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Water news you need to know

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 Interim Director Doug Beeman

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Aquafornia news KSBW Action News 8 (Salinas, Calif.)

Smoke and fire stop at Moss Landing battery facility; water testing expected soon

A lithium-ion battery fire broke out at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility on Thursday, burning through the night and flaring up again Friday. A local state of emergency was declared on Friday, and the county board of supervisors will look to ratify it at a special meeting on Tuesday. The battery facility, one of several located at the former Moss Landing Power Plant, is owned and operated by Vistra Energy. The Vistra facility is the largest battery storage plant in the world. … Elkhorn Slough Reserve is closed until further notice due to potential health risks from the fire. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to conduct water testing in the coming days, per the County of Monterey. Additionally, there is potential for soil testing being discussed.

Aquafornia news Action News Now (Chico, Calif.)

More than 500,000 steelhead trout to be planted into the Feather River, Sacramento River, and Thermalito Afterbay

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has begun the process of planting Central Valley steelhead trout in the Feather River and Sacramento River. Officials say that the steelhead, which were raised at the Feather River Fish Hatchery, were planted at two locations along the Feather River and Sacramento River. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says a total of 540,222 yearling-sized steelhead that were raised in 2024 will be released in local waterways between January 10 and January 30.

Aquafornia news Water Education Foundation

Aquafornia honors Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Dear Aquafornia readers,

Aquafornia is off Monday, Jan. 20, the federal holiday honoring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

We will return with a full slate of water news on Tuesday. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter for breaking news, and on LinkedInFacebook and Instagram for Foundation news.

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

Friday Top of the Scroll: Inside L.A.’s desperate battle for water as the Palisades fire exploded

… Decisions by the [Department of Water and Power], both in the years before the Palisades fire and in the hours after it exploded, have generated stinging criticism, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom to order an inquiry. On Tuesday, the L.A. City Council voted unanimously to demand that the DWP publicly present an analysis of its actions during the Palisades fire. Water officials and experts interviewed by The Times said that municipal water systems in L.A. and elsewhere, even in areas with greater wildfire risk, generally are not designed to fight firestorms that rage through entire neighborhoods. Collins’ remarks offer the first detailed account of the DWP’s response to the most destructive fire in L.A. history.

Related articles:

Aquafornia news POLITICO Pro

USGS Study: Water scarcity a risk for 27M Americans

About 27 million people live in parts of the U.S. where water availability is limited, according to a first-of-its-kind federal assessment. The analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey compared water supply and demand from 2010 to 2020. It found “severe” limitations on the amount of available water in groundwater and surface waters in California, the arid Southwest, and much of the Great Plains and Texas. Other regions facing slightly less severe water constraints include Florida and eastern Washington state and Oregon. The report is the most comprehensive federal study to date on whether the U.S. has enough water to power the economy, researchers said during a call Thursday.

Other water supply and drought articles:

Aquafornia news Water Resources Research Center/The University of Arizona

Blog: Guidance for restoring peace on the Colorado River

These are contentious times for Colorado River policy, with strained relations between the Upper and Lower Basin states in public view. It is, therefore, perfect timing for me to recommend adding the book, Sharing the Waters: Reflections on Developing Colorado River Policy 1988–2008, by Robert W. “Bob” Johnson, to your 2025 reading list. At only 124 pages, this powerful little book is packed with concise explanations of key Colorado River management matters, along with personal insights on how highly contentious river matters have been effectively navigated in the past— insights that are highly relevant today. The book, published posthumously, also features many great photos, including this review’s accompanying photo heralding peace on the Colorado River.

Related articles:

Aquafornia news Water Education Foundation

Announcement: Registration now open for Water 101 Workshop & Central Valley Tour

Registration is now open for our next slate of spring programs, part of a year packed with engaging tours, workshops and conferences on key water topics in California and across the West. Seating is always limited for our events and tickets for our first water tour of 2025 – along the Lower Colorado River in March – have been going fast! Registration is now open for our Water 101 Workshop and our Central Valley Tour, both in April.

Aquafornia news San Diego Union-Tribune

CDC survey: Most living near Tijuana River say their health has worsened

A federal survey of conditions in the Tijuana River Valley, where sewage and toxic chemicals spill over from Mexico, affirmed what people have reported for years: their household lives have been upended and their chronic conditions have worsened. On Thursday, the San Diego County public health department unveiled the results of an October survey conducted in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state. … “While most households are aware of the situation, many continue to risk exposure,” the study said.

