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.
One of the major rationales for building California’s two biggest surface water supply projects was to provide a supplemental source of water from Northern California so San Joaquin Valley farmers could reduce their reliance on groundwater.
The imported water, it was hoped, would lessen reliance on local groundwater and slow or even halt land subsidence caused by excessive pumping from the aquifers.
The growing likelihood of a historic El Niño season has already triggered statewide emergency preparations, raising important questions about what lies ahead for California’s water systems, infrastructure and communities.
At the Foundation’s 42nd Annual Water Summit on October 29 in Sacramento, renowned weather and climate scientist Daniel Swain will share the latest outlook on El Niño conditions and what the recent forecast of the heaviest precipitation hitting in January could mean for California.
With an El Niño winter threatening heavy rain, the State
Auditor warns that California’s aging dams “continue to pose a
risk to public safety,” especially in the Bay Area, San
Diego, and Los Angeles areas. Lawmakers gave the
state the power to penalize dam owners that violate
safety requirements in 2017, after the Oroville
spillway failure forced the evacuation of nearly
200,000 people. Water managers have yet to use
that power, the audit found. Even if state water
managers had wielded their enforcement powers, dam owners
likely couldn’t have afforded the fixes. An audit released
Monday found 57 dams in poor or unsatisfactory
condition as of May, up from previous counts. … The
auditor applauded the water resources department’s inspection
program but blasted its failure to enforce against dam owners
who fail to meet state planning, safety or other
requirements.
… This year, as California faces what experts are calling
“Super El Niño” conditions, residents in the Delta are
preparing for the prospect of devastating
flooding. … But if predictions hold, keeping the
water out won’t be an easy task. The volume of water pushing
against the Delta’s roughly 1,100 miles of
levees — many built by hand more than a hundred years
ago — will be much higher. With warmer ocean temperatures, tide
levels and storm surges will rise, and wet, warm storm systems
will become stronger and more frequent. In a possible scenario
this year, a supercharged King Tide may coincide with
an atmospheric river, sending powerful floodwaters downhill
from the Sierra Nevada to meet a water level in the Delta up to
six feet higher than normal.
Wyoming has shelved a state-funded project to measure
water use in the Green River and Little Snake River
basins after it could not get enough data to create a
basin-wide estimate of water lost during irrigation. At a
meeting in the Cowboy State capitol of Cheyenne last month,
members of the Wyoming Water Development Commission (WWDC)
reported that difficulty gaining access to landowners’
ditches coupled with unexpected costs prevented the
contractor from securing access to all 20 irrigation ditches
the company planned to survey.
… Wyoming water managers said the
measuring efforts could one day resume as part of a coordinated
effort with Colorado, New Mexico and Utah to gauge water
consumption in each state’s portion of the
UpperColorado River Basin,
which includes the Green and Little Snake rivers in Wyoming.
California lawmakers have already made a decisive move in the
battle against golden mussels, the tiny bivalves that
are clogging waterways and pipes in the Delta. But
it’s a waiting game in Congress. … Gov. Gavin Newsom signed
the Golden Mussel Response Act, authored by Assemblymember
Rhodesia Ransom, D-Stockton. The new law could help
water agencies around the state cut through any red tape in
taking action to rid their systems of the rapidly producing
mollusks. … In Congress, the House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held a
hearing last month on the Golden Mussel Eradication and
Control Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy.
It’s yet to be determined whether the measure will pass
by the end of the legislative session, on Jan. 3. The
bill would deliver more federal funding to try to find
treatments to slow the spread of the invaders.
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.
