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.
What role will desalination play in
the arid West? That topic is one of many engaging conversations
that will be explored at our Oct. 29 Water
Summit revolving around this year’s theme,
Stewarding a New Era in Western Water.
Led by Central Arizona Project’s General Manager Brenda Burman,
the panel will discuss all topics worth their
salt - from emerging desalination technologies to the
latest developments in innovative desalination programs to the
regulatory challenges and opportunities that face the region.
The panel of accomplished speakers will provide deep
insight on desalination’s implications for water management
in the West.
The Water Summit is the Foundation’s premier event of
the year and returns to Sacramento on Oct. 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West. Capacity is
limited and registration closes soon, so grab your ticket
here while they’re still available!
Our 2026Colorado River Water
Leaders cohort completed its seven-month
program recently with policy recommendations to
strengthen ”assigned water” programs across the Colorado
River Basin.
“Assigned water” has become a key tool for conserving Colorado
River water and helping to stabilize Lake Mead to prevent
shortages. Originally developed as “Intentionally Created
Surplus” within the 2007 Interim Guidelines, it gives users the
ability to store conserved water earmarked for their own future
use.
The cohort was tasked with assessing existing assigned water
programs and identifying opportunities across the Colorado River
Basin. Following seven months of learning, collaboration and
discussion with leading Colorado River experts who served as
mentors, the cohort developed recommendations focused on:
Greater transparency in water accounting
Stronger relationships and communication among interested
parties
The Phoenix area as we know it today wouldn’t exist without a
massive, gravity-defying canal that cuts through the
desert. For decades, the metro has grown on the back
of an unusual water supply. The
Central Arizona Project is a canal system that
pulls water from the Colorado River on the
state’s western border, then carries it more than 300 miles,
uphill through a series of pipes and pumps to the Phoenix and
Tucson areas. Today, water shortages threaten that
improbable system, and a series of warnings about the
canal’s future from the 1960s, largely ignored for decades,
seem prescient. … The architects of the CAP, 1960s
policymakers who championed it as a promising part of Arizona’s
future, were clear about the fact that it would not
work forever without extra help. They publicly
forecasted big drops to its flows in the 21st century and laid
out a plan to avoid them. … Now, decades later, we know
those suggestions never became reality.
… The national El Niño pattern becomes less reliable around
Northern California and Tahoe. The National Weather Service in
Sacramento says precipitation correlates
little with most El Niño and La Niña patterns in
Northern California. Southern California tends to
receive much more than average precipitation during El Niño. A
National Weather Service graphic based on seven strong El Niño
winters shows that three produced wet conditions in the
Sierra Nevada, while two were dry and two were near
normal. The analysis measures precipitation, which can
fall as either rain or snow. … The UC Berkeley Central
Sierra Snow Lab, at 6,894 feet, found similarly mixed results
when it examined snowfall during nine strong or very strong El
Niño seasons. … The very strong El Niño seasons
generally produced average to above-average
snowfall, but the lab cautioned that the sample was
small. It called the coming winter “still a toss-up.”
An all-hands-on-deck effort saved one of the state’s
most effective drinking water programs, at least for
next year. But what happens after that? The SAFER program,
which had received $130 million annually to provide emergency
water and long-term solutions for families whose wells go dry,
was set to be cut by nearly half until an unlikely
coalition of social justice, farmer and water manager groups
rallied to save it. On Oct. 8, about 40 people
gathered on the dusty bank of a Tulare County recharge basin to
celebrate that win, which resulted in one-time funding
of $171 million for SAFER in the 2027-28 fiscal year.
About $71 million of that will come from the state’s greenhouse
gas reduction fund and the rest is Proposition 4 money.
It’s salmon squeezing time at California’s newest, most
technologically-advanced fish hatchery. Standing in a
large tank filled with 54 degree water, a fish technician
passes an ultrasound wand across the abdomen of an adult female
Chinook salmon to ensure its eggs are fully developed. If
so, techs then squeeze out some eggs from the salmon’s belly
while feeling for the looseness of the remaining eggs. Each
ripe female is then transported into a separate holding tank
for spawning the following day. Male broodstock get similar
handling, except the squeezing is employed to express milk. The
males also get scanned (via a transponder tag embedded in their
abdomen) to determine which are the least genetically related
to the females. Why? Because the last thing biologists
want, especially when resurrecting a salmon run that was killed
off for more than six decades, is inbred fish.
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.
