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.
… Both the city and state are upgrading their respective
[water] systems. The state is undertaking a high-mountain
project to reconstruct the Comstock-era dam at Marlette Lake,
which FEMA found could fail in a 6.5 earthquake or larger.
Estimated to cost more than $23 million, with $10 million in
FEMA grant funding, that project is expected to be completed by
autumn 2026. Meanwhile, the city is upgrading the Quill plant
off Kings Canyon Road to increase treatment of surface water
from the Marlette system and nearby creeks to 4 million gallons
a day.
A former Biden administration official who led water protection
efforts along the U.S.-Mexico border is now working at a major
engineering firm. Maria-Elena Giner, the former U.S.
commissioner of the International Boundary and Water
Commission, joined Black & Veatch last week as a portfolio
leader. She is on the firm’s water resources and community
planning team, working with federal agencies, state and local
governments, utilities and private companies, including tech
firms. Giner said her new role will focus on environmental and
infrastructure challenges affecting the water sector.
With state negotiators in the Colorado River Basin still at
odds ahead of a key deadline, the Trump administration could
soon be tasked with deciding where to cut water use across the
West and appears to be weighing options like draining
reservoirs or curbing senior water rights. … Without a
deal, the Interior Department and its Bureau of Reclamation
have threatened to step in to wield federal authority — a
largely untested power — and potentially tap reservoirs in the
Upper Basin and reduce flows to the Lower Basin.
After a warm, dry weekend across Northern California, wet
weather is forecast to return this week. Widespread rain and
the strongest winds so far this season are predicted in the Bay
Area, North Coast, Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada as an
atmospheric river-fueled storm sweeps through
the region. … Because of the warm wind direction, this
week’s storm isn’t anticipated to be a big snowmaker in the
Sierra Nevada. … Several inches of rain is forecast
around the headwaters of the Sacramento and Feather rivers,
which is important for water supply early in
the wet season.
Two neighboring groundwater agencies in Kings County are
preparing for a showdown over how much farmers can pump even as
the state Water Resources Control Board restarted probationary
sanctions for farmers in the Tulare Lake subbasin. Farmers will
be required to report how much they pumped from July 14, 2024
through Sept. 25, 2025 by May 1, 2026, according to a Water
Board press release issued Friday evening. Fees of
$20-per-acre-foot pumped won’t be far behind.
… Zebra mussels are bad news for western waterways.
Spread mainly by hitching rides on watercraft, the
fast-reproducing mollusks clog water infrastructure, cling to
marinas and docks, and outcompete native species. Colorado has
taken costly measures to keep its lakes and rivers free of the
mussels, but recorded the first official infestation in the
state’s portion of the Colorado River this year. Quagga
mussels, zebra mussels’ close relatives, and other aquatic
nuisance species, have made their presence known at reservoirs
in the Colorado River Basin, like Lake Powell and Lake
Mead.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) plans to
inject 350,000 Chinook salmon eggs into the North Yuba River
this fall as the state government looks for new ways to help
struggling salmon populations recover. This is the second year
CDFW has taken this approach, collecting eggs fertilized at the
Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville and then hydraulically
injecting them into the river’s gravel substrate in November.
… Salmon populations have struggled in California rivers
as they face rising temperatures and fish passage blockages
like dams.
The U.S. says it wants to revive its atomic power industry, but
it barely produces any nuclear fuel. Thanks in part to new
technology, mothballed mines have restarted, potentially
carrying fewer environmental and human health risks than older
mines. But this uranium boom could unfold near some of the
U.S.’s most cherished landscapes, where communities fear
groundwater pollution and other threats.
… [Pinyon Plain Mine, Ariz.] and others like it
pose threats to the region’s network of interconnected aquifers
that stretches across the Grand Canyon region, according to
research published last year.
Is the water in San Francisco Bay safe for swimming? Are the
fish safe to eat? … These are some of the questions addressed
at the State of the San Francisco Estuary Conference, which was
held this week at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center.
… Changes in the amount of cool fresh water that flows
into the Bay from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta are one of the strongest indicators of overall
health. “Based on the amount of fresh water that actually flows
into the bay each year, the estuary has been for decades
experiencing chronic man-made drought conditions,” said
independent consultant Christina Swanson.
The complex web of federal, state and local water-quality rules
has recently become even more stringent, as was on display at a
roundtable Wednesday in Santa Rosa that brought together more
than two dozen local regulators, municipal officials and
construction industry professionals to tackle what’s changed
and what’s posing problems. The event, hosted by the Northern
California Engineering Contractors Association and the North
Coast Builders Exchange, revealed an evolving regulatory
landscape for protecting streams, creeks and rivers from runoff
of sediment, oils and other pollutants from construction sites.
In a recent article in the Journal of Exposure Science &
Environmental Epidemiology, researchers examined blood chemical
levels in adults exposed to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS) through public drinking water systems. Their findings
suggest that even in areas without industrial PFAS
manufacturing, people can be significantly exposed to these
“forever chemicals” through contaminated drinking water,
requiring ongoing monitoring.
The Marin Municipal Water District is preparing for a
scaled-back upgrade to a key pump station at the Sonoma County
line. The pump station is between Kastania Road and Highway 101
in Petaluma. … The district needs flexibility because it
is also developing a separate project to collect more Russian
River water to replenish Marin reservoirs during
droughts. … When completed, it could yield 3,800 to
4,750 acre-feet of water a year to store during droughts.
Over three sunny-but-cool October days, a team of scientists
and volunteers dug up and hauled away the root crowns of trees
along the Crystal River, a first step toward a potential
strategy to protect flows on one of the last
free-flowing rivers in Colorado.
… Environmental and recreation advocates and local
municipalities, as well as many residents of the Crystal River
Valley, have long sought to protect the river from future dams
and diversions — infrastructure projects that have left many
other Western Slope rivers depleted.
When buying property in Arizona, water is often an important
part of the decision, particularly in rural areas. The way real
estate agents address questions like how secure the water
supply is can influence a buyer’s confidence in their purchase.
As Arizona continues to navigate long-term water challenges,
ensuring that agents are informed and equipped to communicate
accurately about water is critical for their clients and
communities. That’s the motivation behind REAL Water Arizona —
Improving Water Education for Real Estate Professionals.
… [T]he program is reimagining how water education is
taught in the state’s mandatory continuing education course for
licensed real estate professionals.
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.
