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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Westlands Water District leader Allison Febbo characterized
Tuesday’s announced 5% federal water allocation increase as
“disappointing” in light of California’s full reservoirs while
also calling for more investment in new water
infrastructure. “While an increase is appropriate, given
current reservoir levels and snowpack, a 5% increase is
disappointing and highlights a critical reality: Even in
average hydrological years, California’s outdated water system
falls short of delivering the water our communities require,”
said Febbo. … The Bureau of Reclamation’s increase means that
the Central Valley Project’s South-of-Delta ag
contractors such as Westlands will receive 55% allotments. All
north-of-Delta CVP contractors are receiving 100% allotments.
Municipal and industrial water service and repayment
contractors will receive a 5% boost to 80% of their historical
use, or public health and safety needs, whichever is greater,
the Bureau said.
Arizona’s governor and the GOP-controlled Legislature are at
odds over regulating groundwater pumping in the state’s rural
areas — and time is running out. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs
stood with local Republican leaders at the start of this year’s
session, optimistic that Republicans in the Legislature would
embrace her proposal to create rural groundwater management
areas. But almost four months later, talks have stalled and
frustration has mounted as both sides try to find a solution to
conserve water that’s increasingly becoming more scarce
amid a prolonged drought. Negotiators have not met
since early April, Hobbs’ office said. Around the same time,
Republicans and some interest groups grew frustrated with a
separate proposal by the Arizona Department of Water Resources
to slash overdraft in the Willcox Basin by a percentage that is
“unattainable,” said Sen. Tim Dunn, one of the Republican
negotiators.
… The California Wildlife Conservation Board, a state agency
dedicated to protecting California’s biological diversity, has
approved $59.5 million in grant funding to preserve nearly
23,000 acres of some of the state’s most ecologically
significant habitats, a May 23 news release from the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife shows. … For instance,
the beleaguered Salton Sea, which is at risk
of drying out and releasing toxic dust if left unattended, will
receive $5.2 million in funding to restore over 560 acres of
crucial wetland habitat. … One of the more significant
awards is a $14.75 million grant to acquire nearly 6,500 acres
of land in Ventura County home to at least 20 special-status
species, including the California red-legged frog and the
Southern California steelhead.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board, one of Colorado’s top
water policy agencies, has a new leader: Southern Ute tribal
member Lorelei Cloud. The 15-member board sets water policy
within the state, funds water projects statewide and works on
issues related to watershed protection, stream restoration,
flood mitigation and drought planning. On May 21, board members
elected Cloud to serve a one-year term as chair, making her the
first Indigenous person to hold the position since the board
was formed in 1937. Cloud said her new role gives Indigenous
people a long-sought seat at the table where water decisions
are made. … Part of the Colorado Water Conservation
Board’s purpose is to protect Colorado’s water interests in
dealings with other states, like the water sharing agreements
among seven states in the Colorado River
Basin. … She represents the San Miguel-Dolores-San
Juan basin in southwestern Colorado, which is part of the
larger Colorado River Basin, a key water source for about 40
million people across the West.
The Colorado River basin has lost 27.8m acre-feet of
groundwater in the past 20 years, an amount of water nearly
equivalent to the full capacity of Lake Mead, the largest
reservoir in the United States, a new study has found. The
research findings, based on Nasa satellite imagery from across
the south-west, highlight the scale of the ongoing water crisis
in the region, as both groundwater and surface water
are being severely depleted. … With less
visibility has come less regulation: California only instituted
statewide management of its groundwater in 2014, and before
that, groundwater use was largely unregulated. Arizona, which
has seen big groundwater decreases, still does not regulate
groundwater usage in the majority of the state. … Since
2015, the basin has been losing freshwater at a rate three
times faster than in the decade before, driven mostly by
groundwater depletion in Arizona.
“I want to be crystal clear. Fast-tracking the Delta Conveyance
Project (DCP) is a direct attack on our region’s environmental
integrity, economic stability and public trust,” Assemblymember
Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) warned Gov. Newsom. Wilson, a
member of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), was
speaking at a press conference on May 20 at the State Capitol
organized to push back against the Governor’s plans to speed up
$20 billion worth of improvements to the State Water Project
(SWP), a tunnel that delivers water from Northern California to
areas in the south of the state. … Other Delta Caucus
members — a bipartisan group of lawmakers representing counties
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the tunnel
begins — also attended, along with officials from the Delta
Coalition of Counties, regional environmental leaders and
tribal leaders from the Delta.
The Kern County Water Agency named two longtime employees to
run the powerful entity after the board let its general manager
go just one month before his contract was set to expire.
Administrative Operations Manager Nick Pavletich and State
Water Project Manager Craig Wallace will co-manage the agency
while a recruitment committee begins the search for a new
general manager. The two were named as interim managers after a
special meeting held Tuesday morning. Pavletich, who has been
with the agency for 24 years, will oversee local activities.
