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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As the city of Los Angeles and the L.A. Department of Water and
Power face lawsuits by residents who claim the city
failed to ensure adequate water to fight the Palisades
fire, California legislators have passed a bill that
would give water agencies a new tool to defend themselves in
such cases. The legislation, Senate Bill 1153, would clarify
that public water agencies do not have a duty to
design, build or maintain a water system for wildfire defense
or suppression, and that the inability to maintain
water supply or water pressure during a wildfire is not a
“substantial cause” of fire damages. The bill, which
is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature,
also would require urban retail water suppliers in high or very
high fire hazard zones to include specific response procedures
for wildfires as part of their disaster preparedness plans.
… [F]or the last three years, the seven states have been
negotiating a new set of rules for sharing a dwindling supply
of water before current ones expire in December. But
the public has had little view inside the negotiating
rooms. … KUNC requested work calendars for the
seven negotiators earlier this year. The information wasn’t
always easy to find. Some states – Arizona, New Mexico and Utah
– were either not responsive to the requests or their state
offices said they didn’t hold the records. Colorado would have
charged about $280 for the documents. … States have said
this closed-door process is needed to reach a deal —
and it’s worked in the past. But this time, it hasn’t.
The tension has only grown.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has “serious concerns” about the
draft Bay Delta Plan. “The Bureau of
Reclamation writes to express its serious concern with the
State Water Resources Control Board’s August 2026 Draft Water
Quality Control Plan for the Bay-Delta. The Draft Plan, as
written, threatens reliability of water supplies that
support not only the Central Valley Project, but the entire
fabric of California’s agricultural economy, rural
communities, urban centers, and natural vitality,” the letter
states. … The federal agency also states that the plan does
“not honor” an agreement reached in 2022. … The letter also
challenges the plan’s regulation of federal reservoirs through
storage targets, decision-making authority and other elements.
“Reclamation cannot support or participate in a process that
disregards federal law, undermines negotiated certainty, and
threatens the viability of the CVP,” the letter states.
A proposal to fund a state drinking water program that has been
a lifeline for communities in the San Joaquin
Valley at $171 million passed by the Legislature
Tuesday after a harrowing few days and now awaits Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s signature. The proposal is supported by a broad
coalition of organizations, some of which typically find
themselves on opposite sides of most issues. But they came
together to protect the Safe and Affordable Fund for Equity and
Resilience (SAFER), which pays for emergency supplies
when homes, and even whole towns, go dry and funds
efforts to find long-term water solutions.
A broad new water conservation law will soon take effect in
phases, banning the watering of “ornamental turf” at corporate,
industrial, government and homeowners association properties
with drinking water across California as a way to preserve
supplies. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new state law in 2023 as
California was emerging from a harsh three-year drought.
Starting on Jan. 1, it will be illegal for local and regional
government agencies across the state — including schools,
cities, counties, courthouses, fire stations and libraries — to
irrigate decorative grass with potable water whether or not
California is in a drought. Enforcement is expected to be light
at first. But scofflaws eventually could face fines of up to
$1,000 a day.
The Trump administration on Friday took another step toward
stripping federal protections from millions of acres of
wetlands, which help filter drinking water for many communities
and provide critical habitat for birds, fish and other
wildlife. The proposed rule from the Environmental Protection
Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would significantly
narrow the definition of “waters of the United States,” or
WOTUS, that are protected from harmful pollution under the
Clean Water Act of 1972. The new version is more sweeping
than an initial proposal released in November, which would have
removed federal protections from fewer wetlands nationwide.
The Navajo Nation Council has taken a major step toward
protecting one of its most precious water resources. A
unanimously passed measure formally acknowledges the Confluence
— where the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers meet — as a
sacred site under tribal law. Doing so formally documents what
Navajos already know — the spiritual and natural significance
of where these two life-giving rivers converge in northern
Arizona’s high desert. … Cataloging information from the
Confluence may also be used to potentially deter future
commercial development by industries like hydropower — while
the Trump administration is eyeing energy projects on tribal
lands.
