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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When the Colorado Water Conservation Board voted unanimously
last month to approve the $99 million purchase of the Shoshone
water rights from Xcel Energy, Western Slope communities called
it a “once-in-a-lifetime” deal. In Grand County, the decision
lands closer to home. For people living at the headwaters of
the Colorado River, it’s a promise that water will keep flowing
west, offering a safeguard for ranchers, recreation businesses
and the river itself. … By securing them permanently for
instream flows, the Colorado River District and its partners
ensured that water will continue downstream even if the aging
plant shuts down.
Local officials are again distributing air purifiers to
residents inundated with pollution from the Tijuana River
sewage crisis after they botched their first attempt to do so.
The first batch of 400 air purifiers distributed through a
lottery system under former District 1 Supervisor Nora Vargas
lacked the necessary filters to clean the gases in the air.
Specifically, the first purifiers lacked the necessary
potassium permanganate and charcoal to effectively filter toxic
gases. A contractor also failed to transfer applicant
information to the San Diego County Air Pollution Control
District, forcing people to reapply for the purifiers without
notification.
The southern steelhead trout has been low in numbers in recent
years, but one Huntington Beach high school is now prepared to
lend a hand toward saving the species. Edison High held a
ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning for an expansion to
its campus Innovation Lab, where it will house the endangered
fish through a partnership with the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife. The new system, funded by the Resource
Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains through a
CDFW grant, will protect up to 650 trout rescued from creeks
impacted by drought, wildfire and debris flows. … Two
large holding tanks will contain the trout, while a water
cleansing system ensures they are safe until a new habitat can
be found.
A local renewable energy and critical minerals company is
poised to go public through a merger with a New York-based
special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a move aimed
at bolstering U.S. energy security and domestic supply chains
for electric vehicles and advanced technologies, according to a
CTR press release. … If completed, the business combination
would list the combined company on a major U.S. stock exchange,
providing capital to accelerate development of ACR’s flagship
Hell’s Kitchen project at the Salton Sea.
… Imperial County officials and residents have long seen
the Salton Sea region — dubbed “Lithium Valley” — as a
potential economic boon, bringing jobs and revenue while
addressing environmental challenges around the shrinking sea.
Dams in the United States may be in worse condition than
previously understood. More than 16,700 dams across the country
are classified as high hazard potential as of 2024, according
to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Over
2,500 of these dams are in poor condition. But with newly
utilized radar technology, scientists at Virginia Tech are
revealing dams across the United States that may have crumbling
infrastructure hidden from view of safety inspectors. … What
they found was shocking to them: Many dams that should have
been stabilized were still sinking, potentially impacting the
dam’s structure.
The year 2025 saw several big water issues hit the news, both
nationally and in some of the biggest produce-growing states.
Many of these stories will continue into 2026’s headlines. For
example, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers set a water
milestone late in the year when they finally released their
long-awaited updated definition of Waters of the U.S. with
implementation expected in February or March of 2026.
… As the year came to a close, California’s largest
irrigation district released its economic impact review report,
which found that water restrictions had wide-reaching negative
impacts on the state and its people.
The training and use of artificial-intelligence systems such as
ChatGPT might already result in more annual carbon emissions
than New York City and more water consumption than all the
bottled water drank globally, according to new research. In one
of the first studies to focus specifically on the environmental
impact of AI, a new report in the data-science journal Patterns
estimated that the technology’s water consumption in particular
was likely far higher than previous estimates. The study
indicates that both AI’s carbon emissions and its water
consumption are growing rapidly, thanks to its surging power
use.
To find Charles Mallory Hatfield, you usually had to look up.
… For decades, Hatfield danced up and down the state,
promising a heavenly waterfall to a drought-bedeviled world.
Once contracted, he and his brother Paul would quench the
thirst of Central Valley farmers or refill the waterways for
coastal citizens who, without his help, would be reduced to
drinking dust. His quiet alchemy, conducted up on those wooden
platforms out in the hills, always seemed to work.
… Today, Utah bolsters its snowpack by as much as 12% in
a given year, solely through cloud seeding — a
sizable return, considering the state’s needs, but nothing like
what Hatfield could promise.
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.
