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This Week's News Highlights

Feature:

BLM Approves Pipeline Conversion for Mojave Groundwater Bank Project Developed with Lytton Rancheria

 
Native News, July 10, 2026
 

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved a right-of-way (ROW) grant allowing construction to begin on the conversion of the Cadiz Northern Pipeline from a natural gas pipeline to a water conveyance system, clearing a major federal hurdle for the Mojave Groundwater Bank project being developed by Cadiz Inc. in partnership with the Lytton Rancheria.

The approval authorizes the conversion and long-term operation of the 220-mile pipeline across BLM-managed lands under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Once the grant is fully executed by Cadiz, construction on the project can begin.

BLM Approves 220-Mile Gas-to-Water Pipeline Conversion in California

 
Pipeline & Gas Journal, July 10, 2026
 

The Bureau of Land Management has approved the conversion of a 220-mile former natural gas pipeline in California into a water conveyance system, allowing construction on the Cadiz Northern Pipeline project to begin.

(P&GJ) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved a right-of-way allowing Cadiz Inc. to convert a 220-mile former natural gas pipeline in California into a water conveyance system, clearing the way for construction to begin.

Policy:

Federal government helping add water to Lake Mead, SoCal water agency says

NBC Los Angeles, July 14, 2026

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.

That’s about $325 per acre-foot. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough to serve roughly three Southern California households a year, according to MWD officials.

California voters rank water among top priorities for next governor

Smart Water Magazine, July 14, 2026

A new statewide survey shows that water reliability and affordability have become a defining issue for California voters ahead of the state’s November 2026 gubernatorial election. The poll, conducted by FM3 Research for the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), a group representing approximately 470 public water agencies that together deliver about 90% of the water used across the state, found that 77% of likely November 2026 voters are more inclined to support a candidate who makes water a priority, a view shared across the political spectrum.

Support for a water focused candidate reaches 83% among Democrats, 77% among independents and 67% among Republicans, according to the memo. Only 3% of respondents said they would be less likely to back such a candidate. The survey also found that 93% of voters agree that safe and reliable water supplies are critical to addressing the state’s goals for communities, the economy, the environment and public health, with 68% saying they “strongly agree.” ACWA Director of Regulatory Relations Chelsea Haines said the results reflect the sector’s importance across multiple fronts, noting that “water is foundational to California’s economy, housing, agriculture, public health and environmental stewardship.”

EPA launches effort to accelerate water infrastructure funding for drinking water and wastewater projects

Water World, July 14, 2026

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a new initiative aimed at accelerating the delivery of federal water infrastructure funding by bringing together states, utilities and industry organizations to identify ways to streamline key financing programs.

EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jess Kramer recently convened what the agency described as its first roundtable focused on improving implementation of federal water infrastructure programs, including the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs), the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) loan program and the Emerging Contaminants in Small and Disadvantaged Communities grant program.

The discussion centered on reducing delays that can slow drinking water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure projects, with particular attention given to barriers facing small and rural communities seeking funding.

Bipartisan Two-Year Water Resources Bill Greenlit by House Panel

Bloomberg, July 14, 2026

Bipartisan legislation authorizing water infrastructure projects across the country advanced unanimously out of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday.

The 2026 Water Resources Development Act (H.R. 9497) aims to help improve the Army Corps of Engineers’ navigation mission and accountability to Congress while also bolstering flood management and dam safety.

Lawmakers every two years reliably pass the bill, which greenlights Army Corps’ studies and projects in nearly every congressional district. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee plans to consider its WRDA legislation (S. 4949) on Wednesday.

Colorado River:

As Colorado River and tributaries shrink, a public power system frays

Colorado Newsline, July 15, 2026
 
The Wayne N. Aspinall Unit, Colorado’s only stake in a federal hydropower system that sells power across the West, is on pace to generate nearly 30% less electricity than its historical average dating to 1978, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. The shortfall is the latest sign of a decades-long decline eroding a system that accounts for about 3% of Colorado’s energy supply.
 
