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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Adult zebra mussels have been found in the Colorado River and a
nearby lake in Grand Junction, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said
Monday. The agency has detected the invasive species in
its larval stage, called a veliger, in past sampling efforts in
the river and nearby lakes. This is the first time an adult
zebra mussel, a sign of a more established population, has been
found in the Colorado River in Colorado. … They can take
up key nutrients for other aquatic species — tanking food
systems — and can build up in layers on docks, pipes and
diversion headgates, ruining water infrastructure.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters are
predicting a La Niña winter for California, increasing the
potential for warmer and drier weather. … Much of
California’s water supply for homes, businesses, and
agriculture comes from Sierra snow runoff, which is stored in
dams and then released through the state’s extensive canal and
piping system. … Are farmers gearing up for shorter water
supplies if La Niña means a drier winter? [Fresno Farm Bureau
CEO Ryan] Jacobsen said it’s still too early to make those
preparations, but farmers will definitely be watching the skies
and hoping for an average or even above-average year for rain
and snowfall.
A bill aimed at preserving flows for fish on two Klamath
tributaries passed through both chambers of the state
legislature last week and awaits signature by Governor Gavin
Newsom. Assembly Bill 263, authored by North Coast
Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa), would maintain
existing minimum flows for the Shasta and Scott rivers. The
flow regulations were established as part of an emergency
drought declaration four years ago. If enacted, the regulations
would be kept until 2031 or whenever the State Water Board sets
permanent rules that are currently in the works.
Other California water and environmental policy news:
Antioch has finally turned on the taps of its long-awaited
brackish water desalination plant, which is expected to help
the city safeguard its water supply for decades to come. The
$160 million facility, hailed by city leaders as a milestone in
California’s water sustainability efforts, will meet up to 40%
of Antioch’s water needs. Residents and businesses use up to 11
million gallons of water daily in the winter and 23 million in
the summer. With the plant in service, the city can treat and
convert into drinking water about 6 million gallons a day of
brackish water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta.
… The potential benefits of beavers are manifold, from fire
prevention and resilience to improved water quality and
fishing. … In 2023, the state began a beaver
restoration program through the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife (CDFW). Most notably, the program partnered with
the Tule River Tribe, as well as the Mountain Maidu people in
northern California, to move beavers to tribal lands from areas
where they were causing problems for humans, primarily in the
watersheds of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.
The State Water Resources Control Board has allocated $2
billion in the past fiscal year to enhance water infrastructure
across California. Officials say the funding aims to increase
water supplies, protect the environment, and support the
state’s economic progress. The projects, when completed, are
set to benefit over 18 million Californians by adding 5,000
acre-feet to the state’s water supplies. They align with Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s Water Supply Strategy to expedite infrastructure
upgrades statewide.
Consumption of Colorado River water is outpacing nature’s
ability to replenish it, with the basin’s reservoirs on the
verge of being depleted to the point of exhaustion without
urgent federal action to cut use, according to a new analysis
from leading experts of the river. The analysis, published
Thursday, found that if the river’s water continues to be used
at the same rate and the Southwest sees another winter as dry
as the last one, Lakes Mead and Powell—the nation’s two largest
reservoirs—would collectively hold 9 percent of the water they
can store by the end of next summer.
Near Hickman, California, just outside Modesto, a 110-foot-wide
grid of solar panels now tops a section of canal, arching over
the gently flowing water. Solar projects have long been a
crucial piece of the state’s movement to clean energy, and
these panels are part of a new project that’s hoping to do far
more than just generate electricity. Dubbed Project Nexus, the
$20 million state-funded initiative hopes to better understand
whether these installations can be an even more efficient
approach to solar energy.
The Cawelo Water District is working on a new “produced water”
project to increase its irrigation supplies. Produced water is
water that comes up with oil during pumping. The district has
used oilfield produced water blended with other surface
supplies for irrigation for about two decades. Discussion
about the new project began in early August. The project is
expected to be completed in early 2026. Construction was pushed
back due to a delay in biological studies but is expected to
start at the end of this month.
Something big was stirring in the flora at the Five-Mile
Recreation Area as trees rustled and vibrations ran along the
ground Monday. It was the work of heavy machinery like
excavators and bulldozers, clearing out debris and biological
materials with the goal of clearing more space for water in Big
Chico Creek and the surrounding flood protection channels.
