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.
California cities pay far more for water on average than
districts that supply farms — with some urban water agencies
shelling out more than $2,500 per acre-foot of surface water,
and some irrigation districts paying nothing, according to new
research. A report published today by researchers with the
UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and
advocates with the Natural Resources Defense Council shines a
light on vast disparities in the price of water across
California, Arizona and
Nevada. … Their overarching conclusion:
One of the West’s most valuable resources has no consistent
valuation – and sometimes costs nothing at all.
Coho salmon have pushed more than 90 miles up California’s
Russian River, reaching the watershed’s upper basin for the
first time in more than three decades — the latest of many
recent milestones for the endangered fish. State wildlife
officials confirmed Thursday that a handful of young coho were
spotted over the summer in Ackerman Creek, a tributary of the
Russian River near Ukiah, in Mendocino County. The juveniles
are believed to have been spawned by adults that migrated from
the Pacific Ocean on a course rife with human-imposed
obstacles, including sediment washed in from forest clear-cuts
and water reductions due to agricultural pumping.
Utah’s 2026 water year is only in its third month, but the
first two have already provided “a bit of whiplash” between
record-breaking precipitation and record-breaking warmth,
federal snowpack experts say. It’s why they say Utah’s snowpack
has gotten off to a “slow start,” ending up just 46% of normal
by the end of November. “Things started very strong. … Then
our weather turned hot and dry,” wrote Jordan Clayton, a
hydrologist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service and
supervisor of the Utah Snow Survey, in its first water report
update of the new water year. Last month was Utah’s
warmest November since at least 1895, according to federal
climate data released this week.
Incompatible pumping allocations being considered by two
groundwater agencies in north Kings County have prompted a
blizzard of responses, and even some accusations, from farmers
and multiple entities. The South Fork Kings Groundwater
Sustainability Agency (GSA) and Mid-Kings River GSA each had
draft pumping allocation policies out for public comment.
… The allocation amounts differ significantly, with
Mid-Kings proposing to allow its farmers to pump a base amount
of 1.43 acre feet per acre of land, which is more than double
South Fork’s proposed base allocation of .66 of an acre foot
per acre of land. That discrepancy initiated opposition
from South Fork farmers.
Registration for our first water tour of 2026 along the
lower
Colorado River is now open, and the bus will fill
up quickly! You can also find more information in this post on
next year’s programming calendar packed with engaging tours,
workshops and conferences, including the Water
101 Workshop, the Central Valley
Tour and the Bay-Delta Tour.
Federal lawmakers have introduced the bipartisan
Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act to reduce regulatory
barriers that slow or prevent ecosystem restoration in Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-mapped floodplains. The
legislation … aims to streamline approvals for low-risk
floodplain restoration projects by reducing costly permitting
fees, shortening review timelines, and allowing certified
engineers to verify that projects will not harm
infrastructure. Trout Unlimited and other
environmental organizations across the country …
strongly support the
bill, emphasizing that reconnecting rivers with
their natural floodplains reduces flood risks, improves
water quality, enhances wildlife habitat, and lowers long-term
community costs.
… Trump’s executive order pushed the Bureau of Reclamation to
modify how it operates the Central Valley Project, a complex of
reservoirs — including Lake Shasta — and canals that captures
runoff from Northern California mountains and supplies water
agencies in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. Last week,
the bureau announced an operational modification that would
increase annual water deliveries by 130,000 to 180,000
acre-feet from the Central Valley Project and another 120,000
to 220,000 from the State Water Project, the latter chiefly
generated from the Oroville Dam on the Feather River. … The
announcement sparked reactions, both pro and con, that reflect
the state’s long-running water allocation battles. –Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
After fishing out more than 25,000 pounds of underwater junk
from Lake Tahoe, divers are gearing up for another round. On
Thursday, environmental nonprofit Clean Up the Lake plans to
start a multi-year effort to remove trash from deeper parts of
the lake, where divers expect to find bigger and heavier items
than in shallower areas. … In addition to
collecting underwater garbage, Clean Up the Lake’s divers look
for invasive species and send any samples they
find to the California Department of Agriculture for further
analysis. The team is also beginning to monitor for algae and
keeping an eye out for harmful algal blooms.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Mexico of posing a
“true threat” to residents of California and Texas, warning
that the country must “immediately” address cross-border water
and sewage problems. The president posted on Truth Social,
“Mexico must take care of its water and sewage problem,
IMMEDIATELY. It is a true Threat to the People of Texas,
California, and the United States of America!” The post
was accompanied by a video that says that “Mexico is sending
millions of gallons of untreated sewage water into the Tijuana
River.”
Construction is complete on the first experimental levee along
the San Francisco Bay shoreline that will clean treated
wastewater and discharge it into the Bay. Now, all that’s
needed is for the levee to be plugged in to the source of
treated water. On Wednesday, officials invited press to visit
the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project, which sits
between the Regional Water Quality Control Plan and the upland
marshes of the Baylands in the lower south of San Francisco
Bay. What’s experimental is the way the levee is
engineered. The top layer is a thick, loamy clay soil covered
in native plants. Treated effluent, or cleaned wastewater from
the treatment plant, will flow from beneath the surface in a
dense layer of gravel and sand.
