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.
As California heads into its dry season, its major reservoirs are in good shape, with statewide storage on Friday estimated to be 20% above normal for this time of year.
Robust rainfall in April has given a slight boost in places — especially welcome after an unusually dry March.
Federal water managers are putting the nation’s largest dam in a precarious position as they try to balance out the Colorado River system in a year of record low snowpack.
Toward the bottom of the Bureau of Reclamation’s marquee announcement last week was a paragraph that said lower flows out of Lake Powell could reduce Hoover Dam’s hydroelectric power generation by about 40 percent as soon as this fall. According to projections, Lake Mead could fall nearly 30 feet in the next two years, more than 8 feet past the 2022 record low.
A draft decision issued Monday on appeals to California’s Delta Conveyance Project appears to hand the state a major win in its battle to make the massive project a reality.
However, while discarding most of the appeals against the project, the recommendation to the Delta Stewardship Council calls for sending two issues about the project back to the state Department of Water Resources for reconsideration. It also wants yearly reports from the department about its outreach efforts to tribes and various agencies.
Scottsdale could lose as much as 80% of its Colorado River water supply in the coming years, according to an expert who spoke at a community water forum Monday night — a warning that left many residents concerned about the city’s long‑term water security.
Roughly 70% of Scottsdale’s municipal tap water comes from the Colorado River, a source that has been under increasing strain from drought, population growth, and shrinking reservoirs. That dependence, experts said, makes the city especially vulnerable.
For much of California’s agricultural history, a wet winter brought relief. Reservoirs filled, rivers ran high, and growers assumed surface water deliveries would follow. Today, that assumption no longer holds. Even in years marked by heavy storms and strong reservoir storage, California water allocation anxiety persists.
The disconnect reflects a fundamental shift in water management. California’s system is now governed as much by regulation, environmental constraints, groundwater limits and operational rules as by precipitation totals. In short, flood years no longer guarantee reliable water.
An extreme marine heat wave is simmering the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, and experts are warning that it could affect coastal weather and ecosystems for months.
The ocean heat wave started forming at the end of last year but has worsened in recent weeks, according to readings from the Scripps Pier in La Jolla, which has broken more than 25 daily temperature records this year. The surface water temperature on Wednesday was 68.5 degrees — 7.7 degrees above average for the date. The sea bottom was 67.6 degrees, the hottest April 15 in about 100 years of records.
