A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
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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.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday declared a statewide emergency for
California, warning of damaging storms that
could be generated this winter from a historically strong El
Niño brewing in the Pacific Ocean. The move is the latest sign
that emergency officials are growing increasingly
concerned about flooding, landslides, coastal damage and power
outages as winter approaches. The declaration
fast-tracks permits for flood protection projects and allows
state agencies to obtain emergency supplies without the usual
competitive bidding process. … On Monday, state
emergency officials said they are already holding planning
meetings with cities and counties to identify places
most at risk, and are beginning to clear drains on
roads and preposition resources, such as sandbags, in locations
across the state.
It’ll take a lot of money to help save water from the shrinking
Colorado River. Now, Amazon is helping foot the bill. The
ecommerce giant announced that it would send $20
million to water-saving projects in Arizona and
California, kicking off a new longer-term effort to
rally money for water conservation. The company formed a new
coalition, dubbed the “Colorado River Basin
Collaborative,” and aims to spend $100 million
on water conservation across two years. …
[Amazon Water Sustainability Lead Will] Hewes cited a new
$2.4 million project that aims to improve irrigation efficiency
on tribal farmland in northern Arizona. … [T]he project
would install high-tech sensors that give farmers
real-time data about when crops need water, ultimately
reducing their draw on Lake Mead, the nation’s largest
reservoir.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signedseven new data center regulations into
law Monday, as public concerns about the facilities’ demands
for water and electricity have reached a fever pitch. Newsom
signed a raft of bills that require data center
operators to report their water consumption and pay
for upgrades to offset any increased electricity grid demands.
… One of the measures was a resurrected measure from
Assemblymember Diane Papan, D-San Mateo. The governor vetoed a
similar bill last year that would have required data centers to
disclose their water usage when applying for licenses.
Chinook salmon have been laying eggs in gravelly nests in the
Sacramento River for millennia. But California’s biggest river
is now so warm that biologists expect a significant number of
the eggs won’t hatch. Environmental advocates blame the Trump
administration. They say the federal government took too much
water out of Shasta Lake for farms in the Central Valley,
leaving the reservoir too warm for many salmon eggs to
survive in a vital spawning area downstream from Shasta
Dam. … State biologists who monitor salmon
nests in the Sacramento River estimated on Sept. 4 that
about 20% of the eggs may not survive. The
river has gotten warmer since then.
We are gearing up for an engaging Water Summit on Oct. 29 and
also prepping our 2027 California Water Leaders program. Our
42ⁿᵈ
annual Water Summit is the Foundation’s premier
event of the year and returns to Sacramento October 29 with
leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West. Conversations during
the Summit will revolve around this year’s theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western
Water, with a focus on emerging topics related to
the challenges and opportunities facing water resource
management. And if you’re interested in applying for
the 2027 California Water Leaders cohort,
sign up for a virtual Q&A session on Nov.
10 to get an overview of our popular but competitive
program and tips on how to submit a strong application.
The Yuma City Council is preparing for a legal fight on two
fronts to protect the region’s water supply as competition for
the Colorado River intensifies. Council
members voted unanimously to authorize legal action
over water transfers from rural areas to growing
suburbs, as well as potential federal mandates that
could reduce water allocations across the desert
Southwest. … One of the city’s primary targets is a
proposed transfer of Colorado River water from GSC Farm
in La Paz County to the fast-growing town of Queen
Creek. Yuma is joining Mohave and La Paz counties to
challenge the transfer. Local leaders worry the move could
set a dangerous precedent, allowing expanding
municipalities to buy up and redirect water rights away from
rural agricultural hubs.
Any groundwater agency hoping to independently avoid state
sanctions under the so-called “good guy” clause of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) will have to
pay between $50,000 and $250,000 just to be
considered. That’s how much the state Water
Resources Control Board staff says it costs to review
the technical and often voluminous exemption
requests. … The Water Board approved the good
guy application fees at its Sept. 15 meeting and got an update
about how well – or not – Tulare County farmers have been
paying other fees. … Exemptions are the only way
individual agencies can avoid fees when a subbasin is
placed on probation by the Water Board for lacking an adequate
groundwater plan.
