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.
Three years after an obscure Arizona agency was charged with
finding new water supplies for the state, it has received six
proposals from groups that hope to tap more than $375 million
in state money to develop new water sources. The proposals
include three to create desalination plants using ocean water —
likely from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. But exactly what
is being proposed — and how much it will cost — remains
confidential as the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority says
state law keeps it so until its board members award one or more
contracts to move ahead with more detailed plans.
Imperial Irrigation District (IID) Water Manager Tina Shields
began her report to the IID board Tuesday, Aug. 19, saying,
“Hydrology never has good news, lately.” … California,
therefore the Imperial Valley, is spared from mandatory cuts in
2026 under the Tier 1 shortage, maintaining its full allocation
of 4.4 million acre-feet, due to its senior water rights.
… If conditions worsen, further reductions could be
triggered, potentially affecting all Lower Basin states. …
She [Shields] said this year was the sixth-worst year in a
64-year recording. “We had a decent snowpack, but the dry soil
and fire damage circumvented the runoff entering the
reservoirs.”
… The Darden Clean Energy Project, approved by the California
Energy Commission in June, is the first development to be
fast-tracked under a 2022 state law that allows large renewable
energy projects to be reviewed and permitted without sign-off
from county and municipal governments. … The nearby
towns struggle with poor drinking water and
air quality. … It will be built on 9,500 acres sold by
the Westlands Water District. … [T]he district’s uncertain
water supplies have made the land impractical
for farming, prompting Westlands to divert water to more
productive land. … Eight other projects, from Imperial
County in the south to Shasta County in the north, currently
are pursuing approval through the opt-in process.
… [Beavers] are praised for bringing lands alive with lush
threaded wetlands that offer resiliency in droughts and
wildfires. On the other hand, a rancher or streamside
homeowner might counter that they are just smelly rats — rats
with a single-minded penchant for property damage. They gnaw
down landscaping and cause floods. … This month, CPW is
having to wade into the middle of the contentious beaver debate
and come up with a management strategy for an animal considered
a keystone species. That means an entire ecosystem would change
drastically without the presence of beavers.
Governor Gavin Newsom is advancing the Sites Reservoir project
to expand California’s water storage capabilities, as the state
braces for water shortages impacting western states and the
looming threat of a hotter and drier future. The California
Water Commission has approved a nearly $219 million funding
increase for the project to ensure it progresses swiftly. The
additional funding is necessary due to increased costs from
delays, including inflation and anticipated construction cost
hikes.
… AI is largely powered by data centers that field queries,
store data and deploy information. As AI becomes ubiquitous,
the power demand for data centers increases, leading to grid
reliability problems for people living nearby. … The
data centers also generate heat, so they rely on fresh water to
stay cool. Larger centers can consume up to 5 million
gallons (18.9 million liters) a day,
according to an article from the Environmental and Energy Study
Institute. That’s roughly the same as the daily water demand
for a town of up to 50,000 people.
To improve sustainability in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California this
week secured agricultural partners to cultivate rice on two
district-owned islands in the Delta – the heart of California’s
water supply system and one of the state’s most vital
ecosystems. In two separate actions, Metropolitan’s 38-member
board on Tuesday (Aug. 19) approved two lease agreements to
convert current agricultural lands to rice farming on Webb
Tract in California’s Contra Costa County and on Bacon Island
in San Joaquin County.
… [M]any people in the poorest county in the state have opted
for cisterns, reservoirs buried underground and covered with a
plastic lid or cement slab. To fill them, residents drive 20
minutes or so to town, often weekly, with tanks in their pickup
trucks or on their trailers to buy water at 10 cents a gallon,
or they have it delivered for an extra fee. … [I]n Fort
Garland [Colo.], the system was abruptly cut off this month —
without warning or notice. … Underneath it all is a deep
concern about whether this is a preview of the water wars ahead
as the West deals with unprecedented drought and its residents
compete for a resource that is finite yet essential to life.
… This week, the City Council for Rancho Palos Verdes, a
small, upscale city along the coast, formally approved an
ordinance that permanently bans new residential construction in
an area known as the Portuguese Bend Landslide
Complex. … Part of the issue, the city said, has
(ironically for a drought-ridden state) been water. The area
has been soaked with rain for much of the past
half decade, which seeped into and destabilized the precarious
hillside soil.
A northern Fresno County groundwater agency is ramping up
efforts to help landowners register their wells by hosting the
first in a string of workshops on Aug. 27. Dates for future
workshops are still in flux. Owners of water wells in the
greater Kerman, Biola, Easton, Fresno and Clovis areas are
invited to the workshop, from 3-6 p.m. at the Kerman Community
Center, 15101 W Kearney Blvd. The North Kings Groundwater
Sustainability Agency board of directors issued a
mandatory well registration policy in April. All well owners
must register by Nov. 30, 2025 to avoid a $100 penalty per
well.
