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.
The state of Arizona is home to 22 tribal nations — and all of
them have a deep connection to water. However, many tribes are
being left out of conversations surrounding the
topic. Liliana Caughman, an assistant professor in
the American Indian Studies program at Arizona State
University, is working to change that. Through her
lab, the Relate Lab, eight Indigenous scholars are working
alongside the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative at ASU
and their WaterSimmersive project to create water-related
exhibits in rural communities throughout Arizona. … The
Indigenous Water Stories Research Cohort is currently working
with tribes like the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Colorado
River Indian Tribes and Navajo Nation to relay the stories and
history of water that come from each.
Last week, the Trump administration announced a set of
sweeping AI policy recommendations to “usher in a new golden
age of human flourishing.” Among the suggested environmental
rollbacks laid out in both an executive order and a
corresponding AI Action Plan is a set of specific
recommendations to essentially loosen Clean Water Act
permitting processes for data centers. … The part
of the Clean Water Act specifically named in these comments and
in the recommendations from the White House deals with how
projects like data centers could impact federally protected
waters during construction or use, and what materials are
discharged into those waters or dredged from them.
Other data center water and environmental impact news:
A Bay Area representative and other federal lawmakers mounted a
push on Tuesday for action on groundwater
rise, which they warned will worsen flooding across
the United States in the decades to come, with the potential to
damage critical infrastructure, harm freshwater supplies and
spread toxic chemicals into communities. … U.S. Reps.
Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, and Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y.,
introduced legislation in June that would set aside $5 million
over the next year for the United States Geological Survey to
study and map groundwater rise nationally through 2100. …
They held a press conference on Tuesday in South San Francisco
in San Mateo County — considered the most at-risk county to sea
level rise in California — to push for
Congress to advance the legislation, which they dubbed the
Groundwater Rise and Infrastructure Preparedness Act of 2025.
A top Colorado state negotiator said Monday that the Bureau of
Reclamation must consider sending less Colorado River water to
California, Arizona and Nevada if regulators want to avoid
“running so close to the brink of crisis all the time.” The
Interior Department and Reclamation are leading negotiations
among the seven states that share the drought-stricken
waterway, trying to come up with a new long-term operating
plan. The states face a November deadline to meet an agreement,
but for nearly two years have been at odds over how to divide
cuts to the amount of water flowing to the Upper Basin —
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — and the Lower Basin of
California, Arizona and Nevada.
Governor Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation for
several counties in Northern California to aid in recovery
efforts following severe storms in February and March. The
proclamation includes Humboldt, Mendocino, Modoc, Napa, Shasta,
Sonoma and Trinity counties. The Governor’s office said these
counties’ roads and waterways were affected by
landslides and widespread flooding, creating
conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and
property. The proclamation authorizes the Governor’s Office of
Emergency Services (Cal OES) to provide assistance to counties
under the California Disaster Assistance
Act. Additionally, Newsom issued a separate emergency
proclamation specifically for Trinity County to address the
impact of the March storms on public safety and infrastructure.
… Iran is in the throes of an acute water crisis, on top of a
monthslong energy shortage that has prompted daily scheduled
power cuts across the country. Iranians still recovering from a
12-day war with Israel and the United States last month must
now confront life without the basics. The government announced
this week that many reservoirs, particularly those that supply
the capital, Tehran, with drinking water, were drying out.
Water supplies for Tehran are predicted to run out in just a
few weeks, officials said, pleading with the public to reduce
water consumption. … [T]he crisis has grown so extreme that
the government shut down all government offices and services in
Tehran and more than two dozen other cities across the country
on Wednesday, creating a three-day weekend in an attempt to
lower water and electricity usage.
In a stunning move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on
Tuesday proposed to repeal its landmark 2009 finding that
greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. The proposal
would also revoke the standards the agency has set for
greenhouse gas emissions from all motor vehicles. The so-called
endangerment finding is a formal determination affirming that
planet-warming greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and
methane pose a threat to human health and the environment. …
If it is reversed, many standards that rely on it could crumble
— leaving the auto industry and other polluting sectors free to
emit greenhouse gases without limits. But experts and state
regulators say it could also represent a golden opportunity for
California to set a national example, as the move may open the
door for stronger regulations at the state level.
