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.
Alfred E. Smith II, a Southern
California water law attorney and an alumnus of the Water
Education Foundation’s Water Leaders program, has been elected
president of the Foundation’s board of directors.
As chair of Nossaman LLP’s Water Group and a partner in the
firm’s Los Angeles office, Smith
serves as general counsel to several Southern California water
districts and represents clients on water rights, groundwater
adjudications, water contamination litigation and remediation
matters.
The workshop, April 10 in Sacramento, is among the events, tours and publications the Water Education Foundation offers to help you get beyond the stream of recent national headlines and better understand how water is managed and moved across the Golden State:
The United States has refused a request by Mexico for water,
alleging shortfalls in sharing by its southern neighbor, as
Donald Trump ramps up a battle on another front. The state
department said on Thursday it was the first time that the
United States had rejected a request by Mexico for special
delivery of water, which would have gone to the border city of
Tijuana. … The 1944 treaty, which governs water allocation from
the Rio Grande and Colorado River, has come under growing
strain in recent years due to the pressures of the climate
crisis and the burgeoning populations and agriculture in
parched areas. … Under the treaty, Mexico sends water from
rivers in the Rio Grande basin to the US, which in turn sends
Mexico water from the Colorado River, further to the west. But
Mexico has fallen behind in its water payments due to drought
conditions in the arid north of the country.
Californians could be drinking water tapped from the Pacific
Ocean off Malibu several years from now — that is, if a
company’s new desalination technology proves viable. OceanWell
Co. plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices,
called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use
them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to
shore in a pipeline. The company calls the concept a water farm
and is testing a prototype of its pod at a reservoir in the
foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The pilot study,
supported by Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, is being
closely watched by managers of several large water agencies in
Southern California.
Recent snowstorms in the Colorado Rockies have helped elevate
snowpack levels as the calendar turns to spring. About two
weeks remain to build up snowpack ahead of what climate experts
say will be another dry year in the desert Southwest. A report
released on Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) forecasts a greater-than-50% chance that
the drought will persist through the end of June. The affected
area includes Southern Nevada, Southern California, Southern
Utah, all of Arizona, and southwest Colorado.
Alfred E. Smith II, a Southern California water law attorney
and an alumnus of the Water Education Foundation’s Water
Leaders program, has been elected president of the Foundation’s
board of directors. As chair of Nossaman LLP’s Water Group and
a partner in the firm’s Los Angeles office, Smith serves as
general counsel to several Southern California water districts
and represents clients on water rights, groundwater
adjudications, water contamination litigation and remediation
matters.
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.
