A new report released on March 13, 2025, shows that changes to reservoir operations at Lake Oroville and New Bullards Bar Reservoir in California can further reduce flood risk for communities along the Tuba and Feather rivers during extreme atmospheric river storm events and potentially benefit water supply during drier river periods.
The recent rain and snow are much needed for Central California’s water supply.
The latest set of storms is already sparking talk of a “Miracle March.”
Malynndra Tome was helping to map livestock ponds in the Navajo Nation when she saw something that inspired her to act. An elderly woman was filling milk jugs with water at the back of a gas station in the Native American reservation, where about 30% of people live without running water.
Eyewitness News was given a rare look inside the engineering marvel, which was the largest public works project in Southern California during the Great Depression, while it’s shut down for its annual maintenance. It’s the final leg of the massive Colorado River Aqueduct: the 13-mile-long San Jacinto tunnel, bringing up to 1,700 cubic feet of water per second underneath one of Southern California’s tallest mountains.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last week that EPA will work with the United States Army Corps of Engineers to review the definition of “waters of the United States.” EPA said it will move quickly to ensure that a revised definition follows the law, reduces red-tape, cuts overall permitting costs, and lowers the cost of doing business in communities across the country while protecting the nation’s navigable waters from pollution.
Representatives of California, Arizona and Nevada are urging the Trump administration to take a different approach in confronting the problems of the water-starved Colorado River. As Trump’s appointees inherit the task of writing new rules for dealing with the river’s chronic water shortages, the three states are raising several concerns they want to see addressed.
The Trump administration announced a wave of regulatory rollbacks on Wednesday including a repeal of Biden-era emissions limits on power plants and automobiles, as well as reduced protections for waterways.
When President Trump called for the federal government to “maximize” water deliveries in California, commanders of the Army Corps of Engineers quickly found two dams where they could carry out that order. And even though the officials knew the water couldn’t be moved out of the Central Vally as Trump wished, they released billions of gallons anyway, according to a newly released government document.
Haze hung over the Salton Sea on a recent winter day, while black-necked stilts and kildeer waded in the shallows, pecking at crustaceans. Something else emerged a few steps closer to the lakeshore: a briny, rotten egg stench wafting from the water. The Salton Sea is nearly twice as salty as the ocean, laden with agricultural runoff and susceptible to algal blooms that spew hydrogen sulfide, a noxious gas. It’s also a haven to more than 400 bird species and a key stop on the Pacific Flyway, one of North America’s main bird migration routes.
After the Washington Post revealed late last week that the Army Corps of Engineers knew that releasing water from two California reservoirs at President Donald Trump’s direction in January was unlikely to reach the southern part of the state, Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., is demanding answers from the Pentagon and the Department of Interior for what he calls the “politically motivated, uncoordinated, unscheduled, and opaque water releases” in the Central Valley between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2.
