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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From citrus groves to floodgates, Jake Severns’ journey has
come full circle. Raised on a citrus farm in California’s
Central Valley, he learned the value of water early in life.
Today, he helps manage that vital resource as the operations
project manager for Pine Flat Dam with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Sacramento District. The Central Valley spans about
20,000 square miles and includes the Sacramento Valley, Delta
and Eastside Streams, San Joaquin Basin, and Tulare Basin. For
Jake and his family, one of more than 44,500 family farms in
the state, according to the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture,
life on the farm taught resilience.
Across the country, the data collected at stream gauges managed
by the U.S. Geological Survey are used to implement drought
measures when streamflows are low, alert local authorities of
floods, help administer water to users on rivers and issue
pollution discharge permits required by the Clean Water Act for
communities across the country. But more than two dozen USGS
Water Science Centers that house the employees and equipment to
manage those gauges and equipment will soon have their leases
terminated after being targeted by the Department of Government
Efficiency. … The Moab (Utah) office operates and
monitors more than 30 stream gauges, eight water quality sites,
five meteorological sites, two groundwater monitoring sites and
one sediment monitoring site. Many of those … send
information in real time to federal, tribal, state and local
partners about floods and the flows of streams and rivers in
the Colorado River Basin.
Southern California cities can expect to receive 50% of their
full water allotments this year from the aqueducts of the State
Water Project, up from 40% last month, as runoff from this
year’s ample snowpack continues to fill reservoirs in Northern
California. … Lake Oroville, the largest reservoir that feeds
the State Water Project, is now 95% full and is expected to
continue rising as snowmelt runs off the Sierra Nevada. The
state Department of Water Resources said the reservoir could
reach full capacity this spring for a third straight year. The
state’s snowpack in the Sierra reached exactly 100% of average
for the season April 4, the department said.
Although the top post at the Bureau of Reclamation remains
without a nominee more than 100 days into the second Trump
administration, state officials say the empty seat will not
slow negotiations over a new Colorado River
operating plan. President Donald Trump has yet to put forth a
leader for Reclamation, which is responsible for dams,
reservoirs, canals and other infrastructure across 17 Western
states. David Palumbo, the agency’s deputy commissioner, is
currently serving in an acting capacity. But state
officials said the lack of a Senate-confirmed leader is
unlikely to hamper ongoing talks about how to share the
Colorado River, as well as any potential cuts when flows are
too low to meet the demands of some 40 million people and 5.5
million acres of farmland.
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Four Sacramento-area lawmakers are calling for the reopening of
Folsom Lake in a letter to state waterways officials, saying
the costs to the local economy and recreational boating are too
great, while calling for better coordination between agencies
to get boats back into the water. The letter — signed by state
Assemblymember Josh Hoover, R-Rancho Cordova; state Sen. Roger
Niello, R-Sacramento; Assemblymember Joe Patterson, R-Rocklin;
and Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin — calls on authorities to
reconsider Folsom’s closure to boating as a precaution after
invasive golden mussels were discovered in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and other Valley
waterways. … The Republican lawmakers said no approved
decontamination facilities are readily available to boaters to
allow their return to the water just as boating season is
approaching.
Each day, the Tijuana River carries millions—and sometimes
billions—of gallons of sewage across the U.S.-Mexico border
into California, where it dumps into the ocean. This wave of
waste frequently overwhelms wastewater treatment plants in both
countries, fueling a public health and environmental crisis in
nearby San Diego communities. The problem has gotten worse in
recent years as budget-strapped infrastructure deteriorates and
climate change fuels increasingly intense storms. Last
week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Lee
Zeldin, visited San Diego County to urge a “100 percent
solution” from Mexico and the U.S. for ending the flow of
untreated wastewater. He told reporters that a meeting with
Mexico officials went well but stressed that the U.S. is “all
out of patience.”
