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 highway stretches across Marin and Solano Counties through
the colorful mosaic of marshland in the San Pablo Bay north of
San Francisco. But state Route 37’s scenic roadway is
vulnerable to sea level rise, which could submerge the highway
as soon as 2040, and is subject to brutal bottlenecks during
peak hours as commuters circulate between counties. The
doomed Bay Area highway that sees over 40,000 drivers a day has
a fix in the works — but not everyone agrees it’s the right
one. As shovels and bulldozers from Caltrans prepare to widen
Highway 37 in a $500 million project, tides continuously chip
away at the road’s edge. Its western half near Novato is
subject to repeated flooding, especially during king tides,
while the eastern span is protected by a series of levees and
dikes.
… Delta residents love to share their experiences with this
summertime weather phenomenon, in all its complexities, and how
it affects their daily activities and even their life choices.
“The Delta Breeze is a real thing,” says Iva Walton, Isleton’s
mayor. The breeze originates in the Pacific Ocean, more than 50
miles away, and meteorologists and atmospheric scientists say
it can bring a few degrees of relief on hot days to the
millions of people who live, work and play in the Delta, a
region that extends from Vallejo to Sacramento and Stockton.
… As inland temperatures rise, the currents push in
through two major openings in the coastal range: the Golden
Gate and the Petaluma Gap, lowlands that run between Bodega and
Tamales bays and Petaluma. From San Francisco and San Pablo
bays, the cool air travels up through the Carquinez Strait,
usually arriving in the Delta in the late afternoon.
California regulators are supporting a controversial plan
backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — and opposed by environmental
groups — that would give water agencies more leeway in how they
comply with water quality rules. The Newsom-backed approach is
included as part of a proposed water plan for the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, released by the State Water
Resources Control Board on Thursday. The plan would give water
agencies two potential pathways to comply with water quality
goals — either a traditional regulatory approach based on
limiting water withdrawals to maintain certain river flow
levels, or an alternative approach supported by the governor in
which water agencies, under negotiated agreements, would make
certain water flow commitments while contributing funding for
wetland habitat restoration projects and other measures.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin
committed the Trump administration to “a permanent, 100%
solution to the decades-old Tijuana River sewage crisis” in a
new agreement signed with Mexico on Thursday.
… According to the agreement, Mexico will shake loose
$93 million in money it previously committed, known as “Minute
238 funds.” Deadlines for several long-discussed improvements
will also come sooner — some this year — it says. One example
is the 10-million gallons per day of treated effluent that
currently flows into the Tijuana River from the Arturo Herrera
and La Morita wastewater treatment plants and will now go to a
site upstream of the Rodriguez Dam, southeast of Tijuana.
… The MOU also commits the two countries to taking into
account Tijuana’s growing population, to make sure that
infrastructure improvements are not outstripped by changes on
the ground.
Western lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of
Colorado, want to know — exactly — how much snow and water is
in the Colorado River Basin. The legislators Thursday
introduced a bill focused on improving how the basin measures
its water supply. … The bill highlights focus areas for
the program, like being more responsive to changing weather and
watershed conditions, informing water management decisions at
local up to interstate levels, and building the program’s
capacity so it can adapt to new forecasting and measurement
capabilities. The bill would also support different
measurement technologies like imaging spectroscopy, machine
learning, and integrated snowpack and hydrologic
modeling. It would increase the program’s budget from $15
million over five years to $32.5 million over five years.
Tucson city officials and the developers of Project Blue — a
planned complex of data centers for Amazon — faced a fractious
crowd hundreds strong Wednesday night as they attempted to make
their case the project will be “water positive” and will not
drive up electric rates, while trying to defend non-disclosure
agreements that still keep information from the
public. … During the first two years, the project
will use drinking water for cooling, but will switch to
reclaimed water. … At one point, a speaker asked [Tucson
City Manager Tim] Thomure how they would enforce the two-year
promise to halt using drinking water, noting that the draft
agreement includes caps but breaking those caps won’t mean the
city cuts off the water supply; instead, the city will
just add extra charges.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle
the research arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a
robust if little-known California agency known as the Office of
Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is poised to take on an
even bigger role to bridge the gap. … Experts said
the decision to break up the research office sends a chilling
signal for science and will leave more communities exposed to
environmental hazards such as industrial chemicals, wildfire
smoke and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAs — in
drinking water, all of which are subject to
the department’s analysis. … Kris Thayer, OEHHA’s director,
came to agency from ORD, where she directed its IRIS program
for identifying and characterizing the human health hazards of
chemicals. She said the state is “absolutely going to be
looking at every way that we can fill the void given our
resources, but we are going to feel the pinch of this.”
