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.
… Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom
Buschatzke said at a recent roundtable that under the Trump
administration, the state could be better positioned than it
was under the Biden administration. … Under the Biden
administration, the Lower Basin states sent a proposal to the
federal government offering to take 1.5 million acre-feet of
water cuts per year. Arizona would cut the most, at 750,000
acre-feet. The Biden government rejected the Lower Basin’s
proposal and issued an “alternative report” on Jan. 17, almost
the last day of the administration. … Arizona Senate
President Warren Petersen went on to say he also wants the
federal government to tie in expensive infrastructure projects
to the negotiations, and not just river-related infrastructure,
but maybe even a desalination plant in
California. Petersen said if Arizona were to help pay
for that, then Arizona could take some of California’s Colorado
River allocation.
Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee introduced 15 water-related bills
Thursday, targeting everything from the length of federal
permitting to the types of water resources protected by the
Clean Water Act. The bills would benefit oil
and gas companies, farming interests, homebuilders, water
utilities and others who say that environmental reviews and
long permitting timelines are stifling development. They were
introduced by Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee
Chair Mike Collins, (R-GA) … Doug LaMalfa,
(R-Calif.) and others. “The Clean Water Act was
intended to protect water quality, support healthy communities,
and balance the demands of economic growth across the United
States,” (Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman
Sam) Graves said in a statement.
… Every summer across the state, the atmosphere dries up and
the temperatures turn warm, sucking moisture from the landscape
and turning the parched vegetation into kindling, ready to burn
under the right conditions. This year, forecasters are already
seeing signs that the pattern could be more intense than usual.
The snow in the Sierra Nevada, the frozen reservoir
that moistens the landscape through the spring, is nearly gone;
it melted off earlier than normal. This year’s grass
crop is plentiful, especially in Northern California, which
received more rain than the southern part of the state, and
it’s already fueling fires as it dries out. And forecasters
predict the summer will be exceptionally hot. All of this adds
up to a higher probability of more large wildfires than usual
this summer, with the possibility that even the smallest spark
could explode into a significant wildfire if not stopped
quickly.
A move to boot Kern County Superior Court Gregory Pulskamp off
the long-running Kern River lawsuit was denied, according to
a ruling issued Tuesday by the assistant presiding
judge of the court. The Kern County Water Agency filed
a motion May 30 to remove Pulskamp citing its belief
the judge would be biased against the agency because a
preliminary injunction he had issued requiring enough water be
kept in the river for fish was overturned by the 5th District
Court of Appeal. … Typically, disqualification motions
come after a trial outcome is reversed, not in the middle of an
ongoing lawsuit, according to attorney Adam Keats, who
represents Bring Back the Kern and several other public
interest groups fighting to get water back in the riverbed
through Bakersfield. The agency, however, argued in its motion
that the injunction and reversal should be considered similar
to a trial. No, they are not similar, states a motion by the
City of Bakersfield urging Kern’s presiding judge to deny the
agency’s motion.
Earlier this month, Fresno welcomed 448 members of the
Salmonidae family to town. … The 448 adult salmon
represent a milestone for the San Joaquin River Restoration
Program, marking the highest number of captured returns since
spring-run juveniles were reintroduced to the river system in
2014 following the 2008 legal settlement that modified the
operations of Friant Dam to provide minimum flows for native
fish. … Most of this year’s bumper crop were trapped in fyke
nets placed downstream of the Eastside Bypass Control Structure
in Merced County. (Some made their way upstream to Sack Dam
until being captured.) After being placed into tanks with
oxygenated, temperature-controlled water, the salmon were
trucked 120 miles then examined and measured before being
released back into the river in northwest Fresno. … What
measures are taken to ensure nearly 450 adult salmon residing
on the outskirts of a city of 547,000 people remain undisturbed
until they can reproduce? The short answer is enforcement and
education. –Written by Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski.
UC Davis Professor of Law Emeritus Harrison (“Hap”) Dunning
passed away at the end of March 2025 at the age of 86. You can
read the details of his life in the Davis
Enterprise Obituary, including the story of his extensive
work in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but he is best
known in the UC Davis community for his work on water law and
the public trust doctrine. From serving on the Governor’s
Commission to Review California Water Rights Law in the 1970s
to his work on the California Water Commission and the Bay
Delta Advisor Council, he lived a life of service to the
California water community. California’s public trust doctrine
is built in part on Prof. Dunning’s legacy of scholarship,
which includes a foundation public trust conference at UC Davis
that resulted in several papers cited in the California Supreme
Court’s Mono Lake decision. [Harrison was a longtime
board member of the Water Education Foundation].
The EPA announced that it will provide $26 million in grant
funding to U.S. states and territories to reduce lead in
drinking water at schools and childcare centers. The funding is
part of the EPA’s ongoing efforts to support testing and
remediation of lead-contaminated water at locations where
children learn and play. Since 2018, the agency has distributed
more than $200 million toward reducing exposure to lead in
drinking water. … Grants will be issued through the Voluntary
School and Child Care Lead Testing and Reduction Grant Program.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S.
territories are eligible for funding. A separate allocation for
tribal entities is expected to be released soon. The EPA’s
broader efforts include the “3Ts” program — Training, Testing,
and Taking Action — which provides guidance for local and state
officials to implement voluntary lead reduction
initiatives.