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to cancel a total of
781 grants issued under President Joe Biden, EPA lawyers wrote
in a little-noticed court filing last week, almost twice the
number previously reported. The filing in Woonasquatucket
River Watershed Council v. Department of Agriculture marks the
first time the agency has publicly acknowledged the total
number of grants set for termination, which includes all of its
environmental justice grants. It comes during court fights over
whether the EPA has violated its legal obligations when clawing
back the funds. … The canceled grants would have funded
a range of projects aimed at helping communities cope with the
worsening effects of climate change.
The Trump administration this week summarily dismissed more
than 400 scientists and other experts who had begun to write
the latest National Climate Assessment report, informing them
by email that the scope of the report was being reevaluated.
The report, mandated by Congress, is prepared every four years
under a 1990 law. It details the latest science on climate
change, and also reports on progress in addressing global
warming. Scientists said they fear the Trump administration
could seek to shut down the effort or enlist other authors to
write a very different report that seeks to attack climate
science — a path they say would leave the country ill-prepared
for worsening disasters intensified by humanity’s warming of
the planet, including more intense heat waves, wildfires,
droughts, floods and sea-level rise.
As the Trump administration fast-tracks fossil fuel projects
through wetlands and federal waters, it is withholding
information about how projects are being evaluated and whether
environmental reviews are being done, according to a new
lawsuit. The Center for Biological Diversity hopes to force the
Army Corps of Engineers to release records about a new
emergency permitting process that the group says could allow
pipelines and other projects to sidestep environmental laws.
The process — which the group contends is illegal in and of
itself — was established following President Donald Trump’s
Jan. 20 declaration of an “energy emergency.” The
environmental nonprofit submitted a Freedom of Information
Request to the Army Corps on March 4 seeking information on
permits applying for fast approval, the lawsuit states.
The value of much of California’s farmland declined from 2023
to 2024, according to figures published last month by the
state’s chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and
Rural Appraisers. Authors of the ASFMRA chapter’s annual Trends
report attributed the declines in farmland value to multiple
factors, including low commodity prices, high inflation and
interest rates, overall high operating costs and regulatory
impacts. Since the adoption of California’s Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act in 2014, appraisers have
noted a divergence in the value of farmland with two reliable
sources of water and so-called “white area” farmland that
depends entirely on groundwater. That trend accelerated last
year, according to the report, with white area orchards in
parts of the San Joaquin Valley losing more than half their
value in the space of a year.
In a working paper, UCLA Anderson’s Felipe Caro, University of
Mannheim’s Martin Glanzer and UCLA Anderson’s Kumar Rajaram
develop a model for the management of reservoir systems over
the long term. It’s designed to minimize societal costs of a
water shortage. In a case study of California’s Sacramento
River Basin, the authors’ management policy reduced average
shortage costs — the cost of getting water from other,
last-resort sources — by 40% compared with the current policy,
potentially remarkable savings.The study focuses on three major
reservoirs in the Sacramento River Basin, each with unique
characteristics: Shasta Lake (slow to fill, large capacity),
Trinity Lake (moderate filling rate) and Folsom Lake (the
smallest of the three, quick to fill).
In April, Reps. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.),
Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) introduced
the Advancing Water Reuse Act (H.R.2940) which aims
to accelerate the use of recycled water by manufacturers, data
centers and other industrial entities. According to the
WateReuse Association (WateReuse), while nearly 70% of the
planet is covered by water, only 2.5% is freshwater and only 1%
is accessible. Industrial water use in the United States is
second only to agribusiness in terms of water usage, and
current industrial water reuse offsets only a fraction of this.
The intention of the Advancing Water Reuse Act is to
create opportunities for businesses to expand operations and
grow jobs while also protecting local water resources by
establishing an Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for industrial
water reuse.
Around the world, farmers are retooling their land to harvest
the hottest new commodity: sunlight. As the price of renewable
energy technology has plummeted and water has gotten more
scarce, growers are fallowing acreage and installing solar
panels. Some are even growing crops beneath them, which is
great for plants stressed by too many rays. Still others are
letting that shaded land go wild, providing habitat for
pollinators and fodder for grazing livestock. According to a
new study, this practice of agrisolar has been quite lucrative
for farmers in California’s Central Valley
over the last 25 years — and for the environment. Researchers
looked at producers who had idled land and installed solar,
using the electricity to run equipment like water pumps and
selling the excess power to utilities.
