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.
Please Note:
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.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee
Zeldin announced new initiatives to tackle
microplastics in the human body and drinking water on
Thursday. Kennedy said the government will create a
$144-million program called STOMP, for the systematic targeting
of microplastics. … Zeldin said the environmental agency
will add microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its list of
concerning chemicals in drinking water. … In 2022,
California became the first government in the
world to require that drinking water be tested for
microplastics. The state has not yet begun reporting its
results.
… Denver Water spokesperson Todd Hartman said via email that
the agency will use a portion of its cash reserves to offset
the lower water sales and other costs associated with the
drought. It has also taken steps to reduce other costs, such as
leaving job vacancies open longer. Colorado experienced
record-low mountain snows this year and a scorching hot spring,
which has the thin snowpack melting sooner than normal.
Reservoir storage is stable for this year, at roughly 80% of
average across the state. But heavy water use could drain those
reservoirs too quickly, potentially causing major shortages
next year if this winter is as dry as last winter’s was,
officials have said. To protect reservoir storage,
cities want customers to reduce water use by 10% to
20%. They’re hoping surcharges will help them
reach those goals.
Other water supply and drought news around the West:
Every year, as winter winds down into April, officials with
California’s Department of Water Resources perform their
snowpack measurements for the last time. … March’s
record-breaking warmth left the state’s snowpack at a mere 18%
of its April 1 average. State officials and scientists are
warning of strained water resources throughout the
state and an earlier-than-usual fire season. The
atypical heat was part of a larger wave of warm temperatures
that swept through the continental U.S during March. The
National Weather Service reported that from March 15
through the 26, more than 1,100 records for warm temperatures
were tied or broken.
What some see as a water grab for a fast-growing metro in Utah
could have implications for the groundwater flows that support
Nevada’s only national park and surrounding farm land. On
Wednesday, a broad coalition of farmers, county and city
governments and environmentalists filed an appeal to the Bureau
of Land Management after it approved permits for a
pipeline that would contribute to the drain of
aquifers in the name of growth in Iron County, Utah, which
includes Cedar City. … Advocates say, without a
doubt, that tapping those water sources will draw down aquifers
near Great Basin National Park in Baker and into western Utah.
Homeowners across Sonoma County could soon be paying more for
their sewer rates as rising operating costs and decades-old
infrastructure continue to strain wastewater systems
countywide, officials say. Sonoma Water, the agency that
manages many of the county’s wastewater sanitation zones and
districts, has proposed increases in all eight of its
operational areas spanning from Penngrove to the Russian River
and Sea Ranch Sanitation Districts. … Aging
infrastructure and an overwhelmed system led to the largest
spill of untreated sewage at the Guerneville wastewater
treatment plant in January in more than four decades, prompting
officials to scramble to identify urgent upgrades to the
treatment plant and its collection system.
The Friant Water Authority has settled a lawsuit involving two
other local agencies over groundwater pumping. The agency
announced the settlement on Thursday. Friant Water
Authority and Arvin-Edison Water Storage District (AEWSD) filed
a lawsuit against Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (ETGSA) in 2024. … Under the settlement, Friant
Water Authority has the right to collect 100% of all balances
owed to ETGSA for transitional pumping penalties. In turn,
ETGSA will pay any amounts it receives from landowners to
Friant, and the agency will also assign all its liens and
invoices on landowner properties for unpaid penalties to
Friant.
In the southeast corner of California, 300-foot-tall sand dunes
rise from a sunbaked landscape dotted with ocotillo and
creosote bushes. Summer temperatures here regularly exceed 110
degrees, and annual rainfall is comparable to that of the
Sahara Desert. Despite its unforgiving terrain, more than
180,000 residents live in Imperial County, one of the country’s
most productive agricultural regions and more recently a magnet
for data center development and lithium extraction proposals.
This has all been made possible by turn-of-the-20th century
canals that carve up the region, supplying it with more
than a million gallons of Colorado River water every
minute. … Communities across Imperial Valley
are now contemplating what dwindling water resources might mean
for their region.
City officials began weighing whether to allow data centers in
the City, with discussion focusing on the facilities’
significant demands on electricity and water infrastructure as
well as how they should be defined and regulated. The
Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee on Wednesday
received a staff presentation outlining what data centers are,
how they operate and the potential impacts they could have
if permitted locally. … Officials underscored
the scale of resources required to operate such facilities. A
10-megawatt data center can consume roughly the same amount of
electricity as 8,000 households and use water equivalent to
about 120 households annually, depending on cooling methods.
The desalination project at Marina State Beach was originally a
pilot study in 1996 – one that proved successful, though
more expensive than pumping groundwater at the time. So, it was
put on pause. In mid-March, after more than two decades and
increasing pressure on local aquifers, the Marina Coast Water
District (MCWD) began reviving that same desalination plant to
help reduce reliance on groundwater. Now in Phase 1, parts of
the plant infrastructure are being restored, and water quality
tests are underway. Once online, the plant will add 300
acre-feet annually – enough to supply around 900 homes.
Colorado’s long-standing balance between public recreation and
private property along rivers is now under renewed pressure.
But changing stream access law would impose significant fiscal
and legal costs for relatively limited new recreational
benefit. The state of Colorado itself may not be able to afford
a redrafting of river access laws, and the state’s property
owners certainly will not be able to afford it.
