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.
California’s water year is off to a great start, thanks in
large part to the past week’s stormy stretch for the state. The
water year began on Oct. 1 and continues until Sept. 30 next
year. Since the start of the water year, Sacramento has seen
nearly 5 inches of rain at Executive Airport. That is
more than three times the normal amount of
rain for this point in the season. Stockton and
Modesto have also more than tripled the normal rainfall through
mid-November. … The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab
site in Soda Springs has recorded over 18 inches of
snow so far this water year. That’s right in line with
the normal value for mid-November.
Other weather and water supply news around the West:
The board overseeing the state agency charged with finding new
water supplies for Arizona is poised to approve as many as five
water importation proposals. … Details of the five
projects — two involving desalination plants and the others
relying on wastewater treatment, surface water and an
unidentified third source — remain secret until the full board
of the agency known as WIFA meets Wednesday. But the Fort
Mojave Indian Tribe and the National Parks Conservation
Association say it’s pretty clear EPCOR plans to rely on a
controversial pumping project in the remote
southeastern California desert — an area protected by
environmentalists for decades.
Other groundwater and desalination news around the West:
A major boost for Northern California’s struggling Chinook
salmon population is underway on Battle Creek, a tributary of
the Sacramento River. Earlier this month, biologists from the
Coleman National Fish Hatchery released approximately 263,000
juvenile late-fall Chinook salmon, with an additional 75,000
released last week. The timing couldn’t be better. A
series of winter storms is pushing higher flows through the
watershed, giving the young fish a better shot at making it
safely down the Sacramento River system and out to the Pacific
Ocean.
Mountain meadows make up a small percentage of the land area in
the Sierra Nevada, but not as small a percentage as once
thought. This is exciting news as they have an outsized impact,
often functioning as high-elevation floodplains. As snow melts
in the springtime, meadows act like a sponge for cold
water, holding on to it until the drier months of the
year when downstream communities need water most. They also act
as a biodiversity hotspot for birds, fish, amphibians, wetland
plants, and insects. And a new model is revealing that there
may be more meadows in the Sierra than previously
estimated.
On Nov. 6, 2025, the Colorado River Indian Tribes Tribal
Council made history with a unanimous vote that fundamentally
changes how the Colorado River is recognized under tribal law.
The council granted legal personhood status to the Colorado
River itself, making CRIT the first community anywhere to
bestow such recognition on the 1,450-mile waterway.
… Under the new status, the Colorado River gains three
significant protections under tribal law. First, the river has
the legal right to be protected. … Second, current and future
CRIT tribal councils must consider the river’s needs when
making decisions. … Third, CRIT now has explicit legal
mechanisms to address the damage that climate change has
inflicted—and continues to inflict—on the Colorado River.
Feelings were running high—and interest was evident—as hundreds
of people turned out for our fall conference last week in
Sacramento. The lunchtime program featured a panel of five
experts representing water interests from across the state.
… Associate center director Caity Peterson set the stage
for the day’s conversation by describing the symbiotic
relationship between California and the federal government when
it comes to managing the state’s water. “We rely on the federal
government for critical data, services, the expertise of agency
staff—and for money. Now that partnership is changing, and we
don’t know quite yet where things are going to land,” said
Peterson.
The Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission will
host a workshop Monday about what the future holds for water
supplies in the wake of the decommissioning of the Potter
Valley Project. “The workshop is intended to help the
public better understand the facts, dispel misinformation, and
engage constructively in one of the most significant water
supply issues facing the region,” organizers said in a
statement. During the three-hour workshop, presenters from
the IWPC, Eel-Russian Project Authority and New Eel Russian
Facility will share factual updates and data about the future
of water in Potter Valley and areas in the Russian River
watershed.
Levels of hazardous chemical pesticides in the nation’s
groundwater are mostly on the decline, according to a new U.S.
Geological Survey report. That should be good news for the 75%
of Wyomingites who rely on private wells for drinking water.
But Jay Feldman, executive director of the nonprofit Beyond
Pesticides, said the study only looks at 22 pesticides — many
of which are no longer being used, and did not measure their
highly toxic replacements. “Some of the more modern chemicals
that are of concern,” Feldman said, “including Roundup,
glyphosate, 2,4-D, dicamba, paraquat — these are all highly
hazardous chemicals that are simply not evaluated in this
study.”
As the San Diego-Tijuana region continues to get pounded by a
series of storms, a trash boom strung across the Tijuana River
channel is working flawlessly. Oscar Romo, project manager for
Alter Terra, the group responsible for the boom, says by the
time all the rain passes, the device is expected to have
stopped about 50 tons of trash from Mexico. … “That’s a
result of culture of just dumping — not always purposely done,
but the city lacks good trash collection. People are also aware
that the rain takes away the trash so previous to a rain they
dump and we get all that,” Romo said.
… Since a court-appointed receiver took over operational
control of [privately owned water company] Big Basin Water more
than two years ago, the system and its estimated 1,200
customers and 550 metered connections deep in the San Lorenzo
Valley have been pulled back from the brink of collapse. The
focus is now on expanding the system’s capacity and finding a
suitable buyer to keep things flowing smoothly for the
foreseeable future, said Nicolas Jaber, project leader with
Serviam by Wright LLP, which was appointed in 2023 by a Santa
Cruz County Superior Court judge to manage and stabilize the
company.
