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.
Subscribe to our weekday emails to have news delivered to your inbox at about 9 a.m. Monday through Friday except for holidays.
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.
Achieving water sustainability in many water-scarce regions
will require reducing consumptive water use by converting
irrigated agricultural land to less water intensive uses.
Conventional approaches to this challenge that emphasize water
conservation as a singular objective often promote ad hoc
practices that temporarily leave land idle while missing an
opportunity to enhance landscape resilience and harness
synergies of managing water and land together. Multibenefit
land repurposing offers an alternative solution to this
challenge by strategically transitioning irrigated agricultural
land to other beneficial uses that consume less water and
provide benefits for multiple constituencies.
An empty and often overlooked parcel across from Sylvan Park is
being reimagined as a vibrant native plant and pollinator
garden. … Once completed, the 13,000-square-foot garden
will feature drought-tolerant native species, pollinator
habitats, educational signage, public seating, and engraved
pavers honoring donors. … The garden also supports the
city’s Climate Action Plan by promoting water conservation.
Case studies from the city’s Municipal Utilities and
Engineering Department show that properties switching to native
landscaping reduced water usage by as much as 70 to 80
percent.
… In this intergenerational conversation, three writers who
carry Western rivers in their blood talk about their boating
lives, creative bents, and views of moving water, in their
earlier years and now. Zak Podmore, whitewater boater and
award-winning journalist, joins us from Bluff, Utah. His books
and articles attracted the notice of Rose McMackin, former
whitewater guide, freelance journalist, and pop culture writer
in Austin, Texas. She is also the daughter of our third guest,
Becca Lawton, an author, fluvial geologist, and pioneering
Grand Canyon boatwoman living in Northern California.
… On Nov. 11, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, Nevada and the Beehive state need to reach a
consensus on how to split up a dwindling river that supplies
water for nearly 40 million people. … Conserving water
in Utah is nothing new. During dry years, there’s often not
enough from rain and snowpack to meet everyone’s water rights,
so some people go without their share. Those cuts typically
happen on a small, localized basis. What makes potential
Colorado River reductions unprecedented … is that they
would happen basinwide. That’s why Utah has prepared for how
that might play out.
Board members of the nascent Tule East groundwater agency spent
their second meeting setting up basics but with an eye on the
clock and a sensitive ear to what didn’t work in the past. The
Tule East Joint Powers Authority Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA), will take over governance of so-called “white
lands” from the embattled Eastern Tule
GSA. … Meanwhile, Tule East board members are
facing a herculean task to get organized and come up with a new
groundwater plan to present to the Water Resources Control
Board, which placed the entire Tule subbasin on probation last
fall for lacking a plan that would stem subsidence, among other
deficiencies.
Northern California’s Siskiyou County took another hit Tuesday
when a federal judge denied its summary judgment motion in a
case over residents’ claims they’re not getting the water they
need. The putative class — many of whom are Asian American and
live in a part of the rural county called Shasta Vista — sued
in 2022. … They also claim officials have used water
ordinances to deprive them in an area with no public water
system. County officials have said the local ordinances
that prevent the transfer of water to the Shasta Vista
residents are needed to combat illegal cannabis grows. But the
plaintiffs contend they’re used against a minority population
that needs water.
Blue veins of ice streaked the snow this January in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Snow hydrologist McKenzie Skiles eyed the veins,
worried. … Studies from her lab and others find that less
snow is falling on mountains worldwide, and there’s more rain
in the forecast. … [C]limate models of California’s Sierra
Nevada Mountains predict that, at 3 degrees warming,
more than half the range’s precipitation will fall as rain, not
snow. That would be disastrous for the Golden State,
where snowmelt from the Sierras is a third of the water supply.
California simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to capture
all that water from rain. More rain will also change flood
risks. … Overall, less snow compromises drinking and
agricultural water storage in the West.
