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.
Time is running out to register for this month’s Water
101 Workshop in Sacramento where you’ll
go beyond the headlines and gain a deeper understanding of
how water is managed and moved across California. And come one,
come all to our annual Open
House & Reception on May 7!
California’s water managers have long looked for ways to adapt to a hotter, drier future where the impacts of climate change leave less water to meet the state’s needs.
At our annual Water 101 Workshopon March 26 in Sacramento, participants will hear from Joel Metzger, deputy director for statewide water resources planning, on efforts underway by the California Department of Water Resources to achieve a target of identifying 9 million acre-feet of additional water supply by 2040, roughly equal to the capacity of two Shasta Reservoirs.
The agenda for the workshop features some of the leading policy and legal experts in California who will detail the historical, legal and political facets of water management in the state. Seating is limited and filling up quickly, so don’t miss out!
None of the seven Colorado River states is happy with the Trump
administration’s plans to divvy up the river as it faces its
driest conditions in decades, but Nevada may have its own
solution. Breaking from its longstanding pact with its Lower
Basin neighbors, Nevada has proposed its own short-term plan to
stabilize Lake Powell and Lake Mead levels that are expected to
plunge over the next two years. … “Nevada is willing to
step out on our own and propose a pragmatic, two-year
operating plan that we hope all six other states will
adopt,” [Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John]
Entsminger said. … In Nevada’s proposal, officials say
that beyond 2028, hydrological conditions are
bad enough that states must re-evaluate how to operate
the Colorado River system every six months.
… The [Western] region is currently in the grip of a severe
snow drought, as more precipitation falls as rain.
… Scientists seem to have found a way to help alleviate
the West’s fire and ice problems simultaneously, at least in
Washington state. Working in the forests of the Cascade
Mountains, researchers divided plots on the south and north
slopes of a ridge and thinned their vegetation to varying
degrees. … Western states will no doubt be interested in what
these researchers found: up to 30 percent more snowpack on the
thinned plots compared to the areas left unkempt. Scaled up,
that would mean an additional 4 million gallons of
water per 100 acres of forest.
Destructive, tiny golden mussels that hitched
their way across the ocean into the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta about two years ago are likely here to
stay, according to panelists at this year’s annual Kern County
Water Summit. And, so far, no eradication, or even effective
treatment, method has been discovered to keep the invasive
mollusks from clogging up equipment and pipes in the state’s
vast water delivery networks. … Water managers in Kern
were dismayed to find the mussels had made their way from the
delta into local water systems all the way to Arvin last
November. And getting them out of the delta … will likely
prove impossible.
Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind
assessment of the health of nature in the United States when
President Trump returned to the White House. He canceled the
report. The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their
own. This week, they released a 868-page draft for public
comment and scientific review. Many of the preliminary findings
are grim: Freshwater ecosystems across the
country are in crisis, “overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and
invaded.” Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are degraded, with
reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34 percent of plant species
and 40 percent of animal species are at risk of extinction.
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.
