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 future of the Colorado River Basin was the hot topic for
several western Colorado entities on Monday. The Colorado Basin
Roundtable is a group of stakeholders who work together to
protect the Colorado River Basin. According to the group, the
basin is among the largest watersheds in the state, covering
close to ten thousand square miles. JJ Fletcher, Mesa County
commissioner, says the river basin is slightly above its normal
capacity. “We’re set in pretty good shape but we see other
areas to the west and also further west, we see that it’s in a
little more drought conditions versus where we’re at at the
central mountains. The Grand Mesa is a little below normal as
well,” says Fletcher.
An initiative led by faculty from seven top research
universities — six of which are in California — aims to
accelerate the deployment of solar arrays over the state’s
extensive canal network. According to a 2021 UC Merced study
published in Nature Sustainability, covering large sections of
the state’s 4,000 miles of canals with solar panels could help
conserve water, reduce air pollution, save land and generate
clean energy using existing land and infrastructure. The
California Solar Canal Initiative (CSCI) research project aims
to accelerate the deployment of solar canals across the state
by equipping government agencies, utilities, community members
and other interested parties with data on optimal locations and
identifying willing host communities.
Alta Irrigation District has purchased 80 acres to develop the
London West Pond recharge basin. The recharge basin will
be located at Ave. 384 and Rd. 56 next to the existing London
Pond recharge site. … Both groundwater recharge basins
will help Alta divert more surface water and boost its
groundwater sustainability efforts to comply with the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Alta said the
basins will increase the available water supply during dry
years for growers and also support nearby residents who are
reliant on groundwater for drinking water.
Wetlands and ephemeral streams provide a wide variety of
benefits to people and wildlife, from flood protection for
local communities, to preventing pollutants from entering the
water supply, to breeding grounds for endangered bird species.
Wetlands can also act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere. … But all that changed with a
May 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court called Sackett v. The
Environmental Protection Agency, which rewrote the legal
definition of wetlands and suddenly left many of these bodies
of water unprotected, according to a new study from the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
A clearer path forward could be emerging in the tiny Tulare
County community of East Orosi, which has long struggled with
contaminated drinking water, a decrepit sewer system and
dysfunction among elected leaders. The state Water Resources
Control Board will be in town Thursday, April 17 to explain why
it proposes that the community’s sewer system be run by a new
administrator, the Tulare County Resource Management Agency
(RMA). … The proposed sewer administration change is a result
of Assembly Bill 805, authored by Dr. Joaquin Arambula
(D-Fresno) and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in
September in the backyard of an East Orosi resident. The
bill authorizes the state Water Board to intervene when a sewer
service provider does not meet regulatory standards or fails to
maintain the technical, managerial and financial capacity
needed to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. The Water Board can
then contract with a new administrator.
A new lawsuit alleges Valley Water CEO Rick
Callender pushed to have his agency sponsor the NAACP
California-Hawaii State Conference — a private group he
personally oversees — with public dollars. The conflict of
interest claim comes from a civil complaint filed March 20 by
Salena Pryor, an NAACP colleague who worked under Callender in
his capacity as the statewide NAACP chapter president. She
accuses Callender of demeaning and undermining her on numerous
occasions while she helped coordinate NAACP events, from
distressing late-night video calls to public embarrassment. It
comes as Callender is on administrative leave from Valley Water
— which cares for Santa Clara County’s streams, flood
protection and wholesale water supply — while the agency
investigates an employee’s misconduct complaint against him.
At Tuesday morning’s Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
meeting, the supervisors spent 27 minutes taking public comment
and discussing a request from 5th District Supervisor Ted
Williams to provide a letter of support for state
Assemblymember Chris Rogers’ Assembly Bill 263. AB 263,
sponsored by the Karuk Tribe and supported by California
Coastkeeper Alliance, would extend emergency water flow
regulations to the Scott and Shasta river watersheds. Both
rivers are tributaries of the Klamath River and flow through
Siskiyou County. … (Board Chair John Haschak)
suggested the Board monitor the bill’s progress and potentially
revisit the issue in the future. AB 263 will be heard at
the California State Assembly on April 8 by the Committee on
Water, Parks and Wildlife.