ForeFront Power is celebrating the completion of a 5-MW solar
project at the Easterly Wastewater Treatment Plant (EWWTP) in
Vacaville, California. There is also an energy storage system
on-site, but no details on the size of the system were
released. The EWWTP system will generate nearly 8.1 million kWh
of renewable electricity annually. Designed to offset the
annual electricity demand at the EWWTP facility, the solar and
storage system is projected to save the city more than $25
million in electricity costs. … The EWWTP solar and
storage system was developed through a 20-year PPA between the
city and ForeFront Power.
… It was in 1878 that the fresh-faced Belfast-born [William]
Mulholland rocked up in the city and met a local well digger
who needed an extra pair of hands, then picked up the trade
himself. Newly obsessed with water (or the lack of it) he rose
quickly through the ranks of various hydrology companies,
eventually becoming head of the Los Angeles Water Department.
After a particularly biblical drought, in 1904 he set himself
the goal of permanently hydrating the city and its 100,000 odd
residents. His plan? Use gravity alone to “surreptitiously
steal” the water of “a large prehistoric freshwater lake” in
the distant Owens Valley (“the Switzerland of California”) and
send it back to Los Angeles.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday it is
redefining the scope of the nation’s bedrock clean water law to
significantly limit the wetlands it covers, building on a
Supreme Court decision two years ago that removed federal
protections for vast areas. When finalized, the new “Waters of
the United States” rule will ensure that federal jurisdiction
of the Clean Water Act is focused on relatively permanent,
standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, such as
streams, oceans, rivers and lakes, along with wetlands that are
directly connected to such bodies of water, the EPA said.
Solano County Supervisor Mitch Mashburn joined eight others on
the Delta Protection Commission to appeal
the Certification of Consistency for the Delta Conveyance
Project. The action, on a 9-0-1 vote, also included “submitting
comments to the Delta Stewardship Council on any appeals filed
by others.” Mashburn said there were “many reasons” for why an
appeal was needed. He said the commission majority did not like
the methodology the state Department of Water Resources used to
reach its conclusions of consistency, and felt the estimated
length of the project and the cost were flawed.
Across the St. George area, lush green golf courses sprawl
among red rock cliffs, cacti and yucca. This water-strapped
region hosts 14 courses within a 20-mile radius. The sport may
have reached a limit in southwest Utah, though. The Washington
County Water Conservancy District’s board passed a new policy
this month that increases regulations on the top 1% of
commercial, institutional and industrial water users, including
water guzzling industries such as golf
courses, data centers and
bottling plants. Any new project that will use
9 million gallons or more of the district’s water must receive
additional review and approval from a committee of mayors and
managers representing the eight cities and towns the district
serves, according to the district.
The application window is now open for our
2026 Colorado
River Water Leaders program, which will run
from March through September next year. Our biennial
program is patterned after our highly successful California
Water Leaders program and selects rising stars from the seven
states that rely on the river – California, Nevada, Arizona,
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – as well as tribal
nations and Mexico to take part in the cohort. Acceptance to
the program is highly competitive. Get a program overview and
tips on
applying by attending our
virtual Q&A session on Dec. 10 at 12:30 p.m.
(Mountain Time) / 11:30 a.m. (Pacific Time).
Ocean waves could soon help solve Fort Bragg’s drought worries.
On Friday, the city and Quebec, Canada-based Oneka Technologies
displayed California’s first wave-powered desalination pilot
buoy. The Noyo Harbor-based buoy, part of the ResilenSea
Project, is a partnership with the city and supported by a
$1.5 million grant from the state of California. … The
system requires no batteries, grid connections or fossil fuels.
And the results of this pilot project will determine whether a
larger array of wave-powered units could eventually supplement
Fort Bragg’s municipal water supply.
A colder storm is moving through western Nevada on Monday,
bringing rain to the valleys and new snow to the Sierra. …
Tahoe elevations could see 3 to 6 inches, with lighter amounts
at lake level. … Another Pacific system is expected to
reach the region by early Thursday, bringing
the next round of rain and Sierra snow. A powerful atmospheric
river moving down the California coast has produced heavy rain,
thunderstorms and high-elevation snow, and state officials say
at least six people have died in storm-related incidents over
the past several days. The system is raising concerns for
flooding and debris flows in areas burned by
recent wildfires. Several rounds of moisture are expected to
move through California into midweek, sending additional rain
and snow into parts of the state.
Voracious, invasive zebra mussels hopped an upstream ride over
the summer and added 100 miles of Colorado River to their
fast-growing infestation of state waterways, Parks and Wildlife
officials said after a recent multiagency, multicounty
sampling. Previously pegged in the Grand Junction area, the
Oct. 29 sampling and subsequent analysis found adult zebra
mussels upstream in Glenwood Canyon and all the way up to the
Colorado River’s junction with the Eagle River at Dotsero, near
a private lake treated for zebra mussels in August.
California farms applied an average of 2.5m lbs of PFAS
“forever chemicals” per year on cropland from 2018 to 2023, or
a total of about 15m lbs, a new review of state records shows.
… The Environmental Working Group nonprofit put together the
report. … The risk for uptake of PFAS is likely
higher in water-rich fruits and vegetables, because water
attracts the chemicals, and research has shown PFAS may
concentrate at dangerous levels in some produce. The chemicals
also pollute water supplies and present a higher risk to the
often low income and Latino farmworkers.
