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 Environmental Protection Agency isn’t required to revise
every outdated wastewater pollution standard
for various industries, but its decision in 2023 to not revise
standards using new pollution control technologies is both
arbitrary and capricious, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled
Wednesday. In 2023 several environmental groups, including
Waterkeeper Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity,
filed a complaint directly to the Ninth Circuit, challenging
the EPA’s decision to not revise “effluent limitations,
effluent limitation guidelines, standards of performance for
new sources, and pretreatment standards” that haven’t been
updated in decades. Passed in 1972, the Clean Water
Act requires the agency to regulate industrial
pollutants that make their way into the water, based on the
best available wastewater treatment technology. But according
to the plaintiffs, the EPA has never set limits on plants that
mold and form plastic, and has gone nearly 40 years without
updating wastewater limits on inorganic chemical plants and
petroleum refineries.
Last week, lawmakers introduced a new proposal to sell off
roughly 3 million acres of public land in the Western U.S. as
part of President Trump’s omnibus spending and tax bill, known
as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” According to the
Wilderness Society, more than 250 million acres of land managed
by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management could
be up for grabs under a leaked June 14 version of the proposal.
Though the plan focuses on land, its effects on
water could be profound. The eligible
land excludes national parks and a few other protected areas,
but it leaves open massive amounts of acreage in each Western
state. These eligible areas include land with wilderness
characteristics, grazing lands, wildlife corridors for
threatened and endangered species, recreation areas and popular
camping sites. Its also land that buffers the
headwaters of some of our most important rivers in the
West.
A Flagstaff-based hub for regional science — and for the
protection of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado
River — could be under threat from President Donald
Trump’s proposed cuts to the federal budget. In a letter to the
Senate Appropriations Committee last month, Trump’s budget
director, Russell T. Vought, laid out the president’s fiscal
priorities — mostly, a long list of cuts to virtually all
federal agencies. Among those was a recommendation to slash
$564 million from the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS). And in a more detailed appendix, the Office of
Management and Budget proposed reducing the budget of the
agency’s Ecosystems Mission Area by approximately 90%.
… Among the programs funded by the Ecosystems Mission
Area are the Southwest Biological Science Center and its
subsidiary, the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center
(GCMRC) — both housed here in Flagstaff.
Hundreds of tiny endangered fish slipped from orange plastic
buckets into a glittering lagoon in Malibu on Tuesday,
returning home five months after being whisked away from
threats wrought by the Palisades fire. The repatriation of more
than 300 northern tidewater gobies — led by the Resource
Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains — marked a
peaceful moment in a region still reeling from the
aftermath of wildfires. … In January, (conservation biologist
Rosi) Dagit orchestrated a successful rescue of 760 of the
semi-translucent, swamp-colored fish from Topanga Lagoon, an
unassuming biodiversity hotspot located off the Pacific Coast
Highway that drains into the Santa Monica Bay. The Palisades
fire that sparked Jan. 7 tore through the area, scorching all
of the critical habitat for the gobies and an endangered
population of steelhead trout that occupied the same watershed.
… Scientists and citizen volunteers arrived on Jan. 17
and used giant nets that served as sieves to retrieve the fish
that rarely exceed a length of two inches.
The design-build team of Stantec and PCL Construction detailed
the planned $250-million expansion of the South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Diego, Calif.,
a project that has recently been fast-tracked due to the
ongoing transboundary raw sewage flows from Tijuana,
Mexico. Michael Watson, senior vice president and major
projects lead for water at Stantec and Jeff Newman, operations
manager at PCL, said at a public meeting held by the U.S.
section of the International Boundary and Water Commission June
12 that they had validated that 50 million gallons per day can
be treated by the plant after the expansion and will soon put
out early work packages. … New IBWC U.S. Commissioner
Chad McIntosh told local officials and attendees at the forum
that even after the expansion they would continue to press
Mexico to halt the cross-boundary sewage and chemical flows
into the Tijuana River which eventually flow
into the Pacific Ocean near the South Bay community of Imperial
Beach.
Water engineer Bob Hurford has a chart he often shares with
communities in the Gunnison River Basin to drive home the
seriousness of the region’s water conditions. It shows that the
basin’s runoff in the 2020s, so far, is worse than the Dust
Bowl era of the ’30s. … The western Colorado river basin
spans mountainous, agricultural regions and communities like
Crested Butte, Gunnison, Paonia, Montrose, Olathe and Delta.
Snowpack in the basin this year was near normal — when based on
30 years of data. The 100-year look was much more bleak,
Hurford found. … Mountain snowpack in the Gunnison
River Basin — one of several major river basins in Colorado —
peaked at 93% in late March, melted a bit, then rose again to
84% of the median, based on federal data from 1991 to 2020. The
basin is broken into smaller watersheds, including the Upper
Gunnison, Uncompahgre and North Fork basins. In the Uncompahgre
Valley, where Harold farms, the snowpack also peaked at
slightly less than normal. Spring runoff projections for the
valley were about 70% of the norm, Hurford said.
