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.
The White House has made its pick to lead the federal agency
that manages water and dams in the American West, a Trump
administration official confirmed Monday. If confirmed by
Congress, Aubrey Bettencourt, a third-generation
California farmer in the Central Valley, will lead the
Bureau of Reclamation during a historic time of interstate
conflict and record drought along the Colorado River. …
During the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, she
was deputy assistant secretary of water and science at the
Interior Department, the parent agency of the Bureau of
Reclamation. … Most recently, Bettencourt served as
chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the
private lands conservation agency leg of the Agriculture
Department, until she stepped down in May.
Arizona is desperate for water. So much so that its taxpayers
are willing to invest in treating Tijuana’s sewage so it’s
drinkable. How would that help Arizona? The state
would ask Mexico for some of its Colorado River water in
exchange. That’s a plan proposed by EPCOR, a
private Canadian water utility. The Arizona state legislature
granted $1 billion to the Water Infrastructure Finance
Authority of Arizona, or WIFA, to jumpstart projects that could
make new water, like the one proposed in the Tijuana River
Valley. Under the proposal, Arizona could help build a
wastewater-to-drinking water facility (like the one San Diego
is building called Pure Water) at the federally-owned South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant or the city-owned
South Bay Water Reclamation Plant.
The Trump administration is “keenly aware” of Americans’
concerns about water and artificial intelligence data centers
and wants the industry to embrace technologies like
reusing treated wastewater, according to a senior EPA
official. But Jess Kramer, who leads EPA’s water office, also
defended the administration’s pledge to help make the U.S. “the
AI capital of the world,” arguing that the technology is
already driving conversations at the agency. “Being the AI
capital of the world, utilizing that as a tool, and utilizing
[it] to the best of its ability, I think that’s a great goal,”
Kramer said in an interview last week. “I don’t think there’s
anything short-sighted about that. I think it has driven a lot
of conversations.”
Scientists feared the Santa Monica Mountains’ last
remaining steelhead trout were dead, smothered by debris
flows unleashed by the Palisades fire. But the endangered fish
surprised them: A team of biologists recently spotted 30 of the
rare trout — and 21 babies — in Topanga Creek. … [T]he
steelhead here are endangered, at both the state and federal
levels. Once, they swam in most streams of the Santa Monicas,
but their numbers plummeted amid overfishing and coastal
development. Increasingly frequent wildfire has further
stressed their habitat. Topanga Creek, a
biodiversity hot spot, is home to their last known population
in the mountains that stretch from the Hollywood Hills
to Point Mugu in Ventura County.
On the evening of June 2, a Southern Humboldt resident looked
at Redwood Creek from the Seely Creek Road crossing and knew
something was wrong. The water was white — not muddy the way it
gets after rain, but opaque, for miles. … What happened next
revealed something bigger than a single spill on a rural creek.
The white water running through Southern Humboldt was connected
to one of the largest infrastructure investments
California has ever made — a $3.25 billion effort to bring
high-speed internet to communities that have gone without it
for years. And at the end of a long chain of
contractors and subcontractors, someone had apparently been
dumping thousands of gallons of drilling waste on private land,
with apparently not enough planning for where it would go.
The period of March through May 2026 ranked as the second
warmest spring in records going back to 1895 for the contiguous
U.S., according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental
Information (NCEI). Across the past 131 years, only 2012 had a
warmer spring, said NCEI in its monthly analysis released on
June 8. The nationwide average temperatures for both spring
2012 (56.17 degrees Fahrenheit) and 2026 (55.79°F) are both
more than 1.5°F above any rivals in the 131-year database.
Spring 2026 was the hottest on record for Arizona,
Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. … The March
heat wave dissolved any hope of a respectable snow season for
large parts of the western United States. … The lack of
remaining Southwest snowpack means runoff will be
limited this summer, only worsening the situation.
After a wildfire, rivers and streams can take years to recover.
