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.
Start making arrangements now to attend our first-ever
Kern River Tour and annual Water
Summit so you don’t miss out. These popular fall
programs have limited seating and will fill up quickly!
Kern River Tour | November 4-6
Join us on this special journey as
we examine water issues along the Kern
River, from its mountain-fed headwaters in the
southern Sierra Nevada to its terminus in the Central Valley west
of Bakersfield. Among the planned stops are both upper forks of
the Kern River, Lake Isabella, lower Kern River canyon, the
Friant-Kern Canal, irrigated agriculture in the valley, the Kern
Water Bank and more. Click here for more
details.
Tom Gibson, new director of
California’s Department of Water Resources, will serve as the
keynote speaker for our 42ⁿᵈ annual Water
Summit on Oct. 29.
Guided by this year’s theme, Stewarding a New Era in
Western Water,Gibson and
other leading policymakers and experts will address emerging
topics related to the challenges and opportunities facing water
resource management in California and the West.
Gibson,
an attorney who has held several roles in the state’s Natural
Resources Agency and its various departments, was appointed by
Gov. Newsom on June 29 and sworn in on July 6 to lead DWR and its
nearly 4,000 employees.
El Niño is no longer merely threatening to enter new territory.
Federal forecasters now say a record-breaking event is the most
likely outcome. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday
there is a 69% chance the agency’s three-month El Niño index
reaches at least 2.5 degrees Celsius during October through
December. That would make it stronger than any El
Niño in NOAA’s modern record dating to 1950. NOAA
also raised the odds of a “very strong” El Niño developing this
fall and winter to greater than 90%, likely eclipsing the
1982-83 and 1997-98 events. … Stronger events
increase the chances of familiar El Niño patterns, including
a stormier California winter, but individual storms and
seasonal rainfall still depend on the atmosphere’s notoriously
chaotic behavior.
Nevada water leaders still aren’t pleased about the federal
government’s framework of cuts to water from the
Colorado River, but they say that suing other
states to maximize their water rights remains an absolute last
resort. ”Our first, second and third choice is negotiation
and cooperation,” John Entsminger, general manager of the
Southern Nevada Water Authority and Nevada’s lead negotiator on
river rights, said during an annual water conservation summit
hosted by Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) in Las Vegas on
Wednesday. But he emphasized that Nevada has a
right to fight. “At the end of the day, we have to
protect our legal interests,” Entsminger said. “We’re not just
going to lose if negotiations fail. We will protect the people
of Nevada.”
A plan to pump billions of gallons of groundwater from under
the Mojave National National Monument is back in court – this
time led by two tribes. The plan was blocked by a federal court
in 2022 but last month the Bureau of Land Management approved a
new right-of-way grant for Cadiz Inc. to begin converting a
natural gas pipeline to transport the water from an aquifer
system located within the monument. Now the Fort Mojave
and Chemehuevi Indian Tribes have taken the plan back
to the court. “This is the Mojave Desert, and we are the Mojave
people, the caretakers of this land, water and wildlife since
time immemorial” … said Fort Mojave Chairman Timothy Williams
in a statement. “Their plan to pump and sell 25 times
more groundwater each year than the aquifer can
replenish would desecrate our traditional territories
and any community sold this water would be left with an
unreliable, unsustainable supply.”
Western rivers like the San Juan and the
Colorado are mostly fed by burbling mountain streams,
which are themselves fed by groundwater and snowmelt. But a
study published on June 5 says those tiny streams are in
trouble. The study in the journal Earth’s Future says the base
amount of water in streams and rivers that doesn’t come from
rain, also known as “base flow,” has been steadily declining
since 1950, though that trend varies depending on the specific
time period. … The study’s implications aren’t limited
to the past. It predicts that if climate warming continues, by
the end of the century, headwater streams could have
anywhere from 45% to 65% less base flow to sustain
them.
Other climate change and drought impact news around the West:
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.
No portion of the West has been immune to drought during the last
century and it occurs with much greater frequency in the West
than in any other region of the country.
