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 U.S. Department of Interior said Wednesday it extended more
than a dozen contracts with water-rights holders in California
and Arizona that aim to boost water funding and conservation
efforts in the Colorado River system for its seven western
states. Interior officials say it marked “major progress” with
the Bureau of Reclamation in securing a continuation of 18
short-term agreements with tribal, municipal and agricultural
water users in the lower Colorado River basin that will, they
said, “result in additional water savings” through 2026 and,
likewise, secure its short-term health as the region looks to
its post-2026 water-use guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake
Mead. … Scott Cameron, a senior adviser to U.S. Interior
Secretary Doug Burgum, said the Trump administration
was focused on strengthening the Colorado River system’s
drought response and “safeguarding the interests of western
communities” for more than 40 million citizens and hydropower
fuel resources in its seven states.
The company that sells Arrowhead brand bottled water has won a
court ruling overturning a decision by California water
regulators, who in 2023 ordered it to stop piping millions of
gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest.
Fresno County Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen Jr. said in
his ruling that the State Water Resources Control Board’s order
went “beyond the limits of its delegated authority.” The board
had ordered the company BlueTriton Brands to stop taking much
of the water it has been piping from water tunnels and
boreholes in the mountains near San Bernardino. … The judge
… said the legal question was “not about water rights,” and
he cited a provision stating the board does not have the
authority to regulate groundwater.
A prolonged spell of relatively warm and dry conditions across
California is rapidly melting the state’s snowpack into creeks,
streams and rivers. Hot weather this week will accelerate
the melt. Several rivers fed by snowmelt, mainly in central and
southern Sierra Nevada, are expected to hit their spring peak
flows in the coming days. The Merced River at Pohono Bridge and
the Tuolumne River at Hetch Hetchy, both in Yosemite National
Park, are forecast to reach maximum flow on Sunday. It’s
not just above-average temperatures driving the melt, but that
in tandem with direct, strong sunlight warms up the snowpack
said David Rizzardo, hydrology section manager at the
California Department of Water Resources. … Snowpack is
critical for water resources because it remains frozen away
until the dry late spring and summer months.
Each time you ask an AI chatbot to summarize a lengthy legal
document or conjure up a cartoon squirrel wearing glasses, it
sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly
scarce resource: water. The data centers that power artificial
intelligence consume immense amounts of water to cool hot
servers and, indirectly, from the electricity needed to run
these facilities. … More than 160 new AI data
centers have sprung up across the US in the past three years in
places with high competition for scarce water resources,
according to a Bloomberg News analysis of data from World
Resources Institute, a nonprofit research organization, and
market intelligence firm DC Byte. That’s a 70% increase from
the prior three-year period.
A week before boating is set to return, state officials
announced they had intercepted a vessel carrying invasive
golden mussels at Folsom Lake this week, the first such
discovery since inspections began last month under a new
emergency program aimed at protecting the reservoir’s water
infrastructure. California State Parks staff found a live
infestation of golden mussels clinging to a boat Tuesday during
a screening at Beals Point. The vessel, which had recently been
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, was
quarantined immediately to prevent the highly invasive species
from contaminating the lake, state officials said Wednesday.
… The lake has been closed to trailered and motorized
boats since April 14 under a joint closure by State Parks and
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Folsom Dam.
… Through a public records request, Eyewitness News obtained
an email from January 9 sent by Erik Scott, the public
information officer for the Los Angeles Fire
Department. The email was sent to top officials in the
department, writing in part, “We are experiencing challenges
with water pressure while battling the Pacific Palisades Fire.”
But in multiple interviews with the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power, officials maintain they never ran out of
water. They said the problem was that demand reached four times
the normal use. … According to LADWP, Los Angeles has a
single water system, meaning the water supplied to your home is
the same water that feeds fire hydrants. … The system is
designed to put out house fires, not multiple neighborhoods on
fire at the same time.
“Dear EPA Grant Recipient,” read the official government email.
“Attached is your Termination of Award from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.” That’s how hundreds of
organizations found out they had officially lost EPA grant
funding as part of the many cutbacks to environmental programs
demanded by the Trump administration. Among them was the
Community Water Center, a nonprofit that works
to provide safe, clean drinking water to rural communities in
California. Their $20-million award had been earmarked for a
major project to consolidate water systems in the low-income
Central Coast communities of Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and
Springfield, which have long been reliant on domestic wells and
small water systems that are riddled with contaminants above
legal limits.
