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.
Big Day of
Giving is ending soon but you still have until
midnight to support the Water Education Foundation’s tours,
workshops, publications and other programs with a donation to help us reach our
$10,000 fundraising goal - we are only $2,502
away!
At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious
as water. Your donations help us every day to teach K-12
educators how to bring water science into the classroom and to
empower future decision-makers through our professional
development programs.
Today is Big Day of Giving! Your donation will help
the Water Education Foundation continue its work to enhance
public understanding of our most precious natural resource
in California and across the West – water.
Big Day of Giving is a 24-hour regional fundraising event that
has profound benefits for our educational programs and
publications on drought, floods, groundwater, and the importance
of headwaters in California and the Colorado River Basin.
Your tax-deductible donation of
any size helps support our tours, scholarships, teacher training
workshops, free access to our daily water newsfeed and more. You
have until midnight to help us reach our $10,000
fundraising goal!
House Republicans passed a measure Thursday that would repeal
the government’s decision to place California’s longfin
smelt, a finger-sized fish, on the endangered species
list. House members passed the resolution, introduced by
California Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale), in a 216-195 vote
that followed party lines. The resolution now goes to the
Republican-controlled Senate. “We want to block the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service’s misguided decision to list the San
Francisco Bay Delta population of the longfin smelt as being
endangered,” LaMalfa, who represents a rice-growing region in
Northern California, said before the vote. He said the agency’s
decision last year to declare the fish species endangered was
“unscientific” and said it’s making it harder to deliver water
from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farmers.
Rapid melts across the U.S. West have caused snowpack to
disappear up to four weeks early in some areas — wreaking
potential havoc on the region’s water supply, federal
meteorologists warned Thursday. These conditions have
particularly affected parts of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico,
causing some basins to shift from above-average snowpack to
“snow drought,” according to an update from the
National Integrated Drought Information System
(NIDIS). That transition occurred in under a month, with
snow disappearing one to four weeks earlier than usual, the
NIDIS updated stated. … As for the Colorado
River Basin, the NIDIS update said that supply
forecasts for this region declined in comparison to April 1
projections, presumably due to dry conditions and early, rapid
snowmelt.
California’s largest reservoir, Lake Shasta, reached
capacity this week, marking the third straight year it has
filled or nearly filled with water. The run of big water years
at the reservoir reflects the unusual string of wet winters the
state has experienced, and it bodes well for water supplies
this year across California. The lake, which stretches
across an extraordinary 35 miles in the southern Cascades north
of Redding near Mount Shasta, is the cornerstone of the
federally run Central Valley Project. Its supplies are sent to
cities and farms hundreds of miles away, including the Bay
Area. The San Joaquin Valley’s booming agricultural industry is
the primary beneficiary.
… As we’ve been reporting, the Kern groundwater subbasin
could be put under probation. On Thursday, local water
officials met to discuss how to fix the problem. The Kern
River Groundwater Sustainability Agency is just one of 20 GSAs
(Groundwater Sustainability Agencies) in the Kern County
subbasin. They are working with the Kern County Water Agency,
Kern Delta Water District, the City of Bakersfield, and many
others to keep the Kern subbasin from going into probation
under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
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.
