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.
On June 30, 2025, the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of California held that the conversion of
temporary to permanent contracts for the Central Valley Project
(CVP) water does not require additional environmental review.
… The challenged provision of the WIIN Act allowed
holders of temporary water service contracts to request that
the Reclamation convert their contracts into permanent
“repayment” contracts, with accelerated repayment of
construction costs. … The Court agreed with Reclamation’s
decision that these WIIN-mandated conversions do not trigger
additional environmental review under NEPA or the ESA, despite
other water contract renewals being subject to those
environmental review requirements under provisions of the 1992
Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA).
Earlier this year, a modest, two-year pilot program aimed at
opening 6 miles of trails (out of 60) to bicycles in the Mount
Tamalpais watershed hit an unexpected legal roadblock. Despite
four years of outreach, resource surveys and stakeholder input,
the decision by the Marin Municipal Water District Board of
Directors to approve the program was met with a California
Environmental Quality Act lawsuit from a coalition of hiking
groups. I consider it a major setback for data-driven planning,
public collaboration and more equitable trail access.
… This decision should not be viewed as an admission of
error, but rather as a pragmatic response to legal tactics that
exploit CEQA to obstruct progress, even when no real
environmental harm is at stake. –Written by Krista Hoff, off road advocacy director for
the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. submitted a request to federal
regulators Friday to tear down an aging hydroelectric project
in Mendocino and Lake counties, a $530 million
demolition that would include removal of two dams on the
Eel River. The Potter Valley Project, according to PG&E, is
no longer financially fit for power generation. However, the
project’s greatest asset has become the water it provides, and
the beneficiaries of that water, which include cities and towns
in Sonoma and Marin counties as well as the region’s celebrated
grape-growing industry, have been on edge about losing
supplies. … Under PG&E’s proposal, a new agency run
by local communities would take over some of the existing
project facilities and continue water shipments. The agency,
though, wouldn’t be able to ship as much water and would likely
charge more for it.
The Interior Department is expanding its targets for layoffs to
include more than 1,400 “competitive areas” — an increase of
hundreds of categories since its first notice this spring —
including new units within the Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and
Wildlife Service, Bureau of Safety and Environmental
Enforcement, and Office of the Secretary, according to an
internal document. … New additions to Interior’s list
include Bureau of Reclamation offices — where the number of
targeted units has doubled since the first notice, to more than
180 — for the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basin, Great
Plains, Mid-Pacific and Pacific Northwest regions. The Fish and
Wildlife Service faces potential cuts to jobs in national
wildlife refuges across the nation and to posts focused on
ecological services and fish and aquatic conservation.
Other natural resource and environmental agency news:
… Because the Hopi—along with the nearby Navajo and San Juan
Southern Paiute—live in remote areas far from major population
centers, residents rely on practical solutions to survive with
limited access to water. … Now, after years of
negotiations, the tribes are seeing their push for long-term
solutions gain renewed momentum in Congress. The Northeastern
Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act, reintroduced this
year with bipartisan support, would resolve decades of legal
disputes and devote $5 billion to delivering Colorado
River water to the region through a new pipeline,
pumping stations and storage systems. … The state also
stands to benefit. If passed, the settlement would give tribes
the authority to release water to other users—flexibility that
could help ease shortages during the ongoing drought.
A cloud seeding pilot program that aimed to enhance water
supplies within the Santa Ana Watershed has been called off,
due to insignificant results and the proliferation of burn
scars from wildfires in the target areas, including Orange
County. Officials with the Santa Ana Watershed Project
Authority announced earlier this month that the four-year
program, which began in late 2023, would not be continued as
researchers did not see the anticipated results.
… Findings from a validation report published in May
indicate while precipitation levels in the San Bernardino and
San Jacinto mountains, in the respective northeast and
southeast corners of the territory, increased by 4%, additional
rainfall in the San Gabriel and Santa Ana mountains was
negligible.
In an effort to head off concerns about the state’s role in a
major Western Slope water deal, a Western Slope water district
has offered up a compromise proposal to Front Range water
providers. In order to defuse what Colorado River Water
Conservation District General Manager Andy Mueller called “an
ugly contested hearing before the CWCB,” the River District is
proposing that the state water board take a neutral position on
the exact amount of water tied to the Shoshone hydropower plant
water rights and let a water court determine a final number.
