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.
A drought in Turkey’s northwestern province of Tekirdag has
left the area’s main dams without potable water, straining
infrastructure and leaving some homes without water for weeks,
due to a sharp drop in precipitation in the country this year.
Authorities say drought is a critical issue, with several
provinces warning of limited fresh water supply this
summer. Various areas in Izmir, Turkey’s third-most
populous province, have experienced frequent water cuts this
month, while the municipality in the western province of Usak
was told over the weekend it would have access to water just
six hours a day, with the main water reservoir depleted.
After one of the Colorado River’s driest years in decades, Lake
Mead and Lake Powell — the largest reservoirs in the country —
could see alarming declines in the coming years, the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation announced today. Federal officials
again called for Arizona and Nevada to cut back their supplies
from the overtapped river — though California, with its senior
claims to the river’s water, will be spared. While
expected, today’s two-year projection ratchets up tension among
seven states in the Colorado River basin, which have struggled
to agree on the river’s management after 2026, when current
guidelines expire.
Years of collapsing areas of land in the San Joaquin Valley —
caused primarily by the over-pumping of groundwater for farming
— has taken a toll on California’s largest water delivery
system that relies on stable land to work well. A state report
released this year determined its 2023 annual water delivery
capability had fallen 3% compared to original-design
deliveries. If no action is taken, it could fall up to 87% by
2043. If that happens, 21 million Californians would feel the
impacts, according to the California Department of Water
Resources (DWR).
The Walker Basin Conservancy has acquired 1,200 acre feet of
decreed storage water from Poore Lake, Calif., in the
headwaters of the Walker River watershed. This transaction
marks the first water acquisition for environmental benefit of
the Walker River and Walker Lake historically diverted in
California. … Adaptive management will keep land in Antelope
Valley in agricultural production and increase the flows of the
West Walker River in California and on to Walker Lake. This
water right is stored in Poore Lake, a reservoir in Mono County
that feeds Poore Creek and the Pickel Meadow Wildlife Area
before joining the West Walker River. Poore Creek and the
downstream habitats it supports have substantial conservation
value and will benefit from enhanced creek flows and riparian
health.
Utah remains on pace to have one of its driest summers in at
least the past 130 years, and long-range outlooks aren’t
looking all too promising either. That has Great Salt Lake
advocates concerned as the lake, fueled by the snowpack runoff
it does receive, drops back down to troubling levels.
… The ski and snow sports forecasting site OpenSnow
lists most of Utah as having stronger odds for below-normal
precipitation in its preliminary winter preview released this
week. … That would be bad news because
snowpack accounts for about 95% of the state’s
water supply, and the Great Salt Lake only refills when water
within its basin isn’t consumed and the state is already
dealing with increasing drought.
… A plan by the Marin Municipal Water District to expand the
[Nicasio] reservoir, which accounts for more than a quarter of
the district’s storage capacity, would inundate more land.
Water in the town’s two creeks could back up during winter at
the enlarged reservoir and cause more flooding in at least five
people’s properties. … The proposal involves installing
a 280-foot-long, 4.4-foot-high inflatable rubber gate across
the spillway crest of Seeger Dam, which created the Nicasio
Reservoir in 1960. That would increase the reservoir’s capacity
by about 3,700 acre-feet, or 16.5%. The gate could then be
raised to capture more rainfall.
The Tucson City Council is primed to rush through an ordinance
that would impose conservation rules on large water users to
protect the city’s water supply from being guzzled by data
centers and the like. … The council is expected to vote
during Tuesday’s regular night session on a proposal to require
all new businesses using at least 7.48 million gallons a month
to submit a water conservation plan to the city. The plan would
show how the business would reduce its water use, water losses
and waste, and improve the efficiency of its water use. The
ordinance would also require new, large water users to use
specified percentages of reclaimed water, often at least 30%
depending on how close they are to reclaimed water delivery
lines.
… Suisun City, a working-class community on the edge of San
Francisco Bay, faces a slow-moving crisis: rising seas could
swallow parts of the town within decades. It also faces an
imminent budget crisis threatening insolvency. Among other
solutions, city leaders are eyeing a controversial fix —
annexing thousands of inland acres from California Forever, a
tech billionaire-backed company — a move that could raise tax
revenue and secure higher ground, but risks fierce fights over
growth, climate adaptation and the city’s future.
… [M]ore than a century ago, states recognized that Native
Americans had rights to Colorado River water and, even earlier
in 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court said in Winters v. U.S., that
when we dedicated land to reservations it included enough water
to make them habitable. … All that history is becoming
more important because we face a deadline. Political
procrastination over decades has pushed nearly every aspect of
Colorado River allocation into a series of 2026 federal
deadlines. … If the states and other stakeholders, like the
Indian Tribes, cannot agree, then the Trump Administration will
likely decide for them. … And, remember, the Indian
Tribes are still getting only about a third of their water. –Written by Ken Ransford, member of the Colorado Basin
Roundtable.
For years, millions of dollars have poured into controlling
dust that wafts off the exposed lake shoreline of the Salton
Sea, hoping to solve a serious air pollution problem in the
Coachella and Imperial valleys. But a new report finds that the
dusty shoreline is only responsible for a small percentage of
the pollution. … Released Thursday, the report draws on
data from local, state and federal agencies and finds that dust
from the expanding dry shore of the Salton Sea accounts for
less than 1% of total small particle pollution in the region.
