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.
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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.
Lois Henry, a journalist who
launched SJV
Water as a nonprofit news site devoted to
covering water in the San Joaquin Valley, was named the
2024 recipient of the Water Education Foundation’s Rita
Schmidt Sudman Award for Excellence in Water Journalism.
Henry said she was honored to receive the award, which
acknowledges outstanding work that illuminates complicated
water issues in California and the West.
“I’m grateful and humbled to receive this recognition,” Henry
said. “Water is such an arcane and politically rife topic. We
really strive to explain what’s happening in layman’s terms and
walk an unbiased line. So, it’s exciting to know our work has hit
the mark and provided value to our readers.”
Registration closes Friday for our
2024 Water
Summit, set for next Wednesday, Oct.
30, in downtown Sacramento with conversations focused on
our theme, Reflecting on Silver Linings in Western
Water.
A $10-billion California bond measure to finance water, clean
energy and other environmental projects was leading by a wide
margin in Tuesday’s election. Proposition 4 called for spending
$3.8 billion for water projects, including those that provide
safe drinking water, water recycling projects, groundwater
storage and flood control. An additional $1.5 billion would be
spent on wildfire protection, and $1.2 billion would go toward
protecting the coast from sea level rise. Other money would be
used to create parks, protect wildlife and habitats, fight air
pollution, address extreme heat events and fund sustainable
agriculture.
… Californians now face a repeat of Trump’s first term
from 2017 to 2021 — another four years of governance consumed
by combative showdowns between the state’s Democratic
leadership and Washington, D.C., possibly distracting from or
even setting back progress on addressing California’s own
problems. … Across state government, officials have been
gaming out a response to “Trump-proof” California. Gov. Gavin
Newsom and his budget team are developing a proposal for a
disaster relief fund after the former president repeatedly
threatened to withhold emergency aid for
wildfire recovery from California because of its water
policy. In 2019, as the Trump
administration narrowed federal water protections,
California adopted even more expansive state
regulations that developers complained made it
more complicated and costly to get building permits.
The recent discovery of a new type of invasive mussel in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is raising concerns that the
non-native species could cause major ecological harm and
inflict costly complications for the infrastructure California
relies on to deliver water across the state. … After finding
the golden mussels in O’Neill Forebay, state workers have begun
surveys to determine the extent of the infestation in the State
Water Project system, including the California Aqueduct, which
transports water pumped from the Delta to cities and farmlands.
The increased monitoring and maintenance that will be required
is expected to have an economic impact for the State Water
Project, increasing water delivery costs, said Tanya
Veldhuizen, manager of the Department of Water Resources’
Special Projects Section.
The legal fracas over who should pay to fix the sinking
Friant-Kern Canal grew Friday when three Tulare County
irrigation districts sued the Friant Water Authority for
imposing steep fees on the districts approved through allegedly
secret communications and serial meetings. In a suit filed Nov.
1 the Terra Bella, Saucelito and Porterville irrigation
districts also seek to declare the fees, up to $295 million
approved in a special meeting held in August, void. “We are
hoping that Friant will go back and re-do that board meeting,
and if they do, that the outcome will be different,” said Sean
Geivet, general manager for the three districts. “The unlawful
tactics of Friant’s leadership need to cease because my three
middle-sized districts can’t continue to function on an uneven
playing field.” He said the districts have documents that show
the fees were approved illegally.
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.
