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 Phoenix area as we know it today wouldn’t exist without a
massive, gravity-defying canal that cuts through the
desert. For decades, the metro has grown on the back
of an unusual water supply. The
Central Arizona Project is a canal system that
pulls water from the Colorado River on the
state’s western border, then carries it more than 300 miles,
uphill through a series of pipes and pumps to the Phoenix and
Tucson areas. Today, water shortages threaten that
improbable system, and a series of warnings about the
canal’s future from the 1960s, largely ignored for decades,
seem prescient. … The architects of the CAP, 1960s
policymakers who championed it as a promising part of Arizona’s
future, were clear about the fact that it would not
work forever without extra help. They publicly
forecasted big drops to its flows in the 21st century and laid
out a plan to avoid them. … Now, decades later, we know
those suggestions never became reality.
… The national El Niño pattern becomes less reliable around
Northern California and Tahoe. The National Weather Service in
Sacramento says precipitation correlates
little with most El Niño and La Niña patterns in
Northern California. Southern California tends to
receive much more than average precipitation during El Niño. A
National Weather Service graphic based on seven strong El Niño
winters shows that three produced wet conditions in the
Sierra Nevada, while two were dry and two were near
normal. The analysis measures precipitation, which can
fall as either rain or snow. … The UC Berkeley Central
Sierra Snow Lab, at 6,894 feet, found similarly mixed results
when it examined snowfall during nine strong or very strong El
Niño seasons. … The very strong El Niño seasons
generally produced average to above-average
snowfall, but the lab cautioned that the sample was
small. It called the coming winter “still a toss-up.”
An all-hands-on-deck effort saved one of the state’s
most effective drinking water programs, at least for
next year. But what happens after that? The SAFER program,
which had received $130 million annually to provide emergency
water and long-term solutions for families whose wells go dry,
was set to be cut by nearly half until an unlikely
coalition of social justice, farmer and water manager groups
rallied to save it. On Oct. 8, about 40 people
gathered on the dusty bank of a Tulare County recharge basin to
celebrate that win, which resulted in one-time funding
of $171 million for SAFER in the 2027-28 fiscal year.
About $71 million of that will come from the state’s greenhouse
gas reduction fund and the rest is Proposition 4 money.
It’s salmon squeezing time at California’s newest, most
technologically-advanced fish hatchery. Standing in a
large tank filled with 54 degree water, a fish technician
passes an ultrasound wand across the abdomen of an adult female
Chinook salmon to ensure its eggs are fully developed. If
so, techs then squeeze out some eggs from the salmon’s belly
while feeling for the looseness of the remaining eggs. Each
ripe female is then transported into a separate holding tank
for spawning the following day. Male broodstock get similar
handling, except the squeezing is employed to express milk. The
males also get scanned (via a transponder tag embedded in their
abdomen) to determine which are the least genetically related
to the females. Why? Because the last thing biologists
want, especially when resurrecting a salmon run that was killed
off for more than six decades, is inbred fish.
What role will desalination play in the arid West? That topic
is one of many engaging conversations that will be
explored at our Oct. 29 Water
Summit revolving around this year’s theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western Water. Led by Central
Arizona Project’s General Manager Brenda Burman, the
panel will discuss all topics worth their salt - from
emerging desalination technologies to the latest
developments in innovative desalination programs to the
regulatory challenges and opportunities that face the
region. The Water Summit is the Foundation’s
premier event of the year and returns to Sacramento on Oct. 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West. Capacity is
limited and registration closes soon, so grab your ticket
here while they’re still available!
A self-imposed timeline for the Stratos data center in Box
Elder County has come and gone with few new details about the
project. Despite the project receiving approval from Utah’s
Military Installation Development Authority and the Box Elder
County Commission, little information has been made public
about factors that could have a major impact, including
how much water the data center will use. It’s
information Utahns have been waiting on for months. When KSL
Investigators spoke with developer Kevin O’Leary on July 1, he
said details about water demand would be included in a
water permit application expected to be publicly
available by the end of August. … [O'Leary Digital CEO
Paul] Palandjian said the application will include detailed
hydrological studies and engineering analysis for water
treatment and recycling. … Palandjian said on
Tuesday that it is complete, in final review, and will be
submitted “shortly.”
