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 Interim Director Doug Beeman.
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This Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public
Works (EPW) will hold a confirmation hearing for a handful of
EPA appointees, including prospective Assistant Administrator
for Water, Jessica Kramer. Kramer has previous experience
at EPA, having served as policy counsel for the Office of Water
during President Trump’s first term. She has since served as a
deputy secretary in the Florida Department of Environmental
Protection and as water counsel for the current EPW Chair, Sen.
Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Kramer was nominated in
mid-February, following the confirmation of EPA Administrator
Lee Zeldin. She has been an advisor in EPA’s Water Office since
her nomination, but will not take on official duties as
Assistant Administrator for Water until she is confirmed by the
full Senate.
Go beyond the stream of recent national headlines and gain a
deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved across
California during our Water 101 Workshop on April
10. Attendees at the Water 101 workshop have the
option of participating in a daylong ‘watershed’ journey that
will take you from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, along
the American River and into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to
learn about forest health, reservoir operations, habitat
restoration, groundwater recharge, Delta water quality and
more. Don’t miss a once-a-year opportunity from the
only organization in California providing comprehensive,
unbiased information about water resources across the
West. See the agenda, what past attendees
say and learn how to sign up.
The Environmental Defense Fund has filed a second lawsuit
seeking to force more agencies to divulge details about the
Trump administration’s efforts to revoke a cornerstone of U.S.
climate policy. The lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia calls on the
Interior Department, NOAA and the White House Council on
Environmental Quality to release information related to the
administration’s plans to strike down the 2009 endangerment
finding, which gives agencies authority to regulate greenhouse
gas emissions. EDF said the latest lawsuit comes after the
three agencies failed to respond to a Freedom of Information
Act request — a situation the lawsuit said is “completely
lacking in transparency, in contrast with the extensive public
process that EPA undertook to develop and adopt the
endangerment finding.”
As Arizona continues to over pump groundwater across the state,
lawmakers advanced four measures Tuesday that would ease
pumping regulations in active groundwater management
areas. Two of the bills approved by the Senate Natural
Resources Committee Tuesday would allow farmers to irrigate
land not already included in an active management area
irrigation right if the land meets certain criteria. The
Groundwater Management Act of 1980 established five initial
active management areas in Arizona — the cities of Phoenix,
Prescott and Tucson, as well as Santa Cruz and Pinal counties —
in which groundwater pumping is recorded and regulated, as
opposed to pumping being entirely unregulated in other parts of
the state.
One in 8 Californians now live in places at risk for the kinds
of devastating wildfires that tore through Los Angeles this
winter, according to a Washington Post analysis of state fire
maps released Monday. The maps, drawn by Cal Fire, the state’s
forestry and fire protection agency, reveal the threat from
wildfire is greater than previous state estimates showed. They
reflect the effects of soaring temperatures on California,
where hotter, drier weather has primed a landscape filled with
vast acres of forest and shrubland for explosive fires — even
in winter, during what should be the state’s rainy
season. When factoring in areas where state and local
firefighters are responsible for fighting blazes, the maps show
there are now about 5.1 million people living in the two
highest fire severity zones in the state, The Post found.
The future of the Colorado River Basin was the hot topic for
several western Colorado entities on Monday. The Colorado Basin
Roundtable is a group of stakeholders who work together to
protect the Colorado River Basin. According to the group, the
basin is among the largest watersheds in the state, covering
close to ten thousand square miles. JJ Fletcher, Mesa County
commissioner, says the river basin is slightly above its normal
capacity. “We’re set in pretty good shape but we see other
areas to the west and also further west, we see that it’s in a
little more drought conditions versus where we’re at at the
central mountains. The Grand Mesa is a little below normal as
well,” says Fletcher.
