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.
San Diegans owe a privately-owned desalination plant over $35
million for water the company couldn’t make. … San Diego
County Water Authority staff revealed Thursday that the
region’s biggest water seller has 10,105 acre-feet of water it
needs to buy from Channelside, the owner of the Carlsbad plant
that de-salts ocean water to make it drinkable. … The cost of
that unmade water is expected to increase by about 2.5 percent
per the contract. … At $3,500 per acre-foot, de-salted
ocean water is the region’s most expensive water source, a fact
that attracts critics of San Diego’s spiking water
prices.
U.S. rivers are running hot. A new analysis of nearly 1,500
river locations over more than 40 years found that the
frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves is increasing
in streams across the country, posing a threat to many species
that are adapted to cooler temperatures. The new analysis,
which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, is the first in-depth study
of riverine heat waves, which are defined as five straight days
of high temperatures in comparison to seasonal averages. The
authors found that human-caused climate change is the primary
driver of the trend, as snowpack dwindles and streams flow more
slowly.
Water markets are a tool that can help growers cope with
increasing water scarcity. While California has been slow to
adopt water markets, Australia’s water markets are much more
developed. We spoke with two experts—Flinders University
Professor Sarah Wheeler and grower Sandy Iosefellis—about what
lessons the Murray-Darling Basin might hold for California’s
growers.
California may experience another dry winter similar to last
year, due to persistent La Niña and neutral Pacific Ocean
conditions. This is the message from Meteorologist Alex Tardy
from Weather Echo. … While the forecast appears
concerning for California’s water supply,
Tardy emphasized that the state will not be completely devoid
of precipitation. “You’ll still have potential for a couple of
big storms and moderate storms, but you don’t have the
potential for a lot of them,” he said.
The city of Roseville, 19 miles northeast of Sacramento,
regularly sits at the top of California’s “best places to live”
lists. … But there is another reason this railroad town
now with some 160,000 residents gets such high accolades. After
two decades of careful municipal planning, it has no problem
with flooding. … Its approach is not flashy. Talk to Brian
Walker, Roseville’s senior engineer and flood plain manager,
and you’ll hear a lot about flood plain mapping and storm
drainage, funding mechanisms and development ordinances. But
this measured and deliberate approach has worked, he and others
say.
There was another development on Monday in the county of Lake’s
ongoing effort to push back against Pacific Gas and Electric’s
effort to remove the dams in the Potter Valley Project,
including the Scott Dam that forms Lake Pillsbury, a plan the
Board of Supervisors chair called “reckless.” County officials
issued a Monday statement that challenged PG&E’s recent
assertions that a reason for decommissioning and removing the
project was due to seismic issues. … Lake County
officials pointed out that, despite those reported drawbacks to
the project, PG&E has still noted water storage and
diversion benefits of the Potter Valley Project within its own
company reports.
More than half a million dollars has been targeted for the
protection of a rare peat fen wetland in Humboldt County. …
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will be
acquiring the property, and it will be included in North Coast
Range Fen Conservation Area … which was established in
2019 “for the purpose of protecting biodiversity, including
important sources of clean cold water for the Van Duzen River
ecosystem and a rare wetland type in California that supports
critically imperiled wetland plant communities,” Wildlife
Conservation Board Information Officer Mark Topping said.
Desert Water Agency (DWA) has adopted a new ordinance banning
potable water irrigation on non-functional turf to meet state
conservation mandates, but property management companies warn
the rules could create financial hardships for HOAs unprepared
for costly landscape conversions. Ordinance number 80,
adopted in early August in response to California Assembly Bill
1572, specifically targets grass areas that are not regularly
used for recreational or community events. … However,
property managers question whether the distinction between
functional and non-functional turf is clear enough for
practical implementation.
The Turlock Irrigation District has completed a $20 million
solar canopy over canals, marking a milestone in generating
clean energy and promising water savings in the Central Valley
city. … ”It limits the light available for
photosynthesis. So it could reduce the amount of aquatic weed
growth, which is a major canal maintenance issue. It also saves
land,” explained Brandi McKuin, a project scientist at UC
Merced. … The team is working to quantify whether the
benefits will outweigh the costs, considering water savings,
reduced aquatic weed growth and land savings.
[S]tate lawmakers have passed a bill to ban products made with
PFAS, widely known as “forever chemicals”. The bill now heading
to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. … ”We are now finding
it just about everywhere,” says UCSD Public Health Professor
Jose Suarez. “We’re finding it in water sources. We’re finding
it in food chains and even in humans.” If Governor Newsom
signs the bill, California would begin phasing out PFAS in
consumer products. By 2028, food packaging and plastic foodware
would be banned. By 2030, cookware with PFAS, like some
nonstick pans, would also be off store shelves.