Butte County announced its new plan to mitigate flood risk in
northeast Chico on Monday, the Five-Mile Stream Action for
Flood Emergency project, which is already underway at the
park.
The City of Brawley will consider on Tuesday supporting a $5
million funding request by the Salton Sea Authority (SSA),
advocating for an equitable distribution of funds from
Proposition 4, a $10 billion climate resilience bond approved
by California voters in November 2024. … Proposition 4
allocated $605 million for watershed resilience, with a
specific $10 million earmarked for the Salton Sea region. The
funds are designated to either create the new Salton Sea
Conservancy or to support the existing Salton Sea
Authority.
In a decision with major implications for Western agriculture,
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the Clean Water
Act exemption for irrigation return flows. The ruling in
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations v. Nickels
affirms that discharges from irrigated agriculture are exempt
from federal permitting requirements so long as they do not
include additional point source discharges unrelated to crop
production. The case centered on California’s Grassland Bypass
Project, a drainage system that conveys water from nearly
100,000 acres of farmland.
To address growing AI demand, many companies are building or
leasing data centers around the globe. DCs that use water-based
cooling consume significant amounts of water, and in this
research, we have analyzed DC exposure to water stress
globally. We examined the current decade and the 2050s decade
under both moderate and moderate-to-high emissions scenarios,
using projections from the S&P Global Sustainable1 Physical
Risk dataset. We found that exposure is already high in some
regions, and we expect the industry’s exposure to water stress
will slightly increase by the 2050s.
The 2025 surface and groundwater monitoring under the RPP and
WDR programs was completed by August. For the Rice Pesticide
Program (RPP), no detections of thiobencarb were reported above
the agricultural drain performance goal. … The Rice
Waste Discharge Requirements (WDR) surface water program
monitored benzobicyclon and bispyribac-sodium, with generally
good results. … The Rice Waste Discharge Requirements
(WDR) groundwater program reported low levels (consistent with
historical averages) of nitrates in shallow groundwater beneath
rice fields.
Water agencies in Northern California are warning against a
scam of people targeting homes and claiming the residents’ tap
water could be unsafe. According to a news release from Citrus
Heights Water District, various water agencies said there have
been increased reports of people posing as water officials and
knocking on doors to do in-home water tests. … The
reports have been increasing across Northern California,
including cities like Elk Grove, Fairfield and Sacramento.
Officials said some people were pushed into buying expensive
water treatment systems after unsolicited tests.
The Colorado River’s massive reservoirs are now so depleted
that another dry year could send them plunging to dangerously
low levels, a group of prominent scholars warns in a new
analysis. The researchers are urging the Trump administration
to intervene and impose substantial cutbacks in water use
across the seven states that rely on the river — California,
Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
… If next year turns out to be a repeat of this year,
they wrote, total water use would exceed the river’s natural
flow by at least 3.6 million acre feet — nearly as much as
California used in all last year.
A California lawmaker’s proposal to make it easier to build
solar projects on former farmland stalled in the early hours of
Saturday amid continued divisions among agricultural groups.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks pulled her AB 1156, which would have
streamlined land-use changes to allow solar development on
water-scarce farmland, from consideration in the final hours of
the legislative session. … [T]housands of acres of fields and
orchards are set to become fallow in the next decades as local
officials and farmers work to meet the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act.
The Klamath Tribes are opposing a new federal water plan they
say risks killing off endangered fish. The Bureau of
Reclamation’s proposal would send up to 38,000 additional
acre-feet of water — roughly 12.4 billion gallons — to Klamath
Project irrigators in southern Oregon and northern California.
… But the Klamath Tribes said in an email that the
additional 38,000 acre-feet would not come from the designated
excess water supply. The Tribes said the allocation would lower
lake levels.
Drought continues to worsen in several parts of the country,
meteorologists warned in early September as dry conditions are
forecast for many areas later in the month, sparking additional
fears about wildfires in the fire-prone West. … In June,
51% of the West was in a drought. Now it’s ballooned to 64%,
according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor. Additionally,
100% of the giant Colorado River basin is now
in a drought.
The Trump administration asked a federal court Thursday to toss
out parts of EPA’s first-ever drinking water regulation for
“forever chemicals,” on the grounds that the Biden-era rule
violated a legal requirement under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Adopting an argument made by water utilities and chemical
companies seeking to overturn the rule, the Trump
administration wrote that the prior administration failed to
give the public an opportunity to weigh in before proposing
strict legal limits in drinking water for four versions of the
chemicals.