Republicans are quietly moving to kill proposed regulations for
PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge that is spread on farmland as
fertilizer, a practice that has sickened farmers across the
country, destroyed their livelihoods and contaminated food and
water supplies. … Republicans quietly
slipped a rider into a House appropriations bill that would
fund the EPA aims to derail the risk assessment process by
cutting off funding. The rider also includes language that
appears designed to permanently prohibit funding for the
implementation of regulations for some PFAS in sludge.
… Public health advocates and some Congress members are
now mobilizing to kill the rider, which they say is likely
illegal because it pre-empts the Clean Water
Act.
… Experts say wastewater infrastructure updates are crucial
as populations continue to boom in cities like Tijuana and
climate-fueled flooding triggers sewage overflows around the
United States. However, these projects can be costly and time
consuming. Delayed fixes leave many communities exposed to
bacteria-laden waterways, particularly along the coast, where
sea-level rise poses a dual threat to outdated
infrastructure. The Tijuana River is widely considered one
of North America’s most degraded waterways. The river winds
through urban areas in Mexico, where communities dump sewage,
trash and other waste directly into the water or onto the
streets, where it can wash in during a storm. … [T]he
problem is especially bad during heavy rainfall events such as
the atmospheric rivers that hit the West Coast.
A fishing village in far Northern California remained under a
tsunami warning Wednesday morning, even as officials reduced
the warning to an advisory for an area directly to the south,
along the Humboldt County coast. Crescent City, a community of
6,700 people that is 25 miles south of the Oregon border,
sounded warning sirens Tuesday evening, before the first waves
arrived not long after midnight. Waves reached a peak of four
feet in Crescent City before dawn on Wednesday.
… Crescent City, which is the county seat of Del Norte
County, is unusually prone to tsunamis, with dozens striking
over the past century. The reason is unusual geology: Just off
the coast, an underwater ridge called the
Mendocino Fracture Zone “funnels tsunamis into deeper water
where they pick up speed before they hit Crescent City,”
according to city literature.
The Calipatria City Council unanimously adopted a resolution
July 8, introduced by Mayor Michael Luellen, opposing the
expansion of solar development on farmland and affirming the
city’s commitment to protecting the Imperial Valley’s
agricultural heritage, economy and environment. Resolution No.
25-24 mirrors and supports a similar position adopted by
the Imperial Irrigation District, emphasizing that the rapid
conversion of irrigated, cultivated lands for energy
development is producing net-negative impacts for the
Calipatria area and the broader Imperial
Valley. “Agriculture has defined our region for over a
century. It is the foundation of our economy, our identity, and
our way of life,” said Mayor Luellen.
The Southern Steelhead Coalition is expanding its reach across
Southern California, nearly doubling the area it covers to
advance landscape-scale restoration efforts for the iconic
Southern California steelhead, a critically endangered species.
The coalition now covers more than 10 watersheds from Santa
Maria to the Santa Monica Mountains, coordinating projects
across partners through cost-effective strategies to recover
this endangered native fish. The coalition’s expansion is
a necessary step towards achieving our collective mission of
saving a species that serves as a vital indicator of watershed
health throughout the region.
EPA could improve permitting for carbon dioxide storage wells
and make the process more transparent for communities affected
by those projects, the agency’s independent watchdog said
Tuesday. The agency has received millions in funding since 2021
to speed up processing of permits for carbon dioxide injected
deep underground. A federal tax credit known as 45Q has made
those wells more attractive to oil and gas companies, spurring
a slew of new permit applications at EPA, which regulates the
practice to safeguard drinking water. But
while EPA has expanded its capacity to approve Class VI
injection wells, it failed to spend $1.2 million appropriated
for the program in 2023 within the appropriate time frame, the
agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a new
report.
