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.
Big Day of
Giving is ending soon but you still have until
midnight to support the Water Education Foundation’s tours,
workshops, publications and other programs with a donation to help us reach our
$10,000 fundraising goal - we are only $2,502
away!
At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious
as water. Your donations help us every day to teach K-12
educators how to bring water science into the classroom and to
empower future decision-makers through our professional
development programs.
Today is Big Day of Giving! Your donation will help
the Water Education Foundation continue its work to enhance
public understanding of our most precious natural resource
in California and across the West – water.
Big Day of Giving is a 24-hour regional fundraising event that
has profound benefits for our educational programs and
publications on drought, floods, groundwater, and the importance
of headwaters in California and the Colorado River Basin.
Your tax-deductible donation of
any size helps support our tours, scholarships, teacher training
workshops, free access to our daily water newsfeed and more. You
have until midnight to help us reach our $10,000
fundraising goal!
The Trump administration is proposing a jaw-dropping $609
million cut to the massive Central Utah Project, which supplies
water to millions of people in northern Utah. … “The Budget
provides $1.2 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation and the
Central Utah Project. The Budget reduces funding for programs
that have nothing to do with building and maintaining water
infrastructure, such as habitat restoration. Instead, the
Budget focuses Reclamation and the Central Utah Project on
their core missions of maintaining assets that provide safe,
reliable, and efficient management of water resources
throughout the western United States,” the reduction item says.
Federal scientists will no longer update a list of weather
disasters that cause billions of dollars in damage, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.
The list had been growing dramatically in recent years, a sign
of both extreme weather and increasing development across the
country. It is on a growing list of scientific datasets
that NOAA says scientists will no longer update or that the
administration will decommission entirely. The agency said the
existing disaster records, stretching from 1980 through 2024,
will remain accessible. Without updates to the database, it
could become harder for the country to assess the ways climate
change, building patterns and population trends are exposing
Americans to weather hazards.
Friday and Saturday are shaping up to be the hottest days so
far this year across much of Northern California. Just two days
later, valley and coastal rain and Sierra
Nevadasnow could be back in the
forecast. It’s part of an unsettled spring weather
pattern that continues across the West
Coast. … Rainfall totals will depend on the
trajectory of the storm. If it moves inland quickly, little to
no precipitation will fall in the Bay Area. If the storm
remains over the ocean, it will pick up more moisture and could
deposit a tenth to a half-inch of rain in parts of the Bay
Area. This wet scenario may also yield a half-foot of snow in
the northern Sierra.
Governor Newsom today announced that the California Department
of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is upgrading 21 fish hatcheries to
boost the state’s salmon and trout populations and protect
hatcheries from the impacts of climate change. The project
helps build the California salmon and trout supply, which are
central to the health of California’s biodiversity but also
indigenous peoples, communities, and the state’s
multimillion-dollar fishing industry. … The “Climate
Induced Hatcheries Upgrade Project” launched today was first
funded with $15 million in emergency drought funding in 2021.
Since that funding was allocated, CDFW has been working with
leading hatchery and hydrology consultants to identify specific
concerns with regard to water quality and quantity, fish
rearing and water supply infrastructure and operational
inefficiencies at the hatcheries.
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.
