You are now in California and the U.S. Media Coverage category.

The El Paso City Council on Monday reviewed a presentation from El Paso Water addressing water infrastructure planning for Northeast El Paso and projected water use at Meta’s data center site amid community concerns about the project’s impact.

Since Meta announced plans to build the data center, residents have continued to raise concerns about the project’s impact on nearby neighborhoods. KTSM previously reported that some residents who live near the site have already reported changes. They reported increased noise, dust, and bright lights from ongoing construction.

Lake Powell, US’s second-largest reservoir, threatens to plunge to unprecedentedly low levels this year after a historically bleak snowpack failed to raise its water level, scientists and water experts have said, adding renewed urgency to stalled talks over how to conserve a water source depended on by tens of millions of people in the US south-west.

The 185-mile Colorado River reservoir currently stands at about 23% of its capacity, or roughly 5.6m acre-feet. Lake Powell fell below that level for a few months three years ago. But those 2023 levels were recorded in the winter, when the reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border hits its lowest ebb. Spring runoff carried the level back up to 9.6m acre-feet by June, according to data from the US Bureau of Reclamation.

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.