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.
President Donald Trump promised to break California’s water
rules wide open. So far, he’s mostly working within them. Five
months after Trump issued a pair of directives for federal
agencies to overturn state and Biden-era rules limiting water
deliveries, the federal government has done no such thing.
Instead, it’s quietly increasing water flows following the very
rules Trump once railed against — at least for
now. … What’s changed? For one, California had a
wet winter, which tends to smooth over political differences.
… Newsom has also aligned himself more with Trump on water,
as when he jilted Delta-area Democrats last month in pushing to
expedite a tunnel to move more supplies from Northern to
Southern California. More substantively, some of the water
districts that might be expected to agitate for Trump to
overturn Biden-era water rules concede that they actually allow
more deliveries than Trump’s version.
Other Trump administration and California water news:
… The Colorado River system rushes through
turbines inside Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell, producing
affordable, carbon-free hydropower. … Climate change and
chronic water overuse continue to constrict the mighty river’s
flows, though, jeopardizing the dam’s ability to produce
hydroelectric power. The lack of water has also created a slew
of environmental problems in the Grand Canyon’s ecosystem,
which sprawls below Glen Canyon Dam — most notably for an
ancient, threatened fish species, the humpback chub, which is
hunted by invasive smallmouth bass. Under Biden last year, the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation finalized a decision that allows the
dam to periodically release surges of water that bypass the
machinery that generates power. These flows cool the river
below the dam, which curbs smallmouth bass reproduction. Utah
Republicans and power providers say that decision has only
further threatened the valuable energy source — and they hope
to undo it.
After sitting near capacity for almost a month, Lake Oroville
is beginning to slowly creep back down in water elevation as
the California Department of Water Resources steadily increases
outflows. Lake Oroville was reported at 896.35 feet in
elevation Monday and will likely lower more in the weeks to
come. DWR spokesperson Raquel Borrayo said the lake was once
again bolstered by a wet and snowy winter. “Thanks to
above-average precipitation and average snowpack levels in the
northern Sierra for the last three years, water levels at Lake
Oroville have been peaking in May and June and then slowly
declining to their low point around November,” Borrayo said.
Borrayo said the higher releases are sent into the Feather
River, though some of the water remains local. … On
Monday, inflows into Lake Oroville were estimated at 3,000
cubic feet per second.
Other reservoir and snowpack news around the West:
… Trump has found a perhaps obvious avenue to pursue his goal
to ensure the United States is getting a fair shake on the
world stage. But some experts fear bringing tariff threats and
“America First” rhetoric into the world of water negotiations
will backfire, and that the careful work of administering the
1944 water treaty could get damaged in the process.
… The treaty is a complex document, but it requires the
United States to deliver water from the Colorado River to
Mexico, and Mexico to deliver water from the Rio Grande to the
United States. … After Trump threatened tariffs in
April, Mexico’s president did announce an additional water
shipment to Texas from Mexico’s reservoirs on the Rio Grande.
But experts say there just isn’t enough water available for
Mexico to get back on track by October. … Many of
northern Mexico’s reservoirs are low or empty, and in some
places, a lack of rain means rivers run dry.
2026 is shaping up to be a key year for the Colorado River and
the seven basin states that rely on its water. Those states
hope to wrap up negotiations on how to use less of the
overallocated river’s water by the end of this year — that
means Arizona lawmakers and the governor would have next year
to approve the deal. Joanna Allhands, digital opinions editor
for The Arizona Republic, has written about this and joined The
Show, along with editorial page editor Elvia Díaz, to discuss.
… “If it plays out like what groundwater negotiations have
done so far, that just means no one compromises, everything
falls apart, we don’t get anywhere. And then that could be
really disastrous for us, specifically because Arizona is the
only Colorado River basin state that is required to have
legislative approval for whatever deal comes our way,” (says
Joanna Allhands).
