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.
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.
As hot temperatures sweep across Utah and water supplies
continue to drop, states and the federal government are
launching a new effort to better measure how much water
evaporates from major reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell. The
Bureau of Reclamation partnered with scientists and Upper Basin
states, including Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, to
launch a new evaporation study at Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and
Navajo reservoirs — key water storage projects in the Upper
Colorado River Basin. … Reclamation is sending up to
1 million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge to prop
up Lake Powell, which forecast models show will reach
levels that threaten hydropower production and could
damage dam infrastructure by early next year.
Where water normally flows continuously on the San Pedro River
east of Sierra Vista, only ponds and puddles persisted last
week. … The Charleston gauge, long considered a key indicator
of the San Pedro’s health, dried up late last month for
the first time in 21 years. And it stayed dry — or
nearly dry — until water from a monsoon storm arrived Friday
morning. It was the latest blow to a river whose lush riparian
groves and very high bird populations have long made it a
global treasure in the eyes of many ecologists. But the river’s
declining flows and the lowering of neighboring groundwater
wells over the years have also made it a political and legal
battleground pitting environmentalists wanting to limit the
area’s growth and groundwater pumping and government
officials who seek to keep the river flowing without curbing
economic development.
Facing legal challenges and growing industrial pressures, the
Imperial County Board of Supervisors will vote Tuesday
on whether to freeze new data center developments
across all unincorporated lands for nearly another year. The
proposed 10-month and 15-day extension of an urgency moratorium
underscores a deepening regulatory anxiety over how these
power-hungry facilities will affect the region’s strained
electric grid and vital water resources. Beyond the data center
freeze, Chairwoman Peggy Price will advance the framework for
a new data center advisory committee. The
group will attempt to bring order to the gold rush by
appointing an 11-member advisory panel representing a
cross-section of conflicting interests.
The Marin Municipal Water District is entering a $2.65 million
deal with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to advance a major
drought resiliency project. The water district board voted
unanimously Tuesday to approve the partnership agreement,
charging the Army Corps to support the “atmospheric
river capture” project. The project is a proposed
pipeline that would replenish Marin reservoirs with
Sonoma County rainwater during droughts. Under the
agreement, the Army Corps will design a section of the pipeline
that is 18,000 feet long. The agreement is a necessary step for
the district to use federal funding from the 2022 Water
Resources Development Act, or WRDA, slated for the project.
… Estimated at $214 million, the planned 13-mile,
36-inch pipe would tap into an aqueduct system that runs along
Highway 101, carrying water from the Russian River into Marin.
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.
