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 San Diego County Water Authority and Metropolitan Water
District are set to announce a historic settlement of decades
of legal disputes following the 2003 deal to purchase water
from Imperial Valley farmers. The disputes are insanely
complex and they have cost San Diego ratepayers an estimated
$20 million in legal fees. … The Water Authority agreed to
purchase water for several decades from IID. It also invested
heavily in lining the canals that bring water from the
Colorado River, saving significant amounts of
water that had been lost to seepage. … The settlement
will set a framework for the Water Authority to sell water to
other Southern California water agencies or to Metropolitan
itself. And Metropolitan has agreed to even allow the Water
Authority to sell water out of state, if it’s not needed here.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget for 2026 slashes
about 90 percent of the funding for one of the country’s
cornerstone biological and ecological research programs. Known
as the Ecosystems Mission Area, the program is part of the U.S.
Geological Survey and studies nearly every aspect of the
ecology and biology of natural and human-altered landscapes and
waters around the country. The 2026 proposed budget allocates
$29 million for the project, a cut from its current funding
level of $293 million. The budget proposal also reduces funds
for other programs in the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as
other federal science agencies. … The E.M.A. is also a
core part of federal climate research. The Trump administration
has sharply reduced or eliminated funds for climate science
across federal agencies, calling the study of climate change
part of “social agenda” research in an earlier version of the
budget proposal.
Other water and environmental project funding news:
The flood plains of Sacramento are a geologic
world away from the more cinematic California of coastal crags
and lofty peaks. Yet that sometimes overlooked region could be
home to one of California’s great disasters waiting to happen,
according to a February report from First Street, a prominent
climate risk prediction firm. The firm’s models suggest
that the mounting risks of catastrophic
flooding will drive Sacramento County — the heart of
California’s fourth-largest metro area, at about 2.4 million
people — to lose, in the average scenario, 28% of its
population by 2055. … Few places in the U.S., if any,
are more at risk of catastrophic flood than
Sacramento. … In modern times, water has been
corralled into aqueducts and dams and not allowed to pool into
the fertile soil, drying out the wetlands and leaving hard,
dusty earth that offers no buffer against floodwater.
A Town Hall convened Thursday aimed at protecting a vital water
resource that has, and could again, prove critical to fighting
wildfires, but also to sustain the economy and enhance
recreational opportunities for an isolated, yet popular
destination point for longtime residents. The Lake County
Chamber of Commerce hosted the event at the Soper Reese
Theater, Thursday. Master of Ceremonies was Amanda Martin,
Chief Economic Officer of the Chamber. Martin said the
presentation was to promote awareness and to educate the
community on the critical issue of a potential removal of
Scotts Dam from the Potter Valley Project. … Should the
dam be torn down, Lake County Treasurer estimated there could
be a loss of $850,000 in tax revenue. Additionally, property
values of $40 million could depreciate. … Meanwhile the
decommissioning of Scotts Dam is estimated at $500 million and
probably more, by the time the work is completed, based on a
study by The Eel River Power Authority.
Santa Clara leaders are raising concerns about how the city’s
dozens of data centers affect residents and the environment.
Santa Clara has more standalone data centers than any other
California city — 55 in operation and three in the pipeline,
according to the city. Demand is growing as more people use the
internet and digitally demanding technology advances, such as
artificial intelligence. With data centers providing the city
with millions in revenue, officials are questioning impacts to
water and the electrical grid. … (Planning
Commissioner Priya) Cherukuru, who is the executive director of
space planning for Stanford Health Care, said Santa Clara needs
to conduct a deeper study on the strain data centers put on
city resources, such as electricity and water. Data centers use
water to cool their densely packed servers. Ahmed Aly, the
city’s principal engineer for water and sewer utilities, said
more data centers are starting to use water efficient cooling
systems, and 31 data centers in the city use recycled
water.
Solano County’s congressional representatives teamed up with
collegues representing Sacramento, San Joaquin and Contra Costa
counties to fire off a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom protesting
his latest proposal to use the budget process to fast-track the
Delta Conveyance Project, also known as the Delta Tunnel. The
controversial project is a $20 billion plan to funnel more
water south. U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson and John Garamendi teamed
with representatives Doris Matsui, Mark DeSaulnier and Josh
Harder to issue the letter to the governor and state
legislative leadership reaffirming their strong opposition to
the proposed tunnel. … Noting that the Bay-Delta is one
of the most ecologically significant estuaries on the West
Coast, and that it supports thousands of fishing jobs, vital
agricultural lands, tribal and environmental justice
communities as well as some of the most vulnerable ecosystems
in the state, the legislators said the tunnel plan would be
devastating for the region.
