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.
NEARLY SOLD OUT!
Our Central
Valley Tour travels the length of the San Joaquin
Valley where water supply and use have been in the national
headlines, including our first stop at San Luis
Reservoir near Los Banos. The fifth-largest
reservoir in the state has been in the news recently because
plans to raise its dam are moving forward,
which would create 130,000 acre-feet of additional water for
off-stream storage used by both the federal Central Valley
Project and California’s State Water Project.
Time is running out to register for next week’s Water
101 Workshop and go beyond recent national headlines
to gain a deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved
across California. Plus, only a handful of spots remain for the
opportunity to extend your ‘beyond the headlines’ water education
experience on our Central Valley
Tour! And come one, come all to our annual Open
House & Reception on May 1.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is facing a funding crisis
that has bogged down efforts to repair and maintain an aging
network of about 1,100 miles of levees that protect the region
from floods. These protective ridges of dirt and rocks,
mostly on private land, are at growing risk of rupturing, which
would endanger half a million people, mostly in Stockton but
also in smaller towns and farmsteads. Also threatened are
thousands of acres of farmland, highways and water supply pumps
that send water to much of the state. … Without substantial
improvements to Delta levees in the next 25 years, “more than
$10 billion in agricultural, residential, commercial, and
infrastructure assets and nearly $2 billion in annual economic
activity would be exposed to flooding,” according to an
estimate from the Delta Stewardship Council.
It’s been a late season bonanza up north, with snowpack levels
sitting at 120 percent of average north of Lake Tahoe. The
central Sierra are a little less well-off but still close to
normal. The southern Sierra have not had their best winter
ever, but even still snow water equivalent is around 85 percent
of normal. There have certainly been worse years in California.
It’s when you get into the interior West that the problems
start. Take Colorado. Their peak snowpack is likely to be the
lowest since 2018. The northern part of the state has done well
with near average snowfall this year. The Colorado River
headwaters are also running near average, but southern
Colorado, particularly the San Juan and Upper Rio Grande basins
are in bad shape. Snow water equivalents are running about 60
percent of the median right now, or well, well below average.
The story improves some in Utah, where the basins are a little
noisier, but in general not in bad shape outside of southern
Utah. Similar story in Wyoming and Idaho. Not great, not
terrible. Oregon? Fantastic winter. Washington? Less so. But
for Arizona and New Mexico, it was a dreadful winter.
Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:
Driving around the cities and small towns of the West, one of
the most consequential changes to the landscape are hard to
see. Data centers, the buildings of the future, are usually
low-slung, their large bulk is best seen from above. A
drone’s-eye view shows a spreading, warehouse-flat landscape
born of the economic and electrical revolution that is
reshaping places like Phoenix, the city of Santa Clara in
Silicon Valley, or rural Oregon towns close to the Columbia
River. … Heat is the enemy of data operations, reducing
their efficiency or even making them inoperable. What creates
the heat? The armies of servers gobbling up vast amounts of
electricity. What cools it? A variety of technologies, with
one, evaporative cooling, requiring significant amounts of
water.
The mythology of rugged individualism often touted in the West
comes to a screeching halt where water is concerned, especially
here in Los Angeles. That’s because the city has long been
propped up by water shipped from hundreds of miles away to the
extent that today, about 85% of its drinking water is imported.
… Imported water is an addiction the city will have to kick
if it’s to weather the worsening impacts from climate change.
That’s why, since at least 2008, LA leaders have pushed the
city — but have so far failed — to massively increase the
amount of recycled wastewater it uses for drinking. Currently,
that number is around 2%. These plans took a major step forward
with the completion last December of Pure Water LA, a city plan
to massively scale-up the amount of wastewater it recycles at
the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in Playa Del Rey. The aim
is to eventually make the city 70% reliant on local supplies.
Today, about 15% of water is derived from local supplies.
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.
