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.
Our Water
Summit on Oct. 30 will take a deep dive on issues
critical to our most precious natural resource in the West but
it’s so much more.
During our event, you’ll also have
a chance to network with people from across the water
communityfrom municipal water agencies to
irrigation districts, farming and lending organizations to state
and federal agencies that manage or regulate water to
environmental and other nonprofit organizations.
Karla Nemeth, director of the California
Department of Water Resources, will deliver the opening keynote
and participants will be treated later in the day to a
presentation by visual artists whose work seeks to expand
perspectives on how we relate to water.
Are you an
up-and-coming leader in the water world? Applications are
now available for our 2025 California Water Leaders cohort, and
are due no later than Dec. 5, 2024.
If interested in applying, start by checking out the
program
requirements. Make sure you have the time to commit
to the program next year and approval from your organization
to apply.
Days after the administrator of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency visited a Los Angeles public housing project
with lead-contaminated water, the agency ordered drinking water
systems nationwide to replace every lead pipe within 10 years.
… But in Los Angeles — where the discovery of contaminated
water in public housing in Watts has shocked officials — the
EPA mandate is unlikely to result in immediate change.
When [EPA Director Michael Regan] joined Mayor Karen Bass
on a visit to the 700-unit Jordan Downs complex this
month, he suggested the brain-damaging element could be from
household plumbing — a critical risk in older homes. It’s a
possibility that highlights the difficulty of eliminating the
threat of lead in California drinking water. Although the
new EPA rule targets lead service lines connecting homes to
water mains, it doesn’t address plumbing inside the building
that can still pose a risk, such as lead soldering, brass
fixtures and interior mains.
The developer of the nationally lauded but controversial Hell’s
Kitchen geothermal and lithium extraction project near the
Salton Sea illegally drained 1,200 acres of fragile wetlands by
dumping dredged fill nearby, according to a settlement
agreement announced on Thursday by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. The work was performed on leased Imperial
Irrigation District land as part of Controlled Thermal
Resources’ Hells Kitchen pilot project west of Niland — on hold
due to an unrelated lawsuit — which aims to produce 49.9
megawatts of steam power and 20,000 tons of lithium annually.
The project is the first stage of much larger planned
production of the mineral, which is used in everything from
commercial solar projects to to smart phones.
Less than two months after the removal of dams restored a
free-flowing Klamath River, salmon have made their way upstream
to begin spawning and have been spotted in Oregon for the first
time in more than a century. Biologists with the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that they found a
single fall-run Chinook on Oct. 16 in a tributary of the
Klamath River upstream of the spot where J.C. Boyle Dam was
recently dismantled. State biologists in California have also
been seeing salmon in creeks that had been inaccessible since
dams were built decades ago and blocked fish from reaching
their spawning areas.
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board said
Friday that “significant amounts of contamination” exist on the
650 acres that make up Phillips 66 refinery sites in Wilmington
and Carson, and that it will probably take “years to clean up”
the soil and groundwater. Phillips 66 announced Wednesday, Oct.
16 that it would close the refineries connected by 5 miles of
pipeline by the end of 2025. The Houston-based energy giant
also hired a pair of real estate firms to develop potential
uses for the land. “There is a large amount of pollution in
soil and groundwater at the Carson and Wilmington facilities,”
a spokeswoman for the LA Water Board said via email. “However,
there is ongoing soil vapor and groundwater clean-up and
significant amounts of contamination are presently being
removed at both facilities.” The agency, in a roundabout
manner, said the site cleanup would be monitored carefully.
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.