Researchers at Stanford are hoping to jump start a water
revolution in California. The goal is to rapidly expand the
areas where we store water – not by building reservoirs,
but by returning millions of gallons back into the ground in a
new and efficient way. … A recent study found the
elevation of San Jose has risen slightly over the decades,
while dozens of other cities around the country are steadily
sinking. One common factor is groundwater. … Valley
Water manages a sophisticated system of ponds and groundwater
injection wells to help replenish the area’s aquifers. While
sites, like the Laguna Seca basin at Coyote Valley are being
conserved as open space, allowing additional stormwater to sink
into the water table. These are long term strategies that are
paying off. … And now, researchers at Stanford’s Doerr
School of Sustainability are hoping to use ground-breaking
technology to expand groundwater recharge across California’s
Central Valley.
Democratic senators are pressing the Interior Department to
determine whether significant staff losses at the Bureau of
Reclamation could put water infrastructure at risk as well as
derail the agency’s ability to fulfill congressional mandates.
In a Friday letter to Interior acting Inspector General Caryl
Brzymialkiewicz, eight senators asked for a review of staff
reductions at Reclamation, pointing to an estimated loss of up
to 25 percent of the agency’s staff under the Trump
administration. “We are concerned that the administration’s
actions to gut the agency of qualified public servants could
leave critical water infrastructure and communities vulnerable
to operational disruptions,” states the letter, led by Sen.
Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), ranking member on the Senate Energy
and Natural Resources Committee.
Coronado’s northern beaches are open again after the city’s
entire shoreline closed over Memorial Day weekend as wastewater
from the ongoing Tijuana sewage crisis pushed bacteria
into coastal waters. The reopenings came as Mexico completed
work on its two-phase International Collector project. …
Mexico completed the second and final phase of its
International Collector project on May 21. During the two
phases of the construction, excess sewage was pushed into the
Tijuana River, causing beach closures in Coronado in April and
in May. However, Mexico used temporary bypasses to prevent
about 75 million gallons of untreated sewage from entering the
river during phase two, the US International Boundary and Water
Commission (IBWC) said. The International Collector is a
pipeline that carries raw sewage from Tijuana to treatment
plants, and it was aging and prone to leaks. Mexico has now
relined the pipeline.
Native fish populations are returning more quickly than
anticipated in the Colorado River Connectivity Channel near
Granby. This news is according to the latest Colorado Parks and
Wildlife electrofishing survey of the trout population along
the newly constructed 1-mile river channel. In May, Parks and
Wildlife biologists estimated that approximately 848 brown
trout and 221 rainbow trout over 6 inches in length live within
the channel. The $33 million connectivity channel project
sought to establish connectivity along the Colorado River after
the construction of the 445-acre-foot Windy Gap Reservoir in
1985 disrupted flows in the region. The reservoir and dam —
which were constructed to help divert water to two northern
Front Range cities — impacted stream flows, caused sediment
buildup and decimated fish populations.
Nicasio residents are urging the Marin Municipal Water District
to reconsider a proposal to add storage to the nearby
reservoir. Over the past two weeks, residents have told
district officials that they fear the project could exacerbate
flooding along Nicasio and Halleck creeks, and that the
community would see no benefit from the added storage at
Nicasio Reservoir. The community uses well water and is not
served by the reservoir or the district’s supply. Residents
said increased flooding would threaten their properties, the
roads, the school and their well water and septic systems.
… The proposal calls for modifying the spillway gates at
Seeger Dam, which was constructed on Nicasio Creek in 1960 to
create the reservoir. … The project would install a
280-foot-long, 4.4-foot-high inflatable rubber gate spanning
the spillway crest to increase capacity by about 3,700
acre-feet. The project was selected from several proposals as a
short-term and efficient way to increase supply.
Lake Tahoe watercraft inspectors on Friday identified highly
invasive golden mussels on a vessel at the Alpine Meadows,
Calif. inspection station. This is the first interception of
the new invasive species by Lake Tahoe watercraft inspectors
since their first detection in North America in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in October, 2024.
… Inspectors at the Alpine Meadows station conducted an
initial decontamination of the 65-foot vessel. It will be held
under quarantine under California Department of Fish and
Wildlife regulations until the vessel is deemed risk-free.
Watercraft Inspection Program managers are also coordinating
with Nevada Division of Wildlife and other state agencies and
continue to share information on all detections with agencies
in both states and the western U.S. As new threats to Lake
Tahoe emerge, the emphasis on following Clean, Drain, Dry
protocols remains for all boaters, paddlers, anglers, and
beachgoers.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins today (May 30) announced
the release of congressionally mandated Emergency Livestock
Relief Program payments to cover grazing losses due to eligible
drought or wildfire events in 2023 and/or
2024. USDA explained that USDA’s Farm Service Agency is
leveraging existing Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP)
data to streamline payment calculations and expedite relief.
Emergency relief payments are automatically issued for
producers who have an approved LFP application on file for 2023
and/or 2024, and do not have to contact USDA to receive
payments. USDA added, “The American Relief Act, 2025,
provided funds for emergency relief payments. This program is
the first of two programs authorized to assist with eligible
losses suffered by livestock producers. FSA will announce
additional ELRP assistance for other losses authorized by the
act, including flooding, later this summer.”
