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.
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.
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.
Our Water
Summit on Oct. 30 will take a deep dive on issues
critical to our most precious natural resource in the West but
it’s so much more.
During our event, you’ll also have
a chance to network with people from across the water
communityfrom municipal water agencies to
irrigation districts, farming and lending organizations to state
and federal agencies that manage or regulate water to
environmental and other nonprofit organizations.
Karla Nemeth, director of the California
Department of Water Resources, will deliver the opening keynote
and participants will be treated later in the day to a
presentation by visual artists whose work seeks to expand
perspectives on how we relate to water.
The Biden and Newsom administrations will soon adopt new rules
for California’s major water delivery systems that will
determine how much water may be pumped from rivers while
providing protections for imperiled fish species. But
California environmental groups, while supportive of efforts to
rewrite the rules, are criticizing the proposed changes and
warning that the resulting plans would fail to protect fish
species that are declining toward extinction in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay.
… The rules under revision govern dams, aqueducts and
pumping plants in California’s two main water systems, the
Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, which
deliver water to millions of acres of farmland and more than 25
million people. Pumping to supply farms and cities has
contributed to the ecological degradation of the Delta, where
threatened and endangered fish species include steelhead trout,
two types of Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, Delta smelt and
green sturgeon.
In the push to stop burning fossil fuels, California may find
itself becoming less of a national power player after November.
That’s if Donald Trump or the Supreme Court dismantles one of
the state’s key weapons against carbon emissions, a
half-century old Environmental Protection Agency waiver program
that allows California to set regulations that are stronger
than federal rules. … Among other programs, [Pres. Joe]
Biden’s landmark climate law is expected to support the state’s
transition to clean energy with funding for renewables, to
modernize the electric grid and expand EV charging
infrastructure. The state climate bond, Prop 4, will also fund
a wide variety of programs from clean drinking
water to habitat restoration across the state.
A federal judge on Friday granted in part a preliminary
injunction against a Northern California county accused of
discriminating against its Asian American population over
access to water. The plaintiffs live in parts of the county
with no wells or other means of accessing water, and say that a
blanket prohibition on transporting water offsite — which isn’t
enforced across the board — disproportionately hurts Asian
American residents.
Tübatulabal Tribal Chairman Robert Gomez sat quietly for most
of the four-and-a-half hour meeting Oct. 23 about the adequacy
of studies on the impacts of Southern California Edison’s
Kernville power plant – Kern River No. 3 (KR3). Then he calmly
rolled in what could be a mini-grenade, just as things were
wrapping up. Gomez said the Tübatulabal tribe
was disenfranchised back in 1995 when KR3’s current license,
set to expire in 2026, was being discussed. The tribe had
hoped to get 1% of the gross revenue from commercial rafting on
the river, which, Gomez said, has since become big business.
But the tribe was shut out of the process, he said. “In the
interim, between 1995 and now, I’ve discovered a document from
the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” he said. “A tribal member had
asked the BIA back in 1914 for assistance because someone was
trying to take her water rights.” The Bureau of Indian
Affairs wrote back affirming the tribal member did in fact own
those rights.
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.
