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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Improvements in reservoir storage and spring runoff conditions
have contributed to a modest increase in water
allocation for westside farmers [in the San Joaquin
Valley], the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Tuesday. The
allocation has risen to 25% for the south-of-Delta contractors,
up from a 20% allocation issued in March. Also receiving a
boost in allocations are municipal and Industrial water service
and repayment contractors. Their allocation increased from 70%
to 75% of their historic use. … Westlands Water District
General Manager Allison Febbo said in a statement that while
farmers appreciate the additional supply of water, the system
still falls short of capturing and storing water.
The Trump administration is nearing intervention in the
yearslong standstill between the seven states that share the
Colorado River at a historic point of crisis. A 10-year
federal plan would require the states to return to the
negotiation table every two years — something that
Arizona officials revealed the first details about last week
during a public meeting. This shift to a new, short-term
agreement in the face of record low reservoir levels was a
central tenet of Nevada’s recent proposal for a stopgap
measure. … A plan must be in place by Oct. 1, the start of
the water year. Current sharing guidelines expire at the end of
2026.
After three consecutive years of being off restaurant menus,
one of the most prized local fish is finally swimming its way
back to market, and chefs are hooked. Wild California King
salmon, also known as Chinook, is the largest of the Pacific
salmon. … The quality of one year’s fishery depends on how
successful the young fish were in getting to the ocean years
before, according to UC Davis professor Dr. Nann A. Fangue. …
“It’s very cyclical, and when we have things like
drought conditions, where the conditions for
outmigrating juvenile fish aren’t so good, you expect in three
years to have kind of a poor fishery, but then when you have
conditions that promote lots of outmigration success, then in
three or four years you expect to have lots of adults
returning, so this is part of that cycle.”
Another ranch in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley is looking to
transfer water to Kevin O’Leary’s massive Stratos data center
project. Murray Hollow L.C. submitted a change application to
the Utah Division of Water Rights on April 28, seeking
to convey water historically used for domestic and livestock
use to industrial use for a natural gas plant and associated
data center, according to the application. The
new application for roughly 11 acre-feet per year is far
smaller than a previous change request filed by Bar H Ranch
last month that would have transferred roughly 1,900 acre-feet
to the Stratos project developers. The Bar H application was
pulled earlier this month after it had amassed nearly 4,000
protests.
There has never been a website offering the public a glimpse
into the basic workings of the Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage
District – a public agency – and that’s not going to
change any time soon. The board voted at its May 12 meeting on
a recurring resolution that declares creating a public website
to provide such items as meeting times, locations and agendas
is a “hardship.” … El Rico GSA and Tulare Lake Basin WSD
share the same address and meeting space at 1001 Chase Ave. in
Corcoran. And they meet on the same day, the second Tuesday of
the month, three hours apart. Unlike Tulare Lake Basin WSD,
however, El Rico GSA is required under the Sustainability
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to maintain a public website,
no exemptions allowed.
Lupine and California golden poppies are already blooming
everywhere. They’re more than beautiful, and tougher than they
look: Wildflowers can teach us a lot about surviving
drought. A new study shows wildflowers employ a
mixture of strategies, some intentionally risky and others
cautiously conservative, both above-ground and below, to thrive
in conditions that can vary widely from year to year. With
climate change making drought more frequent
and more severe, this work hones the ability of land managers
to predict which plants will thrive in which ecosystems in the
future.
The large metallic white box sits in a Southern California
parking lot, looking unremarkable until water starts flowing
from a hose attached to it. Peer inside, though, and it’s
nearly empty but for some wires, tubes and a container of
light-colored material. The water isn’t being conjured out of
thin air by magic but by MOFs — metallic organic frameworks.
MOFs are nanocrystalline structures engineered at an atomic
level to attract specific molecules. In this case that’s H2O
and the machine made by the startup Atoco is silently
harvesting molecules from the surrounding air and storing them
in the material’s porous cavities that serve as microscopic
water tanks. Atoco founder Omar Yaghi shared the 2025 Nobel
Prize in chemistry for pioneering MOFs.
