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.
To improve sustainability in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California this
week secured agricultural partners to cultivate rice on two
district-owned islands in the Delta – the heart of California’s
water supply system and one of the state’s most vital
ecosystems. In two separate actions, Metropolitan’s 38-member
board on Tuesday (Aug. 19) approved two lease agreements to
convert current agricultural lands to rice farming on Webb
Tract in California’s Contra Costa County and on Bacon Island
in San Joaquin County.
… [M]any people in the poorest county in the state have opted
for cisterns, reservoirs buried underground and covered with a
plastic lid or cement slab. To fill them, residents drive 20
minutes or so to town, often weekly, with tanks in their pickup
trucks or on their trailers to buy water at 10 cents a gallon,
or they have it delivered for an extra fee. … [I]n Fort
Garland [Colo.], the system was abruptly cut off this month —
without warning or notice. … Underneath it all is a deep
concern about whether this is a preview of the water wars ahead
as the West deals with unprecedented drought and its residents
compete for a resource that is finite yet essential to life.
… This week, the City Council for Rancho Palos Verdes, a
small, upscale city along the coast, formally approved an
ordinance that permanently bans new residential construction in
an area known as the Portuguese Bend Landslide
Complex. … Part of the issue, the city said, has
(ironically for a drought-ridden state) been water. The area
has been soaked with rain for much of the past
half decade, which seeped into and destabilized the precarious
hillside soil.
A northern Fresno County groundwater agency is ramping up
efforts to help landowners register their wells by hosting the
first in a string of workshops on Aug. 27. Dates for future
workshops are still in flux. Owners of water wells in the
greater Kerman, Biola, Easton, Fresno and Clovis areas are
invited to the workshop, from 3-6 p.m. at the Kerman Community
Center, 15101 W Kearney Blvd. The North Kings Groundwater
Sustainability Agency board of directors issued a
mandatory well registration policy in April. All well owners
must register by Nov. 30, 2025 to avoid a $100 penalty per
well.
Last week I attended a tour of the Tijuana River Valley,
organized by 11 organizations for the 30×30 Partnership Summit,
a statewide meeting of groups committed to achieving
California’s conservation goals. … A vast array of
entities oversee and advocate for the river valley. On the U.S.
side alone, the land is stewarded by federal, state, county and
city agencies. Advocacy groups with a stake in the river’s
future — and in resolving the public health crisis caused by
billions of gallons of untreated wastewater pouring into the
watershed — hail from both sides of the border.
A study on rats suggests that exposure to microplastics may
impair the blood–brain barrier, induce oxidative stress in the
brain, and damage neurons. The microplastic exposure involved
oral administration of low-density polyethylene (LDPE)
suspended in water for 3 and 6 weeks. The research was
published in Molecular Neurobiology. … Study author
Ghasem Forutan and his colleagues note that freshwater
contamination is a major route by which microplastics
can enter the human body.
Employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote to
Congress on Monday warning that the Trump administration had
reversed much of the progress made in disaster response and
recovery since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast two
decades ago. The letter to Congress, titled the “Katrina
Declaration,” rebuked President Trump’s plan to drastically
scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster
response — and more costs — to the states.
History is an increasingly unreliable teacher for water utility
managers. The memory of everything that has gone wrong –
floods, droughts, broken pipes, porous levees, unstable dams,
or inadequate interties – and the record of how utilities fixed
things and paid for the fixes – have traditionally been
chapters in the textbook of rules for the future. … But
climactic and political changes are rendering the 20th century
textbook obsolete in the 21st century. The need to deliver
clean water is the same. The weather, the financing, and the
growing threat of unaffordability are not. The efforts the
Santa Cruz Water Department is making to update the text
parallels work being undertaken by many other utilities.
The history of California water is saturated with stories about
years-long battles that inevitably get called “water wars.” But
UC Merced is trying to flip that narrative and chart a new
course for water in California based on finding common ground,
or in this case, finding common water. “Finding Common
Water” is the name of a river trip that UC Merced and EDF have
organized to bring together individuals who often hold diverse
perspectives. The goal is to find areas of alignment and
explore new collaborations.
… [T]he Colorado River Indian Tribes, often referred to as
CRIT … are planning to establish legal personhood status for
the Colorado River, giving it some of the same rights and
protections a human could hold in court. No government, tribal
or otherwise, has given these kinds of rights to the Colorado
River before. … A Supreme Court decree, Arizona v.
California, recognized CRIT as having the most senior water
rights on the lower Colorado River, and among the most senior
in the entire basin. That means CRIT has some of the most
legally untouchable water rights along the lower half of the
Colorado River.
The Sites Project Authority will receive an additional $218.9
million in inflationary increases, thanks to a unanimous vote
by the California Water Commission. The new total maximum
eligibility for the project is $1.094 billion. This award from
the Calif. Water Commission is part of an effort to
redistribute funding that had been earmarked for the expansion
of Los Vaqueros Reservoir, a project that was halted in
November 2024, which freed up Proposition 4 funds.