… The River District, which represents 15 counties on
the Western Slope, is planning to purchase some of the oldest
and largest non-consumptive water rights on the Colorado River
from Xcel Energy for nearly $100 million. … As part of the
deal, the River District is seeking to add an instream flow
water right to benefit the environment to the hydropower water
rights.
More than 1,200 adult spring-run Chinook salmon meant to return
to the San Joaquin River ended up in the Tuolumne River
instead, prompting a five-part rescue operation. The fish were
originally released as part of the San Joaquin River
Restoration Program. But cooler, cleaner water and improved
habitat conditions on the Tuolumne appeared to draw the fish
off course, according to officials from the Turlock Irrigation
District (TID). … The salmon became trapped below the
historic La Grange Diversion Dam after spring flows receded,
isolating them in a plunge pool with limited oxygen and rising
temperatures. … Officials say the salmon were likely
drawn to the Tuolumne due to restoration work already
underway.
Newly released state guidelines on how to get a handle on
subsidence, or land sinking, were received with mixed reactions
after they were released by the Department of Water Resources
on Thursday. The guidelines provide some basic, but pointed,
advice on how San Joaquin Valley groundwater managers can best
stop, slow or even reverse subsidence, which a 2014 report
shows had cost billions of dollars up to that time in history.
Managers should put more water, lots more, into withered
aquifers to bring land elevations back up, according to the new
guidelines. … One groundwater agency or water district can’t
fix the problem without help from surrounding districts, the
new guidelines state.
As the planet gets hotter and its reservoirs shrink and
its glaciers melt, people have increasingly drilled into a
largely ungoverned, invisible cache of fresh
water: the vast, hidden pools found deep
underground. Now, a new study that examines the world’s
total supply of fresh water — accounting for its rivers and
rain, ice and aquifers together — warns that Earth’s most
essential resource is quickly disappearing, signaling what the
paper’s authors describe as “a critical, emerging threat to
humanity.” … More than anything, Earth is being
slowly dehydrated by the unmitigated mining of
groundwater, which underlies vast proportions
of every continent.
It’s been five years since Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW)
staff specialist Joe Bennett spotted 20 dead bighorn sheep near
a guzzler while flying over Southern Nevada. The manmade water
source had run dry, and the sheep, reliant on it for water, had
died within 40 feet of the failed water source. … [T]he death
of dozens of sheep represented what climate, wildlife and other
experts say they are seeing day after day across the Southern
Nevada desert — desert-adapted wildlife feeling the toll of
abnormally dry conditions carrying on season after season, and
not enough relief through monsoons. … The vegetation turns
crispy; animals that rely on the vegetation for moisture don’t
get it, Bennett said, requiring even more water to digest the
dry roughage.
The governments of Mexico and the United States signed a
memorandum of understanding on Thursday to fund and expedite
several wastewater treatment projects in the Tijuana River
basin. Untreated wastewater continually affects residents
living along the river, which flows across the border from
Tijuana and through several of San Diego’s southern
neighborhoods. Residents living along the river have long
battled severe health issues which researchers say stem from
the river’s contamination. … In Thursday’s event
celebrated in Mexico City, US Environmental Protection Agency
Secretary Lee Zeldin and Mexico’s Secretary of the Environment
and National Resources of Mexico Alicia Bárcena agreed to a
series of actions to be taken by both governments by 2027 to
address the deteriorating wastewater treatment crisis.
The Trump administration this week released a plan to
fast-track the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in the
US, delighting tech groups while alarming environmental
advocates who point to the industry’s toxic emissions, high
water usage and heavy reliance on fossil
fuels. The “AI action plan,” released July 23 by the White
House, calls for the development of new AI data centers – huge
facilities that house AI computing infrastructure – to be
waived from typical assessment requirements under
the National Environmental Policy Act, which determine a
project’s environmental impact. The plan also proposes
expediting environmental permitting for such data centers by
streamlining or reducing regulations under the Clean Air Act,
the Clean Water Act and other environmental
laws.
