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.
Some people in California and across the West struggle to access
safe, reliable and affordable water to meet their everyday needs
for drinking, cooking and sanitation.
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As atmospheric rivers blasted across California in the last few
years, they brought epic amounts of rain and snow
following a three-year drought.
Devastating and deadly floods hit parts of the state in 2022 but
not so much in 2023. With anticipated sea level rise and
other impacts of a changing climate, flood management is
increasingly critical in California.
Water Summit: Exclusive Sponsorship Opportunities Available
In case you missed the news last
week, you can now register for the Water Education Foundation’s
40ᵗʰ annual
Water Summit to be held on Wednesday, Oct. 30, in
Sacramento, with the theme, Reflecting on Silver
Linings in Western Water.
You can now register for the Water
Education Foundation’s 40ᵗʰ annual Water
Summit! The one-day conference will feature leading
policymakers and experts sharing the latest information
and insights on water in California and the West. The event
includes lunch and an evening reception for networking with
speakers and fellow attendees from a variety of backgrounds.
The Water Summit will be held Wednesday, Oct. 30, in Sacramento,
with the theme, Reflecting on Silver Linings in
Western Water. Speakers and conversations will
focus on the promising advances that have developed from myriad
challenges faced in managing the West’s most precious
natural resource.
California officials on Thursday released a plan they say will
aid officials in the reintroduction of fish, including the
imperiled Chinook salmon, to the Klamath River. The report’s
release came the same week that river, which crosses from
southern Oregon to Northern California, became free-flowing for
the first time in a century, after the final two cofferdams in
California on it were breached. The main goal of the Klamath
River Anadromous Fishery Reintroduction and Restoration
Monitoring Plan is to create healthy, self-sustaining fish
populations, including Chinook and coho salmon, steelhead and
Pacific lamprey. This would bring economic benefits, as well as
enhance tribal, recreational and commercial fisheries, the
state Department of Fish and Wildlife said.
To help quantify how much water is lost as evapotranspiration
— the biggest unknown in estimating water use — the Upper
Colorado River Commission is installing EC towers across its
basin. For now, the eddy-covariance towers measure the water
lost from soil and plants to the sky and carbon dioxide, a
major component of global warming. The towers take measurements
20 to 40 times every second, and each one costs a half- million
dollars. One is up and running now at the Southwestern Colorado
Research Center in Yellow Jacket. “Come next year, around this
time, we will have 32 operating fully seamless, all of them
communicating in the entire upper basin,” said Kaz Maitaria,
Ph.D., a staff engineer at the Upper Colorado River Commission
and a Fulbright Scholar.
The Fresno Irrigation District is 47 acres closer to its goal
of building 1,300 acres of recharge basins capable of sinking
200,000 acre feet of water during a wet years. It celebrated
the completion of the 47-acre Kenneson and Sanchez basins on
August 21. … Groundwater recharge has become vital as
overpumped regions scramble to comply with the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which mandates aquifers be
brought into balance by 2040. Most of the San Joaquin Valley,
including the Fresno region, has been deemed critically
overdrafted by the state Department of Water Resources.
According to an announcement Wednesday morning, Amazon Web
Services (AWS) has plans to save the Central Valley’s salmon
population through water conservation; however, these efforts
would also serve a dual purpose, benefitting both the company
and salmon across the state. The cloud service provider
officials say they are committed to being water-positive by
2030. The company adds that a large part of getting to water
positivity starts with their worldwide network of data centers,
which need an abundance of water to keep from overheating. AWS
says they are working on new water replenishment projects in
China, Chile, the United States, and Brazil. In the Central
Valley, their mission focuses on Chinook Salmon, which have
garnered attention after statewide restrictions on salmon
fishing.
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.
