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.
Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration say he has
the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect
historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes,
including two in California created by his
predecessor at the request of Native American tribes. …
Trump in his first term reduced the size of Bears Ears and
Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling
them a “massive land grab.” … Trump’s moves to shrink
the Utah monuments in his first term were challenged by
environmental groups that said protections for the sites
safeguard water supplies and wildlife while
preserving cultural sites.
The Trump administration will move Wednesday to repeal federal
limits on power plant climate pollution, attacking the Biden
era’s most ambitious attempt to use regulations to rein in
heat-trapping gases from the electric grid, according to six
people familiar with the situation. Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will announce the repeal of the
power plant carbon dioxide rule along with a separate
regulation to curb hazardous air pollution such as mercury
during an event at agency headquarters, the people said.
… Scrapping the Biden-era power plant rule would
effectively shelve regulations for the nation’s second-biggest
producer of climate pollution — the electricity sector — which
accounts for one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is
working to crack down on illegal caviar trafficking during
fisheries closures, announcing recently that it seized more
than 150 pounds of packaged salmon roe. The amount suggests
about 75 salmon were illegally taken. Officers with the CDFW’s
special operations unit and Delta Bay enhanced enforcement
program were monitoring for illegal fishing activity along
Sacramento Bay when a Dungeness crab trafficking investigation
led to the discovery that the suspect was also involved in
salmon poaching, according to the state agency. “Evidence
revealed a conspiracy to illegally harvest and process salmon
roe for black market distribution,” CDFW said in a press
release. Meanwhile, another investigation into sturgeon
poaching led to two individuals being arrested and formally
charged with taking an endangered or threatened species.
U.S. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, alongside Senator Jim
Justice of West Virginia, has introduced a new bill to reduce
exposure to lead in old water pipes. According to senators, the
FLOW Act will help cities and public water utilities issue
tax-exempt bonds to help pay for removing and replacing both
public and private lead service lines. … A 2024
statewide study by Water Education Colorado showed that 23
Colorado cities have roughly 20,000 aging lead water delivery
pipes that could taint drinking water. Bennet and Justice say
that privately owned pipes serving residences have been slower
to remove and replace lines than public utility lines due to
the cost of replacing lead service lines. Bennet explains
that the legislation is based on the experience of Denver
Water, a public water utility that finances the removal of all
public and private lead service lines within its service area
by issuing tax-exempt bonds at no cost to its customers.
However, issuing tax-exempt bonds for this purpose can be both
costly and time-consuming for water utility companies.
Rich Kreps, pistachio grower and chairman of the American
Pistachio Growers Board, is calling attention to California’s
mismanagement of water resources, especially on the west side
of Fresno. Speaking with AgNetWest, Kreps criticized decades of
unfulfilled promises and failed infrastructure projects meant
to bolster water storage. “It’s awful,” Kreps said. “We keep
paying for water storage—like we did back in 2018—but the money
keeps getting diverted to projects that never materialize.”
Kreps highlighted the state’s push to tunnel under the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a misguided effort, arguing
that without actual water storage, such a project is
meaningless. He also pointed to environmental mismanagement,
including issues with Delta smelt and sewage flushing, as signs
of a deeply flawed narrative around California’s water
crisis.
A small panel managed to extract a glassful of clean water from
the bone-dry air of Death Valley in California, which suggests
that the device could provide the vital resource to arid
regions. The atmosphere over extremely dry land can hold large
volumes of water, but extracting this in significant quantities
without power is difficult. In the past, researchers have come
up with innovative ways to tap into this reservoir, such as
fog-catching nets made from simple mesh fabrics or spider
silk-like artificial fibres, but they have struggled to make
them work effectively in real-world conditions. Now,
Xuanhe Zhao at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
his colleagues have developed a power-free water-collecting
device that is about 0.5 metres tall and 0.1 m across. It is
comprised of a glass panel that contains an absorbent hydrogel,
a jelly-like substance made from long-chain polymers, and
lithium salts that can store water molecules.
The Biden Administration took a firm approach when it came to
regulating per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The
administration set Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for
certain PFAS chemicals in drinking water, designated PFOA and
PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive
Environment Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA),
and proposed listing PFAS as hazardous constituents under the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to
rescind and reconsider some of the MCLs, but the two strictest,
PFOA and PFOS, are expected to remain. The compliance deadline
for drinking water systems to meet these MCLs has been extended
by two years, from 2029 to 2031. This extension is still an
announcement and not a final rule. … Potential funding
sources for PFAS treatment include federal grants, settlements
from class actions against PFAS manufacturers, and separate
litigation under CERCLA against polluters.