The largest remaining wetland prairie in the San Joaquin Valley
will open to the public on Saturday, March 29, an event that
only comes around once or twice a year. The James K. Herbert
Wetland Prairie Preserve, which houses and protects rare and
unique species in Tulare County, will be open from 9 a.m. to 1
p.m. Attendees can explore the preserve and catch a self-guided
tour with staff. The event is made possible by the
Alta Peak California Native Plant Society, Sequoia Riverlands
Trust and the Tulare Kings Audubon Society.
A long-running fight over California water and the fate of a
tiny fish found a new front with a House measure to strip
federal protections from the longfin smelt. Introduced Friday
by Rep. Doug LaMalfa and six fellow Golden State Republicans,
H.J. Res. 78 would undo the Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing
of the longfin smelt’s San Francisco Bay Delta
population as endangered. “This listing is just another example
of out-of-touch environmental policies making it harder to
store and deliver water in California,” LaMalfa said in a
statement first published by LassenNews.com.
Drinking water has earned a “C-” on the 2025 American Society
of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Report Card for America’s
Infrastructure, which is the same score it received in 2021.
ASCE released the report card grading America’s infrastructure
on March 25, 2025, where the country received an overall grade
of “C,” its highest ever score. ASCE drinking water report card
The ASCE Report Card highlighted the need for funding and
building more resilient infrastructure. According to ASCE, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the
nation’s water infrastructure needs stand at $625 billion over
20 years, exceeding EPA’s 2018 assessment by more than $150
billion. … The report highlighted new funding opportunities,
such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA),
which invested more than $30 billion for drinking water
improvements, removal of lead service lines and addressing
emerging contaminants like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS).
In a historic and consequential move, the United States has
officially denied Mexico’s request for a special water delivery
from the Colorado River to Tijuana. … The 1944
treaty, a longstanding bilateral agreement, regulates water
distribution between the U.S. and Mexico between the Rio Grande
and Colorado Rivers. According to the treaty, Mexico must
deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. over
five-year cycles, averaging 350,000 acre-feet annually.
However, by late 2024, Mexico had fallen over one million
acre-feet behind its commitments. Officials attribute this
shortfall to a combination of prolonged drought, increased
agricultural demands, and aging infrastructure on the Mexican
side of the border.
California is not alone in its struggles to save its freshwater
biodiversity. Across the West, rivers and lakes have been
tapped to supply water to farms and cities—and ecosystems have
paid the price. One project has been restoring water to a
Nevada lake through an unusual mechanism: environmental water
acquisitions. We spoke with the Walker Basin Conservancy’s
Carlie Henneman and Peter Stanton to learn more.
… Despite some recent rainstorms, the majority of Southern
California remains in “severe” or “extreme” drought conditions,
as of the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Precipitation for this water year, which begins Oct. 1, is
still well below average for the southern third of the state.
In coastal areas, rainfall amounts are about 40% to 60% of
average for this time of year; in the state’s most southwestern
corner, it’s even lower, according to California Water Watch.
While Northern California’s precipitation and snowpack are
above average for the year, the Southern Sierra still remains
at about 87% of average for this time of year, according to the
California Department of Water Resources.
A large number of people were scheduled today to testify and
comment on the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) … when a bizarre
hacking incident occurred on the Zoom platform that the
California State Water Resources Control Board was using for a
hearing. The hearing was regarding the pending petitions for a
change in water rights by the California Department of Water
Resources that are required to move forward with the Delta
Tunnel. … When the hearing started, one of the attendee windows
displayed a graphic obscene video with a synthetic or altered
voice saying loudly, “Shut this Zoom Call Down.” The hacker
took over the audio so the Hearing Officer could not speak, so
she shut the hearing down.
