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
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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.
The remaining handful of tickets
for our first-ever Klamath River Tour are now up
for grabs! This special water tour, Sept. 8 through Sept.
12, will not be offered every year so check out the tour
details here.
You don’t want to miss this opportunity to examine water issues
along the 263-mile Klamath River, from its spring-fed headwaters
in south-central Oregon to its redwood-lined estuary on the
Pacific Ocean in California.
Among the planned stops is the former site of Iron Gate Dam &
Reservoir for a firsthand look at restoration efforts. The dam
was one of four obsolete structures taken down in the nation’s
largest dam removal project aimed at restoring fish
passage. Grab your ticket here
while they last!
In December 2012, dam operators at Northern California’s Lake Mendocino watched as a series of intense winter storms bore down on them. The dam there is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ San Francisco District, whose primary responsibility in the Russian River watershed is flood control. To make room in the reservoir for the expected deluge, the Army Corps released some 25,000 acre-feet of water downstream — enough to supply nearly 90,000 families for a year.
U.S. senators are set to interview President Donald Trump’s
pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration on Wednesday in a confirmation hearing that may
be charged with concern over whether massive cuts to the
agency’s workforce may have contributed to the deaths of more
than 100 people when torrential rain flooded Central Texas
early Friday. In the five months since Trump chose Neil Jacobs
to serve as NOAA administrator, hundreds of NOAA scientists and
meteorologists have left the agency through firings, buyouts
and retirements. … Jacobs has emphasized a need for
the United States to improve the accuracy of its weather
forecasting models, which routinely perform worse than models
operated in Europe and, at times, Canada. He has most recently
served as chief science adviser for the Unified Forecast
System, an initiative he has spearheaded to improve U.S.
weather and climate forecasting accuracy using government,
academic and private-sector data.
A state water quality agency hopes to tackle a problem as old
as civilization itself – salt build up from irrigation. The
Central Valley Salinity Alternatives for Long-Term
Sustainability (CV-SALTS) is working with local water managers
and using state-of-the-art engineering software to understand
how groundwater moves through the western Kings and
Delta-Mendota subbasins as part of a long-term salt study. The
salt study, which began in 2022, aims to develop a Central
Valley-wide plan to manage salinity, focusing first on the
Kings and Delta-Mendota subbasins. … The salt study is
still laying the groundwork to understand the complex San
Joaquin Valley watershed and aquifer system. CV-SALTS will
begin developing water and salt management plans by 2026 and
develop a prioritization plan by 2028.
Six months after EPA warned about “forever chemicals” tainting
sewage sludge, states are resorting to a patchwork of policies
as the agency’s path forward on the widely used farmland
fertilizer remains unclear. In the final days of the Biden
administration, EPA inched toward regulating the toxic
chemicals in sewage sludge, releasing a draft report outlining
risks to people living near farms that use the foul-smelling,
nutrient-rich material to grow crops. Now, as the Trump
administration weighs options for addressing contamination
concerns, states and localities are struggling with how to
respond to growing evidence that sludge fertilizer can spread
forever chemicals. … Also known as biosolids, sewage sludge
is the partially dry byproduct of treated sewage from municipal
and industrial sources. EPA has long touted selling the
material to farmers, a practice that frees up landfill space
and reduces reliance on chemical fertilizer.
A major thunderstorm like the one that produced devastating
flash flooding in Texas over the holiday weekend is not likely
in the Bay Area or most of California, but climate scientists
say that if the perfect weather at the right time of
year and geography align, serious flooding can still wreak
havoc here. … A big flash-flood-producing thunderstorm
in California isn’t entirely out of the picture and can occur
during the summertime in the Sierra Nevada or the deserts
across the southeastern part of the state. “The kind of thing
that happened in Texas could also happen in California,” said
Nicholas Pinter, associate director of the UC Davis Center for
Watershed Sciences. “Anyone out hiking in confined, rugged
topography needs to be aware that we have this risk of flash
flooding in California, kind of similar to Texas.”
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.
During California’s 2012–2016 drought, much of the state
experienced severe drought conditions: significantly less
precipitation and snowpack, reduced streamflow and higher
temperatures. Those same conditions reappeared early in 2021
prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom in May to declare drought emergencies
in watersheds across 41 counties in California.
