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.
Our 41ˢᵗ annual Water
Summit, an engaging day of discussions addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West, will be
held on Wednesday, Oct. 1, in Sacramento with the theme,
Embracing Uncertainty in the West.
Speakers and conversations will explore how to move forward with
critical decisions despite myriad unknowns facing our most
precious natural resource, including updates and insights
from leadership at both the state and federal levels in shaping
water resource priorities in California and across the West.
California Natural Resources
Secretary Wade Crowfoot will be the keynote speaker at our
2025 Water
Summit where leading experts and top
policymakers will explore how to move forward with critical
decisions despite myriad unknowns facing the West’s most precious
natural resource.
Now in its 41ˢᵗ year, the Foundation’s premier annual event on
Oct. 1 in downtown Sacramento will focus on the theme,
Embracing Uncertainty in the West. A
full agenda featuring a slate of engaging panelists will be
available soon, but the day will be filled with lively
discussions on topics such as:
The Colorado River’s massive reservoirs are now so depleted
that another dry year could send them plunging to dangerously
low levels, a group of prominent scholars warns in a new
analysis. The researchers are urging the Trump administration
to intervene and impose substantial cutbacks in water use
across the seven states that rely on the river — California,
Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
… If next year turns out to be a repeat of this year,
they wrote, total water use would exceed the river’s natural
flow by at least 3.6 million acre feet — nearly as much as
California used in all last year.
A California lawmaker’s proposal to make it easier to build
solar projects on former farmland stalled in the early hours of
Saturday amid continued divisions among agricultural groups.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks pulled her AB 1156, which would have
streamlined land-use changes to allow solar development on
water-scarce farmland, from consideration in the final hours of
the legislative session. … [T]housands of acres of fields and
orchards are set to become fallow in the next decades as local
officials and farmers work to meet the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act.
The Klamath Tribes are opposing a new federal water plan they
say risks killing off endangered fish. The Bureau of
Reclamation’s proposal would send up to 38,000 additional
acre-feet of water — roughly 12.4 billion gallons — to Klamath
Project irrigators in southern Oregon and northern California.
… But the Klamath Tribes said in an email that the
additional 38,000 acre-feet would not come from the designated
excess water supply. The Tribes said the allocation would lower
lake levels.
Drought continues to worsen in several parts of the country,
meteorologists warned in early September as dry conditions are
forecast for many areas later in the month, sparking additional
fears about wildfires in the fire-prone West. … In June,
51% of the West was in a drought. Now it’s ballooned to 64%,
according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor. Additionally,
100% of the giant Colorado River basin is now
in a drought.
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.
