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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Significant snow falling in the Sierra Nevada over the next few
days could be the region’s last big snow dump of the season,
showcasing a dramatic rebound for the snowpack that provides a
significant portion of California’s water
reserves through the rest of the year. Snow started
falling in the Sierra Nevada, the California mountain range
that straddles the state’s border with Nevada, on Sunday, and
plenty more is expected through Tuesday. Elevations above 4,000
feet are expected to record one to four feet of snow, while the
highest peaks over 8,000 feet could pick up five feet.
President Donald Trump’s vow to put “people over fish” in
Southern California by shifting water to the region’s farmers
could deal a new blow to struggling commercial, sport and
tribal fishermen who have coped for years with decimated salmon
populations. On the cusp of the anticipated third annual
closure for salmon fishing in California — with an official
decision due out next month from the Pacific Fishery Management
Council — many are raising concerns that Trump’s vow to divert
more water from the San Francisco Bay Delta and its watershed
could further cripple their industry.
As the possibility of legal battles on the Colorado River
grows, competing states could use water data to back up their
arguments, including claims that Arizona should bear the most
water cuts in future shortages The Upper Colorado River
Commission — a body that represents the four states in the
upper Colorado River basin — is in its third year beefing up
the measurement of stream flows, water consumption by
crops, and water diversions that its states use to regulate
their water use. Though the Trump administration is reviewing
the federal funding designated for the projects, the commission
says it has continued its work. … The new data will help
the Upper Basin fine-tune its water management, but it could
also play a role in lawsuits between Colorado River states if
ongoing negotiations break down.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have
made big promises to roll back environmental regulations — and
they’ve stacked the agency with appointees with prior
experience fighting a range of rules, including ones to rein in
chemical exposure. Several top EPA officials have spent the
past four years leading legal challenges or lobbying against
landmark environmental and public health regulations finalized
during the Biden administration. Among them is the agency’s ban
on cancer-causing chrysotile asbestos and a rule putting
polluters on the hook for “forever chemicals” cleanup costs. A
rundown of the Trump administration’s appointees in EPA’s
legal, chemicals, land and water offices could signal which
rules are most vulnerable to rollbacks.
From the southwestern U.S. to Minnesota, Iowa and even parts of
New Jersey, it seemed that winter never materialized. Many
communities marked their driest winters on record, snowpack was
nearly nonexistent in some spots, and vegetation remains tinder
dry — all ingredients for elevated wildfire risks. … A
new wildfire outlook will be released Tuesday. While
California isn’t among those areas facing significant potential
for wildfires at the moment, deadly fires in
January torched more urban area than any other fire in
that state since at least the mid-1980s.
Fluoridated drinking water has been hailed as one of the top 10
public health achievements of the 20th century by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But it’s also a
practice that new health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has
said should be halted. This week, Utah appeared to heed
his warnings, as Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation
late Thursday that banned fluoride in public drinking water
across the state, making it the first state to do so. “We
don’t need fluoride in our water. It’s a very bad way to
deliver it into our systems,” Kennedy had asserted the day
after the November election to NPR on Morning
Edition. Below, a primer on fluoride in drinking water,
its history of controversy, and what the science says.
A $20 million grant meant to strengthen a Nevada tribe’s poor
access to electric power and clean water has been suspended,
delaying construction timelines. The Environmental Protection
Agency awarded the money to the Nevada Clean Energy
Fund in December — one of 84 projects in that round of
so-called Community Change Grants. With the money, the
nonprofit aimed to work with the Walker River Paiute Tribe in
west-central Nevada on needed infrastructure improvements.
Kristen Stasio, the nonprofit’s CEO, said in an interview last
week that the EPA hasn’t been communicative since she received
notice March 7 that the grant was suspended.
Other federal water and weather project funding news:
A combination of water management practices has contributed to
notable groundwater gains in Central Arizona despite the region
dealing with long-term water stress, according to a study led
by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and
collaborators in Arizona and Colorado. … Some of the state’s
policies incentivize farmers to use surface water from the
river rather than tap into groundwater. Other policies channel
the river water directly to aquifer recharge zones, where it
can seep down to the groundwater. According to the study, which
was published in Communications Earth & Environment, these
policies have helped bank a total of 10.5 cubic kilometers of
groundwater water from 1989–2019 in the Phoenix, Tucson and
Pinal active management areas, where these policies are in
place.
A new study finds warming could inflict far more damage to the
global economy than previously assumed. Typically, to
understand how future droughts, heat waves, storms, and floods
will impact the global economy, experts look at the cost of
extreme weather in the past. Using that data, they build models
showing that warming will lead to trillions of dollars in
losses in the decades to come. But this method is
actually too optimistic, Australian scientists say, because it
looks only at the local impact of extreme weather. By rattling
supply chains, future storms and heat waves will also send
ripples throughout the global economy, inflicting costs far
higher than models currently show.
The United States government has paused negotiations with
Canada to finalize the renewal of a long-standing treaty
covering the use of the Columbia River in the wake of President
Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada and threats to annex the
northern neighbor. The United States and Canada last July
reached an agreement in principle to manage the mighty Columbia
River, an economic and environmental powerhouse that starts in
Canada and flows through Washington and Oregon on its journey
to the Pacific Ocean. The two countries negotiated for six
years to update the 60-year-old treaty. But talks to finalize
the treaty are “currently paused” while the Trump
administration reviews all pending international agreements,
said Adrian Dix, head of the British Columbia Ministry of
Energy and Climate Solutions in Canada. Officials for the U.S.
State Department and the White House have not responded to
requests for comment.
