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.
Some people in California and across the West struggle to access
safe, reliable and affordable water to meet their everyday needs
for drinking, cooking and sanitation.
There are many ways to support our nonprofit mission by donating
in someone’s honor or memory, becoming a regular contributor or
supporting specific projects.
As atmospheric rivers blasted across California this year, they
brought epic amounts of rain and snow follwing a three-year
drought.
Devastating and deadly floods hit parts of the state and now all
eyes are on the potential for more flooding, particularly in
the San Joaquin Valley as the record amount of snow in the
Sierras melts with warmer temperatures.
With anticipated sea level rise and other impacts of a changing
climate, flood management is increasingly critical in California.
Registration Now Open for Northern California Tour:
October 16-18
Registration is now open for
our popular Northern California
Tour October 16-18, and seats always fill
quickly! This 3-day, 2-night excursion across the
Sacramento Valley travels north from Sacramento to Oroville,
Redding and Shasta Lake.
As we head into summer, don’t miss your chance to explore the
statewide impact of forest health on water resources in July and
be sure to mark your calendars for our popular fall programming!
Northern
California Tour, October 16-18: Explore the
Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape
while learning about the issues associated with a key source
for the state’s water supply. Registration opens June
12!
Water Summit, October 30: Attend the Water
Education Foundation’s premier annual event hosted in
Sacramento with leading policymakers and experts addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West. More
details coming soon!
A Southern California environmental group is suing the U.S.
Forest Service for allowing bottled water company BlueTriton
Brands to pipe water out of the San Bernardino National Forest.
The nonprofit group Save Our Forest Assn. filed the lawsuit in
federal court, arguing the Forest Service violated federal laws
by allowing the company to continue piping water from boreholes
and water tunnels in the San Bernardino Mountains. The
environmental group said the extraction of water, which is
bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, has
dramatically reduced the flow of Strawberry Creek and is
causing significant environmental harm.
Dams and reservoirs are often needed to provide environmental
water and maintain suitable water temperatures for downstream
ecosystems. Here, we evaluate if water allocated to the
environment, with storage to manage it, might allow
environmental water to more reliably meet ecosystem objectives
than a proportion of natural flow. We use a priority-based
water balance operations model and a reservoir temperature
model to evaluate 1) pass-through of a portion of reservoir
inflow versus 2) allocating a portion of storage capacity and
inflow for downstream flow and stream temperature objectives.
We compare trade-offs to other senior and junior priority water
demands. In many months, pass-through flows exceed the volumes
needed to meet environmental demands. Storage provides the
ability to manage release timing to use water efficiently for
environmental benefit, with a co-benefit of increasing
reservoir storage to protect cold-water at depth in the
reservoir. (The researchers are affiliated with the Public Policy
Institute of California, Stanford University, University of
North Carolina, University of Essex and Blue Point Conservation
Science.)
Local water bills might not be going up quite as sharply next
year as expected. The [San Diego] County Water Authority’s
board tentatively shrank a proposed rate hike for wholesale
water from 18 percent to 14 percent on Thursday — despite
concerns the move could hurt the water authority’s credit
rating. An increase in wholesale rates will force nearly every
local water agency to pass on the extra costs to its customers,
but just how much gets passed on could vary widely. Some
agencies buy less wholesale water than others, especially those
with groundwater basin storage or other local water supplies.
The board delayed a final vote on the proposed 2025 increase to
its July 25 meeting, but a coalition led by the city of San
Diego had enough support Thursday to reduce the increase to 14
percent. It would be part of a three-year set of rate hikes
that would cumulatively raise rates by more than 40 percent
when compounded — if the board also follows through on a 16.4
percent increase in 2026 and a 5.7 percent increase in 2027.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1972 Clean
Water Act should only apply to waters that are navigable
year-round, and not to ephemeral streams — waterways that
are underground for much of the year, until there is
significant rainfall. In doing so, the court significantly
rolled back federal environmental protections that had been
around for half a century. A new study seeks, for the first
time, to quantify the volume of water that was affected by last
year’s ruling. According to the paper, published Thursday in
the journal Science, ephemeral streams are responsible for
roughly 55% of all water that comes from regional river systems
in the U.S. In other words, more than half of the water flowing
in and out of rivers in the U.S. is no longer under the
protection of federal law. This newly opened loophole in the
Clean Water Act could have massive implications, the study’s
authors say. Waterways are, after all, connected, and
pollutants from one stream inevitably make their way
downstream. … Some states, like California, have their own
protections. But many do not, and have relied on federal law,
which gives third parties the right to sue for polluting
waterways. Much of the enforcement of the Clean Water Act is
done by nonprofits like the Waterkeeper Alliance and
Riverkeeper suing polluters. Now, it will be left up to the
states to regulate ephemeral streams.
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.
