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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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.
Since 1977, the Water Education
Foundation has worked to inspire better understanding
and catalyze critical conversations about our most vital
natural resource: water.
This is not a mission our nonprofit can carry out alone.
Today on Giving Tuesday, a global day of philanthropy, please
consider making a
tax-deductible donation to support the important
work we do to provide impartial education and foster informed
decision-making on water issues in California and the West.
Today on Giving Tuesday, a global
day of philanthropy, you can support impartial education and
informed decision-making on water resources in California and the
West by making a
tax-deductible donation to the Water Education
Foundation.
Your support ensures that our legacy of producing in-depth news,
educational workshops and accessible and
reliable information on water reaches new heights in 2026.
The Trump administration is making good on a promise to send
more water to California farmers in the state’s crop-rich
Central Valley. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Thursday
announced a new plan for operating the Central Valley Project.
… It follows an executive order President Donald Trump signed
in January calling for more water to flow to farmers, arguing
the state was wasting the precious resource in the name of
protecting endangered fish species. U.S. Secretary of the
Interior Doug Burgum said the plan will help the federal
government “strengthen California’s water resilience.” It takes
effect Friday.
Californians can be excused for being confused about the
weather forecast. Scientists in October said La Niña had
arrived, which many associate with dry conditions, particularly
in the Southland. But we have instead experienced a very wet
season — at least so far — with rain bringing much-needed
moisture to the brush, likely putting an end to the autumn fire
season, and helping to keep the state’s reservoirs in good
shape. … But La Niña “doesn’t always mean
drought,” said meteorologist Jan Null, an adjunct
professor at San Jose State University. In fact, out of the
seven La Niñas seen over the last 15 years, three were whoppers
when it came to rain. … A healthy snowpack is
key to California’s annual water supply.
Other weather and water supply news around the West:
Democratic state Sen. Steve Padilla is calling for public
review of a massive data center designed to power generative
artificial intelligence technology that has been proposed in
the heart of the Imperial Valley. … In a letter to
the Imperial County Board of Supervisors this week, Padilla,
whose district includes Imperial County and South San Diego
County, said the public deserved “a complete picture of the
water usage and energy demands” of the nearly 1million square
foot data center project. … The data center would
require 750,000 gallons of water per day for facility
operations. … The concerns over the Imperial Valley data
center come amid a growing fight over the growth of data
centers and how lawmakers should regulate them — in California
and elsewhere.
… The Colorado River and its reservoirs are not sufficient to
meet the regional demand for water, so
groundwater has been extracted from the
aquifers. … In a recent study published in Geophysical
Research Letters, a research team used gravity data from NASA’s
Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and GRACE
Follow-On to determine how much water has been withdrawn from
Colorado River Basin aquifers since 2002. … The results
indicate that the reservoirs and the aquifers have lost a
combined 52 cubic kilometers of water since 2002. The reduction
of groundwater was 65% of that total, about 34 cubic
kilometers.
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.
