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.
A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American
communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack
running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught
up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.
The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history —
the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the
Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe —
was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being
codified by Congress. “We have significant unresolved concerns
with the legislation that may affect each of our states’ rights
to and interests in Colorado River water,” negotiators for
Utah and Wyoming wrote in March to the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs in a previously unreported letter.
… SGMA is California’s first ever attempt to regulate
groundwater use to protect the state’s aquifers. The San
Joaquin Valley — where almost the entire region is considered
“critically” overpumped — is ground zero for how SGMA
is playing out. Nearly a million acres, or one fifth
of the San Joaquin Valley’s irrigated land may have to be idled
to achieve SGMA’s goals, according to research by the Public
Policy Institute of California. But that economic hit will not
be delivered equally. SGMA’s goal is to stop damage caused by
excessive pumping — vast areas of subsidence, dried up domestic
wells and worsening water quality — by 2040. But the lawdoes
not distinguish between smaller, groundwater-dependent farmers
… and gigantic corporate-owned farms with seemingly unlimited
resources.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed
Saturday that golden mussels have been found in and around the
Port of West Sacramento, the northernmost detection of the
invasive species to date. … Golden mussels attach to
nearly all underwater surfaces, including boats, ropes and
buoys. They can alter the marine food web and diminish water
quality by clogging pipes and drains. The mussel
population in the Port of West Sacramento is believed to have
stemmed from a source population within the vicinity, according
to a press release from the Department of Fish and
Wildlife.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee proposed
bipartisan legislation Friday that would authorize
infrastructure and studies addressing flood risk and
other water challenges, but the package is slimmer on
new projects than past versions. The Water Resources
Development Act of 2026 includes 10 project authorizations and
131 new studies to be conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Four of the projects in the bill are new, while the other six
are alterations of projects previously approved by Congress.
The bill would also direct the agency to prioritize various
issues and studies that have been sidelined by the Trump
administration, with provisionsseeking to promote nature-based and nonstructural flood
solutions.
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.
