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 Monterey Peninsula Water Management District voted Monday
to ask the State Water Resources Control Board to relax parts
of a long-standing cease-and-desist order that restricts how
much water can be drawn from the Carmel River. The order dates
to 2009, when state regulators found California American Water
(Cal-Am) was over-pumping the river, triggering strict caps
that have shaped development and conservation on the Peninsula
for years. … General Manager David Stoldt told the board
that, thanks to aggressive conservation and new supply from
projects like Pure Water Monterey, the Peninsula currently has
enough water to meet existing demand.
It will soon be legal to hunt and kill mute swans anywhere in
California, after Governor Gavin Newsom signed state
legislation into law earlier this month. … Mute
swans are territorial and extremely aggressive, and do not mix
well with other waterfowl species native to the area. They do
not generally migrate and prefer to feed on primarily submerged
aquatic vegetation in wetlands, which are
limited across California, and are essential for many
wetland-dependent birds, native to the state. … Mute
swans were first found in the Suisun and Napa
marshes during the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s annual Waterfowl Breeding Population Survey in
2007.
A wide-ranging letter from J.G. Boswell Company Vice President
Jeof Wyrick accuses SJV Water of misrepresenting the farming
giant’s plan to deal with subsidence. … Wyrick is also the
chair of the El Rico Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA).
… El Rico doesn’t plan to sink Corcoran by another 10 feet,
according to Wyrick’s Aug. 12 letter. Just six feet. It
may be relevant to note that El Rico’s plan would possibly
lower the Corcoran levee, which protects the town and two state
prisons, to a height of 186 feet.
The Trump administration is seeking to lay off nearly 200
Coloradans who work for the Department of the Interior managing
public lands and conducting ecological research. The planned
cuts were outlined in a filing made public Monday in an ongoing
federal court case stemming from a lawsuit by two labor unions
seeking to halt the layoffs. In total, the department plans to
eliminate more than 2,000 jobs across the Bureau of Land
Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of
Reclamation, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological
Survey and the department’s administrative offices.
Although the Bay Area won’t be directly hit by an atmospheric
river this weekend, we will still be impacted by some rain.
According to ABC7 News Meteorologist Sandhya Patel, spotty
showers will move in late Wednesday night with a chance of an
isolated thunderstorm. … As for those to the North, the
National Weather Service says there’s a more than 60% chance of
heavy rain and snow near the California-Oregon border later
this week.
Governor Newsom signed in law California Senate Bill 598 (SB
598) on October 11, 2025, and will go into effect January 1,
2026. SB 598 will implement processes to streamline local
agency water infrastructure projects. It will allow certain
local agencies to use the Construction Manager/General
Contractor (CM/GC) project delivery method for projects aimed
at addressing ongoing drought or climate change-related water
shortages. Currently, California Public Contract Code
section 21568.1 authorizes the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California to use the CM/GC project delivery method
for regional recycled water projects or other water
infrastructure projects under specified conditions.
Demolition of the former Motel 6 is complete, announced the
California Tahoe Conservancy, making way for future
environmental restoration and public access improvements.
… The Upper Truckee Marsh South
property was one of the most consequential environmental
acquisitions in years for the Lake Tahoe Basin. The Conservancy
joined with partners to acquire the property in 2024, providing
the opportunity to remove development from four acres of
ecologically valuable floodplain along the
Upper Truckee River and protect 25 acres of existing wetlands.
The city council approved a $529,337 contract with Sentry
Equipment Corp. for the rehabilitation of a key component at
the city’s wastewater treatment plant on Tuesday, Oct. 4. The
project will focus on upgrading and repairing the plant’s
secondary clarifier, which plays a critical role in the
treatment process by removing or recirculating solids from the
wastewater stream. The clarifiers, originally constructed in
1972 to meet federal Clean Water Act standards, currently
process between 1 to 1.5 million gallons of wastewater per
day.
Dust from California’s drying Salton Sea
doesn’t just smell bad. Scientists from UC Riverside found that
breathing the dust can quickly re-shape the microscopic world
inside the lungs. … Published in the journal mSphere,
the study shows that inhalation of airborne dust collected
close to the shallow, landlocked lake alters both the microbial
landscape and immune responses in mice that were otherwise
healthy. “Even Salton Sea dust filtered to remove live
bacteria or fungi is altering what microbes survive in the
lungs,” said Mia Maltz, UCR mycologist and lead study author.
The salmon season is drawing to a rapid close, but the fish are
in, and things should only get better! Salmon action on all
three rivers, the Feather, American and now the Mokelumne is in
full swing. Despite the full closure of the Sacramento River,
and the current low flows on the Feather, anglers are now
enjoying some of the best action of the season. … On an
interesting note, the San Joaquin River Restoration Program set
a record this year with 448 adult spring-run Chinook returning
to the system. This is the highest number of captured returns
since action began in 2014 and is a testament to the potential
success of well-managed restoration programs.