Native plants and wildlife are often crowded out by invasive
species in the aftermath. But in Nevada’s Virgin River
watershed, a collaboration between federal agencies and
conservation groups is pointing to early signs of recovery. The
work is unfolding in a remote stretch of desert in southern
Nevada, where the tributary winds through a system that
eventually feeds into the Colorado River, a critical water
source for millions across the Mountain West. … The
habitat supports rare species, including the Southwestern
willow flycatcher, and fish, such as the Virgin River chub. …
[T]he effort is only the first step in a longer restoration
process that includes invasive plant removal and water
management improvements designed to slow runoff and increase
soil absorption.
In a report and fact sheet released last month, we analyzed the
development and current status of Tribal water rights in
California. … Of the 103 federally recognized
Indian reservations in California, only about 20 consistently
host irrigated agriculture, and most of these are relatively
small-scale (less than 100 acres). In an average water year,
about 15,800 acres are irrigated on Tribal reservations (about
0.2% of statewide irrigated acreage), including by non-Tribal
residents. Irrigated acreage tends to decline slightly during
drought years and rebounds during wet and normal water years.
Water demands for this agriculture amount to about
60,000–70,000 acre-feet per year (about 0.2% of total statewide
applied water).
On Tuesday, June 9, a team of Tahoe’s protectors will lead a
training on how to protect the Lake’s blue waters from the
threat of aquatic invasive species as part of California
Invasive Species Action Week. The morning event will take place
at Valhalla Tahoe in South Lake Tahoe, is open to all, and free
to attend. … Golden mussels, an environmentally harmful and
highly invasive species, are spreading rapidly across
California. Just days ago, a boat unknowingly carrying golden
mussels was stopped at one of Tahoe’s boat inspection stations
before it could launch on the Lake. This summer is a critical
time for paddlers, anglers, and beachgoers to be aware of AIS
and to Clean, Drain, and Dry their equipment before entering
the water.
The high-stakes brawl over the drought-stricken
Colorado River comes to Capitol Hill this week. The
Trump administration’s top Western water official is
set to appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee on Wednesday as the Interior Department is
preparing to wrest control of the waterway later this summer.
The department already invoked emergency authorities in April
when it became clear that the river would see the lowest flows
on record this summer, threatening the ability to produce
hydropower and release water out of one of the country’s
largest reservoirs, Lake Powell. … Scott Cameron,
Interior’s acting Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, last week
said the department plans to release a draft plan for operating
the waterway unilaterally in the “mid-to-late summer.”
The construction, though not the long-term operation, of a
proposed 45-mile extension to the State Water Project, backed
by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, has received permission from
two key federal wildlife agencies. On Friday, the California
Department of Water Resources received permits known as
biological opinions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
the National Marine Fisheries Service concluding that
construction can proceed under conditions designed to protect
endangered species and sensitive habitat. … The
opinion of the Fish and Wildlife Service orders builders to
take measures to avoid harming endangered or threatened
species.
An Assembly Bill sponsored by the Karuk Tribe, which seeks to
expand consultation between state water agencies and tribes
during water policy decisions, passed through the California
Assembly last week. … If signed into law, Assembly Bill 2218
would declare, as statewide policy, recognition of “the
inequities regarding access to, and control over, water caused
by state-sanctioned acts of termination, removal, and
assimilation inflicted upon all California Native American
tribes.” … A key provision of the bill is
requiring consultation with tribes when certain water policies
are revisited by state agencies. The State Water
Board, when investigating the basis of a water right, would
need to consult with a California Native American tribe whose
ancestral territory includes the water body, when requested.
A Kings County Judge may decide [this] week whether to
allow a lawsuit by the Kings County Farm Bureau to move to the
next phase in its quest to prove the State Water Resources
Control Board overstepped its authority when it placed
the region on probation in 2024 for lacking an adequate
groundwater plan. The Farm Bureau is also
disputing what it says was an improper blanket denial by the
Water Board of exemptions for some local agencies from those
probationary measures, which require farmers to meter and
register wells at $300 each, report extractions and pay the
state $20 per acre foot pumped. At a June 3 hearing, Kings
County Superior Court Judge Robert Burns said he may rule by
June 11 on whether to start the discovery process, where both
sides seek documents. If he does not issue a ruling, the
parties will meet July 2 to determine next steps.