The directors of a Kings County water district didn’t like it,
but they agreed to support a land assessment fee to pay for
regulations to minimize the impacts of excessive groundwater
pumping even though the district, itself, doesn’t actually
contribute to the problem. Directors of the Lakeside Irrigation
Water District agreed on Sept. 2 to support a land assessment
fee being proposed by a separate entity, the Mid-Kings
Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA). … Mid-Kings GSA is
proposing to establish an annual fee of $26.84 per acre. …
But most of the 330 acres owned by Lakeside Irrigation is
actually used for groundwater recharge from the Kaweah River,
directors noted at their meeting. Meaning, the district,
itself, not only doesn’t contribute to the groundwater deficit,
it provides a net benefit to the subbasin.
… A UC Berkeley-led project aims to make it easier for all
Californians to understand the state’s complex water system and
have a say in how this critical resource is used. With the
support of a California Climate Action Grant,
the Collaboratory for Equity in Water
Allocation (COEQWAL) team has spent the past three years
working with stakeholders from around the state. … At an
event in Sacramento on Sept. 3, the collaboration unveiled the
new COEQWAL website, which includes educational modules and
reference guides explaining California’s water system. It also
visualizes the outcomes of more than 100 water management
scenarios modeled using the California Department of Water
Resource’s CalSim 3 planning tool.
As California continues to feel the impacts of a heat dome that
is bringing higher than normal temperatures to large portions
of the state, it’s a good time to remember that fish and
wildlife — especially salmon — need cold water, too.
… Fall-run Chinook salmon begin spawning in the
Sacramento River when eggs from winter-run Chinook salmon that
spawned in late July and early August may still be in their
gravel egg nests, called redds. Great care must be taken to
simultaneously ensure winter-run Chinook salmon redds are
protected, establish suitable flow conditions prior to the
onset of fall-run Chinook salmon spawning and refill Shasta
Reservoir for the next season.
California reached a second settlement with more than 70
parties to recover additional funding to contain a closed
hazardous waste landfill threatening to release hazardous
substances into the environment. The Vine Hill Complex, located
in California’s Contra Costa County, operated as a hazardous
waste treatment, storage and disposal facility until 1989,
accepting offsite waste including petroleum industry
byproducts, metals, electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals and
paints, according to California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a
complaint filed against the parties Thursday. … Despite
its closure, Bonta says the Vine Hill Complex has released and
threatens to release hazardous substances into the environment,
including toxic substances detected in groundwater such as
arsenic, lead, nickel, benzene and chloroform.
… On Thursday, state water regulators released a draft permit
for the highly anticipated Sites Reservoir,
outlining how much water the proposed $6 billion facility
in rural Glenn and Colusa counties can draw from the
Sacramento River and, importantly, when those draws can be
made. The project’s backers, who include Gov.
Gavin Newsom, criticized an earlier draft of the
permit as overly restrictive, saying it offered as little as
half the water needed and left the viability of what
would be California’s eighth largest reservoir in
question. Cities and farms across the state stand to
benefit from the new water supply, including in the Bay Area’s
South Bay and Tri-Valley, though opponents of the
project say it will dangerously deplete the Sacramento
River.
The Central Arizona Project’s board authorized its legal
counsel to take legal action “if necessary”
against a federal plan to cut Arizona’s share of
Colorado River water dramatically in coming
years. Board members went into a closed executive session
before the Sept. 3 vote to discuss certain “occurrences” that
could trigger a lawsuit or other legal filing, and did not
specify them when voting unanimously for the authorization.
Board member Alexandra Arboleda introduced the motion at the
meeting and prefaced it with a statement that the United States
Department of the Interior’s 10-year framework for
dealing with water shortage “contemplates operations
that are contrary to law and devastating to the water users of
the Central Arizona Project.”
