A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except holidays.
Please Note:
Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.
We occasionally bold words in the text to ensure the water connection is clear.
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.
… A UC Berkeley-led project aims to make it easier for all
Californians to understand the state’s complex water system and
have a say in how this critical resource is used. With the
support of a California Climate Action Grant,
the Collaboratory for Equity in Water
Allocation (COEQWAL) team has spent the past three years
working with stakeholders from around the state. … At an
event in Sacramento on Sept. 3, the collaboration unveiled the
new COEQWAL website, which includes educational modules and
reference guides explaining California’s water system. It also
visualizes the outcomes of more than 100 water management
scenarios modeled using the California Department of Water
Resource’s CalSim 3 planning tool.
As California continues to feel the impacts of a heat dome that
is bringing higher than normal temperatures to large portions
of the state, it’s a good time to remember that fish and
wildlife — especially salmon — need cold water, too.
… Fall-run Chinook salmon begin spawning in the
Sacramento River when eggs from winter-run Chinook salmon that
spawned in late July and early August may still be in their
gravel egg nests, called redds. Great care must be taken to
simultaneously ensure winter-run Chinook salmon redds are
protected, establish suitable flow conditions prior to the
onset of fall-run Chinook salmon spawning and refill Shasta
Reservoir for the next season.
California reached a second settlement with more than 70
parties to recover additional funding to contain a closed
hazardous waste landfill threatening to release hazardous
substances into the environment. The Vine Hill Complex, located
in California’s Contra Costa County, operated as a hazardous
waste treatment, storage and disposal facility until 1989,
accepting offsite waste including petroleum industry
byproducts, metals, electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals and
paints, according to California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a
complaint filed against the parties Thursday. … Despite
its closure, Bonta says the Vine Hill Complex has released and
threatens to release hazardous substances into the environment,
including toxic substances detected in groundwater such as
arsenic, lead, nickel, benzene and chloroform.
… On Thursday, state water regulators released a draft permit
for the highly anticipated Sites Reservoir,
outlining how much water the proposed $6 billion facility
in rural Glenn and Colusa counties can draw from the
Sacramento River and, importantly, when those draws can be
made. The project’s backers, who include Gov.
Gavin Newsom, criticized an earlier draft of the
permit as overly restrictive, saying it offered as little as
half the water needed and left the viability of what
would be California’s eighth largest reservoir in
question. Cities and farms across the state stand to
benefit from the new water supply, including in the Bay Area’s
South Bay and Tri-Valley, though opponents of the
project say it will dangerously deplete the Sacramento
River.
The Central Arizona Project’s board authorized its legal
counsel to take legal action “if necessary”
against a federal plan to cut Arizona’s share of
Colorado River water dramatically in coming
years. Board members went into a closed executive session
before the Sept. 3 vote to discuss certain “occurrences” that
could trigger a lawsuit or other legal filing, and did not
specify them when voting unanimously for the authorization.
Board member Alexandra Arboleda introduced the motion at the
meeting and prefaced it with a statement that the United States
Department of the Interior’s 10-year framework for
dealing with water shortage “contemplates operations
that are contrary to law and devastating to the water users of
the Central Arizona Project.”
The world’s leading weather organization is sounding the alarm
about this year’s super El Niño, issuing its most certain
forecast in the history of the organization. In an update
issued early Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization
predicted a “nearly 100% likelihood” that the El Niño
will last through February. … Daniel Swain, a
climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture
and Natural Resources, says this El Niño will be so big, “with
consequences that are so large, I’m not sure we fully
understand them.” The intensity of the El Niño, Swain says,
means that it may cause unexpected and extreme
weather, and he cautions against making certain
predictions about what, exactly, is going to happen over the
next year. But the impacts, he says, will almost
certainly be massive.
The Trump administration on Friday proposed further narrowing
protections for streams and wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of
Engineers issued a supplemental proposed rule that they said
would be likely to reduce the bodies of water that are
under the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction if its
changes are adopted. It would be expected to reduce the number
of waters subject to the Clean Water Act in the West. That
means development or pollution in these streams and wetlands
would no longer require a permit or potential
mitigation. The new changes come on top of an already
proposed rule by the agencies that is also expected to narrow
the Clean Water Act’s applicability.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to require data centers to
disclose how much water they use, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says
concerns over AI’s water use don’t hold “up to any
scrutiny.” On the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath
released Tuesday, Altman said that it takes 38,000 ChatGPT
queries to use as much water as producing a single almond in
California. … The problem, experts say, is that it’s
impossible to verify those numbers given what’s public about
the secretive industry. … Regardless of whether it takes
thousands of queries to match the water needed to produce a
single almond in California (a number that varies substantially
over time and space, according to a 2019 study), the
Congressional Research Service says data centers are using more
water than they used to.