What appears to be pristine water in San Diego Bay is hiding a
disturbing secret beneath the surface. University of San Diego
graduate students working with a local company have discovered
alarming levels of heavy metals, microplastics and invasive
species in Mission Bay and San Diego Bay using innovative
cleanup booms made from recycled materials. The
partnership, called 24/7 Blue, pairs USD students with San
Diego-based Earthwise Sorbents to test sustainable cleanup
technology that could serve as a model for ports and marinas
nationwide. … [E]xpansion plans include South Bay areas
plagued by Tijuana sewage pollution.
… HABs [harmful algae blooms] have been reported at
Eagle Valley Reservoir in Lincoln County, where a HAB watch is
in place. Farther north, a HAB warning began at Lahontan
Reservoir in early June. … Lake Mead National Recreation Area
officials advise people to keep pets away from the algae, which
can look very different in various forms. The danger comes from
cyanobacteria, which can release toxins when disturbed. Last
year, there was a report of a dog dying on the California side
of Lake Tahoe after exposure. Tests after the incident found no
cyanobacteria, but officials said toxins could have been there
before testing occurred.
The California Department of Water Resources has announced
changes to boat ramp hours for water recreators at local
waterways, effective September 1. Inspection and
decontamination services at North Thermalito Forebay will
maintain their current schedule, operating daily from 8:30 a.m.
to 5:30 p.m. However, other ramp hours will see reductions or
changes in the hours they are open. Lake Oroville ramps,
including Spillway and Bidwell Canyon, will open at 7:30 a.m.
and close at 9 p.m. each day. The hours for Lime Saddle and
Loafer Creek ramps will now be from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.
… A newsletter this month by the Almond Board of California
said the [rat] infestation in parts of the San Joaquin Valley,
one of the world’s top agricultural regions, has impacted more
than 100,000 acres and caused $109 million to $311 million in
losses from damage to equipment and crops over a year. … Well
over half a million acres of California farmland were left
unplanted in the early 2020s because of a protracted drought
and diminishing water supplies, which also
meant no pest-control efforts in those fields. The drought
finally ended in the winter of 2022-23, the beginning of a
three-year spell of at least average rainfall
that resulted in more vegetation growth and an abundance of
food sources for wildlife.
Forecasters expect La Niña conditions to develop this fall and
winter. … La Niña is defined by cooler than average
sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific
along the equator. The ocean waters affect atmospheric
activity, tilting the odds toward drier than normal
conditions in Southern California and wetter than average
conditions to the far north, especially in the
winter…. During the most recent fall and winter,
California precipitation mimicked the expected La Niña pattern.
… But during the 2022-23 La Niña winter, Central and Southern
California faced a flurry of storms fueled by atmospheric
rivers, ribbons of water vapor in the sky. Downpours brought
flooding across California and snowstorms produced one of the
state’s largest snowpacks on record.
As we await Friday’s (Aug. 15, 2025) release of the Bureau of
Reclamation’s Colorado River 24-Month Study, we need to
remember a painful lesson of the last five years of crisis
management: whatever you see in Reclamation’s report of the
“Most Probable” reservoir levels for the next two years, we
must prepare for things to be much worse. A year ago,
Reclamation’s “Most Probable” forecast told us to expect Lake
Powell to hold 10.36 million acre feet of water at the end of
July 2025, with a surface elevation 3,593 feet above sea level.
Actual storage in Powell at the end of July was 7.46 maf, 2.9
million acre feet less, and the reservoir is 38 feet lower,
than the “Most Probable” forecast.
State regulators on Thursday ruled unanimously that the
Monterey Peninsula will need more water by 2050 than all
current available sources can supply, including the new
expansion of Pure Water Monterey that will be coming online
this year. As a result, commissioners believe that water
deficit will need to be filled with California American Water
Co.’s desalination project. It was not a
surprise for many, since administrative law judges Jack Chang
and Robert Haga at the California Public Utilities Commission
in May issued a proposed decision that adopted most of Cal Am’s
estimates on water supply and demand by the year 2050.
… Despite the Capitol’s fixation on national political
maneuvering — tinged by Newsom’s likely bid for the White House
— there are pending matters that hit closer to home. None is
more important than what’s been kicking around for at least six
decades, a project to bolster California’s north-to-south
shipments of water by bypassing the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. … Northern California legislators opposed to the
tunnel persuaded their leaders to stall on using a trailer
bill, but Newsom and tunnel advocates, such as the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California, will try again during
the session’s final weeks. –Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
Los Amigos de la Comunidad, Inc. hosted an information session
on August 14 on the receding Salton Sea and its potential
impact on air quality, bringing together researchers and
residents to address concerns about toxic dust. The project, a
two-and-a-half-year collaboration between UC San Diego, UC
Riverside, and community partners, aims to measure dust coming
from Salton Sea’s exposed lake beds, or playa, identify its
chemical composition, and assess the resulting health impact.
… The project also has a forecasting component, using
weather modeling to track where dust travels during wind
events.
The world’s largest data center campus may be coming to Utah,
with a pair of companies planning to construct artificial
intelligence-ready hubs in Millard County. The first domino
fell when Orem-based Fibernet MercuryDelta LLC in May filed a
request to rezone nearly 1,200 acres of property — located
southeast of Delta — from agricultural land to heavy industrial
land for its potential 20-million-square-foot data center
campus called Delta Gigasite. … ”Many operators have
designed closed-loop cooling systems that use various fluids
instead of water. When powered with natural gas, this system is
net water-positive — it can actually generate
about 100 acre feet of new water per 100 megawatts annually”
… reads a release from Creekstone.