The unit’s three dams on the Gunnison River — including Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal — make up Colorado’s only piece of the Colorado River Storage Project, a Depression-era network of federal dams selling power to municipalities, cooperatives, tribes and irrigation districts across the West. Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water entirely within Colorado, is expected to end the year at just 17% of its live storage capacity.
 
As the river shrinks under the stresses of climate change, so does the unit’s output. And the electricity that the waterway does not help to generate has to come from somewhere else, usually at a higher price.

A major Colorado River decision looms. Here’s how it will affect millions.

 
The Washington Post, July 15, 2026
 
With the river in freefall, federal officials plan to intervene, possibly imposing large cuts to water usage in seven states. Effects would be felt beyond the West.
 
The federal government is poised to announce a major decision about the fate of the shrinking Colorado River — a crucial water supply for 40 million people across two countries, seven states and 30 tribes.
 
Over the past few decades, the worst drought in at least a millennium has parched the Western landscape and caused reservoirs to dwindle. A historically warm and snowless winter reduced this year’s flow to a trickle. Water levels behind two of the nation’s largest dams are in danger of dropping so low that the dams stop functioning.

News release: New State of the Basin Report  highlights the challenges and the path forward for the Colorado River

Keep the River Running, July 14, 2026
 
The “State of the Basin Report: A Guide to the Colorado River Crisis” has found that solutions already exist to mitigate a growing water crisis that affects more than 40 million people across seven states.

Drawing on recent research about ecology, water management and technology, new data on the severity of the hydrological crisis, and interviews with conservation experts, the report highlights:

● The current ecological state of the Colorado River Basin, including challenges with growing salinity;
● Key system pressures including water security, governance, the growth of tech companies and data centers, economic risk and climate adaptation;
● Shared challenges for agriculture, cities, energy, ecosystems and Tribal communities
● High-impact intervention areas to strengthen long-term resilience across the basin

News release: Metropolitan partners with federal government to help water levels in historic-low Lake Mead

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, July 14, 2026
 
With the water level at Lake Mead projected to soon reach its lowest point since it was initially filled, Metropolitan Water District is working with the federal government to help add water to the reservoir and protect hydropower generation at Hoover Dam, under an agreement approved today by Metropolitan’s Board of Directors.
 
Under terms of the agreement, the United States Bureau of Reclamation will compensate Metropolitan for leaving up to 200,000 acre-feet of its Colorado River supplies in Lake Mead this year. (An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough water to serve roughly three households.) The action is possible because of three decades of major investments in diverse water sources, storage and conservation. Water from the Colorado River and Northern California provide about half of the water supply for 19 million people in Southern California.

Lake Powell, Mead drop to historic low, signaling major water crisis

ABC4 (Salt Lake City), July 14, 2026
 
An unprecedented low in combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead has broken the previous record low set in 2023, according to a report from the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.
Both Lake Powell and Lake Mead were extremely low as of July 12, with a combined storage of about 12.67 million acre-feet. The last time the combined storage of these reservoirs was this low was in 1957, during construction of Glen Canyon Dam.
 
During that time, the entire amount of water was stored in Lake Mead, coming in at around 7,000 acre-feet less than the current storage. It wasn’t until 1963 that the river diversion tunnels at Glen Canyon Dam were closed and Lake Powell began to fill.

How much water does Flaming Gorge actually lose to evaporation? Water managers may finally find out.

The Salt Lake Tribune, July 13, 2026

As hot temperatures sweep across Utah and water supplies continue to drop, states and the federal government are launching a new effort to better measure how much water evaporates from major reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell.

The Bureau of Reclamation partnered with scientists and Upper Basin states, including Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, to launch a new evaporation study at Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs — key water storage projects in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

“We’re deploying some state-of-the-art instrumentation to monitor evaporation and weather conditions over the reservoirs,” said Chris Pearson, a research scientist at the Desert Research Institute who was busy installing equipment on floating platforms at Navajo Reservoir, which straddles the Colorado and New Mexico border, last week.

