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.
The Water Education Foundation’s
2025 Annual
Reportis now available in an interactive,
digital format and recaps how we accomplished a lot of
“firsts” last year.
A standout moment was our first-ever Klamath River
Tour, where we brought 45 participants into the heart of
the watershed that underwent the nation’s largest dam removal
project.
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Foundation’s tours, workshops, publications and other programs
aimed at building water literacy across California and the West!
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At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious as
water. Your donations help us empower next-generation
leaders from all sectors of the water world to broaden their
knowledge and build their collaborative skills through our
popular Water Leader programs in
California and the Colorado River Basin.
Improvements in reservoir storage and spring runoff conditions
have contributed to a modest increase in water
allocation for westside farmers [in the San Joaquin
Valley], the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Tuesday. The
allocation has risen to 25% for the south-of-Delta contractors,
up from a 20% allocation issued in March. Also receiving a
boost in allocations are municipal and Industrial water service
and repayment contractors. Their allocation increased from 70%
to 75% of their historic use. … Westlands Water District
General Manager Allison Febbo said in a statement that while
farmers appreciate the additional supply of water, the system
still falls short of capturing and storing water.
The Trump administration is nearing intervention in the
yearslong standstill between the seven states that share the
Colorado River at a historic point of crisis. A 10-year
federal plan would require the states to return to the
negotiation table every two years — something that
Arizona officials revealed the first details about last week
during a public meeting. This shift to a new, short-term
agreement in the face of record low reservoir levels was a
central tenet of Nevada’s recent proposal for a stopgap
measure. … A plan must be in place by Oct. 1, the start of
the water year. Current sharing guidelines expire at the end of
2026.
After three consecutive years of being off restaurant menus,
one of the most prized local fish is finally swimming its way
back to market, and chefs are hooked. Wild California King
salmon, also known as Chinook, is the largest of the Pacific
salmon. … The quality of one year’s fishery depends on how
successful the young fish were in getting to the ocean years
before, according to UC Davis professor Dr. Nann A. Fangue. …
“It’s very cyclical, and when we have things like
drought conditions, where the conditions for
outmigrating juvenile fish aren’t so good, you expect in three
years to have kind of a poor fishery, but then when you have
conditions that promote lots of outmigration success, then in
three or four years you expect to have lots of adults
returning, so this is part of that cycle.”
Another ranch in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley is looking to
transfer water to Kevin O’Leary’s massive Stratos data center
project. Murray Hollow L.C. submitted a change application to
the Utah Division of Water Rights on April 28, seeking
to convey water historically used for domestic and livestock
use to industrial use for a natural gas plant and associated
data center, according to the application. The
new application for roughly 11 acre-feet per year is far
smaller than a previous change request filed by Bar H Ranch
last month that would have transferred roughly 1,900 acre-feet
to the Stratos project developers. The Bar H application was
pulled earlier this month after it had amassed nearly 4,000
protests.
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.
