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On the calendar today …
- PUBLIC MEETING: Development of Beaver Management and Restoration Plan from 2pm to 3:30pm. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) invites you to a public scoping meeting to solicit input on the planned preparation of a statewide Beaver Management and Restoration Plan (Plan). The purpose of the meetings is to provide an interactive forum for interested parties to learn more about the planned contents of the Plan, share insights, ask questions, and provide input. To accommodate schedules, we will be holding these early scoping meetings on two occasions, each covering the same information. The meetings will be held virtually via Zoom and are intended for the general public, landowners and land managers, Tribes, restoration practitioners, and other stakeholders who are interested in providing feedback on the proposed outline and scope of the plan. For information about the meetings and to register as an attendee, please see the meeting announcement.
- MEETING: State Water Resources Control Board beginning at 9am. The Water Board will consider proposed resolutions to adopt the State Fiscal Year 2025-26 Drinking Water State Revolving Fund Intended Use Plan. Click here for the agenda.
In California water news today …
Southwest in a ‘mega-drying’ zone due to groundwater loss, study finds
“Nevada, the driest state in the union, is only getting drier as the region’s supply of groundwater quickly disappears. The American Southwest – including Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Nevada, Colorado, Utah and California – is linked to one of four continental-scale “mega-drying” regions worldwide that have undergone unprecedented rates of drying, according to a recent study in Science Advances. The loss of freshwater from the regions is the result of two key factors: severe droughts and groundwater overuse. Two decades of satellite observations revealed that as the dry areas of the world become drier and surface water in rivers and lakes declines, communities are becoming more reliant on groundwater, leading to rapid depletion of freshwater. The lower Colorado River Basin – which supplies water for Nevada, Arizona, and California – has lost groundwater equivalent to Lake Mead’s full storage capacity in the last 20 years, or about 28 million acre-feet of water. … ” Read more from the Nevada Current.
SoCal: The smoldering, noxious waste dump next door
“Five years ago, Elizabeth Jeffords stood at the top of a pretty, tree-lined street in Castaic, California, admiring the house she and her husband just bought. But soon after moving in, the former track runner, now 46, began to feel fatigued, dizzy, disoriented and winded. Jeffords, who often wears oversize black glasses that accent her auburn-tinged hair, saw every type of doctor she could think of and spent thousands of dollars on tests. No one could figure out what ailed her. She always kept her windows open until August 2023, when a putrid, chemical odor roused her in the middle of the night. The next morning, Jeffords saw on social media that many of her neighbors had complained about the foul smell to the local air district. On her front door, she found a notice from the Chiquita Canyon Landfill offering her and other residents a free air filter. When the Jeffords’ bought the house, the realtor didn’t disclose that L.A. County’s second-largest landfill operated two and a half miles from their bedroom window. That’s because the landfill was considered too far away to be a public nuisance—regulatory parlance for an unreasonable threat to public health and safety. Yet the landfill would destroy Jeffords’ dream of country living. And its unchecked toxic emissions would test her faith in the leaders of a state known as an environmental leader. … ” Read the full article at Inside Climate News.
Subsea desalination plant will turn Pacific Ocean into tap water
“Dozens of water-harvesting pods are set to be deployed along the sea floor off the coast of California as the United States ramps up its first subsea desalination project. The effort is expected to produce 60 million gallons (227 million liters) of fresh water per day. Thanks to increasing temperatures, California frequently struggles with maintaining an adequate freshwater supply. Extreme heat causes reservoirs to experience more rapid evaporation, snowmelt runoff is lower because there is simply less snow, the Colorado river is losing volume, and droughts are becoming more frequent and severe. Now, a new project aims to bring in fresh drinking water from the billions of gallons of water that lay off the state’s west coast – the Pacific Ocean. Water technology company OceanWell has just announced the launch of the Water Farm 1 (WF1) project in cooperation with Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD), which manages fresh water for about 70,000 residents located in western Los Angeles County. Six additional California water agencies are also part of the effort. … ” Read more from New Atlas.