The community coalition Defend Ballona Wetlands filed a lawsuit
on July 25 against the California Coastal Commission, alleging
the agency unlawfully approved a fossil gas project that
threatens the ecologically sensitive Ballona Wetlands
Ecological Reserve in Playa del Rey. The suit, joined by
Protect Ballona Wetlands and environmental scientist Robert van
de Hoek, accuses the commission of violating state
environmental laws by allowing Southern California Gas Co. to
plug and abandon two natural gas monitoring wells, Del Rey 14
and 19, without proper review. The lawsuit, filed in Los
Angeles County Superior Court, claims the commission engaged in
“piecemealing” by treating the well abandonment as a standalone
project, despite its connection to a larger, now-decertified
Ballona Wetlands Restoration Project.
A flurry of posts on Facebook in mid-June alarmed users about
harmful algae blooms (HABs) caused by cyanobacteria in Lake
Mendocino. The posts described an incident in which a dog died
of neurotoxin poisoning after swimming in the lake. The poster
was furious that no signage appeared at the lake about the
dangers for pets. … The dog owner or someone else from
the public filed a formal complaint with the Army Corps of
Engineers, which manages Lake Mendocino. The Army Corps
performed tests in late June. Said the Corps, “Last week, water
samples were collected from the South Boat Ramp, North Boat
Ramp, and Pomo-A Swimmers Area. The good news is that while
some cyanobacteria are present, the levels found were low, and
we didn’t detect any of the common toxin-producing
cyanobacteria.”
A new study from Los Alamos National Laboratory shows that New
Mexico’s beloved piñon pine trees may be more flexible in how
they handle extreme drought than scientists once thought.
Generally, all plants have a built-in drought alarm system
called a “stomatal closure point.” When soil gets too dry, the
plant hits a tipping point where it closes up to avoid
dehydration. While this can help the plant survive drought, it
also pauses growth and energy production. … But, when given
more water just before prolonged drought … piñon started to
change, mimicking the behavior of an “anisohydric” plant –
where the plant will let its water levels match the environment
around it. … [T]he discovery could have broad implications
for land managers, offering a tool to predict how ecosystems
might respond to drought.
After a promising step in talks about the future of the
Colorado River, the seven states that use its water appear to
be hitting more hurdles. They’re arguing over exactly how much
water each state will get from the shrinking river. A few weeks
ago, researcher John Fleck at the University of New Mexico said
he saw a “glimmer of hope” in those negotiations. But now, that
glimmer is gone. Fleck says states are falling back into
rivalries that go back more than a century, and they’re afraid
to make compromises. “This new method has a lot of promise, but
as we work out the details, we’re seeing that those old
problems are surfacing again, and the negotiations as a result,
just don’t seem to be going as well as we had hoped they were,”
Fleck says.
Fresno County’s west rural communities of Cantua Creek, El
Povernir, and Five Points are at the epicenter of California’s
clean energy transition and the world’s largest solar project.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) last month approved the
Darden Clean Energy Project (DCEP). … Environmental
justice groups had raised concerns whether the transition from
agriculture to energy production would be
equitable for the communities’ residents. Environmental
advocates said the residents in the communities neighboring the
project already face challenges such as undrinkable and
unaffordable water, extreme heat, and historical
disinvestment. … The solar power plant will be built on 9,500
acres of land in unincorporated western Fresno County that is
no longer able to support agricultural production. The land was
owned by the Westlands Water District.
In the past week, Northern California’s century-old Potter
Valley Project crossed a major threshold toward dismantling. On
July 25, PG&E submitted its formal plan to federal
regulators to tear down the two-dam system that has rerouted
Eel River water into the Russian River for over a century. Just
days earlier, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors became
one of seven required signatories to a water diversion
agreement, paving the way for a replacement system called the
New Eel-Russian Facility, or NERF. Together, the two
developments mark a historic shift: The original infrastructure
is on its way out, and the future of interbasin water sharing
is up for grabs.
The continents are rapidly drying out and the earth’s vast
freshwater resources are under threat, according to a recently
released study based on more than 20 years of NASA satellite
data. … The study, published in the journal Science
Advances, examined changes to Earth’s total supply of fresh
water and found that nearly 6 billion people live in the 101
countries facing a net decline in water supply, posing a
“critical, emerging threat to humanity.” According to the
study, the uninhibited pumping of groundwater by farmers,
cities and corporations around the world now accounts for 68%
of the total loss of fresh water at the latitudes where most
people live.
