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.
Go beyond the headlines and gain a
deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved across
California during our annual Water
101 Workshop on March 26.
One of our most popular events, the daylong workshop at Cal
State Sacramento’s Harper Alumni Center offers anyone new to
California water issues or newly elected to a water district
board — and anyone who wants a refresher — a chance to gain a
solid statewide grounding on water resources. Leading
experts are on the agenda for the workshop that details
the historical, legal and political facets of water management in
the state.
Happy New Year to all the friends, supporters, readers of articles and participants of the tours and workshops we featured in 2025! We are deeply grateful to each and every person who engaged with us last year.
We have much to look forward to in 2026, especially as we gear up to mark and celebrate the Foundation’s 50th anniversary in 2027!
One of our most exciting projects this year will be replacing our 12-year-old website with a beautifully streamlined version that is mobile-adaptable. It will allow fora more intuitive experience as users conduct research, read our weekday newsfeed or water encyclopedia, and sign up for tours and events.
Along with our new website, we’ll be launching a new and improved Aquafornia newsfeed to better align with our reach across California and the Colorado River Basin. Stay tuned!
New Water Map & Spanish Version of California Water Guide
By summer, we’ll publish an update to our Layperson’s Guide to California Water in English and, for the first time, in Spanish. We will also publish a new Klamath River map to illustrate the nation’s largest dam removal project in the watershed straddling Oregon and California.
With social media, we’ll continue focusing on LinkedIn as our primary go-to channel as we ease off Facebook and X/Twitter where engagement has dropped. But not to fear; we’ll continue posting on Instagram.
Our array of 2026 programming begins later this month when we welcome our incoming California Water Leaders cohort. We’ll be sure to introduce them to you and let you know what thorny California water policy issue they’ll be tackling.
We’ll also be welcoming our third cohort of Colorado River Water Leaders in March.Applications are due Jan. 26 so be sure to get them in soon!
With the leaders of seven states deadlocked over the Colorado
River’s deepening crisis, negotiations increasingly seem likely
to fail — which could lead the federal government to impose
unilateral cuts and spark lawsuits that would bring a complex
court battle. … In a meeting this week, Arizona
officials seemed to be anticipating failure. They pointed out
that the amount of water flowing into Lake Mead, the nation’s
largest reservoir, could soon fall to a trigger point —
a legal “tripwire” that would allow Arizona to demand
cuts upriver and sue for a violation of the compact.
… The water reaching the Lower Basin will probably fall
below that point later this year or next, which has never
happened.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin convened national and local
elected officials on Thursday at the Coronado Community Center
to discuss progress on the Tijuana River sewage crisis, marking
his second visit to San Diego since April. … Zeldin
presented several key projects in various stages of completion,
with completion dates scheduled for 2026, 2027 and 2028. …
The Tijuana River Gates, a collection pipe project, emerged as
a centerpiece of the discussion. Mexico funded the first phase,
which began construction in September 2025. Zeldin expects
construction to conclude in six months and to remove 5
million gallons of sewage per day once operational.
The American West’s snowpack is valuable for many reasons.
Snowmelt supplies much of the water flowing through the
region’s streams, rivers, irrigation canals and household
faucets—a vital role that has taken on new urgency this winter
as much of the West struggles with scant snow cover.
… But in the economic realm, researchers have attempted
to put a dollar figure on the region’s snow, and the numbers
they’ve generated are huge. “This stuff’s worth trillions,
not billions” of dollars, said snow scientist Matthew Sturm,
lead author of a widely cited 2017 paper in Water Resources
Research that estimated the value of the water embedded in the
West’s snowpack.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
The groundwater in parts of western Kern County is salty and,
generally, considered a bit crummy, longtime farmer Brad
Kroeker admits. But that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned to
wholesale pollution as Kroeker believes will happen if a
“de-designation” recently approved by the Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board gains final approval from
the state Water Resources Control Board. The regional board
voted 5-1 at its Dec. 12, 2025 meeting to “de-designate”
groundwater for municipal and agricultural uses under a
six-square-mile area north of McKittrick. … The
de-designation action was the end result of a lawsuit filed
against the regional board by Valley Water Management Company,
which has operated two large, unlined oilfield produced water
percolation ponds in the area since the 1960s.
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.