California water board joins opposition to high-risk-AI bill
“The California State Water Resources Control Board is lending its voice to mounting opposition to a bill in California that would regulate high-risk use cases of artificial intelligence. The board said last week that the bill is “vague, ambiguous, and could encompass many current tools used, like excel workbooks.” Known as the Automated Decisions Safety Act, or AB 1018, the legislation would set new rules for how artificial intelligence and other automated-decision systems are used in situations that significantly affect people’s lives, such as in the domains of housing, jobs, health care, credit, education and law. The California Senate Appropriations Committee released a report Friday estimating state and local agencies could pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually in compliance costs, with major expenses tied to audits, staffing, training, notices, appeals and legal enforcement. … ” Read more from State Scoop.
Letters to the Editor: Subsidence isn’t just an environmental crisis, and it can be slowed
Allison Febbo, general manager of the Westlands Water District, writes, “This article (“Central Valley homeowners are watching property values sink with the land,” Aug. 13) makes clear subsidence is not just an environmental crisis. Decades of unreliable surface water left San Joaquin Valley farmers no choice but to pump groundwater — with severe consequences. Sinking land, cracked infrastructure and reduced capacity to the California Aqueduct that delivers water to millions in Southern California. The good news: Subsidence can be slowed — and potentially reversed. … ” Continue reading at the LA Times.
How Orange County’s GWRS revolutionized water reuse
“More than 461 billion—and counting. This striking figure, prominently displayed on the Orange County Water District’s (OCWD) website, represents the gallons of potable water produced by the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) since it became operational in 2008. As the world’s largest advanced water purification system for indirect potable reuse, the GWRS stands out as a visionary project that takes a once-wasted resource, wastewater, and purifies it into high-quality drinking water—a remarkable feat that reflects innovation, leadership and sustainability. OCWD’s visionary leadership in water recycling dates back to the 1970s, when it built and operated one of the region’s first advanced wastewater reclamation facilities, Water Factory 21. Building on this legacy, OCWD expanded upon the partnership with its neighbours at the Orange County Sanitation District (OC San) to develop a solution that would prioritise water reuse and redefine regional water reliability. … ” Read more from Smart Water Magazine.
Statewide study taps 3,000 students for salmon research
“In addition to predators, river diversions, and reduced spawning grounds, California salmon now face a new challenge: Thiamine Deficiency Complex, or TDC, a nutritional deficiency that leads to neurological problems and early death. Thankfully, more than 3,000 high school students offer a way forward in tackling this urgent issue. As research assistants in a nationwide study — created in collaboration with experts from the UC Davis School of Education and Center for Watershed Sciences — the high schoolers worked with scholars from 2020 to 2025 to collect the data needed to determine the cause of rising TDC rates. Together, they monitored hundreds of spawning salmon for early signs of thiamine deficiency, most notably, swimming in spinning patterns. Researchers published the final study in July 2025, identifying anchovy-dominated diets as the cause of TDC. With a recent and ongoing decline in oceanic biodiversity, salmon are primarily consuming anchovies, resulting in critically lower thiamine concentrations in their systems. The high schoolers’ data collection helped advance efforts to protect local salmon, bringing fresh insight to an urgent conservation challenge that’s already impacting the students’ own communities. The project may have ended, but their contributions will continue to serve as a model for building more equitable research projects that encourage everyone to lend a hand. … ” Read more from UC Davis.
