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.
What role will desalination play in
the arid West? That topic is one of many engaging conversations
that will be explored at our Oct. 29 Water
Summit revolving around this year’s theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western Water.
Led by Central Arizona Project’s General Manager Brenda Burman,
the panel will discuss all topics worth their
salt - from emerging desalination technologies to the
latest developments in innovative desalination programs to the
regulatory challenges and opportunities that face the region.
The panel of accomplished speakers will provide deep
insight on desalination’s implications for water management
in the West.
The Water Summit is the Foundation’s premier event of
the year and returns to Sacramento on Oct. 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West. Capacity is
limited and registration closes soon, so grab your ticket
here while they’re still available!
Our 2026Colorado River Water
Leaders cohort completed its seven-month
program recently with policy recommendations to
strengthen ”assigned water” programs across the Colorado
River Basin.
“Assigned water” has become a key tool for conserving Colorado
River water and helping to stabilize Lake Mead to prevent
shortages. Originally developed as “Intentionally Created
Surplus” within the 2007 Interim Guidelines, it gives users the
ability to store conserved water earmarked for their own future
use.
The cohort was tasked with assessing existing assigned water
programs and identifying opportunities across the Colorado River
Basin. Following seven months of learning, collaboration and
discussion with leading Colorado River experts who served as
mentors, the cohort developed recommendations focused on:
Greater transparency in water accounting
Stronger relationships and communication among interested
parties
Groups opposed to California’s Delta Conveyance Project had a
second chance Thursday to argue why the massive water project
fails to meet essential criteria and should return to the state
water department for further workshopping. The Delta
Stewardship Council heard appeals to a certificate of
consistency for the massive water transfer system,
making no decision that day whether to reject the appeal or
send it back to the Department of Water Resources for more
tweaking. The council can’t outright deny the project.
A decision is expected Dec. 9. … Those
appealing and the Delta Protection Commission, the latter an
advisory body for the council, said the water department failed
to meet the mark. … Department officials argued its
benchmarks were narrow, saying its revised certificate of
consistency complied with the Delta Plan.
… Beleaguered Front Range water utilities responded to
historic drought conditions in the just-ended
watering season with a variety of mandates, restrictions, price
increases, friendly reminders and educational
seminars. The results were decidedly
mixed. With no guarantee that predicted
El Niño weather will bring deep powder in the
spots drained by Front Range cities, utility experts
will be studying their results in case they need to redeploy
restrictions in 2027. We asked a handful of cities to
tell us what they learned, and to add up the numbers. Not
every water agency measures its savings the same way or uses
the same historic period for comparison, so we’re presenting
their savings in the way they talk about it in their
communities.
Winter is coming, and it looks warm and wet in California,
according to new data. In a winter outlook published on
Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
provided national temperature and precipitation forecasts for
December, January and February. The new outlook features
how El Niño, the climate phenomenon that emerged in June and
could reach historic strength this year, will influence winter
weather. In California, meteorologists have expected El
Niño to tip the odds in favor of a wetter season, especially in
the southern part of the state. Sure enough, the
outlook shows a 50% to 60% chance that there will be
above-normal precipitation for much of California, from the Bay
Area to the southern border. North of the Bay Area, that
probability drops to 40% to 50%; and in the northern-most
sliver of the state, it’s 33% to 40%.
Gov. Katie Hobbs is lashing out at those who are trying to
undermine plans for what some call a “toilet to
tap”system of converting waste into drinking
water. The governor’s comments come as the question of
whether cities should pursue programs to produce purified water
from what has been sewage has become an election issue in at
least one Arizona city. There, a candidate is running on a
platform to kill the program, even making a campaign video
featuring some brown-looking liquid and telling viewers that is
what they are being asked to drink. “It’s irresponsible
to spread the kind of misinformation that’s being
spread about technology that we need to continue into the
future,” the governor said after speaking at an event to
promote work done by a program at Arizona State
University tasked with finding new sources of water and
conserving what the state has.
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.
