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.
The Water Education Foundation’s
2025 Annual
Reportis now available in an interactive,
digital format and recaps how we accomplished a lot of
“firsts” last year.
A standout moment was our first-ever Klamath River
Tour, where we brought 45 participants into the heart of
the watershed that underwent the nation’s largest dam removal
project.
Big Day of Giving may be ending soon but
you have until midnight to support the Water Education
Foundation’s tours, workshops, publications and other programs
aimed at building water literacy across California and the West!
Donate
now to help us reach our $10,000
fundraising goal by midnight - we are only
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At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious as
water. Your donations help us empower next-generation
leaders from all sectors of the water world to broaden their
knowledge and build their collaborative skills through our
popular Water Leader programs in
California and the Colorado River Basin.
The White House has made its pick to lead the federal agency
that manages water and dams in the American West, a Trump
administration official confirmed Monday. If confirmed by
Congress, Aubrey Bettencourt, a third-generation
California farmer in the Central Valley, will lead the
Bureau of Reclamation during a historic time of interstate
conflict and record drought along the Colorado River. …
During the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, she
was deputy assistant secretary of water and science at the
Interior Department, the parent agency of the Bureau of
Reclamation. … Most recently, Bettencourt served as
chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the
private lands conservation agency leg of the Agriculture
Department, until she stepped down in May.
Arizona is desperate for water. So much so that its taxpayers
are willing to invest in treating Tijuana’s sewage so it’s
drinkable. How would that help Arizona? The state
would ask Mexico for some of its Colorado River water in
exchange. That’s a plan proposed by EPCOR, a
private Canadian water utility. The Arizona state legislature
granted $1 billion to the Water Infrastructure Finance
Authority of Arizona, or WIFA, to jumpstart projects that could
make new water, like the one proposed in the Tijuana River
Valley. Under the proposal, Arizona could help build a
wastewater-to-drinking water facility (like the one San Diego
is building called Pure Water) at the federally-owned South Bay
International Wastewater Treatment Plant or the city-owned
South Bay Water Reclamation Plant.
The Trump administration is “keenly aware” of Americans’
concerns about water and artificial intelligence data centers
and wants the industry to embrace technologies like
reusing treated wastewater, according to a senior EPA
official. But Jess Kramer, who leads EPA’s water office, also
defended the administration’s pledge to help make the U.S. “the
AI capital of the world,” arguing that the technology is
already driving conversations at the agency. “Being the AI
capital of the world, utilizing that as a tool, and utilizing
[it] to the best of its ability, I think that’s a great goal,”
Kramer said in an interview last week. “I don’t think there’s
anything short-sighted about that. I think it has driven a lot
of conversations.”
Scientists feared the Santa Monica Mountains’ last
remaining steelhead trout were dead, smothered by debris
flows unleashed by the Palisades fire. But the endangered fish
surprised them: A team of biologists recently spotted 30 of the
rare trout — and 21 babies — in Topanga Creek. … [T]he
steelhead here are endangered, at both the state and federal
levels. Once, they swam in most streams of the Santa Monicas,
but their numbers plummeted amid overfishing and coastal
development. Increasingly frequent wildfire has further
stressed their habitat. Topanga Creek, a
biodiversity hot spot, is home to their last known population
in the mountains that stretch from the Hollywood Hills
to Point Mugu in Ventura County.
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.