Access to water, and, more importantly, clean drinking water,
remains a challenge for many people on the Navajo Nation, so
Northern Arizona University chemistry professor Jani Ingram and
a team of researchers took on the challenge. They created
a map identifying wells with water that is considered
safe to drink and those that may be best avoided.
Ingram, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, has been at NAU since
2002. Upon arriving, she almost immediately started working on
some of the contaminant issues, particularly water
contamination on the Navajo Nation related to legacy
uranium mining. She said her work was motivated by
uranium mining and community members who “requested for this
type of work to be done.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a
$251 million Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act
(WIFIA) loan to the Las Virgenes-Triunfo Public Financing
Authority in California to support drinking water treatment
improvements and advance water reuse. The funding will support
the Pure Water Project, which will construct an advanced water
purification facility to treat recycled water for the Las
Virgenes-Conejo region of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The
project is expected to provide the region’s first local water
supply while increasing capacity and system reliability for
approximately 105,000 customers.
Beneath the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the deserts
in between, lies a massive energy source — and it isn’t a
fossil fuel. The smashing and separating of tectonic plates
that produced many of the West’s most dramatic landscapes have
also allowed heat from the planet’s core to rise nearly to the
surface. Now, an explosion of new geothermal energy companies
wants to drill into the Earth and capture that heat for clean
electricity. … These new geothermal projects are located
in dry Western states because of their geology, but they face
an ironic practical challenge: Most new geothermal technologies
need water to produce power. … A company called XGS
Energy is trying to provide geothermal energy that requires
nearly no water to New Mexico, which is currently suffering a
decades-long drought.
… Project Nexus tests not one, but three different solar
canal models. A wide-span canopy rises over one of Turlock’s
115-foot canals, resembling the top of a barn. A more classic
set of slanting solar panels sits atop a 20-foot canal. And
accordion-like retractable panels are positioned low across the
narrow canal, ready to roll up at a moment’s notice.
… Roger Bales, a professor at UC Merced who co-authored
a 2021 study that helped convince the state to invest in this
pilot, said his initial calculations indicate that putting
panels over 100 miles of Turlock’s narrow canals could
save enough water for 2,700 households annually.
… Bales said shading the canals led to less
algal growth and less fixed aquatic weed growth — reducing
maintenance and improving water quality.
The ubiquitous plastics of modern life are degrading into tiny
fragments and littering Earth’s landscapes and waterways.
Scientists are starting to examine and measure this phenomenon
to better understand how microplastics move through the
environment and ultimately impact human and environmental
health. A new study focuses on the Truckee River, which stems
from the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe and traverses through
Reno and Sparks, Nevada, before reaching Pyramid Lake. The
research sought to illuminate the concentrations and types of
plastics accumulating throughout the river — which supplies
drinking water to nearly half a million people. Published
September 15th in ACS EST Water, the research was led by Hannah
Lukasik, former master’s student at DRI and the University of
Nevada Reno.
Like a thoughtful friend, the Delta Breeze often shows up right
when it’s needed. … Because of that, any potential
threats to the breeze are taken seriously. When word got around
that the billionaire-backed California Forever development —
which could add thousands of new homes and a shipyard in Solano
County — might disrupt the breeze, residents were concerned.
… Experts from the National Weather Service office in
Sacramento and UC Davis said the phenomenon, often manifesting
as a gentle cooling trend, is driven by atmospheric forces that
occur over hundreds of miles. Because of that, a surface level
development, even one as potentially large as California
Forever, likely will not have a noticeable effect on the
breeze.