Last week I attended a tour of the Tijuana River Valley,
organized by 11 organizations for the 30×30 Partnership Summit,
a statewide meeting of groups committed to achieving
California’s conservation goals. … A vast array of
entities oversee and advocate for the river valley. On the U.S.
side alone, the land is stewarded by federal, state, county and
city agencies. Advocacy groups with a stake in the river’s
future — and in resolving the public health crisis caused by
billions of gallons of untreated wastewater pouring into the
watershed — hail from both sides of the border.
A study on rats suggests that exposure to microplastics may
impair the blood–brain barrier, induce oxidative stress in the
brain, and damage neurons. The microplastic exposure involved
oral administration of low-density polyethylene (LDPE)
suspended in water for 3 and 6 weeks. The research was
published in Molecular Neurobiology. … Study author
Ghasem Forutan and his colleagues note that freshwater
contamination is a major route by which microplastics
can enter the human body.
Employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote to
Congress on Monday warning that the Trump administration had
reversed much of the progress made in disaster response and
recovery since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast two
decades ago. The letter to Congress, titled the “Katrina
Declaration,” rebuked President Trump’s plan to drastically
scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster
response — and more costs — to the states.
History is an increasingly unreliable teacher for water utility
managers. The memory of everything that has gone wrong –
floods, droughts, broken pipes, porous levees, unstable dams,
or inadequate interties – and the record of how utilities fixed
things and paid for the fixes – have traditionally been
chapters in the textbook of rules for the future. … But
climactic and political changes are rendering the 20th century
textbook obsolete in the 21st century. The need to deliver
clean water is the same. The weather, the financing, and the
growing threat of unaffordability are not. The efforts the
Santa Cruz Water Department is making to update the text
parallels work being undertaken by many other utilities.
The history of California water is saturated with stories about
years-long battles that inevitably get called “water wars.” But
UC Merced is trying to flip that narrative and chart a new
course for water in California based on finding common ground,
or in this case, finding common water. “Finding Common
Water” is the name of a river trip that UC Merced and EDF have
organized to bring together individuals who often hold diverse
perspectives. The goal is to find areas of alignment and
explore new collaborations.
… [T]he Colorado River Indian Tribes, often referred to as
CRIT … are planning to establish legal personhood status for
the Colorado River, giving it some of the same rights and
protections a human could hold in court. No government, tribal
or otherwise, has given these kinds of rights to the Colorado
River before. … A Supreme Court decree, Arizona v.
California, recognized CRIT as having the most senior water
rights on the lower Colorado River, and among the most senior
in the entire basin. That means CRIT has some of the most
legally untouchable water rights along the lower half of the
Colorado River.
The Sites Project Authority will receive an additional $218.9
million in inflationary increases, thanks to a unanimous vote
by the California Water Commission. The new total maximum
eligibility for the project is $1.094 billion. This award from
the Calif. Water Commission is part of an effort to
redistribute funding that had been earmarked for the expansion
of Los Vaqueros Reservoir, a project that was halted in
November 2024, which freed up Proposition 4 funds.
… Floods are the most common and costly natural disaster, but
difficult to predict with accuracy. Artificial intelligence has
played a significant role in giving insurers the data they
needed to design a parametric flood policy that could make
sense on both sides. Fremont, which has not had a history of
high flood risk, was one of the first jurisdictions to obtain
this kind of coverage. As changing weather patterns make it
harder for communities to assume they are safe from damaging
floods, others could follow.
Arizona cities are joining together under one banner to
advocate for Arizona in ongoing Colorado River talks. Existing
agreements determining Arizona’s allotted share of Colorado
River water are set to expire next year. … CAP [Central
Arizona Project] is the system that delivers Colorado River
water throughout the state and is in partnership with the
municipalities under the new coalition, branded Coalition for
Protecting Arizona’s Lifeline. The goal of the new Arizona
coalition is to unite Colorado River water users and showcase
the state’s ongoing water conservation efforts.
Thousands of birds fill the air over Mono
Lake, banking and swooping in a swirling murmuration
that resembles an aerial school of fish. As they sweep past,
their beating wings whoosh in unison. This small species, the
Wilson’s phalarope, arrives from the north in large numbers
each summer to feed at the saline lake, preparing for a long
journey to South America. After spending July gorging on the
larvae of alkali flies, the birds are gradually departing this
month to begin their migration to another saline lake about
6,000 miles away — Laguna Mar Chiquita in Argentina. Partly
because of their remarkable transcontinental voyage between
salt lakes, the grayish birds have inspired a close partnership
between communities in California and Argentina.
