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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A warm, dry winter is beginning to create concerns for Aurora’s
water supply. Snowpack across Colorado continues to lag and
reservoir levels sit below what the city typically
expects at this time of year. Aurora Water says it now has
more frequent internal meetings and closer monitoring of
storage levels, runoff projections and short term weather
patterns. … Denver Water is also closely watching its
supply after a season that began weak and has stayed that way.
Other winter storm and water supply news around the West:
More than half a million young Chinook salmon are part of a new
imprinting project aimed at getting the fish back to the
Sacramento River as parts of the Northstate salmon fishery
remain closed for a third year. The Bridge Group is working to
speed up the return of salmon by placing 500,000 young Chinook
salmon into protective net pens instead of trucking them away.
The effort is a multiyear experiment designed to increase
survival and ultimately boost the number of salmon that return
to the Sacramento River. … Half of the fish will be
released into the Sacramento River, while the other half will
be trucked into San Francisco Bay.
Fears are growing in the Colorado River basin about the
prospect of painful water cuts, prolonged court battles and
other dire impacts after negotiators from seven states missed a
second key deadline Saturday to reach a conservation deal.
… Conservation groups want the states in the basin to
start using tools like conservation pools, which would offer
new incentives to voluntarily cut back and save water, and a
climate response indicator to help determine how much water
should be released from Lake Powell. Releases would be
curtailed in response to drought conditions. But those ideas
aimed at protecting the river’s health could be stalled if
states don’t come up with an agreement to implement before the
current operating guidelines at Lake Powell and Lake Mead
expire this fall.
Meghan Hertel was officially sworn in to lead the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), bringing a background
in biodiversity conservation, habitat restoration, and
science-based resource management to the role. As director,
Hertel will oversee management of California’s fish and
wildlife populations, habitat restoration efforts, and
sustainable hunting and fishing, while working with Tribes,
rural communities, landowners, and outdoor stakeholders across
the state. Hertel most recently served as deputy secretary
of biodiversity and habitat at the California Natural Resources
Agency. (Hertel is a graduate of the Water Education
Foundation’s California Water Leaders
program).
The infrastructure of water control looms large across the
history of the American West. Western rivers and watersheds
have long been and remain fundamental sites of contest and
power, hope and disappointment. The fifth season of Western
Edition — the podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on
California and the West (ICW) — digs into the complex history
of how humans dammed, diverted, and exploited water resources
in the region across several hundred years. … Across its
six episodes, the new season invites us all to consider if we
are due for a paradigm shift in how we think about our most
precious resource.
California has taken a further step to strengthen its water
resilience strategy by accelerating the authorization of
stormwater capture and groundwater recharge projects ahead of
the current wet season. The State Water Resources Control Board
has approved nine temporary groundwater recharge permits,
allowing local agencies to store significant volumes of excess
surface water underground during wet periods. Approved just
before a new round of winter storms reached the state, the
permits authorize the recharge of nearly 43,000 acre-feet of
water across several major watersheds.
California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW)
today announced the availability of grant funding to help
prevent the further spread of quagga and zebra mussels that
threaten California’s waterways and cause negative impacts to
recreational boating, fishing and the ecosystem. Funded by the
California Mussel Fee Sticker (also known as the Quagga
Sticker), the Quagga and Zebra (QZ) Mussel Infestation
Prevention Grant Program expects to award up to $2 million
across eligible applicants. Applications open Monday, March 9,
and must be received by Friday, April 17, 2026, by 5 p.m. PDT.
San Diego will pay more than $6 million to a group of insurance
companies that paid out property owners’ claims from January
2024 floods, after the City Council granted final approval
Tuesday to a settlement. It’s the first major settlement as the
city litigates dozens of lawsuits over flooding that destroyed
homes and displaced residents, most in the Chollas Creek
watershed. Separately from the insurers, thousands of San
Diegans have sued the city, saying it caused the flooding and
damage by failing to maintain its stormwater system. City
lawyers have filed cross-complaints against some of them. Under
the settlement, 17 insurance carriers in four subrogation
lawsuits will get a total of $6,326,330.75 from the city.
A new, modernized water technology classroom is in final
planning stages for the Santiago Canyon College campus that
will feature state-of-the-art equipment to help train students
for well-paying careers in water districts throughout Orange
County and beyond. … The new lab will enhance SCC’s
substantial Water and Wastewater Technology
program. Students completing classes offered by the
department are prepared to take and pass state certification
exams, which can lead directly to employment with regional
utilities and water districts such as the Orange County Water
District.
Water has been a godlike force determining life and death for
centuries across Mexico’s arid Baja California Peninsula. And
today, climate stressors, a boom in tourism, and urban growth
are making water an extra precious resource in Mexico’s driest
state. … In many ways, Baja offers an extreme snapshot
of a globally intensifying aridification crisis, where
landscapes are permanently drying up. But the state’s situation
also offers an opportunity: If an arid, fast-growing peninsula
can stabilize its water supply, it could share those lessons
across the country – and even beyond Mexico.
… Frogs have endured four mass extinctions, evolving
repeatedly to survive a changing planet. But now, facing a
fast-moving fungal pandemic that has become the most
devastating infectious disease in vertebrate history …
[researchers] say they need our help. … In Northern
California’s Cascade Mountains, froglets lie with their legs
outstretched in shallow baths — a group of unlikely patients in
a fight for survival. These are Cascades
frogs. … In 2012, [Washington State Associate
Professor Jonah] Piovia-Scott’s team tested baths with diluted
itraconazole, a common antifungal agent, and found they reduced
chytrid infections and improved survival in wild populations of
metamorphosed tadpoles. … The long-term objective is to reach
a point where frogs can survive on their own — without constant
human intervention.