Last year, we watched as the last of four dams were removed
from the Klamath River in a historic endeavor. Karuk and Yurok
citizens sighed in relief, grateful that decades of tribal-led
activism, scientific research and litigation had succeeded in
reopening 400 stream miles of spawning habitat for salmon and
other species. The tears of joy came just a few weeks
later, when research cameras showed the first of more than
6,000 fish traveling past the first dam site. Spawning salmon
were crossing into Oregon’s Spencer Creek, a tributary of the
Klamath, for the first time in 112 years. The salmon had
remembered the way, for it is embedded into their DNA just as
it is in our ancestors’ – a testament of shared memory and
spiritual connection between our people and the river. –Written by Russell “Buster” Attebery, chairman of the
Karuk Tribe, and Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok
Tribe.
A pilot project from a team of oil industry veterans could save
one of California’s key clean energy resources from terminal
decline. On Thursday, the Oklahoma City-based GreenFire Energy
announced that they had restored new life to a defunct well in
The Geysers, the world’s largest geothermal power station — and
one that has been in a state of slow, decades-long collapse.
… The reason for the decline: the ferocious pace at
which conventional forms of geothermal energy can use up water.
… GreenFire’s next-gen system, which sits atop a well
that had also been largely abandoned for lack of pressure,
takes an approach that produces power without losing water.
At Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, Public Works
director, John Diodati said the contaminated water event was
rare and unusual. “For over the last 50 years, we’ve treated
Lopez water for the five cities and this is the first boil
notice,” said Diodati. … On April 30th, a boil water notice
was issued because water samples from the Lopez Lake water
distribution system showed a presence of E. coli. A second
round of tests displayed higher levels of coliform bacteria,
not E. coli. The notice was lifted after the drinking water
supply was tested and confirmed safe. Testing to find the cause
of the contaminated water is expected to take 30 days to
complete. Starting on May 7, the Five Cities water supply will
be treated with free chlorine — a stronger water disinfectant
— until May 28.
An experimental technology now in testing holds the promise of
revolutionizing California’s depleted water supply. California
spends billions to store water, pump water and recycle water.
But even with climate change bearing down, one strategy is a
tougher sell: desalinating water and pulling it from the sea.
Just ask Tim Quinn, Ph.D., who spent four decades as one of the
state’s top water managers. “Every step in traditional
desalination is hugely fraught with controversy,” Quinn said.
There are roughly a dozen desalination plants operating in
California, including the massive Carlsbad plant at San Diego.
But approval of new plants is typically met with fierce
opposition from many environmental groups. Now, Quinn and his
colleagues, at a startup called OceanWell, believe they have a
system that’s much safer for the environment.
Thinning of forests, generally undertaken to reduce dangers
from wildfire and restore the forest to a more natural state,
also can create more mountain runoff to mitigate drought
effects in the central Sierra Nevada region that relies on
snowpack. In fact, researchers from the College of Agriculture,
Biotechnology & Natural Resources at the University of Nevada,
Reno found that the quantity of additional water produced by
thinned forests can be so significant that it might provide
further incentive for forest managers to undertake prescribed
burning or tree-removal using heavy equipment and hand crews
with chainsaws. Water yields from thinned forests can be
increased by 8% to 14% during drought years, found the study
undertaken by Adrian Harpold … and recently published in
Water Resources Research.
The overarching water myth in our part of our state is one of
massive entities — MWD, LADWP — controlled by criminally
wealthy Kings of California with unholy power straight out of a
film noir plot. Ordinary people who dare question the way that
water works need to be told, once again, “Forget it, Jake. It’s
Chinatown,” and move on to fairer fights with organizations
that aren’t so rich and gigantic that they are unassailable.
When you live in Altadena, the water with which you irrigate
your yard and brush your teeth does not come from anyone living
very large. It comes from one of three tiny,
ancient-for-California water companies that have so few
resources that when disaster strikes, there is no bucks-up
bureaucracy to bankroll a big fix. –Written by Whittier Daily News opinion columnist Larry
Wilson.