Santa Rosa residents could see their monthly water and sewer
bills increase by an average of $11 starting in July as the
city looks to invest in improvements to its aging utility
system. Rates are expected to go up by a combined 6.5% under
the first year of a proposed five-year rate schedule, followed
by increases of 5.4% to 5.8% over the next four years. The
Santa Rosa City Council will consider the proposed increases on
Tuesday. Santa Rosa Water is responsible for about $5 billion
in infrastructure, including about 1,200 miles of water and
sewer lines and the regional Laguna Wastewater Treatment Plant.
It serves about 54,000 water customers and 52,000 wastewater
customers.
Despite some heavy rainstorms and squalls of snow in recent
months, the Sierra Nevada snowpack today stands at 90% of
average, according to state officials. This year’s measurements
mark the first below-average snowpack since 2022, when it
dropped to a dismal 38% of the historical average. Last year at
this time, the statewide calculation reached 110% of the
average, and in 2023, the snowpack was one of the largest ever,
measuring more than twice the average. More snow is on the way,
however, which could make this year right around average.
Colorado River states have weeks remaining to resolve deep
divides over how to manage the river for years to come,
officials at a water conference in southwestern Colorado said
Friday. … Basin officials must submit a joint management
proposal by May for it to be considered in the larger federal
process that will decide how the river is managed. A
seven-state agreement would send a clear signal to federal
decision-makers about how the basin wants to manage its own
water future. But for months, basin state officials at the
center of negotiations have been at odds. … The current
river management agreement lapses fully in September 2026, and
there are many steps left in a larger federal process before a
new management plan is finalized.
The chinook salmon has upset a quiet truce in
the California water wars between Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom
and President Donald Trump. Last week, when the winter-run
chinook got caught in pumps that funnel water south from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms and cities, California
officials dialed down water deliveries in line with the state’s
endangered species rules. Their federal counterparts didn’t
restrict the flows — at least not at first. The fishy foul-up
started when officials with the California Department of Water
Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation didn’t immediately
agree on what to do when the salmon got caught up in the pumps
beyond an allowable limit. State officials argued their joint
rules warranted an immediate ramping down of pumping, while
Reclamation staff pushed for more analysis of whether the
changes would actually help the fish population.
In a continued effort to expedite rebuilding after Los Angeles’
devastating firestorms, Gov. Gavin Newsom this week suspended
California environmental laws for utility providers working to
reinstall key infrastructure. His latest executive order
eliminates requirements to comply with the California
Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and the California Coastal
Act for utilities working to rebuild “electric, gas, water,
sewer and telecommunication infrastructure” in the Palisades
and Eaton fire burn zones. Newsom also continued to encourage
the “undergrounding” of utility equipment when feasible, which
he said will help minimize the future fire risk in these
communities.
More than 37 million Americans drink water from systems that
exceed limits on toxic “forever chemicals,” according to USA
TODAY’s analysis of the first update of Environmental
Protection Agency data under the Trump administration. The
EPA had been updating the records quarterly like clockwork, but
the latest data release came more than a month later than
expected, tucked amid an onslaught of cuts and
changes within the agency. … The number of affected drinking
water systems grows with each update as the EPA adds more test
results, and USA TODAY’s analysis shows annual averages at 667
water systems have now surpassed limits the EPA announced a
year ago. Check your local drinking water system’s results in
the map below, or explore the full map here.
The long-delayed restoration of the Salton Sea, the large,
ultra-briny California lake almost universally described as an
“environmental disaster,’’ could be starting to finally get its
sea legs. … Now a combination of factors, including the
presence of vast deposits of lithium about a mile under the
Salton Sea’s bottom, might provide enough impetus for a major
reclamation project that is certain to cost several billions of
dollars. Last fall Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a
conservancy to manage efforts to rehabilitate the lake and
minimize its health impacts, and the state followed by
assigning $480 million – more than half of it from the federal
Inflation Reduction Act – to the project.
Utah has become the first state to ban fluoride in public
drinking water, pushing past opposition from dentists and
national health organizations who warn the move will lead to
medical problems that disproportionately affect low-income
communities. Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation
Thursday barring cities and communities from deciding whether
to add the mineral to their water systems. Florida, Ohio and
South Carolina are considering similar measures, while in New
Hampshire, North Dakota and Tennessee, lawmakers have rejected
them. A bill in Kentucky to make fluoridation optional stalled
in the state Senate.
County water officials said Thursday that financial challenges
they face may force them to substantially raise rates for
wholesale water next year, a move that would lead to higher
water bills across much of the county. … While the
authority has made water sale deals in recent years that have
yielded $40 million, those have left fewer opportunities for
potential additional deals to pursue. The Trump
administration could try to cancel a $19.4 million grant the
authority was awarded last spring by the U.S. Department of the
Interior for an intake pipe at the Carlsbad desalination plant.
And while demand can fluctuate, the largest variable appears to
be how sharply March rains cut back on customers’ March
irrigation usage. Drops in usage make the authority’s finances
worse, not better.
… Phoenix endured its second-longest dry spell on record, with
159 days without measurable rainfall from the end of a
lackluster 2024 monsoon through January 2025. In Flagstaff,
Arizona’s snowiest city, snow on the peaks during most of the
season was created by Snowbowl snow machines. While a few
early March storm systems brought snow and rain across much of
the state, it won’t be enough to offset months of extreme
drought. “It’s going to do very little to move the drought
indices in both the short and long term,” said Michael
Crimmins, a climatologist at the University of Arizona. “We
have precipitation deficits that extend all the way back to the
summer. It’s just too late in the season.”
