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.
As your summer adventures wrap up, be sure to reserve your spot
for our popular fall programs. Seating is limited and will fill
up quickly!
Water Summit | October 29
Our 42ⁿᵈ
annual Water Summit is the Foundation’s
premier event of the year and returns to Sacramento October 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West.
Just one year after the signing of Senate Bill 72, the Summit will
feature a panel discussion of California’s 2028 Water
Plan Update as it undergoes a legislatively
mandated shift from being just a guidance document to a blueprint
providing a framework for implementation of actions.
Start making arrangements now to attend our first-ever
Kern River Tour and annual Water
Summit so you don’t miss out. These popular fall
programs have limited seating and will fill up quickly!
Kern River Tour | November 4-6
Join us on this special journey as
we examine water issues along the Kern
River, from its mountain-fed headwaters in the
southern Sierra Nevada to its terminus in the Central Valley west
of Bakersfield. Among the planned stops are both upper forks of
the Kern River, Lake Isabella, lower Kern River canyon, the
Friant-Kern Canal, irrigated agriculture in the valley, the Kern
Water Bank and more. Click here for more
details.
Just days after the federal government released new plans for
sharing water from the shrinking Colorado River, it is getting
sued by one of the states impacted by the plan. Water officials
in Nevada filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department on
Monday morning. … Arizona’s leaders are still
figuring out how to respond to the
lawsuit. … Much of the recent chatter
about Colorado River lawsuits has been focused on Arizona, and
a legal move called a “compact call.”
… Nevada’s lawsuit does something different. It alleges
that the federal government violated procedural laws
while drawing up its new plans for managing the river.
In short, the lawsuit argues that Interior failed to check
certain legally required boxes while writing its new strategy.
The California Supreme Court dealt a blow to a local
government’s ability to seize water utilities on Monday,
ruling that courts get the final say on whether a
public utility is necessary. Apple Valley, located in
San Bernardino County, California, will have to go back to the
drawing board for its plans to take over the privately owned
water utility, Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company. In a
unanimous decision sending the case back down to a California
appeals court, the California Supreme Court sided with
the utility company in the latest in a decade-long eminent
domain dispute between Apple Valley and the utility
company. … The case goes back to at least 2010
when investment firm Carlyle Infrastructure Partners bought
Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company and raised the rates
significantly.
Electric power generation for data centers is a threat to
water supplies even in states outside the arid
Southwest, according to a report published Tuesday by
the think tank Ceres. Data centers in the seven states with the
highest concentrations of them use about 3.4 trillion
gallons of freshwater for electric power generation every
year, but few electric power producers have connected
increasing power demand to water supply risks, says the report,
“The Water Behind the Watts.” That volume of water adds up to
10.4 million acre-feet—greater than the 8
million-acre-foot average annual urban water demand in
California that the state’s Legislative Analyst’s
Office reported in 2021. It’s the equivalent to 12-times the
annual water use of Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, DC,
combined, the think tank that advocates for clean energy and
sustainable development found.
The world’s biggest oil, gas and cement companies are partly
responsible for California’s water shortages, a new study
finds, with their planet-warming emissions shown to
reduce the state’s snowpack by an annual amount roughly equal
to what would fill Shasta Lake. The study, published
Tuesday, is one of the first to attempt to quantify the impact
of climate change, and specifically industrial pollution, on
water supply and demand in the western United States.
The results suggest that emissions have significantly
undermined water security in the West. The
research appears in the Communications Earth and Environment
journal. It comes as part of the growing field of climate
attribution, which seeks to disentangle the drivers of various
climate problems and pave the way for solutions.
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.
