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
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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.
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.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico struck a conciliatory
tone on Tuesday in response to President Trump’s threats of
additional tariffs over a long-running dispute between the two
nations over water. Mr. Trump said on Monday that he would
place an additional 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports if
Mexico didn’t release 200,000 acre-feet of water, or about 65
billion gallons, to the United States by the end of the year.
He said Mexico owed more than 260 billion gallons under a 1944
treaty mediating the distribution of water from the Rio
Grande, Colorado and Tijuana rivers. Ms. Sheinbaum
told reporters on Tuesday that … it was impossible to
immediately deliver the water Mr. Trump requested because of
physical constraints.
A new Tulare County water district is on a tight timeline to
balance an opportunity to buy water for its farmers with the
need to fund its operations long term. The board of the newly
formed Consolidated Water District voted Dec. 3 to buy 2,900
acre-feet of water from three private ditch companies, the
Persian, Watson and Matthews ditch companies. The timing is
both good and bad. Good because the district is preparing for a
Proposition 218 election in spring to assess new fees to
farmland and this purchase is a clear example of what that
money pays for. The timing is also bad because the district is
operating on a $500,000 loan from Consolidated People’s Ditch
Company while it gets established. The 2,900 acre feet purchase
will eat up $290,000 of that loan.
The Colorado River Basin, like much of the southwestern U.S.,
is experiencing a drought so historic—it began in 1999—that
it’s been called a megadrought. In the basin,
whose river provides water to seven states and Mexico, that
drought is the product of warming temperatures and reduced
precipitation, especially in the form of winter
snow. While the warming trend has been conclusively linked
to human activities driving climate change, the cause of the
waning precipitation wasn’t as clear. Now, however, Jonathan
Overpeck of the University of Michigan and Brad Udall of the
Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University are
convinced that anthropogenic climate change is the culprit as
well.
Federal fisheries officials on Monday rejected a bid to
designate West Coast Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered
under the Endangered Species Act. In response, one of the
conservation groups that petitioned for the listing, the Center
for Biological Diversity, says it is considering a legal
challenge. … The listing of the fish would have meant
stronger oversight of logging near rivers, new requirements for
dams to allow salmon to pass and to release colder water, and
an influx of restoration work that usually follows an
endangered species designation.
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.
