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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Lake Mead is headed for an even more concerning, record-low
level near the end of 2027, according to projections from
federal forecasters released Friday. In November 2027,
the reservoir is likely to dip to 1032.76 feet above
sea level — nearly 8 feet below the previous record
low recorded in 2022, when receding levels began to reveal
skeletal remains. That’s a chilling number based on an
unseasonably warm winter and falling projections for
runoff into Lake Powell, the releases of which flow into
Lake Mead. … According to Friday’s projection, Lake
Powell could dip below so-called “minimum power pool” as soon
as January.
The warm winter has left very little snow in California’s
Sierra Nevada, and now an extreme heat wave is accelerating the
rapid melt in the mountains. The Sierra snowpack
measures 48% of average for this time of year,
according to state data, down from 73% of average in late
February. … California relies on the Sierra snowpack for
about 30% of its water, on average. But the extraordinary
warmth across the West this winter, which broke records in many
areas, brought more precipitation falling as rain instead of
snow. Scientific research has shown that human-caused climate
change is pushing average snow lines higher in the mountains
and changing the timing of runoff.
Landowners and farmers in the Tule and Tulare Lake subbasins
can now log onto the state’s groundwater reporting system
ahead of the May 1 deadline. The state Water
Resources Control Board announced that its groundwater
extraction annual reporting system, or GEARS, is open for
pumpers to begin reporting how much they pump and paying fees.
Pumpers are required to meter their wells, pay $300 per well to
register then with the state and pay $20 per acre foot of
groundwater pumped. … This is all part of the region’s
probationary designation for lacking an adequate groundwater
plan.
Arizona state lawmakers tend to vote in lockstep with their
party on water issues, but when it comes to proposed Colorado
River cuts, they may break ranks. Republicans hold majorities
in the state House and Senate. Members of each party usually
vote in blocs, but that seems likely to change. Arizona is in
the midst of Colorado River negotiations and will likely take a
serious water cut. Unlike other states in the Colorado River
Basin, the plan will need to be approved by Arizona’s 90 state
lawmakers. But some legislative districts will be hit much
harder than others. … For the time being, all Arizona
lawmakers are united in advocating for the best deal for the
state.
The legislator who wrote a law modernizing California’s water
infrastructure says there’s no concrete estimate for the cost
to respond to worsening drought conditions. In a press
conference held Friday at the San Luis Reservoir in western
Merced County, Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced County, author of
last year’s successful Senate Bill 72, said there is no way to
know the cost of developing 9 million acre-feet of
water by 2040. … Caballero added she’s proposing a
bond that could pay for implementing much-needed updates to the
state’s water plan. Meanwhile, certain water infrastructure
projects in California have already cost billions of dollars.
… [S]cientists from across the state and as far away as
Norway published a study tracking the long-term collapse of
salmon age diversity, finding that today’s Chinook salmon
populations in the Central Valley are all-in on a single bet.
Three-year-olds dominate the group, while 5-year-olds are rare
and 6-year-olds are mostly absent. The study was focused on the
Feather River and its tributary, the
Yuba River. … The loss of age diversity
helps explain why modern salmon runs swing so wildly from
abundance to collapse.
… [A] public lands access group has proposed an eye-poppingly
ambitious plan to build eight massive desalination plants off
the California coastline, turning ocean water into fresh for
farming, and reducing demand on the ailing Colorado
River. To meet the energy demand, the plants might
have to be powered with nuclear reactors. … The plan’s
authors at the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition say their $40
billion proposal offers a viable long-term solution at a time
when President Donald Trump is slashing environment-based
regulatory delays and encouraging the country to think big.
There’s been levee breaks over the years all over the delta,
according to San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency executive
director Darren Suen. … Democratic state Senator Jerry
McNerney introduced SB 872 that would direct $300 million
annually in greenhouse gas reduction fund (GGRF) dollars to
levee repairs in the delta and to shore up SWP’s canals to
prevent interruptions in essential water deliveries.
… The bill would include, according to Suen, fixing
their levees to prevent subsidence and saltwater intrusion.
… Suen also said these levied systems were started
during the Gold Rush and a lot of them haven’t been maintained
up to “federal standards.”
… Escondido and surrounding environs are the center of the
San Diego region’s avocado industry. The cities and towns of
the avocado belt, especially Escondido, also have some of the
priciest water in San Diego County, a region notorious for its
high water costs. For growers of a water-intensive crop like
avocados, those high costs are exceptionally burdensome. On
average, 60% of operating costs for Escondido avocado groves go
just to water, according to a 2024 report from the California
Avocado Commission. … Escondido water officials have no
plans to secede. But like the districts that did, they also
blame their high costs on the county water authority.
… [L]onely as it may be, Mono [Lake] has
revolutionized environmental law in California, the American
West, and the U.S., bringing about important changes to water
use and air quality regulations in recent decades and showing
the way ahead for tribal resource rights today. … Now
the Mono Basin could be part of making water history again. In
2017, California began using so-called Tribal Beneficial Uses
(TBUs)—water quality standards keyed to protecting traditional
tribal fisheries and cultural practices—as a way to incorporate
long-ignored tribal needs into state environmental management.
The first regional board to incorporate the definitions of TBUs
into a watershed management plan was the Mono Basin, in
2020.
