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.
… As California entered the 20th century, massive public
works projects surfaced to encourage economic expansion and
transformation, notably in Southern California. Mid-century
also saw arguably the state’s last truly transformative public
works project, the California Water Plan. … The last
decades of the 20th Century and the first decades of the 21st
have been a period of stasis in public works. Projects such as
the tunnel to carry water under the Delta and the Sites
Reservoir to divert and store high flows on the Sacramento
River have kicked around for decades. … Looking back,
it’s amazing that the 363-mile Erie Canal could have been dug
by hand in just eight years, or that the two San Francisco
bridges were erected in just a few years. –Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors recently
discussed dueling resolutions on PG&E’s position in the
decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project’s dams.
… Two different non-binding resolutions were discussed
during the board’s Oct. 21 meeting regarding the
decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project. After hours of
tense discussion and public comment, the board decided to move
forward with a resolution sponsored by Supervisor Ted Williams,
placing it on the consent calendar for the board’s next meeting
on Nov. 4.
Cambria’s embattled, delayed water reclamation facility took a
major step forward this month after years spent in permit
limbo. … The CSD’s [Community Services District's]
water-reclamation concept and plant, which treat effluent and
brackish water and reinject it into the aquifer, have been a
lightning rod since they were first proposed. Some said from
the outset that it wouldn’t work. Others alleged it would cost
way too much for such a small community of about 6,000 people.
And some environmentalists decried its potential impact on the
sensitive habitat near San Simeon Creek, where the plant is
located.
What if San Diego blanketed land, reservoirs and buildings its
Public Utilities Department owned with solar and used the money
it made off that power to subsidize skyrocketing water rates
for poorer people? That’s the idea San Diego City
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera pitched during an uncomfortable
series of debates over raising water rates on San Diegans by 63
percent over the next four years. The Public Utilities
department owns 42,550 acres of land – about the size of
Washington D.C. It could, in theory, lease that land out to
solar developers and help bring down water rates, fix dams or
otherwise prop-up a city department key to ensuring water is
treated and distributed to 1.4 million people.
Oroville city leaders are actively working to combat illegal
dumping along the Feather River by considering a new
designation for the area. Councilmember Shawn Webber has
proposed transforming the river stretch between Table Mountain
Bridge and the Highway 70 Bridge into a city park. However, the
proposal has evolved with growing support for establishing the
area as a wildlife refuge, primarily to protect the sensitive
salmon population that uses this section of the river for
spawning after their journey from the Pacific Ocean.
Water rates for San Diegans will rise 14.7% next year and 14.5%
the following year after the San Diego City Council today
passed an amended water and wastewater rate hike. A staff
proposal before the council was to increase water rates by 63%
through 2029 and wastewater rates by 31% in the same period.
The much- reduced, two-year plan passed by a 5-4 majority
Tuesday was proposed by Councilman Stephen Whitburn.
… The justification for the increase was largely based
on increasing water costs. San Diego’s rates remain below the
county average.
A new kind of gold rush is sweeping the West, and this time the
prize isn’t minerals but megawatts. From Phoenix to Colorado’s
Front Range, data centers are arriving with outsize demands for
power and water. In a new report, the regional environmental
advocacy group Western Resource Advocates (WRA) warns that
without stronger guardrails, the financial and environmental
costs could fall on everyday households. … Where the
potential water needed for new data centers can be estimated,
the scale is sobering. In Nevada, for example, currently
proposed new data centers will consume an estimated 4.5 billion
gallons of water in 2030, if built with conventional
cooling.
After nearly 90 years, Lahontan cutthroat trout have made a
historic return to Lake Tahoe. This milestone is part of a
long-term effort led by the Nevada Department of
Wildlife to restore this native species,
which disappeared from the lake in 1938 due to overfishing,
habitat destruction, and the introduction of non-native
species. In 2014, NDOW began studying non-native rainbow trout
in Lake Tahoe to identify suitable spawning areas for the
Lahontan cutthroat trout. … Over the past several years,
Lahontan cutthroat trout have been gradually reintroduced, with
100,000 fish stocked in Lake Tahoe this year alone.
It now appears San Benito County Water District customers could
be on the hook for more than $730,000—or its roughly equivalent
in stored water under a proposed deal—in sunk costs for the
ill-fated, multibillion-dollar Pacheco Reservoir Expansion
Project. … On Oct. 29, the county water district board
of directors is set to consider a proposal to cover the
district’s share of environmental review costs through December
2021, set at 2.5%, for the $3.2 billion Pacheco expansion,
which was dropped by the Santa Clara Valley Water District last
month.
Just months after the federal government closed on a land
exchange with a billionaire, a proposal to institute a permit
system on the Blue River has ignited a conversation about river
access and fishery health in Colorado. … Blue Valley
Ranch, a more than 2,000-acre property owned by billionaire
Paul Tudor Jones II, and the nonprofit Friends of the Lower
Blue River say a permit system is necessary to manage the
negative impacts of increasing fishing pressure. … As
part of the exchange, the ranch has agreed to cover the costs
of river restoration work for a three-quarter-mile stretch of
the Blue River near its confluence with the Colorado
River. … Anglers who opposed the land swap because
they felt it was tilted toward private interests, said they see
the proposed permit system as the continuation of an effort by
a landowner to restrict public access to the river.
