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.
Invasive golden mussels have now been found in the Wheeler
Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District system, Engineer Manager
Sheridan Nicholas reported at the board’s Jan. 14 meeting. This
was the first detection for the district. … Nicholas
told the board that he had informed the Kern County Water
Agency about the mussel discoveries and urged that board to
create a region-wide task force as many districts are finding
the equipment- and pipe-clogging critters but fighting it
individually. At the Kern County Water Agency’s Jan. 22
meeting, staff confirmed they are creating a task force to
include local water districts as well as others that receive
water through the Central Valley Project that extends to
Millerton Lake.
Drought-plagued Arizona could see state-funded drones spraying
microscopic silver iodide particles into mountain clouds to
boost snowfall if proponents get their way. The state
Legislature is considering allowing the use of money earmarked
for boosting rural water supplies to pay for “cloud seeding”
operations to increase precipitation in the state’s high
country. But the proposal sponsored by Rep. Gail Griffin,
R-Hereford, may have a tough road ahead. That’s because even
some majority Republicans on the committee that heard her
proposal expressed concern about the safety and efficacy of
cloud seeding. It passed Griffin’s committee on Jan. 13 with a
bare majority.
The federal government awarded a $1.1 million contract to an
Ohio company to conduct a pilot project deploying
a technology to kill bacteria and eliminate odors in the
sewage-tainted Tijuana River. It failed, in large part because
the company had never used the technology in an environment
with such a large amount of solid waste pollution and with
unpredictable changes in water flow. The company, Greenwater
Services, uses a nanobubble ozone technology (NBOT) primarily
to attack harmful algae blooms in slow-moving or still water,
such as lakes and ponds. The project at the international
border showed the company’s equipment was ill-prepared for the
conditions that plague the region.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has taken a major step to stabilize
water use in the state’s rural desert, where a Saudi-owned
company established a massive farming operation more than a
decade ago. During her State of the State Address earlier this
month, Hobbs announced she was placing the Saudi alfalfa farm
within an “active management area,” a technical designation
that allows Arizona to slow and possibly even reverse the
growth of groundwater use in a remote desert area of western
Arizona. … In the short term, the designation by itself
cannot reduce the amount of water being used by foreign
megafarms, but it can at least stop new ones from coming in—and
current ones from expanding their operations—in addition to
encouraging farms to reduce their withdrawals.
One of the Bay Area’s most expensive enclaves relies on a
two-lane road that will be covered by rising seas in the coming
decades. … A recent Marin County sea level rise
report for Stinson Beach recommended the road, which is
county-owned, be raised soon, because it’s often impassable
during annual king tides now and is expected to flood during
major storms by around 2050, when storm surge swells the
lagoon, and during monthly high tides by around 2060 to 2075.
… The issue is harder to ignore after record high tides
and flooding hit Marin in early January, probably exacerbated
by sea level rise. It’s part of a broader debate across the Bay
Area over who will pay to shore up public infrastructure.
The Olivenhain Municipal Water District needs to suspend its
water fluoridation program for up to 90 days to look into
employee safety concerns, a majority of the district’s board
decided Wednesday. While the topic of putting fluoride into
drinking water has been a hot-button political issue of late
and President Trump’s Health & Human Services Secretary Robert
F. Kennedy Jr. is encouraging states to ban fluoride in
drinking water contending it’s a toxic substance, OMWD board
member Christy Guerin said the board’s action Wednesday wasn’t
political. Instead, it was in response to safety concerns
related to handling of the huge fluoride bags, said Guerin, a
former Encinitas mayor and formerly worked as a district
director for former U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad.
… Ephemeral waterways are now under threat. A new rule
proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration would strip
Clean Water Act (CWA) protections from nearly all ephemeral
waters in America. … Removing CWA protections will
imperil Southwestern water as we know it. Ephemeral waterways
make up 81 percent of all streams in the Southwest, supporting
basins from the humblest pool to the grandest reservoir. In
addition to fundamental drinking resource concerns, the
proposed rule threatens our most special places. The crown
jewels of Nevada nature, including Ash Meadows and Lake Tahoe,
rely on ephemeral hydrologic networks. –Written by Dexter Lim, a second-year Juris Doctor
candidate at UC Berkeley; Mason Voehl, executive director of
Amargosa Conservancy; and Olivia Tanager, director for the
Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club.
