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.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is putting his stamp on the powerful agency
overseeing California’s biggest water fights — and racing to
get his pet projects across the finish line before his term
ends. Jared Blumenfeld, Newsom’s former CalEPA
secretary, took his seat for the first time Tuesday on
the five-member State Water Resources Control Board days after
Newsom appointed him to replace Laurel Firestone. …
Blumenfeld’s arrival gives Newsom a deeply experienced ally on
the board right as the agency is preparing to make final
decisions on Newsom’s water priorities. These include a
long-delayed master plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Bay Delta, as well as water right permits for
the Sites Reservoir and the Delta
Conveyance Project, the controversial 45-mile long
tunnel to divert more water from Northern to Southern
California.
When the Colorado River first filled the country’s largest
reservoirs decades ago, it ushered in a century of optimism in
the West. We planned for abundance. Today, more than 40 million
people across seven states, 30 Tribal Nations and two countries
rely on this river. … We cannot accept a new set
of management rules that deepen hardship for the Upper
Basin while allowing unsustainable water use to continue
downstream. Water conservation cannot decimate Upper Basin
economies to bolster Lower Basin ones. When we use less water,
that water flows downstream to be used elsewhere. Colorado and
the other upper division states have lived on the front lines
of climate change for 25 years; it’s time for the lower
division states to do the same. –Written by Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner on the
Upper Colorado River Commission.
… The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced
last week that golden mussels were discovered in the Sacramento
River Deep Water Ship Channel and Washington Lake in West
Sacramento. … Because of the potential that golden
mussels clog up water infrastructure and affect
wildlife, Sacramento County declared a local emergency
last month, joining San Joaquin and Kern counties. In a news
release announcing the move, officials said it would allow the
county to work more closely with regional, state and federal
partners to confront the threat. Yolo County spokesperson Will
Arnold said the county is considering that option and will be
working with West Sacramento and the port to coordinate next
steps.
Despite firm opposition from the Havasupai Tribe, Arizona
regulators on July 6 permitted a higher level of
arsenic in groundwater under a uranium mine near the
tribe’s place of emergence. Before the approval, two
groundwater scientists submitted comments urging the state
Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to require the owner
of the Pinyon Plain uranium mine to give more proof that the
higher levels were naturally occurring and not due to mining
discharge or activities. Energy Fuels Resources, the mine
owner, says its investigation was thorough and that operators
aren’t at fault. It also disputed those scientists’
findings.
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.
