Seven years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to bring safe and affordable drinking water to the state’s most disadvantaged communities.
Last week, Newsom celebrated the program’s accomplishments.
Rainfall across much of California and the West has become more clustered in heavier storms, with longer dry spells in between.
The net effect is a drying out, researchers found in a new study. It isn’t just the western United States; the same is true in much of the rest of the world.
In a clear sign that California is not facing water shortages or a drought this summer, Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir and a key component of California’s water system, has nearly filled to the top.
The massive reservoir, contained behind America’s tallest dam, was 99% full on Tuesday afternoon, at 122% of its historical average for mid-May and still slowly rising, with just two feet to go to fill entirely.
In its battle against the drought racking the region, city of Corpus Christi officials have been actively pursuing four seawater desalination proposals — one of its own and three that would be in coordination with private or other public entities.
It’s part of a layered strategy to build supply, augmenting other initiatives to pump groundwater from several well fields and develop treated effluent for industrial uses.
Evolution works over millennia. Climate change is moving far faster. That mismatch is killing some of the planet’s most vital ecosystems, including California’s towering redwoods and the seagrass meadows along its coast, both of which store vast amounts of carbon and support complex webs of life.
Marine heat waves, record wildfires and coastal development are pushing these systems beyond their limits as climate change, driven by emissions of fuels such as oil and gas, accelerates. An estimated 1 million species face extinction, many within decades, largely due to human activities such as habitat destruction, pollution and overuse of natural resources, according to a 2019 report by a United Nations-affiliated intergovernmental scientific body.
From the Rockies to the Cascades to the Sierra Nevada, mountainsides across the West are sparsely covered by the snow that usually blankets the high country well into the summer.
That snowpack is like a savings account that the West draws on when the hot, dry months arrive. It moistens the landscape as it melts, lessening the risk of severe wildfire. The runoff feeds into river basins, and the swelling waterways provide power to hydroelectric dams, irrigation to farmers and drinking water to cities.
The 2026 Pacific hurricane season is just around the corner — and the latest numbers suggest a volatile year ahead.
In the latest outlook from AccuWeather, forecasters are warning of an active season that could increase flood risks for parts of the Southwest U.S., including Southern California, even without direct landfalls.
For the first time, golden mussels, an invasive species of tiny mollusks that can rapidly reproduce and cause millions of dollars in damage to pipes, drinking water plants, irrigation systems and dams — sparking growing concerns across California — have been found in Santa Clara County.
Last month, a juvenile golden mussel was discovered in the raw water intake area at the Penitencia Water Treatment plant near Alum Rock Park in San Jose. A few weeks later, in late April, an adult was found in a raw water strainer at the Santa Teresa Water Treatment Plant in San Jose’s Almaden area.
Lake Shasta, the largest reservoir in California, has continued to make headlines. The lake’s water levels are nearing capacity again, thanks to additional storms since January 2026 saturation, which created a steady level increase not seen since 2011. Right now, the reservoir is at a mere 14 feet from full.
While the arid summer months ahead are expected to drop the current level, the overall streak has been quite an impressive and dramatic change. Especially when looking at the timeline of the drought-riddled lake beginning in 2021, a timeframe that included measurements of 38% capacity.
It has been widely reported that March was a disaster for California’s snowpack. Summer seemed to arrive three months early, with record-shattering heat and dryness and a mere pittance of precipitation. Did a relatively cool, rainy, and even snowy April make up for it? The short answer is no—but it helped.
It’s important to remember that snowpack is California’s third-largest source of water storage, behind surface reservoirs and groundwater. Our statewide water supply grid is built around storing roughly 30% of statewide water supply in snowpack, a relatively reliable source of water through the 20th century.
