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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… “[I]n California, where we depend on water, we got to make
sure that we have enough water to keep agriculture going,” said
farmer Joe Del Bosque, who operates Del Bosque Farms in western
Fresno County. … On Thursday, he welcomed us onto his farm to
share his thoughts on the Bureau of Reclamation’s Action 5
plan, one they say will help fulfill President Donald Trump’s
executive order to ‘strengthen California’s water resilience’.
According to the Westlands Water District, it’s a plan that
would provide a yearly increase of roughly 85,000 acre feet for
those getting water deliveries south of the Delta. … He [Del
Bosque] acknowledged the federal action and said it goes a long
way in improving their confidence for the future.
The Chandler City Council unanimously rejected to rezone 10
acres of land for a proposed new data center at their meeting
Thursday night. The project has generated significant public
interest, especially after former Arizona Senator Kyrsten
Sinema spoke in favor of the project at an October Planning and
Zoning Committee hearing. … Representatives for the
project have said the planned facility would use a closed-loop
cooling system, a method they argue requires significantly less
water than traditional evaporative cooling. … However,
experts caution that water usage goes beyond what happens at
the site itself.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power to inspect nearly 100
drinking water reservoirs and storage tanks over concerns about
improper maintenance, the agency announced Thursday. The EPA
identified violations of the Safe Drinking Water
Act, such as unprotected openings and inconsistent
storage system cleaning, during a July 2024 inspection,
according to a news release. The LADWP said in a statement that
it entered into a consent order with the EPA on Dec. 3 to
resolve concerns raised from the EPA’s 2024 inspection of 18
water storage tanks without litigation.
On December 8, 2025, the California Court of Appeal issued its
decision in Dreher v. City of Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power, affirming Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power’s budget-based tiered water rates for
single-dwelling unit customers. The Court rejected Patz v. City
of San Diego’s strict interpretation of Proposition 218 in
several key respects, finding: agencies may base tiered rates
on source-of-supply costs even when supplies are commingled;
tier breakpoints do not require cost-based justification; and
agencies may rely on peak pumping and storage costs to support
higher rates in upper tiers.
The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board or
Board) returned the Kern County Subbasin to the Department of
Water Resources’ (DWR) jurisdiction under the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) on December 8, 2025. On
September 17th, the State Water Board approved Resolution No.
2025-0029 directing the Board’s Office of Sustainable
Groundwater Management staff to send a letter to DWR
formalizing the return of the Kern County Subbasin to DWR’s
jurisdiction.
Juvenile coho salmon have been documented in a tributary of the
Russian River in Mendocino County for the first time since
1991, state officials announced Thursday. According to
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Pinoleville
Pomo Nation Water Resource Specialist and Yurok tribal member
Dakota Perez Gonzalez discovered several young coho salmon in
Ackerman Creek north of Ukiah in June. After the juvenile
salmon were discovered in an isolated pool that was drying, the
tribe and CDFW partnered on a rescue effort, Perez Gonzalez
said. The fish were transported to Warm Springs Fish Hatchery
in Geyserville, where they are being raised in CDFW’s
broodstock program.
Arizona State Senator Janae Shamp has introduced legislation
aimed at banning the addition of fluoride chemicals to the
state’s public water systems, according to a press release from
the Arizona Senate Republicans. SB 1019, filed ahead of the
2026 legislative session, would prohibit individuals and
political subdivisions from introducing fluoride or
fluoride-containing compounds into drinking water supplied by
public systems. … Arizona lawmakers argue that
fluoridation entails ongoing costs for chemicals, equipment and
maintenance, and say those funds could be better allocated to
infrastructure upgrades or water conservation efforts.
Volunteers planted 250 native trees at Hidden Valley Nature
Center on Dec. 5 as part of an effort to restore
habitat along the Santa Ana River. The project,
organized by Trout Unlimited and the Arbor Day Foundation with
support from industrial gas company Linde, replaced invasive
species with native cottonwoods, sycamores and willows. …
Over time, the trees will shade the river to keep water
temperatures cool for wildlife, stabilize soil to reduce
erosion and filter pollutants from stormwater runoff. The
project is also expected to help mitigate climate change-driven
flooding impacts along the Santa Ana floodplain.
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.
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But
demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital
water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the
region – particularly from the Colorado River – was top of mind
at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference, an
event organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West
that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars
to discuss solutions to urgent problems facing rural Western
regions.
