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.
A new aquatic invader, the golden mussel, has penetrated California’s ecologically fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the West Coast’s largest tidal estuary and the hub of the state’s vast water export system. While state officials say they’re working to keep this latest invasive species in check, they concede it may be a nearly impossible task: The golden mussel is in the Golden State to stay – and it is likely to spread.
Register today for the return
of our Bay-Delta
Tour May 7-9 as we venture into the most critical
and controversial water region in California. Get a firsthand
look at the state’s vital water hub and hear directly from
experts on key issues affecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and San Francisco Bay.
The 720,000-acre network of islands and channels supports
the state’s two large water systems – the State Water Project and
the federal Central Valley Project – and together with the San
Francisco Bay is an important ecological resource. You’ll learn
firsthand how the drought is affecting water quality and supply
that serves local farms, cities and habitat. Much of
the water also heads south via canals and aqueducts to provide
drinking water for more than 27 million Californians and
irrigation to about 3 million acres of farmland that helps feed
the nation.
State officials negotiating a new long-term operating plan for
the drought-ravaged Colorado River are warning that time is
running short to reach an agreement among the seven states that
share the waterway. During a Tuesday meeting of the Upper
Colorado River Commission — which represents the states of
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — negotiators raised
concerns that a deal must be in place by “early summer,” or
they risk being excluded from necessary environmental impact
assessments.
Reservoirs across California recently received good news only
weeks after a late January snowpack update from the California
Department of Water Resources (DWR) sparked concern. … The
state of California’s snowpack worsened through January, with
another DWR snowpack survey showing the statewide snowpack
average at only 65 percent on January 31. However, recent
winter weather activity across much of the state during the
first half of February helped those levels recover, according
to a social media post from the National Weather Service (NWS)
office in Sacramento, California, that was made earlier this
week.
Other snowpack and water supply news across the West:
President Trump this week nominated geologist Ned Mamula to be
director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Trump also nominated
natural resources manager Andrea Travnicek earlier this month
to be assistant secretary for water and science at the
Department of the Interior, a role that oversees USGS and the
Bureau of Reclamation. … During the first Trump administration,
Mamula was part of the Department of the Interior’s transition
team before becoming critical minerals program director at DOE.
… Travnicek was most recently state director of water resources
for North Dakota and, if confirmed by the Senate, would serve
under her former boss, former North Dakota Governor Doug
Burgum.
Santa Rosa. Paradise. Boulder County. Lahaina. Los Angeles. All
are places that have shown that American cities and their water
systems weren’t built to withstand wildfire, experts say.
Hydrants trickled. Pumps and treatment plants lost power.
Chemical contaminants were sucked into pipes, requiring
extensive and costly work. In Paradise alone, where the 2018
Camp Fire killed at least 85 people and destroyed more than
18,000 structures, rebuilding the drinking water system is
expected to cost $125 million and take three-and-a half more
years. As wildfires grow more frequent and intense with climate
change, and become a greater threat to cities, water utilities
are reckoning with the reality that they must build back
better.
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.
