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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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.
Mark your calendars! Registration will be opening soon for two
exciting Water Education Foundation events this fall.
Water Summit | Oct. 29
Join us for our premier event of
the year, bringing together leading policymakers and experts from
all sectors to discuss the most pressing water issues facing
California and the West.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado
River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated
between the seven states that depend on the river. Those
guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding
negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against
the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend
on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two
federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of
unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15
percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities
scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for
shortages.
A battle over housing and groundwater in Stanislaus County has
dealt the City of Patterson another legal setback. A Stanislaus
County judge has ruled the city illegally denied a key
application for the proposed 719-home Keystone Ranch
development, finding Patterson violated state housing law when
it rejected the project’s tentative subdivision map. The ruling
marks the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute that began last
year over how to address the city’s groundwater challenges. The
conflict stems from a decision by the California
Department of Water Resources to reject Patterson’s groundwater
sustainability plan and order the city to reduce
groundwater pumping by 10%.
Financial support for the planning phase of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta tunnel has plummeted among Kern County
agricultural water districts as they continue to seek
definitive answers about water supplies and how the tunnel will
operate. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) had been
seeking $33 million from Kern districts to be paid in two
installments this year and in 2027 for the planning and
pre-construction phase of the tunnel, known as the Delta
Conveyance Project. But it will get considerably less
than that based on participation levels that districts have
approved during recent meetings. … The reduced support
will likely be a significant hit to tunnel funding for this
phase, but a DWR spokesman said by email that the project will
proceed.
Officials in Wyoming said a contractor for Mark Zuckerberg’s
tech company, Meta, flushed bacteria-contaminated water into
public sewers during construction of a controversial new AI
datacenter. The incident prompted water authorities in Cheyenne
to implement strict safety regulations on how wastewater from
such projects is disposed of. … The company, however,
noted that contamination by the rare but naturally occurring
Cupriavidus gilardii bacterium did not affect drinking
water supplies. … The incident comes amid growing
nationwide backlash to the construction of resource-hungry
datacenters, which opponents say place unbearable demands on
local water and energy supplies.
A trial that some say could cripple Nevada’s ability to
regulate water within the state began in a Las Vegas courtroom
this week. For decades now, developers and the state have gone
back and forth over Coyote Springs. That’s a development about
an hour northeast of Las Vegas. No one lives there, and that’s
largely because years ago, the state engineer declared there
wasn’t enough water. That decision was backed by the Nevada
Supreme Court. Now, the Seenos, developers from California who
are the sole owners of the development today, are seeking
restitution for all the money they invested in the project.
They claim the state essentially stole their water rights. The
lawsuit could potentially cost the state billions.
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.
No portion of the West has been immune to drought during the last
century and it occurs with much greater frequency in the West
than in any other region of the country.
