Watch our series of short videos on the importance of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, how it works as a water hub for
California and the challenges it is facing.
When a person opens a spigot to draw a glass of water, he or she
may be tapping a source close to home or hundreds of miles away.
Water gets to taps via a complex web of aqueducts, canals and
groundwater.
Learn more about our team in the office and on the Board of
Directors and how you can support our nonprofit mission by
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contributor or supporting specific projects.
Unlike California’s majestic rivers and massive dams and
conveyance systems, groundwater is out of sight and underground,
though no less plentiful. The state’s enormous cache of
underground water is a great natural resource and has contributed
to the state becoming the nation’s top agricultural producer and
leader in high-tech industries.
A new era of groundwater management began in 2014 in California
with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The landmark law
turned 10 in 2024, with many challenges still ahead.
Tom Gibson, new director of
California’s Department of Water Resources, will serve as the
keynote speaker for our 42ⁿᵈ annual Water
Summit on Oct. 29.
Guided by this year’s theme, Stewarding a New Era in
Western Water,Gibson and
other leading policymakers and experts will address emerging
topics related to the challenges and opportunities facing water
resource management in California and the West.
Gibson,
an attorney who has held several roles in the state’s Natural
Resources Agency and its various departments, was appointed by
Gov. Newsom on June 29 and sworn in on July 6 to lead DWR and its
nearly 4,000 employees.
Mark your calendars! Registration will be opening soon for two
exciting Water Education Foundation events this fall.
Water Summit | Oct. 29
Join us for our premier event of
the year, bringing together leading policymakers and experts from
all sectors to discuss the most pressing water issues facing
California and the West.
Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest in Colorado and an
emergency savings bank for Lake Powell, has been on a
crash course with critically low water levels this summer, the
kind that halt power production and keep dam managers up at
night. Officials have stepped in to cut dam releases and
restrict water use, but they’re still facing grim
possibilities if more rain doesn’t start falling soon.
The expansive federal reservoir stretches for nearly 30 miles
between the city of Gunnison and Black Canyon of the Gunnison
National Park. But it’s not just a scenic lake — it’s part of
the plumbing of the West. Water experts say Blue Mesa
serves as a proxy for Colorado’s water conditions and
conditions in Lake Powell, an immense reservoir on the
Utah-Arizona border. This year, it’s a clear demonstration of
the record dry conditions straining water and renewable
power supplies across the West.
… Increased temperatures earlier in the year followed by
other weather-related phenomena are causing much of the western
United States to experience what scientists are calling
“snow-eater” heat waves. A new study, published Wednesday in
the journal Science Advances, analyzes the weather events using
a method developed to identify the heat waves. Snow-eater heat
waves are pretty much like they sound — abrupt snowmelt
triggered by rain-on-snow and followed by several days of
unseasonably high temperatures. … The authors
noted that in the spring and early summer in the West, heat
waves occur regularly. But they have nearly doubled in
frequency and intensity since the mid-1990’s. And with
those extreme temperatures comes increased snowmelt,
which in turn can cause severe floods.
Federal officials said Thursday they will not release cool
water this year from one of the Colorado River’s major
reservoirs, which would have protected a threatened native
fish downstream but put more strain on already struggling
hydropower production. In an email obtained by The Associated
Press, the Bureau of Reclamation told various groups that water
from Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona would
not be released “due to significant hydropower generation
concerns under already strained system conditions.” As the
Colorado River and its once massive reservoirs shrink from
overuse and climate change, officials were faced with a
decision that pits conservation of the humpback chub — a
threatened fish native to the river — against ratepayer costs
for electricity.
A lawsuit brought by two out-of-state investment firms could
make it harder for Arizona to protect vulnerable groundwater
basins, threatening one of the state’s few tools for
safeguarding rural water supplies. The companies, tied
to real estate developers in Utah and Nevada, sued after the
Arizona Department of Water Resources designated northern
Mohave County’s Hualapai groundwater basin an Irrigation
Non-Expansion Area in 2022. Under the designation, no
new farmland can be irrigated, though existing farms can keep
pumping. The investors argue ADWR should have used the
state’s standard rulemaking process in creating the INA. A
Maricopa County Superior Court judge agreed with the investors
in January, rejecting ADWR’s position that state law allows it
to use a separate procedure. The agency has appealed.
Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the
Bay Model is a giant hydraulic replica of San Francisco
Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. It is housed in a converted World II-era
warehouse in Sausalito near San Francisco.
Hundreds of gallons of water are pumped through the
three-dimensional, 1.5-acre model to simulate a tidal ebb
and flow lasting 14 minutes.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when
the Colorado River broke
through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years,
creating California’s largest inland body of water. The
Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130
miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
Drought — an extended period of
limited or no precipitation — is a fact of life in California and
the West, with water resources following boom-and-bust patterns.
No portion of the West has been immune to drought during the last
century and it occurs with much greater frequency in the West
than in any other region of the country.
