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.
Growers and water managers in the Kaweah groundwater subbasin
were gratified to see a formal recommendation this week for the
state Water Resources Control Board to move the region from
enforcement back to state oversight. The Water Board will vote
on the recommendation to kick the subbasin back into the arms
of the Department of Water Resources at its Dec. 2 meeting.
… An issue that remains difficult is that farmers in a
large chunk of the Greater Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA) don’t have surface water and rely heavily on
pumping. Meanwhile, surface water imported and recharged by
farmers in the East and Mid-Kaweah GSAs, tends to drain toward
Greater Kaweah.
… Data centers are also straining water supplies, raising
questions about scarcity across the dry Mountain West – from
the Colorado River and the communities it serves to the Great
Basin region, in places like Reno, Nevada, where a data center
park one-and-a-half times the size of the city is growing next
door. U.S. data centers used 17 billion gallons of water, or
enough for 150,000 homes for a year, according to a 2024
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report. That water demand
is projected to double or even quadruple within the next few
years, according to the federal report.
A new method for predicting how rainfall contributes to river
flow across the entire US has been developed by an
international team of scientists. The technique, which combines
physics knowledge with advanced artificial intelligence (AI),
aims to help decision-makers better prepare for extreme weather
and climate impacts. … The model outperformed several
traditional hydrologic approaches while also estimating the
likelihood of a range of different river-flow events. … Their
findings, published in the journal Water Resources Research,
could enhance river flow prediction, water management, and
climate resilience across the US and beyond.
… The [Colorado River] basin, on the whole, is drying. That’s
frightful for the 40 million people and 5 million acres that
the river supplies with water. But it’s also worrisome for
electricity generation. Lakes Mead and Powell, the basin’s two
largest reservoirs, are approaching critical levels in which
hydropower from their dams (Hoover and Glen Canyon,
respectively) would be severely curtailed or altogether cease.
… As the power of flowing water becomes less
reliable, they [utilities] are turning to an energy resource
that is almost always on in the Southwest during the day: the
sun.
At a virtual press conference on Thursday, Oct. 9, Klamath
River scientists announced that a year after the last of the
dams were removed, river health has begun to bounce back. With
salmon swimming upstream, bald eagles flying overhead, and
increased bear, beaver, otter and osprey activity, the
ecosystem is booming with ecological shifts thanks to the
completion of the world’s largest dam removal effort. … [T]he
fish monitoring effort done by California Trout is likely the
most comprehensive science and monitoring project ever done to
evaluate a dam removal effort.
After failing to win voter approval in 2021, Marin County is
again considering a tax to support replacing a floodwall that
protects nearly 600 homes in San Rafael. The
rapidly-deteriorating timber-reinforced berm made of compacted
dirt and wooden boards in the Santa Venetia area now is
proposed to be replaced with a composite sheet pile floodwall.
The project cost has escalated from a $6 million estimate in
2021 to the latest calculation of $25 million.
The State Water Resources Control Board is hosting a meeting in
Ukiah Wednesday to collect comments related to the Potter
Valley Project. According to information provided by the board,
it is holding “scoping meetings to provide information about
the Proposed Project, the CEQA process, and to receive written
or oral comments from trustee agencies, responsible agencies,
Tribes, and other interested persons concerning the range of
alternatives, potential significant effects, and mitigation
measures that should be analyzed in the EIR.”
A planned meeting between NOAA Fisheries’ senior political
leaders and representatives of the eight regional fishery
advisory councils has been canceled due to the government
shutdown. The Council Coordination Committee, which includes
the chairs, vice chairs, and executive directors from each
regional fishery management council, was scheduled to meet
Wednesday and Thursday to share information and talk about the
nation’s fisheries priorities, including compliance with
President Donald Trump’s executive order to boost American
seafood competitiveness. The notice for the meeting on the
committee’s website noted the cancellation and that it was due
to the shutdown.
… For grassroots groups in states like Louisiana, Texas, and
Mississippi, these [federal] cuts were devastating. Many relied
on federal support to fund clean water projects, legal
advocacy, or climate resiliency training. Without that support,
entire programs have been paused or shut down. In California,
however, the story unfolds differently. California has built
its own climate and equity infrastructure over the past two
decades. From the landmark Assembly Bill 32 Global Warming
Solutions Act to CalEnviroScreen, a state tool that maps
pollution and vulnerability, California has consistently gone
further than the federal government in directing resources to
frontline communities.
Governor Gavin Newsom today announced that more than $128
million in Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC)
Program grants have been approved to permanently protect more
than 40,000 acres of croplands and rangelands across 24
counties, returning more than 11,000 acres to California Native
American tribes, securing farmland for military veterans, and
benefiting low-income communities. … Eight projects
receiving grants will return 11,316 acres of land to California
Native American tribes to support cultural and traditional
agriculture uses.