… Across some of the most productive farmland in the United
States, a nutrient called phosphorus has been accumulating in
the soil for decades, at levels far beyond what crops actually
require. … Unlike nitrogen, which easily escapes from
soil into the air or groundwater, phosphorus sticks to soil
particles. Once it’s added, it tends to remain in place. That
trait made phosphorus seem environmentally
benign. However, phosphorus can still be carried off
fields when rain or irrigation water erodes phosphorus-rich
soil, or some of the built-up phosphorus dissolves into
runoff. Years of application have led to something no one
initially planned for: accumulation.
Climate change increases risks to the operations and financial
reliability of drinking water utilities across the United
States. Here we develop a comparative climate risk index that
includes hazard, vulnerability, and exposure components for
1455 medium and large municipal US drinking water utilities. We
find that 67 million customers are serviced by utilities with
higher climate risk. Drinking water utilities in the Western US
have higher risk due to expected large changes in climate
hazards, while utilities in the Northeast and Midwest have
higher risk due to existing vulnerabilities and exposure. We
use this climate risk index, along with an analysis of
municipal bond official statements, to identify utilities in
need of climate adaptation and resilience planning.
With Western states deadlocked in negotiations over how to cut
water use along the Colorado River, the Trump administration
has called in the governors of seven states to Washington to
try to hash out a consensus. The governors of at least four —
Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming — say
they’ll attend the meeting next week led by Interior Secretary
Doug Burgum, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom
won’t. Newsom is “unable to attend but plans to send
key representatives of his administration to attend in his
place,” spokesperson Anthony Martinez said in an email.
… As the negotiations remain at an impasse, the
possibility of the states suing one another is increasing.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is stepping into a labor dispute that could
threaten the timeline of one of his flagship water projects:
the planned Sites Reservoir north of Sacramento. Newsom
(D) wrote to the Sites Project Authority Board of Directors on
Friday expressing concern that the board’s choice to finalize a
contract with Barnard Construction Co. to build the roughly
$6.8 billion reservoir was alienating unions. “The
Construction Manager you select must ensure that the project’s
ambitious timetable is not disrupted by the potential for labor
unrest,” Newsom wrote. … Sites Reservoir would be the
first major new reservoir built in California in decades. The
project would divert water from the Sacramento River into an
offstream reservoir capable of holding up to 1.5 million
acre-feet of water.
Wyoming’s top water managers are warning that a significant
drawdown of Flaming Gorge Reservoir this spring is likely
imminent due to low snowpack and generally dry conditions
throughout the seven-state Colorado River
Basin region. Wyoming is a headwaters of the Colorado
River system, mostly via the Green River, which feeds Flaming
Gorge. As of Jan. 8, snow cover across the West was at its
lowest since 2001. … Flaming Gorge, which straddles the
Wyoming-Utah border, is one of the key reservoirs in the
Colorado River system that water managers turn to for extra
releases when there’s a projected shortage — primarily to
ensure operational water levels at Lake
Powell.
Nearly one million young salmon are being released this week
into flooded rice fields near the Yolo Bypass. The project is a
partnership with stakeholders from the Bridge Group and
the Coleman National Fish Hatchery. The juvenile fish,
called salmon fry, will spend several weeks growing in the
shallow fields. After that, they will swim into the Sacramento
River and begin their trip to the Pacific Ocean. The
effort is based on scientific research showing flooded rice
fields can help young Chinook salmon grow and survive.
The South Fork Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA)
approved a pumping allocation during a Jan. 15 board meeting.
