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. Also, 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.
The Rio Linda/Elverta Community Water District (RLECWD), has
reached a major settlement in its long-running lawsuit against
the U.S. government over potential groundwater contamination
stemming from the former McClellan Air Force Base. The $6.25
million agreement, officially approved by the U.S. District
Court on February 18, 2025, resolves the District’s claims
under federal environmental laws. After accounting for legal
fees, the District received $4.09 million from the settlement
on March 12th. … Early news reports suggested the
District, along with Sacramento Suburban Water District in a
similar case, was initially seeking much larger sums,
potentially over a billion dollars, to address the
contamination concerns.
A nearly half-mile segment of coastline in Huntington Beach and
Newport Beach at the Talbert Channel reopened to surfers and
swimmers Monday morning after a large sewage spill caused a
weekend cessation of water activity. Orange County Health Care
Agency officials on Saturday called for the temporary closure
along beaches 1,000 feet to the north and south of the channel,
near the mouth of the Santa Ana River, to protect visitors from
potential exposure to bacteria. The spill stemmed from a
blockage discovered Friday evening in a sewer line on Costa
Mesa’s Mesa Verde Drive East, near Golf Course Drive, according
to Scott Carroll, general manager of Costa Mesa Sanitary
District.
Few developments in local history have changed the Valley more
than Friant Dam. From providing flood control and irrigation
water to the east side of the Valley, to drying up huge
portions of the river, and destroying the salmon population,
the scale of the dam’s impact is undeniable. Today on KVPR’s
Central Valley Roots, we explore the dam’s history. California
leaders originally envisioned the Central Valley Project as a
state funded effort as early as 1919. But amid the Great
Depression, the state couldn’t sell the bonds necessary to fund
construction. Instead the state turned to Washington. In 1935
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved the construction
of Friant Dam.
… Many experts are calling for a collective reframing of
water as a scarce and essential common good.
… Extraction rights and pricing systems that fail to
account for the hidden effects (or ‘externalities’) that come
from using this common good lead to inefficient consumption and
can direct water-intensive activities to regions that are
already water-stressed. … Better pricing through targeted
water-use taxes and subsidies could help to manage demand,
improve access and support more sustainable use. For example,
chip manufacturers like Intel and TSMC have invested in
building semiconductor factories (or ‘fabs’) in Arizona – a
state known for its dry climate. … Better pricing could
have given these companies the incentives to locate their
facilitates in more water-abundant regions, easing pressure on
Arizona’s water system.
Beside a restored creek in San Geronimo, California, birds soar
where birdies once were scored. Formerly home to an 18-hole
golf course, the 157-acre property has been rewilded into a
thriving nature preserve. The fairway, once groomed to
unnatural perfection, is now overgrown with tall grass and
wildflowers. … Vitally, the creek that runs through the
course’s front nine – no longer impeded by a dam – is seeing a
slow return of the endangered coho salmon. … With the
number of golf course closures outweighing openings every year
since 2006, some are rethinking the best use of these open
spaces. In states such as Florida, Ohio, Massachusetts,
and California, nature is now being allowed to run its course
to protect wildlife and protect against storms.
Some residents in San Diego neighborhoods including Pacific
Beach and La Jolla told CBS 8 that they have recently picked up
on a strong chlorine flavor and questioned what was happening.
… Working for you, CBS 8 reached out to the City of San
Diego to find out what’s causing the smell and taste. According
to the city, chlorine is a standard and essential part of
treating drinking water. It’s used as a disinfectant and is
regularly added to water stored in local reservoirs, which are
monitored weekly. … After a recent inspection, the city
added more chlorine to the Bay View reservoir to ensure water
quality. Some residents served by the reservoir, including in
Pacific Beach, La Jolla and Soledad, may have temporarily
noticed a stronger taste or smell.
Some of the top players in Central Valley water policy are
urging farmers to take action while the time is ripe to press
their elected representatives to work with President Donald
Trump on making real change in the amount of water that will be
delivered to the region for years to come. That was as
the core of the message delivered to over 100 farmers at the
fifth annual California Water Alliance forum, held in Fresno on
Friday. … The message from (Rep. Vince) Fong and (Friant
Water Authority CEO Jason) Phillips was simple: With Trump at
the helm, this is a once in a generational opportunity to flip
California’s water crisis on its head and return to a period
several decades ago when water flowed freely across the
state.
