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 vetoed a bill aimed at shoring
up the Delta’s aging levees and protecting the
region and vital water infrastructure from flooding and sinking
land. In his veto message, Newsom said the
more than $170 million for repairing levees, aqueducts
and canals and other projects already included in the state
budget made the measure
redundant. … A network of 1,100 miles of
federal and non-federal levees lines Delta waterways and
protects the region from flooding.Many of these aging
levees do not meet current “construction standards and could
fail at water levels well below the top of the levee,”
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in 2018. The
price tag for fixing them: roughly $3.3 billion,
according to the state’s Delta Stewardship Council.
The Las Vegas Valley Water District will fine businesses and
homeowners associations in the new year if they
continue to use water from Lake Mead to irrigate grass it has
deemed “nonfunctional.” A page on the water district’s
website said that beginning Jan. 1, irrigation of decorative
grass will be classified as water waste and come with fines.
Those fines, if approved, will range from $80 for a
first offense on a water meter sized for most residential homes
to $5,120 for the fifth offense on the largest water
meter size. It’s the first time Southern Nevada water managers
have told the public how they intend to enforce
Assembly Bill 356, a controversial 2021 law that banned using
Colorado River water to irrigate turf that agencies
consider nonfunctional or decorative.
Walter Hardesty has raised hay and cattle south of Elk Grove
long enough to watch groundwater turn from a
private worry into a regional one. Soon, he expects to manage
it from his phone. The Harvest Water Program is set
to deliver recycled water to his ranch in 2027, and he
will order it through an app for a set date and
duration. Then, an automated valve at the edge of his property
will do the rest, all the while giving the aquifer beneath his
fields and his wells, which will be run about half as often,
time to recover. That, in essence, is the promise at the
center of a nearly $597 million public project. … The
Harvest Water Program is billed by SacSewer, the Sacramento
Area Sewer District, as California’s largest
agricultural water recycling project.
… According to the District’s materials, it will
deliver up to 50,000 acre-feet of recycled water a
year.
The Southwestern United States was facing heavy rain and the
potential for flash flooding through early Wednesday as
moisture from two far-off storms streamed into the region. The
flood threat was focused over New Mexico and Arizona on Monday
and will begin to shift east into Texas and the Plains Tuesday
into Thursday. One to three inches of rain was forecast to fall
across much of the region, including in parts of
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado
and Texas, and some isolated areas could receive up to seven
inches. Flood watches were in effect, and forecasters said
more urgent flash-flood warnings were likely over the
next few days.
Daniel Swain has made a name for himself studying the extremes
of a warming planet. Fires, floods, droughts, heat, storms: if
it’s a record breaker, Swain has probably studied it. As
a weather and climate research scientist at UCLA’s Institute of
the Environment and Sustainability, Swain has dedicated his
life to understanding so-called “outlier
events” and how climate change is
super-charging them. … Based on a recent study
in Science, the current El Niño is likely the
strongest in over a millennium. … In a recent interview,
Swain and Inside Climate News reporter Nina Dietz
discussed why this El Niño is unlike anything we’ve
seen before, and what it could mean for California and
beyond.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed two bills targeting the health
effects of the Tijuana River sewage crisis. One orders the
state’s first update in more than a half-century to its
hydrogen sulfide air standard. The other requires workplace
protections for lifeguards, park rangers and others working
outdoors in the Tijuana River Valley. Senate Bill 58, by state
Sen. Steve Padilla, directs the California Air Resources Board
to update the state’s air quality standard for hydrogen
sulfide, which has not been updated since 1969, according to
Padilla’s office. Senate Bill 1046, by Sen. Catherine
Blakespear, directs Cal/OSHA to develop workplace standards to
minimize exposure to cross-border pollution. Newsom signed the
bill Sunday, according to Blakespear’s office. Both laws take
effect Jan. 1, 2027.
