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 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.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to head NOAA pledged Wednesday
to fully staff the National Weather Service, after catastrophic
Texas floods triggered a new wave of criticism over the
president’s deep cuts across government. Administration critics
have wondered whether efforts to reduce the federal workforce
and eliminate programs affected the government’s ability to
warn residents. … Jacobs, whose background is in weather
modeling, has advocated for retooling NOAA’s weather data
collection processes, including through greater engagement with
private-sector companies that operate their own satellites and
would benefit from multibillion-dollar government contracts.
… Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Jacobs that the
nation cannot afford to retrench on climate change given its
direct impacts on communities facing rising frequency
and intensity of storms, floods, droughts, wildfire and other
natural disasters.
The Colorado River is now officially “positive” for invasive
zebra mussels in the latest failure of containment for the
voracious species, after three new samples came up with larvae
July 3, from between Glenwood Springs and Silt. The main stem
Colorado River discoveries piled on top of a confirmed “large
number” of adult zebra mussels in a private body of water in
western Eagle County, and two more positive larvae tests, at
Highline Lake and Mack Mesa Lake, both near the Utah border,
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials said Wednesday. Sampling
was redoubled throughout June after tests found a single zebra
mussel larvae, or veliger, in the Colorado River from a June 9
collection. It’s the second year in a row veligers are
being discovered in the West’s key river channel through
Colorado, and now CPW officials are also dealing with a
full-blown adult zebra mussel invasion in the privately owned
Eagle County water.
Two major climate disasters of 2025 — the Texas flooding that
killed more than 100 people and the L.A. wildfires in January
that resulted in 30 deaths and wiped out more than 15,000 homes
and businesses — highlight the struggles officials face in
fully preparing for extreme weather
conditions. In both cases, the National Weather
Service offered clear warnings of potentially life-threatening
weather events; in Los Angeles, warnings were given days before
extraordinary winds — of up to 100 mph — slammed a region
already suffering from a record-dry fall. … Since then,
there have been calls for sweeping reforms of how Los Angeles
County prepares for disasters, and investigations into what
went wrong. … With climate change bringing more extreme
deadly weather, local emergency management officials around the
nation are trying to keep up.
Other flood risk and emergency management news around the West:
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. Plus, register for the 41st annual
Water
SummitOct. 1,
themed Embracing Uncertainty in the
West, and read our latest
Western Water story on how FIRO is helping
harness the power of atmospheric rivers.
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.
