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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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.
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At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious
as water. Your donations help us every day to teach K-12
educators how to bring water science into the classroom and to
empower future decision-makers through our professional
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Today is Big Day of Giving! Your donation will help
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public understanding of our most precious natural resource
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The U.S. Department of Interior said Wednesday it extended more
than a dozen contracts with water-rights holders in California
and Arizona that aim to boost water funding and conservation
efforts in the Colorado River system for its seven western
states. Interior officials say it marked “major progress” with
the Bureau of Reclamation in securing a continuation of 18
short-term agreements with tribal, municipal and agricultural
water users in the lower Colorado River basin that will, they
said, “result in additional water savings” through 2026 and,
likewise, secure its short-term health as the region looks to
its post-2026 water-use guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake
Mead. … Scott Cameron, a senior adviser to U.S. Interior
Secretary Doug Burgum, said the Trump administration
was focused on strengthening the Colorado River system’s
drought response and “safeguarding the interests of western
communities” for more than 40 million citizens and hydropower
fuel resources in its seven states.
The company that sells Arrowhead brand bottled water has won a
court ruling overturning a decision by California water
regulators, who in 2023 ordered it to stop piping millions of
gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest.
Fresno County Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen Jr. said in
his ruling that the State Water Resources Control Board’s order
went “beyond the limits of its delegated authority.” The board
had ordered the company BlueTriton Brands to stop taking much
of the water it has been piping from water tunnels and
boreholes in the mountains near San Bernardino. … The judge
… said the legal question was “not about water rights,” and
he cited a provision stating the board does not have the
authority to regulate groundwater.
A prolonged spell of relatively warm and dry conditions across
California is rapidly melting the state’s snowpack into creeks,
streams and rivers. Hot weather this week will accelerate
the melt. Several rivers fed by snowmelt, mainly in central and
southern Sierra Nevada, are expected to hit their spring peak
flows in the coming days. The Merced River at Pohono Bridge and
the Tuolumne River at Hetch Hetchy, both in Yosemite National
Park, are forecast to reach maximum flow on Sunday. It’s
not just above-average temperatures driving the melt, but that
in tandem with direct, strong sunlight warms up the snowpack
said David Rizzardo, hydrology section manager at the
California Department of Water Resources. … Snowpack is
critical for water resources because it remains frozen away
until the dry late spring and summer months.
Each time you ask an AI chatbot to summarize a lengthy legal
document or conjure up a cartoon squirrel wearing glasses, it
sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly
scarce resource: water. The data centers that power artificial
intelligence consume immense amounts of water to cool hot
servers and, indirectly, from the electricity needed to run
these facilities. … More than 160 new AI data
centers have sprung up across the US in the past three years in
places with high competition for scarce water resources,
according to a Bloomberg News analysis of data from World
Resources Institute, a nonprofit research organization, and
market intelligence firm DC Byte. That’s a 70% increase from
the prior three-year period.
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.
