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.
A new aquatic invader, the golden mussel, has penetrated California’s ecologically fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the West Coast’s largest tidal estuary and the hub of the state’s vast water export system. While state officials say they’re working to keep this latest invasive species in check, they concede it may be a nearly impossible task: The golden mussel is in the Golden State to stay – and it is likely to spread.
Register today for the return
of our Bay-Delta
Tour May 7-9 as we venture into the most critical
and controversial water region in California. Get a firsthand
look at the state’s vital water hub and hear directly from
experts on key issues affecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and San Francisco Bay.
The 720,000-acre network of islands and channels supports
the state’s two large water systems – the State Water Project and
the federal Central Valley Project – and together with the San
Francisco Bay is an important ecological resource. You’ll learn
firsthand how the drought is affecting water quality and supply
that serves local farms, cities and habitat. Much of
the water also heads south via canals and aqueducts to provide
drinking water for more than 27 million Californians and
irrigation to about 3 million acres of farmland that helps feed
the nation.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to conserve
water in the Colorado River Basin — including $86.6 million for
advanced wastewater treatment in Tucson — have been frozen by
the Trump administration, Arizona’s senators say. U.S. Sen.
Mark Kelly’s office said funding for all projects related to
the river that were to be financed by the 2022 Inflation
Reduction Act — which include the Tucson project — are frozen.
Specifically, the Tucson project to treat wastewater to
drinking-water standards is on a federal website’s list of
frozen projects, said David Wegner, a retired U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation official.
Lake Shasta water levels are still higher than usual for this
time of year, even after U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials
released 10 times the amount of water flowing through Shasta
and Keswick dams during the second week of February. At just
under 1,037 feet, Shasta Dam was lapping almost 30 feet from
the top of the reservoir (1,067 feet) on Thursday, according to
the California Department of Water Resources. But the amount of
water in the state’s largest reservoir is much closer to its
historical average for this time of year than it was a week
ago, days after record breaking rainfall drenched the greater
Redding area and the North State.
… Today, most Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents
still don’t have clean drinking water, with “do not drink” and
“do not boil” notices still in effect. They pick up packages of
bottled water from the stoop of the utilities’ offices, and
while they’re technically allowed to use the tap water for
showers, washing hands and laundry, many still don’t trust
it. As residents question why it’s taking so long to bring
back clean drinking water, the utilities are pushing through a
lengthy process of restoring water pressure throughout their
sprawling system, then repeatedly testing hundreds of sites for
dangerous carcinogens and attempting to flush them out until
the water is safe.
Governor Newsom announced (Feb. 14) another important step in
the state’s work to modernize its water infrastructure through
the Delta Conveyance Project. Passing yet another critical
milestone, the project received a required Incidental Take
Permit. The permit includes measures to minimize, avoid,
and fully mitigate impacts on threatened or endangered species
as a result of the construction, operation, and maintenance of
the Delta Conveyance Project.
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.