Wallace, who has worked at the agency a little more than 10
years, will oversee the agency’s statewide activities with a
focus on the Delta Conveyance Project, a
tunnel proposed to bring water beneath the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta. The agency board also announced it would form an
advisory committee of board members to work with the
co-managers “to ensure stability.”
Lawyers for the Sweetwater Authority water agency are demanding
that former authority board member Josie Calderon-Scott retract
claims she made recently to Voice of San Diego that the
authority knew about elevated levels of toxic industrial
chemicals in its main reservoir years before alerting the
public. But Calderon-Scott said she’s not backing down.
And she challenged the authority to produce documents that she
said would settle the issue. In a May 23 letter, lawyers
for the agency’s law firm, Best, Best & Krieger, demanded that
Calderon-Scott retract claims she made in a May 13 Voice
newsletter that the agency knew “for years it had a
PFAS [chemicals] problem in its reservoir” and
that “this problem existed for a long time before [the agency]
notified the public.” Those statements, the lawyers wrote,
“are false and untrue, are defamatory, and create alarming
confusion for residents served by the authority.”
When the weather heats up, many want to grab a drink, get on a
boat and spend time with friends and family on the water. This
year, at Lake Camanche, it’s a different story. “We’ve taken
the precaution, a difficult one, to shut down our boat launches
for this year as we try to get our arms around this and figure
out the best way to prevent its introduction to East Bay MUD’s
water system,” East Bay Municipal Utility District spokesperson
Christopher Tritto said. The reason is because of the recently
discovered golden mussel found in the
Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta. While this invasive species
hasn’t made it into the reservoir, the utility district is
taking this ban a step further: no kayaks, no paddleboards, and
more. The only boats allowed are those with a permanent
slip or boats that have been in the water before the launches
closed.
The Bureau of Reclamation is awarding a major construction
contract for Phase 2 of the B.F. Sisk Safety of Dams
Modification Project. The $255 million award to NW Construction
marks a significant milestone in the continued effort to
improve public safety and water supply reliability in
California. … B.F. Sisk Dam was originally constructed
in 1967 and is a key feature of the Central Valley
Project and State Water Project. The
dam, located on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley,
impounds San Luis Reservoir, the largest offstream reservoir in
the nation, and plays a critical role in delivering water for
prime farmland, California communities, and wildlife
refuges. … The dam safety project, Reclamation’s largest
under the 1978 Safety of Dams Act, will construct stability
berms and shear keys, and raise the crest of the existing
3.5-mile-long earthen dam.
President Donald Trump has taken millions of dollars already
allocated to blue states—and reallocated the funding to red
states—impacting a wide array of ongoing critical
infrastructure projects, including the Pajaro River Flood
Management Project. … Also losing funding are the
American River Common Features Levee Improvement Project, the
Lower San Joaquin River Project and the West Sacramento
Project. Pajaro River Flood Management Agency (PRFMA) Director
Mark Strudley said that construction is still expected to start
this fall on Reach 6, which runs along Corralitos Creek from
Green Valley Road to East Lake Avenue. That portion of the
project is funded by $156 million already allocated to the
project. … PRFMA was also counting on—and what Trump zeroed
out—was $38.5 million in funding for the Pajaro River Levee
project provided by Congress to the Army Corps under
Republicans’ yearlong continuing resolution for fiscal year
2025.
Launching the PPIC Water Policy Center ten years ago was a
risk. How was a small team going to have a big impact on such
intractable problems? After a decade, the proof is in the
pudding. We’ve done it by being interdisciplinary, seeking out
facts amid controversy, and really trying to understand the
challenges and opportunities in each water sector. Despite the
many difficulties and complexities of California’s water, the
state has made tremendous progress on water management in the
last decade, and the Water Policy Center has worked hard to
support that progress with forward-looking, nonpartisan
research. We follow where the facts lead, and that commitment
to the facts—even if the results are not popular—has made us a
trusted voice on some of the thorniest challenges in the field.
Since the center launched ten years ago, we’ve released a wide
range of impactful research. Here are just four major areas of
research we’ve conducted on issues that matter deeply to all
Californians.
Coronado’s shoreline closed over Memorial Day weekend as
wastewater from the ongoing Tijuana sewage crisis pushed
bacteria into coastal waters. … Agencies in both the US
and Mexico are working to repair the failing infrastructure
that causes the ongoing pollution. Mexico is currently in the
second phase of repairing its International Collector, which
carries Tijuana’s wastewater to treatment plants and is prone
to leaks. It is unclear if the weekend’s closures were related
to the project, although the US International Boundary and
Water Commission said ahead of the project that excess sewage
flow might arise from the project. During the project’s
first phase, Mexico diverted excess sewage into the Tijuana
River, which ultimately caused beach closures in Coronado.
… In the US, the IBWC is working to repair its own
infrastructure, the most notable of which is the South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Local farmers are fighting against a plan to sharply reduce
their special water rate discount, contending it could wipe out
much of the county’s already-shrinking agriculture industry.
