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 State Water Resources Control Board has added a new chapter
and made other language updates to its draft Bay-Delta
Plan. … ”The release of these documents puts us on
track for updates to the Bay-Delta Plan to come before the
State Water Board for adoption in 2026,” E. Joaquin Esquivel,
chairman of the board, said in a statement. … In July 2025,
staff proposed updates to the plan that would allow water right
holders in the Sacramento/Delta to comply with water quality
requirements by either leaving a percentage of unimpaired flow
instream … or implementing a combination of flow and
habitat restoration commitments as a party to the [Healthy
Rivers and Landscapes] program. … The July 2025 proposal
also incorporated tribal beneficial uses and a formal
designation of tribal tradition and culture beneficial uses in
the Bay-Delta watershed.
For three days [this] week, water leaders from across the
Colorado River Basin will gather in Las Vegas to talk about
water and the looming failure of the seven basin states to work
out differences on a plan to manage the river through drought.
Tribal leaders and water protectors will arrive with their own
goals and a clear message for delegates to the Colorado River
Water Users Association conference. They’re worried about not
being at the negotiating table despite holding about 20% of the
Colorado’s senior water rights. They want to see a more
holistic approach to river management as the Southwest’s
long-term drought threatens to permanently impact the
Colorado’s flow.
Snow season is off to a rough start for Utah and its neighbors.
Most of the West is in a snow drought, with so little white
stuff covering the ground that the region hit a 25-year low. If
the trend continues, it could be a recipe for disaster for the
Colorado River and its reservoirs. That
includes the nation’s two largest, Lake Powell
and Lake Mead, which prop up a system that
provides water to communities on the Wasatch Front and tens of
millions of other Americans across the West. A new report from
more than a dozen Colorado River experts projects that even
near-average snowpack this winter could send the two reservoirs
to record lows in 2026.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
After years of water shortfalls that have cost Texas farmers
about $1 billion annually, Mexico agreed late Friday to begin
immediate deliveries of water to the United States, averting a
5% tariff threatened by President Donald Trump. In a statement
late Friday, USDA announced Mexico has agreed to release
202,000-acre-feet of water – 65.8 billion gallons — to the
United States with deliveries expected to begin this week.
… Under the 1944 Water Treaty, Mexico is obligated to
deliver 1.75 million acre-feet over five years to the United
States from the Rio Grande River. The United States in turn
delivers 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico from the
Colorado River.
The rapid growth and impact of massive data centers, especially
for AI and cryptocurrency companies, this year has had big
economic benefits, especially for construction and design firms
and their workers. … But there’s increasing
blowback to that rapid expansion, with more individual
communities opting against new data center projects because of
their gargantuan need for electricity and
water, which is driving utility rates for residential
customers higher. That blowback is getting more coordinated as
a coalition of more than 230 environmental, tribal and
community groups is calling for a national moratorium on such
construction.
The Pacific Ocean remains officially locked in a La Niña phase,
but the mechanisms keeping it there are beginning to sputter.
On Thursday, the Climate Prediction Center left a La Niña
advisory in place, confirming that cool sea surface
temperatures continue in the equatorial Pacific. But it
won’t last much longer. The agency expects the La Niña phase to
fade by February. … After February, the agency expects a
neutral phase, where neither El Niño phase or La Niña
conditions exist. But mounting evidence suggests that the
neutral phase won’t last long and the Pacific could snap back
to an El Niño phase as early as next summer.
Representatives Jim Costa (CA-21) and Adam Gray (CA-13)
introduced their End California Water Crisis Package (last
week), a suite of bills that would authorize additional
California water storage projects, ease permitting
restrictions, and create enforceable timelines for
environmental review processes. The bills aim to expand
California’s water storage capacity by providing funding and
technical support to both develop and maintain water
infrastructure projects. … The End California Water Crisis
Package includes three bills to stabilize water access in the
Central Valley.
The water that flows down irrigation canals to some of the
West’s biggest expanses of farmland comes courtesy of the
federal government for a very low price — even, in some cases,
for free. In a new study, researchers analyzed wholesale prices
charged by the federal government in California,
Arizona and Nevada, and found that large agricultural
water agencies pay only a fraction of what cities pay, if
anything at all. … Farmers in California’s Imperial
Valley receive the largest share of Colorado River water.
… Tina Shields, IID’s water department manager, said the
district opposes any surcharge on water. Comparing
agricultural and urban water costs, as the researchers did, she
said, “is like comparing a grape to a watermelon.”
… [Last] week, California state officials held a series of
public meetings across the county to discuss public health
responsiveness, wastewater infrastructure and U.S.-Mexico
relations related to the [Tijuana River sewage] crisis. …
Meetings ranged from Thursday’s State Senate Environmental
Quality Committee hearing in La Jolla, chaired by Sen.
Catherine Blakespear, to a three-day California Coastal
Commission meeting in Imperial Beach from Wednesday to Friday.
… Officials repeatedly discussed the so-called “hot spot” on
Saturn Boulevard, where raw sewage and industrial waste flowing
from four concrete culverts create a toxic waterfall that
aerosolizes pollutants.
The Bureau of Reclamation is inviting public input on a draft
environmental impact statement for the Del Puerto Canyon
Reservoir Project. This proposed reservoir, located south of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta near Patterson, California,
would provide up to 82,000 acre-feet of new off-stream water
storage. The project aims to enhance agricultural water supply
reliability, improve refuge water deliveries, and offer flood
control. … The Del Puerto Water District and the San
Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority are
partnering with Reclamation on this project.
