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.
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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.
Mark your calendars! Registration will be opening soon for two
exciting Water Education Foundation events this fall.
Water Summit | Oct. 29
Join us for our premier event of
the year, bringing together leading policymakers and experts from
all sectors to discuss the most pressing water issues facing
California and the West.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado
River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated
between the seven states that depend on the river. Those
guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding
negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against
the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend
on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two
federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of
unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15
percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities
scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for
shortages.
The Trump administration finalized a rollback of the Endangered
Species Act on Friday, paving the way for drilling, mining and
other human development across protected wildlife habitats. The
move redefines “harm” under the Endangered Species Act, the
landmark conservation law that protects threatened and
endangered plants and animals. … The move seems
especially poised to hit California. … Of the roughly 2,300
species protected by the Endangered Species Act, nearly 300 are
found in California. These species include amphibians such as
tiger salamanders and Yosemite toads; birds
such as California condors and northern spotted owls; fish such
as Little Kern golden trout and Santa Ana
suckers. … A report from Earthjustice estimates
that expanded oil drilling in California could threaten five
marine species including humpback whales, sea otters,
leatherback sea turtles, marbled murrelets and wild
salmon.
Predicting the weather is always tricky, with even the most
solid forecasts sometimes not living up to the hype. But over
the last few months, the world’s weather experts have become
more united in the belief that we were going to be hit by a new
El Niño climate pattern, and the consensus of computer models
suggests it will probably be a very strong
one. California is no stranger to the effects of El
Niño, with the pattern associated with some of the state’s most
memorable destructive winter seasons. … For Southern
California, it would mean a higher chance of
above-average rainfall, risking a winter of flash
floods and landslides. During three of the four
“very strong” El Niños in the global record, downtown Los
Angeles got significantly more rain than average.
A San Joaquin water district says it may have found a powerful
tool in the fight against California’s growing golden mussel
problem. The Arvin-Edison Water Storage District says a
large-scale copper-based treatment successfully killed
golden mussels found throughout the areas of its water system
that were treated before farmers experienced disruptions to
their water deliveries. … The district turned to a
copper-based product called Natrix CA, using it in a 30-day
treatment across its water system. … The first
30-day treatment cost the district about $3 million.
… [T]he next round of treatment is expected to cost about
$1.3 million, with the district anticipating two to three
treatments each year.
In its dash to build President Trump’s signature border wall,
the federal government is drilling unpermitted wells into
already-depleted aquifers in New Mexico, according to state
officials. The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer told
Here & Now it counted at least six wells under development
along the border, but none have the necessary permits required
by state law. … [Rancher Russell] Johnson relies on a
natural spring to supply water for his cattle and his
home. “These wells that they’re drilling for border
wall construction, they’re talking about trying to attain
300-plus gallons a minute, and it’s going to pump us
dry,” he said.
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.
