A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation Writer Matt Jenkins.
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Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s two largest
reservoirs, have fallen to their lowest combined levels on
record, a grim marker in the deepening water crisis across
seven states that depend on the Colorado River. The two
reservoirs are now lower than the previous record in
2023. … U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met with
governors of the seven states virtually Tuesday and said his
agency will release a plan to deal with water shortages
next week. … After the meeting Tuesday, Burgum
said he was grateful to the governors for their “leadership and
commitment to finding solutions to address drought conditions
in the Colorado River Basin.” The Trump administration is
focused on “establishing a new operating framework and
continues to work with the states and 30 tribes to get closer
to consensus,” he said.
El Niño is coming. Of that, scientists seem sure as ocean
temperatures continue to heat up. Warmer ocean water fills the
atmosphere with moisture, which can ride the jet stream into
California as massive storms. Or not. Weather is such a tricky
beast. Regardless of whether this pattern becomes a “monster,”
“Godzilla,” “Jurassic,” or just plain vanilla “super” El Niño,
Fresno Engineer John Ennis has found an historic quirk thathe
believes can result in a very specific outcome in the
San Joaquin Valley. There is a nearly
100% correlation between a Relative Oceanic Niño Index
of level 2 and flooding on the old Tulare Lake
bed, according to a paper Ennis wrote.
Other weather and water forecast news around the West:
This year’s devastating snow drought in the Upper Colorado
River Basin was made 14 times more likely by years of
global climate change, according to a new study by
Colorado School of Mines researchers, who are increasingly
linking short-term weather disasters to decades of
warming. … Warmer temperatures in the West have
also intensified the impacts of the worst drought winters such
as 2025-26, according to the research published in the
“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The
currentsnowpack drought, coming amid climate change,
robbed 25% more moisture from snowpack than a
similar-scale drought occurring before the Industrial
Age advent of heavy fossil fuel use and global warming.
The statewide drought is prompting water restrictions across
Colorado. La Veta, a Southern Colorado town of less than 1,000
residents at the base of the Spanish Peaks, is among
the most severely affected areas in the state. …
Residents are not allowed to use outdoor watering tools
including hoses and sprinklers. La Veta diverts its water
from the Cucharas River into two reservoirs on the edge of
town. “The lake water at this point could, without any further
moisture, cover the town for 150 days (from
July 13),” said [Town Clerk Heather] Hillis. “It needs to start
snowing like September 1.” … The latest U.S. Drought
Monitor shows the area in some of the worst conditions in the
state.
After a marathon of almost seven hours – split between two
separate meetings that morphed into each other – Tehama County
Supervisors voted to take a step back in approving the proposed
fee structure for residential and agricultural groundwater
fees. … The first hearing, which involved every
homeowner or ‘groundwater extractor’ in the managed sub-basins
of Corning, Los Molinos, Antelope, Red Bluff and Bowman, was
about the possible imposition of a $2.70 fee per
assumed acre-foot of water. The second hearing was for
ag-zoned land in the Corning, Los Molinos, and Red Bluff
sub-basins and involved a potential $2 per-assumed
volumetric acre-foot used per crop
type. According to Deputy Director of Public
Works Justin Jensen, every effort was made to contact property
owners with addresses that were provided to him. But those who
spoke against the fees – and most of the elected board – agreed
that there was a failure in the rollout.
Federal wildlife officials are loosening protections for a
native fish in the Colorado River. The razorback
sucker was downlisted from “endangered” to
“threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The move
suggests progress in protecting the fish, but environmentalists
say the species still struggles to survive in much of its
habitat, and stronger protections were needed. The razorback
sucker, which can grow up to 3 feet long and live for 40 years,
is on a relatively short list of fish that live nowhere else in
the world besides the Colorado River basin. Of the roughly 25
species on that list, four are protected under the endangered
species act. Those fish face multiple threats in a
river system that is getting drier and has been thoroughly
altered by human activity.
