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.
Some people in California and across the West struggle to access
safe, reliable and affordable water to meet their everyday needs
for drinking, cooking and sanitation.
There are many ways to support our nonprofit mission by donating
in someone’s honor or memory, 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.
Our Water
Summit on Oct. 30 will take a deep dive on issues
critical to our most precious natural resource in the West but
it’s so much more.
During our event, you’ll also have
a chance to network with people from across the water
communityfrom municipal water agencies to
irrigation districts, farming and lending organizations to state
and federal agencies that manage or regulate water to
environmental and other nonprofit organizations.
Karla Nemeth, director of the California
Department of Water Resources, will deliver the opening keynote
and participants will be treated later in the day to a
presentation by visual artists whose work seeks to expand
perspectives on how we relate to water.
Are you an
up-and-coming leader in the water world? Applications are
now available for our 2025 California Water Leaders cohort, and
are due no later than Dec. 5, 2024.
If interested in applying, start by checking out the
program
requirements. Make sure you have the time to commit
to the program next year and approval from your organization
to apply.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared to side with the City
of San Francisco in its unusual challenge of federal water
regulations that it said were too vague and could be
interpreted too strictly. The outcome could have sweeping
implications for curtailing water pollution offshore and would
deal another blow to the Environmental Protection Agency, which
has faced a string of losses at the court over its efforts to
protect the environment. The case has given rise to unusual
alliances, with the city joining oil companies and business
groups in siding against the E.P.A. In arguments on Wednesday,
it was the conservative justices who seemed the most aligned
with a city best known as a liberal bastion. At its core, the
case is about human waste and how San Francisco disposes of it
— specifically, whether the Clean Water Act of 1972 allowed the
E.P.A. to impose generic prohibitions on wastewater released
into the Pacific Ocean and to penalize the city.
The value of farmland in parts of the San Joaquin Valley,
California’s agricultural heartland, has fallen rapidly this
year as commodity prices lag and implementation of the state’s
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act casts a shadow on the
future of farming in the region. In 2014, when SGMA was
adopted, the value of farmland without reliable surface water
access began to decline. But within the past several months,
those values have plummeted, according to appraisers, realtors
and county assessors. “It’s very dramatic,” said Janie Gatzman,
owner of Gatzman Appraisal in Stanislaus County, who until last
month served as president of the California chapter of the
American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers.
… The sharp drop in land values this year—a decade
after SGMA was adopted—came as implementation of the law ramped
up. This year, state regulators intervened for the first time.
Humanity has thrown the global water cycle off balance “for the
first time in human history,” fueling a growing water disaster
that will wreak havoc on economies, food production and lives,
according to a landmark new report. Decades of destructive land
use and water mismanagement have collided with the human-caused
climate crisis to put “unprecedented stress” on the global
water cycle, said the report published Wednesday by the Global
Commission on the Economics of Water, a group of international
leaders and experts. … Disruptions to the water cycle are
already causing suffering. Nearly 3 billion people face water
scarcity. Crops are shriveling and cities are sinking as the
groundwater beneath them dries out.
Our Water
Summit on Oct. 30 will take a deep dive on issues
critical to our most precious natural resource in the West but
it’s so much more. During our event, you’ll also have a
chance to network with people from across the
water community from municipal water agencies
to irrigation districts, farming and lending organizations to
state and federal agencies that manage or regulate water to
environmental and other nonprofit organizations. Karla
Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water
Resources, will deliver the opening keynote and
participants will be treated later in the day to a
presentation by visual artists whose work seeks to expand
perspectives on how we relate to water.
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.
