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.
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Directors and how you can support our nonprofit mission by
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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.
California’s water managers have long looked for ways to adapt to a hotter, drier future where the impacts of climate change leave less water to meet the state’s needs.
At our annual Water 101 Workshopon March 26 in Sacramento, participants will hear from Joel Metzger, deputy director for statewide water resources planning, on efforts underway by the California Department of Water Resources to achieve a target of identifying 9 million acre-feet of additional water supply by 2040, roughly equal to the capacity of two Shasta Reservoirs.
The agenda for the workshop features some of the leading policy and legal experts in California who will detail the historical, legal and political facets of water management in the state. Seating is limited and filling up quickly, so don’t miss out!
The Water Education Foundation, which celebrates its 49th birthday this year, is proud to be the only organization in the West providing comprehensive, unbiased information about the region’s most critical natural resource. Through our workshops, water leadership programs and explorations of key watersheds, we bring the West’s myriad challenges and opportunities into context to help build sound and collective solutions to water issues.
So, don’t miss your chance to go beyond the news headlines and gain a deeper understanding of how water flows across California and its challenges by signing up for our popular spring tours and workshops below, all of which have limited seating and may sell out before long!
… California water officials, who are conducting their
monthly snow survey Friday, will find that the statewide
snowpack heading into March is just under 70% of average for
this point in the season. … Already, managers of the
giant state and federal water projects are saying that low
snowpack, which makes up nearly a third of California’s water
supply, will mean scaling back water deliveries to cities and
farms over the coming year. The federal government announced
Thursday that irrigation agencies in the San Joaquin Valley,
the state’s biggest agricultural region, would likely get just
15% of the water they requested.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The Colorado River may be running dry, but the Pacific Ocean is
not — and on Thursday, San Diego took a first formal step to
turn that into a business opportunity. The San Diego
County Water Authority voted to sign a memorandum
of understanding with federal, Arizona and Nevada
water managers to explore selling desalinated Pacific Ocean
water across state lines. The pilot, if formalized,
would turn ultra-expensive water and underused capacity at the
Western Hemisphere’s largest desalination plant, in Carlsbad,
into a resource for fast-growing neighboring states as they
absorb potentially-economy-shattering cuts on the Colorado
River.
Attorneys and officials opposed to a massive California water
project pleaded their case Thursday to an oversight panel,
arguing point by point how the Delta Conveyance Project failed
to meet specified criteria. … The opponents — which
included several groups, governmental entities and Native
American tribes — delivered similar messages: a certificate of
consistency issued in October that shows the project as
consistent with the Delta plan is faulty. The state Department
of Water Resources failed to show the project would uphold the
plan’s two coequal goals: creating a reliable, statewide water
supply while protecting and restoring the Delta ecosystem that
preserves its values as a place.
After an unprecedented three-year shutdown of California’s
commercial salmon fishery, Chinook salmon runs are beginning to
rebound, particularly in the Klamath Basin. On Wednesday, the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) hosted its
Annual Salmon Information Meeting where fisheries scientists
and industry stakeholders shared the latest ocean salmon
abundance forecast and offered a basin-by-basin breakdown last
year’s salmon returns and a first look at what’s to come in
2026. The annual meeting marks the beginning of a
two-month public process to develop management criteria for the
upcoming sport and commercial ocean salmon fishing seasons,
both of which are tentatively scheduled to open on May
16.
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.