Other water quality articles:

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

How climate change worsened the most destructive wildfires in L.A. history

An extremely warm summer and fall. An unusually dry winter. Hillsides covered with bone-dry vegetation. And strong Santa Ana winds. In the mix of conditions that have contributed to the most destructive fires in L.A. history, scientists say one significant ingredient is human-caused climate change. A group of UCLA climate scientists said in an analysis this week that if you break down the reasons behind the extreme dryness of vegetation in Southern California when the fires started, global warming likely contributed roughly one-fourth of the dryness, one of the factors that fueled the fires’ explosive spread. Extreme heat in the summer and fall desiccated shrubs and grasses on hillsides, they said, enabling those fuels to burn more intensely once ignited. The scientists said without the higher temperatures climate change is bringing, the fires still would have been extreme, but they would have been “somewhat smaller and less intense.”

Related articles:

Aquafornia news SJV Water

Proposed ag water district could aid groundwater-dependent farmers in northern Tulare County

A proposed new agricultural water district could brighten what had been shaping up as a grim future for a number of farmers in the northern part of Tulare County’s flatlands under the state’s groundwater law. Four private ditch companies are working to form the new district to cover 84,000 acres, 24,000 of which are totally groundwater dependent. Pumping restrictions under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) are expected to severely limit crop production in such groundwater reliant areas. The proposed Consolidated Water District has indicated it will use land assessment fees to buy surface water and build systems to convey surface water throughout the district. That’s significant, said Mark Larsen, General Manager of the Greater Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA), which covers the area where the new district is proposed.

Other groundwater article:

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

Trump’s EPA nominee stays vague as senators press him on climate views

Americans deserve a clean environment “without suffocating the economy,” Lee Zeldin said during his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a department likely to play a central role in President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to slash federal regulations and promote oil and gas development. “The American people elected President Trump last November in part due to serious concerns about upward economic mobility,” Zeldin said. “A big part of this will require building private sector collaboration to promote commonsense, smart regulation.” The hearing occasionally grew pointed when Democrats questioned Zeldin about climate change asking what, if anything, he thinks should be done about a problem that has worsened floods and raised sea levels but that Trump has dismissed.

Related articles:

Aquafornia news Voice of San Diego

San Diego City Council bashes county water authority over costs

Facing a $258 million budget deficit, San Diego City Council members spent an hour Tuesday night delivering an unprecedented public bashing of the region’s main water seller for ever-climbing costs.   Water purchases from the San Diego County Water Authority are the city of San Diego’s second-largest expense and its price increase this year was double what the agency once forecasted. The city’s Public Utilities Department has begun a campaign to alert City Council that growing Water Authority prices threaten to eat up much of the city’s water budget. The result means delays on city water projects and maintenance on 3,000 miles of pipeline, and potential staff cuts which has the labor union representing city public utilities workers shook.  

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

Bill Eschmeyer, developer of definitive fish database, dies at 85

Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes is the definitive global source, with the Latin name for 65,000 species compiled by biologists at the California Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Bill Eschmeyer of San Anselmo, who spent 40 years on an odyssey that took him to every museum with a collection of dead fish in jars. The database he created, which started before the Internet, was still growing and being refined long after Eschmeyer retired and moved to the East Coast to be near his three adult children. He died Dec. 30 at an assisted care facility in Nashua, N.H., said his daughter Lanea Tripp, who was named for an 18th century Swedish biologist her father admired. Eschmeyer had suffered from dementia compounded by long COVID. He was 85.

Aquafornia news Fresno County Farm Bureau/California Agriculture News Today

Blog: Major myths regarding water use in almonds

There are significant myths regarding almonds. Most of it is about how they use too much water, but they get four crops from every drop of water. They’re very efficient. Clarice Turner is president and CEO of the Almond Board of California. “Part of what we’re doing is just making sure that the public is aware of the facts, Turner said.  “And by the way, it’s not marketing hype because we are a quasi-government overseen by the USDA. Everything we publish has to be fact-based. That’s coming from at least three peer-reviewed academic studies in the traditional process. That’s how we get our information,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that people think almonds use too much water.  A statement like this grows arms and legs.  When you irrigate almonds, you get four crops per drop— There’s the kernel we eat, which grows inside a woody shell, fuzzy outer hull, and the tree. The trees store tons of carbon each year, the shells become livestock bedding, and the hulls are nutritious dairy feed, reducing the water needed to grow other feed crops,” explained Turner.