Pima County staff held an open house downtown Monday, to
discuss the proposed rules. The meeting came just days after
the county approved a 120-day moratorium on new data center
developments. Currently, Pima County only allows data centers
in its most intensive industrial zones The proposed rules would
formally define what data centers are and establish guidelines
regarding the energy and water used by data centers as well as
noise levels. … Under the draft regulations, the county
would require data centers to use closed-loop water cooling
systems. This technology allows water to be recirculated and
reused. Projects would also need certified access to an
adequate supply of both water and energy.
n the tiny community of Shaver Springs in the Fresno County
foothills, residents say the water is so brown it leaves stains
in their bathtubs, tiles and clothing. They say it’s been like
this for years. But they’ve only now gotten attention outside
of their community. At multiple public meetings in the last
month, residents and other advocates have shown up with their
concerns, telling county leaders they need to address the
community’s water system as well as high water bills.
… The State Water Resources Control Board lists Shaver
Spring’s water quality as “failing” in its drinking water
database known as SAFER. But the water board has stopped short
of stating Shaver Springs’ water is undrinkable. A
statement from the agency said that, while there is no risk to
ingesting the water, “alternative drinking water supplies
should be used due to the increasing levels of uranium and
gross alpha in Well 7.”
State funding aimed at helping farmers and ranchers implement
water conservation techniques is helping address a variety of
drought-related problems, administrators, scientists and
farmers told New Mexico lawmakers on Monday. They asked
legislators to double the program’s funding next year as the
state continues to suffer from record low snowpack and drought
conditions. A presentation in front of the Water and Natural
Resources Committee during its meeting in Taos noted that 80%
of New Mexico’s water benefits agriculture, and this year’s
record low snowpack and ongoing drought conditions have
negatively impacted farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to produce
crops and raise livestock.
… The steep grades of diversion dams and other human-built
structures can block fish from traveling upstream. Fishways
provide a ramp bypass fish can navigate to restore their range.
These fish-friendly structures are especially important in
times of drought – as Colorado has experienced this year –
because water levels decline, and fish are more likely to
become isolated in smaller pools, which could threaten their
survival if the pools continue to shrink or if the water warms
to dangerous levels. … Most fishways are designed for
game fish, like trout and salmon, but [Researcher Chris] Myrick
and his students design ladders for little fish in
Colorado. Small fish are an important part of the food
web; they eat insects and feed waterfowl and game fish. They’re
also an indicator of water quality; if small fish are thriving,
their environment is healthy.
The remarkable recovery of dunes in Death Valley after some
were obliterated by remnants of a hurricane may offer clues to
how scientists should interpret rocks to study ancient
flooding, new research suggests. The study, published in
the Journal of Geophysical Research by a lab based at
the University of California, Los Angeles, tracks the
rebuilding of Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes after Hurricane
Hilary in 2023, the remnants of a storm that brought a year’s
worth of rain to Death Valley National Park in a single day.
… The dune landscape’s quick removal of evidence that
Hilary occurred suggests extreme flooding may leave a much more
fragmented and difficult-to-recognize signature in the rock
record than scientists might expect from the size of the event.
With a strong El Niño increasing the odds of big storms this
fall and winter, California is on alert for possible
flooding. But if it delivers a wet punch, it will also
bring an upside: a bonanza of water. How
prepared is the state to capitalize on El Niño? And what more
can it do to take advantage of an extremely wet year? Experts
say California has made progress capturing more
stormwater, but there is still more it can
do. Los Angeles County uses a network of 27
spreading grounds, where artificial basins fill up when storms
send torrents cascading down from the mountains into the San
Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. The water sinks into porous
soil and replenishes the groundwater.
… Southwestern states for years have sought to find new
sources of water in a drying region, and
desalination, the process of removing salt
from ocean water to make it potable, is one of the
solutions they’re studying. Arizona advanced one such
project on Sept. 16, which proposes to provide water for Mexico
in exchange for part of the state’s share of Colorado River
water. The proposed Northern Gulf of California Desalination
Project calls for Arizona to build a plant in the Gulf
of California to supply drinking water to residents in
Baja California, Mexico. Arizona would then use some of
Mexico’s supply of Colorado River water to augment its
own. But the project faces the same challenge
threatening water throughout the region — too little Colorado
River water to go around.
