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.
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.
Big Day of Giving may be ending soon but
you have until midnight to support the Water Education
Foundation’s tours, workshops, publications and other programs
aimed at building water literacy across California and the West!
Donate
now to help us reach our $10,000
fundraising goal by midnight - we are only
$4,120 away!
At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious as
water. Your donations help us empower next-generation
leaders from all sectors of the water world to broaden their
knowledge and build their collaborative skills through our
popular Water Leader programs in
California and the Colorado River Basin.
California officials announced Friday that the State Water
Project will deliver more water than expected in 2026. The
Department of Water Resources increased the project’s water
allocation to 45% from 30% of requested supplies. … Lake
Oroville, the state’s largest reservoir, is now at 99% of
capacity, according to the California Department of Water
Resources. Across California, reservoirs are at 117% of
average levels for this time of year.
… “California’s reservoirs are full, but most snowpack
melted off weeks ago,” Department of Water Resources Director
Karla Nemeth said. “We must use this stored water carefully
because there’s no backfill until next season.”
Directors of a Riverside County water agency said to be
interested in a pair of Eel River dams, 600 miles away from
their jurisdiction, held a public meeting Thursday night that
proved revelatory. It shed light on a recent trip by Elsinore
Valley Municipal Water District directors and representatives
of a neighboring water agency to the North Coast waterworks. It
also gave both supporters and opponents of dam removal on the
Eel River a chance to weigh in on the seemingly far-fetched,
Trump-era move by the Southern California entities in a complex
Northern California water dispute. The updates and public input
came in a May 14 board meeting of the Elsinore Valley Municipal
Water District, which now has an ad hoc committee dedicated to
“exploring opportunities associated with Potter Valley,”
according to Director Chance Edmondson.
An alfalfa-growing megafarm can’t halt a public nuisance
lawsuit accusing it of excessive groundwater pumping in the
southwest corner of Arizona, plagued with fissures and land
subsidence, a state judge ruled Friday. Fondomonte
Arizona LLC, which accounts for more than 80% of groundwater
pumping in the 912-square-mile Ranegras Plain Basin,
asked Maricopa County Judge Scott Minder to pause a 2024
lawsuit filed by Attorney General Kris Mayes so the Arizona
Department of Water Resources could first implement its own
restrictions. The department designated the basin an active
management area in January and has begun a two-year process
aimed at cutting groundwater pumping by 50% over 50
years.
Data center builders don’t tell the public how much water they
use, according to a new report — and the industry is
encroaching into water-stressed and vulnerable communities. The
report, by the think tank Next10 and researchers at Santa Clara
University, finds that planned data centers — the ganglia of
artificial intelligence — are spreading to regions
reliant on overtapped groundwater and strained surface water,
with potentially major effects in the Central and Imperial
Valleys. But, reinforcing previous studies, the
researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local
policies allow data center operators to avoid publicly
disclosing their actual water use.
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.