Lake Tahoe’s iconic blue waters were the third murkiest on
record last year and the worst they’ve been in several years,
according to data from scientists who have studied the lake for
decades. Clarity of the alpine lake — measured by dropping a
white disk into the water and noting when it disappears from
sight — is a signal of its overall health. Tiny particles are
major culprits of reduced clarity, including the sediment and
other pollutants that wash into the lake from runoff and air
pollution and the plankton that grow in its
waters. Researchers with UC Davis’ Tahoe Environmental
Research Center reported today that the average murkiness in
2024 was exceeded only in 2021, when fires blanketed the lake
in smoke and ash, and in 2017, when the lake was clouded by
sediment-laden runoff during a near-record wet year. The
report says that clarity levels are “highly variable and
generally not improving,” and recommends that “future
research should focus on examining the nature of the particles
that affect water clarity.”
The remote and rugged Klamath River in Oregon and California,
one of the mightiest in the American West and an ancient
lifeline to Indigenous tribes, is running free again, mostly,
for the first time in 100 years after the recent removal of
four major dams. At the burbling aquifer near Chiloquin, Ore.,
that is considered the headwaters, a sacred spot for native
people, a group of kayakers, mostly Indigenous youth from the
river’s vast basin began to paddle on Thursday. Ages 13 to 20,
they had learned to kayak for this moment. Stroke by stroke,
mile by mile, day by day, they plan to reach the salty water of
the rugged Northern California coast, more than 300 miles away,
in mid-July. If all goes as planned, the kayakers will
pass the rehabilitated sites of the largest dam-removal project
in U.S. history. They will pass salmon swimming upstream
in places that the fish had not been able to reach since the
early 1900s. They will pass through the ancient territory of
their tribes — the Klamath, Shasta, Karuk, Hoopa Valley and
Yurok among them.
If you know anything about the Salton Sea, maybe you’ve heard
that California’s largest lake has been shrinking for decades,
the fish are dying, and toxic dust from the lakebed is blowing
around the Coachella Valley. The term “apocalyptic” gets thrown
around. For the people who live here, that’s not a helpful
way to think of the place. … Thinking of the Salton Sea as a
place that’s doomed can make it hard to see it as a place in
the middle of dramatic change, affected in real time by humans
— and lately by the equivalent of a really big faucet.
Long-running plans to add more water — more sustainable water —
to the edges of the sea are now coming online, which should be
great news for the region’s most devoted tourists: the birds.
… As water is rerouted from the lake to San Diego and
other urban areas, the Salton Sea is getting saltier. So the
fish are dying off, and the fish-eating birds, like pelicans,
are also going elsewhere as the place changes.
Cuts and freezes are jamming up some of the basic functions of
government at agencies targeted in President Donald Trump’s
rollbacks of his predecessors’ energy and environmental
policies, more than a dozen federal employees told POLITICO.
Lockdowns of spending and an absence of guidance from political
appointees are leaving Environmental Protection Agency
scientists unable to publish their research, preventing some
Energy Department officials from visiting their department’s
laboratories and forcing the cancellation of disaster planning
exercises at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the
13 employees, who were granted anonymity to avoid reprisals.
They said the chaos has also left recipients of Biden-era
energy grants in limbo as they wait for approval to continue
the projects they’ve started. … Other affected agencies
include the Interior Department and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, which conducts crucial climate
research and oversees the National Weather Service.
As the Senate continues to comb through the Big Beautiful Bill,
258 million acres of public land across the western U.S.,
including large swaths of California, could soon be eligible
for sale. A map published by the Wilderness Society, a
nonprofit land conservation organization, reveals which parcels
of land across 11 states would be up for grabs, in accordance
with the land sale proposal detailed by Sen. Mike Lee, a
Republican from Utah and the chairman of the Senate Committee
on Energy and Natural Resources. If the budget is passed
by the July 4 deadline, an estimated 16 million acres in
California are at risk of being sold over the next five years.
Those vulnerable parcels of land include areas adjacent
to Yosemite National Park, Mount Shasta, Big Sur and Lake
Tahoe. … In all, up to 3 million acres across
all states would be authorized to be sold out of 258 million
eligible acres across the West.