If the San Joaquin River is to be protected from further harm
at the hands of a multinational mining company with a history
of environmental violations, help won’t be arriving from the
state capitol. A bill authored by Assemblymember Joaquin
Arambula (D-Fresno) aimed at squelching CEMEX’s controversial
blast mine failed to advance from its first committee hearing
Monday afternoon in Sacramento. Only one member of the Assembly
Natural Resources Committee voted “aye” on AB 1425 compared to
13 “noes” and no votes, killing the bill for this legislative
session. That does not mean CEMEX gets the green light to start
drilling and blasting 200 feet away from the river 3 miles
outside the Fresno city limits. Goodness no. It simply means
the process for potential approval will continue as prescribed
by the California Environmental Quality Act. –Written by Fresno Bee opinion columnist Marek
Warszawski.
The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are fighting
against having to comply with the Clean Water Act. Instead of
fixing its broken roads that bleed sediment into salmon-bearing
streams, the federal agencies are opposing new regulations that
would hold them accountable for repairs. We think this stinks.
The Clean Water Act is an interesting law. Although it is a
federal law, it leaves implementation to individual states. In
California, we implement the Clean Water Act through the
Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act. Under Porter-Cologne,
the state is broken into various districts, each with the
responsibility to regulate water quality pollution to achieve
water quality objectives—roughly that all waters should be
drinkable, fishable and swimmable.
Carlsbad residents pay less for water than other cities around
the county, but rates are about to jump. A 20 percent increase
in July will add $25.30 to the average customer bill, with more
to come. The Carlsbad City Council voted 4-1 last week to raise
rates for water, sewer and recycled water that will bring
additional increases in Jan. 2026 and 2027, for a total of
$61.75, or 49% over the current rate. City staff explained that
the San Diego County Water Authority raised wholesale rates by
14% last July. “That means it costs us 14% more to purchase
water for Carlsbad customers,” said Shoshana Aguilar, senior
management analyst with the city’s utilities department. Sixty
five percent of the cost of water bills involves county water
purchases from sources such as the Colorado River and
desalination. The rate hikes fund the many costs of water
delivery and can’t exceed the cost of service.
A long-feared monster earthquake off California, Oregon and
Washington could cause some coastal areas to sink by more than
6 feet, dramatically heightening the risk of flooding and
radically reshaping the region with little to no warning. Those
are the findings of a new study that examined the repercussions
of a massive earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone, which
stretches from Northern California up to Canada’s Vancouver
Island. The study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that in an
earthquake scenario with the highest level of subsidence, or
land sink, the area at risk of flooding would expand by 116
square miles, a swath that’s 2½ times the size of San
Francisco.
While California residents are asked to let their lawns go
brown and swap grass for drought-tolerant landscaping, the
Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta reopened in December 2024 after
a multi-million-dollar refresh. The restored 229-acre golf
course underwent extensive re-grassing and irrigation upgrades,
even though a single golf course can use up to a million
gallons of water daily. … A million gallons of
water daily is roughly what one desert golf course can consume.
That’s the daily water use of about 3,000 households. Also,
desert golf courses often play by different rules. In Nevada,
they were exempt from the state’s 2021 law banning
nonfunctional grass. Others may benefit from subsidized water
rates or are grandfathered into decades-old water rights
agreements that allow continued access to groundwater or
Colorado River allocations.
Mexico has agreed to send water to the United States and
temporarily channel more water to the country from their shared
rivers, a concession that appeared to defuse a diplomatic
crisis sparked by yearslong shortages that left Mexico behind
on its treaty-bound contribution of water from the borderlands.
… In a social media post, Mr. Trump accused Mexico of
“stealing” water from Texas farmers by not meeting its
obligations under a 1944 treaty that mediates the distribution
of water from three rivers the two countries share: the
Rio Grande, the Colorado and the Tijuana. In an
agreement announced jointly by Mexico and the United States on
Monday, Mexico will immediately transfer some of its water
reserves and will give the country a larger share of the flow
of water from the Rio Grande through October.