Following nearly a decade of investment in the agrarian
Suisun Valley, Caymus Vineyards is fighting
a state water conservation policy that it sees
as a threat to the burgeoning wine region. Solano County’s
23-square-mile Suisun Valley has been recognized as an American
Viticultural Area since 1982, but it was largely unknown as a
wine destination before Caymus …. Over the last year, [Caymus
Vice President Michael] Carlson has worked to raise local
awareness of a state policy change that would restrict
the amount of water that the county can tap from nearby Putah
Creek. Caymus says the new policy could stunt the
region’s growth by limiting the water available for grape
growing, wine production and urban development. Carlson’s
concern stems from a pending update to the Bay Delta
Plan, which governs the flow of water from California
streams into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta.
A tech developer has asked a Nye County judge to toss out a
ban on data centers in one of the state’s most
overstressed water basins that serves Pahrump. In a
statement, developer Sean Dalesandro said his company is asking
for a judge to uphold a principle of fairness, adding that he
believes the ban unlawfully disregarded a significant
investment into zoning. His company’s previously proposed data
center project, the Manse Technology Campus, drew protests from
hundreds of residents. … The legal petition is in
response to a ban on data centers in basin 162, the
Pahrump Valley Hydrographic Basin, where water rights
committed on paper to property owners outweigh
the annual yield by more than three to one.
A flotilla of boats cruising the San Joaquin
River Friday gave nearly 90 scientists, water
management officials and leaders from 19 U.S. states and four
Canadian provinces a closer look at the threat posed by
golden mussels. The Western Regional Panel on Aquatic
Nuisance Species ended its annual meeting with the tour
embarking from Stockton. The group got a firsthand look at
the mussels’ impacts in San Joaquin County,
including how the species clings to boats, water pumps, pipes
and other infrastructure. … Meanwhile, elected officials
from San Joaquin County were in Washington, D.C., this week in
part to drum up more federal support for the golden
mussel problem.
When water managers in Arizona are trying to plan for how much
water they’ll get from rivers and reservoirs, they look to the
mountain snow. A new study compares
different programs for measuring that
snow, and found that they produce
wildly different estimates. The study, published in
the journal Water Resources Research, mostly found problems
with long-term models, and said most water managers in
the Southwest are using more accurate systems for
predicting the amount of water in reservoirs in the near term.
High-altitude snow is far more important to the
Southwest’s water supply than summer rains, so getting
accurate data about that snow is pivotal for the people who
make plans for the water that flows to cities and farms across
the region.
About a mile downstream from Guerneville, Sarah Dale’s Russian
River dock is marooned on a silty, bone-dry riverbed. …
Normally, a branch of the Russian River would be coursing past
their dock in their Neeley Road hamlet and teeming with otters,
herons, kayakers and swimmers. But for the past two summers,
this part of the river has run dry. In August 2024, an
I-beam failed on a seasonal dam downstream in a community
called Vacation Beach, and repairs have
lagged. … When the dam broke in August 2024, the
district initially seemed on track to fix the problem, but by
spring 2025 had announced that the dam would not be installed
in June after the state Division of Safety of Dams barred its
reinstallation without environmental reviews and other
permits.
From September 28–30, researchers from the Center for Watershed
Sciences (CWS) will join colleagues from across California at
the 2026 Bay-Delta Science Conference in Sacramento. The
conference brings together scientists, policymakers, engineers,
resource managers, knowledge holders, community advocates,
artists, and others to think about the future of California’s
Bay-Delta. This year’s theme, “The Opportunity of Change:
Building and Being the Future Together,” focuses on envisioning
a more connected and resilient California system where science
is central to solutions in the Bay-Delta. Here’s a glance
at what to expect!
Microplastics are occurring at a higher concentration in the
Truckee River than in Lake Tahoe by a factor of 3-4, according
to a recently published study. Researchers say this could mean
the extra pollution is coming from the river’s surrounding
landscape and emphasize that reducing single-use plastics is
critical to protecting the river’s water quality. It’s another
study within the last few years seeking to understand this
ubiquitous material and how it impacts human and environmental
health. … Adding further context, the Truckee River’s
concentrations are comparable to those found in studies of
other Western rivers. The Truckee River’s role in
providing drinking water to half a million people is just one
implication of this data.