Snowpack was near normal for much of the upper Colorado River
basin this winter. By April 1, which is what hydrologists
typically consider to be the end of winter for water
measurement, the upper basin had received about 90% of its
historical median snowpack. … Despite the overall positive
snowpack report, hydrologists and drought forecasters are not
optimistic about runoff. Forecasters predict that through July,
runoff will be at 67% of average above Lake Powell, the largest
reservoir on the Upper Basin. “Dry soils across the West,
both going into the winter season and during the spring,
combined with a relatively hot, dry March have really
diminished our predicted streamflow for the summer,” said Nels
Bjarke, a hydrologist with the Western Water Assessment.
California wildlife officials will shut down a state-run fish
hatchery in Humboldt County, ending more than 50 years of
operations due to rising costs, aging infrastructure and
federal limits on steelhead production. The Mad River Fish
Hatchery, which raises a modest number of steelhead and rainbow
trout and serves as an access point to the picturesque Mad
River for recreation and fishing, will close in June after
decades of financial challenges. … Because the Northern
California steelhead found in the Mad River are federally
protected as a threatened species, the hatchery is limited to
raising only 150,000 fry per year under regulations meant to
preserve the wild DNA of fish that breed naturally in the
waterway, the agency said.
Seven months before fire swept through the Pacific Palisades
neighborhood of Los Angeles, the city’s water managers were
formulating a plan to revive an old reservoir to temporarily
boost the area’s limited water capacity. The Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power was exploring the option because
the neighborhood’s main reservoir — the Santa Ynez Reservoir —
had been taken offline as a result of a torn cover, which
officials had begun preparations to repair early in 2024. The
repair project was still months away from completion this
January when the fire broke out, and with the reservoir empty,
firefighters ran short of water in fighting the blaze. Emails
released to The New York Times under public records law show
that the city had searched for solutions to rectify the
monthslong supply shortage but, despite lengthy discussions and
preliminary preparations, failed to correct the problem in
time.
For people on the West Coast, atmospheric rivers, a weather
phenomenon that can bring heavy rain or snow from San Diego to
Vancouver, are as common a feature of winter as Nor’easters are
in Boston. … But it is also a specific meteorological
phenomenon that describes the moisture-rich storms that develop
over the Pacific Ocean and dump precipitation when they collide
with the mountain ranges of Washington, Oregon and California.
These plumes of exceptionally wet air transported through the
atmosphere by strong winds are not unique to the West Coast,
though. They occur around the world, and a growing number of
meteorologists and scientists are beginning to apply the term
to storms east of the Rocky Mountains.
For the first time, scientists have mapped groundwater
variables nationally to understand which aquifers are most
vulnerable to contamination from orphan wells. Oil and
gas wells with no active owner that are no longer producing and
have not been plugged are considered orphan wells. These
unplugged wells can create pathways for contaminants like
hydrocarbons and brine to migrate from the oil and gas
formation into groundwater zones. … USGS scientists Joshua
Woda, Karl Haase, Nicholas Gianoutsos, Kalle Jahn and Kristina
Gutchess published a geospatial analysis of water-quality
threats from orphan wells this month in the
journal Science of the Total Environment. They found that
factors including large concentrations of orphaned wells and
the advanced age of wells make aquifers in Appalachia, the Gulf
Coast and California susceptible to
contamination.
Three years ago, when Utah’s Great Salt Lake was at its lowest
levels, state lawmakers were alarmed enough to try what may be
impossible: save the lake from drying up. If Utah succeeds, it
would be the first place in the world to reverse a saline
lake’s decline. The salt lake — the largest in the Western
Hemisphere — once covered an area larger than Rhode Island.
Today, more than half its water is gone. About 800 square miles
of lake bed sits exposed, baking in the desert heat, sometimes
billowing toxic dust plumes across the state’s urban core.
… But the measures the state is pursuing will take
decades to reap results, if ever. Critics now say the pace and
scale of the efforts must greatly increase.