Tips to understand our convoluted yet obligatory units of water
Edward Ring writes, “Those of us following water politics and the water industry have become familiar with the most common units of water volume and water flow. Professionals in the industry make constant use of terms, often reduced to acronyms, forgetting that the rest of us may have no idea what they’re talking about. When it comes to encouraging meaningful discussions over water policy, understanding these terms is mandatory. But whether it’s politicians who rely on staff members who are themselves usually spread too thin to become expert anyway, or journalists who often just grab a quote with a number in it to give their story a whiff of verisimilitude, water numeracy is unusual. The situation is compounded by the fact that unlike the rest of the world, where units of water are divided into neat levels of magnitude according to a decimal system – 1,000 liters of water is a cubic meter (weighing a metric ton), and 1 billion cubic meters is a cubic kilometer (weighing a metric gigaton) – American units of water volume are, to put it charitably, convoluted. … ” Continue reading from Edward Ring.
Ancient forests, modern fires, and the debate over active management
“Photographs of forests in the western U.S. from the mid-1800s show a starkly different reality compared to what we see today, says Paul Hessburg, an ecologist and professor at the University of Washington. “It looks nothing like the current landscape,” he tells Mongabay. Today, many of these forests are overgrown and dominated by younger trees. Back then, they were typically more open — “park-like,” according to many scientists. They were part of a broader mosaic: conifer-dominated forests mixed with deciduous woodlands, open meadows and wetlands in a patchy broth of diverse habitats. Fire played an integral role — perhaps the integral role — in shaping these ecosystems. But soon, European-descended emigrants to the West shut it down in just about every way they could, with little understanding of the implications. Hessburg and other researchers spend their careers teasing apart these dynamics and looking for ways to replicate those effects through a set of “active management” tools, such as prescribed burning and thinning. Where possible, the goal is often to usher fire back into the landscape at lower intensities to promote regeneration and avoid the catastrophic megafires that have destroyed communities in recent years. … ” Continue reading from Mongabay.
In commentary today …
We can have it all: forward-looking climate policy and affordability. Here’s how.
Daniel Barad, Western States Policy Manager with the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes, “They say it can’t be done. Climate policy means higher costs for consumers, they say. Policies that prioritize pocketbooks mean rolling back health protections, they say. But as we enter the final month of the legislative session in California, elected officials have an opportunity to prove that we can have it all: Forward looking climate policy that protects consumers and prioritizes affordability. But having it all will require thoughtful leadership and an unprecedented willingness to work together across interests to meet extraordinary challenges. I believe we can do it. Call me an optimist. Call me a dreamer. But never call me an unconcerned nonscientist. … ” Read more from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In regional water news and commentary today …
NORTH COAST
PG&E dam removal proposal explained on podcast
“Pacific Gas and Electric Company presented a podcast on August 11, to update the public regarding its intention to surrender its license and eventual dismantling of the Scott Dam and the Cape Horn Dam in Mendocino County then cease hydroelectrical power generation. The Eel-Russian Project Authority is a joint powers authority formed by a joint exercise of powers agreement between the County of Sonoma, Sonoma County Water Agency (Sonoma Water) and the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission (IWPC).and Round Valley Indian Tribes, whom all have a seat on the five-member Board of Directors, which is comprised of two representatives from IWPC, one from Sonoma Water, one from the County of Sonoma, and one from Round Valley Indian Tribes. … The Eel-Russian Project Authority is negotiating with PG&E as the utility moves ahead with plans to surrender operations of the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project and to decommission the Scott and Cape Horn dams on the Eel River. The Eel-Russian Project Authority will also have the legal capacity to own, construct and operate a new water diversion facility near the Cape Horn Dam. … ” Read more from the Lake County Record-Bee.
MOUNTAIN COUNTIES
PG&E warns of increased river flows for whitewater recreation in Quincy
“Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has issued a warning to the public to exercise heightened safety measures as water flows will be elevated through the weekend of August 23-24 on a section of the North Fork Feather River, designated for whitewater recreation. The increased water flows will transform parts of the river into Class III, IV, and V rapids, which are suitable only for skilled paddlers and not for tubing. The affected area, known as the Rock Creek Reach, spans an 8.3-mile portion of the North Fork of the Feather River within the Plumas National Forest, situated between PG&E’s Rock Creek Dam and the Rock Creek Powerhouse near Storrie. … ” Read more from KRCR.
