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.
As your summer adventures wrap up, be sure to reserve your spot
for our popular fall programs. Seating is limited and will fill
up quickly!
Water Summit | October 29
Our 42ⁿᵈ
annual Water Summit is the Foundation’s
premier event of the year and returns to Sacramento October 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West.
Just one year after the signing of Senate Bill 72, the Summit will
feature a panel discussion of California’s 2028 Water
Plan Update as it undergoes a legislatively
mandated shift from being just a guidance document to a blueprint
providing a framework for implementation of actions.
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.
… [C]entral Arizona cities are charting a course through a
future with less Colorado River water. Water managers across
the Phoenix metro say they have robust backup plans in
place to keep taps flowing, thanks to years of
preparation and huge construction projects. Those upgrades,
though, come with a big price tag, and will
carry the area into a future that is still rife with
uncertainty. … The very fact that Phoenix and its
neighbors can receive water from the Colorado River is a feat
of engineering. The canal system that carries it from western
Arizona is a gravity-defying product of 1960s optimism and more
than $4 billion in building costs. Soon, with less water in
that canal, it will take more feats of engineering to survive.
The steep costs of those projects will likely be passed along
to residents.
California Senate Republicans are urging Governor Gavin Newsom
to veto legislation concerning how water districts
calculate tiered water rates, saying the measure could
affect the application of Proposition 218.
Assembly Bill 2180, authored by Assemblymember Shirley Weber,
D-San Diego, was the subject of a letter from Senate
Republicans asking Newsom to reject the bill. The legislation
comes as the California Supreme Court considers a case
involving tiered water rates charged by water
agencies. The case, Dreher v. City of Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power, concerns whether water districts
are complying with legal requirements governing tiered water
rates. Senator Steven Choi, R-Irvine, said Proposition 218,
approved by California voters in 1996, was intended to provide
protections for property owners and ratepayers from certain
government-imposed fees and charges.
As fights about data centers erupt nationwide, California
lawmakers have approved a pair of bills to make data center
developers disclose how much water they really
use. The bills are a new test of whether
California will set limits on an industry that’s becoming a
flashpoint over water, electricity and the environmental
consequences of artificial intelligence. Lawmakers on
Monday cleared Assembly Bill 2469 by Assemblymember Diane
Papan, a Democrat from San Mateo. The bill bars local
governments from approving new or expanded data centers
unless the developer discloses its water plans and
covers the full cost of any new water pipes, treatment or
storage for the facility. … It’s almost
identical to a bill Papan authored last year, which Newsom
vetoed amid pressure from the tech industry.
After decades of pollution and years of beach closures caused
by raw sewage in the Tijuana River, San Diego County
Supervisors are pursuing a local plan to divert the
river and treat it directly. They’re calling for the
county to design a new treatment plant to capture and
clean contaminated water before it enters San Diego
communities, using potential local tax revenue to back
nearly a billion dollars worth of bonds to build it.
… The supervisors called for spending $1.8 million to
design a system to divert and treat the river water. They also
proposed $4 million to immediately fix a sewage hot spot on
Saturn Boulevard, where river pollution becomes aerosolized.
The board will vote on the plan Tuesday.
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.