Due to staff reductions, retirements, and a federal hiring
freeze, the National Weather Service has announced a series of
suspensions involving weather balloon launches in recent weeks.
The question is, will this significantly degrade forecasts in
the United States and around the world? … (B)ased on 20
years of experience and a number of conversations about this
with others in the field, there are some very real, very
serious concerns beyond statistics. One thing is that the
suspended weather balloon launches are occurring in relatively
important areas for weather impacts downstream. A missed
weather balloon launch in Omaha or Albany won’t impact the
forecast in California. But what if a hurricane is coming? What
if a severe weather event is coming? You’ll definitely see
impacts to forecast quality during major, impactful
events.
The EPA recently announced a consent decree with the operators
of the Oasis Mobile Home Park in California to resolve
violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The consent
decree requires the park’s operators to upgrade its drinking
water and wastewater systems and pay a $50,000 penalty. … The
mobile home park is located within the Torres Martinez Desert
Cahuilla Indians Tribal Reservation boundaries in Thermal,
California, which is in the Eastern Coachella Valley. With an
estimated population of 1,000 people, it’s the valley’s largest
mobile home park, primarily serving agricultural workers,
according to the EPA. “While situated on Tribal land, the
public water and wastewater systems at Oasis operate
independently from Tribal control or ownership,” the EPA
release notes. “The Park’s drinking water system uses
groundwater that has high levels of naturally occurring
arsenic.”
The Bureau of Reclamation has announced the award of a
$115,900,000 contract to AMES Federal Contracting Group of
Burnsville, Minnesota, for the construction of a new spillway
at Hyrum Dam. Hyrum Dam was built on the Little Bear River in
northern Utah in 1935 and impounds Hyrum Reservoir, which
provides water storage for irrigation and municipal use.
In addition to continued repairs and modifications over the
years, operators have done their best to minimize the amount of
water released through the spillway. … “The spillway at Hyrum
Dam is used every year to release excess water downstream, and
though continuous maintenance has occurred on the spillway
since its construction, the 90-year-old structure is in need of
replacement,” said Reclamation Upper Colorado Basin
Regional Director Wayne Pullan.
At its February 13, 2025, meeting, the Mendocino County Inland
Water & Power Commission (IWPC) discussed a landmark Memorandum
of Understanding (MOU) that sets the stage for a New
Eel-Russian Diversion Facility (NERF). … IWPC also
discussed efforts to restart the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE)
Feasibility Study on raising Coyote Dam, a long-debated project
aimed at increasing water storage capacity in the Upper Russian
River Watershed. Coyote Dam was originally designed to be
36 feet taller, but funding shortfalls prevented the full
construction. Increasing the dam height would allow more water
to be stored for dry-season use, especially as flows from the
Potter Valley Project decrease.
Officials are investigating several fire stations between
Livermore and Pleasanton for water contamination as Pleasanton
continues looking for new well sites. In 2023, The San
Francisco Bay Regional Water Board started to examine
facilities for evidence of possible PFAS, or polyfluoroalkyl
substances, in groundwater and runoff storm water in the two
cities. The board chose to investigate the fire stations
after Pleasanton in 2019 began shutting down its three
wells due to significant PFAS contamination. The board now
wants to figure out if fire-fighting foams, which contain the
forever chemical, were a significant source of a massive
subsurface plume of those substances.
Only about a dozen residents attended a recent event in Hanford
to learn about free well testing and organizers learned it’s a
trust thing. “(Rural Kings County residents) don’t want you
coming out and checking their water because they’re afraid
you’re going to close their well down and tell them they have
to dig a new well that they can’t afford,” said attendee Sandra
Martin. “A lot of elderly are afraid.” Kings Water
Alliance Executive Officer Debra Dunn assured attendees the
organization has no intent, nor authority, to shut anyone’s
well down. “We do not tell people what to do with their wells,”
Dunn said.