Recreational activities are temporarily restricted along a
1.25-mile stretch of the Klamath River because of an upcoming
river restoration project, according to the Klamath National
Forest. The restoration project, led by the Yurok Tribe and its
partners, covers the area from the confluence of Humbug Creek
downstream to the Klamath River’s confluence with Brushy
Creek. The work is intended to repair damage caused by
historic mining practices and the 2022 McKinney Fire. Heavy
rainfall after the fire triggered flooding and debris flows
that carried large amounts of sediment into the Klamath River,
reducing water quality, degrading fish habitat and limiting
river access.
Despite multi-million-dollar efforts to combat an invasive
species’ impact on a key California water source, Yolo County
was forced to declare a local emergency in its latest attempt
to slow the spread. The Yolo County Board of Supervisors
proclaimed a local emergency Tuesday as golden mussels continue
to threaten the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, officials
explained in a news release. This proclamation comes after
Sacramento County, San Joaquin County and the City of Stockton
also declared local emergencies. The county said a local
emergency status will allow for smoother coordination across
agencies and organizations.
Lake Natoma visitors looking for relief from the heat may want
to reconsider swimming in the water after recent samples
continue to show high levels of E. coli at the Black Miners Bar
Swim Area and Nimbus Flat North Beach. For the past five weeks,
E. coli levels at parts of Lake Natoma have exceeded the
threshold that the Environmental Protection Agency considers
safe in recreational waters. The latest samples show that Black
Miners Bar Swim Area is more than five times the limit, while
Nimbus Flat North Beach is more than three times the limit.
… A full investigation has not been conducted at Lake
Natoma to confirm the cause of the elevated E. coli levels, but
[California State Water Resources Control Board
spokesperson Blair] Robertson said birds could be behind the
increase.
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) directed $30.7
billion specifically towards safe drinking water programs,
representing the single-largest investment into water
infrastructure in United States history. The law mandates that
49% of funds be provided as grants and forgivable loans to
“disadvantaged communities.” Notably, the definition of
disadvantaged communities has been left to the discretion of
states, allowing variability in how different states identify
and prioritize these communities. This study examines how
states redefined disadvantaged communities after the BIL, maps
their spatial distribution, and analyzes disparities in
drinking water funding from 2019 to 2023. Our results suggest
that, despite widespread updates to disadvantaged community
definitions, racial and ethnic minorities continue to encounter
barriers to accessing funding.
Workforce concerns have ranked in the American Water Works
Association (AWWA)’s top ten sector challenges for years. But
in 2026, the question has shifted from how to replace retiring
workers to something harder: how to stop institutional
knowledge from disappearing with them. When AWWA published its
2026 State of the Water Industry report in March, workforce
emerged once again as one of the most pressing concerns facing
utilities across the United States. With 21% of employees
eligible to retire within five years and vacancy rates
averaging 9%, the scale of the challenge is hard to ignore. We
sat down with AWWA CEO David LaFrance to dig deeper into what
the data is really telling us, and what the sector needs to do
to prepare.
California’s cities spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer
dollars each year to manage their clean water obligations, yet
violations persist with no clear end in sight. Stormwater
pollution is ubiquitous, and commercial, industrial, and
institutional properties are a significant and unaddressed part
of the problem, contributing between 35–60% of stormwater
pollutants. … Under two recent bills that stalled
out in Sacramento, commercial stormwater permit holders would
have had the option to meet their obligations by funding
regional stormwater projects — green infrastructure, stormwater
capture, wetland restoration — at the watershed scale. –Written by Sean Bothwell, executive director of
California Coastkeeper Alliance.
… Recently, a data center under construction in Cheyenne,
Wyoming, was found to have contaminated the sewer system with a
rare bacterium. The water utility took swift action. The
Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities fined the project developer,
revoked its wastewater permit and announced that it would not
accept certain types of wastewater from data centers
citywide. The developer of the project — which is backed
by Meta — is appealing the $10,000 fine and disputes the
utility’s conclusion tracing the bacterium to its project. But
the incident highlights what engineers view as an
emerging challenge for the data center industry that is already
under scrutiny over its environmental footprint.
