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.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Friday released a sweeping
report outlining five alternatives for managing the Colorado
River after current rules expire in 2026. The 1,600-page report
marks a pivotal moment in negotiations among seven states, 30
tribal nations, Mexico, and a host of stakeholders who rely on
the river’s dwindling supply. … California, which draws
4.4 million acre-feet annually from the Colorado River, faces
potential cuts of up to 3.9 million acre-feet per year under
some scenarios, according to the Bureau’s analysis. That could
hit Southern California cities and Imperial Valley agriculture
hardest.
It’s a rare site to see the U.S. Drought Monitor Map show
California without a drought, or even abnormally dry
conditions. That hasn’t happened for a
quarter-century. … State Climatologist Michael
Anderson said the state doesn’t use the U.S. Drought Monitor as
an “indicator, and it’s not an official drought-free
declaration.” … “As we’ve seen in past years,
California can go quickly from wet to dry conditions, and we
are expecting dry conditions to return through the rest of
January. This will have an impact on statewide rain and
snowfall averages, which are expected to decrease,” Anderson
said.
The world’s oceans absorbed more heat in 2025 than any year on
record, providing the fuel for extreme weather
that killed thousands of people across the globe, according to
researchers of a study published Friday in Advances in
Atmospheric Sciences. … Record-breaking rainfall
highlighted what scientists call “the escalating risks
associated with rapidly intensifying storm systems in a warming
climate.” These disasters are connected to warming oceans in a
direct way. Warmer water means more evaporation, which puts
more moisture into the air. When storms form over these
supercharged oceans, they carry that extra water and dump it as
extreme rainfall.
… With its 70 miles of coastline and 40 miles of bay shore,
Marin is one of the counties most vulnerable to sea
level rise in the Bay Area. … It will cost an
estimated $17 billion to protect Marin County from the 2 feet
of sea level rise expected toward the end of the century,
according to a recent study, and federal grants for climate
change projects have disappeared. The county has to balance
both long-term and immediate needs that are increasingly
overlapping, such as $25 million to fix an aging
levee in San Rafael that was damaged during the recent
flooding.
The fastest‑growing piece of America’s artificial intelligence
infrastructure is colliding with one of its most finite local
resources: water. As utilities, state regulators, and local
governments rush to accommodate a surge in data‑center
construction driven by AI and cloud computing, water is
emerging as a constraint that few permitting systems were
designed to manage. … In 2023, U.S. data centers
consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water, according to
federal and industry analyses compiled by the Energy Department
and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Hyperscale
facilities alone are projected to consume between 16 billion
and 33 billion gallons annually by 2028.
The Trump administration is following up on its pledge to try
to stop the removal of two dams on Northern
California’sEel River, a move that
gives farmers and rural residents opposed to the controversial
demolition a welcome ally. U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Brooke Rollins last month filed to intervene in the regulatory
proceedings over PG&E’s Potter Valley
Project. … Despite the high-profile intervention
and forceful language, however, the Trump administration’s
influence on the Potter Valley Project’s regulatory proceedings
is likely to be limited. Many legal experts say the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the independent agency
that oversees hydroelectric facilities, can’t require a private
company to keep a project running.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would
free about $50 million in funds for maintaining Hoover Dam.
House members approved the bipartisan Help Hoover Dam Act on
Thursday as part of a larger appropriations bill. It now moves
to the U.S. Senate for approval. Lawmakers say the measure will
allow the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Hoover Dam’s
operations, to access about $50 million in stranded funding
from an orphaned federal account. The bureau could then use the
money on operations, capital improvements and clean-up actions.
Attorney General Kris Mayes says her new agreement with a
mega-dairy company will cut groundwater pumping in Southeast
Arizona’s Willcox Basin by more than 100,000 acre-feet over the
next 15 years. “This is a real reduction in groundwater
pumping,” cumulative from 2026 to 2040, Mayes told a big crowd
in Cochise County Thursday. … The annual savings will be a
drop in the bucket compared to the current groundwater
overdraft in the Willcox Basin, which is estimated at more than
100,000 acre-feet every year. … But it’s an important first
step, officials say, adding that the reduction in groundwater
overpumping will be multiplied by additional measures.
In the United States, 54.9 million acres were irrigated in
2022, down slightly from 56.3 million acres in 1997. This
modest decline conceals significant regional changes in recent
decades. California’s irrigated acreage decreased from 8.8 to
8.2 million acres between 1997 and 2022. … The decrease
in irrigated area in the West—where a generally arid climate
means most crops require irrigation—primarily reflects
surface and groundwater shortages due to drought and
groundwater depletion in the face of competing demands
for water. In some areas, urbanization has also
contributed to this shift.
Recent storms have once again pushed large amounts of trash
from Mexico into the Tijuana River Valley, but new equipment
installed along the river is already making a noticeable
difference. Project leaders say newly added floating trash
deflectors are improving how debris is captured, preventing
waste from scattering throughout the river corridor in San
Ysidro and reducing the risk of pollution reaching
the Pacific Ocean. … The deflectors work alongside
an existing trash boom installed about a year and a half ago at
the start of the Tijuana River Valley. Stretching roughly 700
feet across the river, the barrier is designed to intercept
debris flowing north from Tijuana before it spreads downstream.