A long-awaited Bay-Delta Plan is on track to be ready for
adoption this year, with possible refinements still under
review — but with no signs of major changes to the proposal as
released in December. Eric Oppenheimer, executive director of
the State Water Board, on Friday told The Sacramento Bee that
the board’s staff is reviewing thousands of public comments,
evaluating whether any updates to the proposed plan and
supporting environmental analysis are needed before bringing it
to the board for a final decision. “So far, based on what
we’ve seen … what we’ll be putting out is refinement to the
basin plan amendment language,” Oppenheimer said. … The
proposed Bay-Delta Plan has drawn divided reactions from
conservation groups and regional water agencies, with last
month’s three-day hearing underscoring those tensions.
Rainy conditions will pick up again across Northern California
this week, starting Monday night and lasting through Wednesday
morning. … The incoming rain will fall from a large
atmospheric river storm that will impact areas of Northern
California, including high elevations in the Sierra Nevada,
with its newly bolstered snowpack. … The Sierra snowpack has
the capacity to soak up the rain that does fall, which means
less risk of flooding. … Despite all the snow from last
week, much of the Sierra snowpack is still lower than average.
Swain said that while last week’s snowstorms helped, much of
the Western U.S. is starved for snow.
Other water supply and snowpack news around the West:
The Interior Department, which is in charge of the nation’s
public lands and waters, has completed a major scaling back of
its environmental regulations. The department, which also
oversees activities including drilling and mining on the
nation’s lands and in its waters, has rescinded more than 80
percent of its previous environmental regulations under the
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Interior said in a
press release that its actions would be aimed at cutting down
delays and costs for energy, minerals, livestock grazing,
infrastructure, wildfire mitigation, water
projects and conservation efforts. … Critics
have argued that NEPA reviews are time-consuming and slow down
the development of the nation’s energy and infrastructure.
Supporters of robust reviews argue they are an important
guardrail for health and the environment.
As artificial intelligence drives the data center construction
boom, building one in Denver is poised to get more complicated
after Mayor Mike Johnston and members of the Denver City
Council announced plans to impose a moratorium on new
facilities. Under the plan, the city will review additional
data-center-specific regulations targeting “responsible land,
energy, and water use.” … “These (data center) projects
present new and complex issues that argue for better alignment
between Colorado’s economic development, energy, and water
strategies, particularly given the obvious impacts of
water scarcity in our region driven by climate
change,” Denver Water CEO and Manager Alan Salazar
said in a statement to The Denver Gazette.
Following the discovery of invasive zebra mussels in the
Colorado River last year, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) is
working hard to prevent further contamination across the
state. Part of that is an ongoing effort in boat
inspections to prevent the spread of invasive aquatic species
including both zebra and quagga mussels. In 2025, CPW conducted
more than 438,000 such inspections at various bodies of water.
Officials say early detection of the invasive species was made
possible by increased staffing and upgraded lab facilities, but
the discovery on the Western Slope still set off alarm bells
because once adults are present in a reproductive state, they
have the ability to rapidly multiply and clog
infrastructure.
The North Fork of Matilija Creek and Bear Creek both run
through Wheeler Gorge Campground in the Los Padres National
Forest. … Four vehicle crossings through the campground
blocked endangered Southern California Steelhead from migrating
upstream as part of their ocean-to-freshwater stream spawning
process. A just-completed project that’s been in the works for
decades has removed the barriers. … It gives the migrating
steelhead access to an additional 13 miles of streams they
couldn’t reach for decades due to the barricades. There was
also a population of steelhead trout that was trapped, living
in creeks above the campground, which will now be able to
migrate south.
Yuba Water Agency and state officials reported encouraging
water-quality test results following the large pipe rupture at
the New Colgate Powerhouse in Yuba County. In a Friday news
release, the agency said samples collected downstream in the
Yuba River and at Englebright Lake showed no “concerning
results.” The initial testing found no detections of industrial
or petroleum-related contaminants, specifically polychlorinated
biphenyls, petroleum hydrocarbons and volatile organic
compounds, the agency said, adding that Yuba Water has been
taking samples from the Yuba River every day since the morning
after the rupture.
California State Parks is preparing a new general plan
for the Salton Sea State Recreation Area and is inviting
the public to participate in the process through a series of
workshops this month. … The general plan will establish
a long-term vision for the park, which has changed
significantly since the park was designated as a state
recreation area in 1963. … Declining water levels have
reshaped recreation opportunities at the park and impacted the
park’s ecosystem, leading to death of wildlife throughout the
past two decades. By creating a new general plan, California
State Parks is hoping to increase opportunities for land-based
recreation.
The Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear from oil
and gas companies trying to block lawsuits seeking to hold the
industry liable for billions of dollars in damage linked to
climate change. The conservative-majority court agreed to take
up a case from Boulder, Colorado. … Governments around the
country have sought damages totaling billions of dollars,
arguing it’s necessary to help pay for rebuilding after
wildfires, rising sea levels and severe storms
worsened by climate change. The lawsuits come amid a wave of
legal actions in California, Hawaii and New
Jersey and worldwide seeking to leverage action through the
courts. The case out of Boulder County will likely have
implications for other lawsuits.
