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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Directors and how you can support our nonprofit mission by
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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.
California’s water managers have long looked for ways to adapt to a hotter, drier future where the impacts of climate change leave less water to meet the state’s needs.
At our annual Water 101 Workshopon March 26 in Sacramento, participants will hear from Joel Metzger, deputy director for statewide water resources planning, on efforts underway by the California Department of Water Resources to achieve a target of identifying 9 million acre-feet of additional water supply by 2040, roughly equal to the capacity of two Shasta Reservoirs.
The agenda for the workshop features some of the leading policy and legal experts in California who will detail the historical, legal and political facets of water management in the state. Seating is limited and filling up quickly, so don’t miss out!
The Water Education Foundation, which celebrates its 49th birthday this year, is proud to be the only organization in the West providing comprehensive, unbiased information about the region’s most critical natural resource. Through our workshops, water leadership programs and explorations of key watersheds, we bring the West’s myriad challenges and opportunities into context to help build sound and collective solutions to water issues.
So, don’t miss your chance to go beyond the news headlines and gain a deeper understanding of how water flows across California and its challenges by signing up for our popular spring tours and workshops below, all of which have limited seating and may sell out before long!
With desert cities like Phoenix and Tucson bracing for their
allotments of Colorado River water to be slashed dramatically,
San Diego County’s water agency could for the first time sell
some of its water to other states by drawing on its ample
supplies from the nation’s largest desalination plant.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s board
unanimously approved an initial agreement last week to consider
selling some of its water to Arizona and Nevada, where
cities that depend on the over-tapped Colorado River are
expected to face substantial cuts in water supplies. The
approach would not involve sending desalinated water to other
states, but rather selling some of San Diego County’s allotment
of Colorado River water, which in turn would generate funds to
increase output at the Carlsbad desalination plant.
Recent storms in Colorado’s high country last month did not
dramatically improve what’s still on track to be a record low
snowpack season in the Rockies. … Statewide snowpack was
hovering at about 62% of normal entering March.
… Water managers are already warning of
potential water restrictions in the Colorado River
basin. Denver Water said that as of March 2, the
Colorado River snowpack ranked the second worst since tracking
started decades ago. “It is likely that we will need to
implement additional drought response measures this year,” the
company wrote in a snowpack update this week.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
Though some valley groundwater managers say new state
guidelines “move the goal posts” on subsidence, state
regulators gave fair warning of what was coming. At a September
workshop Deputy Director of the Department of Water Resources
Paul Gosselin told attendees the new guidelines would require
hard commitments and detailed action plans to stop the rapid
sinking that has damaged canals and sunk such large sections of
the San Joaquin Valley, the resulting “bowl” can be seen from
space. … The guidelines, released by the Department of
Water Resources in January, outline how agencies should manage
aquifers to avoid further subsidence.
… Even though Arizona will soon be home to nearly 200 data
centers and chip factories, these facilities have not yet
caused a major bump in the state’s water consumption. The
companies’ precise effects on water supply are hard to discern
due to their own secrecy about their water usage, but the
aggregate picture suggests they have found ways to minimize
their impact, whether through new cooling technologies or by
recycling water on-site. And despite local backlash, water
experts and many local officials appear to have largely made
their peace with the industry’s arrival — and with the Phoenix
region’s emergence as one of the nation’s largest AI
infrastructure clusters. … Arizona is home
to more than 150 data centers, according to an
analysis from the Data Center Map, an industry resource.
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.
