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.
Our Layperson’s
Guide to California Water has been completely
updated for 2026, providing a comprehensive overview of the
ways water is used, as well as its critical ecological role,
throughout the state. The 24-page publication traces the history
of the vital resource at the core of California’s identity,
politics and culture since its founding in 1850.
Time is running out to register for next Thursday’s Water
101 Workshop and go beyond the headlines to gain a
deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved across
California. Plus, only a handful of seats remain for the
opportunity to extend your ‘beyond the headlines’ water education
experience on the optional watershed tour the next day!
… Where Govs. Gavin Newsom of California
and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania are slamming the gas
price spikes stemming from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran,
[Ariz. Gov. Katie] Hobbs is touting Arizona defense
contractors’ work on Tomahawk missiles that the U.S. military
deploys in the conflict. Her aim: to get Trump to
intervene on behalf of the state in the West’s biggest water
war. … Hobbs’s pitch to Trump on the river is
garnering a wide base of support within Arizona. A phalanx of
state and local officials from both parties, business leaders
and even her electoral challengers are joining in the effort.
Aurora City Council members unanimously passed a Stage I Water
Shortage declaration in Monday night’s meeting, putting
restrictions on outdoor water use starting
immediately. The shortage declaration imposes
restrictions on outdoor watering for residents and businesses
and reduces commercial user allocations, such as that for golf
courses, by 20%, according to Aurora Water General Manager
Marshall Brown. With the passage of the shortage declaration
Monday night, Aurora Water officials will also start to ramp up
enforcement. In the past, enforcement was gentle, water
officials said. This year, officials will issue one
warning.
Wyoming has seen a decent amount of snow in the first
week of April, but meteorologists says it’s officially too
little, too late to save the state’s historically low snowpack,
which has been melting for weeks. The spring storm brought
much-needed moisture to several dry spots across the Cowboy
State. … Tony Bergantino, the director of the Water
Resources Data System and the Wyoming State Climate Office,
finally said the word that describes this past winter’s
miserable snowpack. “I guess you could say that it’s
‘unprecedented,’” he said. … Bergantino added that Wyoming
could already be primed for a disastrous fire season.
In Aurora, data center proposals run through a simple filter.
City officials compare total water use against how much of that
water won’t come back—lost to evaporation. If either number
gets too high, the project doesn’t move forward. When a
developer wants to build in Denver, there is no matrix. That
gap—two cities, two standards, nothing statewide connecting
them—is the center of a question Colorado has avoided
answering: who is responsible for knowing how much
water AI data centers use, and when does that become too
much? The question got harder to ignore this spring.
On March 16, Governor Jared Polis activated Phase 2 of the
state’s Drought Response Plan—the first activation in nearly
six years—after federal water managers ranked this year’s
snowpack 45th out of 46 years on record.
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.
