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.
Nearly 40 organizations across the Sacramento region are
beginning the formal process of approving the Water Forum 2050
Agreement, a major milestone in advancing the next generation
of regional water management. … “Twenty-five years ago,
the region made a bold decision to move past disagreement and
commit to a shared approach for protecting the Lower American
River and securing reliable water supplies,” said Water Forum
Executive Director Ashlee Casey. “Water Forum 2050 strives for
the same level of foresight. Our goal is that 25 years from
now, people will view this agreement with the same confidence
and appreciation we have for the original.”
Several Colorado agencies have waded into the discussion of
which waters the federal government should protect from
pollution and development under the Clean Water Act. In
November, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency proposed a change to the
federal rule defining “Waters of the United States” or WOTUS to
bring it in line with guidance from the Trump administration
and a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision. … Despite having
state protections, there are concerns with how the proposal
could adversely affect arid, Western states and challenge state
resources.
Three communities – San Diego, Oceanside and parts of East
County – are entering the era of recycled water, at a crucial
moment for local water politics. How that gets sorted out will
be reflected in San Diegans’ water bills. A decade ago, amid
worries about the impact of drought on water supplies, those
San Diego municipalities turned to recycled water, that is,
turning sewage into drinking water. One local city, Carlsbad,
also has a desalination plant, which turns seawater into
drinking water. All those recycled water projects now are
coming to fruition. But angst about drought has been overtaken
by concern about the rising cost of water from the San Diego
County Water Authority.
With Imperial Beach closures stretching into a third
consecutive year, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has
approved a new executive-level position aimed at speeding up
and unifying the County’s response to the ongoing Tijuana River
Valley sewage crisis. Supervisors voted Tuesday to establish a
County Pollution Crisis Chief, a role designed to serve as the
central point of coordination for sewage-related response
efforts. County leaders say the position will bring urgency,
accountability and clearer leadership during the ongoing state
of emergency impacting South Bay communities.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched the first
step of its expedited review to determine safe levels of
fluoride in drinking water, according to a notice posted in the
Federal Register on Wednesday, advancing a priority of the
Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. The
agency’s final toxicity assessment will inform potential
revisions to fluoride drinking water standards under the Safe
Drinking Water Act and will also support the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations on fluoride in
drinking water, according to the notice.
Stanislaus County supervisors adopted a well mitigation and
management plan Tuesday for the groundwater underlying most of
the northern part of the county. County government has
jurisdiction over the eastern and western unincorporated areas
that are not within irrigation districts — about 22% of the
groundwater basin. … According to a report Tuesday from
county Water Resources Manager Christy McKinnon, groundwater
levels are expected to decline before management efforts
reverse the pattern. Almost 30 wells are at risk of failing if
there is no action.
The Marysville ring levee project started in 2010. Now, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is nearing completion of the
project. Engineers are submitting for federal certification.
… By federal standards, the project is done. FEMA
requires a one-in-100-year level of protection. But the state
of California requires a 200-year level protection. … ”I
think it’s especially important for Marysville because it’s at
the confluence of two major rivers, Feather River and Yuba
River, which has been the focal point of devastating floods
over the last century or so,” said Ryan McNally, the director
of water resources and flood risk reduction with Yuba Water
Agency.
The California Farm Water Coalition has released its 2025
Impact Report. … In 2025, CFWC deepened its leadership
role as a unified voice for California agriculture, working
alongside the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley and
the San Joaquin Valley Water Collaborative Action Program.
… Key advocacy efforts included supporting the Healthy
Rivers and Landscapes alternative in the Bay-Delta Plan,
championing critical infrastructure projects like the B.F. Sisk
Dam improvements, Sites Reservoir permitting and construction,
Success Reservoir Enlargement Project, and pressing for strong
federal action under Executive Order 14181 with a shared goal
of increasing available water supply by 9 million acre-feet per
year by 2040.
… You could feel the significance of what we were celebrating
[Dec. 11]: the functional completion of statewide LiDAR data
acquisition for California. … We now hold high-resolution,
three-dimensional information for the entire state—a dataset
capable of revealing everything from the heights of individual
trees to the traces of active earthquake faults.
… Across the state, agencies and partners are now
turning raw LiDAR data into actionable information products at
statewide and local scales. A few examples: WERK Initiative:
Advancing watershed-scale remote sensing products calibrated
for forest and landscape stewardship. Department of Water
Resources: Leading California’s contribution to the national
elevation-derived hydrography dataset—essential for modeling
water flow, flood behavior, and watershed resilience.
… As warm and dry conditions continue in the West, the
forecasts for the amount of water flowing through the
Upper Colorado River Basin keep dropping.
… And to top it off, the [Drought Response Operations]
agreement that outlines how Upper Basin states, including
Colorado, can help out in drought years expired Dec. 31, and
it’s not yet clear from a legal standpoint what that means for
this year. … The agreement, called the DROA by the water
wonks, aimed to keep Powell’s elevation above 3,525 feet above
sea level. … It’s one of several agreements that expire this
year and must be replaced, including Mexico’s Colorado River
agreement and reservoir operation rules from 2007.
… Colorado’s mountains harbor a vital water
supply that melts and runs through four major rivers and 19
downstream states each year.
A federal courtroom in San Francisco is becoming the latest
battleground over the future of West Coast salmon. On Jan. 26,
a case brought by commercial fishing groups went before a
judge, accusing major tire manufacturers of using a chemical
additive that can be lethal to endangered fish once it washes
into rivers and streams. … At the center of the dispute is
6PPD, a compound used to prevent tires from breaking down when
exposed to air and ozone. According to the plaintiffs, that
same chemical transforms into a toxic byproduct known as
6PPD-quinone once tire particles are washed off roads during
storms. They argue this runoff can devastate salmon
populations along the California and Alaska coasts.