A new website, the San Francisco Bay State of the Birds,
created by the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture and Point Blue
Conservation Science, provides scientists, policymakers, and
the public with an up-to-date look at which Bay Area bird
populations are thriving and which are declining, and what that
says about the health of San Francisco Bay’s wetlands
and waters. The findings suggest that the populations
of Bay Area marsh birds and wetland ducks are doing well,
shorebirds and diving ducks are declining, indicating that some
habitats are rebounding from “rapidly evolving climate change
and biodiversity challenges,” according to the project
researchers, while others still need conservation attention.
Heavy autumn rains brought relief to drought-plagued portions
of the Southwest, but across the Colorado River basin ongoing
water supply concerns still linger amid tense policy
negotiations and near record-low reservoir storage. Even
after accounting for the heavy rain, 57% of the
Colorado River watershed remains in severe drought,
according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. More than 11% of the
basin is in extreme drought. … In response to extremely
low water conditions, it’s possible water from upstream
reservoirs in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico could be
released to support Powell’s hydropower turbines.
Other weather and water supply news across the West:
… Cloud seeding has been happening in Colorado since the
1950s, and state scientists say it’s one tool that can help
boost snowpack during our changing winters. … State
scientists say cloud seeding can increase snowfall by 8% to 12%
per storm when conditions line up. … Colorado currently
has seven state-permitted cloud seeding programs, mostly in
high-elevation mountain areas. … Western states like
Arizona, California and Nevada even help fund Colorado’s cloud
seeding efforts because they benefit, too.
Arizona’s tech boom has brought jobs, investment and innovation
to the desert. But as the number of data centers multiply
across the Valley, so does concern over what keeps their
humming servers cool: water. According to Data Center Map, 162
data centers now operate in Arizona, with many more planned or
under construction. These massive facilities, the digital
backbone of cloud computing, social media and artificial
intelligence, rely on enormous quantities of water to keep
thousands of servers from overheating.
During a brief storm last month, a trash boom in the Tijuana
River managed to stop 20 tons of trash and debris from entering
California. Historically, during rain events in the San
Diego-Tijuana region, water flows from south of the border into
the U.S. carrying tons of plastic, tires and other debris. Last
year, as a way to stop the pollution, a 1,200-foot trash boom
was strung across the river bed by Alter Terra, a binational
environmental group. Sections of the boom float according
to the level of the river — its fence-like partitions stop the
trash from flowing farther into the Tijuana River Valley and
the Pacific Ocean.
One of the most picturesque and affluent communities along Lake
Tahoe is dealing with a nasty problem: potential raw sewage
contamination. A boil water notice was sent Monday to residents
of Incline Village, situated on the north end of Lake Tahoe in
Nevada, after a water main break resulted in a loss of pressure
in the water distribution system. In the notice, officials with
the community’s general improvement district said the loss of
pressure could cause backups through cracks and joints in pipes
and pose a “high potential that fecal contamination or other
disease-causing organisms could enter the distribution system.”
… [E]very positive development in the embattled Klamath basin
seems to come with a catch, and the catch this time is ominous:
The Trump administration has shown disregard for the salmons’
well-being, cutting already allocated funding for needed
ongoing river restoration, fish-monitoring and fire-prevention
projects, and firing the federal officials who helped
facilitate them. Even worse, in the event of drought — which
has plagued the basin for most of this century — the
administration has signaled that it intends to drastically
reduce the river flows that salmon need so that upper-basin
farmers get full water allocations. –Written by author Jacques Leslie.
The EPA has begun cleanup work at the Lukachukai Mining
District Superfund Site on the Navajo Nation, where uranium
mining left decades of contamination. The agency said crews
will remove thousands of cubic yards of uranium-contaminated
waste rock from the Mesa V complex and place it in a newly
built engineered repository designed to prevent further erosion
or groundwatercontamination.
The project is expected to take about a year to
complete. Officials said the area is used for grazing and
other activities by Navajo families, and the cleanup will help
reduce risks from exposure to radioactive materials.
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.
