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.
Time is running out to register for next Thursday’s Water
101 Workshop and go beyond the headlines to gain a
deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved across
California. Plus, only a handful of seats remain for the
opportunity to extend your ‘beyond the headlines’ water education
experience on the optional watershed tour the next day!
To replenish California’s
chronically depleted aquifers, the state’s Department of Water
Resources is taking a hard look at a new line of attack: Pairing
more sophisticated reservoir operations with groundwater
recharge. Water managers are aiming to make greater use of the
increased floodwater that’s expected to come with flashier, more
intense storms and earlier snowmelt.
Water managers along the Colorado River are looking for
an amount of water equal to what the entire state of
Utah has rights to in order to head off a water and power
crisis across the West, they said Tuesday. …
Speaking at a meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission on
Tuesday, Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart said the
upstream states estimate an additional 1.7 million acre-feet of
water will need to be added to Lake Powell to keep the water
level there from falling below the hydropower turbines at Glen
Canyon Dam. The Bureau of Reclamation has said it will not let
water levels fall below the turbines because of concerns that
doing so could damage the dam, which sits on the river near the
Arizona and Utah border.
The heat dome that settled over California, broke records, and
scorched most of California last week is creeping eastward,
with some temperature relief in sight. In the meantime,
temperatures across the Golden State will remain slightly above
average into April. … Weather experts say the state’s
snowpack was reported below normal, with less than 50% of the
average across much of Northern California.
… California’s reservoirs are in good shape,
above historic averages, with many nearing capacity.
But that summertime snowbank on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada
is disappearing early and fast, dropping to 38% of average for
mid-March statewide.
Other snowmelt and heat wave news around the West:
An update from the Bureau of Reclamation means a modest
increase in water sent to south-of-Delta contractors, including
Westlands Water District. On Tuesday, the bureau announced the
yearly allocation would increase to 20% from 15%. This comes as
a recent heat wave has experts worried about accelerated
melting of the vital Sierra snowpack. Allison Febbo, general
manager of Westlands, said in a release that the
government needs to better coordinate with experts to adapt
allocations to real-world conditions and decrease the need for
groundwater pumping.
Do you use Chat GPT? Do you talk to Siri on your phone? If so,
you’ve helped fuel the rise in data centers. Now, the
energy-hungry, water-thirsty centers are
coming to places in the Southwest, including the lands of
native peoples. That was the topic of a panel discussion Friday
in Window Rock, Arizona, organized by Diné C.A.R.E., a Navajo
environmental organization. Executive director of Diné
C.A.R.E. Robyn Jackson said data centers have become a serious
concern for the Navajo Nation. She said five centers have been
proposed in and near the nation, three in Arizona and two in
New Mexico. … Water required to cool the facilities is
also enormous. Yet centers are being built in hot, arid states
such as Arizona, even as it and six other states wrangle over
how to allocate Colorado River water.
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.