The tiny native oysters of San
Francisco Bay managed to outlive the Gold Rush,
bay-shore development and decades of punishing pollution. New
research shows they have a fighting chance to survive global
warming as well. … In recent years, extreme heat waves
killed thousands of shellfish that inhabit the same type of
intertidal zone, including mussels that were baked in their
shells in both the Pacific Northwest and Northern California
during low tide. Scientists involved with oyster restoration
were really concerned when that happened, said Chela Zabin,
ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and
one of two dozen co-authors on the study. … The
study, which was published last month and involved significant
team effort in 26 locations up and down the West Coast, with
funding from the nonprofit organization the Nature Conservancy,
showed that native oysters thrive in a wide range of
habitats.
From farmers to winemakers, commercial irrigators pumping from
the Paso Robles Area Groundwater Basin may soon need to pay for
their water use. On Tuesday, the Paso Robles Area Groundwater
Authority voted unanimously to send notices of the proposed
rates to impacted property owners, giving them the opportunity
to protest the fees. If a majority of recipients submit a
written protest, the agency can’t implement the rates. The
California Department of Water Resources considers the basin
“critically overdrafted.” Users pumped about 25,500 acre-feet
of water more than was returned to the underground reservoir in
2024, according to the most recent annual report on the basin.
… The fees would fund administrative tasks like
monitoring wells and writing annual reports along with programs
designed to balance the basin. If passed, the rate structure
will last for five years.
In some places, farmer cooperation is critical to the continued
existence of whooping cranes and other wetland-dependent
waterbird species, close to one-third of which are
experiencing declines. Numbers of waterfowl (think ducks and
geese) have crashed by 20 percent since 2014,
and long-legged wading shorebirds like sandpipers have
suffered steep population losses. Conservation-minded
biologists, nonprofits, government agencies and farmers
themselves are amping up efforts to ensure that each species
survives and thrives. With federal support in the crosshairs of
the Trump administration, their work is more important (and
threatened) than ever. Their collaborations, be they domestic
or international, are highly specific, because different
regions support different kinds of agriculture — grasslands, or
deep or shallow wetlands, for example, favored by different
kinds of birds. Key to the efforts is making it financially
worthwhile for farmers to keep — or tweak — practices to meet
bird forage and habitat needs.
The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply limited the reach of
environmental impact statements in a victory for developers. In
an 8-0 decision, the justices said these claims of the
potential impact on the environment have been used too often to
delay or block new projects. … In Thursday’s unanimous
decision, the high court ruled for the developers of a proposed
88-mile railroad in northeastern Utah, a spur line that could
carry crude oil that would be refined along the Gulf Coast.
… Sections of the rail line would run along the
Colorado River. … Agency officials said they
haven’t yet had a chance to study the Supreme Court’s decision,
and so it is unclear what the ruling’s effect will be (on
California high-speed rail), if any. The same is true for
the Delta Conveyance Project — a proposed $20-billion
tunnel that would move water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta to cities and farmlands to the south that
is undergoing NEPA review.
Many of California’s reservoirs have filled nearly to capacity
this year with runoff from the ample snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada. But the situation is very different along the Colorado
River, another vital water source for Southern California,
where a very dry spring has shrunk the amount of runoff
streaming into reservoirs. The latest forecast from the federal
Colorado Basin River Forecast Center shows that the river’s
flows into Lake Powell will probably be about 46% of average
over the next three months. … The snowpack in the upper
Colorado River Basin reached 89% of the median level on April
1, but the outlook worsened over the last two months because of
persistent dryness, warm temperatures and dry soils in the
mountains that have absorbed a portion of the runoff.
… The water level of Lake Powell, on
the Utah-Arizona border, sits at 33% of capacity. Downstream
near Las Vegas, Lake Mead is 32% full.
As hot, dry and disastrous as the last few years have been, it
appears that the chaos caused by a warming planet is just
getting started. Though the hottest year in nearly two
centuries was recorded only last year, the world will probably
shatter that record yet again by 2029, according to a new
report from the World Meteorological Organization, the climate
and weather arm of the United Nations. There is a very good
chance that average warming over the next five years will be
more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, above
preindustrial levels, the cap established by the Paris
Agreement to ward off the worst consequences of climate change.
… In the western U.S. states, including
California, those effects most probably include
drought, heat waves and longer fire seasons
with more intense wildfires, climate scientists said.
Gov. Spencer Cox’s emergency drought declaration has now
expired, but state water managers say conservation should
“remain a top priority” as the state’s typically driest season
approaches. … Cox declared a state of emergency for 17
of Utah’s 29 counties late last month, citing extreme and
severe drought conditions already in place across large swaths
of central and southern Utah. Below-average snowpack levels in
those regions were also a factor in the emergency.
… Although Utah’s reservoir system remains at 87% of
capacity, drought continues to be a challenge heading into
summer. About 70% of Utah remains in drought, including 46% of
the state that is either in severe or extreme drought,
according to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s final report before
meteorological summer begins.