Storms across the Western U.S. are dumping more rain in shorter
bursts than in decades past. But according to new research,
that doesn’t necessarily mean landscapes are holding onto more
water. Scientists say the growing concentration of rainfall
into intense downpours — separated by longer dry stretches —
may actually leave soils and ecosystems with less moisture over
time. The findings, published this month in the journal Nature,
point to another way climate change may be reshaping
water availability across the region. Researchers
analyzed decades of precipitation and land moisture data from
around the world. They found that when rainfall becomes
concentrated into heavier bursts, more water remains on the
surface instead of soaking into soils or groundwater.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $44.3
million in new grant funding for “Small or Disadvantaged
Communities” to address polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in
Colorado water. That funding comes as the agency rolls back
some regulations on those chemicals. … The funding for
Colorado water is part of a billion dollar investment across
the country. The money can be allocated to testing,
planning, and infrastructure projects. According to a
press release from the EPA, “small, rural, and disadvantaged
water systems often have fewer resources.“ … The EPA
described its approach to “forever chemicals” as in part
“correcting the Biden-Harris Administration’s failure to follow
the clear requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
A long-awaited overhaul of the lower Russian River’s aging
wastewater system is on deck after Sonoma Water was awarded a
$47.8 million grant from the state. The money, funded
through California’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund program,
will support the Russian River Sanitation District’s efforts
to rehabilitate the system’s 34 miles of sewer lines
and four miles of mains. … The award is the
largest ever for Sonoma Water, the parent agency that first
applied for the grant in 2019. It has seen repeated spills on
its watch linked to the Neeley Road plant. The latest, and
largest in more than 40 years, came in January, when an
estimated 5.5 million gallons of wastewater, including
untreated sewage, overflowed from the treatment plant into the
lower Russian River for more than three days.
In a quiet Capitol Hill office last week, the decades-long
stench of the New River finally met a renewed sense of federal
urgency. Rep. Raul Ruiz said in a statement he sat down with
International Boundary and Water Commission Commissioner Chad
McIntosh and Deputy Commissioner Tony Frye. Their focus was a
waterway that has long ceased to be just an environmental
eye-sore, hardening instead into a full-blown public health
crisis for Imperial County. The meeting followed a May 11
federal roundtable in Calexico, California, where EPA
officials, local leaders, and exhausted residents laid bare the
realities of living near what is widely considered one of the
most polluted rivers in North America.
Keeping invasive golden mussels out of key San Joaquin
Valleyreservoirs will mostly be up
to conscientious boaters this summer as there is no
comprehensive approach to watercraft inspection and
decontamination throughout the state. State and local agencies
are encouraging boaters to “clean, drain and dry” boats before
moving from one body of water to another. But most
lakes in the state, including five key reservoirs on the
valley’s east side, don’t have mandatory inspections and
cleaning stations. Given the rapid and concerning
spread of the mussels, Rep. Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) has
secured $5 million in the 2027 Energy and Water Development
bill to support boat inspections at Millerton Lake, Pine Flat
Reservoir, Lake Kaweah, Success Lake and Lake Isabella.
The Delta Counties Coalition issued the following statement in
response to remarks made May 7 by Gavin Newsom at the
Association of California Water Agencies conference: “Governor
Newsom offered a sweeping reflection on California’s water
history during his tenure in office, but in doing so, he
largely glossed over the very real and immediate concerns of
the communities that would be most impacted by the Delta Tunnel
Conveyance Project. For those who live, work and depend on the
Delta for local water supplies, this is not an abstract policy
debate or a continuation of past proposals — it is about the
future of our homes, our farms and one of the most important
estuaries in the country.”
The Trump administration on Monday proposed rolling back limits
on “forever chemicals” that contaminate millions of Americans’
drinking water and have been linked to a range of health
problems. The proposal would partially rescind the first
national drinking water limits for the chemicals — also known
as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — set by the
Biden administration. Under the changes, EPA would eliminate
strict limits for four PFAS and allow utilities to request a
two-year extension to remove two other PFAS from tap water.