Salmon: A keystone species of the Yuba River
“In every ecosystem, species are connected through intricate relationships — predators and prey, pollinators and plants, decomposers and the dead. While many of these species play essential roles, some exert a disproportionately large influence compared to their population numbers. These are known as keystone species. A keystone species is like the central stone in a traditional stone arch. Remove that stone, and the entire structure collapses. In an ecosystem, removing a keystone species can trigger a domino effect, disrupting food webs, changing habitat, and even altering the physical landscape. Keystone species help regulate populations, maintain biodiversity, and support ecosystem resilience. … What all keystone species have in common is that their presence is critical to balance. When they thrive, ecosystems flourish. When they disappear, ecosystems unravel. This concept is more than a metaphor, it’s observable across biomes, from tropical rainforests to alpine rivers. And here in Northern California, few keystone species are as ecologically significant — or as culturally iconic — as salmon. … ” Read the full article from the South Yuba River Citizens League.
SACRAMENTO VALLEY
A 1960s California dam failure destroyed this bridge. Now, debris removal begins
“Placer County officials began Monday removing a bridge which sank under the American River after a dam failure washed out the structure in 1964. Water rushed through the Hell Hole Dam on Dec. 23, 1964, after a five-day storm gushed 22-inches of rain into the reservoir. The construction for the project went slower than anticipated, and was incomplete in anticipation of flooding season, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. No one died, but rock from the dam slammed into five structures, destroying two suspension bridges and Placer County’s State Route 49 bridge, according the association. The bridge is near Highway 49 and Old Foresthill Road, just outside North Auburn. On Monday, Placer County officials began removing 750 tons of bridge debris, such as 10-feet tall and 200-foot-long girders. The work aims to ensure safety for residents recreating in the area, according to county officials. … ” Read more from the Sacramento Bee.
BAY AREA
Las Gallinas sewer district solar project takes shape
“Work is underway to install a 1-megawatt solar energy project at the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District headquarters in San Rafael. The project at 300 Smith Ranch Road, which involves a solar photovoltaic system with nearly 1,600 panels, replaces a larger yet less powerful 588-kilowatt system that was decommissioned about four years ago after two decades in operation. A second phase that is under design will install a battery system with a storage capacity of more than 2,100 kilowatt hours with a discharge duration of four hours. “One of the goals is to increase capacity,” said Mike Cortez, the district engineer. “The technology has advanced, the panels are smaller and they are more efficient. The more we generate, the more savings we have.” … ” Read more from the Marin Independent Journal.
Saratoga’s FireSafe Council gets $185k grant for wildfire resilience projects
“The Saratoga-based Santa Clara County FireSafe Council announced on Aug. 14 that it received a $185,000 grant for wildfire resilience projects near the Los Gatos Creek Watershed. The grant was given to the council by San Jose Water for wildfire resilience efforts in the Call of the Wild and Chemeketa Park communities in Los Gatos. Cal Fire’s most recent Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps list these communities as areas with very high fire hazard severity. They border on San Jose Water’s critical water source areas in the Los Gatos Creek Watershed. “This new funding is an expansion of our partnership with San Jose Water and the Wildland Urban Interface communities, which are in service areas that are challenged with ingress/egress considerations in Cal Fire-designated high and very high fire hazard severity zones,” said FireSafe Council CEO Seth Schalet. … ” Read more from the San Jose Mercury News.
SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY
VIDEO: Kern River water goes mostly to agriculture
“Here is the third in our series of videos examining how rights to the water of the Kern River were divvied up through a complex matrix of settlements, decrees and contracts stretching back more than 135 years.” Watch video at SJV Water.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Huntington Beach air show secures 5-year Coastal Commission permit — with 21 special conditions
“The Pacific Airshow received approval Friday of a coastal development permit from the California Coastal Commission, propelling the event up to roar through the skies of Huntington Beach again this fall. The Coastal Commission unanimously voted to approve a five-year permit to operate Pacific Airshow, LLC — albeit with a list of 21 special conditions that the show must abide by to mitigate impacts on natural resources and public access to the beach. Among them, Pacific Airshow, LLC must pay $274,758 to the California State Lands Commission for public access and habitat enhancement projects at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, to resolve unpermitted development. … ” Read more from the LA Times.
Along the Colorado River …
Human emissions drove the megadrought in the western US
“Greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions from human activity have been driving the prolonged drought in the western United States through a complicated connection with the Pacific Ocean, according to a new CU Boulder-led study. For more than two decades, an extreme dry spell has drained the Colorado River, devastated local farms, and intensified wildfires across the American Southwest. The new prediction, published Aug. 13 in Nature, could help water managers region develop better water use plans or invest in infrastructure accordingly, with relief potentially still decades away. “Our results show that the drought and ocean patterns we’re seeing today are not just natural fluctuations—they’re largely driven by human activity,” said Jeremy Klavans, postdoctoral researcher in CU Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and lead author of the study. … ” Read more from UC Boulder.
SEE ALSO: Human emissions driving Colorado River ‘megadrought,’ CU Boulder research finds, from Colorado Public Radio
The Colorado River is in a shortage again, amid mounting calls for long-term changes
“The latest projections for the Colorado River are out, and they paint a picture of more dry conditions and dropping reservoirs. The river supplies water to nearly 40 million people across the Southwest, and it’s stretched thin by climate change and steady demand. New data from the Bureau of Reclamation shows low inflows and dropping water levels at the nation’s two largest reservoirs – Lake Powell and Lake Mead. This is just the latest bad news in the midst of a megadrought going back more than two decades. The river will enter 2026 in a “Tier 1 Shortage,” under which Arizona and Nevada will face mandatory cutbacks to their water supply. While they put some water users in an uncomfortable pinch, those cutbacks aren’t raising the same alarm bells they once did. Dry conditions and water reductions have become a sort of new normal. Shortage conditions for the lower Colorado River basin were first declared in 2021, and have been in place since. … ” Read more from Arizona Public Media.
Colorado River basin states get centuries-old assist on future Colorado River use
“The clock is ticking for Wyoming and other Colorado River Basin states to decide how to split up shrinking water supplies, and some conservationists are reconsidering a centuries-old water distribution tradition at work across the arid American West. As historian and Member of the Hispanic Conservation Leadership Council Nick Saenz explained, each spring farmers are in a race against time to water crops before snowmelt disappears. In the tradition known as acequia, decisions are made democratically, and irrigation priorities benefit entire communities over any individual user. Saenz said acequia offers a blueprint for how to share a scarce resource. “That’s going to require us all working together,” said Saenz. “That’s going to require some concessions and some compromise, and trying to envision how as a group we can make decisions about our collective future.” … ” Read more from NPR.
Officials predict Lake Mead will hit its lowest water levels ever in 2 years
“Amid severe drought and ongoing, tense negotiations over the future of the Colorado River, federal officials are predicting that Lake Mead will see its lowest water levels ever within the next two years. Last week, the Bureau of Reclamation released a report that estimates water levels for reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin, including Lake Powell and Lake Mead, over the next two years. Lake Mead and Lake Powell are currently 31% full. For both reservoirs, the outlook over the next two years isn’t good. … ” Read more from SF Gate.
NAU professor to study water quality of Grand Canyon springs following Dragon Bravo Fire
“A researcher with Northern Arizona University will be studying how the Dragon Bravo Fire and efforts to contain it might be affecting the Grand Canyon’s water supply. The National Science Foundation provided NAU professor Abe Springer and his colleagues rapid-response funding to investigate water contamination in Roaring Springs. … ” Read more from KJZZ.