The Western U.S. is facing parallel and escalating hazards in
the form of ongoing drought and increasingly frequent
wildfires. Although the region’s ecosystems have
evolved with wildfires, the intensity and frequency of blazes
where people live and recreate remains a persistent challenge
for communities. New research examines tradeoffs in wildfire
resilience when Western communities face hard decisions about
adaptation strategies to drought, such as retiring or
converting irrigated cropland. … The research, published
October 12th in the journal Environmental Research
Letters, was co-led by Austen Lorenz and DRI’s Bea Gordon
alongside colleagues including fire managers. … The study’s
results found that cropland serves as a landscape-scale
buffer to wildfire as demonstrated across 11 Western states.
... The research has implications for
improving management of both water saving strategies
and wildfire risk reduction, which the authors suggest
should be managed jointly, rather than in isolation.
PG&E plans to start repairing a void at the base of
Cape Horn Dam by Nov. 20, according to a letter the
utility filed with federal dam-safety regulators Oct. 6. Cape
Horn Dam holds back Van Arsdale Reservoir on the Eel
River in Mendocino County. An intake 400 feet upstream
of the dam sends Eel River water into the Potter Valley
Project’s tunnels. The water runs to the Potter Valley
powerhouse, which empties into the East Fork of the
Russian River. PG&E is obligated to deliver up to
19,000 acre-feet of that water to the Potter Valley Irrigation
District, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission. The dam is also home to the Van Arsdale Fisheries
Station, where salmon and steelhead climb a fish ladder
past the dam.
Conservation and public health groups filed a lawsuit today to
force the Trump administration to develop required water
quality standards for atrazine, a cancer-linked pesticide found
at dangerous levels in thousands of U.S. waterways and in
drinking-water supplies. … Atrazine is the nation’s most
widespread pesticide water pollutant. According to a new Center
for Biological Diversity report, the pesticide contaminates 25%
of all river miles in the continental United States at levels
the Environmental Protection Agency recognizes as harmful to
aquatic life. Atrazine pollution is caused by industrial
agricultural operations using tens of millions of pounds of the
pesticide each year. Today’s lawsuit challenges the lack of
water quality protections in American waterways as required
under the Clean Water Act. The Act requires the EPA to develop
water quality standards for pollutants like atrazine. The
agency initiated but failed to complete that step in 1999.
NOAA Fisheries has received a request from the Sonoma County
Water Agency (SCWA) for authorization to take small numbers of
marine mammals incidental to Russian River Estuary management
activities in Sonoma County, California over the course of five
years from the date of issuance. NOAA Fisheries is announcing
receipt of the SCWA’s request for the development and
implementation of regulations governing the incidental taking
of marine mammals. NOAA Fisheries invites the public to provide
information, suggestions, and comments on the SCWA’s
application and request.
With an El Niño winter threatening heavy rain, the State
Auditor warns that California’s aging dams “continue to pose a
risk to public safety,” especially in the Bay Area, San
Diego, and Los Angeles areas. Lawmakers gave the
state the power to penalize dam owners that violate
safety requirements in 2017, after the Oroville
spillway failure forced the evacuation of nearly
200,000 people. Water managers have yet to use
that power, the audit found. Even if state water
managers had wielded their enforcement powers, dam owners
likely couldn’t have afforded the fixes. An audit released
Monday found 57 dams in poor or unsatisfactory
condition as of May, up from previous counts. … The
auditor applauded the water resources department’s inspection
program but blasted its failure to enforce against dam owners
who fail to meet state planning, safety or other
requirements.
… This year, as California faces what experts are calling
“Super El Niño” conditions, residents in the Delta are
preparing for the prospect of devastating
flooding. … But if predictions hold, keeping the
water out won’t be an easy task. The volume of water pushing
against the Delta’s roughly 1,100 miles of
levees — many built by hand more than a hundred years
ago — will be much higher. With warmer ocean temperatures, tide
levels and storm surges will rise, and wet, warm storm systems
will become stronger and more frequent. In a possible scenario
this year, a supercharged King Tide may coincide with
an atmospheric river, sending powerful floodwaters downhill
from the Sierra Nevada to meet a water level in the Delta up to
six feet higher than normal.
Wyoming has shelved a state-funded project to measure
water use in the Green River and Little Snake River
basins after it could not get enough data to create a
basin-wide estimate of water lost during irrigation. At a
meeting in the Cowboy State capitol of Cheyenne last month,
members of the Wyoming Water Development Commission (WWDC)
reported that difficulty gaining access to landowners’
ditches coupled with unexpected costs prevented the
contractor from securing access to all 20 irrigation ditches
the company planned to survey.
… Wyoming water managers said the
measuring efforts could one day resume as part of a coordinated
effort with Colorado, New Mexico and Utah to gauge water
consumption in each state’s portion of the
UpperColorado River Basin,
which includes the Green and Little Snake rivers in Wyoming.
