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.
Mark your calendars! Registration will be opening soon for two
exciting Water Education Foundation events this fall.
Water Summit | Oct. 29
Join us for our premier event of
the year, bringing together leading policymakers and experts from
all sectors to discuss the most pressing water issues facing
California and the West.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado
River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated
between the seven states that depend on the river. Those
guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding
negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against
the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend
on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two
federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of
unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15
percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities
scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for
shortages.
In a requirement that is the first of its kind in the
country, some 600 commercial and industrial properties
in the Los Angeles area will have to clean up the water that
runs off their parking lots or pay to have it cleaned up. The
Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board voted to
require shopping centers, warehouses, private hospitals and
office complexes whose properties drain into the Dominguez and
Los Cerritos channels to get stormwater permits.
… Environmental advocates, who have pushed for the
change for years, said the new requirements will make a
major difference in addressing water pollution.
… But representatives of developers, property owners and
business groups raised concerns about the costs and
requirements that they said are sometimes unclear.
Joel Ferry is stepping down as commissioner of the Department
of Natural Resources, just ahead of an anticipated
announcement on Utah’s future share of Colorado River
water and as the state grapples with plunging water
levels in both the Great Salt Lake and Lake Powell. Since 2022,
Ferry has played a pivotal role in water issues, as Gov.
Spencer Cox’s point man on Great Salt Lake conservation efforts
and the Colorado River. ... Cox nominated Jamie
Barnes, the state forester and director of the Utah Division of
Forestry, Fire and State Lands since 2021, to take
Ferry’s place pending Senate confirmation. … Ferry has been
closely involved intense, high-stakes negotiations on the
allocation of Colorado River water between Utah and the other
states that rely on it.
In a major milestone after years of delays and cost increases,
the Santa Clara Valley Water District has approved a
construction contract to tear down and rebuild Anderson Dam,
the largest dam in Santa Clara County, and bring the
aging 240-foot-tall structure up to modern earthquake
standards. The San Jose-based government agency
awarded the $1.88 billion contract on Friday to
Flatiron-Dragados-Sukut, a joint venture of major
engineering firms Flatiron-Dragados and Sukut Construction
based in Concord. Work on the massive project, one of the
largest public works projects in the Bay Area in recent years,
is scheduled to begin Jan. 1 and finish by
2033.
Two environmental advocacy organizations and two Native
American tribes on Tuesday filed separate lawsuits to vacate
the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the use of a
decommissioned oil and gap pipeline across protected federal
public land in the Mojave Desert for a controversial water
project. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra
Club said in their complaint filed in Los Angeles
that the bureau’s decision will have a devastating impact on
the fragile desert environment. Cadiz Inc. acquired the
pipeline from El Paso Natural Gas in 2011 and intends the use
it forits Mojave Groundwater Bank, a project to pump
water from an underground aquifer in the Mojave Desert to the
company’s customers west of the desert along the California
coast.
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.
No portion of the West has been immune to drought during the last
century and it occurs with much greater frequency in the West
than in any other region of the country.