Other water supply and drought news around the West:
The long, litigious tail behind Santa Cruz County’s 2023 winter
storms still has no end in sight. But this week, a
partner at one of the firms leading the mass tort against local
and state government agencies for their alleged failure to
protect Pajaro Valley residents and businesses against the
destructive floods told Lookout that they are seeking damages
in the range of tens of millions of dollars. … The nine
lawsuits filed between 2023 and 2024 fault a half-dozen
government agencies for the damage caused by a string of
atmospheric rivers in the winter of 2023, beginning with the
New Year’s Eve floods in Watsonville and ending with the
catastrophic breach of the Pajaro River levee on March
11. … The lawsuits allege that the governments not only
knew, or should have known, that the levee’s instability posed
grave risks to the region’s people and businesses, but that
they also failed in their responsibility to address the
issue.
A new cannabis industry-led program has launched to control
sediment and restore watersheds across Northern California, the
nonprofit Cannabis for Conservation said Thursday. The
Arcata-based organization is dedicated to conserving wildlife
and restoring habitats in cannabis-impacted areas. It recently
received a grant from the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife to implement the Sediment Reduction on Cannabis Farms
in Priority Northern Watersheds program starting this
month. According to CFC, over the next three years the
program will support projects on over 40 privately-owned
properties in watersheds that feed into the Eel, Mad, Trinity
and Mattole rivers. The goal of the program is to reduce
harmful sediment production and restore degraded watersheds,
CFC said. All the areas to be served through the project have
been impacted by cannabis cultivation and rural development.
… The CFC grant was awarded through the CDFW’s Cannabis
Restoration Grant Program, which is funded through cannabis tax
revenue.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District joined
the City of Inglewood June 13 to officially sign a project
agreement that will strengthen the city’s emergency water
storage capacity and spotlight more than two decades of
interagency collaboration. The agreement, supported by federal
funding through Section 219 of the Water Resources Development
Act, will assist in the design and construction of the
Morningside Reservoir — the first and
highest-priority of four planned water infrastructure projects.
The overall program is expected to support up to $20 million in
improvements across Inglewood’s aging water system.
… The new reservoir, which will be constructed below
grade on the existing site, is designed to hold about 4 million
gallons of water. It will mix groundwater from Inglewood’s
treatment plant with supply from the Metropolitan Water
District and distribute it citywide.
President Donald Trump has tapped longtime water manager Ted
Cooke to be the next commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation. The nomination, submitted Monday to the
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, attempts to
fill a pivotal role at the top federal agency for Western
rivers, reservoirs and dams. If confirmed, Cooke will become
the main federal official overseeing Colorado River matters.
His nomination comes at a tense time for the river. The seven
states that use its water appear deadlocked in closed-door
negotiations about sharing the shrinking water supply in
the future. Cooke will likely try to push those state
negotiators toward agreement about who should feel the pain of
water cutbacks and when. If they can’t reach a deal ahead of a
2026 deadline, the federal government can step in and make
those decisions itself.
Other Reclamation and Colorado River negotiation news:
Tulare County farmers are incensed by a proposed new fee
structure that they say will put the entire burden of state
groundwater oversight across the San Joaquin Valley solely on
their shoulders. It costs the state Water Resources Control
Board about $5.5 million a year to oversee six basins in the
San Joaquin Valley that have been found to have inadequate
groundwater plans as part of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Two of those
subbasins have been placed on probation, under which farmers
are required to pay fees to reimburse the state for those
oversight costs. One of those subbasins has, so far,
escaped the fees pending the outcome of a legal
action. … At a June 11 online Water Board workshop,
staff unveiled a new fee structure they say will repay state
costs and protect small farmers. Tule subbasin farmers say the
proposed fee structure, expected to raise $6.6
million, is unfair.
Aspen residents could face mandatory water restrictions this
month as the city responds to a drought parching western
Colorado. Water experts warn that the low snowpack could lead
to more severe drought as the summer progresses. Aspen is
already under Stage 1 Water Shortage, after the city council
voted to institute the measures last week. The goal is to
reduce water use by 10 percent by reducing use at public
facilities, and urging voluntary conservation by businesses and
residents in the 6,600-person resort community.
… Snowpack was low this winter, and high temps have
caused a faster melt. That’s resulted in lower stream runoff
forecasts, said Nagam Bell, a hydrologist at the USDA Natural
Resources Conservation Service, in a report. “Early monsoon
activity could improve moisture conditions, but consistent
summer rainfall will be critical moving forward,” they
said.
Other drought and water supply news around the West:
The first discovery of golden mussels in North
America at Rough and Ready Island near Stockton in San Joaquin
County has water managers throughout California on the alert,
including the Yuba Water Agency, which manages New Bullards Bar
Reservoir. On Tuesday, the Yuba Water Agency announced that it
will launch a new watercraft screening pilot program later this
summer at New Bullards Bar Reservoir in Yuba County. The pilot
program aims to prevent the spread of the golden mussel, a
highly invasive species found in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta last fall that could pose a
significant ecological and economic threat to the Yuba River
watershed. … Thus far, all the sightings of golden
mussel have been concentrated in the delta, although five
additional sightings have been reported in the San Joaquin
Valley.
