Our California Water Map, recently updated, is one of our most popular products. We also offer magazines, documentaries, posters, layperson guides and more. Our catalog offers a wide array of resources to help you understand the complex issues of water in California and the Southwest.
Project WET is an award-winning, nonprofit water education program and publisher. The program facilitates and promotes awareness, appreciation, knowledge, and stewardship of water resources.
Join the impartial, nonprofit Water Education Foundation in its mission to create a better understanding of water issues and help resolve water problems through educational programs.
California’s groundwater is a great natural resource and has contributed to the state becoming the nation’s top agricultural producer and a leader in high-tech industries. Groundwater is an asset that is increasingly relied upon by municipalities, industry and agriculture and it will play an important role in the future sustainability of California’s overall water supply.
As California embarks on its unprecedented mission to harness groundwater pumping, the Arizona desert may provide one guide that local managers can look to as they seek to arrest years of overdraft.
Groundwater is stressed by a demand that often outpaces natural and artificial recharge. In California, awareness of groundwater’s importance resulted in the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 that aims to have the most severely depleted basins in a state of balance in about 20 years.
Water supply for California’s cities and farms is largely dependent on snowmelt from the upper watershed in the Sierra Nevada. But that paradigm is being challenged by wildfires, climate change and widespread tree mortality.
Join us for a two-day tour as we head into the Sierra foothills and up into the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream, but have dramatic impacts on water supply and quality downstream and throughout the state.
Soaring numbers of water systems around the country are testing positive for a dangerous class of chemicals widely used in items that include non-stick pans and firefighting foam, regulators and scientists said Tuesday. The warnings, and promises by Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt of official action to confront the related health risks, came in a summit with small-town and state officials increasingly confronting water systems contaminated by the toxic substances.
The high-ranking lawmaker who wants to block judicial review of a massive California water tunnels project calls his maneuver something close to standard operating procedure. And, like it or not, he’s right. In the latest example of a controversial tactic, the chairman of a key House panel included language blocking judicial review of California’s WaterFix project in a fiscal 2019 Interior Department funding package.
The Legislature created the Department of Water Resources in 1956 for the purpose of managing the State Water Project, then in its early stages of planning. … AB 3045 would create a new State Water Project Commission under the state’s Natural Resources Agency to run the project – the agency, whose secretary serves in the governor’s cabinet, has broad authority over DWR.
Rivers are drying up, popular mountain recreation spots are closing and water restrictions are in full swing as a persistent drought intensifies its grip on pockets of the American Southwest. … With the region’s water resources strained, a top federal official has resumed pressure on states in the Southwest to wrap up long-delayed emergency plans for potential shortages on the Colorado River, which serves 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico.
Wetlands are among the most important ecosystems in the world. They produce high levels of oxygen, filter toxic chemicals out of water, reduce flooding and erosion, recharge groundwater and provide a diverse range of recreational opportunities from fishing and hunting to photography. They also serve as critical habitat for wildlife, including a large percentage of plants and animals on California’s endangered species list.
As part of the historic Colorado River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for thousands of years due to its elevation of 232 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 drought occurs with much greater frequency in the West than in any other regions of the country.