Colorado lags far behind neighboring states when it comes to
keeping special permits critical to stopping pollutants from
entering streams current, a new report says. Colorado’s backlog
has, at times, surged to 70%, while six other states surveyed
have fairly few lapsed wastewater treatment permits, according
to the report, with Arizona and Oregon, for instance, showing
permit backlogs of just 10%. The analysis was commissioned last
year to help the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment and state lawmakers understand why the situation
has deteriorated and how it can be fixed. … Colorado
lawmakers approved $6 million in new funding in 2023 to help
the CDPHE’s Water Quality Control Division hire more people to
help process permits more quickly and efficiently, but the
backlog remains and affects major treatment facilities.
For almost a century, parts of California have been gradually
sinking, impacting critical infrastructure and the communities
who rely on it. Recognizing this challenge, the Department of
Water Resources has released a draft Best Management Practices
document for public comment that will help local water
agencies address this growing concern and support groundwater
reliant communities. … Once finalized following public
review, the document will serve as a guide for groundwater
managers on the basics of subsidence, how to best manage it,
and available technical assistance. This document does not
replace any existing, local, state, or federal regulations, but
serves as a resource that local agencies can add to their water
management toolkit.
… Flash floods have wreaked havoc across the country this
summer, transcending geography, topography and the built
environment from the rural Southwest to the largest cities in
the Midwest and Northeast. … These heavy precipitation
events are among the clearest symptoms of climate change,
scientists say. Copious studies warn that they’re already
happening more often and becoming more intense, and they’ll
continue to worsen as global temperatures
rise. … But in recent years, scientists have
noticed an alarming trend. Extreme storms in some parts of the
world appear to be defying the Clausius-Clapeyron relation,
producing far more rainfall as temperatures rise than the
equation would predict. … It’s a phenomenon scientists
have dubbed the super-Clausius-Clapeyron rate. Researchers are
still investigating the reasons it’s happening.
After years of uncertainty and relying on bottled water,
residents in the small rural community of Robbins are finally
seeing progress toward a permanent solution for safe, clean
drinking water. Construction is now underway on a new well and
water treatment facility, part of a sweeping overhaul of the
town’s aging water system. Robbins, located in Sutter County
and home to roughly 300 people, has struggled for decades with
contaminated tap water that didn’t meet state or federal safety
standards. … The $8 million project is funded by a grant
from the California State Water Resources Control Board’s SAFER
program. The investment is being used to upgrade key parts of
the town’s water infrastructure, with three major construction
sites now active.
… In Los Angeles, 41 of 45 samples collected from 17
rivers and tributary sites contained multiple types of forever
chemicals. … The Waterkeeper Alliance report shows that
wastewater treatment plants and places where treated sewage
sludge, known as biosolids, is spread on land as fertilizer,
such as the LA-Glendale Water Reclamation Plant, are major
sources of PFAS pollution. … There are new city-wide
developments that may make a difference when it comes to water
treatment. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
(LADWP) is constructing a massive water infrastructure project
near the LA River. … While the project doesn’t
specifically reference PFAS, experts note that large-scale
recycling treatment upgrades like this could significantly
limit public exposure to PFAS by filtering them out.
The Great Salt Lake is in the middle of its summer decline,
bringing its levels back down to a concerning section within
the state’s management plan. Its southern arm is now down to
4,192.2 feet elevation, losing about 1½ feet since its peak
this spring, while its north arm remains just below that, at
4,191.8 feet elevation, according to federal data. Levels begin
to create “serious adverse effects” on brine shrimp viability,
air quality, mineral production and recreation at 4,192 feet
elevation, the state plan warns. However, the lake is also
receiving a significant financial boost amid ongoing efforts to
get water back to the lake. Up to $53 million in grant funding
is now available for projects that support the Great Salt Lake
and its wetlands, state officials announced on Wednesday.