Along the Klamath River in Northern California, where logging
companies once cut ancient redwood trees, vast tracts of land
have been returned to the Yurok Tribe in a years-long effort
that tribal leaders say will enable the restoration of forests
and the protection of a watershed that is
vital for salmon. The effort, which unfolded gradually over the
last 23 years, culminated in May as Western Rivers Conservancy
turned over 14,968 acres to the Yurok Tribe. It was the last
portion of 47,097 acres that the nonprofit group acquired and
transferred to the tribe in what is thought to be the largest
“land back” deal in California history. Members of the tribe
say they are celebrating the return of their ancestral lands
along Blue Creek, a major tributary that meets
the Klamath about 40 miles south of the Oregon border. Blue
Creek holds cultural and spiritual significance for the Yurok,
and its cold, clear waters provide a refuge for salmon.
On Wednesday, June 11, the U.S. Senate released a provision in
President Trump’s H.R.1 – One Big Beautiful Bill Act that calls
for the sale of approximately 2.2 million to 3.3 million acres
of federal land under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service.
… According to the tax and spending bill, lands in
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New
Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming could be sold off
for energy and/or housing development over the next five years.
… The Greater Yellowstone Coalition wrote via press
release that the privatization of federal lands could lead to
the loss of public access, negatively impact local economies
and result in development that harms wildlife habitat and
water resources. “Our national public lands
are not a luxury, they’re our legacy,” Greater Yellowstone
Coalition Executive Director Scott Christensen wrote. “These
are outdoor spaces that connect us to each other, fuel the
economies of western states and provide clean drinking water to
millions of Americans downstream.”
During the first semiannual meeting of the North American
Development Bank (NADBank) in 2025, the Governments of the
United States and Mexico, through the Board of
Directors, agreed to invest up to US$400 million in
priority water conservation and diversification infrastructure
in response to prolonged drought conditions throughout the
U.S.-Mexico border region. NADBank will welcome input from the
public on the Water Resilience Fund (WRF) during a 30-day
public comment period, after which the Board will consider its
final approval. Through the WRF, NADBank will allocate up
to US$100 million in retained earnings over the next five years
for concessional financing, as well as make up to US$300
million available for low-interest loans from its established
lending resources. NADBank may also supplement these
instruments with market-rate financing to further expand the
reach and impact of available resources.
… Since Trump returned to the White House in January, his
administration has fired or let go hundreds of climate and
weather scientists — and cut ties to hundreds more who work in
academia or the private sector. His team has eliminated major
climate programs, frozen or cut grants for climate research and
moved to shutter EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting program. The
Trump administration has slow-walked climate-related contracts
— including one for the upkeep of two polar weather satellites.
And it’s begun to wall off the United States from international
climate cooperation. … (H)is budget strategy calls for
even deeper cuts in the months and years ahead. That includes
billions of dollars in cuts to climate and weather research at
NOAA and NASA, widely considered two of the world’s top science
agencies. All told, it’s an unprecedented assault on
humanity’s understanding of how global warming is transforming
the planet, scientists say.
… Data centers are central to the internet’s environmental
impact. While they consume a lot of electrical energy, massive
amounts of water and have harmful pollutants, those levels have
been relatively stable in the past decade. … Since AI servers
run much hotter than a typical server, they require much more
water for cooling. In 2023, Google’s data centers consumed over
23 billion liters of freshwater for cooling its servers; for
context, that’s just one billion liters shy of PepsiCo.’s
reported overall freshwater consumption for the same
year. … AI’s environmental impact has been a topic of
increasing concern for researchers like Ren and Mohammad Islam,
a computer science and engineering professor at the University
of Texas, Arlington, who co-authored a paper on “making AI less
thirsty.” “GPT-3 needs to ‘drink’ (i.e., consume) a 500ml
bottle of water for roughly 10 to 50 medium-length responses,
depending on when and where it is deployed,” Ren and Islam’s
paper reports.
… Eastern San Joaquin County, like the rest of the Central
Valley, is facing an uncertain future due to the looming state
groundwater mandate that requires basins not
to pump more water from an aquifer than is replenished in a
given year. It is safe to say Milton will feel the pain
when it comes big time. To prevent a similar fate, the SSJID
has developed a long range water plan critical in its fight to
keep the state from ignoring historical front-of-the-line
legally adjudicated water rights to commandeer water from the
Stanislaus River basin to use as they see fit. That,
coupled with the groundwater mandate, would have a major
negative impact on Manteca, Ripon, Escalon and the surrounding
countryside as well as Lathrop and Tracy. While it wouldn’t
send the South County back to the 1880s, it would still be
devastating. And if you think this is only a problem for
farmers, guess again. Choke off the water supply based on
average or above average precipitation years, and you will
devalue existing homes. –Written by Manteca Bulletin editor Dennis Wyatt.