Aurora Water’s single largest water customer is refusing to
reduce its usage, despite a mandatory 20% cutback ordered under
the city’s drought restrictions, according to the water
utility. The customer is Niagara Bottling, a California-based
company that has operated a bottling plant in Aurora since
2012. The plant draws directly from the city’s tap
water supply, purifies it and sells it, often under
store brand labels. Costco’s Kirkland Signature water, for
example, is often bottled by Niagara, which has plants across
the country. Aurora Water says last year, Niagara used
more than 200 million gallons of water. The
company is allocated 178 million gallons. … But Aurora
is currently under Stage 1 drought restrictions.
Sites Reservoir is still facing opposition from conservation
groups, but in most corners of Colusa County – where
mom-and-pop businesses are trying to survive long enough to
hold the community’s identity intact – the project’s
massive seven-year build-out is increasingly being viewed as a
badly needed stimulus opportunity. At least, for those who
think it will actually happen. Water contractors have
talked about building a project like Sites in Colusa for
decades. That means some longtime residents equate discussing a
financial windfall from it today as something like daydreaming.
But things change. Now, with strong support from California’s
Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom and the Mid-Valley’s Republican
Congressman James Gallagher, the managers at Sites Project
Authority say they could be breaking ground on the
reservoir as early as next summer.
The severe snow drought that gripped the western United States
in this past winter was made four times more likely by
human-caused climate change, according to a new study
led by researchers at Colorado School of Mines and published
today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS). In the Upper Colorado River Basin, a critical source of
water for millions of people across the southwestern U.S., the
study found that the snow drought was approximately 14 times
more likely because of climate change. The study is among the
first to apply modern climate attribution techniques to a
large-scale snow drought event, quantifying the extent to which
warming temperatures have increased the likelihood of
dramatically reduced snowpack across the American West.
… As what is now post-tropical cyclone Elida nears northern
California, the shield of moisture on its eastern flank is
dragged north across the entire state. … Thanks to the high
moisture content, any thunderstorms that do pop, especially on
Tuesday, will be capable of ample lightning, one-inch-per-hour
rainfall rates, and 50+ mph wind gusts. Storms will be
slow-moving out of the southeast, meaning the rain that does
arrive will come from a stacked weather system that will
increase flash flooding risks in localized spots.
The water level at Lake Mead is less than 10 feet away
from rendering most of the hydroelectric turbines at the Hoover
Dam inoperable. In a new projection from the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, the water level is expected to fall
below 1,035 feet next April. That figure is critical. Currently
just shy of 1,042 feet, if Lake Mead falls below 1,035 feet — a
level not seen since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s —
it’s expected that 70% of the Hoover Dam’s current hydropower
production will be cut. The Bureau of Reclamation’s
24-month study released last week forecasts a continued decline
in Lake Mead’s water level. The study projects Lake Mead
falling to 1,031.6 feet in April 2027 and 1,010 feet by the end
of June 2028.
… Fishing for chinook salmon, also called king salmon, had
been called off completely for California’s commercial
fishermen since 2023 and nearly as long for recreational
anglers. While the fishery is open again this year, and the
federal government recently announced emergency funding for
those hit hardest by the closure, the consequences of multiple
canceled fishing seasons continues to have ripple effects that
are hard to fully account for. … Without plentiful
chinook salmon to support local fisheries, “people won’t always
spend the money for other species or for other recreational
activities,” [fisherman James] Stone said. “Salmon is what
drives the fishing industry.”
The Shafter-Wasco Irrigation District board voted at its July 8
meeting to spend more to hit invasive golden mussels hard in
October, rather than saving costs by reducing treatments.
… Cost for this option is $509,491. … At its July
14 meeting, the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District tabled a
decision to spend $1.3 million on a second phase of mussel
treatment while it explores other vendors that may offer a
higher insurance liability cap. SePRO Corporation, which did
Arvin-Edison’s first treatment in April for $2.5 million, wants
to set a liability cap of $10 million. Board members balked at
that saying if water treatments proved detrimental, crop losses
could be in the hundreds of millions. … The board opted
to have staff investigate the current status of golden mussel
growth in the district as well as SePRO competitors.
