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.
The Water Education Foundation’s
2025 Annual
Reportis now available in an interactive,
digital format and recaps how we accomplished a lot of
“firsts” last year.
A standout moment was our first-ever Klamath River
Tour, where we brought 45 participants into the heart of
the watershed that underwent the nation’s largest dam removal
project.
Arizona lawmakers are tripling the size of the state’s
legal fund for potential lawsuits about sharing water from the
Colorado River. The new state budget will add $6 million to the
pool of money, which was first set up in 2025, bringing
the fund to a total of $9 million. … Negotiators
from the seven states are under pressure to agree on a new set
of rules for sharing water after the current ones expire later
this year. They have been unable to forge a deal, meaning that
the federal government will likely force a water management
plan on the states. If that happens, states are likely
to sue one other or the federal government, sending the
Colorado River’s future to a messy legal battle that
would likely end up in the Supreme Court.
When golden mussels were found in an
international shipping channel in Stockton nearly two years
ago, marking the first detection of the invasive shellfish in
North America, state officials knew it was going to be bad. Now
those fears are being borne out. The roughly 1-inch-long,
golden-brown mollusks, native to Asia, have spread from
the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where
they were initially spotted, through canals and aqueducts to
the Bay Area and Southern California. …
Across California, tens of millions of dollars are being spent
to stop the mussels. But with no retreat in sight and
increasing potential for disruptions to water delivery as well
as flood control systems and hydroelectric operations, efforts
to get a handle on the infestation are ramping up.
The Navajo Nation has officially declared a drought emergency
after President Buu Nygren signed the declaration on Wednesday,
June 10, putting immediate measures into effect to address
worsening conditions across the reservation. The declaration,
which was unanimously approved by the Commission on Emergency
Management (CEM) on Tuesday before being signed by Nygren,
responds to severe and ongoing drought conditions that
have reduced precipitation, strained water supplies, degraded
rangelands, lowered reservoir levels, and threatened
the economic well-being of Navajo communities. … The
commission also recommended allocating $6,553,730 from the
Agricultural Infrastructure Fund to support drought mitigation
efforts, including windmill repairs and related water
infrastructure improvements.
An alleged breach of several California water systems by an
Iranian-linked hacker group did not compromise any water
production or delivery systems, according California Water
Service Company. … [The hacker group] Handala stated Thursday
that it had gained access to several systems, including in
Bakersfield, Visalia and Chico and showed screenshots of what
it said were residents’ bills, according to several news sites.
It claimed to have five gigabytes of data from the alleged
breach on its website, according to Iranian news network Press
TV. In a statement carried by Iran’s state broadcaster, Handala
said it could disrupt the water systems if it chose to but had
refrained from doing so as a “warning” to Washington, D.C. The
alleged hack was in retaliation for U.S. strikes that may have
damaged two water storage facilities in southern Iran near the
strait of Hormuz.
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.