The Brawley City Council has been scheduled on Tuesday to
accept more than $1 million in federal funding from the
Southwest Border Regional Commission (SBRC) to expand water and
sewer infrastructure, a project designed to support new housing
and economic development in the city’s northwestern sector.
… The SBRC, a federal-state partnership covering 103
counties in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, funds
projects aimed at addressing economic distress through
infrastructure improvements and regional partnerships.
South Platte Renew, which serves 300,000 customers in both
Littleton and Englewood, has transformed wastewater treatment
into a success story in renewable energy. … The team at
South Platte Renew considered how to capture the methane gas
and reuse it, eventually proposing a biogas pipeline injection
system in 2019. It was approved, and the $7.8 million price tag
was paid for through sewer funds from Englewood and Littleton.
It was the first of its kind system in the state of Colorado.
… South Platte Renew has now helped other water
treatment facilities in the state get their systems up and
running.
Over two days of hearings, Colorado water managers laid out
their arguments related to one of the most powerful
water rights on the Colorado River and who should have
the authority to control it. The Colorado River Water
Conservation District plans to buy the water rights associated
with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon from Xcel
Energy and use the water for environmental purposes. To do so,
it must secure the support of the Colorado Water Conservation
Board. The CWCB is the only entity allowed to own instream-flow
water rights. … The board is now scheduled to
decide at its regular meeting in November.
… The ground is sinking because of excessive groundwater
pumping in the San Simon Valley, an area with a long
agricultural history and a recent boom in nut production. In a
matter of two decades, thousands of acres of pecans and
pistachios were planted by Arizona farmers and outside
investors attracted to a place with excellent growing
conditions and an essential, but unregulated resource:
groundwater.
[Friday,] the State Water Resources Control Board released a
Draft Scientific Basis Report Supplement that analyzes the
science underpinning a proposed voluntary agreement for the
Tuolumne River, a tributary of the Lower San Joaquin River. The
board will hold a public workshop on Wednesday, Nov. 5,
2025, to receive oral comments on the draft report, and written
comments are due by Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. A quorum of board
members may be present at the workshop, but no action will be
taken.
When Ted Cooke, the former general manager of the Central
Arizona Project, was nominated as the next commissioner of the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June, Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton
tweeted that his “decades of expertise” in water policy would
be valuable in the tough discussions to form new management
guidelines for the Colorado River. On Sept. 16, amid apparent
complaints from states on the upper Colorado, the Trump
administration abruptly withdrew Cooke’s nomination.
… Cooke told The Arizona Republic that the White House
told him the decision was due to “paperwork problems” with his
vetting documents. Cooke called that bogus.
An area of low pressure is setting up just off the coast of
Southern California and will bring another round of
unseasonable rain and potential flooding to the region, as well
as parts of Arizona and the lower Colorado River Basin. This
comes just a few days after the remnants of Tropical Storm
Mario brought a surge of moisture into Southern California and
parts of the Southwest, resulting in deadly flash flooding. …
While more rain is expected across the region beginning Monday,
the highest potential for flash flooding in parts of Southern
California will occur Tuesday and Wednesday.
The California Water Commission awarded $10.9 million to the
Sites Reservoir Project this week. This early funding from the
Water Storage Investment Program aims to assist with permitting
and environmental documents. … The Water Storage Investment
Program, backed by Proposition 1, supports five major water
storage projects across California, including Sites Reservoir.
Recently, inflationary adjustments made the project eligible
for more early funding.
A high-stakes legal battle over groundwater rights is
threatening the City of Camarillo’s water supply, with
officials warning the dispute could lead to higher costs for
residents and force a nearly $70 million desalter to be
sidelined. In a letter to state Sen. Monique Limón, Mayor Kevin
Kildee says the city is in a water crisis that stems from a
lawsuit filed by a group of large landowners calling
themselves the OPV Coalition against Camarillo and other
groundwater users in the Oxnard and Pleasant Valley basins. The
lawsuit is a process under the state’s Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act. … But city officials assert the lawsuit is
being used to manipulate the system for private gain.
… U.S. data center demand, driven largely by A.I., could
triple by 2030, according to McKinsey, which would require data
centers to make nearly $7 trillion in investment to keep
up. … [A]ccording to the International Energy Agency, a
100-megawatt data center, which uses water to cool servers,
consumes roughly two million liters of water per day,
equivalent to 6,500 households. This puts strain on
water supply for nearby residential
communities, a majority of which, according to Bloomberg News,
are already facing high levels of water stress.
