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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For the seventh time in less than a decade, Oregon’s commercial
fishermen, governor and congressional delegation are asking for
federal aid to soften the blow of climate change on the state’s
ocean salmon fisheries. … Oregon’s commercial ocean
salmon fishermen caught about 18,000 Chinook between March and
October of 2024 — about 40% of the 10-year average. From 2011
to 2015, the average catch was closer to 75,000 per year,
according to John North, an assistant fish division
administrator with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
More than 50% of Chinook were caught in Newport in 2024, while
southern Oregon fisheries struggled with low returns due to
drought and warming waters in the Sacramento and
Klamath rivers.
Budget and staffing cuts under President Donald Trump’s
administration are undermining global efforts to monitor the
climate and produce accurate weather forecasts, warns the
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The
quality and quantity of climate observations available to
scientists worldwide supplied by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has already suffered a
measurable decline, according to ECMWF Director General
Florence Rabier. … Rabier said there has been a reduction in
the number of observations shared by the U.S. since March,
including a roughly 10 percent decline from weather balloons
that collect data on temperature, humidity, and wind patterns.
Minutes before sunrise Monday, nearly a dozen boat owners were
already lining up in the Beals Point parking area for the first
day of boat inspections and a 30-day quarantine aimed at
preventing an invasive species from finding its way into Folsom
Lake. “It’s long before the scheduled 9:30 a.m. start time for
inspections, but I’m glad I got here early,” said Rudy Divin, a
fishing guide. Starting Monday, Folsom Lake and Lake Clementine
are closed to all motorized and trailered vessels for the next
month. All boats seeking to launch on either lake are required
to go through a mandatory 30-day quarantine.
Officials are monitoring reports from the San Diego County Air
Pollution Control District of an overnight uptick in hydrogen
sulfide readings in the Tijuana River Valley, creating odor
issues in South County. The increase in odors in the last 24
hours “appears to be associated with reports from the
(International Boundary and Water Commission) that sewage
infrastructure work in Mexico has resulted in the release of up
to 5 million gallons per night of sewage into the Tijuana River
Valley,” according to the county. This flow comes in addition
to “rogue sewage flows” being investigated by the IBWC with its
partners in Mexico. The IBWC operates the South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant and is tasked with
collaborating with Mexico on border water issues.
… Studies suggest that PFAS has contaminated almost 50% of
the U.S. tap water supply. These chemicals are linked to a
growing list of health risks, including cancers and chronic
diseases. Many global institutions have recently taken
regulatory action. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) proposed stringent limits for PFAS in drinking water.
… Beyond drinking water, recent studies expose another
major PFAS concern: wastewater and sludge. Treated wastewater,
often considered safe for reuse, has been found to still carry
significant levels of PFAS. Even more concerning is the
widespread practice of using treated sewage sludge as farm
fertilizer. The EPA has warned that PFAS in sludge can
contaminate crops, soil, and groundwater, creating a direct
pathway from industrial chemical waste to the food we
eat. … The question isn’t whether businesses should act,
it’s whether they can afford not to.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has
gone after fluoride in drinking water, a move that medical
experts widely disagree with. Water fluoridation has been
proven to be so effective at preventing tooth decay that the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) named it one
of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th
century, a time during which Americans’ life expectancies rose
by 30 years. “Fluoride has been studied extensively for decades
and is considered safe and effective at recommended levels,”
cosmetic dentist Dr. James Heaton tells USA TODAY. “While some
debates focus on the ethics of water fluoridation or potential
health concerns, the overwhelming consensus from the American
Dental Association, CDC and World Health Organization is that
fluoride is a critical tool in preventing tooth decay.” Here’s
what licensed medical experts want you to know about fluoride.
Ben Harris, senior staff attorney with the LA Waterkeeper,
discusses Assembly Bill 1313, which was introduced by assembly
member Diane Papan on March 25. The bill would enact a
statewide commercial stormwater permit in
California that will balance the cost of stormwater management
between private facilities and local governments while
encouraging stormwater capture through the development of more
green space in urban communities. Harris expands on the
purpose of the bill, why LA Waterkeeper sees it as necesssary
and other details.
