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
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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.
Wade Crowfoot and Brenda Burman
lead an exciting line-up of water and policy experts who will be
speaking about Embracing Uncertainty in the
Westat our 2025 Water
Summit on Wednesday, Oct.
1, in downtown Sacramento.
Now in its 41ˢᵗ year, the event will once again gather
leading experts and top policymakers from California and
across the West for engaging conversations focused
on how to move forward with critical decisions despite myriad
unknowns facing the West’s most precious natural resource.
As previously announced, the day
will open with a keynote address from California Natural
Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. Secretary Crowfoot
oversees an agency charged with stewarding California’s rivers
and water supplies, including billions of dollars of public
investment to protect people and natural places from climate
change impacts.
Our 41ˢᵗ annual Water
Summit, an engaging day of discussions addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West, will be
held on Wednesday, Oct. 1, in Sacramento with the theme,
Embracing Uncertainty in the West.
Speakers and conversations will explore how to move forward with
critical decisions despite myriad unknowns facing our most
precious natural resource, including updates and insights
from leadership at both the state and federal levels in shaping
water resource priorities in California and across the West.
The White House plans to pull back its nomination of a former a
veteran Arizona water official to lead the Bureau of
Reclamation, leaving the agency without permanent leadership
nine months into President Donald Trump’s second term. Ted
Cooke, a former top official at the Central Arizona Project,
told POLITICO’s E&E News on Wednesday that he has been
informed his nomination will be rescinded. … Although it
is not unusual for Reclamation to be without permanent
leadership until late in the first year of a new
president term, the Colorado River negotiations put more
pressure on the White House to fill the post.
Adding new snowpack monitoring stations at strategic locations
would be better at predicting water supply in the western U.S.
than basin-wide mapping — and it would be less expensive —
according to a new study. … On average, about half of
the water in western streams is driven by snowmelt.
… For the study, researchers analyzed more than 20 years
of snow estimates and streamflow data across 390 snow-fed
basins in 11 states. Their analysis found the location and
importance of “hotspots” — areas where snowpack isn’t currently
measured but is especially predictive of water supply.
It took half a dozen attempts but Kern water managers finally
came up with a groundwater plan that met with state approval.
The state Water Resources Control Board voted on Wednesday to
move the Kern subbasin out from under its enforcement purview
and back under oversight of the Department of Water Resources
(DWR). The move is a huge relief to area farmers and water
managers who had been facing the prospect of being put on
probation. Probation comes with severe sanctions including
requiring farmers to meter and register wells at $300 each,
report extractions to the state and pay $20 per acre foot
pumped.
California was supposed to kick off a new era of dam building
when voters passed a $7.5 billion water bond in 2014. But ten
years later, only one dam project from the list is still alive.
Sites, which would divert water from the Sacramento River into
an offstream reservoir capable of storing water for 3 million
homes annually, is the sole survivor, as of Wednesday, of a
batch of four new or expanded reservoirs that California
officials had envisioned would bolster supplies for cities and
farmers. … The string of project failures underscores an
inconvenient reality: even with the rare political alignment of
Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump in support of more
water storage, the numbers haven’t penciled out.
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.
