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.
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.
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.
Scattered rain and mountain snow showers will continue across
Northern and Central California on Friday morning. But stormy
conditions will fade across California by the evening, giving
way to generally quiet weather for the three-day holiday
weekend. Continued showers could add up to an additional foot
of snow in the Sierra Nevada above 5,000 feet, with the
heaviest snowfall in the morning and midafternoon Friday.
Travelers heading across the Sierra for the holiday weekend
should prepare for winter driving conditions. In the Bay
Area, rain showers will be more hit-or-miss than Thursday’s
widespread precipitation.
The rainstorms that drenched Southern California two years ago
weren’t enough to replenish deep underground aquifers that had
been depleted by pumping over the last two decades, a new study
has found. Stanford University scientists analyzed how the
historic 2023 storms affected groundwater levels across Los
Angeles and Orange counties. They found that while shallow
aquifers rebounded, deeper aquifers more than 150 feet
underground regained only about 25% of the water they had lost
to pumping since 2006.
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.
The push to remove two dams on Northern California’s Eel River,
making it the longest free-flowing river in the state, took a
step forward Thursday with a major agreement among clashing
communities. The agreement, which unites local, state
and tribal leaders behind the retirement of PG&E’s Potter
Valley hydroelectric project and its two dams, promises
“restorative justice” compensation for the region’s indigenous
people and continued water exports to the Russian River basin,
where the PG&E facility has long sent supplies. … Most
fundamentally, it would raise river levels and give struggling
salmon and other fish access to spawning habitat blocked by the
dams for more than a century.
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.