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.
California’s megadrought seems as endless as the Mojave Desert.
Between killer heat and growing wildfires, the state
experiences some of the harshest effects of climate change.
Although California is leading in clean energy policies needed
to tackle the worst impacts, water management is still a real
problem. … Ángel S. Fernández-Bou, bilingual senior
climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has
spent part of his career studying the problems facing
California’s land, including farms, farmworkers, and people. He
has devised several solutions that can protect people and help
them prosper. They start, he says, with listening to and
respecting community and Indigenous knowledge.
Danielle Henderson laughs when friends call her a water nerd,
but for her, the Truckee River is more than just a job–it’s a
living system she’s spent 18 years learning to protect.
Henderson is the Natural Resources Manager for the Truckee
River Flood Management Authority (TRFMA). For years, she has
pondered a particular part of the river corridor, an area now
being considered for a major flood mitigation project: The
Rock-McCarran Flood Project. … In her role with TRFMA,
Henderson is eager to see this project break ground, which will
encompass nearly 170 acres of open space that will be
revitalized, with river health and flood mitigation at the
forefront.
A new thematic map depicting primary water rights systems
across the U.S. has been developed by a collaborative team from
the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, the National
Drought Mitigation Center and the Department of Agricultural
Economics, all at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The
innovative tool provides a clearer understanding of the
variability of surface water and groundwater rights systems,
which are crucial for effective water management and policy
development by researchers, policymakers and landowners alike.
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District is set to begin a project
on Oct. 27 to create defensible space around 37 of its water
infrastructure sites, aiming to protect water systems from
potential wildfire damage. This initiative comes in response to
the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in 2020, which burned
approximately 80% of the district’s lands and resulted in the
loss of about 50% of its infrastructure. … The $170,000
project, funded through a Cal Fire grant, will prioritize
protecting key sites, including water treatment plants, pump
stations, wells and water intake sites.
A new state bill aims to improve cleanup of abandoned shopping
carts. Joshua Lopez is with the South Bay Clean Creeks
Coalition, a volunteer-based group that works to clear local
waterways in San Jose. … Every Wednesday, the
group’s volunteers work to restore certain areas off of rivers
and creeks. With more than 500 cleanups this year, they’ve
pulled out around 2,000 shopping carts. … “These things
become like cages to the salmon as they’re coming in. And if
there’s not enough water in the waterway, the fish end up
getting trapped there,” Lopez said. On Tuesday, California Gov.
Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes changes to the state’s
laws on abandoned carts.
Southeastern San Diego County residents can expect even pricier
water bills due to higher sewer rates that their water agency
approved earlier this month. Otay Water District board members
unanimously approved gradually increasing sewer rates over a
five-year period. Next year’s hike takes effect in January and
will raise the cost of sewer service by about 4%, though
increases in subsequent years could reach nearly 10%.
… Otay Water officials say the new rates are necessary
to cover anticipated rising costs for sewage treatment, as well
as increases in payroll and construction costs.
The Silicon Valley-backed group, California Forever, has
unveiled its latest proposal, a massive Suisun City Expansion
Plan that calls for annexing more than 20,000 acres east of the
current city boundaries. … The Solano County
Economic Development Corporation has voiced support for the
project, saying it could strengthen Suisun City’s financial
future. However, groups like the Greenbelt Alliance have raised
concerns. … Some of those community concerns include
environmental impacts, the additional water supply needed, and
the potential loss of farmland.
Sustainable Conservation is pleased to announce that Dr.
Josette Lewis has been selected as the organization’s next
Chief Executive Officer, following a nationwide search led by
the Board of Directors and executive search firm DSG|Koya.
Lewis will assume leadership at the beginning of 2026.
… She currently serves as Vice President and Chief
Scientific Officer at the Almond Board of California, where she
oversaw its water stewardship programs and spearheaded the
California Pollinator Coalition, a first-of-its-kind
partnership among agriculture, conservation organizations, and
government agencies to protect threatened pollinator species.
A senior House Democrat is pushing EPA for answers on a delayed
report on the health effects of “forever chemicals.” Rep.
Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), ranking member on the House
Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing EPA, sent a letter
Thursday pressing EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin over “a growing
pattern of interference with the Agency’s scientific work,” the
letter reads. A ProPublica exposé published last week revealed
the agency has for months delayed the release of a final
toxicity report linking developmental, liver and reproductive
risks to the chemical perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA).
There are so many early arriving white-fronted geese in the
Central Valley, it has scientists and waterfowl hunters
perplexed. It isn’t unusual to observe whitefronts in small
flocks from the Oregon border to the San Joaquin Valley’s
Mendota Wildlife Area in late September and early October. What
is not normal, however, are the massive flocks that are working
dry fields, newly flooded wetlands, and flooded rice fields.
