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.
A cold and dynamic storm is forecast to soak much of California
early this week as a strong low-pressure system drops south
from the Pacific Northwest. It’s the first major Pacific storm
of the season and expected to bring widespread rain,
heavy Sierra snow and a chance of severe
thunderstorms — along with flood risks near
recent burn scars in Southern California. From Monday morning
into Wednesday, winter storm warnings blanket the Sierra
Nevada, where 1 to 3 feet of snow is expected.
In a move to bolster local control over California’s critical
water resources, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill
709 into law. The legislation, authored by Assemblyman Jeff
Gonzalez (R-Indio), clarifies the authority of local
Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) to adapt their
management plans in response to new data and changing
conditions. The bill addresses a key component of the state’s
landmark 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
…[T]he law lacked explicit clarity on whether the legally
binding coordination agreements between these agencies could be
amended after receiving an official assessment from the state’s
Department of Water Resources (DWR).
With rising tensions over a dwindling supply of water from the
Colorado River, Wyoming and six other states have until Nov. 11
to hammer out a deal for water allocation or the federal
government will step in and settle it for them. The main point
of conflict is between the river’s Upper Basin states, Wyoming,
Colorado, Utah and New Mexico – and the Lower Basin states;
Arizona, Nevada and California. In a nutshell, the Upper
Basin states claim that the Lower Basin states are hogging
water, leaving them with too little for their own pressing
needs.
The Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency
(SVBGSA) on Thursday outlined a multi-hundred-million-dollar
plan to halt worsening seawater intrusion by treating and
pumping water back into the basin to create a protective
barrier. No vote was taken, but the presentation put a
spotlight on the project’s price tag — estimated between $700
million and $1 billion — and the unresolved question of who
pays. … Agency leaders said recent studies show
intrusion is more severe than previously understood,
threatening municipal supplies and the region’s agriculture if
left unchecked.
Several flood safety projects in the Central Valley will get
$21.5 million in state funding, about half of what proponents
had hoped for. It’s not known yet which projects that money
will pay for, though the enacting legislation states $5 million
must be spent on flood protection in the Miles and Bear creeks
in Merced County. Those creeks caused serious damage in the
2023 floods, nearly destroying the entire town of Planada. How
the remaining $16.5 million will be used is still to be decided
but McFarland Mayor Saul Ayon said work on Poso Creek
“…absolutely must be the top priority.”
The data-center economy is booming in California, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to slow it down. The governor vetoed
a bill on Saturday that would have provided more transparency
around the water usage of data centers, which regularly require
millions of gallons of fresh water to cool their computers.
… The bill, AB 93, would have required data centers
applying for business licenses to disclose to their water
supplier how much water they expected to use. For existing data
centers, it would have required a disclosure of annual water
use to renew a business license.
When fire hydrants ran dry in the first hours of the Palisades
fire, firefighters faced confusion and costly delays in getting
vital water trucks into the area to help fight the destructive
blaze, new city documents revealed. It took some time for
officials to secure so-called tender trucks and when they
finally arrived, the fire was so intense they needed escorts to
get to the front lines, according to the Los Angeles Fire
Department’s after-action report released this week.
… The revelations underscore how scarce water
supplies hampered the Palisades fire fight.
California will halve its production of steelhead trout and
chinook salmon at a major fish hatchery this fall because the
federal government hasn’t increased its funding, a state
official said Thursday. The Bureau of Reclamation is
providing $2.5 million in the current fiscal year to the state
of California to run the Nimbus Fish Hatchery on the American
River in Northern California — less than the $3.16 million
state wildlife officials estimated would be necessary to run at
full capacity.
For more than a century, a canyon along the Klamath River — its
riverbanks and striking rock formations — was closed to the
public, seen only by a few. But now, for the first time in
generations, rafts once again glide through its waters.
… For decades, reservoirs drew people to live and
recreate along the Klamath. Now, the river and its new
surroundings are being rediscovered in a different way.
… With the dams and diversion pipes gone, water now
flows freely through the canyon, revealing its distinctive
geology — visible now to anyone with a paddle.
… Jointly managed by the Resource Conservation District of
Greater San Diego County and the County of San Diego, this
community garden is the largest of its kind in the region.
Located amidst horse ranches in the city’s southernmost
stretch, the garden spans the Tijuana River Valley Regional
Park with more than 200 plots, including 10 quarter-acre farms
leased for $324 to $1,600 per year. But after news broke late
last month that the Resource Conservation District (RCD)
decided to terminate its lease, citing ongoing concerns about
health and safety in the area based on the ongoing
Tijuana River sewage crisis … gardeners are
now facing the possibility of losing their plots after a 60-day
grace period.