Those pushing for a controversial new AI data center in
Chandler … have made big promises about how it would save the
city water. … As Arizona approaches a water crisis —
with dwindling groundwater supplies and looming cuts to its
Colorado River allotment — the pitch sounded almost too good to
be true. The final development agreement, which is up for
a vote by the Chandler City Council on Thursday, tells a
different story. Namely, the agreement and internal city emails
obtained by Phoenix New Times via a public records request show
that the data center development … could suck much more water
out of Chandler’s pipes over the long run than is being used at
the site currently.
The City of Santa Barbara has released a Draft Wastewater and
Water Systems Climate Adaptation Plan the first of its kind in
California. It is seeking public comments through Feb. 10.
Jointly funded by the California Coastal Commission, California
Coastal Conservancy and the City. The plan lays out how Santa
Barbara will shield critical water and wastewater
infrastructure from rising seas, heavier storms and increased
flooding. City officials say the wastewater system is the
highest-priority risk. Heavy rain can push floodwater into
sewer pipes and manholes, overwhelming the system and causing
sanitary sewer overflows.
Policy professor and water consultant Randall Crane was seated
today as the Municipal Water District of Orange County’s newest
representative on the board of directors of the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California. Crane is a
professor emeritus at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs,
where he studied water governance, infrastructure planning,
transportation, and the economic development challenges of
cities. Through his career, he has advised the World Bank and
several countries on water access, environmental governance,
and regional infrastructure planning. He succeeds Larry Dick,
who served on Metropolitan’s 38-member board since 2003.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico struck a conciliatory
tone on Tuesday in response to President Trump’s threats of
additional tariffs over a long-running dispute between the two
nations over water. Mr. Trump said on Monday that he would
place an additional 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports if
Mexico didn’t release 200,000 acre-feet of water, or about 65
billion gallons, to the United States by the end of the year.
He said Mexico owed more than 260 billion gallons under a 1944
treaty mediating the distribution of water from the Rio
Grande, Colorado and Tijuana rivers. Ms. Sheinbaum
told reporters on Tuesday that … it was impossible to
immediately deliver the water Mr. Trump requested because of
physical constraints.
A new Tulare County water district is on a tight timeline to
balance an opportunity to buy water for its farmers with the
need to fund its operations long term. The board of the newly
formed Consolidated Water District voted Dec. 3 to buy 2,900
acre-feet of water from three private ditch companies, the
Persian, Watson and Matthews ditch companies. The timing is
both good and bad. Good because the district is preparing for a
Proposition 218 election in spring to assess new fees to
farmland and this purchase is a clear example of what that
money pays for. The timing is also bad because the district is
operating on a $500,000 loan from Consolidated People’s Ditch
Company while it gets established. The 2,900 acre feet purchase
will eat up $290,000 of that loan.
The Colorado River Basin, like much of the southwestern U.S.,
is experiencing a drought so historic—it began in 1999—that
it’s been called a megadrought. In the basin,
whose river provides water to seven states and Mexico, that
drought is the product of warming temperatures and reduced
precipitation, especially in the form of winter
snow. While the warming trend has been conclusively linked
to human activities driving climate change, the cause of the
waning precipitation wasn’t as clear. Now, however, Jonathan
Overpeck of the University of Michigan and Brad Udall of the
Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University are
convinced that anthropogenic climate change is the culprit as
well.
Federal fisheries officials on Monday rejected a bid to
designate West Coast Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered
under the Endangered Species Act. In response, one of the
conservation groups that petitioned for the listing, the Center
for Biological Diversity, says it is considering a legal
challenge. … The listing of the fish would have meant
stronger oversight of logging near rivers, new requirements for
dams to allow salmon to pass and to release colder water, and
an influx of restoration work that usually follows an
endangered species designation.
Early last year, the hydropower company Nature and People First
set its sights on Black Mesa, a mountainous region on the
Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. … Pumped-storage
operations involve moving water in and out of reservoirs, which
could affect the habitats of endangered fish and require
massive groundwater withdrawals from an already-depleted
aquifer. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which
has authority over non-federal hydropower projects on the
Colorado River and its tributaries, ultimately
denied the project’s permit. The decision was among the first
under a new policy: FERC would not approve projects on tribal
land without the support of the affected tribe. … Now,
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright wants to reverse
this policy.
The City of Fresno is making its second major legal offensive
against corporate polluters in two years, filing suit against
more than 40 companies it accuses of contaminating the city’s
groundwater with PFAS, the synthetic compounds
known as “forever chemicals.” Fresno’s groundwater is over 600%
EPA standards for forever chemicals — some of the worst
contamination in California, according to a 2024 investigation
from USA Today. An analysis from the Environmental Working
Group found contaminated sites across central and north Fresno,
from Old Fig Garden to Pinedale.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of
Engineers will hold public meetings this month on their revised
definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), according
to a regulatory alert from the Office of Advocacy within the
U.S. Small Business Administration. The WOTUS rule helps
determine which water bodies the federal government can
regulate under the Clean Water Act. The revised WOTUS
definition aims to bring the regulations in line with the
Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA and provide
clarity on the CWA’s regulatory scope, the Advocacy alert
stated.