The policy will allow Lemoore-area pumpers to extract a base
amount of .86 acre feet per acre of land. “I think it’s a
necessary evil, but it scares me and it’s going to be real
expensive and I don’t know how long it’s going to last. I don’t
think it’s sustainable for the farmer. It might be sustainable
for the groundwater, but it’s not sustainable for the farmer,”
Board member Ceil Howe said before the vote. The pumping
allocation policy is just one piece of the puzzle to ensure
that the GSA complies with the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA), which aims to have local
entities bring aquifers into balance by 2040.
The State Water Resources Control Board unanimously adopted an
order extending its approval of the landmark Lower Yuba River
Accord for another 25 years. Specifically, the board approved
Yuba Water Agency’s petition for a long-term extension of the
points of diversion and places of use associated with
the Lower Yuba River Accord through 2050.
… Since the mid-2000s, the Yuba Accord has advanced a
broad suite of important benefits [including]:
… science-based minimum instream flows to protect
spring-run Chinook salmon and steelhead trout … a
reliable source of water available to improve statewide water
supplies … a reliable source of supply to ensure local
agricultural needs can be met, while also maintaining
hydropower production.
The Delta Science Program leads the development of the Delta
Science Plan, a shared framework that provides vision,
principles, and approaches for better coordinating science in
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and more effectively
communicating the outcomes of science activities and their
management implications to policymakers. … The due date for
public comments on the draft 2026 Delta Science
Plan has been extended until January 30,
2026, and we encourage community feedback to help
shape its final form.
San Diego County leaders announced Thursday they have a plan to
help reduce toxic sewage pollution in the Tijuana River Valley
and measure its impact on residents’ health. At a news
conference from the river valley, Supervisors Paloma Aguirre
and Terra Lawson-Remer said they want the county to use
reserves typically set aside for emergencies for two
initiatives they estimate would cost $4.75 million. The
proposal to use rainy-day funds for Tijuana River sewage
efforts is the latest Aguirre has made this week. On Tuesday,
she suggested using $19.25 million to buy more air purifiers
for residents and air monitors for the county to record
real-time data of hydrogen sulfide levels and to run a
treatment pilot program that would improve the river water’s
conditions.
The story of California begins with water. Without the mass
import of the wet stuff from parts north and east, much of
Southern and Central California would be barely inhabitable. No
one tells the story of water in California’s heartland in more
detail, or with more tenacity, than Lois
Henry. She’s a former Bakersfield Californian
columnist who six years ago launched
SJVWater.org. Mega-farmers, environmentalists
and everyday folk read her site to learn about arcane water
district policies, the effect of those policies on farmland and
fish and for insights on the political intrigue that powers the
San Joaquin Valley.
Water-related violence has almost doubled since 2022 and little
is being done to understand and address the trend and prevent
new and escalating risks, experts have said. There were 419
incidents of water-related violence recorded in 2024, up from
235 in 2022, according to the Pacific Institute. … [Pacific
Institute Co-Founder Peter] Gleick said: “The Colorado
River and the Rio Grande in the US have become
increasingly politically contentious in recent years. There are
treaties dating back to 1944 that govern both rivers, requiring
the US to deliver Colorado River water to Mexico and Mexico to
deliver Rio Grande water to the US. But as border politics
ramped up under the Trump administration, these issues became
more contentious. Several people were killed in Mexico during a
protest at a dam used to deliver water to the US, after farmers
objected to the releases.”
The No Desert Data Center Coalition filed a lawsuit last week
against Pima County in southern Arizona for approving a land
sale and rezoning request from a data center developer — just
the latest move in the battle over data centers amid
water concerns in Arizona. … Local
opposition to data centers in Tucson, a Democratic stronghold,
Marana, a conservative-leaning district, and Chandler, a
Republican suburb, suggests bipartisan consensus over concerns
of water scarcity and rising energy costs. … Beale
Infrastructure, the data center developer, said the data
centers will be air-cooled instead of using millions of gallons
of water to “wash” the heat away from servers. But the
trade-off in this case is a massive energy draw in an already
strained region.