After seven years of planning, permits and construction,
Antioch’s new water desalination plant will provide East
County’s largest city with enough drinking water for
generations to come. It is the first desalination plant for the
Delta and only the second desalination plant in the Bay Area,
along with a plant located in Newark. … The facility
will produce up to six million gallons per day of treated
drinking water — an important boost to regional supply
reliability amid rising salinity in the San Joaquin River, the
state said in a press release.
Beneath the beauty of the San Francisco Bay, a silent toxin has
infiltrated the complex ecosystem: mercury. Mercury’s
effects are everywhere in the food chain. The toxin has
detrimental impacts across the entire ecosystem, from marine
life to land animals. A study by the San Francisco Estuary’s
Regional Monitoring Program found high mercury concentrations
in the South Bay caused lowered hatchability in the eggs of
double-crested cormorants and Forster’s terns.
Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services lifted
harmful algal bloom advisories in Humboldt County and recapped
the year’s toxic growths — with eight recorded HAB incidents
between late July and Mid-September in waters people swim and
play in. This year’s blooms are believed to have caused one
dog’s death and one possible human illness. … Health
advisories this summer at Big Lagoon (the only water body
routinely monitored for harmful toxins via the Big Lagoon
Rancheria) were issued after water was found with
concentrations exceeding state safety standards at three
separate locations on July 22.
… [W]ith Newsom’s signature on SB 765 this week, another
animal can now claim to also be an official part of the state
identity: the giant garter snake. A semi-aquatic species that
is considered one of North America‘s largest native snakes,
with a maximum length of 64 inches, the nonpoisonous striped
snake has historically thrived in natural wetlands along
California’s Central Valley, from Chico down to
Fresno. Unfortunately, the giant garter snake is becoming
a casualty of California’s brutal cycle of droughts and habitat
destruction — as much of the Central Valley converts to
agriculture or infrastructure development. … To this point,
it has managed to survive by inhabiting artificial waterways
like irrigation, canals and rice fields.
Federal scientists on Thursday announced that La Niña — the
phenomenon where Pacific Ocean waters off South America are
cooler than normal — has officially begun and is likely to
continue into winter. From social media to coffee shops and
even some TV weather reports, a common claim is that La Niña
means a dry winter is coming for California, and in years when
the opposite occurs, El Niño, a wet winter is on the
way. But don’t fret just yet about water shortages, brown
lawns, and wildfires. The reality, history shows, is that a lot
depends on where you live.
Utah’s expansion of cloud seeding is starting to provide a
return on investment, water policymakers were told Thursday.
“Statewide average is 10.4% increase in snowpack,” said Jake
Serago, an engineer with the Utah Division of Water Resources,
during a presentation to the state’s water resources board on
Thursday. … The Utah State Legislature pumped a massive
amount of cash into cloud seeding earlier this year in an
effort to help mitigate impacts from drought.
The state’s cloud seeding budget went from roughly $200,000 in
2022 to nearly $16 million this year.
Farmers, ranchers and other water users in four Western states,
including Colorado, are cutting back on water use because of
low flows through the Colorado River Basin. Less than half
the normal amount of water flowed into Lake Powell from the
Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming —
this summer. Farmers in the four-state region fallowed fields
and changed their crop plans to adapt to a smaller water
supply. The dry summer conditions coincided with high-stakes
negotiations over how the water supply for 40 million people
will be managed starting in August 2026.
One year after the final piece of concrete was removed from the
last of four dams on the Klamath River in northern California,
tribes and environmentalists say the river, the fish and other
species that depend on the Klamath’s health are recovering and
tribes continue to reclaim their lands and waters. Barry
McCovey, Yurok Tribe’s fisheries director, said during a news
conference Oct. 9 that the river is much clearer than it used
to be.
Moisture from what remains of a hurricane will hang over the
Southwest United States like a wet sponge this weekend,
bringing a chance of significant heavy rainfall and flash
flooding to some places. … Flood
watches have already been issued for parts of
southeast California and eastern Nevada, much of Arizona, the
southern half of Utah and the southwest corner of Colorado.
… An area of Arizona that includes Phoenix falls within
the bull’s-eye of a region most at risk for heavy rain and
flash flooding.
Initial arguments have wrapped up in a Ventura County
groundwater rights case – litigation that Camarillo officials
have argued could undermine the city’s water supply. A group of
agricultural property owners called the OPV
Coalition filed the lawsuit in 2021. Pending in Santa
Barbara Superior Court, it seeks to determine groundwater
rights in two basins that include areas in Oxnard,
Camarillo, Port Hueneme, Ventura and nearby unincorporated
communities. The goal was to resolve all competing demands for
groundwater in the Oxnard and Pleasant Valley basins, according
to O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, the law firm representing
the coalition.