A publicly traded company announced Tuesday that it has secured
$51 million in financing from Lytton Rancheria of California,
marking the first tribal investment in the Mojave Groundwater
Bank, a water supply and groundwater storage project planned as
the largest groundwater bank in the Southwest. Cadiz Inc., a
Los Angeles-based water solutions company, reported it is
raising the capital through Mojave Water Infrastructure Company
LLC, a special-purpose entity formed to construct, own and
operate the project. The federally recognized tribe’s
investment represents the first tranche of approximately $450
million in total equity capital the company is raising for the
project.
The board of the L.A. Department of Water and Power voted
Tuesday to nearly double the amount of water it recycles for
drinking at the Donald C. Tillman Wastewater Treatment Plant in
Van Nuys. The city has been retrofitting one of its
wastewater treatment plants in Van Nuys to recycle water for
drinking in order to boost water supplies in the face of
long-term water shortages driven by climate change and overuse.
Now, if approved by City Council, the plant will be able to
recycle water to its full capacity, producing enough water for
a half-million Angelenos as soon as 2028.
There’s good news for farmers and ranchers in the northern
Rockies, with optimistic weather predictions for expected
precipitation this winter. And, the Climate Prediction Center
continued issuing forecasts during the government shutdown with
the official release of their early winter weather outlook on
Oct. 16, 2025. … Heavy precipitation is expected across
coastal portions of southern Oregon and Washington into
northern California. … As for precipitation [in
Colorado], there is an equal chance of below, near or above
normal precipitation through the winter months, except for a
very small sliver in southwest Colorado of below normal.
San Joaquin County is launching a task force to combat the
spread of golden mussels, an invasive species threatening the
local ecosystem and infrastructure, with the help of $20
million in state funding. Deep beneath the
Delta hides a threat to the ecosystem, as
golden mussels, discovered in the area for the first time last
year, are known for clogging pipes and harming native species.
… The new funding aims to establish infrastructure for
education, tagging, and inspections.
California law requires the Department of Water Resources (DWR)
to create, promulgate, and update every five years the
California Water Plan (Plan). The Plan is intended to provide a
comprehensive strategy for the sustainable management and
stewardship of California’s water resources. However, the Plan
has not had significant revisions responsive to increasing
climate unpredictability. On October 1, 2025, Governor Newsom
signed Senate Bill (SB) 72 into law, significantly expanding
the requirements of the Plan to provide a more forward-looking,
actionable roadmap to secure water resources across the state.
The City Council received an update Tuesday on a two-year
feasibility study proposing to transform 250 acres of
underutilized parkland along the Santa Ana River into a
“vibrant public realm”—building on a vision first conceived
more than 20 years ago to “put the river back in Riverside.”
… The California State Coastal Conservancy supported the
feasibility study, conducted by Economic Consultants Oregon,
Ltd. under a $199,335 contract Council approved in October
2023. The draft study is now available online for
public comment before finalization.
The El Dorado Water Agency (EDWA) held its first-ever regional
plenary on Thursday, October 23 to hear from water experts in
Tahoe about what the issues are and what can be done to solve
them. … One of the major points of discussion was
tetrachloroethylene pollution, also called PCE pollution, which
affected wells at the Y in past years, and continues to affect
other systems through a 400-yard plume. While the drinking
water in Tahoe is safe, controlling and preventing PCE
contamination is something that water suppliers are
prioritizing.
… They’re technically called beaver dam analogues — since
with their complex patterns of sticks and mud, they’re supposed
to imitate real beaver dams. … [F]ake beaver dams aren’t
meant to last forever. They’ll be maintained annually for about
five years (unless real beavers take over earlier), but the
result when established in the right place can be remarkable,
restoring and rejuvenating wetlands, replenishing the water
table, keeping water higher up in systems longer in the year,
and providing habitat for everything from insects, frogs and
toads to elk and moose, and yes, even beavers.
The Merced River flows for 145 miles, from the spectacular
beauty of Yosemite Valley all the way to Hills Ferry west of
Livingston, where the Merced meets the San Joaquin. But how and
when did the river did it get its name? Today on KVPR’s Central
Valley Roots we look back at the names that have graced this
waterway. We have Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga to
credit for giving us the river’s modern name, and we’ll get to
that in a moment. But this story begins much earlier.
Nevada’s growing reliance on groundwater for irrigation and
drinking water has led to significant declines in thousands of
wells across the state, according to a recent study. The study,
published in Hydrological Process, analyzed data from about
6,500 wells across Nevada and found that about 40% had
significant declines over the last three decades amid
intensifying drought and rising water demand – a
decline that is expected to put groundwater dependent
ecosystems in the state at serious risk.