… Changing these laws would not only be a legal
headache. It would be an enormously expensive proposition for
landowners, county governments, and the state of Colorado, and
one with limited demonstrable value. –Written by Greg Walcher and Mike King, former executive
directors of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.
Both chambers of Congress introduced the Cooperative
Watershed Management Program Reauthorization Act of 2026
in March. The bipartisan bill—sponsored by Sen. Steve
Daines (R-Mont.), Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Rep. Juan
Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.)—would extend
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s (Reclamation) Cooperative
Watershed Management Program (CWMP) through 2031 and improve
funding accessibility to maximize watershed impacts. The CWMP,
part of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program, supports communities
in forming watershed groups to identify, plan, design, and
implement projects that address local water needs.
Advanced technology can help farmers get to the root of a
growing problem ¾ overwatering in an era of increasing drought
and water scarcity. A new UC Riverside system can map soil
moisture tree by tree, so growers water only where and when
it’s needed. This system, detailed in the journal Computer
and Electronics in Agriculture, was led by the research group
of Elia Scudiero. … The new system replaces limited
sensor data and guesswork with detailed maps. A robot moves
through an orchard measuring a property of the soil called
electrical conductivity. These readings, combined with data
from the fixed moisture sensors already in the ground, allow
researchers to build a statistical model that predicts water
content across the entire field.
Facing an abysmal snowpack and spring runoff, the state’s
largest Front Range water provider has enacted an agreement
that lets it take more water from the Western Slope for a
limited time. On March 18, Denver Water put the Shoshone call
reduction agreement into effect with water rights owner Xcel
Energy, which allows Denver Water to divert more water
from the headwaters of the Colorado River in an
attempt to alleviate shortages. The agreement reduces the call
at the Shoshone hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon by half,
from 1,408 cfs to 704 cfs.
Other Colorado River management and Western drought news:
The light snow flurries in the Tahoe area this week after a
spell of record-setting March heatwaves across California were
not enough to reverse the damage. California’s water officials
gathered at Philips Station near Lake Tahoe on the first day of
April to measure what is typically the winter’s peak snowpack.
Instead, they found only thin, patchy snow and no
measurable snow, marking the second-lowest April 1 snowpack in
75 years. … The devastating final snow survey
of the season at Phillips Station aligned with a broader snow
drought trend across the state, with the statewide snowpack
remaining far below average at 18%.
Financial support for the controversial Delta Conveyance
Project has been eroding among Kern County agricultural water
districts over the past year and lost another significant chunk
when the Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District opted
recently to cut its contribution by nearly 97% – from $4.6
million down to $146,000. … Four other large State Water
Project contractors in Kern are also considering lowering their
participation levels as the Department of Water Resources is
trying to firm up agreements to collect $300 million from
contractors for the ongoing planning and design phase of the
$20 billion project.
The U.S. Geological Survey released a new machine learning tool
that forecasts droughts up to 90 days ahead nationwide. The
tool may provide communities extra time to prepare for water
shortages that could impact agriculture, municipal supplies,
recreation and ecosystems. The tool forecasts streamflow
drought, which is when rivers and streams drop below normal
levels for extended periods, which may directly impact water
availability even when rainfall returns to normal. The USGS
River DroughtCast uses machine learning models trained on data
from thousands of USGS streamgages, some with more than 100
years of continuous records, to forecast when rivers and
streams will drop to abnormally low levels.
Our Layperson’s
Guide to California Water has been completely
updated for 2026, providing a comprehensive overview of the
ways water is used, as well as its critical ecological role,
throughout the state. The 24-page publication traces the
history of the vital resource at the core of California’s
identity, politics and culture since its founding in 1850. A
first-ever Spanish-language edition of the guide will also be
published this summer in partnership with Fresno State’s
California Water Institute. The Layperson’s Guide to California
Water is available for $18.Get
your copy here.
… It was only three years ago, at a press conference, that
state and federal lawmakers and business figures were touting
the [Salton Sea] area’s great promise for extracting lithium, a
mineral critical for batteries in electric cars, smartphones
and industrial power systems, from volcanic layers deep in the
ground. … But lithium demand alone cannot solve the
problem of harvesting it. BHE Renewables built a pilot plant in
Calipatria near the Salton Sea, only for dissolved solids in
the brine to gunk up the equipment meant to filter out the
lithium. … Most concerning for residents is that the
plan could result in dirtier air. Nearly a third of the water
for farms in the Lithium Valley region ends up as runoff for
the Salton Sea, so less agriculture would result in its
shrinking — exposing more dusty lake bed.
Plans to raise water levels at Shasta Dam are sparking debate,
with tribal members warning the change would cause spiritual
harm. The proposal would increase water storage capacity, and
state leaders say the additional storage is needed during
drought years. But for the Redding Rancheria, which has members
of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, the issue goes beyond water.
Tribal Chairman Jack Potter said the dam has already disrupted
salmon runs and that raising water levels would submerge sacred
areas that remain, including burial sites and places where they
hold traditional ceremonies.
The Karuk Tribe of California and the city of Yreka will host a
creek cleanup April 25 aimed at restoring Yreka Creek, a
waterway biologists consider the “last stronghold” for coho
salmon in the Shasta River watershed. Though the creek runs
through an urban area, it supports a small but significant
salmon population that many residents may not realize is there.
… The cleanup will focus on removing trash and invasive
Himalayan blackberry, which can grow in dense thickets up to 8
feet tall and crowd out native vegetation. The effort is
especially important for coho salmon, which are listed under
the Endangered Species Act due to declining populations.
