Trump Orders Colorado River Water Cuts on Arizona, California, and Nevada

Current conditions: Tropical Storm Moke sideswiped Hawaii yesterday just weeks after a weakened Hurricane Lala became the first major storm to hit the Big Island in decades • On the western fringe of the United States’ Pacific borders, Typhoon Saudel struck Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands over the weekend, bringing heavy rain and flooding • Temperatures in Khorramshahr, on Iran’s border with Iraq, are topping 118 degrees Fahrenheit, rendering the southwestern port city the hottest place on Earth.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump administration orders Arizona, California, and Nevada to cut water use

With water levels in reservoirs across the American West at record lows, the Trump administration has directed Arizona, California, and Nevada to cut back on how much water they use from the Colorado River over the next two years. On Friday, the Department of the Interior imposed the reductions via a series of documents detailing a two-year and a 10-year plan to salvage the supplies from the drought-stricken river fed by snowmelt from Colorado’s stretch of the Rocky Mountains. As climate change has shifted snow patterns, levels on the river have dropped. Yet the seven states that depend on the water — the aforementioned three in the Lower Basin, and Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming in the Upper Basin — could not come to agreement among themselves on how to divvy up the dwindling supply. Instead, the Interior Department came up with a proposal that forced the Lower Basin states to pare back first. As you may recall, Arizona’s Democratic governor called the cuts “draconian” when the administration released its proposal in early August. The plan, which imposes short-term cuts while leaving a larger split for later, sets the stage for what E&E News predicted would be “a behemoth legal fight.”

2. Energy Department redirects $500 million for green steel to upgrading a coal-fired blast furnace

When the Department of Energy announced a review last year of droves of grants the Biden administration had given for clean industrial projects, the nation’s leading green steel project appeared on the chopping block. Cleveland-Cliffs, the steel giant based in Vice President JD Vance’s hometown in Ohio, said it was renegotiating the $500 million grant that was supposed to fund construction of a modern, integrated mill that could increase U.S. steel production and allow the country to compete with China in selling lower-carbon material to Europe. More than a year later, the deal has finally been renegotiated. As expected, the money will now go instead toward upgrading a coal-fired blast furnace at the Middletown Works plant, Canary Media reported on Friday. Never mind the fact that Congress promulgated the money specifically for lower-carbon steel, making the shift “possibly illegal,” as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo reported last year.

3. Congestion costs on largest U.S. grid spike by nearly half

Congestion costs on PJM Interconnection skyrocketed 43% to $6 billion during the first half of this year, up from $2.1 billion during the same period of 2025. That’s according to the grid’s independent watchdog, which last week warned that bottlenecks on high-voltage transmission lines during high-stress events such as storms or heat waves were now what Reuters put bluntly as “the single biggest driver of the increase in soaring wholesale electricity costs.” Across the U.S., July’s electricity bills were, in the frank words of Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin, “higher than ever.”

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4. America’s nuclear fuel supply chain is forming anew

Last week, the uranium miner Ur-Energy sent the first shipment from its mine in Wyoming, World Nuclear News reported Friday. That same day, the American subsidiary of the European uranium giant Urenco broke ground on its latest facility in the U.S., NucNet reported. Downstream, meanwhile, Standard Nuclear — a fuel manufacturer specializing in extra-expensive but extra-safe ceramic-coated fuel pellets called TRISO, which I have written about previously— just cut another deal with a major vendor.

5. Tesla abandons solar roof tiles

I have a confession. Nearly a decade ago, I sat at my sister’s kitchen counter in Massachusetts after she gave birth to my niece, trying to write about the latest technology to come out from Tesla. Not yet burdened by its billionaire chief executive’s political baggage, the company was largely seen at the time as subverting preconceptions about the popularity of electric vehicles. Tesla’s erstwhile absorption of Musk’s former solar manufacturer, Solar City, only cemented the company’s status as an industry leader in producing and deploying panels domestically. The conventional wisdom, at least among some industry analysts at the time, was that any bet against Tesla was an ill-advised gamble against the lucky Mr. Musk. So, I wrote about it as a breakthrough. But the solar-generating roof tiles the company unveiled that fall when I was in New England turned out to be little more than a passing fantasy. Now Electrek has reported that the company plans to discontinue the product.

THE KICKER

And I said, dam. Egyptian Cabinet/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images

Say what you will about Spain’s solar records or America’s gas surge, nothing quite matches the enormous surge of power that is a new hydroelectric station. This week, Tanzania christened its largest-ever hydroelectric station, the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Dam, named for the country’s revolutionary first prime minister after independence. Mwananchi, the country’s largest newspaper, said the plant’s launch “opened a new chapter in Tanzania’s energy sector.”