Scottsdale is defending its water future in the face of big Colorado River cuts

KJZZ, July 13, 2026

The city of Scottsdale and its water future has been in the headlines a lot lately, from its on-again, off-again plans to get highly treated wastewater directly to your tap to its reliance on Colorado River water amid what are likely to be pretty big cuts coming to that supply.

Now, Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowski says they’re taking a major step towards securing their long-term water outlook by directing their city manager and city attorney to potentially create a large water use ordinance for the city.

What if next year looks like this one?; The nagging, unanswerable question as Colorado River states struggle to share this diminished river

Montrose Press, July 8, 2026
 
In haggling with their down-river states about sharing the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, the headwater states have delivered a consistent message. We don’t have two big reservoirs named Mead and Powell sitting upstream from us, they say. Mostly we must make do with what the sky delivers.
 
At the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting in Denver last month, the states reiterated this message, offering ample evidence from places like Emery, Utah, and Kemmerer, Wyo. Lest anybody miss the message, Chuck Cullom, the director of the upper-basin commission, showed aerial images of farming areas in Colorado and the other upper-basin states. Far less green was evident in the Montrose area and on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation during June than in 2024.
 
This exceptional year for drought and heat was described by several speakers in Denver as dire. “I want you all to recognize the significance and severity of the things we’re dealing with,” said the Utah representative, Gene Shawcroft. “Totally unprecedented.”

‘This is terrifying’: The Colorado River, a lifeline for seven states, is drying up at its source

Arizona Daily Sun, July 8, 2026
 
The desiccation of the river’s headwaters is shrinking a critical water lifeline for about 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland across the Southwest, from the Rockies to Southern California and northern Mexico. With less snowmelt feeding the Colorado River, its giant reservoirs are dropping to dangerously low levels. Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir near Las Vegas, is now 28% full.
 
Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir, is at just 24%, approaching a point where there won’t be enough water behind Glen Canyon Dam to continue generating electricity. To keep hydropower going as long as possible, the Trump administration is taking emergency measures, releasing extra water from another reservoir upstream to raise the lake level.
 
Experts and state water managers say it’s clear the seven states that rely on the river need to drastically cut water use to avert disaster before the supply in reservoirs is exhausted.
 
A substantial portion of the cutbacks will likely fall to California, which uses more from the river than any other state — nearly one-fourth of the water that flows from taps in Southern California cities, and all of the water that irrigates farms in the Imperial Valley.

Tribes:

The Rise of Tribal Water Power in Arizona

Lake Powell, Chronicle, July 14, 2026

Navajo President Buu Nygren signs a $43 million contract in May 2025 with B4 Enterprises to launch the LeChee Water Improvements Project, marking a major step toward water independence for the Navajo Nation..Photo provided by Navajo Nation Office of the President.

Energy / Data Centers:

California proposal would build 8 data centers in Bay Area. Here’s where

 San Francisco Chronicle, July 8 2026
 
A California company has proposed building dozens of data centers around the state — including at least eight in the Bay Area. And some local leaders are receptive to the idea.
 

Proposed data center locations in California

A presentation by Global Stack LLC outlines a plan to develop fairgrounds around the state by adding data centers. The locations below were specifically listed as candidates in California. Blue dots represent fairgrounds whose boards of directors have discussed Global Stack in public meetings, according to records and interviews. It’s an unconventional pitch. The company, Global Stack LLC, wants to use fairgrounds across California as a site for the data centers. On top of that, it seeks to put helicopter landing pads — useful in emergencies, the company says — in the same development.

Why Solar Developers Should Evaluate Compensatory Mitigation Early

ESA, July 7, 2026
 
As renewable energy development accelerates across California and the western United States, developers are facing a growing challenge: how to efficiently navigate compensatory mitigation requirements while maintaining project schedules and budgets.
 
California’s ambitious clean energy goals are driving unprecedented levels of renewable energy investment. According to industry and agency projections, California may require hundreds of thousands to millions of additional acres of renewable energy development over the coming decade to meet its clean energy targets. At the same time, water supply challenges and implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act are reshaping land-use patterns across the Central Valley and other agricultural regions. As farmland is fallowed or retired from production, many landowners and developers are viewing solar energy as an attractive alternative use.