It seems there is always something happening related to Valley
Water’s Pacheco Reservoir project. In April, the Sierra Club
and others submitted comments about the draft Environmental
Impact Report (EIR) for geotechnical investigations. On May
21st, the California Water Commission will discuss progress to
date on the project to help them decide whether to allocate
additional funding. Then, on June 10th or 24th the Valley Water
Board of Directors will receive an update on the project which
will focus on how Pacheco fits into their Water Supply Master
Plan (WSMP), and on their progress on finding project
partners. Our letter on the Draft EIR for geotechnical
investigations asked for additional information about
access to the approximately 200 exploration locations, many of
which will be accessed off-road by vehicle or by
helicopter.
Tulare County Board of Supervisors made its annual trip to
Sacramento to advocate for issues important to the county. The
two days of meetings were held on April 22-23, immediately
before the 2025 California State Association of Counties
Legislative Conference. … “We talked to everybody about
kind of the same issues,” (Supervisor Larry) Micari said,
explaining that the main focus of the advocating effort was
water. “The biggest thing that we talked about is the
Airborne Snow Observatories,” he said. … “There’s talk
of them reducing funding, so we spoke to them to try to get
that funding to stay, and to actually increase it,” he
said.
A Red Bluff resident is speaking out against his local water
district. The resident, Dennis Hay, has three acres of land
that fall under the Proberta Water District territory. Hay
first received an invoice from the district in 2022, telling
KRCR there were no details on what the charge was for, and he’s
had no water ordered or delivered. The total for the most
recent invoice, he said, adds up to nearly $1,300. … Per
the California Water Code, a water district can charge for
water that has not been delivered as a standby charge if the
correct procedures are followed. Hay says he does not know if
the district billed him as a standby charge, adding that he is
not yet aware of how the invoice amount was calculated.
Environmental groups are demanding that the Trump
administration exercise the federal government’s authority to
curb wasteful water use in an effort to address the Colorado
River’s chronic water shortages. In a petition submitted
Tuesday, the Natural Resources Defense Council and nine other
groups called for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to enforce a
provision of federal regulations stating that water deliveries
in California, Arizona and Nevada “will not exceed those
reasonably required for beneficial use.” … The petition
takes aim in particular at wasteful water practices in
agriculture. … Leaders of the groups that submitted the
petition … suggested in it that the government should also
consider wasteful water use in cities and industries.
A recently released technical report concludes that the sinking
of land in the Central Valley due to over-pumping of
groundwater, referred to as subsidence, has restricted the
amount of water the State Water Project (SWP) can deliver in a
year by 3 percent. By 2043, if no action is taken, the current
trajectory of subsidence, combined with climate change, could
reduce deliveries by 87 percent. … The technical report,
an addendum that builds on the Delivery Capability Report (DCR)
released in 2024, analyzed the capability of the SWP to deliver
water under both current and potential future conditions in the
year 2043. The new findings underscore the importance of
eliminating groundwater overdraft in the Central Valley and
repairing existing damage to the state’s main water-delivery
arteries.
… Assembly Bill 697 by Lori Wilson, a Democrat from the
Fairfield area, would allow state highway officials to
potentially harm three protected bird species and endangered
mice as workers add new lanes to a stretch of Highway 37 to
wine country. … The 21-mile highway connects Interstate
80 in Vallejo in Solano County to Highway 101 in Novato in
Marin County along the north San Pablo Bay. It cuts though some
of the state’s last remaining salt marshes,
which are threatened by sea level rise. … Wilson’s
measure would, during construction, waive certain protections
under the California Endangered Species Act for the endangered
salt marsh harvest mouse, as well as for three protected birds:
the California clapper rail, the California black rail and the
white-tailed kite.
Layers of snowpack melted rapidly in Colorado in April, which
could lead to less water supply in the summer and higher
wildfire potential, according to data from the National
Integrated Drought Information System. The federal data,
released on May 1, indicate that “substantial and rapid”
snowmelt occurred throughout broad swaths of Colorado between
April 10-17. Several weather stations maintained by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture logged record snowmelt during that
week, compared to the same period in prior years. … How
quickly snow melts, and when it happens, can impact water
availability during hot summer months and affect how likely
wildfires are to occur in a region. An area that’s seen rapid
snowmelt in early spring could have dried-out vegetation by
summer, a potential fuel for blazes.