The numbers are staggering. What triggered the early
migration from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska is anyone’s
guess, but these coveted geese are migrating en masse.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Monday that aims to increase
the use of recycled water throughout the state. Senate Bill 31
by Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, allows businesses, homes and
government agencies to increase their use of recycled water.
… The new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2026 and will allow
parks to expand the use of recycled water, will reduce
restrictions for using it on decorative bodies of water, will
protect homeowners’ associations from having to install new
plumbing systems when using recycled water and will allow food
handling and processing companies to use it for toilets and
urinals or for outdoor irrigation under certain conditions.
Southern California water leader Shivaji Deshmukh will be the
next general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California, the nation’s largest drinking water
provider, following a unanimous vote today by the agency’s
board of directors. Deshmukh will become Metropolitan’s 16th
general manager in its nearly 100-year history, replacing
retiring general manager Deven Upadhyay. … Deshmukh
comes to Metropolitan from the Inland Empire Utilities Agency,
one of Metropolitan’s 26 member agencies, where he has been
general manager since 2019.
A storm that was delivering an unusual amount of rain for
October had much of Southern California on edge on Tuesday as
forecasters and local officials warned it could unleash the
type of heavy rain that sends torrents of water and debris down
steep slopes in places recently burned by wildfires. But by
Tuesday afternoon, it appeared the storm had left the region
relatively unscathed. … [R]ainfall had been mostly
beneficial, helping to ease drought conditions in
Southern California and mitigating the risk of
wildfires — for now. …Snow
fell in the Sierra Nevada on Monday and Tuesday and was
expected to continue into early Wednesday, bringing the
first measurable snow of the season.
Growers and water managers in the Kaweah groundwater subbasin
were gratified to see a formal recommendation this week for the
state Water Resources Control Board to move the region from
enforcement back to state oversight. The Water Board will vote
on the recommendation to kick the subbasin back into the arms
of the Department of Water Resources at its Dec. 2 meeting.
… An issue that remains difficult is that farmers in a
large chunk of the Greater Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability
Agency (GSA) don’t have surface water and rely heavily on
pumping. Meanwhile, surface water imported and recharged by
farmers in the East and Mid-Kaweah GSAs, tends to drain toward
Greater Kaweah.
… Data centers are also straining water supplies, raising
questions about scarcity across the dry Mountain West – from
the Colorado River and the communities it serves to the Great
Basin region, in places like Reno, Nevada, where a data center
park one-and-a-half times the size of the city is growing next
door. U.S. data centers used 17 billion gallons of water, or
enough for 150,000 homes for a year, according to a 2024
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report. That water demand
is projected to double or even quadruple within the next few
years, according to the federal report.
A new method for predicting how rainfall contributes to river
flow across the entire US has been developed by an
international team of scientists. The technique, which combines
physics knowledge with advanced artificial intelligence (AI),
aims to help decision-makers better prepare for extreme weather
and climate impacts. … The model outperformed several
traditional hydrologic approaches while also estimating the
likelihood of a range of different river-flow events. … Their
findings, published in the journal Water Resources Research,
could enhance river flow prediction, water management, and
climate resilience across the US and beyond.
… The [Colorado River] basin, on the whole, is drying. That’s
frightful for the 40 million people and 5 million acres that
the river supplies with water. But it’s also worrisome for
electricity generation. Lakes Mead and Powell, the basin’s two
largest reservoirs, are approaching critical levels in which
hydropower from their dams (Hoover and Glen Canyon,
respectively) would be severely curtailed or altogether cease.
… As the power of flowing water becomes less
reliable, they [utilities] are turning to an energy resource
that is almost always on in the Southwest during the day: the
sun.
At a virtual press conference on Thursday, Oct. 9, Klamath
River scientists announced that a year after the last of the
dams were removed, river health has begun to bounce back. With
salmon swimming upstream, bald eagles flying overhead, and
increased bear, beaver, otter and osprey activity, the
ecosystem is booming with ecological shifts thanks to the
completion of the world’s largest dam removal effort. … [T]he
fish monitoring effort done by California Trout is likely the
most comprehensive science and monitoring project ever done to
evaluate a dam removal effort.
After failing to win voter approval in 2021, Marin County is
again considering a tax to support replacing a floodwall that
protects nearly 600 homes in San Rafael. The
rapidly-deteriorating timber-reinforced berm made of compacted
dirt and wooden boards in the Santa Venetia area now is
proposed to be replaced with a composite sheet pile floodwall.
The project cost has escalated from a $6 million estimate in
2021 to the latest calculation of $25 million.
The State Water Resources Control Board is hosting a meeting in
Ukiah Wednesday to collect comments related to the Potter
Valley Project. According to information provided by the board,
it is holding “scoping meetings to provide information about
the Proposed Project, the CEQA process, and to receive written
or oral comments from trustee agencies, responsible agencies,
Tribes, and other interested persons concerning the range of
alternatives, potential significant effects, and mitigation
measures that should be analyzed in the EIR.”
