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
donating in someone’s honor or memory, or becoming a regular
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.
Start making arrangements now to attend our first-ever
Kern River Tour and annual Water
Summit so you don’t miss out. These popular fall
programs have limited seating and will fill up quickly!
Kern River Tour | November 4-6
Join us on this special journey as
we examine water issues along the Kern
River, from its mountain-fed headwaters in the
southern Sierra Nevada to its terminus in the Central Valley west
of Bakersfield. Among the planned stops are both upper forks of
the Kern River, Lake Isabella, lower Kern River canyon, the
Friant-Kern Canal, irrigated agriculture in the valley, the Kern
Water Bank and more. Click here for more
details.
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.
Is climate change enough justification to stop the expansion of
a reservoir that will take more water from the dwindling
Colorado River? That’s the central question in a lawsuit
pitting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Colorado’s largest
water utility against a consortium of environmental nonprofits.
The environmentalists say the Colorado River has no more water
to give, while Denver Water, the utility whose Gross
Reservoir would nearly triple in capacity, argues it
is ensuring its customers can withstand droughts. The Corps
contends it is not required to consider climate change or the
downstream effects of its expansion of a dam to grow the
reservoir. The case in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
has the potential to ripple through Western water
management as states, tribes, cities and the federal
government struggle to find a compromise on how to steeply cut
water use.
A California Democrat’s proposal to enshrine Biden-era water
quality rules in state law to backstop potential rollbacks
under the Trump administration has died in the state
Legislature amid continued opposition from farmers and water
agencies. State Assembly Appropriations Chair Buffy
Wicks announced on Thursday that state Sen. Ben Allen’s SB 601
was held back, meaning it won’t be voted on this year. It’s the
second year in a row that Allen tried — and failed — to get his
bill through the committee. Sean Bothwell, the executive
director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, which
sponsored the bill, said in an interview that he had tried to
reach a deal with the governor’s office and the State Water
Resources Control Board on the bill over the past couple of
months, but ultimatelydid not agree to all the administration’s
proposed changes because they removed some of the environmental
protections in the bill.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has denied two late
requests to intervene in the decommissioning of the Potter
Valley Project sought by its owner, the Pacific Gas and
Electric Company, Mendocino County officials reported. In a
press release this week, the Mendocino County Inland Water and
Power Commission explained that Elsinore Valley Municipal Water
District of Southern California and Infrastruk Group LLC, a
company based out of Southern California and Spain, had both
sought “to intervene as formal parties in PG&E’s Potter
Valley Project license surrender proceeding,” and both
requests were denied by FERC, “allowing the federal process to
continue.” … With the facility no longer
cost-effective and its dams deemed a safety risk, PG&E is
now seeking to abandon the project while a locally-formed group
called the Eel-Russian Project Authority seeks to continue
water diversions.
The Yurok Tribe and other plaintiffs on Friday asked a San
Francisco federal judge to once again intervene in a
long-running conflict with the feds over water releases from
the Klamath Irrigation Project in Northern California after the
Trump administration said last year that irrigation should take
priority over threatened salmon species. The Klamath Project
supplies water to more than 225,000 acres of farmland and two
wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin along the
Oregon-California border. But critics say the project has
decimated the local Chinook and Coho salmon population.
… Senior U.S. District Judge William Orrick didn’t
indicate on Friday how he might rule on the tribe’s motion for
summary judgment.
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.