An initiative led by faculty from seven top research
universities — six of which are in California — aims to
accelerate the deployment of solar arrays over the state’s
extensive canal network. According to a 2021 UC Merced study
published in Nature Sustainability, covering large sections of
the state’s 4,000 miles of canals with solar panels could help
conserve water, reduce air pollution, save land and generate
clean energy using existing land and infrastructure. The
California Solar Canal Initiative (CSCI) research project aims
to accelerate the deployment of solar canals across the state
by equipping government agencies, utilities, community members
and other interested parties with data on optimal locations and
identifying willing host communities.
Alta Irrigation District has purchased 80 acres to develop the
London West Pond recharge basin. The recharge basin will
be located at Ave. 384 and Rd. 56 next to the existing London
Pond recharge site. … Both groundwater recharge basins
will help Alta divert more surface water and boost its
groundwater sustainability efforts to comply with the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Alta said the
basins will increase the available water supply during dry
years for growers and also support nearby residents who are
reliant on groundwater for drinking water.
Wetlands and ephemeral streams provide a wide variety of
benefits to people and wildlife, from flood protection for
local communities, to preventing pollutants from entering the
water supply, to breeding grounds for endangered bird species.
Wetlands can also act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere. … But all that changed with a
May 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court called Sackett v. The
Environmental Protection Agency, which rewrote the legal
definition of wetlands and suddenly left many of these bodies
of water unprotected, according to a new study from the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
A clearer path forward could be emerging in the tiny Tulare
County community of East Orosi, which has long struggled with
contaminated drinking water, a decrepit sewer system and
dysfunction among elected leaders. The state Water Resources
Control Board will be in town Thursday, April 17 to explain why
it proposes that the community’s sewer system be run by a new
administrator, the Tulare County Resource Management Agency
(RMA). … The proposed sewer administration change is a result
of Assembly Bill 805, authored by Dr. Joaquin Arambula
(D-Fresno) and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in
September in the backyard of an East Orosi resident. The
bill authorizes the state Water Board to intervene when a sewer
service provider does not meet regulatory standards or fails to
maintain the technical, managerial and financial capacity
needed to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. The Water Board can
then contract with a new administrator.
A new lawsuit alleges Valley Water CEO Rick
Callender pushed to have his agency sponsor the NAACP
California-Hawaii State Conference — a private group he
personally oversees — with public dollars. The conflict of
interest claim comes from a civil complaint filed March 20 by
Salena Pryor, an NAACP colleague who worked under Callender in
his capacity as the statewide NAACP chapter president. She
accuses Callender of demeaning and undermining her on numerous
occasions while she helped coordinate NAACP events, from
distressing late-night video calls to public embarrassment. It
comes as Callender is on administrative leave from Valley Water
— which cares for Santa Clara County’s streams, flood
protection and wholesale water supply — while the agency
investigates an employee’s misconduct complaint against him.
At Tuesday morning’s Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
meeting, the supervisors spent 27 minutes taking public comment
and discussing a request from 5th District Supervisor Ted
Williams to provide a letter of support for state
Assemblymember Chris Rogers’ Assembly Bill 263. AB 263,
sponsored by the Karuk Tribe and supported by California
Coastkeeper Alliance, would extend emergency water flow
regulations to the Scott and Shasta river watersheds. Both
rivers are tributaries of the Klamath River and flow through
Siskiyou County. … (Board Chair John Haschak)
suggested the Board monitor the bill’s progress and potentially
revisit the issue in the future. AB 263 will be heard at
the California State Assembly on April 8 by the Committee on
Water, Parks and Wildlife.
The largest remaining wetland prairie in the San Joaquin Valley
will open to the public on Saturday, March 29, an event that
only comes around once or twice a year. The James K. Herbert
Wetland Prairie Preserve, which houses and protects rare and
unique species in Tulare County, will be open from 9 a.m. to 1
p.m. Attendees can explore the preserve and catch a self-guided
tour with staff. The event is made possible by the
Alta Peak California Native Plant Society, Sequoia Riverlands
Trust and the Tulare Kings Audubon Society.