… As climate change drives up flooding risk, the safest
move for Isleton residents might be to abandon their small city
— but short of that drastic option, insurance could provide a
safety net. Now, with help from researchers, the state has
funded its first community flood program, providing one private
insurance policy for all Isleton residents at no cost. Isleton
is piloting community-based insurance for California, which
desperately needs alternatives. … Isleton hoped to fund
the program independently after the pilot ends in 2027 by
establishing a parcel tax, but many residents seem unsupportive
of paying it. Despite the uncertain future, Isleton’s new
leadership said they plan to lock in the insurance policy this
month.
Humans might be the ultimate ecosystem engineers in the sense
that we constantly modify ecosystems and change the processes
which drive them. In some cases, this can harm biodiversity by
displacing native ecosystem engineers which deliver important
benefits for other species and bolster both habitat and species
diversity (Romero et al. 2015). Humans also can leverage their
ecosystem engineering to benefit biodiversity, such as through
mimicking ecosystem engineering structures as part of
restoration. Our recent paper (Goss et al. 2025) reviews how
mimicked ecosystem engineer structures might help meet
restoration goals, and potential risks with the use of these
human-engineered structures.
PG&E mostly agrees with a recent opinion piece urging the
removal of Scott Dam due to a better understanding of the
seismic risks. As described in our draft decommissioning plan,
PG&E considers the expedited removal of the Scott Dam to be
in the best interest of PG&E customers. It is also the most
appropriate long-term mitigation to address the seismic risk.
In the meantime, PG&E has implemented interim measures to
reduce near-term seismic risk — the most prominent being the
restricted maximum reservoir storage elevation. However,
contrary to the opinion piece, PG&E’s decision not to seek
a new license for the Potter Valley Project — a hydroelectric
facility — is based on the fact the project is not economical
for PG&E’s customers. –Written by Dave Canny, vice president of PG&E’s North
Coast Region.
San Luis Obispo County lifted the boil-water order for all
remaining areas on Saturday afternoon, following a
water-contamination alert that lasted four days. According to
an alert from the county, the boil-water order was lifted
shortly after noon, allowing residents in Pismo Beach and Avila
Beach to resume normal water use, after the State Division of
Drinking Water gave the all-clear. … The county said it
was working with state officials to investigate the cause of a
single positive E. coli test result that spurred the boil
order. The investigation is expected to take 30 days. Director
of Public Works John Diodati said the drinking water is safe
and will be monitored and tested as the county investigates the
cause.
Four City Councilmembers, City of Malibu staff and a
group of concerned citizens rolled up their sleeves at a work
session on April 24, deliberating about three keystone issues
that officials must make decisions about before those who are
rebuilding homes are able to submit architectural
plans and permit applications for city approval. The meeting
addressed wastewater treatment for parcels destroyed by the
Palisades Fire, geotechnical study requirements, and
self-certification by some design professionals, an approach
that would save fire victims time and money. Residents
were palpably frustrated because the four long months since the
fire have been full of tumult and the tough
issues discussed in the session are complicated, will take a
lot of time and will be expensive.
Other local water management and infrastructure news:
Housing developers and conservation advocates clashed over a
bill Thursday that would encourage the federal government to
open thousands of acres of public land in Clark County for
development, a move critics say will encourage sprawl and
supporters argue would lower housing costs. … The
resolution’s opponents cited concerns about water scarcity,
utility costs, urban sprawl, and the urban heat island effect.
… A joint study by Clark County and the City of Henderson
found that development under the Clark County Lands Bill could
increase daily water demand by 49 million gallons, or about 18%
of Nevada’s total allocation from the Colorado River.
Up and down the coast, sea birds, sea lions, dolphins and even
whales have fallen victim to the bloom starting in late
February. One recent Sunday, 16 dead dolphins were collected
from San Diego-area beaches. … This is the fourth year
in a row there’s been significant blooming of Pseudo-nitzschia
off the coast of California. It creates domoic acid, a
neurotoxin that accumulates in small fish, like sardines and
anchovies, which are then eaten by marine mammals and birds.
… Recent algae blooms were fueled by La Niña weather patterns
that brought colder, nutrient-rich waters to the surface. A
“ribbon” of cold water formed in December and was still in
place in April, extending about 30 miles off the shoreline.