President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda will be undermined
by steep cuts to federal agencies that are said to be planned
by the Trump administration, scientists, lawmakers and energy
executives warned on Monday. Pleas from numerous quarters have
streamed into the inboxes of cabinet secretaries, asking them
to salvage various divisions of government agencies. Federal
officials face a deadline today to present their plans for
another round of mass firings, and agencies that address energy
and the environment are expected to be hard hit. … Opponents
of the job cuts are making arguments more in line with the
Trump administration’s priorities by saying the cuts threaten
nuclear energy, mineral production and expanding energy access.
California City needs a study to update its water and sewer
rates in order to address what Public Works Director Joe
Barragan called a “failed” water system. “The way the water
system is now is not sustainable,” he said. “Our water system
has failed.” The city has long been plagued with water line
leaks. In addition, the system is operating with only about
half its wells functional, Barrragan said. … The city
last adopted a water rate study, and the associated rates, in
2014, he said. To keep up with changing costs, it is
recommended that a rate study is conducted every three to five
years. The city last commissioned a study in 2021, but it was
never adopted. It was updated in 2023 but again not adopted.
Continuing to put off an examination of the costs and rates
needed to meet them will only mean a larger increase in rates
for customers, Barragan said.
Last week, more than 750 water utility professionals from
across the United States convened in the nation’s capital for
the annual Water Week, featuring Congressional office visits
and policy updates from sector leaders and regulators. The
anchor event of Water Week is the National Water Policy Fly-In,
held April 8-9. … Jessica Kramer, senior advisor to
the assistant administrator for water at U.S. EPA, was also on
hand to deliver remarks about EPA priorities for the coming
year. While Kramer didn’t offer many policy specifics given the
ongoing transition to the new administration, she did ensure
the utility leaders in attendance that the water officials in
the agency would work to foster positive collaboration within
the sector. She also noted support for many of the issues above
including pursuing a “polluter pays” model for PFAS cleanup.
Locals call the Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve “UC
Merced’s backyard,” and it’s a backyard unlike any other.
Picture a 6,500-acre stretch of land that has thousands of
vernal pools in the winter, blankets of vibrant flowers in the
spring, the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the distance, and
countless animals to watch, including the famously-elusive
“fairy shrimp.” Established in 2001 and located just north of
Merced, the reserve protects the sensitive vernal pool habitats
and grasslands. … Vernal pools are small pond-like dips in
the ground that fill up during the rainy season. … Jasmine
Salazar, a graduate student assistant and tour guide for the
reserve, told community members on the recent tour that vernal
pools are very rare to California now, but they’ve been around
for centuries. “In the Central Valley, we used to have a
ton of vernal pools. But because of infrastructure and
urbanization, we’ve lost 99% of them,” Salazar, 20, said.
California water managers this week cut in half the amount of
water being pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta at the
state’s plant near Tracy, saying the main reservoir it serves
is nearly full and the water is needed for fish. The reduction
is required under the state’s environmental permits for pumping
from the fragile Delta, because despite nearly full reservoirs
and a robust snowpack, the San Joaquin River watershed had
less-than-normal precipitation during the water year which
began Oct. 1. … The state’s Banks Pumping Plant lifts water
from the Delta to canals and reservoirs that serve San Joaquin
Valley farms and Southern California cities. But environmental
regulations require pumping to be reduced in the spring months
of March, April and May to protect fish, including spring-run
Chinook salmon, Delta smelt and longfin smelt, DWR officials
said in a news release.
Hours after President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with
additional tariffs over a massive water debt, that country’s
president publicly vowed to make a substantial payment soon.
Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico must send 1.75 million acre-feet of
water to the U.S. from the Rio Grande every five years, and the
United States is to pay Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of water
annually via the Colorado River out West. The
current five-year cycle ends in October and Mexico, so far, has
paid only 512,604 acre-feet of water to the United States —
about one-third of what it owes — according to the latest IBWC
data published Friday. … On Friday morning, Mexican President
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said her country doesn’t have enough
water to give to the United States but will make payments.
Every year, when snow from the Rocky Mountains melts into
water, it finds its way into Lake Powell, the country’s
second-biggest reservoir. But with each passing season, less
snowmelt becomes reservoir water that 40 million people can use
to drink, plant crops or satiate their
lawns. … Atmospheric demand from climate change is
one piece of the puzzle, as Schumacher puts it, as to why
federal projections show that runoff into Lake Powell will
reach about 67 percent of a historic average this season. Other
reasons include dry soils and hotter temperatures accelerating
sublimation, the process where solid snow turns only into gas
instead of liquid, Schumacher said. Snowpack itself above the
reservoir has hovered between around 84 and 91 percent of
average in this month’s readings — another poor showing that
continues over two decades of Western drought.
