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
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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.
Tom Gibson, new director of
California’s Department of Water Resources, will serve as the
keynote speaker for our 42ⁿᵈ annual Water
Summit on Oct. 29.
Guided by this year’s theme, Stewarding a New Era in
Western Water,Gibson and
other leading policymakers and experts will address emerging
topics related to the challenges and opportunities facing water
resource management in California and the West.
Gibson,
an attorney who has held several roles in the state’s Natural
Resources Agency and its various departments, was appointed by
Gov. Newsom on June 29 and sworn in on July 6 to lead DWR and its
nearly 4,000 employees.
Mark your calendars! Registration will be opening soon for two
exciting Water Education Foundation events this fall.
Water Summit | Oct. 29
Join us for our premier event of
the year, bringing together leading policymakers and experts from
all sectors to discuss the most pressing water issues facing
California and the West.
… The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal steward for the
river under the Department of the Interior, last week released
a 10-year framework that establishes rough parameters for
managing the river, but imposes no specific long-term plan. …
The federal government plans to roll out more detailed
management plans every two years if the states continue their
impasse. The agency will release the first of those
plans any day, imposing cuts in the downstream states
of California, Arizona and Nevada — an estimated 10% cut to
California’s supply through 2028, or roughly 440,000 acre-feet
a year. No mandatory cuts are expected in the upper basin
states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, according to
those involved in negotiations. … This isn’t the
long-term plan that California’s water suppliers were hoping
for.
Kevin Clyde’s mind is always in the clouds. As a water district
board member in southeastern Utah, he’s constantly checking a
patch of sky near the La Sal Mountains. He swears he’s seen
more wisps of white near a new cloud seeding station in the
area — one that, he hopes, has prompted more rain and snow in
his region. … These stations aim to increase rain and
snow by shooting charged ions into the sky, as opposed
to the better-known method of shooting chemicals out of a
plane. It’s a new approach to cloud seeding, aka weather
modification, which dates back to the early 1900s and
manipulates clouds to drop more precipitation. … But the
ion stations have also sparked skepticism from some
researchers, who say industry is too far ahead of the science.
And it raises the question of whether unproven technologies are
raising false hope for communities frantic for water.
Growing more drought-tolerant crops could be an option for San
Joaquin Valley farmers facing severe groundwater cutbacks,
according to two joint studies by the Public Policy Institute
of California (PPIC). The studies looked at growing
winter crops or forage using less water as an economic
alternative to straight out fallowing ground. “This is
not a solution or means of (groundwater) demand reductions, but
a way to make that fallowing less bad,” Caitlin Peterson, PPIC
Associate Director and one of the authors of the studies, told
SJV Water. “How can we still achieve that reduction in pumping
but not reduce productivity?” The studies looked at
types of crops that could be grown with much less water
and the economic viability of those crops.
Senate Democrats are urging the Trump administration to
reconsider plans to repeal drinking water limits for some
“forever chemicals” and delay compliance deadlines for others,
arguing that the changes contradict prior EPA findings. In a
letter Tuesday to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, 26 Democrats
said the proposed changes to a Biden-era drinking water
regulation for the harmful chemicals could violate the
Safe Drinking Water Act and aren’t supported by
science. “EPA has repeatedly stated that protecting
Americans from PFAS is a top priority,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Yet these proposed rollbacks move in the opposite direction.”
Known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, “forever
chemicals” have been widely used by the military and in
consumer products because of their extreme resistance to heat,
water and oil.
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.
