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In an effort to address the historic-low water level at Lake Mead, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Tuesday approved an agreement with the federal government to help add water to the reservoir.

On Tuesday, Metropolitan’s Board of Directors approved an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which will provide the agency up to $65 million to keep up to 200,000 acre-feet of its Colorado River supplies in the lake this year.

At a time when families are grappling with rising costs for housing, groceries and other essentials, keeping basic services affordable has never been more important. For public water agencies, that responsibility extends beyond delivering safe drinking water. It means balancing today’s needs with tomorrow’s challenges through thoughtful planning and sound financial stewardship.

That is why the Sweetwater Authority governing board’s recent approval of a $65.6 million budget for fiscal year 2026-27 with no increase in water rates deserves attention.

For the second time in 122 years, a sensitive gauge measuring the San Pedro River’s streamflow near Sierra Vista went dry, a reading conservationists say is bad news for one of the Southwest’s last free-flowing rivers.

On June 22, the river stopped flowing at a U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge east of the city. That site, known as the Charleston gauge, monitors the river’s water level at the surface and remained at zero for over two weeks.

As the Trump administration delays regulations on “forever chemicals” that pollute reservoirs, rivers and aquifers nationwide, California officials say they are unsure what the consequences will be for an estimated 1.5 million Californians served by utilities with contaminated sources of drinking water.

With uncertainty over when regulations on some of the most common of these cancer-causing pollutants, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, will take effect in California, lawmakers are floating alternative plans to remove them from the state’s tap water.

A developing El Niño is forecast to become unusually powerful this winter, which could hold major implications for California’s water supply, reservoirs and flood risk.

The odds of a “very strong” El Niño—defined by exceptionally warm sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific—have increased dramatically as the event develops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) latest outlook, released Thursday, shows a 75 to 81 percent chance of a very strong event between November and January, the heart of California’s wet season.