Audio: Invasive zebra mussels devastate ecosystems. Can officials stop them from harming the Colorado River?
“A small menace is invading the river that supplies water to 40 million people in southwestern states. Zebra mussels are tiny freshwater shellfish. They’re about the size of your thumbnail, with a striped shell. Since the late 1980s, they’ve spread to 30 states across the country, including Colorado. Now, Colorado Parks and Wildlife says they’ve been found in the Colorado River near towns like Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs. Zebra mussels wreak havoc on water infrastructure and devastate ecosystems. And they are difficult – if not impossible – to eradicate from rivers. We wanted to learn more about why this species is so damaging and what Colorado Parks and Wildlife plans to do about them. Erin O’Toole spoke with Robert Walters, who oversees the agency’s Aquatic Nuisance Species Program.” Listen at KUNC.
In national water news today …
Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much
“As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also use water indirectly, through the water required to produce the electricity to power the facility. The amount of water used to produce electricity increases dramatically when the source is fossil fuels compared with solar or wind. A 2024 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that in 2023, U.S. data centers consumed 17 billion gallons (64 billion liters) of water directly through cooling, and projects that by 2028, those figures could double – or even quadruple. The same report estimated that in 2023, U.S. data centers consumed an additional 211 billion gallons (800 billion liters) of water indirectly through the electricity that powers them. But that is just an estimate in a fast-changing industry. … ” Read more from The Conversation.
Businesses face ‘chaos’ as EPA aims to repeal its authority over climate pollution
“The Trump administration’s plan to undo a landmark finding that climate pollution threatens public health and welfare poses lots of risks for corporate America. The Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding has served as the legal basis for federal climate regulations under the Clean Air Act since 2009. The finding concludes that the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere endangers people’s health and the well-being of communities. Reaching that determination was a prerequisite to set limits for the pollution. Getting rid of that authority would lead to the repeal of “all greenhouse gas standards” at the federal level, according to the EPA, amounting, it says, to “one of the largest deregulatory actions in American history.” … ” Read more from National Public Radio.
“How can this happen?” Fight over sewage sludge on farms intensifies
“Ryan Dunham heard his eleven-year-old daughter’s scream from his living room. He bolted up the stairs to the bathroom where she was taking a shower and couldn’t believe his eyes. The water flowing from the faucet was brown, and it smelled like “decay, rot and death.” It was the same smell he noticed coming from his neighbor’s farm fields across the street just days earlier. Dunham has lived in New Scotland, a rural town in upstate New York, for more than 20 years and is accustomed to the smell of manure. But this smell was different, it was so bad he couldn’t open his windows and his kids didn’t want to play outside in the middle of summer. After that day last spring, Dunham discovered his neighbor was spreading sewage sludge — a biosolid made up of decomposed human and industrial waste — as fertilizer on the fields. That waste was seeping into his home’s water supply, putting his family’s health at-risk. “I connected the dots that my kids were literally taking showers in human sewage,” Dunham said. “How can this happen in the state of New York? How can this happen legally in the United States of America? It boggles my mind.” … ” Read more from The New Lede.
Proposed NASA cuts could affect public health research
“Daniel P. Johnson, a geographer at Indiana University at Indianapolis, works with a team of researchers who spend a lot of time catching blowflies, dissecting their iridescent blue-green abdomens, and analyzing the contents of their guts. Johnson and his colleagues are tracking the spread of Lyme disease on a warming planet. But they need a lot of additional data. They get it from NASA. The world’s foremost driver of space science is not a public health agency. But NASA’s vast data collection has quietly become important for health research, helping scientists track disease outbreaks and monitor air pollution amid climate change. Now, as President Donald Trump’s administration proposes sweeping cuts to the agency’s budget, including its Earth Sciences Division, experts are worried that many of these data sources could be lost, and research collaborations halted, with serious consequences for public health. … ” Read more from Undark.