Los Angeles area water agencies were hard hit in 2022 by
successive years of drought and an unprecedented meager State
Water Project allocation, but none was more impacted than Las
Virgenes Municipal Water District, which serves about 70,000
users in an upscale section of the city with virtually no other
supply alternatives, in-state or out. The severe per-person
water-use limit prompted officials to come up with a plan to
create new supply through a novel in-ocean desalination
process. … The nine-month pilot “exceeded expectations,” says
Mark Golay, OceanWell director of engineering projects. … The
goal is to scale to an ocean-based “farm” system of multiple
pods about 4.5 miles offshore of Malibu that could produce,
when operating by about 2028, up to 50-60 million gallons per
day.
A record-shattering drought has racked much of the US. But the
artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless,
with the majority of planned datacenters set to be built in
drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found. About
two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a
large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places
that have been among the driest in the country over the past
year. … Datacenter developers say the industry’s current
water use is still just a fraction of what much larger
consumers, primarily agriculture, already take, causing growing
strain on key sources such as the Colorado
River. … Yet the public backlash has been so
strong – polling shows 70% of Americans don’t want to live next
to a datacenter – that some states are considering new
restrictions.
Warning signs lined the sand at Coronado Beach this weekend as
elevated bacteria levels linked to another sewage spill from
Tijuana forced swimming closures along parts of San Diego
County’s coastline. County health officials extended
water-contact closures from Imperial Beach north through the
Silver Strand and into Coronado after a recent break in a
Mexican wastewater pipeline sent millions of gallons of
sewage-contaminated water toward the Pacific Ocean. The closure
comes despite emergency repairs completed this week on the
cross-border sewer line that collapsed for the second time in
recent weeks. … Mexican repair crews worked around the clock
to seal the damaged international wastewater pipeline. The
break increased flows through the Tijuana River Valley, where
polluted runoff eventually reached the ocean.
A project to restore habitat on the Cannibal Island unit of the
lower Eel River estuary has received a financial boost from the
Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB). At its May 28 meeting in
Sacramento, the WCB awarded the project a $4 million grant
under Proposition 4, the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire
Prevention, Drought Preparedness and Clean Air Bond Act, passed
by California voters in 2024. The property in question is owned
by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the
grant was awarded to CalTrout. … CalTrout is working with
researchers and state and federal agency partners to collect
scientific data and develop restoration plans to transform the
area from a largely diked and drained salt marsh into a diverse
mix of working agricultural lands and thriving natural
habitats.
Like many communities in the American Southwest, Las Vegas is
facing a prolonged drought that is forcing policy leaders to
make tough decisions about how best to mitigate the declining
water supply. In 2021, state lawmakers passed a measure that
ostensibly banned all irrigation of so-called “non-functional
turf.” The law officially goes into effect next January, but
the Southern Nevada Water Authority has already begun working
to replace that grass with more drought-tolerant landscaping,
mostly through rebates for customers who choose to
re-landscape. A lawsuit is now challenging the Southern Nevada
Water Authority’s grass removal program in federal court. The
suit claims that the program’s enforcement is overzealous and
is potentially causing environmental harm.
About 50 gallons of water spilled into a storm drain at GKN
Aerospace in Garden Grove, and testing is underway to see if
the water contained any toxic chemicals, Orange County health
officials said Friday. Specifically, officials are searching
for any trace of methyl methacrylate, or MMA. Approximately
7,000 gallons of that same chemical were in a tank at the
facility that went into crisis in late May, creating a risk of
explosion that forced the evacuation of 50,000 people in
portions of Garden Grove, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress
and Westminster. The threat subsided on May 26 after officials
confirmed that the tank had cracked and was no longer
pressurized. The water spill occurred during a routine
effort to empty what the Orange County Health Care Agency
called an “onsite stormwater/condensation tank located in
an area unrelated to the incident site.”
Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday issued a statewide drought
emergency declaration, potentially freeing up additional state
funding for the state’s response to record-low snowpack
and prolonged warm temperatures across
Colorado. Colorado’s snowpack peaked in early March about
a month earlier than usual and at the lowest level since 1987.
Farmers, ranchers, fishing and rafting outfitters, and cities
and reservoir managers are already feeling the impacts of tight
water supplies this year on their wallets and water supply
budgets. Polis’ declaration follows recommendations Monday from
the Colorado Drought Task Force and the Water Conditions
Monitoring Committee.
