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.
More than half a million Californians live among waterways in
low-lying towns of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. …
[T]housands of homeowners in the region are insured against
flooding thanks to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),
which backs policies sold by private insurers. … But the
flood insurance program is administered by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, and the Trump administration says
that agency is in need of a major overhaul. … The flood
insurance program might even be eliminated, experts say.
… In July, the Legislature passed, and Governor Katie Hobbs
signed, an unprecedented law to authorize the transfer of
groundwater rights from agricultural to urban use within
Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties. This framework legislation –
called “Ag to Urban” – enables farmers in these three counties
to sell and transfer their groundwater rights to the home
building industry. … To gain the necessary majority for
passage, Ag to Urban contains a significant limitation: the
credits made available to home builders can be used only within
a one-mile radius of the farmland being retired from
production, thereby ensuring that local communities will retain
a continuing share in ongoing regional development. –Written by Bruce Babbitt, a former governor of Arizona
and former U.S. secretary of the interior under President Bill
Clinton.
Other groundwater regulation news around the West:
… Last summer, Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife, or CLAW,
and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority
purchased the approximately 2.5-acre parcel that’s home to
Laurel Spring for $1 million after two months of intense and
hurried fundraising. … The property near the corner of
Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue is home to
a spring and stream that flow year-round, providing a valuable
water source for species … which are dealing with increased
habitat fragmentation from development and roadways that can
make accessing the Santa Monica Mountains’ limited water
sources even more difficult.
… Peatlands — fens and bogs — are key climate regulators.
(Bogs are maintained by precipitation, but fens, which, in
North America, occur in the Northeast, Midwest and Mountain
West, depend on groundwater.) … In relatively dry southern
Colorado, they also provide a secondary round of water storage.
The first round is Colorado’s snowpack, which, as it melts,
feeds groundwater that fens’ spongy peat captures and later
releases to dwindling waterways and drying landscapes after the
snow is gone. But the steep and degraded bare patch at
Ophir Pass no longer functions.
Amid handwringing at San Diego City Hall over next week’s vote
to hike water rates, city analysts dropped a harrowing report
revealing how easily the department that handles water and
wastewater could collapse without them. … The analysts’
report says that if councilmembers refuse to raise rates at
all, the Public Utilities Department would still have to make
an immediate almost 30 percent cut to its budget. That would
likely come in the form of staff layoffs and disruptions in
water or wastewater service, which could be anything from
unanswered customer service calls to more frequent water pipe
breaks.
After more than five years of construction, San Mateo’s
upgraded Wastewater Treatment Plant was unveiled in a
ribbon-cutting ceremony. It is the largest infrastructure
project in San Mateo’s history, and developers say it’s one of
the most sustainable wastewater treatment facilities in the
country. … The plant is part of San Mateo’s $1 billion
Clean Water Program, an initiative that was launched in 2015 in
response to a cease and desist order the city received
mandating sewer system improvements to prevent overflow into
the San Francisco Bay.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has cited
five individuals in Siskiyou County for illegally using suction
dredge equipment in state waterways, a practice banned due to
its harmful impacts on native fish and wildlife. On August 20,
2024, wardens discovered a man actively dredging the Salmon
River near Cecilville in search of gold. … Although the case
was initially dismissed due to a clerical error, prosecutors
have since refiled charges, with arraignment set for October 7,
2025, in Siskiyou County. Since July, four others have been
cited for unlawful dredging on the Klamath River and Elk Creek.
In his first public comments since facing allegations of water
theft, Modesto Irrigation District Director Larry Byrd said
during Tuesday’s board meeting that the claims are a conspiracy
to hurt him politically. An independent investigation into
Byrd’s water use at an almond orchard near La Grange, first
reported Sept. 15 in The Modesto Focus, is moving forward,
MID General Manager Jimi Netniss said Tuesday. Byrd said, “I
completely support (it) and will fully cooperate.”
Albuquerque’s South Valley is surrounded by brown desert and
towering red mesas. But, inside the valley, the land is
sprouting lush trees and green fields. Here, the Rio Grande
spills into irrigation ditches called acequias. They wind
through the landscape of this small Hispanic community,
carrying rain and snowmelt straight to crops. … For
hundreds of years, Hispanic communities across the Southwest
have relied on these networks of hand-dug irrigation ditches to
water their crops and feed their families. But now, these
ancient traditions are under pressure from a changing climate
and shrinking water supplies.
The white sturgeon sport fishing season opens Oct. 1, 2025,
through June 30, 2026, for catch-and-release fishing in the
ocean, San Francisco Bay, Delta and lower Sacramento and San
Joaquin rivers. … Though recent results from white
sturgeon monitoring surveys by CDFW suggest the white sturgeon
population has continued to decline, science indicates that
non-lethal take via a catch-and-release fishery will not harm
the long-term viability of the white sturgeon population.
