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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A major California water lifeline serving more than 600,000
residents is on the brink of being shut down by one of
America’s largest utility companies – and now its fate may lie
in the hands of Donald Trump. Since 1922, the century-old
Potter Valley Project has diverted water from Northern
California’s Eel River into the Russian River, serving as a
critical source of water for farms and communities across
Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin and Lake counties. However,
PG&E announced plans to fully dismantle the project, citing
financial losses and aging infrastructure – a move that sparked
controversy across the region, SF Gate reported. In a rare
twist, the federal government is now stepping into the local
water battle, as the Trump administration reviews whether or
not to block the shutdown.
In Sacramento, even an inch of rain can lead to a much more
complicated problem underground. The city is one of only two in
California and four on the West Coast still operating a
combined sewer system—a century-old design where stormwater and
sewage flow through the same pipes. As climate challenges
intensify, modernizing and maintaining the system is a 24/7
job. The history of Sacramento’s combined sewer system (CSS)
stretches across 7,500 acres in neighborhoods like downtown,
east Sacramento, Oak Park and Land Park. The system serves
300,000 residents, at least ten times the population when it
was built. “These systems were never meant to keep up with the
type of rainfall we’re seeing today,” said Carlos Eliason, a
spokesperson for the city’s sewage operations.
… America’s wetlands were historically viewed as useless
areas that stood in the way of development. More than half of
the 221 million acres of wetlands that existed when Europeans
settled have been destroyed, and six states—California,
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio—have lost at least
85 percent of their wetlands, according to the US Fish and
Wildlife Service (FWS). Wetlands act as “natural sponges,”
absorbing up to an estimated 1.5 million gallons of water per
acre, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and they provide more than half of America’s
$5.9 billion seafood harvest, including trout, bass, crab,
shrimp, and oysters. They also filter pollutants from the water
and sequester carbon dioxide. About half of our endangered and
threatened species on wetlands. … And yet, the
destruction continues. Between 2009 and 2019, the United States
lost about 1,047 square miles of wetlands, a 2024 FWS report
notes—an area roughly the size of Rhode Island.
A bill to exempt some housing projects from a controversial
California law that pro-building activists blame for slowing
down development cleared its first legislative hurdle this
week. On Monday, the State Assembly’s Natural Resources
Committee approved AB 609, introduced by Assemblymember Buffy
Wicks (D-Berkeley), which would exempt infill housing projects
built within existing cities from review under the California
Environmental Quality Act. … In recent years, CEQA has become
a political lightning rod as housing activists have argued
it has been used to slow or stop housing projects from
moving forward, while defenders say it hasn’t played a
major role in deterring housing production in California.
… But not everyone is on board with the proposed
changes. “We just have blinders on in terms of how much good
CEQA — and looking at the environmental reviews — has done to
preserve safety and safety for water and safety from fire,”
said Susan Kirsch, president of Catalysts for Local Control.
We have previously written on the evolving risks associated
with PFAS—also known as “forever chemicals”—and their
implications for policyholders navigating environmental
liabilities involving both PFAS and PFAS-related chemicals
(i.e., fluorinated chemicals that do not fit the definition of
PFAS). Our prior analyses explored coverage strategies and
regulatory enforcement trends. With regulatory activity and
litigation continuing to accelerate, we are circling back to
provide an updated look at the regulatory and legal landscape
surrounding PFAS, including recent federal developments,
insurer responses and practical guidance for policyholders
navigating this complex and high-stakes area. … Since our
last insurance roundup in October 2023, there have been
significant developments in PFAS regulation, litigation and
insurance coverage about which policyholders should be aware.
This blog post provides an inexhaustive overview of some of the
more significant developments.
… Today, 40% of the irrigated land in the (Central) Valley
still depends on flood irrigation. It’s a method that served
its purpose for decades but no longer aligns with current
challenges. It’s inefficient and costly—not just for the
farmer, but for the entire community that relies on that water.
And perhaps most concerning: many producers remain locked into
this system not due to lack of will, but due to lack of access
to the capital required to transition. But change is already
taking shape. A new generation of companies,
organizations, and public-private initiatives is proving that
it’s possible to reduce water use without compromising
productivity. And even more importantly: that this model of
water stewardship benefits every actor involved. Every cubic
meter of water saved creates value—for the companies financing
technology adoption, for the farmers implementing it on their
land, and for the communities that depend on water to
thrive. –Written by Jairo Trad, CEO & Co-Founder of Kilimo.