The Eastern Municipal Water District will update the
hydrogeologic conceptual model and groundwater flow model for
the San Jacinto Groundwater Basin. … INTERA, Inc., will
update models for the Hemet North, Hemet South, San Jacinto
Upper Pressure, and Canyon groundwater management zones. GSI
Environmental, Inc., will update the Lakeview, Perris South,
and Menifee zones. Geoscience Support Services, Inc., will
handle the Perris North and San Jacinto Lower Pressure zones.
Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., will provide overall quality
assurance and quality control and ensure the data and
interpretations from all consultants are synthesized,
especially along zone boundaries.
A new study by Colorado Parks and Wildlife researchers suggests
man-made whitewater parks that create “play waves” for kayakers
and other recreationists are having a negative impact on fish
passage. … The study, published in the
peer-reviewed journal “River Research and Applications,” looked
at two white water parks that have incorporated fish passage
structures into the design. … [A]dult trout appeared to make
it upstream past the whitewater park while fewer juvenile trout
succeeded in doing so. There was also a higher concentration of
suckers below the structure than above it, suggesting the park
could be impacting the suckers’ movement.
For months, Sacramento County has been advancing a
25,000-resident community north of downtown in Natomas without
a confirmed water supply. Its new solution is a supply that was
slashed by 82% in the last drought. … Upper Westside’s
new proposed water supplier is the Natomas Central Mutual Water
Company, a long-time provider of untreated Sacramento River
water to Natomas farmers. The company gets its water from
Shasta Dam and the Central Valley Project (CVP), run by the
federal Bureau of Reclamation. … This is where Trump
(and future presidents with similar California water politics)
comes in. Trump has vowed to provide more “beautiful” water to
Central Valley water. That’s impossible to do without
aggressively operating Shasta. –Written by Sacramento Bee columnist Tom Philp.
The House passed legislation Thursday that would make more than
a dozen changes to the Clean Water Act, including establishing
new procedures to reduce lawsuits and limiting states’
authority to block infrastructure due to environmental
concerns. The “PERMIT Act” passed 221-205. … [T]he bill would
end protections under the Clean Water Act for ephemeral streams
and limit states’ ability to block energy projects due to water
quality concerns. It would establish strict timelines for when
environmental groups could file a lawsuit challenging a permit
authorizing the destruction of wetlands. Another provision
would make it harder for individuals, municipalities and
advocacy groups to sue over unauthorized water pollution
discharges.
Other Clean Water Act and wetland protection news:
Snow cover across the West was the lowest December 7 snow cover
amount in the MODIS satellite record (since 2001), at 90,646
square miles. … Snow drought is most severe across much
of the Sierra Nevada in California, the
Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon, the Blue Mountains of
Oregon, and the Great Basin in Nevada, with
snow water equivalent (SWE) in most of these basins at less
than 50% of median. Rain across the West increased soil
moisture and reservoir levels. However, the continued
above-normal temperatures forecast across the West may worsen
snow drought conditions.
In a rare public statement on contentious water use
negotiations, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo urged the seven Colorado
River Basin states to come to an agreement as time
runs out to strike one. Lombardo thanked Interior Secretary
Doug Burgum in a letter dated Tuesday for an invitation to a
meeting in Washington, D.C., this week with all the states’
governors and appointed negotiators. Though it didn’t happen,
Lombardo asked Burgum to reschedule it for January “as the
risks of inaction continue to grow.” … The letter comes less
than a week before the start of the Colorado River Water Users
Association conference in Las Vegas.
California public officials, scientists and coastal advocates
rang the alarm over the continued pollution of the Tijuana
River into the Pacific Ocean and nearby communities on the
Mexican border, describing the situation as one of the worst
public health and environmental disasters in the country and
around the world. … The Thursday [California Senate
Environmental Quality Committee] hearing invited a series of
panelists to explain the multifaceted issue to the public,
including oceanographers, air pollution experts and public
health experts, among others. … It is estimated that 40
million gallons of rancid sewage are dumped into the Pacific
Ocean every day, totaling billions of gallons per year,
according to the San Diego Coastkeeper.
… “[I]n California, where we depend on water, we got to make
sure that we have enough water to keep agriculture going,” said
farmer Joe Del Bosque, who operates Del Bosque Farms in western
Fresno County. … On Thursday, he welcomed us onto his farm to
share his thoughts on the Bureau of Reclamation’s Action 5
plan, one they say will help fulfill President Donald Trump’s
executive order to ‘strengthen California’s water resilience’.
According to the Westlands Water District, it’s a plan that
would provide a yearly increase of roughly 85,000 acre feet for
those getting water deliveries south of the Delta. … He [Del
Bosque] acknowledged the federal action and said it goes a long
way in improving their confidence for the future.
The Chandler City Council unanimously rejected to rezone 10
acres of land for a proposed new data center at their meeting
Thursday night. The project has generated significant public
interest, especially after former Arizona Senator Kyrsten
Sinema spoke in favor of the project at an October Planning and
Zoning Committee hearing. … Representatives for the
project have said the planned facility would use a closed-loop
cooling system, a method they argue requires significantly less
water than traditional evaporative cooling. … However,
experts caution that water usage goes beyond what happens at
the site itself.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power to inspect nearly 100
drinking water reservoirs and storage tanks over concerns about
improper maintenance, the agency announced Thursday. The EPA
identified violations of the Safe Drinking Water
Act, such as unprotected openings and inconsistent
storage system cleaning, during a July 2024 inspection,
according to a news release. The LADWP said in a statement that
it entered into a consent order with the EPA on Dec. 3 to
resolve concerns raised from the EPA’s 2024 inspection of 18
water storage tanks without litigation.
