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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… Low commodity prices, declining land values, and a
tightening credit market have all contributed to increased
anxiety for San Joaquin Valley farmers, especially almond
growers. In 2024, there were 216 farm bankruptcies nationwide,
an increase of 55% from the previous year. Of that number,
California had the most with 17 farms falling into bankruptcy.
… The decline in land value led to another problem for
farmers, a loss of collateral to back up their loans. “With the
loss of those large farming entities you have a flood of land
on the market and it depressed the land values and so now you
no longer have the collateral you need,” said Hagop Bedoyan, a
bankruptcy attorney in Fresno. “Lenders like to see more of an
equity cushion.” Bedoyan added that lenders not only want
farmers to have more equity but they are also requiring farmers
to have two sources of water, surface and well
water.
The State Water Resources Control Board is launching a new and
improved system called CalWATRS (short for California
Water Accounting Tracking and Reporting System) to make
reporting water rights easier and more efficient. This system
will help the state manage water data better and make it easier
for the public to access important information. … You’ll
be able to explore and get used to the new CalWATRS system from
July through September 2025. This is your chance to try it out
before official reporting begins. Look for more information on
the CalWATRS website. … The current system, eWRIMS, will stop
accepting reports on June 8, 2025. You’ll still be able to
search for water rights information in eWRIMS after that, but
you won’t be able to submit anything new.
Spending warm summer days at the lake might look a little
different for some people this year. Lake Camanche has been
added the long list of Northern California waterways,
restricting boats and other watercraft because of invasive
golden mussels. … Objects like
paddleboards or kayaks are not allowed because of the recent
spread of the golden mussel, discovered for the first time in
Northern California last year. According to the East Bay
Municipal Utility District, unless you have a boat with a
permanent slip at Camanche, or were in the water or in on site
dry storage when boat launches closed last November, your
watercraft is banned. … Tiwana Cypress and her husband
have been camping at Lake Camanche for 10 years.
… Cypress said she’s seen other options, like taking
advantage of the lake’s boat rentals.
Two longtime employees are taking over operations at the Kern
County Water Agency in an interim capacity. The agency
named Nick Pavletich and Craig Wallace as co-managers while it
conducts a search for a new general manager. … Board
President Eric Averett said in a statement last week that the
board believes that this is the right time to take the
leadership of the agency in a new direction and did not provide
any specifics as to why McCarthy was ousted. … Pavletich is
the Administrative Operations Manager and has been with the
agency for 24 years. Wallace is the State Water Project Manager
and has been with the agency for a decade. Pavletich will
oversee all local activities in his interim role, with Wallace
taking over all statewide activities, including a special focus
on the proposed Delta tunnel.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) reported
the Colusa County Superior Court sentenced a Placer County man
May 21 to two years in jail for commercializing state wildlife.
According to the DFW, Justin D. Lewis conspired to
commercialize Pacific lamprey, a jawless fish that is usually
sourced commercially from Alaska and highly regarded as bait
for sturgeon and other fish. The DFW also noted lamprey have
significant food and cultural significance to Yurok tribal
members in Del Norte County and other tribal communities in the
area. Lewis sourced the fish from the Klamath River in Del
Norte County and resold through co-conspirators in Colusa
County and elsewhere, DFW confirmed. “Because of a temporary
downturn in the bait market, Lewis and others created an
illegal commercial market for California lamprey,” the DFW
stated.
Some La Plata County residents are looking for alternate
sources of drinking water after a wastewater treatment system
malfunctioned, sending E. coli into the local waterways. The
wastewater treatment system serves Pine Winds Mobile Home Park,
where about 60 people live east of the La Plata River and west
of Durango. Rivulets of water crisscrossed the community’s main
road Monday, flooding its central leach field. The field
typically helps treat wastewater before it enters the
groundwater system or nearby creek that flows into the La Plata
River. The leach field is failing, said Nicole Rowan,
director of the water quality control division at the Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment. “There’s too much
water in there, so it can’t slowly let the water flow through
it to properly treat it,” Rowan said.
Work is set to begin on a water infrastructure in central
Oroville as the California Water Service (Cal Water) works to
improve water supply reliability and fire protection. The
project, which begins on June 9, 2025, is expected to last
10-12 weeks. Cal Water said that crews will install 3,510 feet
of new 12-, 8- and 6-inch water main to replace aging main.
“Infrastructure improvements like this help Cal Water provide
safe, clean, reliable drinking water to our customers’ homes
and businesses. That’s our top priority,” said Loni Lind, Local
Manager. “Proactive, ongoing maintenance and upgrades like this
also help improve our emergency readiness.” … Cal Water
said that this effort aligns with their goal to continually
modernize and upgrade its water system to better serve
customers.
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.
