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.
Over two days of hearings, Colorado water managers laid out
their arguments related to one of the most powerful
water rights on the Colorado River and who should have
the authority to control it. The Colorado River Water
Conservation District plans to buy the water rights associated
with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon from Xcel
Energy and use the water for environmental purposes. To do so,
it must secure the support of the Colorado Water Conservation
Board. The CWCB is the only entity allowed to own instream-flow
water rights. … The board is now scheduled to
decide at its regular meeting in November.
… The ground is sinking because of excessive groundwater
pumping in the San Simon Valley, an area with a long
agricultural history and a recent boom in nut production. In a
matter of two decades, thousands of acres of pecans and
pistachios were planted by Arizona farmers and outside
investors attracted to a place with excellent growing
conditions and an essential, but unregulated resource:
groundwater.
[Friday,] the State Water Resources Control Board released a
Draft Scientific Basis Report Supplement that analyzes the
science underpinning a proposed voluntary agreement for the
Tuolumne River, a tributary of the Lower San Joaquin River. The
board will hold a public workshop on Wednesday, Nov. 5,
2025, to receive oral comments on the draft report, and written
comments are due by Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. A quorum of board
members may be present at the workshop, but no action will be
taken.
When Ted Cooke, the former general manager of the Central
Arizona Project, was nominated as the next commissioner of the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June, Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton
tweeted that his “decades of expertise” in water policy would
be valuable in the tough discussions to form new management
guidelines for the Colorado River. On Sept. 16, amid apparent
complaints from states on the upper Colorado, the Trump
administration abruptly withdrew Cooke’s nomination.
… Cooke told The Arizona Republic that the White House
told him the decision was due to “paperwork problems” with his
vetting documents. Cooke called that bogus.
An area of low pressure is setting up just off the coast of
Southern California and will bring another round of
unseasonable rain and potential flooding to the region, as well
as parts of Arizona and the lower Colorado River Basin. This
comes just a few days after the remnants of Tropical Storm
Mario brought a surge of moisture into Southern California and
parts of the Southwest, resulting in deadly flash flooding. …
While more rain is expected across the region beginning Monday,
the highest potential for flash flooding in parts of Southern
California will occur Tuesday and Wednesday.
The California Water Commission awarded $10.9 million to the
Sites Reservoir Project this week. This early funding from the
Water Storage Investment Program aims to assist with permitting
and environmental documents. … The Water Storage Investment
Program, backed by Proposition 1, supports five major water
storage projects across California, including Sites Reservoir.
Recently, inflationary adjustments made the project eligible
for more early funding.
A high-stakes legal battle over groundwater rights is
threatening the City of Camarillo’s water supply, with
officials warning the dispute could lead to higher costs for
residents and force a nearly $70 million desalter to be
sidelined. In a letter to state Sen. Monique Limón, Mayor Kevin
Kildee says the city is in a water crisis that stems from a
lawsuit filed by a group of large landowners calling
themselves the OPV Coalition against Camarillo and other
groundwater users in the Oxnard and Pleasant Valley basins. The
lawsuit is a process under the state’s Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act. … But city officials assert the lawsuit is
being used to manipulate the system for private gain.
… U.S. data center demand, driven largely by A.I., could
triple by 2030, according to McKinsey, which would require data
centers to make nearly $7 trillion in investment to keep
up. … [A]ccording to the International Energy Agency, a
100-megawatt data center, which uses water to cool servers,
consumes roughly two million liters of water per day,
equivalent to 6,500 households. This puts strain on
water supply for nearby residential
communities, a majority of which, according to Bloomberg News,
are already facing high levels of water stress.
According to a new study, the planet is drying at an
unprecedented pace, presenting a critical threat to humanity.
Researchers found that “continental drying is having profound
global impacts” that “threaten water availability” across the
globe. To learn more, Ali Rogin speaks with ProPublica climate
investigations editor Abrahm Lustgarten for our series, Tipping
Point.
The California Tahoe Conservancy held a board meeting on
Thursday, Sept. 18, at Lake Tahoe Community College, but not
before a tour around two project sites. … The board’s first
stop at the Upper Truckee River Restoration demonstrated prior
efforts, which removed fill from wetlands, constructed a storm
water basin to improve water quality, and built new trails to
the river at the Elks Club site. … Restoring the Upper
Truckee River Watershed is a significant focus for the
conservancy due to its significance as the largest and most
environmentally consequential watershed draining to Lake Tahoe.
Colorado, along with 15 other states, is poised to sue the
federal government for ignoring endangered species regulations
in a wide range of infrastructure projects on public lands. One
of those projects, a controversial proposal to expand an oil
shipping facility in Utah, would significantly increase
hazardous rail shipments through Colorado. … The railway
project, estimated to cost at least $2.4 billion to build,
would allow for up to 350,000 barrels of oil per day — more
than doubling U.S. oil-by-rail transport — to move in heated
oil tankers for 100 miles along the headwaters of the
Colorado River.