Scores of communities around the United States have aging and
decrepit wastewater systems that can put residents’ health and
homes at risk. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and former
President Joe Biden’s administration promised hundreds of
millions of dollars to address the problem, but much of that
has been undone in President Donald Trump’s return to office.
Some of the Trump administration’s cuts have come as he has
targeted diversity, equity and inclusion. Advocates say that
will likely widen inequality, as many of the worst wastewater
systems are in poor communities. Here are key takeaways from
The Associated Press’ reporting on the issue.
The Grand Canyon is one of the world’s most famous waterways,
and its stretch of the Colorado River and its
tributaries are protected. But a new study has discovered that
some of the canyon’s water systems may contain pharmaceutical
drugs and forever chemicals. … Monument Spring, which
feeds into the Colorado River, showed traces of multiple
pharmaceutical medications, including an antibiotic,
antifungal, antidepressant, and a diabetic drug. The amounts
are small, but experts say the findings indicate wastewater
from a nearby treatment plant is somehow seeping back to the
canyon and the Colorado River, a major water source for plants,
animals, and humans in the region.
Lodi Unified School District students this week participated in
the first step to hatch salmon and return them to the Mokelumne
River. Representatives from East Bay Municipal Utilities
District visited more than 80 classrooms throughout the region
Thursday, delivering eggs that students will nurture and
monitor for the next couple of months. … [District
spokeswoman Mary] Campbell said there were some warm
temperatures early on during last year’s spawning season, but
EBMUD staff was able to maintain cold stable water conditions
to support salmon spawning, egg incubation and juvenile
survival in the lower Mokelumne River. She said temperatures
this season were very good, and some 10,536 Chinook salmon
returned to the river.
Sediment bulk density is a physical property of the sediment
bed that tells scientists how compacted the particles
are. … These analyses are used in beneficial
sediment reuse and marsh restoration projects in places like
San Francisco Bay, where marshes buffer shorelines from storms
but are in danger of drowning due to sea-level rise if sediment
accumulation can’t keep up. … To accurately calculate
ρdry in a system as complex and dynamic as the San Francisco
Bay and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, USGS scientists decided
to create a site-specific model, described in a newly published
study.
The Bureau of Reclamation today released a draft Environmental
Impact Statement evaluating a range of operational alternatives
for managing of Colorado River reservoirs after 2026, when the
current operating agreements expire. Prolonged drought
conditions over the past 25 years, combined with forecasts for
continued dry conditions, have made development of future
operating guidelines for the Colorado River particularly
challenging. The draft EIS evaluates a broad range of potential
operating strategies. It does not designate a preferred
alternative, ensuring flexibility for a potential collective
agreement.
After experiencing one of the wettest holiday seasons on
record, still soggy California hit a major milestone this week
— having zero areas of abnormal dryness for the first time in
25 years. This data, collected by the U.S. Drought Monitor, is
a welcome nugget of news for Golden State residents, who in the
last 15 years alone have lived through two of the worst
droughts on record, the worst wildfire seasons on record and
the most destructive wildfires ever. Right now, the wildfire
risk across California is “about as close to zero as it ever
gets,” and there is likely no need to worry about the state’s
water supply for the rest of the year, said UC climate
scientist Daniel Swain.
One of the largest farming businesses in Arizona has agreed to
use less water and pay $11 million in a deal that state
officials say will help preserve disappearing
groundwater and provide financial help for residents
whose wells have run dry. Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes
announced the binding legal agreement with Minnesota-based
dairy company Riverview LLP on Thursday. … Groundwater
levels have been dropping rapidly over the last decade in the
Willcox area of southeastern Arizona’s Sulphur Springs Valley,
where Riverview runs a giant dairy and farming operation.
… Under the agreement, Riverview will stop irrigating
2,000 acres of crops in phases within 12 years.
… Utah is in a snow drought and it’s not
alone: Much of the vast, mountainous West is missing its
lifeblood — fueled by record-hot temperatures so far this
winter. California’sSierra Nevada
Mountains, only recently pasted with heavy snow from
atmospheric river storms, are the exception. And while this is
an immediate problem for businesses and active outdoors fans,
experts are also worried about bigger implications in the near
future. If the trend continues, it could deepen the West’s long
drought, aggravating already contentious negotiations about
allocating water along the Colorado River.
Water levels around the San Francisco Bay Area rose over a foot
higher than the tide charts predicted last week as a winter
storm arrived during king tides. … One reason that tide
predictions were off: sea level rise. The tide charts used by
sailors, city planners, surfers and coastal businesses around
the country are based on sea levels from roughly the 1990s, but
water levels have risen by about 3 inches in the Bay Area in
the meantime. Even that small amount can throw off tide
predictions and exacerbate flooding, though rain and winds —
which also do not get factored into the tide charts — were the
main culprits for both.
A wastewater spill that spurred warnings to stay out of the
Russian River this week after a storm drenched Sonoma County
was stopped Thursday morning, officials said. Tuesday’s heavy
rainfall overwhelmed a local wastewater treatment facility, the
Russian River Treatment Plant in Guerneville, which received
flows at a rate of around 4 million gallons per day — nearly
six times its average dry-weather design of 710,000 gallons.
With no additional storage available, millions of gallons of
untreated wastewater traveled roughly a quarter-mile through a
forested redwood grove before entering the mainstem of the
river. … The spill was officially stopped at 6:50 a.m.
Thursday.
