urban runoff and rain contributing to the
problem. During wet and stormy periods, as much as six
feet of the cliffs can crumble onto the beach below, posing a
risk to the rail tracks that carry thousands of passengers and
freight daily. The drainage system is designed to capture and
redirect water from urban runoff and rain, which are the
primary causes of erosion from the top down.
Companies that run data centers are facing increasing scrutiny
for guzzling water in the dry western U.S. as artificial
intelligence fuels a boom in the industry. California
legislators passed a bill this month that would require the
facilities to report their projected water use before they
begin operating and thereafter certify how much they use
annually. The bill is now awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
signature. … The California legislation requires
companies to submit water information for both new and existing
facilities.
The Interior Department gained three new leaders last week when
the Senate approved a group of President Donald Trump’s
political nominees, filling out what has been a thin bench of
confirmed top brass for the more than 60,000-strong agency that
oversees public lands and energy. William Doffermyre will
become the Interior Department’s top lawyer, Andrea
Travnicek will take over as assistant secretary for water and
science, while Leslie Beyer assumes the role of
assistant secretary for land and minerals management.
San Diegans owe a privately-owned desalination plant over $35
million for water the company couldn’t make. … San Diego
County Water Authority staff revealed Thursday that the
region’s biggest water seller has 10,105 acre-feet of water it
needs to buy from Channelside, the owner of the Carlsbad plant
that de-salts ocean water to make it drinkable. … The cost of
that unmade water is expected to increase by about 2.5 percent
per the contract. … At $3,500 per acre-foot, de-salted
ocean water is the region’s most expensive water source, a fact
that attracts critics of San Diego’s spiking water
prices.
U.S. rivers are running hot. A new analysis of nearly 1,500
river locations over more than 40 years found that the
frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves is increasing
in streams across the country, posing a threat to many species
that are adapted to cooler temperatures. The new analysis,
which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, is the first in-depth study
of riverine heat waves, which are defined as five straight days
of high temperatures in comparison to seasonal averages. The
authors found that human-caused climate change is the primary
driver of the trend, as snowpack dwindles and streams flow more
slowly.
Water markets are a tool that can help growers cope with
increasing water scarcity. While California has been slow to
adopt water markets, Australia’s water markets are much more
developed. We spoke with two experts—Flinders University
Professor Sarah Wheeler and grower Sandy Iosefellis—about what
lessons the Murray-Darling Basin might hold for California’s
growers.
California may experience another dry winter similar to last
year, due to persistent La Niña and neutral Pacific Ocean
conditions. This is the message from Meteorologist Alex Tardy
from Weather Echo. … While the forecast appears
concerning for California’s water supply,
Tardy emphasized that the state will not be completely devoid
of precipitation. “You’ll still have potential for a couple of
big storms and moderate storms, but you don’t have the
potential for a lot of them,” he said.
The city of Roseville, 19 miles northeast of Sacramento,
regularly sits at the top of California’s “best places to live”
lists. … But there is another reason this railroad town
now with some 160,000 residents gets such high accolades. After
two decades of careful municipal planning, it has no problem
with flooding. … Its approach is not flashy. Talk to Brian
Walker, Roseville’s senior engineer and flood plain manager,
and you’ll hear a lot about flood plain mapping and storm
drainage, funding mechanisms and development ordinances. But
this measured and deliberate approach has worked, he and others
say.
There was another development on Monday in the county of Lake’s
ongoing effort to push back against Pacific Gas and Electric’s
effort to remove the dams in the Potter Valley Project,
including the Scott Dam that forms Lake Pillsbury, a plan the
Board of Supervisors chair called “reckless.” County officials
issued a Monday statement that challenged PG&E’s recent
assertions that a reason for decommissioning and removing the
project was due to seismic issues. … Lake County
officials pointed out that, despite those reported drawbacks to
the project, PG&E has still noted water storage and
diversion benefits of the Potter Valley Project within its own
company reports.
More than half a million dollars has been targeted for the
protection of a rare peat fen wetland in Humboldt County. …
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will be
acquiring the property, and it will be included in North Coast
Range Fen Conservation Area … which was established in
2019 “for the purpose of protecting biodiversity, including
important sources of clean cold water for the Van Duzen River
ecosystem and a rare wetland type in California that supports
critically imperiled wetland plant communities,” Wildlife
Conservation Board Information Officer Mark Topping said.
Desert Water Agency (DWA) has adopted a new ordinance banning
potable water irrigation on non-functional turf to meet state
conservation mandates, but property management companies warn
the rules could create financial hardships for HOAs unprepared
for costly landscape conversions. Ordinance number 80,
adopted in early August in response to California Assembly Bill
1572, specifically targets grass areas that are not regularly
used for recreational or community events. … However,
property managers question whether the distinction between
functional and non-functional turf is clear enough for
practical implementation.
The Turlock Irrigation District has completed a $20 million
solar canopy over canals, marking a milestone in generating
clean energy and promising water savings in the Central Valley
city. … ”It limits the light available for
photosynthesis. So it could reduce the amount of aquatic weed
growth, which is a major canal maintenance issue. It also saves
land,” explained Brandi McKuin, a project scientist at UC
Merced. … The team is working to quantify whether the
benefits will outweigh the costs, considering water savings,
reduced aquatic weed growth and land savings.
[S]tate lawmakers have passed a bill to ban products made with
PFAS, widely known as “forever chemicals”. The bill now heading
to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. … ”We are now finding
it just about everywhere,” says UCSD Public Health Professor
Jose Suarez. “We’re finding it in water sources. We’re finding
it in food chains and even in humans.” If Governor Newsom
signs the bill, California would begin phasing out PFAS in
consumer products. By 2028, food packaging and plastic foodware
would be banned. By 2030, cookware with PFAS, like some
nonstick pans, would also be off store shelves.
