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.
Registration is now open for our next slate of spring programs,
part of a year packed with engaging tours, workshops and
conferences on key water topics in California and across the
West.
Seating is always limited for our events and tickets for our
first water tour of 2025 – along the Lower Colorado
River in March – have been going fast!
Current Foundation member organizations receive access to
coveted sponsorship opportunities for our tours
and events, all of which are prime networking
opportunities for the water professionals in attendance! Contact
Nick Gray for more information.
Happy New Year to all the friends, supporters, readers and participants of the tours, articles and workshops we featured in 2024! We’re grateful to each and every person who engaged with us last year.
As we turn the page to 2025, one of our most exciting projects will be a first-ever Klamath River Basin Tour in September. We’ll visit some of the sites where four dams came down along the river’s mainstem, and talk to tribes and farmers in the region and learn from scientists watching the river’s restoration unfold.
While most of our tours span three days, this one will likely stretch to four or possibly five days to accommodate the time to get to this remote watershed straddling the California/Oregon border. Stay tuned for more details!
Our array of 2025 programming begins later this month when we welcome our incoming California Water Leaders cohort. We’ll be sure to introduce them to you and let you know what thorny California water policy issue they’ll be tackling.
In March, we return to the Southwest’s most important river with our Lower Colorado River Tour, and the bus is quickly filling up! We then journey across the San Joaquin Valley on our Central Valley Tour in April and take a deep dive into California’s water hub in May with our signature Bay-Delta Tour.
… In an interview aired Wednesday night, Trump said he may
withhold aid to California until the state adjusts how it
manages its scarce water resources. He falsely claimed that
California’s fish conservation efforts in the northern part of
the state are responsible for fire hydrants running
dry in urban areas. … Several California
representatives agreed that the federal government must guard
against the misuse of funds but argued that the money should
not be held up or saddled with restrictions not placed on other
states after tornadoes and hurricanes. The dilemma played out
in social media posts by Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who
narrowly prevailed in November in his swing district
east of Los Angeles. “Californians are entitled to receive
federal disaster assistance in the same manner as all
Americans,” he wrote on X. But, he quickly added, “Some federal
policy changes may be needed to expedite rebuilding as well as
improve future wildfire prevention. Those kind of policies are
not conditions.”
On Friday, in the last hours of the Biden administration, the
Bureau of Reclamation announced it would spend $388.3 million
for environmental projects in Colorado and three other Colorado
River Basin states. Now that funding is in limbo. The money was
set to come from a Biden-era law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to
halt spending money under the act. Lawmakers were still trying
to understand whether the freeze applied to the entire
Inflation Reduction Act or portions of it as of Wednesday
afternoon. The new executive order focused on energy
spending but also raised questions about funding for
environmental projects in the Colorado River Basin, including
$40 million for western Colorado’s effort to buy powerful water
rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant on the Colorado River and
16 other projects in Colorado.
The Department of Water Resources yesterday filed a petition
with the State Water Resources Control Board to extend the
timeframe to maximize its existing water rights. This is an
important component of meeting the State’s climate change
preparedness goals and the potential to develop additional
storage of water and would help support virtually every major
water initiative underway. These include California’s Water
Supply Strategy: Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future, the
Department’s Climate Adaptation Plan, the Healthy Rivers and
Landscapes Program, the state’s water quality control plan, and
all efforts for water reliability in and through the Delta.
… To accommodate growth in Pacific Palisades, they built a
reservoir in Santa Ynez Canyon, as well as a pumping station
“to increase fire protection,” as the L.A. Department of Water
and Power’s then-chief water engineer, Gerald W. Jones, told
The Times in 1972. Some Palisades residents had initially
fought having a reservoir so close, fearing a repeat of the
1963 Baldwin Hills disaster when a reservoir failed, killing
five people and destroying about 280 homes. In the decades
since, the Santa Ynez Reservoir became a source of comfort. …
But on Jan. 7, the reservoir that had long been a lifeline was
empty when Palisades residents needed it most, as a wildfire
spread rapidly amid dangerously high winds. … The episode has
drawn an urgent question from residents and city leaders: Why
was the reservoir empty for nearly a 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.