… For more than a century, hydroelectric dams have diverted
water through the valley from the northward flowing Eel River’s
watershed to the southerly Russian River’s east fork, where the
two wind within a mile of each other near the Lake County
border. The local ecology, economy and culture have adapted
accordingly. Now that the alteration is no longer
profitable, Pacific Gas & Electric is looking to undo the
diversion by removing the dams, with potentially devastating
ramifications for the communities that have grown to depend on
the water they store and divert. … A coalition of
considerable political force has aligned behind PG&E’s
effort to relinquish its license for the Potter Valley
Project. Environmental nonprofits, tribal
representatives and elected officials, including Rep. Jared
Huffman, have endorsed the removal of Scott Dam, citing seismic
risk, fish habitat restoration and historical justice for the
Round Valley Indian Tribes as core motivations.
Over 250 million acres of public lands could be eligible for
sale if the President’s budget reconciliation package,
something he has called the “big, beautiful bill,” is passed. A
map and analysis were created by The Wilderness Society using
source data from BLM, USFS, USGS, NPS, and SENR reconciliation
bill text (Senate Energy and Natural Resources) as of June
16, 2025. … The map includes Kiva Beach, much of Fallen Leaf
Lake, Tallac Historic Site, and even ski resorts who lease land
from USFS, including Alpine Meadows, Heavenly Valley, as well
as other treasured acreage through the Sierra and beyond.
… The mandates of the bill call for the sale of .5-.75
percent of each BLM and USFS land across 11 western states, or
about 3.3 million acres. It opens up 250 million acres for
“developers to pick from,” to get to the 3.3 million acres,
according to Oliva Tanager of the Sierra Club.
New data from Nasa has revealed a dramatic rise in the
intensity of weather events such as droughts and
floods over the past five years. The study shows that
such extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting
and more severe, with last year’s figures reaching twice that
of the 2003-2020 average. The steepness of the rise was not
foreseen. The researchers say they are amazed and alarmed by
the latest figures from the watchful eye of Nasa’s Grace
satellite, which tracks environmental changes in the planet.
They say climate change is the most likely cause of the
apparent trend, even though the intensity of extremes appears
to have soared even faster than global temperatures. A Met
Office expert said increases in extremes have long been
predicted but are now being seen in reality. He warned that
people were unprepared for such weather events, which would be
outside previous experience.
President Donald Trump recently addressed Mexico’s failure to
pay the water it owes the U.S. under a decades-old treaty.
Under the 1944 treaty, Mexico must send 1.75 million acre-feet
of water to the U.S. from the Rio Grande every five years, and
the United States is to pay Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of
water annually via the Colorado River out West. Mexico,
however, has fallen behind on its payments. … The water
payments are just one of several water-related issues at which
the U.S. and Mexico are at odds. In San Diego, raw sewage has
been flowing in from Mexico for decades via the Tijuana River,
which runs from the south to the north. When it rains, tons of
debris and trash, in addition to millions of gallons of
sewage-tainted water, make their way north of the border and,
eventually, into the Pacific Ocean. The bacteria in the water
has forced the closure of beaches in southern San Diego that
have already been in place for years.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to allow
a developer to purchase public land for a planned $3.6 billion
data center just southeast of Tucson, and approved a rezoning
of the parcel to allow for the construction project. After
being rezoned with a 3-2 vote, the board voted to sell the the
290-acre parcel, which will be acquired by the San
Francisco-based developers for nearly $20.8 million. The
controversial agenda items passed after dozens spoke in front
of the board about what they saw as problems with the planned
project, including the large amounts of water and electricity
the data center will require. … The developer, San
Francisco-based Beale Infrastructure, promises to remain 100
percent sustainable through reclaimed water
delivered by a pipeline built at the developer’s expense. They
also agree to replenish all potable water used. Despite these
promises, much of the public continued to voice their
frustration with the potential long-term negative impacts.
… Over the course of his (Alameda Creek Alliance founder Jeff
Miller’s) career, he has participated in lawsuits, protests,
and hundreds of board meetings, alongside hundreds of other
people. More than $100 million dollars have been spent across
state funding, federal grants, and agency money. Almost every
barrier to fish migration in Alameda Creek has been removed.
This week, the last barrier that can feasibly be removed in our
lifetimes—a concrete structure over a PG&E gas
pipeline—will begin coming down. By 2026, Alameda Creek will
flow free. This final barrier removal opens up some twenty
miles of creek—a new survival path for steelhead in the Bay.
But what is just as remarkable is the three-decade process that
got us to this point has reshaped not only the creek but our
public agencies, and their approach to fish and watershed
stewardship.
