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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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.
A surge of monsoonal moisture, not uncommon during summer
months, moved into the state from the southwest desert region
early Tuesday, bringing lightning across much of California.
Monsoon thunderstorms can trigger dust storms,
lightning-sparked wildfires and downpours that result in
flooding. … In Southern California, the heaviest storms
will be focused over the Antelope Valley and the San Gabriel
Mountains through Wednesday evening, bringing a 30% to 50%
chance of flooding to the area that includes the Bridge fire
burn scar.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S.
International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) announced
the completion of a 10 million-gallon-per-day expansion at the
South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant (SBIWTP) in
San Diego. The project boosts the facility’s capacity from 25
to 35 mgd, a 40% increase aimed at reducing cross-border sewage
flows from Tijuana into the Tijuana River Valley. Originally
planned as a two-year project, the expansion was completed in
just 100 days.
The Bureau of Reclamation is looking to artificial intelligence
to better answer one of the most pressing questions in the
West: How much water is available? Upstream Tech recently
signed a $680,000 contract with the Interior Department to
improve what are known as “short-term probabilistic forecasts,”
or estimates for how much water will flow from streams and
rivers into reservoirs over a 10-day period. The company will
use a machine-learning model, a subset of AI, to boost the
accuracy and scope of water models.
California’s variable hydroclimate is projected to become
increasingly volatile in the 21st century. Yet, there is
widespread recognition that extreme events, such as
record-breaking heatwaves and catastrophic wildfires, are
already becoming the new normal. The 2025 edition of the State
of Bay–Delta Science (SBDS) presents the current state of the
science on climate change and extreme events affecting the
Delta and its watershed, and in doing so, generates new
insights on knowledge gaps and promising directions for future
research.
The California Natural Resources Agency announced a positive
development at the Salton Sea, with several bird species,
including brown and white pelicans, returning to the newly
filled ponds of the Species Conservation Habitat (SCH) project.
… The project, which aims to restore and create deep and
shallow water habitats, is designed to support local and
migratory bird populations. So far, about 2,000 acres of the
9,000-acre SCH footprint have been filled with a combination of
New River and Salton Sea water.
… With colleagues at the University of San Francisco, the
Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and I have combed
through thousands of parcel records to answer a simple
question: Who controls California’s farmland? … Today,
ownership of the land that feeds us is increasingly hidden
behind layers of shell companies and trusts, making it nearly
impossible to know who controls these resources. –Written by Meredith Song, a master’s student at UC
Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a student fellow
with the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, and Adam Calo, an
assistant professor of environmental governance and politics at
Radboud University in the Netherlands.
For millennia, humans have sought to make seawater
drinkable. Ancient mariners tried distillation by boiling the
oceans in which they sailed, and in more recent times,
engineers have experimented with filters and chemicals. As
the climate warms, populations surge and droughts intensify,
there is a growing need to make the sea drinkable. … But
creating drinking water from the sea is not without
environmental impacts. These depend on how plants process
seawater, whether they run on fossil fuels or renewable energy
and where they are built.
A California Democrat’s proposal to enshrine Biden-era water
quality rules in state law to backstop potential rollbacks
under the Trump administration will not move forward this year
amid continued opposition from farmers and water agencies.
Assembly Appropriations Chair Buffy Wicks announced on Friday
that Sen. Ben Allen’s SB 601 will be a two-year bill, meaning
it won’t be voted on this year and has until next fall to win
passage. Sean Bothwell, executive director of the California
Coastkeeper Alliance, which is sponsoring the bill, said its
backers decided they needed extra time to finalize the language
amid continued opposition. “It’s a big bill and we didn’t want
to rush it,” he said.
Colorado River is dimming as time runs out for the negotiators
tasked with dividing up the shrinking river relied upon by 40
million people. “The path to success seems tenuous at this
point,” Arizona’s negotiator, Tom Buschatzke, said in an
interview this week with The Denver Post. “The discussions
continue to revolve around the main issue that we’ve been
struggling with for some time since these discussions started.”
… Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, said in a
statement this week in response to Buschatzke’s comments that
time is of the essence in the negotiations. The states have no
option but to live within the means of the river, she said.
While the developer of Project Blue has made it clear it still
wants to buy energy from Tucson Electric Power despite defeat
at the hands of the Tucson City Council, its path to finding
water for its planned data-center complexes is much more hazy.
Project Blue developer Beale Infrastructure has declined to
answer questions from reporters or public officials about where
it intends to get water for its first data-center complex.
… Here is a look at four possible methods the company
could use to run its data centers, including one that would
require little water use.
