Industry News
Industry News
This Week's News Highlights
Policy:
E&E Politico (accessible), June 8, 2026
The high-stakes brawl over the drought-stricken Colorado River comes to Capitol Hill this week.
The Trump administration’s top Western water official is set to appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday as the Interior Department is preparing to wrest control of the waterway later this summer.
The department already invoked emergency authorities in April when it became clear that the river would see the lowest flows on record this summer, threatening the ability to produce hydropower and release water out of one of the country’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell.
Local News Matters – Bay Area, June 7, 2026
THE CONSTRUCTION, though not the long-term operation, of a proposed 45-mile extension to the State Water Project, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, has received permission from two key federal wildlife agencies.
On Friday, the California Department of Water Resources received permits known as biological opinions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service concluding that construction can proceed under conditions designed to protect endangered species and sensitive habitat.
Lost Coast Outpost, June 5, 2026
An Assembly Bill sponsored by the Karuk Tribe, which seeks to expand consultation between state water agencies and tribes during water policy decisions, passed through the California Assembly last week.
The Karuk Tribe says the bill could help address historic inequities by giving tribes a seat at the table.
The vote was 57 in support and 23 members refusing to vote, including every Republican in the Assembly and three Democrats.
If signed into law, Assembly Bill 2218 would declare, as statewide policy, recognition of “the inequities regarding access to, and control over, water caused by state-sanctioned acts of termination, removal, and assimilation inflicted upon all California Native American tribes.”
It would also have the Legislature formally acknowledge and apologize for over a century of state-sanctioned policies that harmed Native Americans.
NPR, June 5, 2026
Like many communities in the American Southwest, Las Vegas is facing a prolonged drought that is forcing policy leaders to make tough decisions about how best to mitigate the declining water supply.
In 2021, state lawmakers passed a measure that ostensibly banned all irrigation of so-called “non-functional turf.” The law officially goes into effect next January, but the Southern Nevada Water Authority has already begun working to replace that grass with more drought-tolerant landscaping, mostly through rebates for customers who choose to re-landscape.
A lawsuit is now challenging the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s grass removal program in federal court. The suit claims that the program’s enforcement is overzealous and is potentially causing environmental harm.
“Our concern is that they’ve used a good cause, water conservation, to basically just do whatever the heck they want, and they’ve gone around and, without any oversight, have basically terrorized local residents,” Las Vegas Attorney Sam Castor, who is leading the lawsuit, told KNPR.
Energy/ Data Centers:
The Guardian, June 8, 2026
A record-shattering drought has racked much of the US. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned datacenters set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found.
About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.
Of 809 planned datacenters, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing datacenters are already situated in drought-affected areas.
Colorado River:
The Gazette, June 8, 2026
The Department of the Interior is moving forward with a 10‑year framework for managing the Colorado River after 2026, outlining a plan to issue new operating guidelines every two years as the seven basin states remain unable to reach an agreement. The Trump administration is now 18 months into its term, but has not named a new nominee to lead the Bureau of Reclamation after the previous pick withdrew amid reported political pressure from senators in the upper Colorado River basin. That nominee was from Arizona, in the lower basin.
Even without a confirmed commissioner, the Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum have continued pushing a seven‑state process to craft new post‑2026 operating guidelines for the Colorado River.
Acting commissioner Scott Cameron outlined the department’s ongoing work—and what it may do if states fail to reach an agreement—during remarks Thursday at the annual Getches‑Wilkinson Colorado River conference at the CU Boulder law school.
KJZZ, June 6, 2026
With a deadline for a new Colorado River plan fast approaching, the states who share its water are still at an impasse, and still repeating many of the same talking points that have emerged during more than a year of unsuccessful negotiations.
Federal officials said they will formalize a plan for dividing the shrinking water supply as soon as mid summer, and state leaders are not close to a seven-state agreement that would keep the river working somewhat normally and stave off messy lawsuits between states and the federal government.
Negotiators representing the seven states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada — rarely address the public together, but an annual water policy conference in Boulder, Colorado put two of them on the same stage.
Treatment:
USC Price, June 2, 2026
A new global study has found that people without access to clean drinking water are significantly more likely to experience food insecurity and food safety threats, underscoring the urgent need for coordinated global action to address these issues together.
The study was published in Nature Food by a team of researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) with expertise in water, food, and public policy. They analyzed survey data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, which included 124,003 respondents from 121 countries across all country-income levels.
The data revealed that, around the world, people who lack clean drinking water also tend to have difficulties with food access and food safety.
Climate:
Smart Water Magazine, June 6, 2026
For decades, groundwater overexploitation has outpaced the data needed to quantify it at a global scale. A landmark new study published in Environmental Research Letters now closes much of that gap. Tracking 42,844 monitoring wells across 47 countries over 20 years, it delivers the most comprehensive in-situ assessment of groundwater level trends to date and confirms what many in the sector have long suspected, while also surfacing risks from rising water tables that remain poorly understood.
Prism Reports, June 8, 2026
Ahead of the election of a new governor in California, a coalition of environmental advocacy organizations is sounding the alarm about the future of water in the Golden State. Without major changes to how water is sourced, conserved, and distributed, municipalities will struggle under the weight of ecological decline to provide the necessary resource to millions of households, according to the group’s new report, titled “A Water Renaissance for California.”
The report released on May 20 by the coalition, which includes organizations from northern and southern parts of the state, details how a shift toward local water sourcing and away from the current model of transporting water hundreds of miles from its source can mitigate impacts of climate change, restore imperiled waterways, and help secure cities against a near-guaranteed future where water availability is less predictable.
Water Management:
California Water Blog, June 7, 2026
The popular mythology of water management often treats cities as the bad guys. We tend to condemn those cities–often in colorful terms–for their avarice, arrogance, and power, and those narratives have policy consequences. But they often miss the mark.
In a recent paper, I ask whether perhaps these narratives might go a bit too far. Cities, western and otherwise, are hardly perfect in their water management, and the stories of past chicanery didn’t come from nowhere. In recent decades, though, the story is quite different; cities have helped improve water management in many ways.