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
$4,120 away!
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.
On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public
offering to state that water conditions—including water
scarcity, regulations around water, and drought—could constrain
data center development. It isn’t the only tech company trying
to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water
use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center
issues. A recent Gallup poll found that seven
out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development,
with water scarcity ranking as the top resource
concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some
tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that they’re
facing the issue head-on. … Google is taking a
different approach … the company rolled out a series
of water-related commitments to communities where it has data
centers, along with funding announcements for water-related
projects in the US.
Members of the Colorado Drought Task Force want Gov. Jared
Polis to issue an emergency proclamation to unlock more help,
potentially from state coffers, in face of worrisome drought
conditions. After a historically bad winter that ended a
month early, Colorado is already feeling the impacts — whether
that’s financial strain, tough business decisions or an
overstressed environment. As part of the state’s response,
the task force recommended Monday moving into the
highest level, phase three, of the state’s drought response
plan. The move could allow the state to tap more
resources or seek a presidential declaration. … The
officials gathered for their third meeting in Winter Park to
hear updates about drought conditions and impacts on fisheries,
water providers and wildfire risk.
A new report from a group of widely respected Colorado River
experts says the region’s major reservoirs are sliding toward
“devastating consequences” as water levels continue to drop.
The authors write that another dry year, on the heels of last
winter’s record-setting dry conditions, would send the nation’s
largest reservoirs to “run-of-the-river” levels, meaning that
they are unable to store water for the future, and simply pass
water downstream. As a result, the paper’s authors — a group of
academics and retired water officials — are calling on state
water managers and the federal government to work quickly on
new rules for sharing the Colorado River and avert
infrastructure problems at Lake Powell and Lake Mead,
the nation’s two largest reservoirs.
A collapse in a major Tijuana sewage pipeline has sent millions
of gallons of raw wastewater surging into the Tijuana River
Valley, pushing a South Bay treatment plant far beyond its
capacity and driving dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide gas
into surrounding neighborhoods overnight. The U.S.
International Boundary and Water Commission reported the
failure of Tijuana’s Parallel Gravity Line [last] Friday
night. The line conveys wastewater across Tijuana and its
collapse sent excessive flows to the South Bay International
Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is designed to handle 35
million gallons per day. The plant sustained flows above 45
million gallons per day for 13 hours over the weekend and
peaked above 60 million gallons per day for nine hours.
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.