Factors such as harmful algal blooms, poaching, poor river and
Delta conditions and historical overharvest have been shown to
have significant negative impacts on the population.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) …
observed the second annual Mono Lake Day, celebrated on
September 28, to recognize more than 30 years of environmental
stewardship and success in balancing natural resource
protection with urban water needs. … Since 1994, LADWP
has invested nearly $50 million in enhancing the ecosystem,
wildlife and recreation in the broader Mono Basin. These
efforts include restoring approximately 20 miles of streams,
including over 800 acres of wetlands, and numerous habitat
enhancement projects.
… [T]he state has been working with private companies to put
over 130 dairy digesters — or systems that trap the
methane released from large lagoons of manure — on
farms. … The digesters have been shown to be
effective at cutting methane emissions, but they’re also
increasingly controversial among environmental groups and
Central Valley residents. Now, some of those groups are
suing the state’s air management board over amendments to the
LCSF that went into effect in July. … The environmental and
animal welfare groups … claim that the policy will spur
larger dairy operations to expand in scope, which will cause
more water contamination and air pollution in
the communities near the operations.
After four years of contentious negotiations, the seven states
that rely on water from the Colorado River are racing against
the clock to reach agreement on a new long-term operating
strategy for the river’s dams and reservoirs …. But the
double whammy of climate change and a now-quarter-century-long
drought has strained relationships between the seven states
that share the dwindling river …. As a result, (the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) has quietly abandoned the
effort to rely on best guesses about the river’s future via
traditional modeling methods. Now, it’s bringing a radically
different style of thinking to the negotiating table: Decision
Making Under Deep Uncertainty, or DMDU.
Hoping to reduce flooding risk for thousands of people living
in low lying areas and expand habitat for fish and wildlife,
Silicon Valley’s largest water agency and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers on Thursday announced they have completed a $197
million project to build two miles of new levees along San
Francisco Bay’s southern shoreline. … The work,
officially called the South Bay Shoreline Project, also is the
key step toward plans for restoring 2,900 acres of former
Cargill industrial salt evaporation ponds near Alviso back to
tidal wetlands for fish and wildlife, and to expand waterfront
public trails in the South Bay.
A pipeline company with a long history of Bay Area safety
incidents will pay a penalty for spilling 40,000 gallons of
gasoline into a Walnut Creek waterway, the
U.S. EPA announced Tuesday. Kinder Morgan subsidy Santa Fe
Pacific Pipeline, or SFPP, agreed to pay $213,560 in its
settlement with the EPA, which claims that the company violated
the Clean Water Act. … The EPA said that Kinder
Morgan and SFPP also agreed to pay over $5 million for three
fuel spills in 2004 and 2005. … Those fines were over an
April 2004 spill of 123,000 gallons of diesel fuel in Suisun
Marsh … a February 2005 spill of about 76,000 gallons of jet
fuel into the Oakland Estuary; and a smaller
spill into the Donner Lake watershed.
Michael Kimmelman’s recent story on Los Angeles’s water needs
included a surprising fact: The city has been using less water,
even as its population has grown. … In a 2024 survey from the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, 90 percent
of respondents said they considered it important to conserve
water daily, even when the region is not in a drought. We asked
readers around the country what they thought of Los Angeles’s
approach to water conservation, and whether they had taken
similar actions. More than 500 wrote in to offer their
thoughts.
The Town of Windsor has reached a major milestone: 100% of
the community’s wastewater is now recycled and reused. …
[B]ecause the storage is now jointly managed [with Sonoma
Water], Windsor avoids having to discharge wastewater into Mark
West Creek and the Russian River Basin. Instead, they now
provide fully treated recycled water for irrigation of parks,
public spaces and golf courses, as well as water for power
generation at the Geysers.
Officials at Pyramid Lake say starting Oct. 1, watercraft
inspections will become mandatory for any craft using the lake.
The new regulation was approved by the Pyramid Lake Paiute
Tribal Council to strengthen protections against the invasive
mussels already seen in the Lake Tahoe area. The council says
the adaptability of the Golden Mussels makes them a serious
threat to the lake and its surrounding bodies of water.
Starting Oct. 1, all motorized and/or trailered watercraft must
be inspected prior to launch at the lake.
The Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI)
announced today the launch of an extensive plan to update
California’s Tribal Consultation Guidelines. The effort aims to
strengthen protections for Tribal cultural resources and
honor government-to-government relationships with Tribal
Nations and Native communities across the state. The
Tribal Consultation Guidelines, last revised in 2005, serve as
a critical resource for ensuring that Tribal governments have a
meaningful voice in land use decisions and environmental
planning.
Stockton City Council unanimously voted this week to oppose the
proposed Delta Conveyance Project, a massive tunnel that would
divert water to Southern California from the Sacramento River
before it reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The council
passed a resolution at its meeting Tuesday officially opposing
the project, which Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to fast-track
multiple times only to be blocked by state legislators. City
staff highlighted in agenda documents multiple concerns with
the proposed tunnel, saying the $20.1 billion project would
fail to benefit local residents.
