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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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.
A new caucus has formed in the Utah State Legislature to
monitor bills and advocate for the state’s interests on the
Colorado River. Rep. Scott Chew, R-Jensen, told FOX 13 News he
formed the Colorado River Caucus on Utah’s Capitol Hill
made up of lawmakers whose districts are along the
river and its tributaries.He has run legislation
seeking to defend Utah’s interests in the high-stakes political
negotiations over the water that provides life for more than 40
million people in the West. … Rep. Chew said he wanted
to ensure people in his part of the state are represented on
the Colorado River.
Six hundred miles is a long way to go for water. That’s how far
the Scott and Cape Horn dams are from the Elsinore Valley
Municipal Water District. It’s not far enough to deter Elsinore
Valley’s interest in buying the dams located in a rural stretch
of Northern California.The dams’ fate is the subject of an
intensifying showdown involving conservationists, Native
Americans, farmers and most recently, the Trump administration.
… In an April 21 post on X, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
Brooke Rollins described the district as a “legitimate buyer”
for the dams, which are part of the Potter Valley Project that
sends water to the Russian River flowing through Mendocino and
Sonoma counties.
The California State Water Resources Control Board has released
a final draft remand order directing the Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board to revise dairy water
quality regulations, prompting concerns from industry groups
about potential costs and operational impacts on dairy farms.
The proposed changes apply only to dairies operating in the
Central Valley. … The order focuses on reducing
nitrate impacts to groundwater. … A key
component of the proposal is a broader whole-farm nitrogen
accounting system. Dairies would be required to track nitrogen
generated on their operations, applied to cropland and exported
off-site, with the goal of reducing nitrogen that could
contribute to groundwater contamination.
In April, developers of the massive Imperial Data Center
cleared a major hurdle after Imperial County Supervisors
approved a plan to combine several tracts of land for the
nearly one-million-square-foot facility in rural Southern
California. It would be the largest data center in the
state. … Last week, that progress came to a
halt when the county board walked back its decision, declaring
a 45-day moratorium on data centers and forming a public
commission to advise the county on zoning policy for the
facilities. … The company originally pledged to
use recycled water from neighboring cities, but when
that didn’t pan out, it sued Imperial Irrigation District in
Imperial County Superior Court this month, seeking 260
million gallons of river water each year.
California State Parks is expanding and for the first time
ever, Yuba County will have its own state park along the
Feather River. … State Parks Forward is a recent
initiative to bring three new state parks to the
central and Sacramento Valley by 2030. Specifically
targeting underserved areas, the parks will be at the
San Joaquin River Parkway, Dust Bowl Camp, and Feather
River Park in Yuba County. … The state expansion
also means protection for the rare riparian forest. “There’s
only 2% of the original riparian forests remaining and this is
a prime example where we can perpetuate it and make sure it’s
available for those future generations,” said [Matthew Allen,
the Northern Buttes District superintendent of California State
Parks].
Growers in a small western Fresno County region are falling out
over groundwater, specifically who should be entitled to how
much. And accusations have started piling up against the
Pleasant Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) board
president, Jimmy Anderson. Some farmers say Anderson has
manipulated groundwater credits for his own benefit, creating a
captive market to sell water and setting up smaller farmers for
failure. The problem, they say, is a groundwater allocation
policy that Anderson instituted after he came on the board in
January. That policy gives water credits to land parcels based
on historical use versus a per-acre, equal spread as is common
in other GSAs. That gave large landowners, like Anderson,
more credits regardless of how the land is now being used.
The Yurok Marine Department and the UC Davis Bodega Marine
Laboratory announced they recently deployed a real-time ocean
monitoring buoy near the mouth of the Klamath River. Installed
in about 60 feet of water, the Klamath River Spotter buoy
collects and transmits data on water temperature, wave
conditions, wind speed and direction, and barometric pressure.
The information is publicly available through the SOFAR Ocean
platform. The Yurok tribe says the buoy will help researchers
better understand the Klamath River plume. … Researchers
plan to use the data to study environmental conditions near the
river mouth and monitor potential long-term changes
following the removal of four dams on the Klamath
River.