The wait for the winter migration is finally over as the
first birds have arrived. The Pacific Flyway migration
route goes through California’s Great Central Valley
bringing millions of birds into the valley during the next
month. By November huge flocks of geese, ducks, swans and
various shorebirds and songbirds will be
living in dozens of National Wildlife Refuges (NWR),
state refuges, private reserves and fallow farmlands. But
the bird everyone seeks is the stately Sandhill
Crane.
An early-season storm was lashing Southern California early
Tuesday, prompting officials in Los Angeles County to issue
evacuation warnings in some areas. Thunderstorms could unleash
heavy rain that sends torrents of water, mud, sand, rocks,
trees and boulders down steep slopes in places recently burned
by wildfires, forecasters warned. … A flash
flood watch was in effect through Tuesday afternoon
for all areas that burned within the past two years. … A
winter weather advisory was issued through Wednesday for the
Lake Tahoe Basin, where the highest peaks were predicted to
pick up two feet of snow.
Other weather and water supply news around the West:
Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed legislation that would have
required data centers to report how much water they
use. … Assembly Bill 93, introduced by
Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo), would have required
new data centers to disclose their expected water use when they
apply for a business license and would have required all to
report their water consumption annually. In a message
explaining his decision Saturday, Newsom said the widespread
adoption of AI “is driving an unprecedented demand for data
center capacity throughout the nation.”
Already heated tensions flared Friday when a southern Tulare
County dairy farmer noticed what appeared to be signs
illustrating subsidence levels being affixed to a telephone
pole across the street from his ranch in the Pixley Irrigation
District. … He wrote in the post that attempts to speak
to the people putting up the signs didn’t yield many answers,
although one man’s hat offered a clue: Delano-Earlimart
Irrigation District (DEID). … The photo op was, indeed,
orchestrated by DEID to illustrate the level of subsidence in
that area.
Washington Evening Star humorist Philander Chase Johnson
created a great character named Senator Sorghum. A 1902 piece
called “A Delicate Distinction” had one character saying, “That
friend of yours seems to have a clear conscience.” Senator
Sorghum answered, “No, not a clear conscience; merely a
bad memory.” A convenient memory is common in politics. And
current negotiations regarding the Colorado River District’s
attempt to purchase the Shoshone water rights from Excel Energy
provide a perfect example. Water providers up and down the
Front Range, and especially Denver Water, seem to be
conveniently forgetting the agreement made more than a decade
ago – to support the purchase, and even help finance it. –Written by Greg Walcher, former director of the Colorado
Department of Natural Resources.
The Klamath Tribes walked out of a summit for Oregon’s tribal
governments and the governor this week, calling for action from
the governor’s office over concerns about the preservation of
their resources. The Klamath Tribes say their goal is the
restoration of the Klamath watershed, citing a
series of events that infringe on rights guaranteed through a
treaty signed in 1864. … This past summer, the tribes
say outfitters and guides infringed on tribal members’ fishing,
creating confrontational situations and prompting requests for
consultation.
The planet is grappling with a “new reality” as it reaches the
first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible
climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs,
according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists
across the world. As humans burn fossil fuels and ratchet up
temperatures, it’s already driving more severe heat
waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. But there are
even bigger impacts on the horizon. Climate change may also be
pushing Earth’s crucial systems — from the Amazon rainforest to
polar ice sheets — so far out of balance they collapse, sending
catastrophic ripples across the planet.
Following more than five years of planning and construction,
the San Mateo Wastewater Treatment Plant, on the shoreline of
San Francisco Bay, has undergone a $552 million upgrade and
expansion, becoming the largest public works investment in the
city’s history. The facility is now one of the most advanced
and sustainable wastewater treatment plants in the nation. The
comprehensive five-year project, carried out in three phases,
has significantly increased the plant’s capacity to handle
major storm events and prevent sewer system overflows that
threaten both public health and San Francisco Bay.
San Diego business and political leaders sought to strengthen
the economic relationship with their Mexican counterparts
Monday during the Regional Chamber of Commerce‘s 19th annual
cross-border trade mission. The delegation includes more
than 110 people from both San Diego and Baja California,
including the mayors of multiple cities and Mexican economic
development specialists. … [San Diego Mayor Todd] Gloria
said he views the mission as an “opportunity to advocate for
trade policy that benefits our businesses, as well as to press
for additional, substantive action to address the
Tijuana River Valley sewage crisis.”
Rancho California Water District announces that its Board
Member, Carol Lee Gonzales-Brady, has been elected Vice
President of the Association of California Water Agencies
(ACWA), the nation’s largest statewide coalition of public
water agencies. Gonzales-Brady will begin her two-year term on
January 1, 2026. Gonzales-Brady, who has served on the Rancho
Water Board of Directors since 2017 and completed two terms as
Board President, brings a wealth of experience to her new
statewide leadership role.