Earth’s landmasses are holding onto a lot less water than they
used to — and this loss is not just due to melting ice sheets.
Terrestrial water storage, which includes water in underground
aquifers, lakes, rivers and the tiny pore spaces within soil,
declined by trillions of metric tons in the early 21st century,
researchers report in the March 28 Science. This sharp decrease
in freshwater stores is driven by rising temperatures on land
and in the oceans, which in turn are linked to an increased
global incidence of drought. And given the projected warming of
the planet, this trend isn’t likely to change any time soon,
say geophysicist Ki-Weon Seo of Seoul National University and
colleagues.
The Trump administration on Monday demanded the resignation of
the top federal official overseeing a dispute between the
United States and Mexico over untreated sewage flowing across
the border into California. Maria-Elena Giner, who leads
the International Boundary and Water Commission, said in an
interview Monday that White House officials asked her to resign
by the end of the day and threatened to fire her
otherwise. The commission plays a crucial role in
navigating cross-border water conflicts, including the
[Colorado River], ongoing sewage crisis facing coastal
California communities and dwindling water deliveries to
farmers in South Texas.
… In an order issued Thursday, (Interior Secretary Doug)
Burgum put Tyler Hassen, who came to the Interior Department as
a representative of the U.S. DOGE Service, in charge of a
sweeping effort to “create significant efficiencies” and
eliminate “redundant efforts” across the department. Hassen’s
broad portfolio includes IT, human resources, training,
financial management, international affairs, contracting,
communications and other tasks. … Hassen’s decisions
could have major implications for how Interior — which is
responsible for maintaining national parks, protecting
endangered species, and overseeing drilling in public lands and
waters — operates going forward. … One
of Hassen’s first tasks after President Donald Trump’s
inauguration was visiting a Northern California water pumping
station to push one of Trump’s long-standing priorities:
rerouting water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other
parts of the state.
Humans have the technology to literally make snow fall from the
clouds. In the drought-stricken Southwest, where the
Colorado River needs every drop of water it
can get, there are calls to use it more. Utah, home to the
nation’s largest cloud seeding program, is at the crossroads of
the technology’s past and future. The state has become a
proving ground for cloud seeding in the West, with water
managers, private sector investors, and conspiracy theorists
keeping a close eye on their progress. … Utah’s
cloud seeding program is being closely watched by others around
the region. Its efforts cover more ground than any other state
in the nation, and it has one of the strongest bases of state
funding. For that reason, other water-short states in the
Western U.S. are keeping an eye on how much return on
investment Utah is getting from a $5 million annual cloud
seeding budget and those efficiency-boosting tech upgrades.
The websites
for four regional climate centers funded
by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or
NOAA, returned to service Monday after
an outage linked to expired contracts, according to
service notifications. The sites shut last week after a funding
lapse compromised NOAA’s contracts with the research
universities that operate the centers, which provide custom
weather analysis tools across 27 states. The Southern Regional
Climate Center, housed at Texas A&M University, is
receiving “stopgap” funding to restore service, director John
Nielsen-Gammon said in an interview Monday, with a full-year
contract extension expected to come sometime in the next
several weeks.
Following in the footsteps of other federal science agencies
under President Donald Trump’s administration, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week ordered its
staff to start canceling grants already awarded to universities
and research institutes, according to an agency source and an
email seen by Science. Although EPA is not a large funder of
R&D compared with other federal agencies, it does provide
$35 million to $40 million each year to researchers studying
the impacts of pollution and ways to reduce them. The internal
email, sent between senior agency administrators, gave no
reason for scrapping the grants, but the Trump administration
has also been downsizing EPA activities in other ways. Since
Trump took office, EPA has scrapped $1.5 billion in grants for
environmental justice and frozen $20 billion in funding for
clean energy and efficiency programs.
The state of California has adopted a new framework to
coordinate a response to the recent discovery of golden
mussels, an invasive species that can wreak havoc on local
ecosystems. … In December 2024, the California Fish and
Game Commission voted to list golden mussels as a restricted
species. To help contain and suppress the invasive shellfish,
the California state government has unveiled a comprehensive
Golden Mussel Response Framework. … Among the measures
called for in the framework are an investigation into how
golden mussels can spread, increased inspection and
decontamination of watercraft, and an education campaign.