For years, San Diegans near our southern beaches have learned
to treat the Pacific with suspicion. On a day when the water
looks inviting, invisible pathogens may be drifting north from
Tijuana, where a water treatment plant struggles to contain its
outflow. … But oceanographers at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography have devised a way to tip the odds. The new
Pathogen Forecast Model translates the complexity of oceanic
physics (currents, winds, tides, waves) into something as
simple as a weather report. … The new model can project, up
to five days in advance, where contaminated water is likely to
travel and how risky it might be to take a swim at various San
Diego beaches.
The accurate detection of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS), often termed “forever chemicals,” presents a critical
and complex challenge for environmental science due to their
structural diversity, the lack of standardized methods, and the
need for highly sensitive equipment to measure trace
environmental levels. A study published in Environmental
Science and Technology reveals an innovative, deep
learning-based approach to overcome these obstacles. The
prevalence of background contamination and the sheer number of
distinct PFAS compounds further complicate the development of
universal detection protocols.
A controversial proposal to build a 14-mile underground tunnel
to transport water from Northern California southward got a
boost from the state Court of Appeals, which ruled that
preliminary work can begin on the project. Last year, a judge
in Sacramento County agreed with a collection of counties,
water districts, environmental groups and native tribes seeking
to stop the Delta Conveyance Project. The
judge found that preconstruction geotechnical work had to be
certified by a state agency before it could begin, and issued a
preliminary injunction preventing that work from moving
forward. But on Friday, a three-judge panel from the state
appellate court reversed that ruling.
Salmon on the Klamath River have crossed a
major threshold a year after four dams were
removed along the California-Oregon border, with the fish
reaching the river’s headwaters for the first time in more than
a century. Oregon wildlife officials said Friday that
multiple salmon were observed in Upper Klamath Lake, as well as
its major tributaries, which confirms the 300-mile migration of
salmon from the Pacific Ocean in Northern California to their
historical spawning grounds in southern Oregon.
Colorado is in its first year of responding to a zebra mussel
infestation in a big river, the Colorado River. State staff say
they have what they need to handle the high-priority needs —
they just need their funding to stay off the chopping
block. The fast-reproducing mussels, or their microscopic
stage called veligers, were first detected in Colorado in 2022.
Since then, the state’s Aquatic Nuisance Species team and its
partners have been working to monitor water, decontaminate
boats and educate the public to keep the mussels from
spreading. That effort logged a serious failure this summer
when state staff detected adult zebra mussels in the Colorado
River, where treatment options are limited.
The Interior Department on Monday revealed it was planning more
than 2,000 layoffs that are now paused under a court order,
with the scheduled cuts spread throughout its bureaus and
offices. The department shared the details of its plans
after a federal judge ordered the disclosure as part of her
temporary freeze on many reductions in force during the
government shutdown. … [The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service] is looking to lay off 143 covered
employees, or about 2% of its overall workforce. Its Migratory
Birds, Conservation Investment and Fish and Aquatic
Conservation offices would see the most significant cuts. …
[The Bureau of Reclamation] is
planning to shed 30 covered employees. Those cuts are set to
occur in the Pacific Northwest, at the Hoover
Dam and scattered across other locations.
An atmospheric river taking shape over the Pacific could bring
rain and mountain snow along Interstate 80 and other Sierra
routes late this week, according to the National Weather
Service. Forecasters in Sacramento said confidence continues to
rise in a “potent atmospheric river event” developing between
Friday and Monday. Snow levels begin above 8,000 feet Friday
and drop to near pass level, including Donner, later in the
weekend. The storm is being driven by a deepening trough from
the Gulf of Alaska, which may funnel subtropical moisture
directly into Northern California.
Water agencies all over California are experiencing water
affordability and cost increase challenges. We spoke with Dan
Denham, general manager of San Diego County Water Authority, to
learn how his agency is working to keep prices affordable for
its customers. … [Dan Denham:] Water markets are
absolutely part of the solution. They should have been 20 years
in the making. … [T]here are barriers, including compacts and
court decrees between different parties, that make it difficult
to set up a water arrangement. But we can get around that with
cooperative agreements.
The United States has been at the nexus of a data center boom,
as OpenAI, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others invest hundreds
of billions to build the giant computing sites in the name of
advancing artificial intelligence. But the companies have also
exported the construction frenzy abroad, with less scrutiny.
… As data centers rise, the sites — which need vast
amounts of power for computing and water to cool the computers
— have contributed to or exacerbated disruptions not only in
Mexico, but in more than a dozen other countries, according to
a New York Times examination.
… This megadrought—defined as a multidecade period of extreme
dryness—has been ongoing for 25 years across the southwestern
United States and northwestern Mexico. Scientists say it’s
driven by anthropogenic climate change, supercharged by
greenhouse gases. … This drought is impacting agriculture,
industry, and water availability for people’s everyday use, but
it has also hit animals hard. Its impacts are particularly
visible in birds, who have lost habitat, struggled to find
food, and in some cases have begun to decline dramatically.
