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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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.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado
River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated
between the seven states that depend on the river. Those
guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding
negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against
the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend
on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two
federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of
unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15
percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities
scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for
shortages.
… Thomas Gibson, of West Sacramento, has been appointed
Director at the California Department of Water Resources.
Gibson has been Chief Deputy Director at the California
Department of Water Resources since 2024, where he was Chief
Counsel from 2021 to 2024. He held multiple positions at the
California Natural Resources Agency from 2014 to 2020,
including Deputy Secretary and Special Counsel for Water,
Undersecretary, and General Counsel. Gibson held multiple
positions at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
from 2007 to 2014, including General Counsel and Assistant
Chief Counsel. He held several roles at Best Best &
Krieger LLP from 2002 to 2008, including Partner and
Associate.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado River has been operated
under a set of guidelines negotiated between the seven states
that depend on the river. Those guidelines expire this year,
and after five years of grinding negotiations over a new
agreement, the upstream states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and
New Mexico remain deadlocked against the downstream states of
California, Arizona and Nevada. … That has set up a showdown
over a legal time bomb that’s been ticking away at the
heart of the Colorado River Compact since the river’s
guiding document was signed more than 100 years ago. The Lower
Basin states believe the Compact promised them a minimum
delivery of water sent down the river from the Upper Basin. The
Upper Basin states believe the Compact promised them a fixed
amount of water that they could rely on to meet future growth.
As the river’s flows have dwindled, those two supposed
guarantees are proving to be irreconcilable.
For the next five years, the Environmental Protection Agency
has indicated it will not require public water utilities to
test for microplastics or pharmaceuticals in drinking water,
according to a proposed rule published in the Federal Register.
On Friday, the EPA submitted a list of chemicals it plans to
test for under the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, a
mandatory testing program used to collect information about
concerning chemicals in drinking water that could be harming
human health. It did not include microplastics or
pharmaceuticals. The omissions come after
announcements by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this year
that his agency was designating microplastics and
pharmaceuticals priority contaminants for testing.
The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on a legal battle over
one of Colorado’s critical water sources as a
neighboring state seeks to use more water from the South Platte
River. The nation’s highest court on Monday announced it would
hear the case, in which Nebraska officials claim Colorado water
administrators are violating a century-old water
compact by failing to send enough of the river’s water
across the border. They also say Colorado officials are
interfering in the neighboring state’s efforts to build a canal
that would allow it to take more of the river’s water. Colorado
Attorney General Phil Weiser on Monday denied Nebraska
officials’ allegations that the Centennial State was violating
the 1923 South Platte River Compact.
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.
