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.
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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.
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.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado
River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated
between the seven states that depend on the river. Those
guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding
negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against
the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend
on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two
federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of
unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15
percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities
scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for
shortages.
California and two other states have avoided the harshest water
cutbacks the Trump administration could have imposed over the
next two years to deal with the deepening crisis on the
Colorado River. The Times has learned that federal officials
have agreed with an offer made earlier this year by
California, Arizona and Nevadato
reduce what they take from the river by at least 3.2 million
acre-feet between now and the end of 2028. Under the
plan, California will cut its use of Colorado River water by
about 12% through 2028, Arizona will take about 31% less and
Nevada 28% less, according to two officials at state and local
agencies who spoke anonymously since details of an announcement
are still being finalized.
Mexico says it’s finally going to hire a company to build a
plant that turns the ocean into freshwater in Rosarito,
reviving an idea shelved years ago amid protests that the
government was privatizing water. And, in the name of reducing
how much water Mexico takes from the Colorado
River, the United States is going to help get the
water to the cities that need it. Construction could
start as soon as Aug. 1, according to a federal
Mexican project website. … This is not the only
desalination plant in Baja California. There are multiple
across the state, but they are small in comparison to what’s
being proposed in Rosarito. The Rosarito plant would be
the size of a desalination plant in Carlsbad, which
has the ability to produce 50 million gallons per day and
currently provides San Diego with about 10 percent of its
drinking water needs.
… Salt Lake City is considering a new ordinance that would
limit new nonresidential properties to 200,000 gallons
per day, mirroring the emergency order issued in
March. Uses tied to agriculture would be exempt, as would water
consumed by schools, government-owned or operated facilities
that primarily provide social services, places of worship and
hospitals. … “We have got to get our heads and our hands
around the water crisis, and start to manage things more
responsibly. It’s literally a human survival
issue, so … I would be happier if we went even
stricter,” said Salt Lake City Councilwoman Victoria Petro.
Other drought impact and response news around the West:
On a hot morning in June, dozens of agave plants took root in
the soil of Madera County. The plant has long been grown in
parts of Mexico to make tequila and mezcal. But in California,
it’s only more recently gotten attention from Central Valley
farmers seeking options as they face water shortages
and the prospect of fallowing land. Researchers say
agave could be a useful option for farmers with limited water
supplies. The drought-resilient crop has
demonstrated commercially viable yields with less than a tenth
of the water usage needed for many tree
crops. … Samuel Sandoval Solis, a fellow UC Davis
agave researcher, said the water demands of agave are so little
that researchers are looking to develop a manual for growing
agave without any irrigation.
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.