PFAS are a class of thousands of synthetic substances nicknamed
“forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break
down.
The Denver City Council unanimously approved a one-year
moratorium [Monday] on new data center development in the city,
marking a major policy pause as officials work to establish new
regulations. The measure halts the acceptance and processing of
new zoning permits and site development plans for data centers
while Denver drafts rules addressing energy use, water
consumption, noise and citing standards. The
moratorium remains in place for up to one year, or until the
city adopts updated data center regulations. The vote
comes despite construction well underway on a data center in
the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood that is estimated to use far
more water and power than anything currently operating in
Denver.
A late-season snowstorm has brought several inches of May
powder to the high country, offering a modest but welcome boost
to a state grappling with drought conditions. Snow fell
steadily throughout the day Monday and into Tuesday morning,
with more than five inches of snow reported in Aspen Springs,
Walden, Nederland, Sawpit, and Estes Park. … While the storm
is part of a pattern of late-April and May precipitation
events, the 9NEWS Weather Impact Team has cautioned it will do
little to reverse the region’s critically low snowpack [in the
headwaters of the Colorado River].
Statewide snowpack is currently sitting around 20% of
normal, and even lower in parts of Clear Creek County,
where it stands at just 9%. … Still, the moisture carries
real benefits as Colorado begins the summer season.
California officials on Thursday convened the inaugural board
meeting of the newly minted Salton Sea Conservancy, marking the
state’s first new conservancy in over fifteen years and
signaling a major escalation in the battle to save its largest,
most troubled lake. The high-stakes session, led by Joe Shea,
Assistant Secretary for Salton Sea Policy at the California
Natural Resources Agency (CNRA), introduced the new governing
board to the public, detailed its financial blueprint, and
underscored a renewed commitment to grassroots community
involvement. … According to the CNRA, the Salton Sea
Conservancy is uniquely armed with a dual mandate: overseeing
the long-term operations and maintenance of projects
constructed under the Salton Sea Management Plan and
aggressively acquiring and holding vital land and water rights.
It’s the time of year, when a massive 100-foot rubber
dam emerges from the bottom of the Russian River near
Forestville. That’s to ensure the 600,000 residents of Sonoma
and Marin counties who rely on the river for drinking water
have a stable supply during summer, when demand for water
increases but river levels are lower. Monday marked the
start of the three-day process of raising the dam, which was
first raised in the 1970s. … Most of the year, residents
of the area consume 20-40 million gallons of water a day. At
the height of summer, consumption can reach up to 60 million
gallons a day.
An endangered fish recovery project near Moab is trying a new
approach this year after unusually low Colorado River flows
disrupted the wetland nursery process normally used to raise
young razorback sucker. Earlier this month, biologists
with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources stocked 5,000
larval bonytail chub — the rarest endangered native fish in the
Colorado River Basin — into the central pond at the Scott and
Norma Matheson Wetlands Preserve as part of an experimental
recovery effort. Instead of relying on spring runoff to
naturally carry endangered razorback sucker larvae into the
preserve, DWR biologists directly introduced the bonytail in
hopes that fish raised in a more natural environment may
ultimately survive better once released into the Colorado
River.
Other habitat and species restoration news around the West:
House lawmakers will consider a range of water sector
challenges this week, with hearings on both cybersecurity
threats to infrastructure as well as a recent massive sewage
spill in the Potomac River. The House Science, Space and
Technology Subcommittee on Environment will convene Thursday
to discuss cybersecurity threats facing the nation’s
water infrastructure and new research on how to prevent
them. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations is meeting Wednesday to scrutinize
the causes of a massive sewage spill in the Potomac River.
Experts say the spill highlights the risk of aging, underfunded
water infrastructure. The Science panel’s hearing comes as
federal agencies are warning of an uptick in attempted
cyberattacks from Iran-affiliated actors targeting critical
sectors such as water and wastewater utilities.