The California State Lands Commission will hold a hearing on
Tuesday to consider whether to grant the
California-American Water Company a lease to construct and
operate slant wells in Marina as part of its proposed
desalination project in the area. Marina City Council
chambers will open Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. for Marina residents
to weigh in during the public comments section of the hearing.
Marina is encouraging all interested members of the public to
attend and make their thoughts known. For the city of Marina,
the hearing, and the decision that follows, will be one in a
long battle against what the city feels is a private company
intruding not just on the natural beauty where they live, but
on their legal rights to the water under them.
Although there have not yet been detections of the golden
mussel in the waterways of Sutter, Colusa and Yuba counties,
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking that
everyone be on guard. That’s partly because these freshwater
mollusks were sighted in Sacramento County in 2024 and 2025 –
directly in the Sacramento River and parts of the Delta – and
last week elected supervisors in those jurisdictions declared a
local state of emergency. The invasive species from China can
disrupt native aquatic ecosystems and get into plumbing or
essential water passageways. … “You can see the mussels
are in the Delta, and downstream of the Delta, but they have
not been detected in lakes upstream, in the foothills,” [CDFW
information officer Krysten] Kellum said.
The president appears to be having a harder time cleaning the
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool than the sewage-contaminated
Tijuana River, even though he used the same contractor for
both. The New York Times revealed over the weekend that
Greenwater Services won a $1.7 million no-bid contract to
install a water purification system in the pool located on the
National Mall earlier this spring. But now that work has come
under scrutiny after algal blooms overtook the pool, turning it
a vibrant shade of green. Meanwhile, Greenwater executives
claim their treatment of the Tijuana River went extremely well.
Greenwater won a $2.5 million no-bid contract last year to do
experimental water treatment on the Tijuana River. … The
experiment didn’t go perfectly. An October 2025 storm swept
away their equipment trailers and virtually ended the
experiment.
Splashing through shallow water in Connected Lakes State Park,
local kids were on the hunt Monday morning for all types of
tiny invertebrate animals and insects that might tell them a
bit about water quality and health of the local ecosystem. The
kids are taking part in RiversEdge West’s annual Wellspring
Project — a free four-day river education and art program for
middle school students in the Grand Valley. … The rest
of the week is full of activities centered around rivers and
water, learning about agriculture and wildlife, creating art
and capping it all off with a raft trip on the Gunnison
River. “We learn all about water in the West and the
Colorado and Gunnison rivers and we end our week with a float
trip down one of the rivers — this year, the Gunnison River,
because the Colorado is a little low,” [Education and Outreach
Coordinator at RiversEdge West Nicole] Cook said.
Boaters may notice lower water levels at the Thermalito
Afterbay through the end of June as the California Department
of Water Resources (DWR) works to support an endangered bird
species. The Western Snowy Plover is a threatened shorebird
that is native to Northern California. The species has been
endangered since 1993, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. Shallow water can be a hazard to boaters and jet
skiers. DWR said the shallow-water hazard is located in a
corner of the Thermalito Afterbay near the intersection of East
Hamilton Road and Highway 99. A hazard buoy will be placed
in the area to alert boaters to shallow water.
… To many, the functionality of Glen Canyon Dam’s river
outlet works has been a slow-moving crisis. If levels at Lake
Powell fall too low, water deliveries to Lake Mead
could be cut off due to potential damage of those release
tubes, spelling trouble for Southern Nevada and its
neighbor states in the Lower Colorado River Basin. … In
a Friday statement, the Southern Nevada Water Authority said
the uncertainty of Glen Canyon Dam’s infrastructure is another
reason for every state to take swift action to cut water use in
order to protect reservoir storage. “While Reclamation has
acknowledged the engineering feasibility exists to operate at
these levels, the bypass tubes were not envisioned to
be the sole release mechanism,” the statement said.
“Gambling on how much we can safely release while the reservoir
is near empty seems less than prudent.”