The U.S. Congress has passed hundreds of laws protecting
federal public lands over the past century through bipartisan
efforts and with the support of local governments. Now,
President Donald Trump’s administration and some Republican
lawmakers in Congress are pushing policies and legislation that
upend these protections. … Even Americans who may not seek
out the wild landscapes of public lands benefit in less obvious
ways. Large portions of the water supply for some of the
biggest U.S. cities come from forests. … While about 13%
of the U.S. water supply comes from national forests, this
source is particularly important in the West, where it accounts
for almost half of the total water supply.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has completed
its 2025 waterfowl breeding population survey. The survey shows
an increase in both mallard and total duck species this year.
The breeding population of mallards rose from 177,828 to
265,640, marking a 49% increase. Total ducks, encompassing all
species, increased from 373,864 to 474,495, a 27% rise. Despite
this growth, mallards remain 16% below the long-term
average. “The survey indicated an increase in mallard
abundance, and habitat conditions were good in northern
California, so we expect average to above-average production
for all waterfowl species,” said CDFW Waterfowl Program
Biologist Melanie Weaver.
San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District (SBVMD) has
voiced strong support for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest budget
revision, which identifies the Delta Conveyance Project as a
key initiative for streamlining and investment. The
fast-tracked permitting process for the project was highlighted
in the governor’s 2025-26 May Budget Revision released earlier
this year. … The Delta Conveyance Project, or DCP, aims
to strengthen the State Water Project, a large water delivery
network that supplies 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres
of farmland, including parts of the Inland Empire. Currently,
the State Water Project accounts for 26% of the water delivered
by local retailers within the San Bernardino Valley’s
353-square-mile service area.
The highway stretches across Marin and Solano Counties through
the colorful mosaic of marshland in the San Pablo Bay north of
San Francisco. But state Route 37’s scenic roadway is
vulnerable to sea level rise, which could submerge the highway
as soon as 2040, and is subject to brutal bottlenecks during
peak hours as commuters circulate between counties. The
doomed Bay Area highway that sees over 40,000 drivers a day has
a fix in the works — but not everyone agrees it’s the right
one. As shovels and bulldozers from Caltrans prepare to widen
Highway 37 in a $500 million project, tides continuously chip
away at the road’s edge. Its western half near Novato is
subject to repeated flooding, especially during king tides,
while the eastern span is protected by a series of levees and
dikes.
… Delta residents love to share their experiences with this
summertime weather phenomenon, in all its complexities, and how
it affects their daily activities and even their life choices.
“The Delta Breeze is a real thing,” says Iva Walton, Isleton’s
mayor. The breeze originates in the Pacific Ocean, more than 50
miles away, and meteorologists and atmospheric scientists say
it can bring a few degrees of relief on hot days to the
millions of people who live, work and play in the Delta, a
region that extends from Vallejo to Sacramento and Stockton.
… As inland temperatures rise, the currents push in
through two major openings in the coastal range: the Golden
Gate and the Petaluma Gap, lowlands that run between Bodega and
Tamales bays and Petaluma. From San Francisco and San Pablo
bays, the cool air travels up through the Carquinez Strait,
usually arriving in the Delta in the late afternoon.
California regulators are supporting a controversial plan
backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — and opposed by environmental
groups — that would give water agencies more leeway in how they
comply with water quality rules. The Newsom-backed approach is
included as part of a proposed water plan for the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, released by the State Water
Resources Control Board on Thursday. The plan would give water
agencies two potential pathways to comply with water quality
goals — either a traditional regulatory approach based on
limiting water withdrawals to maintain certain river flow
levels, or an alternative approach supported by the governor in
which water agencies, under negotiated agreements, would make
certain water flow commitments while contributing funding for
wetland habitat restoration projects and other measures.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin
committed the Trump administration to “a permanent, 100%
solution to the decades-old Tijuana River sewage crisis” in a
new agreement signed with Mexico on Thursday.
… According to the agreement, Mexico will shake loose
$93 million in money it previously committed, known as “Minute
238 funds.” Deadlines for several long-discussed improvements
will also come sooner — some this year — it says. One example
is the 10-million gallons per day of treated effluent that
currently flows into the Tijuana River from the Arturo Herrera
and La Morita wastewater treatment plants and will now go to a
site upstream of the Rodriguez Dam, southeast of Tijuana.
… The MOU also commits the two countries to taking into
account Tijuana’s growing population, to make sure that
infrastructure improvements are not outstripped by changes on
the ground.
