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.
Heavy rain and snow has pounded California in recent weeks,
causing floods, power outages, mudslides and other disruptions.
But the storms have also filled reservoirs and deepened the
snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, easing drought
concerns in a state that is perpetually worried about not
having enough water. The near-constant pace of storms so
far this winter has brought the state above-average
precipitation, driving the storage level in most of
California’s water reservoirs to well above normal for this
point in the rainy season. Measurements show virtually no
drought in the state.
A California appellate court dealt a setback [late
last] week to the state’s Delta tunnel project, ruling
that the Department of Water Resources lacks the legal
authority to issue billions of dollars in bonds to dig the
controversial conveyance under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
to Southern California. In an opinion issued Wednesday,
the state’s 3rd District Court of Appeal said the bond plan —
first approved by water managers in 2020 — was too vague and
gave the department “unfettered discretion” to decide what to
build and how to pay for it. The court upheld a 2024 decision
by a Sacramento judge, siding with project opponents led by the
Sierra Club and several capital region counties, including
Sacramento.
… Data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shows that the
water elevation at Lake Mead’s Hoover Dam was
1,062.24 feet at the end of December. That’s the lowest it’s
been during this time of the year since 2022, when it was
1,044.82 feet. Before that, levels were the lowest in 1936,
when the region experienced a severe drought. Lake Mead stored
8.59 million acre-feet of water on Dec. 31, according to USBR
data. The lake can store about 26 million acre-feet of water,
meaning it was only about 33% full at the end of the
year.
Just a couple weeks ago, the Phillips Station site near Lake
Tahoe — the location where California officials conduct regular
manual snowpack surveys — was dry ground. But that’s changed.
On a sunny day near the end of December, the site was blanked
by a couple feet of snow. But officials say the state is
still below average. Researchers with the state’s
Department of Water Resources reported a snow depth of 24
inches at Phillips Station. That’s 50 percent of average for
this site. Statewide, snowpack levels are at 71 percent of
average for this date.
As salmon return to Klamath River headwaters for the first time
in over a century, the newly formed Klamath Indigenous Land
Trust announced the purchase of 10,000 acres in and around the
former reservoir reach of the river. The move is one of the
largest private land purchases by an Indigenous-led land trust
in U.S. history, according to the announcement. … With
the acquisition complete, the land trust’s next steps include
developing comprehensive land management plans using input from
area tribes, ensuring stewardship reflects both cultural values
and ecological priorities, the announcement said. Those plans
will address habitat recovery, cultural resource protection,
fire management and public access considerations.
The City of Camarillo filed a Writ of Mandate in Santa Barbara
County Superior Court, seeking an urgent review of a recent
groundwater ruling that city officials claim relies on outdated
science and could threaten the region’s water security for
decades. … City leaders argue the decision established a
“dangerously low” safe yield for the local basin— the amount of
water that can be pumped sustainably— by ignoring critical
evidence and modern modeling. … At the heart of the dispute
is Camarillo’s $70 million North Pleasant Valley Desalter. The
city alleges the court excluded evidence regarding the
facility’s role in treating salty groundwater and meeting state
mandates to reduce reliance imported water from the
Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.
A House Natural Resources subcommittee this week will take up
two aspects of forest management — clean water and reliable
electricity — at risk in an era of worsening wildfires. The
Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will hear
testimony on efforts to step up forest thinning and related
work, highlighted in the “Fix Our Forests Act,” H.R. 471,
that’s awaiting further action in Congress. The legislation —
which is bipartisan thanks mainly to a Democratic push from
California — would ease certain environmental
reviews of forest projects aimed at removing vegetation from
utility rights of way or protecting vital watersheds, among
many other provisions.
… A major escalation to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the state
[Colo.] came on Tuesday, when he used the first veto of his
second term to kill a pipeline project to provide clean
drinking water to the state’s eastern plains, a largely
conservative area. … The bill would have helped to fund
a 130-mile pipeline to bring water from a reservoir near
Pueblo, Colo., to small farming and ranching towns on the
state’s eastern plains, where groundwater is contaminated with
salt and even naturally occurring radioactive elements. The
project has been in the works since the 1960s.
2025 is the year for salmon success in California’s Yuba River.
A nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring
the watershed has positive results to share this year.
… The South Yuba River Citizens League, or SYRCL, is
leading the charge when it comes to salmon restoration in the
Yuba watershed. … And for 2025, they’ve recorded 6,200
adult chinook salmon and counting, the most they’ve seen in
more than a decade. … Restoration science is being
implemented around the state, with many other streams and
waterways seeing similar results. And being a keystone species,
salmon play a critical role in our ecosystems and represent
healthy waterways.
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a rule delaying
by five years deadlines for stricter wastewater treatment
standards for coal-fired power plants, a move that will allow
continued releases of toxic pollutants into waterways that
supply drinking water for more than 30 million Americans. The
delayed standards would have required coal plants to
significantly reduce discharges of wastewater containing
arsenic, mercury, bromide, and other hazardous pollutants.