Latin America is at a pivotal moment in its water
infrastructure development. Historically hindered by limited
public funding and rigid policies, investment in sanitation,
wastewater treatment, and desalination is now gaining momentum
due to population growth, climate pressures, and rising
industrial demand. Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Mexico are at the
forefront of this shift, each driven by unique socio-economic
needs. … Mexico faces severe water
scarcity due to droughts, air pollution, and structural
challenges, particularly in northern states like Chihuahua,
Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California. Financial constraints
have further hampered efforts to address the crisis. … In
April 2025, the government also announced a US$1.5 billion
investment for 37 water infrastructure projects, focusing on
irrigation, hydro agriculture, and potable water improvements.
Key projects include a desalination plant in
Rosarito, Baja California, and aqueducts in Colima and
Veracruz.
… A Cal Fire plan to clear thousands of acres of native
habitat each year in order to reduce wildfire risk is now
facing a setback. On May 30, the California Appellate Court
ruled in favor of environmental groups who argued that the plan
could lead to an even more flammable landscape. … This
particular lawsuit began in 2020, when the Endangered Habitats
League and Chaparral Institute unsuccessfully sued Cal Fire and
the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection over its
vegetation treatment program, which had been approved the year
before. Previous fuel reduction methods had been limited to
prescribed burning, trimming, and using equipment to cut and
uproot plants on an average of around 33,000 acres per year.
… As California’s heat and drought
conditions worsened, and as firefighters struggled to keep up
with the increasing risk posed by the the crispy landscape, the
government’s arsenal of tools for vegetation removal was
expanded — and so was its target acreage.
Disputes over whether Grover Beach should raise its wastewater
rates to pay for infrastructure upgrades continued on Monday
evening as the Grover Beach City Council unanimously voted to
approve a new wastewater rate structure that will see sewer
costs increase by 90% by 2030. On Monday, the Grover Beach
City Council heard a final report from city staff on whether
increasing wastewater rates was needed to pay for sewer
maintenance and infrastructure costs as the Proposition 218
public protest period came to a close. The protest period,
which started April 14, required the council to send notices to
every customer of the wastewater system explaining the rate
change, why it was needed and giving them an option to send in
a protest ballot. Had the city received protests from more than
50% of customers — or a minimum of 2,681 votes — the rate
structure change would have been off the table.
Attendees of a tap water conference voted Denver has the best
tap water in the U.S. and Canada, but judges from the
organization disagreed. The American Water Works Association
just awarded Henrico, Virginia, the accolade at the annual AWWA
Annual Conference and Exposition in Denver. The region near
Richmond faced off against cities and communities across the
country, including Denver, but ultimately beat Denver, along
with other communities’ tap water. Three judges tasted samples
from 26 water utilities across the U.S. and Canada. Denver
scored a first-place spot in the “People’s Choice” category –
voted on by all conference attendees — but failed to place in
the top three among the judges in the “Best of the Best”
category.
Scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the
University of California San Diego were able to ‘hear’ the
impacts of a marine heatwave and even economic slowdowns by
analyzing 15 years of ocean sounds recorded off the coast of
Southern California. The recordings, collected between 2008 and
2023, allowed researchers to hear whales moving north in
response to a marine heatwave that began in 2014 as well as the
massive decrease in noise from container ships during the 2008
financial crisis. The findings, published June 5 in
the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, show
that listening to the sea can be a tool for monitoring ocean
ecosystems and even human economic activity. … The findings
show how ocean soundscapes can serve as a near real-time
monitoring system for marine ecosystem health, providing early
warning of species displacement and habitat shifts due to
climate change and increasingly frequent marine
heatwaves.
A cross-border sewage crisis affecting Southern California
could play a role in a prominent congressional race, where a
Republican challenger has become a national figure on the
issue. Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor, has been
sounding the alarm recently on Fox News and other conservative
outlets about the untreated sewage that’s been flowing from the
Tijuana River in Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, contaminating the
water and sickening residents. At the same time, he’s seeking
to unseat Rep. Mike Levin, accusing the Democratic incumbent of
not doing enough to protect residents. … Desmond says
Levin’s focus — including $635 million that Levin has gotten
approved for projects like improving a major sewage plant on
the Mexican side through the bipartisan infrastructure law,
among other actions — lets Mexican officials off the hook.
The Trump administration wants to unplug a high-powered U.S.
Geological Survey research program whose scientists have helped
protect wildlife, manage forests, thwart pests and illuminate
nature for over three decades. Eliminating the biological
research branch of the USGS, as called for in President Donald
Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, would accelerate the
administration’s targeting of scientific experts and studies
already shown in layoffs and grant cancellations at the
National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
… The Ecosystem Mission Area is one of five designated
mission areas within USGS. It received about $293 million for
fiscal 2025. Trump’s proposal would drop it to zero in fiscal
2026. … Other USGS mission areas, such as Natural
Hazards and Water Resources, would get less money but
still survive under Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget.
