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.
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.
A new caucus has formed in the Utah State Legislature to
monitor bills and advocate for the state’s interests on the
Colorado River. Rep. Scott Chew, R-Jensen, told FOX 13 News he
formed the Colorado River Caucus on Utah’s Capitol Hill
made up of lawmakers whose districts are along the
river and its tributaries.He has run legislation
seeking to defend Utah’s interests in the high-stakes political
negotiations over the water that provides life for more than 40
million people in the West. … Rep. Chew said he wanted
to ensure people in his part of the state are represented on
the Colorado River.
Six hundred miles is a long way to go for water. That’s how far
the Scott and Cape Horn dams are from the Elsinore Valley
Municipal Water District. It’s not far enough to deter Elsinore
Valley’s interest in buying the dams located in a rural stretch
of Northern California.The dams’ fate is the subject of an
intensifying showdown involving conservationists, Native
Americans, farmers and most recently, the Trump administration.
… In an April 21 post on X, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
Brooke Rollins described the district as a “legitimate buyer”
for the dams, which are part of the Potter Valley Project that
sends water to the Russian River flowing through Mendocino and
Sonoma counties.
The California State Water Resources Control Board has released
a final draft remand order directing the Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board to revise dairy water
quality regulations, prompting concerns from industry groups
about potential costs and operational impacts on dairy farms.
The proposed changes apply only to dairies operating in the
Central Valley. … The order focuses on reducing
nitrate impacts to groundwater. … A key
component of the proposal is a broader whole-farm nitrogen
accounting system. Dairies would be required to track nitrogen
generated on their operations, applied to cropland and exported
off-site, with the goal of reducing nitrogen that could
contribute to groundwater contamination.
In April, developers of the massive Imperial Data Center
cleared a major hurdle after Imperial County Supervisors
approved a plan to combine several tracts of land for the
nearly one-million-square-foot facility in rural Southern
California. It would be the largest data center in the
state. … Last week, that progress came to a
halt when the county board walked back its decision, declaring
a 45-day moratorium on data centers and forming a public
commission to advise the county on zoning policy for the
facilities. … The company originally pledged to
use recycled water from neighboring cities, but when
that didn’t pan out, it sued Imperial Irrigation District in
Imperial County Superior Court this month, seeking 260
million gallons of river water each year.
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.