… Floods are the most common and costly natural disaster, but
difficult to predict with accuracy. Artificial intelligence has
played a significant role in giving insurers the data they
needed to design a parametric flood policy that could make
sense on both sides. Fremont, which has not had a history of
high flood risk, was one of the first jurisdictions to obtain
this kind of coverage. As changing weather patterns make it
harder for communities to assume they are safe from damaging
floods, others could follow.
Arizona cities are joining together under one banner to
advocate for Arizona in ongoing Colorado River talks. Existing
agreements determining Arizona’s allotted share of Colorado
River water are set to expire next year. … CAP [Central
Arizona Project] is the system that delivers Colorado River
water throughout the state and is in partnership with the
municipalities under the new coalition, branded Coalition for
Protecting Arizona’s Lifeline. The goal of the new Arizona
coalition is to unite Colorado River water users and showcase
the state’s ongoing water conservation efforts.
Thousands of birds fill the air over Mono
Lake, banking and swooping in a swirling murmuration
that resembles an aerial school of fish. As they sweep past,
their beating wings whoosh in unison. This small species, the
Wilson’s phalarope, arrives from the north in large numbers
each summer to feed at the saline lake, preparing for a long
journey to South America. After spending July gorging on the
larvae of alkali flies, the birds are gradually departing this
month to begin their migration to another saline lake about
6,000 miles away — Laguna Mar Chiquita in Argentina. Partly
because of their remarkable transcontinental voyage between
salt lakes, the grayish birds have inspired a close partnership
between communities in California and Argentina.
A UC Davis study is highlighting what it calls inequities in
California’s water management, showing underrepresentation of
women and people of color in positions on water boards.
Sponsored by the nonprofit group Water Education for Latino
Leaders (WELL), the study was unveiled at the State Capitol,
revealing that women occupy only about 27% of water board
positions, Latinos hold 15% of board seats, and other people of
color account for just 5% of board positions. The group says
this lack of diversity means water agencies do not adequately
represent most Californians.
Three years ago, the AB&I metal foundry ceased all
operations in East Oakland. … The years of metal
smelting had left contaminants such as arsenic and lead in the
hardscape, soil, and groundwater, and the
polluted lot was supposed to be undergoing a yearslong
remediation process. … [Community members] soon came to
realize the site was being used as a tow yard by a company
called Auto Plus Towing. … Now an array of organizations
— the city, the companies, the watchdog group, the county, the
state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, the San
Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board — are trying
to deal with the fallout, and make sure the polluted site
finally gets cleaned up.
… As Californians struggle to recover from compounding
climate disasters, Gov. Gavin Newsom is moving to fast-track
the Delta Conveyance Project, presenting lawmakers with a
familiar choice. But before committing billions to yet another
major water project, we must confront some hard lessons from
our past. … As mayor of Los Angeles in the early 1900s,
Frederick Eaton partnered with William Mulholland to develop
the L.A. Aqueduct, a massive conveyance system that redirects
water from Mono Lake and Owens Valley. … It was one of
the most significant and destructive water transfers in U.S.
history. –Written by Devon Provo, an urban planner and senior
policy manager at Accelerate Resilience L.A.
A brutally hot and dry summer is taking its toll on Utah’s
reservoirs, with water levels showing a “drastic decline,”
which officials say is more than double the normal rate. The
Utah Division of Water Resources shared Thursday that the
state’s reservoir storage currently sits at 67 percent, which
is slightly above the normal level of 65 percent for this time
of year. That number is much lower than at the same point in
2024, when the storage levels were at 83 percent.
… Along with the arid weather conditions, the water
level declines can also be attributed to last season’s
disappointing snowpack around the state.
For the first time in three years, anglers have been able to
fish sections of the Feather River, American River and
Mokelumne River for salmon. Since the opener on July 16, the
fishing has been productive but by no means hot on the Feather
River. But for anglers unable to fish for salmon in all Central
Valley streams since 2022, the fishing has drawn many to the
riverbanks near Oroville to catch a big, bright Chinook.
Recently, low counts have resulted in the continued closure of
Chinook salmon fishing in the Klamath River Basin and mainstem
Sacramento River by the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife.
As wildfires blazed through Los Angeles, turning buildings and
lives to ash, President Trump politicized the tragedy, blaming
an endangered species. In a January 8 Truth Social post, Trump
said—erroneously—that Governor Gavin Newsom caused the
wildfires by keeping water from Southern California to save “an
essentially worthless fish,” the delta smelt.
… It turns out Donald Trump had a political score to
settle. … In 2020, Newsom sued the federal government,
successfully, to halt a Central Valley water infrastructure
project that could help farmers but harm the smelt, thereby
violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