(From news release:) Anticipated water demands for Klamath
Project water contractors are likely to be met as the Klamath
Basin hydrology pivots from consecutive years of drought.
Described in the 2025
Klamath Project Annual Operations Plan, today’s
initial water supply allocations from the Bureau of Reclamation
are based on modeled estimates of water available for
irrigation delivery and incorporate current reservoir storage,
precipitation, and snowpack, as well as projected inflow
forecasts. … The 2025 Plan is used as a planning and
information tool by water users and details the volume of water
available for Project irrigated agriculture as well as water
reserved to meet Endangered Species Act requirements in the
Klamath River and Upper Klamath Basin.
On a stormy spring day, Devon Peña stood atop a
sagebrush-covered hill and looked down on Colorado’s San Luis
Valley. Dark clouds had unleashed a deluge just a few hours
earlier, but now they hovered over the mountains, veiling the
summits above. Below, rows of long, narrow fields extended from
Culebra Creek toward a man-made channel, the main artery of the
valley’s centuries-old “acequia” irrigation system. This was
the “People’s Ditch,” a waterway holding the oldest continuous
water right in Colorado. … The acequia system was once
dismissed by Western water managers. But as a changing climate
brings increasing drought and aridification to the Southwest,
time-tested solutions like this one could hold the key to
mitigating the worst impacts of climate change, especially in
rural communities.
Microplastics, tiny plastic particles found in everyday
products from face wash to toothpaste, are an emerging threat
to health and ecology, prompting a research team to identify
what keeps them trapped in stream ecosystems. Everyday
actions like washing synthetic clothing and driving, which
wears down tires, contribute to an accumulation of
microplastics in environments from city dust to waterways.
These plastics often carry toxic chemicals that can threaten
the health of humans and wildlife.”We are the key source of
microplastics,” said Shannon Speir, assistant professor and
researcher in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food
and Life Sciences, and for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment
Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System
Division of Agriculture.
… This month, the (University of Colorado Boulder) team
published a new study, led by Eckland, in Water Resources
Research. The analysis draws on their 2021 field season and
parses information about sediment and organic carbon in river
water for a surprising result. Reservoirs like Elephant Butte
may sequester organic carbon within layers of sediment,
especially during periods of drought and flash floods.
Essentially, the reservoir acts as a carbon sink, trapping
organic material that would otherwise emit carbon dioxide
through natural decay. The explanation lies in physics.
Normally, when water flows into a reservoir, it spreads out
over the surface. But if the river picks up enough sediment,
the process flips upside down. Instead of the river water
fanning out on top, an underwater current plunges it downward.
Scientists call this a “hyperpycnal plume.”
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta
filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Donald
Trump’s broad imposition of tariffs on imported goods … but
California’s economy was already sluggish. … California’s
largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry, including its
famous winemaking sector, is also shrinking, largely due to
uncertain water supplies, labor shortages and the same high
costs for electricity and fuel that the logistics industry
faces. The Public Policy Institute of California has estimated
that, “even in the best-case scenario, some 500,000 acres may
need to be fallowed in the San Joaquin Valley” due
to restrictions on pumping irrigation water from
underground aquifers. –Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters
The mountain yellow-legged frogs of Yosemite National Park are
in an epic fight for survival. Theirs is a tale of devastation
and redemption, luck and suspense, and amphibians in
helicopters. And in an era of grim headlines about the state of
nature, a recent UC study about them offers a rare glimmer of
hope: These frogs, which were plagued nearly to extinction by a
deadly fungus just a few years ago, are now poised for a
comeback. This Earth Day, we’re celebrating stories from the
past year of UC research that illustrate the resilience of life
on our planet and demonstrate the power of humans to help solve
problems of our own making.
Knights Ferry has a major drinking water problem in its small
water system, and it’s had it for a long time. The residents
have largely learned to live with the near constant leaks,
equipment failures and sporadic shutoffs. The community was
established in the 1850s on the northeastern edge of Stanislaus
County. Home to the longest covered bridge west of the
Mississippi and a park run by the Army Corps of Engineers, it’s
a destination by out-of-towners for recreational opportunities
and preserved Gold Rush-era history.
