Lake Hodges is a San Diego landmark where people hike, bike, fish, kayak, canoe, bird watch and take photographs against the backdrop of a century-old, city-owned reservoir.
It’s also a disaster waiting to happen. The question is whether calamity would come by flood or by fire.
The states of California, Arizona and Nevada have proposed voluntary water-saving measures for the next three years aimed at buying time while negotiations remain deadlocked over the future of shrinking reservoirs filled by the Colorado River.
The Colorado River provides water to some 40 million people in the American west. But the two massive reservoirs filled by the river, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both stand at historically low levels, after consistent overdrawing coupled with reduced snowpack and warming from climate change.
Proponents of a huge water project are claiming victory after the $20 billion tunnel largely cleared a key hurdle last week. But the massive construction — known as the Delta tunnel — is still mired in controversy, and many roadblocks lay ahead, writes CalMatters’ Rachel Becker.
To shore up state water supplies, the Delta tunnel aims to divert more water from Northern California — while bypassing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — and deliver water to roughly 30 million people living mostly in Southern California, as well as farmland.
For the first time, growers in one of California’s most acutely water-stressed areas have to reveal how much groundwater they are pumping. For generations, they’ve been free to take water from wells on their own land without reporting to it the state.
The State Water Resources Control Board ordered landowners in parts of the San Joaquin Valley around Corcoran and Pixley to submit detailed reports by Friday.
Two high-profile water crises, juiced up by climate change and industrial overuse, are building in the US. From a city in Texas staring down a drought emergency to a decades-long political crisis coming to a head for the states that rely on the Colorado River, water issues in the West will take center stage this summer—and experts tell WIRED that other places should take notes and start planning ahead for their own future.
In February, following a winter of record-breaking heat, snowpack in various mountain ranges across the American West reached record lows. March came in even hotter, smashing records in states across the region.
Phoenix leaders are laying out their plan to keep water flowing as the Colorado River shrinks, relying on decades of preparation for potential shortages.
The city of Phoenix has been in stage 1 drought conditions since 2022, but they are preparing to move to stage 2 by the end of the year.
On Tuesday, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) announced he has opened an investigation into the Trump administration’s latest scheme to steal water from Northern California and divert it to Southern California.
As part of his investigation, he sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum demanding records and information about their efforts to facilitate a Southern California water district’s takeover of dams and water rights on the Eel River, hundreds of miles outside its service area. He sent a similar letter to the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.
A plan to install a tunnel beneath a 45-mile stretch of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has moved closer to final approval after a state agency determined most of the project’s certification was consistent with a regulatory plan.
The Delta Stewardship Council voted 6-1 last week to return two issues related to the Delta Conveyance Project back to the California Department of Water Resources for further review, while rejecting most appeals filed by 10 groups challenging the project’s compliance with policies.
California’s largest agricultural water district wants to turn a growing water crisis into an economic pivot.
The Valley Clean Infrastructure Plan aims to repurpose tens of thousands of acres of water‑starved farmland in California’s San Joaquin Valley into a massive solar‑and‑battery network, producing power for the state’s grid, lowering energy costs for farmers, and creating a new economic lifeline as groundwater rules force fields to fallow.