Other science and environmental research funding news:
A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Forest Service
cannot transfer land containing Oak Flat, a site sacred to the
Western Apache, to a copper mining company until two cases
against the project are settled after the Forest Service
publishes its final environmental review for the project. …
The legal battle over Oak Flat, known in Apache as Chi’chil
Biłdagoteel, has been one of the most high-profile mining cases
in the country over the past decade. … It would …
use as much water each year as the city of
Tempe, home to Arizona State University and 190,000
people. It would pull water from the same tapped-out
aquifer the Phoenix metro area relies on,
where Arizona has prohibited more extraction except for
exempted uses like mines.
Following a wet spring that resulted in a vast amount of
vegetative growth, Boulder County, Colorado, experienced a very
dry fall. The dry conditions zapped the moisture out of the
vegetation. The county was under a red flag for extremely windy
conditions. The heavy winds were coming from the west through
the east, enveloping the open area of the county. The dry
vegetation, combined with the windy conditions, created the
perfect recipe for a fire to break out. What ensued over the
following hours would be studied for years to come. A case
study, titled “Water Utility Resilience: A Case Study of the
2021 Marshall Fire,” was conducted and prepared by Professor
Brad Wham, University of Colorado, Boulder, Professor Erica
Fischer, Oregon State University, and University of Colorado,
Boulder, Graduate Assistant Rachel Geiger. … Geiger
detailed the day the fire broke out, as well as the impact of
it on five nearby water systems and the
residents they serve.
… Recently the governor used his May budget revision to
fast-track the Delta Conveyance Project, saying that was a
critical addition to the State Water Project. That announcement
drew criticism from opponents. The 15-member Delta Caucus
— a bipartisan group of lawmakers representing Delta
communities — sent a letter to Newsom and legislative leaders
saying they are “unanimous in strong opposition to the
governor’s proposal to fast-track the Delta tunnel.” One
of the caucus members is State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon
(D-Yolo), who previously served as the mayor of West Sacramento
for two decades. Cabaldon recently spoke with Insight Host
Vicki Gonzalez about the caucus’s opposition to the Delta
Conveyance Project, and the alternative methods that could help
meet the state’s water needs.
Water pouring from the faucets of at least 42 million Americans
is contaminated with unacceptable levels of “forever
chemicals,” according to a USA TODAY analysis of records the
Environmental Protection Agency released on June 2. Per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a family of manmade
chemicals engineered to be nearly indestructible. Studies have
shown they can accumulate over time in human bodies, leading to
certain cancers and other health complications. Over the past
two years, the EPA has collected complete sets of test results
from about 6,900 drinking water systems, with thousands more
expected as the PFAS testing initiative continues another year.
USA TODAY’s analysis of these systems with complete results
shows nearly a quarter of large water utilities serving at
least 100,000 customers exceeded limits the EPA approved last
year on two chemicals: PFOS and PFOA.
… In new research published in the journal Biological
Conservation, (UC Davis PhD candidate Sidney) Woodruff and her
colleagues propose a possible — though intensive —
countermeasure: a near-total eradication of the bullfrog from
habitats that it has invaded. The result was the striking
recovery of the Northwestern pond turtle, California’s only
native freshwater pond turtle species, at a couple of remote
bodies of water within Yosemite National Park.
… Woodruff and her colleagues conducted a combination of
night surveys to remove the adults and day surveys to go after
bullfrog egg masses. Across two sites, she estimates they
removed some 16,000 bullfrogs, amounting to a near-complete
eradication. And after several years of removal, “we came
across our first couple of small pond turtle hatchlings and
juveniles swimming out in the environment,” says Woodruff.
During the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association Members and
Leaders monthly luncheon in May, Contra Costa Water District
Board President, Ernesto Avila provided an update on the
district’s current work and plans. They include repairing 20 of
the 48-mile canal at a cost of $1 billion, keeping water rates
as low as possible and expanding service to keep up with
growth. … Half of the district’s water is provided to
treated water customers and the other half to raw water
customers, Avila stated and then spoke about ensuring adequate
“water supply during disasters such as fire and earthquake
emergencies.” … The district owns Los Vaqueros Reservoir
for storage, which is currently 93% full. But “we can’t just
draw water whenever we want,” Avila stated. “All of our intakes
are screened to protect fish.” “We are out of our drought,”
Avila added. However, “during the drought there were no
constraints on water supply for development and growth.”