In late June and July of this year, UC Davis convened an
Advanced Studies Institute (ASI) on “International Approaches
to Freshwater Management.” … Despite two previous UC
Davis ASIs – focused on flood science and groundwater and
drought management – the road to the 2025 Institute was rocky.
In February 2025, Sen. Ted Cruz’s office flagged our NSF
funding, along with another 3400 grants as “questionable
projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.” For the
record, we disagree that training students in water science and
management is woke or in any way controversial. …
Fortunately, NSF agreed and so far our project has escaped the
fate of others that have been cancelled.
Located on the shore of Harbor Marsh in the Palo Alto Baylands,
the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project is the first
horizontal levee to be built in the San Francisco Bay that
beneficially reuses treated wastewater for irrigation.
Construction began in September 2025. … A horizontal levee is
a nature-based solution that provides many benefits over
traditional levees. Their unique designs have a wide gentle
slope which helps a marsh adapt as sea level rises. This one
will also use treated wastewater to restore a native habitat on
its slope. The process will further filter pollutants out of
the treated wastewater.
For generations, the Gualala River was a lifeline for coho
salmon. Today, those fish are nearly gone, the river listed as
“impaired” under the Clean Water Act after more than a century
of logging, erosion, and habitat loss, according to a press
release from the Redwood Coast Land Conservancy. On Saturday,
Oct. 11, neighbors, scientists, and local advocates will gather
at the Gualala Arts Center for Restoring the River: Community
Event. … The event builds on the group’s 2022 Mill Bend
Preserve Conservation Plan, which identified estuary
restoration as the community’s top priority.
A recent sunset paints the sky over the San Lorenzo River and
downtown Santa Cruz in vibrant colors as the river flows to the
Monterey Bay. … During normal rainfall years, the water
supply mostly meets the county’s needs. However, demand during
droughts exceeds supply in parts of the county, resulting
in a deficit. Over many years, this has led to chronic
“overdrafting” of the basins and the lowering of the
groundwater level causes saltwater intrusion to occur near the
coast. Santa Cruz is one of only a few counties in California
that does not receive any water from outside the county.
The Arizona official nominated to anchor a rocky Colorado River
negotiation process with an impending deadline claims he was
iced out by Upper Basin officials who thought he would be
biased against them. Ted Cooke, who said he came out of
retirement to try and help the two divided groups of states
come to a consensus, alleged in an interview Thursday that
Upper Basin state officials from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and
New Mexico urged members of Congress to oppose his nomination
for Bureau of Reclamation commissioner. “I’ve never seen this
kind of vitriol and opposition based on presumed bias,” Cooke
told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Environmental Protection Agency will keep polluters on the
hook to clean up “forever chemicals” linked to serious health
risks, upholding a major rule despite chemical industry
opposition. … The Biden administration last year
designated two types of forever chemicals as hazardous
substances under the nation’s Superfund law. … [EPA
administrator Lee] Zeldin was briefed on the issue this month
and ultimately decided to keep the designation in
place. That decision came after he also elected to keep
strict drinking water standards in place for the same two kinds
of forever chemicals, though the agency eliminated standards
for four others.
State water officials debated a controversial proposal to use
two powerful Colorado River water rights to help the
environment, weighing competing interests from Front Range and
Western Slope water managers. Almost 100 water professionals
gathered in Durango this week for a 14-hour hearing focused on
the water rights tied to the Shoshone Power Plant, owned by an
Xcel Energy subsidiary. … Their decision could make a
historic contribution to the state’s environmental water rights
program and impact how Colorado River water will flow around
the state long into the future.
The global water cycle has become “increasingly erratic and
extreme” with wild swings between droughts and
floods, spelling big trouble for economies and
societies, according to a report published Thursday by the
World Meteorological Organization. The water cycle refers to
the complex system by which water moves around the Earth. It
evaporates from the ground — including from lakes and rivers —
and rises into the atmosphere, forming large streams of water
vapor able to travel long distances, before eventually falling
back down to Earth as rain or snow. Climate change, driven by
humans burning fossil fuels, is upending this process.
Can Page’s infrastructure and environment handle a gigawatt
data center? The proposed Huntley LLC data center would consume
as much electricity as a major power plant while demanding
millions of gallons of water daily in one of America’s most
water-stressed regions. … The Colorado River system, which
supplies Page through Lake Powell, faces its worst crisis in
recorded history. … A large data center could double the
community’s water demand. … Unlike agricultural or municipal
water use, data center cooling water is typically not returned
to the system in reusable form. The water evaporates through
cooling towers or becomes too thermally polluted for other
uses, representing a permanent withdrawal from the Colorado
River system.