The world’s leading weather organization is sounding the alarm
about this year’s super El Niño, issuing its most certain
forecast in the history of the organization. In an update
issued early Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization
predicted a “nearly 100% likelihood” that the El Niño
will last through February. … Daniel Swain, a
climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture
and Natural Resources, says this El Niño will be so big, “with
consequences that are so large, I’m not sure we fully
understand them.” The intensity of the El Niño, Swain says,
means that it may cause unexpected and extreme
weather, and he cautions against making certain
predictions about what, exactly, is going to happen over the
next year. But the impacts, he says, will almost
certainly be massive.
The Trump administration on Friday proposed further narrowing
protections for streams and wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of
Engineers issued a supplemental proposed rule that they said
would be likely to reduce the bodies of water that are
under the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction if its
changes are adopted. It would be expected to reduce the number
of waters subject to the Clean Water Act in the West. That
means development or pollution in these streams and wetlands
would no longer require a permit or potential
mitigation. The new changes come on top of an already
proposed rule by the agencies that is also expected to narrow
the Clean Water Act’s applicability.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to require data centers to
disclose how much water they use, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says
concerns over AI’s water use don’t hold “up to any
scrutiny.” On the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath
released Tuesday, Altman said that it takes 38,000 ChatGPT
queries to use as much water as producing a single almond in
California. … The problem, experts say, is that it’s
impossible to verify those numbers given what’s public about
the secretive industry. … Regardless of whether it takes
thousands of queries to match the water needed to produce a
single almond in California (a number that varies substantially
over time and space, according to a 2019 study), the
Congressional Research Service says data centers are using more
water than they used to.
After years of debate over how much freshwater should be
allowed to flow to the sea through the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta, the State Water Resources Control Board has released a
final draft of its regulatory plan. … In the draft
plan, water right holders can choose from two pathways to
compliance. They can provide a minimum rate of water flow from
Sacramento River tributaries, or they can voluntarily invest in
habitat restoration projects with specific flow volumes in lieu
of sustaining a minimum flow rate. Some stakeholders say that
part of the plan hands regulatory authority over to the very
groups the board is supposed to regulate.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unlocked
approximately $6 million in reserves and is planning to spend a
portion of that money on evaluating the first phase of a
project to build a new treatment plant, separate from the
existing South Bay plant, to capture and treat Tijuana River
sewage flows. On Sept. 1, the board established the Tijuana
River Capture and Cleanup Initiative with three phases to build
a new treatment plant near the U.S.-Mexico border, at a
starting cost of $1.8 million to evaluate options including
past proposals. A county board letter about the initiative
does not include a total price estimate nor where that money
would come from or the treatment capacity for the plant and
where it would be built. However, the letter says the first
phase will consider a 2021 river diversion study by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
The State Water Resources Control Board has recommended a
danger advisory, its highest warning for toxic algae, at Lake
Pillsbury after sampling ahead of the Labor Day weekend found
toxin levels above the state’s danger threshold, Lake County
Health Services said in a notice. The reservoir sits behind
PG&E’s Scott Dam on the upper Eel River and is the largest
lake in the Mendocino National Forest. It has 31 miles of
shoreline, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The county
said State Water Board staff collected a water sample at Lake
Pillsbury Resort on Aug. 24 as part of a pre-holiday assessment
and found high concentrations of cyanobacteria, the microscopic
bacteria also called blue-green algae, and 23.84 micrograms per
liter of microcystins and nodularins, the toxins the bacteria
produce.
The Sierra Nevada Conservancy announced they have approved
nearly $1.5 million for new projects that will boost
sustainable recreation and tourism in the Sierra-Cascade from
Proposition 68. … According to the Sierra Nevada
Conservancy, the new recreation and tourism grants went to
projects in Alpine, Butte and Inyo counties. … Inyo
County received a $498,610 grant for its Owens River Water
Trail project, which will help create a 6.1-mile paddling route
for non-motorized watercraft and the addition of both a
durable, ADA-accessible, public access launch site and take-out
site on the Lower Owens River. The new facilities will be
located on land owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power but will be managed under a long-term lease by Inyo
County.
