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.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Department of Water Resources (DWR)
today conducted the third snow survey of the season at Phillips
Station. The manual survey recorded 28 inches of snow depth and
a snow water equivalent of 11 inches, which is 47 percent of
average for this location. The snow water equivalent measures
the amount of water contained in the snowpack and is a key
component of DWR’s water supply forecast. Statewide, the
snowpack is 66 percent of average for this
date.
… California water officials, who are conducting their
monthly snow survey Friday, will find that the statewide
snowpack heading into March is just under 70% of average for
this point in the season. … Already, managers of the
giant state and federal water projects are saying that low
snowpack, which makes up nearly a third of California’s water
supply, will mean scaling back water deliveries to cities and
farms over the coming year. The federal government announced
Thursday that irrigation agencies in the San Joaquin Valley,
the state’s biggest agricultural region, would likely get just
15% of the water they requested.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The Colorado River may be running dry, but the Pacific Ocean is
not — and on Thursday, San Diego took a first formal step to
turn that into a business opportunity. The San Diego
County Water Authority voted to sign a memorandum
of understanding with federal, Arizona and Nevada
water managers to explore selling desalinated Pacific Ocean
water across state lines. The pilot, if formalized,
would turn ultra-expensive water and underused capacity at the
Western Hemisphere’s largest desalination plant, in Carlsbad,
into a resource for fast-growing neighboring states as they
absorb potentially-economy-shattering cuts on the Colorado
River.
Attorneys and officials opposed to a massive California water
project pleaded their case Thursday to an oversight panel,
arguing point by point how the Delta Conveyance Project failed
to meet specified criteria. … The opponents — which
included several groups, governmental entities and Native
American tribes — delivered similar messages: a certificate of
consistency issued in October that shows the project as
consistent with the Delta plan is faulty. The state Department
of Water Resources failed to show the project would uphold the
plan’s two coequal goals: creating a reliable, statewide water
supply while protecting and restoring the Delta ecosystem that
preserves its values as a place.
After an unprecedented three-year shutdown of California’s
commercial salmon fishery, Chinook salmon runs are beginning to
rebound, particularly in the Klamath Basin. On Wednesday, the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) hosted its
Annual Salmon Information Meeting where fisheries scientists
and industry stakeholders shared the latest ocean salmon
abundance forecast and offered a basin-by-basin breakdown last
year’s salmon returns and a first look at what’s to come in
2026. The annual meeting marks the beginning of a
two-month public process to develop management criteria for the
upcoming sport and commercial ocean salmon fishing seasons,
both of which are tentatively scheduled to open on May
16.
Aquatic invasive mussels that can hitch a ride in a small
amount of trapped water are prompting a new competition aimed
at stopping their spread — and it comes with significant prize
money. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced the “Halt the
Hitchhiker: Invasive Species Challenge,” a three-phase prize
competition designed to identify innovative solutions that stop
aquatic invasive species from spreading through watercraft
ballast compartments. Aquatic invasive species such as
quagga, zebra, and golden mussels can travel between
waterbodies in small amounts of water trapped in ballast
systems. The invasive mussels threaten water delivery and
hydropower infrastructure across the West.
For many months, the Los Cerritos Wetlands Trust and local
residents have urged the City of Seal Beach to order a full
environmental review for a proposed 4.6-acre solar panel
project near the Los Cerritos Wetlands, due to environmental
concerns over its threats to nearby wildlife and endangered
species. Running through Long Beach and Seal Beach, the
Los Cerritos Wetlands make up about 500 acres of precious
ecological habitat for numerous wildlife, flora and fauna,
including rare and endangered species. It is all that remains
of the historic 2,400-acre wetlands complex that previously
went through areas of Los Angeles, the San Gabriel River and
Orange County.
State and local regulators need a better understanding of how
much water data centers use to know whether the amount is
causing problems, speakers at an Environmental Law Institute
webinar said Thursday. The webinar discussed Regulating Data
Center Water Use in California, a report released by the
University of California, Berkeley, that looked at available
information on data centers’ water usage and strategies state
and local officials could use to get more details. The report
also examines strategies that regulators could use to require
efficient use of water.
There’s plenty of actual wet groundwater rights for Carson
Valley’s water purveyors for at least the next quarter century,
Carson Water Subconservancy General Manager Ed James told
county commissioners. … The largest holders of Carson
Valley’s groundwater rights are the agricultural landowners,
who have supplemental rights they can use when there isn’t
sufficient water in the river to meet their irrigation
allotment under the Alpine Decree. That’s one way where a dry
water year on the river can affect the aquifer, but James said
that Nevada law is starting to catch up with the notion that
the river and the aquifer are connected.
A Las Vegas attorney said he plans to add hundreds of
plaintiffs to his lawsuit agains the Southern Nevada Water
Authority, and he asked a judge on Thursday to consider
protecting their identities. … At issue in the case is
the water authority’s enforcement of a 2021 law that
will make it illegal at the beginning of next year to use water
from the Colorado River to irrigate “useless grass,” or grass
that an expert committee has deemed nonfunctional. It was
another packed courtroom Thursday, when District Judge Anna
Albertson called attorneys back to discuss the terms of a
limited restraining order that normally can last up to two
weeks.