After years of debate over how much freshwater should be
allowed to flow to the sea through the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta, the State Water Resources Control Board has released a
final draft of its regulatory plan. … In the draft
plan, water right holders can choose from two pathways to
compliance. They can provide a minimum rate of water flow from
Sacramento River tributaries, or they can voluntarily invest in
habitat restoration projects with specific flow volumes in lieu
of sustaining a minimum flow rate. Some stakeholders say that
part of the plan hands regulatory authority over to the very
groups the board is supposed to regulate.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unlocked
approximately $6 million in reserves and is planning to spend a
portion of that money on evaluating the first phase of a
project to build a new treatment plant, separate from the
existing South Bay plant, to capture and treat Tijuana River
sewage flows. On Sept. 1, the board established the Tijuana
River Capture and Cleanup Initiative with three phases to build
a new treatment plant near the U.S.-Mexico border, at a
starting cost of $1.8 million to evaluate options including
past proposals. A county board letter about the initiative
does not include a total price estimate nor where that money
would come from or the treatment capacity for the plant and
where it would be built. However, the letter says the first
phase will consider a 2021 river diversion study by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
The State Water Resources Control Board has recommended a
danger advisory, its highest warning for toxic algae, at Lake
Pillsbury after sampling ahead of the Labor Day weekend found
toxin levels above the state’s danger threshold, Lake County
Health Services said in a notice. The reservoir sits behind
PG&E’s Scott Dam on the upper Eel River and is the largest
lake in the Mendocino National Forest. It has 31 miles of
shoreline, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The county
said State Water Board staff collected a water sample at Lake
Pillsbury Resort on Aug. 24 as part of a pre-holiday assessment
and found high concentrations of cyanobacteria, the microscopic
bacteria also called blue-green algae, and 23.84 micrograms per
liter of microcystins and nodularins, the toxins the bacteria
produce.
The Sierra Nevada Conservancy announced they have approved
nearly $1.5 million for new projects that will boost
sustainable recreation and tourism in the Sierra-Cascade from
Proposition 68. … According to the Sierra Nevada
Conservancy, the new recreation and tourism grants went to
projects in Alpine, Butte and Inyo counties. … Inyo
County received a $498,610 grant for its Owens River Water
Trail project, which will help create a 6.1-mile paddling route
for non-motorized watercraft and the addition of both a
durable, ADA-accessible, public access launch site and take-out
site on the Lower Owens River. The new facilities will be
located on land owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power but will be managed under a long-term lease by Inyo
County.
A new study finds health care costs associated dust blowing off
a shrinking Great Salt Lake could cost as much as $2 billion a
year. Lena Harris, an assistant professor at Texas A&M,
wrote the working paper with researchers from Arizona State
University and University of California Davis. She said they
did a “back of the envelope calculation” that found just
factoring PM 2.5 and PM10 blowing off the lakebed at scale
could lead to significant costs for emergency room visits and
years off Utahns’ lives. … The study also explored health
benefits of getting water into the lake, factoring in acquiring
agriculture water (spending as much as $1,000 an acre-foot).
For every additional acre-foot of water in the Great Salt Lake?
One model finds Utahns would get on average about $1,295 per
acre-foot in health benefits.
A massive spill of raw sewage and untreated
wastewater into the Arkansas River in southeastern
Colorado continues to wreak havoc on the region. Water in the
river downstream of the spill, east of Pueblo, is still testing
high for dangerous nasties like the bacteria E. coli.
… And all of this is happening during one of the most
agriculturally important times for the Lower Arkansas Valley,
as watermelon, cantaloupe, chile peppers and other crops are
harvested. … These new water quality challenges pile on
top of earlier 2026 farming obstacles in the valley. Much of
the Colorado-famous melon crop from the area was devastated in
early season hail storms.
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.