The entire staff of the lead poisoning office at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention was included in layoffs at
the agency last week. And in recent weeks, state water
officials have complained that funding for replacing lead pipes
had been frozen or delayed. These actions have alarmed public
health experts, who worry that decades of progress in
eliminating a persistent and preventable threat could be
jeopardized. More than 20 employees from the CDC’s Lead
Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch were let go as
part of a sweeping staff reduction across the Department of
Health and Human Services, where more than 10,000 employees
were put on administrative leave. The division played a key
role in addressing lead contamination in applesauce pouches and
in helping communities across the country curb the threat of
lead in schools.
Inland waters like rivers, lakes, streams and reservoirs need
oxygen to survive, just like we do, but oxygen levels have
dropped dramatically since 1900, researchers warn. The reason?
Human behavior. That’s according to researchers of the
Netherlands’ Utrecht University in their study, published
Friday in the journal Science Advances. “More farming, more
wastewater, more dams, and a warmer climate — they all change
how our freshwater ecosystems function,” said one of the
paper’s lead authors, Junjie Wang, in a written statement.
Co-author Jack Middelburg, added, “We found that the main
causes lay in these direct human activities. First, it turns
out that nutrient input through, for example,
over-fertilization, is a major driver of this acceleration.
Secondly, the longer travel time of freshwater to the sea
through the construction of dams and reservoirs has proven to
be just as important.” The results of this oxygen depletion are
already being felt around the globe, in the form of dying fish,
disrupted food chains and poor water quality.
California’s national forests are on the chopping block —
literally — in the wake of the Trump administration’s April 5
order to immediately expand timber production in the United
States. Last week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins
issued an emergency declaration that ordered the U.S. Forest
Service to open up some 112.5 million acres of national
forestland to logging. The announcement included a grainy map
of affected forests, which did not specify forest names or the
amount of impacted acreage in each. However, U.S. Department of
Agriculture officials have confirmed to The Times that the
order will touch all 18 of the Golden State’s national forests,
which collectively span more than 20 million acres.
President Trump this week directed 10 federal agencies —
including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy
Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — to implement
a novel procedure to scrap a wide array of longstanding energy
and environmental regulations. He told agencies that oversee
everything from gas pipelines to power plants to insert
“sunset” provisions that would cause regulations to
automatically expire by October 2026. If the agencies wanted to
keep a rule, it could only be extended for a maximum of five
years at a time. Experts say the directive faces enormous legal
hurdles. But it was one of three executive orders from Mr.
Trump on Wednesday in which he declared that he was pursuing
new shortcuts to weaken or eliminate regulations.
… SGMA requires local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies
(GSAs) to develop groundwater sustainability plans (Plans) to
chart a path for achieving sustainable groundwater management
by 2040. Implementing Plans will cost money. However,
generating new sources of revenue and repurposing existing ones
can be complex. Without careful attention to these challenges,
the revenue generation process can be protracted and vulnerable
to failure–a concern that early signs of litigation and
opposition to GSAs’ efforts to generate revenue suggest. Our
new issue brief reports on results from a systematic analysis
of attention to financing in a sample of Plans. We developed a
rubric for evaluating Plans for adequacy of attention to
financing considerations and applied this rubric to a sample of
Plans. We also analyzed DWR’s process for reviewing Plans,
including its approach to satisfying relevant statutory and
regulatory requirements.
San Diego officials say Mexico is continuing to release
millions of gallons per day of raw sewage into the city’s
waters despite its promises to end the flow that has sickened
Navy SEALs and San Diego residents. “Mexico just dumped 6
million gallons of sewage into the Tijuana River — after
promising they wouldn’t,” said San Diego County Supervisor Jim
Desmond on X today (Apr. 11). “We are at the mercy of a foreign
government that continues to pollute our waters — while we get
stuck with the consequences.” Desmond also said Navy SEAL
training is often being shifted farther north in San Diego from
Coronado, where the training typically takes place, due to the
high volume of waterborne illness caused by fecal and bacterial
contamination.