After a proposed provision in the recent Republican tax break
and spending cut law that would have opened up millions of
acres of federal lands for sale was axed, Colorado climate
leaders and public lands advocates still didn’t have much to
celebrate. That’s because the massive federal policy
bill‘s surviving provisions governing oil and gas leasing on
federal lands are “an egregious step back for the environment,”
according to Melissa Hornbein, a senior attorney at the Western
Environmental Law Center. … Allison Henderson, the
southern Rockies director for the Center for Biological
Diversity, said this provision poses a “significant risk” to
the environment, water supplies and vulnerable
species of animals that live on public lands, because resource
management plans “do not provide kind of the nitty-gritty,
site-specific types of mitigation measures that are necessary.”
… These days, the focus is less on San Diego’s access to
water — the envy of water managers everywhere — but on its
astronomical costs. Further, what some of the visionaries
didn’t foresee is the region would be stuck with way more water
than it needs. Unloading it has proved a vexing problem. And a
lot more is coming with the city of San Diego’s Pure Water
recycling project — which could produce the region’s costliest
water yet — and other emerging water reuse programs, such as
one in East County. … One glimmer of hope to take the
edge off the increases: emerging changes in the byzantine legal
and political dynamics of California’s water world, which could
open up markets for San Diego water. Oddly enough, some
local officials are hoping a prime customer will be their
former nemesis, the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California. –Written by San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Michael
Smolens.
… As the salmon runs have declined for many reasons, one of
the strategies to reduce salmon smolt mortality has been
trucking the juvenile salmon to the delta to bypass the striped
bass. Stripers are spawning in the Sacramento River during the
spring salmon out-migration. Stripers love to eat baby salmon.
As with many things in life, the solution to today’s problem is
often the cause of the next issue. Trucking the juvenile salmon
directly from the hatchery on Battle Creek to the lower delta
or the bay does not allow the salmon to imprint on the
Sacramento River water. These fish did not know their way
home. The result was salmon wandering to freshwater creeks
flowing into the bay. … The solution to this has
been to set net pens in the Sacramento River to hold these
Coleman salmon smolts for a period of time to imprint on the
water. Then they are trucked down to the delta or bay.
As Southern California enters the peak of summer, water
agencies, utilities, and residents are turning their attention
to one of the region’s most pressing challenges—sustainable
water use. July is officially recognized as Smart Irrigation
Month, a national initiative launched by the Irrigation
Association in 2005 to raise awareness about the value of
efficient irrigation practices. … In Southern California,
where outdoor water use accounts for more than 50% of
residential consumption (Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California, 2022), Smart Irrigation Month comes at a
critical time. With July historically being the month of
highest water demand, communities from Irvine to the Inland
Empire are rallying around the message: Use water wisely, every
drop counts.
Building new housing is a priority across the state, especially
in fire ravaged areas of Southern California. But now a growing
number of environmental groups say they want to make sure that
future construction isn’t putting communities at risk from
climate change. They’re pointing to a provision in a recently
passed budget bill, AB 306, which could essentially freeze new
residential building regulations for the next six years and
bars cities and counties from adopting stricter
codes. David Lewis is executive director of the nonprofit
Save the Bay. His group is concerned that the bill will slow
climate resiliency efforts, including upgrades meant to protect
communities from flooding and other effects of sea level rise.
A federal judge declared in a new ruling that the Bureau of
Reclamation can issue permanent water agreements to major
contractors in California — specifically the sprawling
Westlands Water District — without undertaking new
environmental or Endangered Species Act reviews. But
conservation advocates who brought the lawsuit against the
Westland contract said that it does not clear the path forward
for that deal, pointing to a series of claims still pending in
the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
District Judge Jennifer Thurston, a President Joe Biden
appointee, issued a decision in favor of the Interior
Department on June 30, and subsequently ordered the case,
Center for Biological Diversity, et al., v. U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, closed last week.
Cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been named as the end
customer for a planned data center campus in Tucson, Arizona.
Project Blue is a 290-acre site set to host a
data center campus. At least three data centers are reportedly
set to be built, but the final number of buildings could be
higher; some reports suggest up to 10 buildings totaling 2
million sq ft (185,805 sqm) and 600MW are planned. … A
new opposition group, No Desert Data Center, is attempting to
mobilize residents against the project over its water use and
potential impact on the area. The site is reportedly set to use
drinking water for its cooling systems for at least the first
two years of operation until it can switch to using treated
wastewater once a new water line is completed.