A long-running fight over California water and the fate of a
tiny fish found a new front with a House measure to strip
federal protections from the longfin smelt. Introduced Friday
by Rep. Doug LaMalfa and six fellow Golden State Republicans,
H.J. Res. 78 would undo the Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing
of the longfin smelt’s San Francisco Bay Delta
population as endangered. “This listing is just another example
of out-of-touch environmental policies making it harder to
store and deliver water in California,” LaMalfa said in a
statement first published by LassenNews.com.
Drinking water has earned a “C-” on the 2025 American Society
of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Report Card for America’s
Infrastructure, which is the same score it received in 2021.
ASCE released the report card grading America’s infrastructure
on March 25, 2025, where the country received an overall grade
of “C,” its highest ever score. ASCE drinking water report card
The ASCE Report Card highlighted the need for funding and
building more resilient infrastructure. According to ASCE, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the
nation’s water infrastructure needs stand at $625 billion over
20 years, exceeding EPA’s 2018 assessment by more than $150
billion. … The report highlighted new funding opportunities,
such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA),
which invested more than $30 billion for drinking water
improvements, removal of lead service lines and addressing
emerging contaminants like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS).
In a historic and consequential move, the United States has
officially denied Mexico’s request for a special water delivery
from the Colorado River to Tijuana. … The 1944
treaty, a longstanding bilateral agreement, regulates water
distribution between the U.S. and Mexico between the Rio Grande
and Colorado Rivers. According to the treaty, Mexico must
deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. over
five-year cycles, averaging 350,000 acre-feet annually.
However, by late 2024, Mexico had fallen over one million
acre-feet behind its commitments. Officials attribute this
shortfall to a combination of prolonged drought, increased
agricultural demands, and aging infrastructure on the Mexican
side of the border.
California is not alone in its struggles to save its freshwater
biodiversity. Across the West, rivers and lakes have been
tapped to supply water to farms and cities—and ecosystems have
paid the price. One project has been restoring water to a
Nevada lake through an unusual mechanism: environmental water
acquisitions. We spoke with the Walker Basin Conservancy’s
Carlie Henneman and Peter Stanton to learn more.
… Despite some recent rainstorms, the majority of Southern
California remains in “severe” or “extreme” drought conditions,
as of the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Precipitation for this water year, which begins Oct. 1, is
still well below average for the southern third of the state.
In coastal areas, rainfall amounts are about 40% to 60% of
average for this time of year; in the state’s most southwestern
corner, it’s even lower, according to California Water Watch.
While Northern California’s precipitation and snowpack are
above average for the year, the Southern Sierra still remains
at about 87% of average for this time of year, according to the
California Department of Water Resources.
A large number of people were scheduled today to testify and
comment on the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) … when a bizarre
hacking incident occurred on the Zoom platform that the
California State Water Resources Control Board was using for a
hearing. The hearing was regarding the pending petitions for a
change in water rights by the California Department of Water
Resources that are required to move forward with the Delta
Tunnel. … When the hearing started, one of the attendee windows
displayed a graphic obscene video with a synthetic or altered
voice saying loudly, “Shut this Zoom Call Down.” The hacker
took over the audio so the Hearing Officer could not speak, so
she shut the hearing down.
Due to staff reductions, retirements, and a federal hiring
freeze, the National Weather Service has announced a series of
suspensions involving weather balloon launches in recent weeks.
The question is, will this significantly degrade forecasts in
the United States and around the world? … (B)ased on 20
years of experience and a number of conversations about this
with others in the field, there are some very real, very
serious concerns beyond statistics. One thing is that the
suspended weather balloon launches are occurring in relatively
important areas for weather impacts downstream. A missed
weather balloon launch in Omaha or Albany won’t impact the
forecast in California. But what if a hurricane is coming? What
if a severe weather event is coming? You’ll definitely see
impacts to forecast quality during major, impactful
events.
