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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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 Water Education Foundation’s
2025 Annual
Reportis now available in an interactive,
digital format and recaps how we accomplished a lot of
“firsts” last year.
A standout moment was our first-ever Klamath River
Tour, where we brought 45 participants into the heart of
the watershed that underwent the nation’s largest dam removal
project.
The chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
warned Arizona and two other states that rely on the Colorado
River on Wednesday that they will lose access to hundreds of
millions in conservation aid if they pursue litigation over
water rights. Roughly $354 million is still available
under a 2022 climate law. But the funds expire at the end of
September. “States that choose to sue their fellow basin states
over Colorado River operations should not expect Congress to
reward that decision with additional federal funding,” Sen.
Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah – one of the four Upper Basin
states, said at the outset of a hearing onthe stalemate among the seven states that share the
river. “Federal taxpayers should not be asked to
subsidize litigation among the states.”
Some farmers in southern Tulare County – where
excessive groundwater pumping has already caused
hundreds of millions in damage to the Friant-Kern
Canal – are back to pumping like crazy while there’s a
gap in oversight. It hasn’t gone unnoticed. “They have got
to be serious about stopping the pumping,” said Jeevan Muhar,
general manager of Arvin-Edison Water Storage District
Groundwater Sustainability Agency. “It needs to stop for the
canal to function as it is supposed to.” The “they” Muhar
referred to is the Tule East Groundwater Sustainability Agency
(GSA), which took over a large chunk of the Tule subbasin after
its predecessor, Eastern Tule GSA, folded. But there’s not
much that can be done right now as Tule East is still in its
formation stages.
The Trump administration is not going to set nationwide
environmental requirements or recommendations for the rapidly
growing data center industry, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said
Wednesday. While there are technologies and practices that
reduce air pollution and water usage, states
and communities know what works best for them, Zeldin said at
the POLITICO Energy Summit in Washington. … Just 37
percent of Americans would support a data center being built in
their area, according to a POLITICO poll earlier this year.
There are myriad reasons cited by opponents, but water usage
and air pollution are common complaints. Zeldin on Wednesday
cited closed-loop data center designs that don’t have to
regularly tap into local water supplies.
… If a potential super El Niño materializes later this year,
as forecasters expect with 82% probability by July, the
combined warming could disrupt ecosystems, harm marine life and
threaten the juvenile salmon that are heading out to sea for
the first time since populations began to recover. The
concern is specific and urgent. Young salmon that hatch in
rivers like the Sacramento, Klamath and Eel
spend their first months in the ocean, where they depend on
cold, nutrient-rich upwelling water to find food and survive.
When ocean temperatures rise, that food web breaks down. The
prey species that juvenile salmon depend on shift northward or
decline, and survival rates drop.
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.