A proposal to build a hydroelectric power plant near the Red
Rock Canyon National Conservation Area won preliminary approval
from federal regulators earlier this month. The Desert Bloom
Project is a large-scale, closed-loop pumped storage proposal
that promises to produce 1,170 gigawatt-hours of power
annually. … Pumped storage projects require massive
amounts of water to generate hydroelectric power. … The
proposed project would require 9,800 acre-feet of water stored
across two reservoirs. … The Las Vegas Valley Water
District, which serves the area, said the project is out of
step with Southern Nevada water conservation policy.
The ongoing debate over a state plan to construct a 36-foot
underground tunnel below the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
to carry water to a reservoir in Alameda County has now been
given the novelization treatment. Santa Cruz author Victoria
Tatum, who swam in the Delta in her youth, tells a fictional
story of a farmworker family’s fight over the tunnels in “More
Than Any River.” The book will be published March 24.
… Tatum said she emerged as “a water nerd” by the end of
the research. “More Than Any River” focuses on farming families
along the Delta standing their ground against the agribusiness
owners of the Delta tunnel project.
Three weeks after Tahoe’s biggest snowstorm in decades, Donner
Summit has as much dirt as snow. Feet of powder quickly
disappeared, as rain and unusually warm temperatures depleted
gains from the February blizzard that had been cheered at the
time as a potential season-saving event. California’s
snowpack is already its lowest since 2015, and
record-shattering March heat arriving next week will make it
worse. The rate of melting is “unprecedented,” said Tim
Bardsley, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office
in Reno. The entire snowpack, he said, has been wiped away
along sunny parts of the Lake Tahoe shoreline.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
… Information from the Golden State Salmon Association and
the Pacific Fisheries Management Council forecasts a current
adult salmon ocean population of 392,349 in 2026 — more than
double last year’s ocean abundance estimate. The
Klamath River forecast also jumped to 176,233,
up from 82,672 in 2025. For comparison, the upper
Sacramento River saw a return of over 60,000 adult
salmon to natural spawning areas in 2025 compared to just over
4,000 in 2024. … The number of returning jacks is key to
forecasting the adult salmon population in the ocean now, which
informs how many salmon fishery managers will allow to be
caught this year. Both some commercial and sport fishing are
expected to be approved later this spring by the Pacific
Fishery Management Council.
In the midst of historic drought in the Rocky Mountains, many
water managers are looking for ways to get more moisture into
the environment. Some are considering things like cloud
seeding, which is meant to create more precipitation
in certain areas. It’s a technique that has been used for
decades in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Rain
Enhancement Technologies, a company that’s operated in Oman,
doesn’t use traditional cloud-seeding methods, which are
characterized by putting silver iodide particles into the
atmosphere. Instead, they do what they call “ionization cloud
seeding,” which uses high-voltage rays to ionize naturally
occurring aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are necessary
for cloud formation, and therefore, precipitation.
For over 40 years, the U.S. Forest Service has been monitoring
high-altitude mountain lakes in Colorado to track the
environmental impacts of human-caused pollutants and climate
changes in delicate wilderness areas and
ecosystems. Mountain lakes are extremely sensitive, making
them a perfect testing ground for measuring ecosystem changes
in climate and the environment. … A study
[by researchers from the Forest Service and University of
Colorado Boulder] set out to determine whether
environmental changes — including climate change and air
pollution — have impacted the lakes’ chemistry and ecosystem
over time. … [T]his type of monitoring and data could help
answer questions about how this winter’s historically
low snowpack in Colorado could impact mountain
lakes.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a
new initiative designed to strengthen federal support for
drinking water and wastewater utilities nationwide, aiming to
improve compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act while
helping communities modernize aging water infrastructure. …
[T]he initiative, Real Water Technical Assistance
(RealWaterTA), refocuses federal resources on technical support
and practical guidance for water systems, particularly those
facing operational, financial or regulatory
challenges. EPA officials say the program is intended to
help utilities deliver reliable drinking water services while
maximizing the impact of federal infrastructure funding now
flowing to states and municipalities.
The director of the Border Environmental Education Project says
the San Antonio de los Buenos wastewater treatment plant has
helped reduce beach pollution in Tijuana, but has yet to
operate at full capacity. … … The plant came on line
in June of last year. Prior to the completion of the project,
the plant malfunctioned daily dating back to 2018, resulting in
constant spills of untreated water directly onto Tijuana’s
beaches, material that often flowed northward contaminating the
coastline in California cities such as Coronado and Imperial
Beach, where the beaches have been closed for more than 1,400
consecutive days.
Officials with the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District say
hydraulic fluid observed earlier this week at Ruth Dam has not
reached the Mad River and remains contained
near the dam’s intake structure on Ruth Lake. The district said
the sheen was observed on Ruth Lake near the R.W. Matthews Dam
intake structure and is currently contained within floating
booms placed around the area. District staff surveyed the lake
and reported finding no evidence of oil along the reservoir
shoreline. … According to the district, a mechanical
failure occurred March 3 during a routine inspection by the
California Division of Safety of Dams.
Tribal leaders testified before the Senate committee on Indian
Affairs in support of a landmark water rights settlement. The
agreement would provide 56,000 acre-feet of Colorado River
water annually to the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan
Southern Paiute Tribe. The Northeastern Indian Water Rights
Settlement agreement has been years in the making. The deal
would help bring water to nearly 30% of Navajo and Hopi
residents without a running tap, often forced to haul water
many miles. Navajo President Buu Nygren tells KNAU that
Wednesday’s hearing was a positive step as tribal and state
leaders push Congress to ratify the settlement.
