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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A House Natural Resources subcommittee this week will take up
two aspects of forest management — clean water and reliable
electricity — at risk in an era of worsening wildfires. The
Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will hear
testimony on efforts to step up forest thinning and related
work, highlighted in the “Fix Our Forests Act,” H.R. 471,
that’s awaiting further action in Congress. The legislation —
which is bipartisan thanks mainly to a Democratic push from
California — would ease certain environmental
reviews of forest projects aimed at removing vegetation from
utility rights of way or protecting vital watersheds, among
many other provisions.
… A major escalation to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the state
[Colo.] came on Tuesday, when he used the first veto of his
second term to kill a pipeline project to provide clean
drinking water to the state’s eastern plains, a largely
conservative area. … The bill would have helped to fund
a 130-mile pipeline to bring water from a reservoir near
Pueblo, Colo., to small farming and ranching towns on the
state’s eastern plains, where groundwater is contaminated with
salt and even naturally occurring radioactive elements. The
project has been in the works since the 1960s.
2025 is the year for salmon success in California’s Yuba River.
A nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring
the watershed has positive results to share this year.
… The South Yuba River Citizens League, or SYRCL, is
leading the charge when it comes to salmon restoration in the
Yuba watershed. … And for 2025, they’ve recorded 6,200
adult chinook salmon and counting, the most they’ve seen in
more than a decade. … Restoration science is being
implemented around the state, with many other streams and
waterways seeing similar results. And being a keystone species,
salmon play a critical role in our ecosystems and represent
healthy waterways.
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a rule delaying
by five years deadlines for stricter wastewater treatment
standards for coal-fired power plants, a move that will allow
continued releases of toxic pollutants into waterways that
supply drinking water for more than 30 million Americans. The
delayed standards would have required coal plants to
significantly reduce discharges of wastewater containing
arsenic, mercury, bromide, and other hazardous pollutants.
Under the new rule, power plants will have additional time
before being required to install more advanced treatment
technologies.
The recent rainstorms are putting the Tijuana River Trash Boom
Project to the test, and so far, it’s proving its worth.
The trash boom was installed about a year and a half ago to
stop waste from spreading through the Tijuana River Valley and
into the Pacific Ocean. The barriers, stretching roughly
700 feet across the beginning of the Tijuana River Valley, are
designed to catch debris flowing from Tijuana before it reaches
the ocean. Oscar Romo, the director of the project, told
CBS 8 that during last year’s rain season, the system collected
about 500 tons of trash. Now, just two months into this
rain season, the boom has already trapped nearly that same
amount.
… Point Buckler Island, a 50-acre, boat-only island in Suisun
Bay, has been purchased by the John Muir Land Trust, which
plans to restore the island to its original tidal
marshland. The acquisition follows years of legal
disputes tied to unauthorized development that altered the
island’s natural flows. Located just east of the Carquinez
Strait in Solano County, Point Buckler sits at a critical
transition zone where saltwater from San Francisco Bay meets
freshwater from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
This brackish habitat plays an outsized role in supporting
migrating waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway and helps young
salmon and steelhead adjust as they move from river to ocean.
The Salton Sea Bird Festival will return on Saturday, Jan. 17,
2026, offering birdwatchers and outdoor enthusiasts a rare look
at one of the Pacific Flyway’s most critical stops during the
peak of winter migration. The daylong event, organized through
a partnership of state, federal, and nonprofit organizations,
features a diverse lineup of field trips and educational
activities designed to showcase the ecological significance of
California’s largest inland lake. Among the day’s highlights is
a guided public tour of the Species Conservation Habitat (SCH)
project. Hosted by the Salton Sea Management Program (SSMP),
the tour provides a behind-the-scenes look at the 9,500-acre
aquatic restoration site located at the southern end of the
sea.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today conducted the
first snow survey of the season at Phillips Station. The manual
survey recorded 24 inches of snow depth and a snow water
equivalent of 5 inches, which is 50 percent of average for this
location. The snow water equivalent measures the amount of
water contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s
water supply forecast. Statewide, the snowpack is
71 percent of average for this date. Today’s results are
welcome news for water managers who rely on the statewide snow
surveys to make water supply decisions for the year ahead.
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Aquafornia is off for the holidays although we will
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Foundation-related news.
Seeking to prevent the California State Water Resources Control
Board from stepping in to regulate groundwater in critically
overdrafted subbasins, local agencies are working to correct
deficiencies in their plans to protect groundwater. With
groundwater sustainability agencies formed and groundwater
sustainability plans evaluated, the state water board has moved
to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
or SGMA. … Under probation, groundwater extractors in
the Tulare Lake subbasin face annual fees of $300 per well and
$20 per acre-foot pumped, plus a late reporting fee of 25%.
SGMA also requires well owners to file annual groundwater
extraction reports.
Last year’s snow deluge in California, which quickly erased a
two decade long megadrought, was essentially a
once-in-a-lifetime rescue from above, a new study found. Don’t
get used to it because with climate change the 2023 California
snow bonanza —a record for snow on the ground on April 1 — will
be less likely in the future, said the study in Monday’s
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
… UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who wasn’t part
of the study but specializes in weather in the U.S. West, said,
“I would not be surprised if 2023 was the coldest, snowiest
winter for the rest of my own lifetime in California.”
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
A group of Western lawmakers pressed the Biden administration
Monday to ramp up water conservation, especially in national
forests that provide nearly half the region’s surface water.
“Reliable and sustainable water availability is absolutely
critical to any agricultural commodity production in the
American West,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in a
letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The 31
members of the Senate and House, all Democrats except for Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), credited the administration for
several efforts related to water conservation, including
promoting irrigation efficiency as a climate-smart practice
eligible for certain USDA funding through the Inflation
Reduction Act.
A study led by NASA researchers provides new estimates of how
much water courses through Earth’s rivers, the rates at which
it’s flowing into the ocean, and how much both of those figures
have fluctuated over time—crucial information for understanding
the planet’s water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.
The results also highlight regions depleted by heavy water use,
including the Colorado River basin in the United States, the
Amazon basin in South America, and the Orange River basin in
southern Africa.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
A steady stream of water spilled from Lake Casitas Friday, a
few days after officials declared the Ojai Valley reservoir had
reached capacity for the first time in a quarter century. Just
two years earlier, the drought-stressed reservoir, which
provides drinking water for the Ojai
Valley and parts of Ventura, had dropped under 30%.
The Casitas Municipal Water District was looking at emergency
measures if conditions didn’t improve, board President Richard
Hajas said. Now, the lake is full, holding roughly 20 years of
water.
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the
world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an
immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these
reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries
production and management potential, indicates a study from the
University of California, Davis. The study, published
in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S.
reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of
fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems
could play major roles in food security and fisheries
conservation.
California has unveiled an ambitious plan to help combat the
worsening climate crisis with one of its invaluable assets: its
land. Over the next 20 years, the state will work to transform
more than half of its 100 million acres into multi-benefit
landscapes that can absorb more carbon than they release,
officials announced Monday. … The plan also calls for
11.9 million acres of forestland to be managed for biodiversity
protection, carbon storage and water supply protection by 2045,
and 2.7 million acres of shrublands and chaparral to be managed
for carbon storage, resilience and habitat connectivity, among
other efforts.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended
Alternative 3 – Salmon Closure during the final days of the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) meeting mirroring
the opinions of commercial and recreational charter boat
anglers. The department’s position is a significant change from
early March. The PFMC meetings are being held in Seattle from
April 6 to 11, and the final recommendations of the council
will be forwarded to the California Fish and Game Commission in
May.