Last year, legislators passed, the governor signed, and
California voters approved, a ten billion dollar climate bond
(the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought
Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024, SB 867
(Allen), which appeared on the November ballot as Proposition
4). While the bond act’s full title largely tells the story of
its contents, the water- and resilience-focused spending may
not be what all Californians expected from the state’s first
self-proclaimed climate bond. … The negotiations will
continue to unfold, but in the meantime, it is helpful to look
at the contents of the bond’s legislative language. Some may be
surprised to learn, for example, that the bond primarily
addresses climate adaptation and resilience, rather than
climate mitigation such as clean energy infrastructure. This
post outlines some major areas, projects, and funding within
the language passed in 2024.
The regulation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”)
in drinking water remains one of the primary focuses for
legislatures and agencies at both the state and federal levels.
In May 2025, the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(“EPA”) affirmed Maximum Contaminant Levels (“MCLs”) of 4 parts
per trillion (“ppt”) for two PFAS substances, perfluorooctanoic
acid (“PFOA”) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (“PFOS”). Many
states have already regulated PFAS compounds in drinking water
but have done so in a variety of different ways, and at
different levels. The result is a patchwork of regulations and
standards which presents significant operational and compliance
challenges to impacted drinking water systems. This client
alert surveys MCLs, as well as guidance and notification
levels, for PFAS compounds in drinking water across the United
States.
Canadian Wave-powered desalination innovator Oneka Technologies
has secured regulatory approval to move forward with its
wave-powered desalination pilot project off the coast of Fort
Bragg, California. According to Oneka Technologies, the
Fort Bragg Planning Commission unanimously approved the
initiative on May 28, 2025, following the completion of the
environmental review process. The review included a 30-day
public consultation. The project, partly funded by the
California Department of Water Resources (DWR), is now entering
the deployment phase. … This is said to be the first
seawater desalination pilot to complete the CEQA process since
California updated its regulations in 2015. The system is
designed to produce freshwater using wave energy, operating
off-grid and without greenhouse gas emissions.
Before enjoying Ruth Lake this summer, be sure to clean, drain
and dry all gear, boats and trailers to prevent the spread of
the invasive golden mussel. The golden mussel, native to East
and Southeast Asia, was first documented in California in 2024.
Like quagga and zebra mussels, the golden mussel is capable of
rapidly spreading, wreaking ecological health and threatening
water infrastructure and water quality. Thomas Jabusch of the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Michiko Mares of
the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District join the program to
golden mussels, their threat, and what you can do to stop the
spread of this invasive species.
President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the U.S. out of an
agreement with Washington, Oregon and four American Indian
tribes to work together to restore salmon populations and boost
tribal clean energy development in the Pacific Northwest,
deriding the plan as “radical environmentalism” that could have
resulted in the breaching of four controversial dams on the
Snake River. The deal, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin
Agreement, was reached in late 2023 and heralded by the Biden
administration, tribes and conservationists as historic. It
allowed for a pause in decades of litigation over the harm the
federal government’s operation of dams in the Northwest has
done to the fish. Under it, the federal government said it
planned to spend more than $1 billion over a decade to help
recover depleted salmon runs. The government also said
that it would build enough new clean energy projects in the
Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by the
Lower Snake River dams … should Congress ever agree to remove
them.
It’s been a wet several weeks in Colorado, but as Coloradans
know, moisture tends to come in the form of rain at this point
in the year. And as snowpack continues to dwindle around the
state, several regions are far behind their snowpack norm for
the date. According to data provided by the USDA, the state of
Colorado is at just 36 percent of the snowpack norm for June
12. … Meanwhile, western Colorado is hurting for
snowpack, too, with the Colorado Headwaters river basin
at just 28 percent of what’s typical. … It’s also
worth noting that places where the snow has disappeared the
fastest are also where some of the state’s most serious drought
conditions are found. Currently, it’s estimated that about 60
percent of the state is ‘abnormally dry’ or in a phase of
drought, compared to 38 percent at the same point last
year.
California Democrats tried on Thursday to dissuade Secretary of
the Interior Doug Burgum from cuts to water
infrastructure funding. Instead, they got a clear view
of the Trump administration’s priorities. The water security
programs may be working, but budget cuts are more important,
Burgum told lawmakers during a House hearing on President
Donald Trump’s proposed budget for the Department of the
Interior. … Congress is supposed to have the final say
in federal funding, but the administration’s budget proposal,
which would eliminate WaterSMART, is raising
red flags for some House Democrats, especially given the
approach DOGE has taken to federal funding. Burgum was
responding to Rep. Luz Rivas, who represents the San Fernando
Valley. Rivas said WaterSMART, which funds water management
improvements, drought planning and more throughout the American
West, was successful in mitigating water shortages in her
district. It’s received billions in federal funding since 2010,
with billions more matched by state and local partners.