Climate:

When and where to expect monsoon showers for the Central Valley as temps surge

The Sacramento Bee,  July 13, 2026

Sunday was an unusual summer day for much of Central and Southern California, bringing clouds and even sparse rain showers across much of the state as a monsoon was full steam ahead. The North American monsoon – a weather pattern that invites tropical moisture into the region during the summer months – doesn’t always make its way all the way to Central and Northern California. The fact that is has is a sign of the strength of the weather pattern. That pattern is pointing towards some seriously hot temperatures later this week amid lingering chances for rain.

The Role of Water Conservation in California’s Residential Growth

The Daily Californian, July 13, 2026

California’s urban water system is shaped by competing demands from households, industry, and agriculture alongside a time and regionally variable water supply. As the population grows, so does residential water demand. In this context, water management and residential growth are inextricably linked. 

California’s Urban Water Management Plan positions water conservation as a core strategy for managing residential growth and urban demand; the question for the future is not whether conservation is necessary, but how it can support future growth sustainably. 

California has incredibly variable weather conditions, often switching between extremes of drought and flood. According to the Department of Water Resources (DWR), we rely on five to seven big storms for most of our annual precipitation. Over the past decade, the state has seen three of its largest and three of its smallest snowpacks; increased temperatures also mean that precipitation falls as rain instead of snow, increasing the frequency of winter floods. These factors mean that our water availability is highly variable, differing from year to year even under more typical conditions.

Treatment:

How PFAS chain length influences environmental fate and water treatment

Phys.org, July 7, 2026
 
In a new review, a team of researchers led by Professor Eilhann E. Kwon from Hanyang University, South Korea, examined how the length of a PFAS molecule’s fluorinated carbon chain affects its environmental fate and treatment outcomes. By synthesizing findings from environmental, laboratory and modeling studies, the researchers sought to identify patterns that could help improve PFAS monitoring, remediation and water treatment strategies. Their findings are published in the journal npj Clean Water.
 
“PFAS, often referred to as ‘forever chemicals,’ should not be viewed as a single uniform group,” said Prof. Kwon. “The length of the fluorinated carbon chain controls behavior of PFAS in water.”

PFAS Remediation Explained: Treatment Options, Costs, Liability, and the 2026 Compliance Reality

 
E+E Leader, July 2026
 
PFAS occupies a strange place in the environmental management conversation. It is simultaneously over-discussed — no conference agenda is complete without a “forever chemicals” panel — and under-planned, in the sense that a remarkable number of organizations with plausible PFAS exposure have never sampled for it, budgeted for it, or asked their counsel what the CERCLA designation means for a property they own. A recurring pattern in PFAS reporting is that the liability is arriving before companies detect the risk.
 
This explainer is for the people the problem actually lands on: water and wastewater utilities staring at treatment capital decisions, EHS and facilities leaders at sites with firefighting foam or industrial PFAS history, manufacturers discovering the chemistry in their inputs, and the deal teams pricing all of the above into transactions. We’ll cover what makes PFAS genuinely different from other contaminants, where the legal and regulatory exposure actually comes from, what each major treatment technology does and doesn’t do — and the questions that separate credible remediation vendors from the ones selling certainty that doesn’t exist yet.

Arizona permits higher arsenic levels under uranium mine despite tribal opposition

NPR Arizona, July 7, 2026
 
Despite firm opposition from the Havasupai Tribe, Arizona regulators on July 6 permitted a higher level of arsenic in groundwater under a uranium mine near the tribe’s place of emergence.
 
Before the approval, two groundwater scientists submitted comments urging the state Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to require the owner of the Pinyon Plain uranium mine to give more proof that the higher levels were naturally occurring and not due to mining discharge or activities.
 
Energy Fuels Resources, the mine owner, says its investigation was thorough and that operators aren’t at fault. It also disputed those scientists’ findings.
 
A press release attributed to the Havasupai Tribe condemned ADEQ’s decision to revise the mine’s aquifer protection permit, and said it represents “a profound attack on the Tribe’s inherent responsibility to guard and protect the waters of the Grand Canyon.”