Things have been really dry in many parts of
Wyoming this winter but it’s not as dry as
Utah, where it’s record-breaking. As of Jan.
27, only a tenth of an inch of snow has fallen on Salt Lake
City, Utah, this winter. That’s the lowest snowfall on record,
by a significant margin. … The latest records show the
statewide snowpack is currently at 59% of the median, close to
a new historic low. … If the mid-February pivot comes to
pass, Wyoming should do well. Many of its basins are in dire
need of more snowpack, and [Cowboy State Daily meteorologist
Don] Day believes there’s a decent chance they’ll get it.
… The situation in the south isn’t as promising.
Colorado and Utah have
already reached a deficit that wouldn’t be impossible to
overcome, but it would take a lot.
Sacramento remains one of the most flood-prone areas in
the country, with significant development and
construction taking place in historic floodplains despite
ongoing efforts to shore up protections. For decades, many
people living in these high-risk areas in California and across
the country have turned to a federal program for coverage in
case of disaster — the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),
managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA). The program has provided policies to millions,
but faces a looming deadline amid a potential government
shutdown. Without Congressional reauthorization or amendments
the NFIP could lapse at the end of the month, putting the
brakes on new insurance contracts and reducing the NFIP’s
authority to borrow funds from the U.S. Treasury.
On Tuesday, Jan. 27, U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto
(D-Nev.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to deliver more
funding to protect the Lake Tahoe Basin. … Senator
Cortez Masto’s Santini-Burton Modernization Act would allow
U.S. Forest Service to once again use S-B Act funds to manage
public lands in the Tahoe Basin, with an emphasis on protecting
lake clarity, reducing wildfire risk, and addressing recreation
impacts, all of which were outlined in the original law [the
Santini-Burton Act of 1980]. The bill would also expand the
Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California’s authority to manage
lands in the Basin.
President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin
Newsom are so in sync on California water that they’re in
a race to capture as much of it as possible — possibly even at
each other’s expense. Trump and Newsom’s relative
alignment on water issues has been good news all around
for farmers and cities that draw from both sides of the state’s
main water hub: the federally run Central Valley
Project and the aptly named State Water Project, which
is state-run. Water deliveries have ticked up, mostly as a
result of back-to-back wet years but also as a result of
loosened environmental rules on both sides, much to the chagrin
of environmental groups concerned about the collapse of
endangered fish populations in the sensitive Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta. But the feds have been steadily squeezing out
more water over the course of the past year — to the point
where state customers are getting worried that their own
supplies could be in jeopardy.
The U.S. Department of the Interior approved a major
California water project on Friday, clearing a key obstacle for
a massive new reservoir. The proposed 1.5 million
acre-foot Sites Reservoir would store water from the
Sacramento River and distribute it during droughts to several
parts of California, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin
valleys, Southern California and the Bay Area. Stretching
about 4 miles across and 13 miles north to south, it’s
meant to provide water to approximately 24 million people, and
it would mark California’s first major reservoir project since
1979. … The next steps in the project are
securing water rights from the state and getting local agencies
to officially sign off on funding.
… Complicating BOR’s mission, the Western States have
experienced ongoing historic drought over the last two decades.
Our work has identified multiple challenges in this area. For
example, we audited BOR’s cost allocation and ratesetting
processes for the Central Valley Project and
determined that BOR did not have internal controls sufficient
to ensure the accuracy of those processes, which is necessary
to ensure that costs are accurately allocated and that
construction and operations costs are recouped by the Federal
Government as appropriate.
The San Francisco Bay and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta Estuary
(hereafter, Bay-Delta) is the largest estuary on the West Coast
of the United States. The Bay- Delta covers more than 1,600
square miles and drains a watershed of more than 75,000 square
miles, which is greater than 40 percent of California. The
region surrounding the Bay- Delta is home to about 10 million
people, and its habitats (fig. 1) support more than 800 plant
and animal species. The waterways of the Bay- Delta are the
central hub of California’s extensive freshwater delivery
system, supplying water to more than 27 million Californians
and 4 million acres of farmland in the Central Valley.
… This fact sheet focuses on research conducted by the
USGS in the Bay- Delta region, mostly within the past 5 years.
Utah has successfully bid to seize control of the defunct US
Magnesium plant, and it plans to donate the massive volume of
water it evaporated each year to benefit the Great Salt Lake.
The company declared bankruptcy in September following years of
insolvency, a catastrophic equipment failure in 2021 and after
it fell short on an environmental cleanup contract with federal
regulators. State regulators, meanwhile, denied the company’s
attempts to extend intake canals in 2022 and continue siphoning
away the Great Salt Lake’s record-low water. … US
Magnesium pumped more than 52,000 acre-feet of lake brine and
groundwater in 2024, according to state information.
A groundbreaking water research facility is taking shape along
the San Diego River, giving scientists access to something
they’ve never had before: real water, in real time. The
project, called the One Water Lab, is being developed by San
Diego State University. … What makes it unique is direct
access to multiple water sources, including the San Diego
River, stormwater runoff, and even wastewater. A dedicated
sewer line will allow researchers to work with wastewater
onsite before safely returning it to the system. Next door, a
massive biofiltration basin is already quietly doing critical
work. The system collects stormwater and treats it through
layers of specialized media, helping remove pollutants before
they reach the river.