The developers of a new, massive Northern California reservoir
say they’ll have enough water to pursue their $6 billion
venture, laying to rest their previous concerns that
the project 70 miles northwest of Sacramento might not be
viable. The proposed Sites Reservoir, billed
as a remedy for the state’s chronic water shortages, appeared
to be at risk earlier this year when state regulators outlined
how much water the facility could draw from the
Sacramento River, and when those draws could
occur. … But two weeks ago, after pushback from Gov. Gavin
Newsom and other advocates, the State Water Resources Control
Board relaxed the conditions laid out in the
reservoir’s proposed water right. … On Friday,
officials with the Sites Project Authority, the agency leading
the ambitious endeavor, reported that their analysis of
the revised water right showed the reservoir would have
adequate water to make the project cost-effective.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes and the Central Arizona Water
Conservation District reached an agreement on Colorado
River, CRIT officials announced. The CRIT and CAWCD
agreement will deliver more than 9,000 acre-feet of
CRIT Intentionally Created Surplus, or ICS, water to the
district. … CRIT officials said the agreement
with the CAWCD represents the last remaining water CRIT
made available as part of a Drought Contingency Plan that was
agreed to in 2019. The surplus water was
previously conserved between 2020 and 2022 after requests from
the federal government. CRIT leaders conserved water to
help stabilize Lake Mead. … Under the
agreement, the CAWC District will compensate the CRIT at
$590 per acre-foot, for a total of
$5.3 million in two payments.
As the 2026-27 El Niño flirts with record territory, scientists
are increasingly confident it will have an
outsize influence on California precipitation.
That’s because there is a significant similarity between this
event and two prior very strong El Niños that drenched
California, and a difference from two that didn’t. The
key is the exact location of warm water: El Niños in
the far east — with the most unusually warm water near South
America — correlate more strongly with California
precipitation than a central-Pacific based El Niño,
according to John O’Brien, a climate scientist and a program
officer for science at the Heising-Simons Foundation.
… Despite El Niño’s outsize influence,
scientists note there’s a chance California ends up
relatively dry. Nothing is guaranteed.
Karla Nemeth spent eight years atop California’s water
bureaucracy, trying to make the state’s vast, creaky system
work in a hotter, more volatile climate. Now she’s
continuing the fight from outside government. …
Newsom is winding down his term, and Nemeth left her position
in July. Earlier this month, she took over as executive
director of the Association of California Water
Agencies, the state’s largest water trade group.From
that perch, she’ll be pushing the next administration
and the Legislature to do more about water storage, flood
protection, affordability and the Colorado River. In
an interview with POLITICO, she reflected on her time in the
executive branch and the challenges ahead for California and
its next governor.
A House Natural Resources Committee subcommittee held a
legislative hearing Sept. 16 on eight water, wildlife and
public-access bills, spanning California water, tribal
settlements, invasive species, Florida wildlife and
Yosemite access. … The bills included
the Yosemite National Park Equal Access and Fairness Act, the
Golden Mussel Eradication and Control Act of 2025, the
Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Water Rights
Settlement Act, and an amendment to the Aamodt
Litigation Settlement Act. The package also included the
Pechanga Band of Indians Water Rights Settlement
Technical Amendments Act. … H.R. 5935 would
authorize the Agua Caliente water-rights settlement and
establish a $500 million settlement trust fund for
water infrastructure and conservation. H.R. 8546 would
make technical updates to the Pechanga settlement, while H.R.
6869 would let parties extend the deadline for completing the
Pojoaque Basin Regional Water System.
Kearny, Ariz., is a town on the brink. Located at the foot of
the Dripping Spring Mountains in eastern Arizona, this small
community of 2,000 people sources its water from the Gila
River. … But in March, the snowpack feeding the
river had dropped to precipitous levels: It was just 1 percent
of its historic norm for that time of
year. … Kearny’s dilemma foreshadows a
crisis building across the American Southwest. Since 2000, the
region — which includes Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah,
Colorado and parts of northern Mexico — has endured a historic
“megadrought,” or a period of severe dryness that persists for
decades. Scientists say it’s the driest this region has been in
1,200 years. … [R]esearchers worry that the
megadrought may be locked in place for the foreseeable
future.
In Silicon Valley’s biggest city, residents and environmental
groups are organizing against a wave of proposed data center
projects that officials have courted in a bid to position the
city as a hub for AI infrastructure. The clash highlights a
challenge confronting policymakers nationwide: how to support
an industry viewed by government and business leaders as
critical to economic competitiveness while responding
to growing public concerns about the electricity, water and
pollution impacts of the infrastructure required to
power it. … The fight comes as California Governor Gavin
Newsom weighs a package of bills intended to
protect state residents from the costs of powering data centers
and increase transparency around their energy and water
use.