Under the new rule, power plants will have additional time
before being required to install more advanced treatment
technologies.
The recent rainstorms are putting the Tijuana River Trash Boom
Project to the test, and so far, it’s proving its worth.
The trash boom was installed about a year and a half ago to
stop waste from spreading through the Tijuana River Valley and
into the Pacific Ocean. The barriers, stretching roughly
700 feet across the beginning of the Tijuana River Valley, are
designed to catch debris flowing from Tijuana before it reaches
the ocean. Oscar Romo, the director of the project, told
CBS 8 that during last year’s rain season, the system collected
about 500 tons of trash. Now, just two months into this
rain season, the boom has already trapped nearly that same
amount.
… Point Buckler Island, a 50-acre, boat-only island in Suisun
Bay, has been purchased by the John Muir Land Trust, which
plans to restore the island to its original tidal
marshland. The acquisition follows years of legal
disputes tied to unauthorized development that altered the
island’s natural flows. Located just east of the Carquinez
Strait in Solano County, Point Buckler sits at a critical
transition zone where saltwater from San Francisco Bay meets
freshwater from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
This brackish habitat plays an outsized role in supporting
migrating waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway and helps young
salmon and steelhead adjust as they move from river to ocean.
The Salton Sea Bird Festival will return on Saturday, Jan. 17,
2026, offering birdwatchers and outdoor enthusiasts a rare look
at one of the Pacific Flyway’s most critical stops during the
peak of winter migration. The daylong event, organized through
a partnership of state, federal, and nonprofit organizations,
features a diverse lineup of field trips and educational
activities designed to showcase the ecological significance of
California’s largest inland lake. Among the day’s highlights is
a guided public tour of the Species Conservation Habitat (SCH)
project. Hosted by the Salton Sea Management Program (SSMP),
the tour provides a behind-the-scenes look at the 9,500-acre
aquatic restoration site located at the southern end of the
sea.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today conducted the
first snow survey of the season at Phillips Station. The manual
survey recorded 24 inches of snow depth and a snow water
equivalent of 5 inches, which is 50 percent of average for this
location. The snow water equivalent measures the amount of
water contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s
water supply forecast. Statewide, the snowpack is
71 percent of average for this date. Today’s results are
welcome news for water managers who rely on the statewide snow
surveys to make water supply decisions for the year ahead.
Thanks for being avid readers of Aquafornia in 2025!
Aquafornia is off for the holidays although we will
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Heavy rain and flash flooding soaked roads in northern
California, leading to water rescues from vehicles and homes
and at least one confirmed death, authorities said Monday.
… The National Weather Service expects rain through the
Christmas week as a series of atmospheric rivers was forecast
to make its way through Northern California. A large swath of
the Sacramento Valley and surrounding areas were under
a flood watch through Friday. … Up to 6
feet of snow was predicted for parts of the Sierra
Nevada and winds could reach 55 mph in high
elevations by Wednesday.
California state water managers are likely to be able to
increase how much water they pump out of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta under a new set of environmental rules
approved Thursday, which align the state more closely with
federal water managers. The California Department of Fish and
Wildlife on Thursday largely approved the Department of Water
Resources’ request to loosen the operating rules of the State
Water Project. … The new rules give state water managers
greater leeway to pump more water out of the Delta,
particularly during the winter and spring, when young Delta
smelt can get caught up in and die at the pumps.
Until last week, Adam Sullivan was Nevada’s state engineer —
the person most responsible for managing water in the nation’s
driest state. That changed when state officials confirmed
Sullivan’s departure from the role — an unusual move, given
that the state engineer often serves under multiple governors
and must have expertise in Nevada’s oft-byzantine set of water
laws and regulations. So what happened? In his first
public comments since news of his departure broke, Sullivan
said he was terminated amid complaints about his decisions,
telling The Nevada Independent that there were a number of
disagreements between himself, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s
office and the director of his department that escalated over
the last six months.
San Diego arrived in Las Vegas this week ready to sell off some
of its excess water at negotiations over the dwindling Colorado
River between the states, tribes and farmers who use it. They
left without a deal in place. Dan Denham, the San Diego
County Water Authority’s general manager, has been hinting
there’s willing buyers of San Diego’s expensive desalinated
ocean water in the state of Arizona. Arizona is first in line
to have their Colorado River supply cut off during water
shortages. That very scenario is what the annual Las Vegas
negotiations were set up to prevent.
A controversial recent study highlights an old truth
about the American West’s snowpack: it’s difficult to
measure—and just as hard to forecast how much of its water will
ultimately reach tens of millions of people and vast swaths of
farmland. Water managers have increasingly turned to aircraft
that use lasers to gauge the snowpack across entire basins. But
the Aug. 15 scientific paper argues for a less expensive
strategy: focusing new monitoring efforts on a select number of
locations known as “hotspots” that excel at predicting how much
water will run off from the snowpack—a frozen reservoir that
can change dramatically over short distances.
