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.
As we head into summer, be sure to
mark your calendars for our popular fall programs which will all
be opening for registration soon!
Importantly, we will launch our first-ever Klamath River Tour to
visit the watershed and, among other things, see how the
river has responded to the dismantling of four obsolete dams. It
will not be an annual tour, so don’t miss this opportunity!
Check out the event dates and registration
details:
Big Day of
Giving is ending soon but you still have until
midnight to support the Water Education Foundation’s tours,
workshops, publications and other programs with a donation to help us reach our
$10,000 fundraising goal - we are only $2,502
away!
At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious
as water. Your donations help us every day to teach K-12
educators how to bring water science into the classroom and to
empower future decision-makers through our professional
development programs.
A controversial provision backed by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) to
sell hundreds of thousands of acres of federally owned land in
Nevada and Utah to generate revenue for Republicans’ tax and
spending bill has been stripped out of the legislation by GOP
leadership at the behest of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT). … To
that end, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) introduced an amendment during
the Rules Committee’s marathon markup Wednesday to strip the
Clark County acreage from the bill, while Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV)
offered an amendment to take out land sales for parcels in Utah
that run alongside a proposed water pipeline
route that concerned water managers in other Colorado
River states, including Nevada.
One of the largest tree die-offs in California history, which
has turned evergreen forests into a bleak canvas of oranges and
browns, appears to be subsiding after nearly a decade of
wreckage. New data from the U.S. Forest Service shows that the
number of trees that perished in California last year hit a
10-year low. The 6.6 million trees counted as dead is still
above normal, scientists say, but it marks a major letup in the
run of drought, bugs and disease that’s
decimated forests across the state. The epidemic peaked in 2016
with 62 million dead trees. The improvement, revealed in the
preliminary results of Forest Service aerial surveys, is
credited to wet weather. … Healthy forests
are vital, notably for ecosystems, water supplies,
carbon storage and communities reliant on forest recreation and
the timber trade. Large numbers of dead trees can also increase
the risk of wildfire.
In an ominous sign for an already struggling project, state
officials on Wednesday said they are unhappy with the lack of
progress over plans by the Santa Clara Valley Water District to
build a huge new dam near Pacheco Pass and Henry W. Coe State
Park in Santa Clara County. Members of the California Water
Commission, an 8-member agency appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom
that tentatively committed $504 million in state bond funding
seven years ago to the $2.7 billion project — and still could
revoke it — expressed frustration at the district’s shifting
timelines and lack of specifics and accomplishments.
… On Wednesday, district officials told the water
commission that they still haven’t secured major permits needed
to start construction, haven’t secured water rights, and only
have completed 30% of the design. They said they wouldn’t be
able to break ground until 2029 and won’t complete construction
until at least 2036.
Sen. Jerry McNerney is laying down the gauntlet against Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal to fast-track a controversial
Delta water tunnel. What happened: McNerney said he has the
votes to defeat Newsom’s bid last week to speed up the
permitting for a tunnel underneath the state’s main water
delivery hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, if it came to
that. “I’m confident that we do,” the former House Democrat
said in an interview following a press conference on the
issue. A version of the proposed project has been floating
around — first as a canal, then a pair of tunnels — for more
than a half-century, during which it has reliably brought out
opposition from environmental groups and elected officials in
the Delta region concerned about habitat loss and construction
impacts.
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.
