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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Directors and how you can support our nonprofit mission by
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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.
The remaining handful of tickets
for our first-ever Klamath River Tour are now up
for grabs! This special water tour, Sept. 8 through Sept.
12, will not be offered every year so check out the tour
details here.
You don’t want to miss this opportunity to examine water issues
along the 263-mile Klamath River, from its spring-fed headwaters
in south-central Oregon to its redwood-lined estuary on the
Pacific Ocean in California.
Among the planned stops is the former site of Iron Gate Dam &
Reservoir for a firsthand look at restoration efforts. The dam
was one of four obsolete structures taken down in the nation’s
largest dam removal project aimed at restoring fish
passage. Grab your ticket here
while they last!
In December 2012, dam operators at Northern California’s Lake Mendocino watched as a series of intense winter storms bore down on them. The dam there is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ San Francisco District, whose primary responsibility in the Russian River watershed is flood control. To make room in the reservoir for the expected deluge, the Army Corps released some 25,000 acre-feet of water downstream — enough to supply nearly 90,000 families for a year.
California regulators are supporting a controversial plan
backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — and opposed by environmental
groups — that would give water agencies more leeway in how they
comply with water quality rules. The Newsom-backed approach is
included as part of a proposed water plan for the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, released by the State Water
Resources Control Board on Thursday. The plan would give water
agencies two potential pathways to comply with water quality
goals — either a traditional regulatory approach based on
limiting water withdrawals to maintain certain river flow
levels, or an alternative approach supported by the governor in
which water agencies, under negotiated agreements, would make
certain water flow commitments while contributing funding for
wetland habitat restoration projects and other measures.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin
committed the Trump administration to “a permanent, 100%
solution to the decades-old Tijuana River sewage crisis” in a
new agreement signed with Mexico on Thursday.
… According to the agreement, Mexico will shake loose
$93 million in money it previously committed, known as “Minute
238 funds.” Deadlines for several long-discussed improvements
will also come sooner — some this year — it says. One example
is the 10-million gallons per day of treated effluent that
currently flows into the Tijuana River from the Arturo Herrera
and La Morita wastewater treatment plants and will now go to a
site upstream of the Rodriguez Dam, southeast of Tijuana.
… The MOU also commits the two countries to taking into
account Tijuana’s growing population, to make sure that
infrastructure improvements are not outstripped by changes on
the ground.
Western lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of
Colorado, want to know — exactly — how much snow and water is
in the Colorado River Basin. The legislators Thursday
introduced a bill focused on improving how the basin measures
its water supply. … The bill highlights focus areas for
the program, like being more responsive to changing weather and
watershed conditions, informing water management decisions at
local up to interstate levels, and building the program’s
capacity so it can adapt to new forecasting and measurement
capabilities. The bill would also support different
measurement technologies like imaging spectroscopy, machine
learning, and integrated snowpack and hydrologic
modeling. It would increase the program’s budget from $15
million over five years to $32.5 million over five years.
Tucson city officials and the developers of Project Blue — a
planned complex of data centers for Amazon — faced a fractious
crowd hundreds strong Wednesday night as they attempted to make
their case the project will be “water positive” and will not
drive up electric rates, while trying to defend non-disclosure
agreements that still keep information from the
public. … During the first two years, the project
will use drinking water for cooling, but will switch to
reclaimed water. … At one point, a speaker asked [Tucson
City Manager Tim] Thomure how they would enforce the two-year
promise to halt using drinking water, noting that the draft
agreement includes caps but breaking those caps won’t mean the
city cuts off the water supply; instead, the city will
just add extra charges.
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.