A bill that would allow the Southern Nevada Water Authority to
install a massive water service line under a conservation area
cleared the U.S. Senate on Thursday. … The Horizon
Lateral pipeline, which will be wide enough to drive a Ford
F-150 truck through, could cost the agency up to $2 billion.
Officials say the new project is necessary to ensure that
service isn’t disrupted if and when the South Valley Lateral
pipeline, built in 1996, goes down for repairs. The South
Valley Lateral pipeline transports about 40 percent of the Las
Vegas Valley’s water.
Rep. Dave Min’s request for $1 million dollars for the San
Gabriel River Trash initiative was recently approved by the
EPA. Seal Beach District One Council Member Joe Kalmick
announced the funding at last week’s City Council meeting.
… The River Trash Initiative is a working group made up
of Seal Beach, Long Beach, Orange County, Los Angeles County,
the Surfrider Foundation (North Orange County and Long Beach
chapters) and the offices of Assembly members Diane Dixon and
Josh Lowenthal. … The website sgrcleanup.com, the
website for the River Trash Initiative, put the volume of river
trash at more than 300 tons in the years 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program is going broke.
Increased flood strikes in more places, combined with outdated
ways of predicting flood risk, are putting property owners at
risk and the program itself in over $20 billion of debt.
Arizona State University researcher Upmanu Lall was part of a
team that recently published a pair of papers to understand
what is happening and what needs to be done. … Based on
their findings, Lall and his colleagues argue for creating
regional catastrophe bonds or secondary insurance to
specifically handle hyperclustered events. They also suggest
updating how we assess flood risk by including climate trends,
population growth in floodplains and infrastructure decay into
insurance models.
In a corner of his house in Salqin, a city in Syria’s
northwestern Idlib province, agricultural engineer Abdullatif
Boubki stacks metal tins filled with olive oil: his land’s
harvest from last season. … Olive oil is a strategic
commodity that does not lose its value, but worry never leaves
Boubki. Water—not olives or oil—is his daily concern. He spends
hours browsing local Facebook pages and Telegram channels,
searching for updates on water availability through the public
network in his neighborhood. … Boubki’s story is a microcosm
of the broader situation in Syria, which has topped the Global
Conflict Risk Index since 2022 as the most drought-prone
country in the Mediterranean. But even as the country suffers
an acute water crisis, thousands of cubic meters of groundwater
are flowing into the global market in the form of olive oil, an
export that represents both national pride and a silent
depletion of resources.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration launched a planning effort
Wednesday to identify enough new water to fill up two Shasta
Reservoirs, or 9 million acre-feet, by 2040 to offset expected
losses to climate change. The 2028 Water Plan, a result of last
year’s SB 72, will lay out a blueprint for new reservoirs,
groundwater recharge and conservation projects. “Climate
change is reshaping life in California through historic
droughts and record storms that threaten the farms that feed
the nation, communities that depend on reliable water, and the
environment we all share,” Newsom said in a statement.
Despite a strong start to California’s wet season, snowpack
conditions remain below average. A deficient snowpack
could mean less water available for summer irrigation,
threatening to cut surface water deliveries to farmers. …
State officials reported the snowpack was at 59% of
average by the end of last month. San Joaquin
Valley farmer Aaron Barcellos said he’s concerned about what
water supplies he will be able to get from this winter’s
snowpack, especially since about two-thirds of his farm’s water
comes from snowpack storage. The uncertainty has already
begun to impact his planning—particularly with cotton, which he
has grown since 1988.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The latest news about the Colorado River is dire. Since 2000,
the river’s flow has shrunk about 20%. An extremely warm winter
has brought very little snow in the Rocky Mountains. Reservoirs
are declining to critically low levels. And the leaders of
seven states are still at loggerheads over the water cutbacks
each should accept to prevent reservoirs from falling further.
… Officials are talking about what they will do if no
deal is reached. Representatives of Arizona, Nevada and
California already offered cuts of 27%, 17% and 10%,
respectively. But that hasn’t been enough for negotiators
representing Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah.
An unlikely coalition of farmers and water managers, who in the
past would be at loggerheads over the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta, are banding together in an effort
to move the needle on how to better manage this unique
resource. … The Great Valley Farm Water Partnership,
formed two years ago, includes members from the delta and San
Joaquin Valley, regions that have historically advocated for
delta operations from their own silos. By seeking unity and
practical outcomes for both farmers and the environment, the
partnership is gaining traction.
California’s water managers have long looked for ways to adapt
to a hotter, drier future where the impacts of climate change
leave less water to meet the state’s needs. At our annual
Water
101 Workshopon March 26 in
Sacramento, participants will hear from
Joel Metzger, deputy director for statewide water
resources planning, on efforts underway by the
California Department of Water Resources to achieve a target of
identifying 9 million acre-feet of additional water
supply by 2040, roughly equal to the capacity of two
Shasta Reservoirs. Seating is limited and filling up quickly,
so don’t miss out!
The Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission,
local organizations, engineers, politicians, and community
members have been exploring long-term water supply options
ahead of PG&E’s plan to decommission the Potter Valley
Project. The commission’s most recent
meeting this month looked at proposals such as
raising Coyote Valley Dam at Lake Mendocino. … Raising
the dam could increase water availability, storage, and allow
water to be pumped to Potter Valley and other areas that would
be most impacted by the decommissioning. However, raising the
dam would also require altering nearby structures at Lake
Mendocino.