Other agriculture articles:

Aquafornia news The Mercury News

Thursday Top of the Scroll: Collapse of Contra Costa plan to expand Los Vaqueros Reservoir disappoints California officials

The collapse of a $1.5 billion plan to enlarge Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County and share the water with residents across the Bay Area is a disappointing setback for the state’s efforts to expand water storage, and should be studied to reduce the chances of it happening again with other projects, state water officials said Wednesday. At a meeting in Sacramento, several members of the California Water Commission, a state agency which had promised the project $477 million in state bond funding in 2018, said Contra Costa Water District leaders should have kept them better informed when negotiations between Bay Area water agencies on costs and risks began to unravel this summer. …  The project was scheduled to begin construction by next year. It was considered by water experts statewide as one of the most promising ways to expand California’s water supplies in an era of more severe droughts. It had no major lawsuits and wasn’t controversial with environmental groups, largely because it was proposing to expand an existing reservoir rather than damming a river.

Aquafornia news The Associated Press

For LA water issues, misinformation spreads nearly as fast as the wildfires

A billionaire couple was accused of withholding water that could help stop Los Angeles’ massive wildfires. Democratic leadership was blamed for fire hydrants running dry and for an empty reservoir. Firefighters were criticized for allegedly using “women’s handbags” to fight the fires. Those are just a few of the false or misleading claims that have emerged amid general criticism about California’s water management sparked by the fierce Los Angeles fires. Much of the misinformation is being spread “because it offers an opportunity to take potshots at California Democratic leadership while simultaneously distracting attention from the real contributing factors, especially the role of climate change,” said Peter Gleick, senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit he co-founded that focuses on global water sustainability.

Related articles:

Aquafornia news Arizona Republic

Early snowpack in Colorado basin is average, cuts likely to remain

Snowpack in the upper Colorado River basin is slightly less than normal for this time of year, meaning Arizona could see sustained water cuts through 2026. Though trends could change through the rest of the winter, the snowpack in the basin is about 94% of the median for mid-January. While Arizona’s share of Colorado River water in 2025 is already set, the snowpack numbers are early indicators of how much river water the state could get next year. Even with an average snow year, water managers say dry conditions and warming temperatures could create below-average runoff, keeping Arizona water users in shortage.

Other Colorado River articles:

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

What California’s hydroclimate whiplash means for wildfires

Extreme Santa Ana winds whipped flames across Los Angeles County last week, with gusts catapulting embers across tinder-dry landscapes spreading devastating wildfires across the region. The Palisades and Eaton fires have caused at least 25 deaths, as of Tuesday, and destroyed over 12,000 structures. One factor that drove the destructive blazes began years earlier. California has some of the U.S.’s most variable precipitation, with increasingly dramatic swings between wet and dry periods, also known as “hydroclimate whiplash.” 

Other wildfire and weather articles:

Aquafornia news Bloomberg Law

BlueTriton can keep using California water pipeline, judge rules

The US Forest Service likely overstepped its authority by ordering bottling company BlueTriton to remove its California water infrastructure, a federal judge ruled. Judge Jesus G. Bernal this week granted BlueTriton Brands’ motion for preliminary injunction, thereby allowing the company to keep using water infrastructure in the San Bernardino National Forest for the foreseeable future, according to an order filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The decision marks the latest win for BlueTriton, known for popular water brands Arrowhead and Ozarka, in its battle to maintain California water operations.

Aquafornia news California Department of Water Resources

News release: State Water Project operations: New framework already benefitting California’s water supply

… In December 2024, a new framework took effect to minimize harm to endangered species from the operation of California’s two biggest water projects. The framework, developed by federal fishery agencies and called a “biological opinion,” replaces a framework that had been in place since 2019. … The new science and additional flexibility that underpin the revised framework allow water project operators to respond more nimbly to real-time conditions in California rivers and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where rivers drain to San Francisco Bay. Farms and cities have the potential to gain additional water supply, while endangered species are protected. … The State Water Project, a network of reservoirs and pumping plants, provides some or all of the water used by 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland. Since the new biological opinion went into effect on December 19, the State Water Project – a major source of Southern California water supply – already has gained 12,500 acre-feet of additional water supply beyond what would have been possible under the 2019 framework. The additional supply is approximately enough water to meet the needs of 37,500 households for a year.