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.
We are gearing up for an engaging Water Summit on Oct. 29 and
also prepping our 2027 California Water Leaders program. Join a
virtual Q&A on our Water Leaders program on Nov. 10. Details
below.
Water Summit | October 29
Our 42ⁿᵈ
annual Water Summit is the Foundation’s
premier event of the year and returns to Sacramento October 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West. Capacity is
limited and filling up quickly, so register here while
seats are available!
Conversations during the Summit will revolve around this year’s
theme, Stewarding a New Era in Western
Water, with a focus on emerging topics related to
the challenges and opportunities facing water resource
management.
The mandate to identify 9 million acre-feet of
additional water supply in California by 2040
The need for clarity in the ongoing AI/data center
discourse related to water resources management
The latest developments in desalination
efforts and their implications for the arid West
Our 42ⁿᵈ annual Water
Summit, an engaging day of discussions addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West, will be
held on Thursday, Oct. 29, in Sacramento with the theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western Water.
Speakers and conversations will highlight emerging topics related
to the challenges and opportunities facing management of the
West’s most precious natural resource.
Lively conversations will focus on topics such
as:
The mandate to identify 9 million acre-feet of additional
water supply in California by 2040
The need for clarity in the ongoing AI/data center discourse
related to water resources management
The latest developments in desalination efforts and their
implications for the arid West
A full agenda will be posted soon, and speakers
include:
Joel Metzger | Deputy Director, Statewide
Water Resources Planning, California Department of Water
Resources
Sandi Matsumoto | California Water Program
Director, The Nature Conservancy
Cannon Michael | President, Bowles
Farming
Craig Miller | General Manager, Western
Municipal Water District
Dave Pederson | General Manager, Las Virgenes
Municipal Water District
As previously announced,
the day will open with a keynote address from Tom
Gibson, the new director of California’s Department of
Water Resources. An attorney who has held several roles in
the state’s Natural Resources Agency and its various departments,
Gibson was appointed by Gov. Newsom on June 29 and sworn in on
July 6 to lead DWR and its nearly 4,000 employees.
… Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill aimed at shoring
up the Delta’s aging levees and protecting the
region and vital water infrastructure from flooding and sinking
land. In his veto message, Newsom said the
more than $170 million for repairing levees, aqueducts
and canals and other projects already included in the state
budget made the measure
redundant. … A network of 1,100 miles of
federal and non-federal levees lines Delta waterways and
protects the region from flooding.Many of these aging
levees do not meet current “construction standards and could
fail at water levels well below the top of the levee,”
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in 2018. The
price tag for fixing them: roughly $3.3 billion,
according to the state’s Delta Stewardship Council.
The Las Vegas Valley Water District will fine businesses and
homeowners associations in the new year if they
continue to use water from Lake Mead to irrigate grass it has
deemed “nonfunctional.” A page on the water district’s
website said that beginning Jan. 1, irrigation of decorative
grass will be classified as water waste and come with fines.
Those fines, if approved, will range from $80 for a
first offense on a water meter sized for most residential homes
to $5,120 for the fifth offense on the largest water
meter size. It’s the first time Southern Nevada water managers
have told the public how they intend to enforce
Assembly Bill 356, a controversial 2021 law that banned using
Colorado River water to irrigate turf that agencies
consider nonfunctional or decorative.
Walter Hardesty has raised hay and cattle south of Elk Grove
long enough to watch groundwater turn from a
private worry into a regional one. Soon, he expects to manage
it from his phone. The Harvest Water Program is set
to deliver recycled water to his ranch in 2027, and he
will order it through an app for a set date and
duration. Then, an automated valve at the edge of his property
will do the rest, all the while giving the aquifer beneath his
fields and his wells, which will be run about half as often,
time to recover. That, in essence, is the promise at the
center of a nearly $597 million public project. … The
Harvest Water Program is billed by SacSewer, the Sacramento
Area Sewer District, as California’s largest
agricultural water recycling project.
… According to the District’s materials, it will
deliver up to 50,000 acre-feet of recycled water a
year.
The Southwestern United States was facing heavy rain and the
potential for flash flooding through early Wednesday as
moisture from two far-off storms streamed into the region. The
flood threat was focused over New Mexico and Arizona on Monday
and will begin to shift east into Texas and the Plains Tuesday
into Thursday. One to three inches of rain was forecast to fall
across much of the region, including in parts of
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado
and Texas, and some isolated areas could receive up to seven
inches. Flood watches were in effect, and forecasters said
more urgent flash-flood warnings were likely over the
next few days.
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.
