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.
… 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.
A team of researchers in California drew
notoriety last year with an aborted experiment on a retired
aircraft carrier that sought to test a machine for creating
clouds. But behind the scenes, they were planning a much larger
and potentially riskier study of salt-water-spraying equipment
that could eventually be used to dim the sun’s rays — a
multimillion-dollar project aimed at producing clouds over a
stretch of ocean larger than Puerto Rico. The details
outlined in funding requests, emails, texts and other records
obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News raise new questions about a
secretive billionaire-backed initiative that oversaw last
year’s brief solar geoengineering experiment on the San
Francisco Bay.
Lawmakers in U.S. Congress will consider several fisheries
provisions in the U.S. Department of the Interior budget bill,
with each legislative body proposing different levels of
funding for the National Fish Hatchery System, fish
conservation, and stopping the spread of invasive species.
Though currently on vacation, both the U.S. House and the U.S.
Senate are in the midst of the fiscal year 2026 budget process,
which involves passing several massive appropriations that
offer varying levels of policy guidance to the federal
government. Recently, both the House Committee on
Appropriations and the Senate Committee on Appropriations
revealed and approved separate versions of an appropriations
bill funding the Department of the Interior, which contained
several fisheries provisions, mostly focused on the nation’s
fish conservation and recovery efforts.
… On Thursday, U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John
Hickenlooper, as well as U.S. Reps. Joe Neguse and Brittany
Pettersen sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom
Shultz, urging him to “immediately” release the funds for the
Colorado State Forest Service. “The Colorado State Forest
Service, as well as state departments of forestry across the
country, rely on this annual funding to establish community
wildfire protection programs, complete forest management
projects to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect
drinking water, and improve collaboration across all
layers of forestland ownership,” the letter states.
… “Withholding this money without justification puts
communities in Colorado and across the West at severe risk of
wildfire, flooding, landslides, and other natural and geologic
disasters,” the congressional delegation wrote.
… The agency [Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts]
operates 10 different water reclamation plants — from Valencia
to Long Beach — that produce 150 million gallons of recycled
water every day. The Warren Facility in Carson, meanwhile,
isn’t just an isolated water treatment plant. Instead, it’s a
key component in a wastewater treatment network — called
the Joint Outfall System — that consists of seven treatment
facilities and more than 1,200 miles of sewers running from
Long Beach to La Canada-Flintridge. It serves a vast majority
of LASAN’s clientele — about 5 million people — and has the
capacity to treat up to 400 million gallons of wastewater
daily, making it one of the largest such facilities in the
world. Six of the JOS plants, according to LASAN, convert less
salty waste water into higher-quality recycled water, which is
then sent off and used for landscape irrigation, groundwater
replenishment and other uses.
… Beginning in 2008, boats trailered to Tahoe have been
required to undergo inspections for prolific quagga mussels,
which have caused vast damage in the Great Lakes, Lake Mead and
other places. But the discovery late last year of another
species, the golden mussel, in the
Sacramento River Delta has redoubled concern.
The golden mussels, native to Asia, are even heartier and more
prolific than their quagga cousins. The tiny creatures grow up
to 2 inches in length, and have already proved their ability to
spread. They have been detected in Quail Lake
in Los Angeles County. And inspectors at Alpine Meadows found a
single live golden mussel on the drive shaft of a boat bound
for Tahoe at the end of May. Allowed to proliferate, the
mussels will thoroughly encrust docks, boats and other hard
surfaces, requiring cleanups that easily run into millions of
dollars.
