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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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.
Our Layperson’s
Guide to California Water has been completely
updated for 2026, providing a comprehensive overview of the
ways water is used, as well as its critical ecological role,
throughout the state. The 24-page publication traces the history
of the vital resource at the core of California’s identity,
politics and culture since its founding in 1850.
Time is running out to register for next Thursday’s Water
101 Workshop and go beyond the headlines to gain a
deeper understanding of how water is managed and moved across
California. Plus, only a handful of seats remain for the
opportunity to extend your ‘beyond the headlines’ water education
experience on the optional watershed tour the next day!
Facing an abysmal snowpack and spring runoff, the state’s
largest Front Range water provider has enacted an agreement
that lets it take more water from the Western Slope for a
limited time. On March 18, Denver Water put the Shoshone call
reduction agreement into effect with water rights owner Xcel
Energy, which allows Denver Water to divert more water
from the headwaters of the Colorado River in an
attempt to alleviate shortages. The agreement reduces the call
at the Shoshone hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon by half,
from 1,408 cfs to 704 cfs.
Other Colorado River management and Western drought news:
The light snow flurries in the Tahoe area this week after a
spell of record-setting March heatwaves across California were
not enough to reverse the damage. California’s water officials
gathered at Philips Station near Lake Tahoe on the first day of
April to measure what is typically the winter’s peak snowpack.
Instead, they found only thin, patchy snow and no
measurable snow, marking the second-lowest April 1 snowpack in
75 years. … The devastating final snow survey
of the season at Phillips Station aligned with a broader snow
drought trend across the state, with the statewide snowpack
remaining far below average at 18%.
Financial support for the controversial Delta Conveyance
Project has been eroding among Kern County agricultural water
districts over the past year and lost another significant chunk
when the Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District opted
recently to cut its contribution by nearly 97% – from $4.6
million down to $146,000. … Four other large State Water
Project contractors in Kern are also considering lowering their
participation levels as the Department of Water Resources is
trying to firm up agreements to collect $300 million from
contractors for the ongoing planning and design phase of the
$20 billion project.
The U.S. Geological Survey released a new machine learning tool
that forecasts droughts up to 90 days ahead nationwide. The
tool may provide communities extra time to prepare for water
shortages that could impact agriculture, municipal supplies,
recreation and ecosystems. The tool forecasts streamflow
drought, which is when rivers and streams drop below normal
levels for extended periods, which may directly impact water
availability even when rainfall returns to normal. The USGS
River DroughtCast uses machine learning models trained on data
from thousands of USGS streamgages, some with more than 100
years of continuous records, to forecast when rivers and
streams will drop to abnormally low levels.
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.
