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.
The remaining handful of tickets
for our first-ever Klamath River Tour are now up
for grabs! This special water tour, Sept. 8 through Sept.
12, will not be offered every year so check out the tour
details here.
You don’t want to miss this opportunity to examine water issues
along the 263-mile Klamath River, from its spring-fed headwaters
in south-central Oregon to its redwood-lined estuary on the
Pacific Ocean in California.
Among the planned stops is the former site of Iron Gate Dam &
Reservoir for a firsthand look at restoration efforts. The dam
was one of four obsolete structures taken down in the nation’s
largest dam removal project aimed at restoring fish
passage. Grab your ticket here
while they last!
In December 2012, dam operators at Northern California’s Lake Mendocino watched as a series of intense winter storms bore down on them. The dam there is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ San Francisco District, whose primary responsibility in the Russian River watershed is flood control. To make room in the reservoir for the expected deluge, the Army Corps released some 25,000 acre-feet of water downstream — enough to supply nearly 90,000 families for a year.
In the contentious talks over how states will split the
shrinking Colorado River, negotiators are reaching consensus on
one point: Just go with the “natural flow.” The concept is a
somewhat simple one. Instead of negotiating future cuts across
the entire seven-state region, the process would rely on recent
water records — the amount of water flowing from the Colorado
River headwaters in the Upper Basin to a point in Arizona
marking the boundary of the Lower Basin states. Negotiators
recently heralded the move as a potential breakthrough in the
long-stalled talks: It could help end a stalemate over how to
share the pain of future water reductions and at the same time
respond to the impacts of climate change. But that belies a set
of lingering questions. For one, just determining the
water in the river will require complex calculations relying on
evolving research. Even more critically, there’s no indication
negotiators are close on the particularly difficult issue of
deciding how big a share of water each group of states can
claim. Still, observers say it could mark an important change.
As Congress starts work on the next government funding bills,
President Trump is proposing eliminating a key water
conservation program that’s sent more than $3.2 billion to
Western states since 2010. The program, known as WaterSMART and
run by the Bureau of Reclamation, provides federal dollars to
local governments and organizations in the West to address
worsening drought and water scarcity. WaterSMART grants,
combined with state and local dollars, have funded more than
2,350 projects addressing water conservation, habitat
restoration, water recycling, drought preparedness and
more. … The budget proposal strips the Bureau of
Reclamation of around $600 million from its current budget of
around $1.86 billion, according to an analysis by the
Association of California Water Agencies, a policy and trade
group. The proposal zeroes out funding for WaterSmart, as well
as other water programs at BOR.
Every spring, tens of thousands of California gulls, some from
the Bay Area, leave their home on the coast for a lengthy
flight over the Sierra Nevada to summer at Mono Lake. There,
the next generation of birds is born. Last year, however,
long-simmering problems with the gull population exploded into
view. The number of chicks that hatched at Mono Lake dropped to
its lowest level on record: just 324 birds, down from about
11,000 chicks the prior year, according to a new report by the
research group Point Blue Conservation Science. The dramatic
decline is not only raising questions about the future of the
gulls, but it’s rekindling concern about how the iconic lake
200 miles from San Francisco is being
managed. … Those working to protect the lake see
the record-low gull numbers as a sign that the water
restrictions haven’t gone far enough and need to be revisited.
… There are two ways to better predict the weather: Measure
it more accurately, or describe how it works in more
excruciating scientific detail. Enter WindBorne, a start-up in
Palo Alto, Calif. … The good news is that we may be poised to
enter a new golden age of A.I.-enabled weather prediction. …
There’s a catch, though. These new deep learning forecasts are
built on data provided for free by public science agencies. In
the United States, that relationship is threatened by the Trump
administration’s heavy cuts to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which houses the National
Weather Service. … For now, weather forecasting models
based on deep learning remain dependent on data releases from
the physics-based models at the public weather agencies.
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.
