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California’s water agencies are trying to force their way onto the 2026 gubernatorial campaign agenda.

Water is one of California’s most consequential governing problems and one of its least attractive campaign issues: it’s technical, regionally specific and easy to get wrong. Water matters intensely in the red-leaning Central Valley, the thirsty, agricultural heart of the state, but that rarely translates into votes for Democrats; in fact, the Democratic gubernatorial contenders barely mentioned it in the June primary.

For the next five years, the Environmental Protection Agency has indicated it will not require public water utilities to test for microplastics or pharmaceuticals in drinking water, according to a proposed rule published in the Federal Register.

On Friday, the EPA submitted a list of chemicals it plans to test for under the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, a mandatory testing program used to collect information about concerning chemicals in drinking water that could be harming human health. It did not include microplastics or pharmaceuticals.

The Colorado River basin and its two largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — are facing potentially record-low water levels in the coming months due to a snow drought that impacted much of the West over the winter season, projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show.

The 24-month study released by the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water resource management, on Friday indicates that Lake Mead could reach a record-low level of 1,036 feet of elevation in 2026.

High in the Rocky Mountains, spring-fed streams and ponds have vanished, leaving patches of cracked mud in what were once spongy meadows.

This year has been so extremely warm and arid that the mountains have remained largely snowless. The water-generating source of the Colorado River, its headwaters, is drying up.

Questions are mounting around a proposed artificial intelligence data center in California’s Imperial Valley because its developer is now seeking Colorado River water, despite earlier saying the project would avoid drawing from the drought-stressed river.

KPBS reported that Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing has gone to court to secure 260 million gallons of water per year from the Imperial Irrigation District — about 750,000 gallons a day — for a planned artificial intelligence complex in the desert.