U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz called on the federal government Wednesday
to launch a rigorous environmental and historic review of a
controversial proposal to pump billions of gallons of
groundwater from the Mojave Desert, framing the project as a
threat to local communities, tribal sovereignty, and iconic
national parks. In a formal letter to Interior Secretary Doug
Burgum, Ruiz, D-Calif., urged the Bureau of Land Management to
conduct a comprehensive assessment under federal environmental
and historic preservation laws before deciding on a crucial
pipeline right-of-way application for Cadiz Inc. The proposal
by Los Angeles-based Cadiz, which is backed by foreign
investors, seeks to extract 16 billion gallons of water
annually for 50 years from an ancient desert
aquifer.
Forecasts of summertime moisture will be some welcome relief
for farmers and ranchers in the Intermountain West, after
undergoing a rugged, widespread drought and record snowpack
drought over the past year. Although not a guarantee,
there are promising signs for moisture in the
Intermountain West region (Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado, Utah and Wyoming) thanks to the El Nino climate
phenomenon combined with monsoon moisture expected this summer,
which was detailed on the latest Intermountain West Drought
Update Webinar, Tuesday, June 16, 2026, hosted by the National
Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s National Integrated
Drought Information System. Not only is moisture critical for
forage for rangeland, pastures and drinking water for cattle,
but also for the major lakes and rivers supplying water to the
western states.
Wildlife experts in both California and Oregon report they’re
seeing a high number of newly released Chinook
salmon sickened and killed by a parasite. The
salmon have been found dead at multiple traps in Oregon
and California in the Klamath River. The deaths, first
reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, are believed to
primarily be due to a parasite called Ceratonova shasta. The
parasite, which is linked to the salmon, has reached farther
north in the river than ever before following the destruction
of four dams near the Oregon-California border. … A
recent count from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that
almost half, or 46%, of nearly 700 salmon found in traps have
tested positive for C. shasta.
Amid a field of “zombie willows” in the Kawuneeche Valley
within Rocky Mountain National Park, researchers and water
providers are taking lessons from nature’s ecosystem
engineers to build drought resilience and restore
wetlands. … The Kawuneeche Valley exists just
downstream from the Colorado River headwaters.
… “A healthy and functioning wetland is a sponge,” said
Jeremy Shaw, a research scientist with Colorado State
University who has led wetland and stream restoration efforts
in the valley. “It is a fire break. It is a drought resilience
machine. It is a water quality plant. It’s a water treatment
plant. So healthy, functional wetlands, particularly ones that
support beavers, trap sediment nutrients, output clean,
reliable water. It also slows down and spreads out the water.”
A pilot study by the San Francisco Estuary Institute captures
plastic particles in the Bay that are 10 times smaller than
measured before, the width of a human hair. These smaller
microplastics may account for the vast majority of those
present in the water. The study could inform broader
research on plastics and human health, coastal ecosystems and
the ability of the sea to trap carbon from the earth’s
atmosphere. … [SFEI spokesperson Sierra] Garcia
said a statewide plastics monitoring project will begin this
summer under the California Ocean Protection Council. …
Microplastics have flowed through the Golden Gate and entered
the base of the food chain in the Greater Farallones and
Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
In California, a sprawling 4,000-mile network of canals winds
through citrus orchards and fields of tree nuts, delivering
irrigation and drinking water to homes and farms across the
state. The canals are critical in an increasingly arid part of
the country. But what if they could help fulfill another urgent
need: renewable energy? To test that idea, researchers, private
enterprise and a public utility in the Central Valley are
installing solar panels atop the man-made waterways. The pilot
program, called Project Nexus, is testing solar
canopies that researchers say could generate gigawatts of power
and save billions of gallons of water by providing shade that
slows evaporation. It could be transformational if
scaled up, researchers say, in helping the state to meet its
ambitious climate and biodiversity goals.
From a fast-melting snowpack in the Sierra to over-pumped
groundwater in the Central Valley and a drought on the Colorado
River, California’s water supply is facing enormous pressure.
Increasingly, some believe the only real alternative is to draw
water from the Pacific Ocean offshore. Former Water Manager Tim
Quinn believes he and his team at OceanWell can do it safely
and more affordably. … The company just released data
from an ongoing study on a reservoir in Southern California.
They say the system produces water roughly 10 times
purer than conventional drinking water, without damaging
surrounding marine organisms. … It comes at a
time of renewed interest in desal.