The cash-strapped County Water Authority says it must roll back
the longtime rate discount it now gives to roughly 1,000 local
farmers because of dropping demand and changes to the
authority’s business model. Farmers say the rate hike proposal
is shortsighted because it would accelerate the demise of many
farms, stripping the water authority of existing customers at a
time when it needs more customers — not less. Losing hundreds
of local farms would also hurt ordinary San Diegans, the
farmers say, by replacing local fruits and vegetables with
imported produce that would be more expensive and less fresh.
… While the discount varies from local water agency to
water agency, it is typically in the neighborhood of 25%.
A Placer County man is going to jail after the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife busted an illegal fish selling
operation. According to the CDFW, their Delta Bay Enhanced
Enforcement Program and Special Operations Unit investigated a
conspiracy to sell Pacific lamprey, leading to the arrest of
Justin D. Lewis. Lewis sourced Pacific lamprey, a California
state species of special concern, from the Klamath River in Del
Norte County and resold the fish to sellers across Colusa
County and beyond. The CDFW said lamprey are often used as bait
for sturgeon and other fish, but also are valued highly by the
Yurok tribe in Del Norte County as a food source and cultural
emblem. Lewis was sentenced on May 21 to two years — one
in the Colusa County Jail, and another on supervised release.
He also must pay more than $20,000 in fines and his fishing
privileges are suspended.
California’s second-largest reservoir (Lake
Oroville) reached full capacity for the third
year in a row Thursday, the first time it’s hit such a
record in its 57-year history. … Its latest
milestone comes as warming temperatures and snowmelt runoff
made its way into the Feather River watershed. … Water levels
are at 121% of the reservoir’s historical average for this time
of year, which is a similar trend among nearly all if the
state’s major reservoirs. With the exception of the San Luis
Reservoir, which is sitting at 94% of its historical capacity,
every major reservoir is above its average. The past wet
winter in California has bolstered snowpack accumulation and
cut detrimental drought conditions that have been persistent in
previous years.
To those who know about it, the San Joaquin River is Fresno’s
greatest natural feature. … Yet, those passionate about
the river told The Fresno Bee that too many people — even
Fresnans — still don’t know about it. And they have different
ideas about how to capture the possibilities. Some want more
entrepreneurial development at the water’s edge — like a new,
commercialized river walk — though others vehemently oppose
that kind of development, and it doesn’t square with long-term
goals set out in a conservation-focused master plan. Others
argue it’s the city of Fresno that holds the keys to unlocking
the river’s potential for economic development, and that
leadership over the years has failed to advance innovative
ideas. … Critics of the river’s management say that it
has too few public access points and too few easy ways for the
general public to use it for recreation. The natural resource
is administered by a conservancy that has set out a long-term
plan that does not emphasize economic development or tourism
marketing.
As the Colorado River’s giant reservoirs have declined during
the last two decades, even larger amounts of water have been
pumped and drained from underground, according to new research
based on data from NASA satellites. Scientists at Arizona State
University examined more than two decades of satellite
measurements and found that since 2003 the quantity of
groundwater depleted in the Colorado River Basin is comparable
to the total capacity of Lake Mead, the nation’s largest
reservoir. The researchers estimated that pumping from wells
has drained about 34 cubic kilometers, or 28 million acre-feet,
of groundwater in the watershed since 2003 — more than twice
the amount of water that has been depleted from the river’s
reservoirs during that time.
Water began flowing from a pipe onto hundreds of acres of dry,
sunbaked lake bed as California officials filled a complex of
shallow ponds near the south shore of the Salton Sea in an
effort to create wetlands that will provide habitat for fish
and birds, and help control lung-damaging dust around the
shrinking lake. The project represents the state’s largest
effort to date to address the environmental problems plaguing
the Salton Sea, which has been steadily retreating and leaving
growing stretches of dusty lake bottom exposed to the desert
winds. … The habitat area in Imperial County is being
filled with water after an adjacent area called East Pond
received its first water in April. In the coming weeks, state
officials said the flooding of these sections will bring to
fruition the first 2,000 acres of the Species Conservation
Habitat Project, a central effort in California’s plan for
improving conditions at the state’s largest lake.
California’s second-largest reservoir, Lake
Oroville, reached capacity Friday, hitting the high
water mark for the third straight year — a first for the
57-year-old reservoir. The milestone comes after a moderately
wet winter in California, with enough snow in the mountains,
particularly in the north, to melt and flush substantial water
into state reservoirs. This week, water storage in California’s
major reservoirs stood at a comfortable 116% of average for the
time of year, ensuring decent supplies for the rest of
2025. At Lake Oroville, about 70 miles north of Sacramento
in Butte County, water levels rose Friday morning to within
inches of the 900-foot elevation mark that state water managers
deem full pool, prompting notice that the reservoir had hit
capacity. At capacity, the lake holds 3.4 million acre-feet of
water, enough to supply more than 7 million households for a
year.