The North American Development Bank (NADBank) on Friday
announced a $400 million Water Resiliency Fund designed to
boost water conservation and alternative sources of water for
the U.S./Mexico border region. … [T]he Water
Resiliency Fund (WRF) will provide up to $400 million in
financing for priority infrastructure projects aimed at
conserving and diversifying water supply sources in the
U.S.-Mexico border region. This includes desalination plans,
technology for municipalities and water districts to re-use
storm water runoff, and projects with irrigation districts to
reduce water loss.
Pasadena Water and Power officials said late last week that
ongoing monitoring continues to show safe drinking water
throughout the utility’s service area, including neighborhoods
affected by the Eaton Fire. Testing is being
conducted across the system under additional guidance from the
California State Water Resources Control Board’s Division
of Drinking Water. … Recent results from key
sites and reservoirs in fire-impacted zones confirm the water
meets state standards. The data is available on a new online
hub … which features results from June as well as earlier
sampling events.
… Although it’s approximately 140 miles east of the Golden
Gate Bridge, Moccasin is perhaps the safest, cleanest and
quietest part of San Francisco. Most of the town’s homes
and buildings are owned by the city and county of San
Francisco. Every resident works, in some capacity, for the San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission to operate the Hetch
Hetchy Water and Power System. … Up to 200 million
gallons per day pass through Moccasin on the way to citywide
faucets and the plant generates about 295,000 megawatt hours
per year.
The California Department of Water Resources has been using a
fish monitoring station in the Feather River to track the
migration of fish species. Officials say this station is
crucial for monitoring Chinook salmon and steelhead
populations, which are listed as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act. … The station uses an underwater
camera with motion detection software to capture video of fish
as they pass through a chute. This footage helps scientists
identify fish species and determine if they are of hatchery
origin by checking for a clipped adipose fin.
On Tuesday, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors unanimously
adopted a temporary 45-day moratorium on the approval of new
agricultural water well permits in the Yolo Subbasin
Groundwater Agency’s focus areas. … On Oct. 7, a public
hearing will be held by the board to consider whether to extend
the 45-day moratorium. According to county counsel Phil
Pogledich, the next extension could be for 10 months and 15
days. … The steady increase in conversion of dry-farmed
or unirrigated lands to perennial crops in the focus areas has
raised concerns. The moratorium will temporarily halt the
issuance of new agricultural well permits in the focus
areas.
As the National Weather Service scrambles to hire up to 450
people to restore deep cuts by the Department of Government
Efficiency, potential applicants are being asked to explain how
they would advance President Donald Trump’s agenda if hired. A
posting from the weather service’s parent agency seeking
meteorologists asks applicants to identify one or two of
Trump’s executive orders “that are significant to you, and
explain how you would help implement them if hired.” It’s among
screening questions added to government job applications as
part of a “merit hiring plan” that Trump announced at the
outset of his second term.
… Even as Native peoples and their allies celebrated at the
mouth of the Klamath, more work lies ahead to restore the rest
of the basin. Wetlands need restoration to impound phosphorus
that pours from extinct volcanoes and prevent the growth of
deadly algae. … Two other dams, Link River and Keno,
still bar salmon from reaching their farthest nurseries. …
The damage from removing wetlands from Upper Klamath Lake and
some of its tributaries, providing an all-you-can-eat buffet of
phosphorus for toxic algae that suffocates the fish, continues
to reverberate.
On Aug. 30, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator
Lee Zeldin signed a final action that withdrew proposed
revisions to the EPA’s Meat and Poultry Products Effluent
Limitations Guidelines (ELG) for wastewater discharged by meat
and poultry processing and rendering facilities. The
agency determined that existing federal wastewater regulations
under the Clean Water Act are effective compared to the
proposed changes. Zeldin stated in his remarks how withdrawing
the proposed revisions would advance the Trump Administration’s
effort to lower food costs for American families and farmers.
Three million gallons of acidic mine drainage flooded into the
Animas River basin 10 years ago, turning the southern Colorado
river a mustard yellow and making international headlines.
Caused by federal contractors working to treat pollution from
the Gold King Mine, the accidental release of water laden with
heavy metals prompted the creation of a Superfund site and a
reckoning with lingering environmental harms from the area’s
mining legacy, including hundreds of abandoned mines high in
the San Juan mountains. A decade later, community members and
Environmental Protection Agency staff are still grappling with
the long-term cleanup of the area’s mines and tailings piles.
A simmering feud over management of one of North America’s
longest rivers reached a boiling point when the U.S. Supreme
Court sent western states and the federal government back to
the negotiating table last year. Now the battle over waters of
the Rio Grande could be nearing resolution as New Mexico, Texas
and Colorado announced fresh settlement proposals Friday
designed to rein in groundwater pumping along the river in New
Mexico and ensure enough river water reliably makes it to
Texas. New Mexico officials say the agreements allow water
conservation decisions to be made locally while avoiding a
doomsday scenario of billion-dollar payouts on water
shortfalls.