A recently released opinion from the Justice Department
suggests that the Trump administration may seek to unilaterally
eliminate national monument designations. The administration
has previously expressed interest in shrinking or removing
protections on protected lands to clear the way for resource
extraction or development, and the DOJ opinion would seem to
mark an escalation of those priorities. The stakes are
particularly high here in Arizona, where we have the
second-highest number of national monuments in the country.
Roger Naylor, author of “Arizona National Parks and Monuments:
Scenic Wonders and Cultural Treasures of the Grand Canyon
State,” joined The Show to discuss the implications of this.
… “These are essential places to us, not only for our
recreation, not only for tourism, but just protecting wildlife
corridors and very often protecting
watersheds, keeping our water supply safe as well,”
(says Naylor.)
One of the all-time great stories of American environmental
law, the Mono Lake saga recounts the protracted conflict over
scarce water resources between the City of Los Angeles and
advocates for the Mono Basin, Yosemite’s eastern watershed,
some four hundred miles to the north. In 1983, in National
Audubon Society v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court
famously addressed the conflict by centering the state’s
obligations under the common law public trust doctrine, which
sets forth public rights and obligations in certain natural
resource commons, especially navigable waterways. … While the
decision itself is well-represented in the legal literature,
the full story of the case has not received the attention it
deserves. This Article offers fresh perspective on the least
recounted but critical parts of the story—not only the
significance of the legal innovations in the decision, but also
what happened beforehand to lay the foundations for the
landmark ruling, and then what happened afterward to bridge the
court’s holding to the ultimate outcome for Mono Lake.
California Trout (CalTrout) and Pacific Gas & Electric
(PG&E) kicked off construction today on a project that will
remove the last unnatural barrier to fish passage on mainstem
Alameda Creek, the largest local tributary to the San Francisco
Bay. … This project will open more than 20 miles of stream
including quality spawning habitat in the upper watershed to
Chinook salmon and steelhead with completion anticipated in
winter 2025. … In 2022 and 2023, former barriers at the BART
weir and inflatable bladder dams in Fremont, eight to ten miles
upstream of where Alameda Creek enters the Bay, were made
passable for fish due to newly constructed fish ladders by the
Alameda County Water District and after years of advocacy by
the Alameda Creek Alliance. The newly constructed fish ladders
enabled Chinook salmon and steelhead to migrate through the
lower creek into Niles Canyon and access parts of the upper
Alameda Creek watershed for the first time in over fifty years.
Soon, these fish will be able to consistently swim even further
upstream.
San Lucas residents, who have been without clean drinking water
for nearly 14 years, may soon see a resolution as local leaders
approve a plan to bring affordable water to the community. In
the small, rural town of San Lucas, with a population of a
little over 400 people, residents struggle with a basic
essential: water. They have lived without proper drinking
water for over a decade, with the cost of clean drinking water
being their biggest obstacle. Now, county leaders, along with
the San Lucas Water District, have a solution. ”We were
able to bring in a partner, CalWater, to be able to be that
water provider, and in doing so the average monthly bill in the
community is expected to be around 90 dollars. But the benefit
beyond that is anybody who is low-income, which we know 90% of
that community is, will only pay about 60% of that bill, so
they are going to average around 50 to 60 dollars a month. As a
water bill, that is doable,” said Monterey County Supervisor
Chris Lopez.
… Originally born in Colorado, (Richard) Sloan moved to
Fresno with his parents when he was around 4 years old. He
moved to Khartoum, Sudan for two years and returned in 1964 to
Fresno. It was then, when he was 13 years old, when he first
became acquainted with the San Joaquin River. … During
his final years in (Army) service and after, Sloan began
volunteering for the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation
Trust. That was when he experienced his first canoe ride down
the river, where he noted that he was “never out of sight of a
tire” while on the water. … “I thought, ‘Oh my God, why
doesn’t anybody do anything about that?’ and that’s what
spurred me onto that first cleanup, then after that, I started
organizing tire cleanups and they turned out to be pretty
popular,” Sloan said. In 2000, he got a full-time position
with the trust as the River Steward Coordinator and also became
chair of the Sierra Club Tehipite Chapter. Through his
positions he was able to coordinate the river’s first clean up
at Camp Pashayan, where they pulled out 60 tires and an
old-timey soda vending machine.
… Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom
Buschatzke said at a recent roundtable that under the Trump
administration, the state could be better positioned than it
was under the Biden administration. … Under the Biden
administration, the Lower Basin states sent a proposal to the
federal government offering to take 1.5 million acre-feet of
water cuts per year. Arizona would cut the most, at 750,000
acre-feet. The Biden government rejected the Lower Basin’s
proposal and issued an “alternative report” on Jan. 17, almost
the last day of the administration. … Arizona Senate
President Warren Petersen went on to say he also wants the
federal government to tie in expensive infrastructure projects
to the negotiations, and not just river-related infrastructure,
but maybe even a desalination plant in
California. Petersen said if Arizona were to help pay
for that, then Arizona could take some of California’s Colorado
River allocation.
Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee introduced 15 water-related bills
Thursday, targeting everything from the length of federal
permitting to the types of water resources protected by the
Clean Water Act. The bills would benefit oil
and gas companies, farming interests, homebuilders, water
utilities and others who say that environmental reviews and
long permitting timelines are stifling development. They were
introduced by Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee
Chair Mike Collins, (R-GA) … Doug LaMalfa,
(R-Calif.) and others. “The Clean Water Act was
intended to protect water quality, support healthy communities,
and balance the demands of economic growth across the United
States,” (Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman
Sam) Graves said in a statement.
… Every summer across the state, the atmosphere dries up and
the temperatures turn warm, sucking moisture from the landscape
and turning the parched vegetation into kindling, ready to burn
under the right conditions. This year, forecasters are already
seeing signs that the pattern could be more intense than usual.
The snow in the Sierra Nevada, the frozen reservoir
that moistens the landscape through the spring, is nearly gone;
it melted off earlier than normal. This year’s grass
crop is plentiful, especially in Northern California, which
received more rain than the southern part of the state, and
it’s already fueling fires as it dries out. And forecasters
predict the summer will be exceptionally hot. All of this adds
up to a higher probability of more large wildfires than usual
this summer, with the possibility that even the smallest spark
could explode into a significant wildfire if not stopped
quickly.
A move to boot Kern County Superior Court Gregory Pulskamp off
the long-running Kern River lawsuit was denied, according to
a ruling issued Tuesday by the assistant presiding
judge of the court. The Kern County Water Agency filed
a motion May 30 to remove Pulskamp citing its belief
the judge would be biased against the agency because a
preliminary injunction he had issued requiring enough water be
kept in the river for fish was overturned by the 5th District
Court of Appeal. … Typically, disqualification motions
come after a trial outcome is reversed, not in the middle of an
ongoing lawsuit, according to attorney Adam Keats, who
represents Bring Back the Kern and several other public
interest groups fighting to get water back in the riverbed
through Bakersfield. The agency, however, argued in its motion
that the injunction and reversal should be considered similar
to a trial. No, they are not similar, states a motion by the
City of Bakersfield urging Kern’s presiding judge to deny the
agency’s motion.
Earlier this month, Fresno welcomed 448 members of the
Salmonidae family to town. … The 448 adult salmon
represent a milestone for the San Joaquin River Restoration
Program, marking the highest number of captured returns since
spring-run juveniles were reintroduced to the river system in
2014 following the 2008 legal settlement that modified the
operations of Friant Dam to provide minimum flows for native
fish. … Most of this year’s bumper crop were trapped in fyke
nets placed downstream of the Eastside Bypass Control Structure
in Merced County. (Some made their way upstream to Sack Dam
until being captured.) After being placed into tanks with
oxygenated, temperature-controlled water, the salmon were
trucked 120 miles then examined and measured before being
released back into the river in northwest Fresno. … What
measures are taken to ensure nearly 450 adult salmon residing
on the outskirts of a city of 547,000 people remain undisturbed
until they can reproduce? The short answer is enforcement and
education. –Written by Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski.