California lawmakers have already made a decisive move in the
battle against golden mussels, the tiny bivalves that
are clogging waterways and pipes in the Delta. But
it’s a waiting game in Congress. … Gov. Gavin Newsom signed
the Golden Mussel Response Act, authored by Assemblymember
Rhodesia Ransom, D-Stockton. The new law could help
water agencies around the state cut through any red tape in
taking action to rid their systems of the rapidly producing
mollusks. … In Congress, the House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held a
hearing last month on the Golden Mussel Eradication and
Control Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy.
It’s yet to be determined whether the measure will pass
by the end of the legislative session, on Jan. 3. The
bill would deliver more federal funding to try to find
treatments to slow the spread of the invaders.
New satellite observations show that some global river
models struggle to account for dams, reservoirs, and other
human influences, raising questions about their
reliability for water planning. A new NASA satellite is
revealing major flaws in the computer models scientists use to
understand rivers, including waterways across the
American West. Researchers found serious modeling
errors in nearly 10% of the river stretches they studied
worldwide. But those errors often occurred in waterways that
are especially important for managing water supplies,
generating hydropower, and preparing for climate
change. The study, published in Geophysical Research
Letters, compared global river models with observations from
NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite. In some
cases, the models showed rivers behaving oppositely to what the
satellite observed.
After a year marked by drought, frost, and
rising costs, Utah farmers now look at recent rain and snowfall
as signs of hope for the year ahead. Farmers across the state
said 2026 brought a series of challenges that affected crops
and profitability, making moisture heading into winter
especially welcome. … As rain moved into Utah
and snow began falling at higher elevations, agricultural
leaders shared how the moisture provides optimism.
Snowpack plays a critical role in supplying water to
farms throughout the valleys during the growing
season. … As Utah farmers head into winter,
many hope fall moisture will lay the groundwork for a stronger,
more productive 2027.
Amid a nationwide race to develop large data centers to drive
the artificial intelligence boom, some local Colorado
governments hit pause by enacting moratoriums to research what
local regulations make sense. Public criticism concerns the
environmental and health effects of data centers, especially
hyperscale sites that provide massive computing power for
companies like Google and Amazon, and inaction from the
state government. … Recently, data centers increasingly
are built to train and run AI and cloud storage, a workload
that requires a bigger footprint and significantly more energy
and water. … A recent Gallup poll found that about 70%
of Americans oppose data center construction in their town.
Respondents were concerned about centers’ energy and water use,
which they fear could lead to higher utility bills.
… Ormat Technologies, one of the biggest geothermal
operators in the world, could begin exploratory drilling in
Surprise Valley by the end of the year. The
Reno-based company is preparing to develop up to 11 geothermal
test wells on nine well pads across a nearly 40-acre span in
the valley. … Some see it as a harmless, renewable
energy that’s safe and heavily regulated by the state. A power
plant could also kick-start the sluggish economy by bringing
jobs and families back to the area. Others worry that if a
plant comes online, it would disrupt the valley’s rural
character. Some even fear it could be a detriment to the
geothermal reservoir. … Ormat representatives fielded
questions in March from residents who worried about threats to
the groundwater from drilling and chemicals.
Rumors that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security allegedly
illegally used water from New Mexico in order to aid in
construction of its border wall circulated in
October. Specifically, people claimed that DHS
had issued a waiver to remove the state’s protections and
ownership of the water wells despite ongoing disputes with
land owners and lawsuits against the federal government’s
actions regarding its construction plans. The claim was
true. On Oct. 2, the Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne
Mullin issued a directive — available to read on the Federal
Register — that it was “necessary to waive certain laws,
regulations, and other legal requirements in order to ensure
the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the
vicinity of the international land border in the state of New
Mexico.” Included in the waiver was the entirety of the New
Mexico Water Code.
An elected board member of Silicon Valley’s largest water
agency was removed from the agency’s public meeting by security
on Tuesday after she began shouting that the other six board
members had a vendetta against her and she refused to yield the
floor. Rebecca Eisenberg, a Palo Alto attorney who is running
for a second four-year term for the Santa Clara Valley Water
District on Nov. 3, was escorted out after chairman Tony
Estremera threatened to call the police to end the disruption.
It was the second time in the past three months that Eisenberg
has been removed by security from a public meeting of the
district, a government agency based in San Jose that provides
water and flood protection to 2 million residents in Santa
Clara County. The previous incident occurred July 14 following
a similar clash.
