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.
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.
The Upper Colorado River Commission welcomed a new
representative from New Mexico at a meeting in downtown Denver
on Tuesday, where it discussed ongoing negotiations over how to
share America’s most over-allocated river. Tanya
Trujillo, deputy state engineer and senior water
policy advisor to New Mexico Gov. Michelle Grisham, replaced
Estevan López as the state’s top negotiator on the Colorado
River, which supplies water to 40 million people across
seven Western states, 30 tribes and Mexico. Trujillo
served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for
water and science under President Joe Biden.
Colorado’s rivers and streams are expected to flow at only a
quarter of normal levels during June and July, following what
the Natural Resources Conservation Service referred to as an
“unusual volatile winter” in its June water supply
outlook. On the Western Slope, the outlook is even more
grim, with the Colorado River headwaters basin expected
to see streamflows 21% of normal and the
Yampa-White-Little Snake basin 19% of normal during these two
months. This year, Colorado’s snowpack accumulation was
the lowest on record. … As Colorado’s climate experts
and forecasters look for any bright spot or relief for the
drought, many are looking at the June 11 arrival of El Nino at
the expected arrival of a Super El Nino by the end of the
year.
California’s troubled commercial salmon fleet, fishing this
year for the first time since 2022, is in store for some
federal disaster aid after the Trump administration announced
it would allocate $21.3 million to support the state’s
beleaguered fishery. The June 17 announcement by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, follows years
of requests for help from a West Coast industry still reeling
after a historic closure that banned all California salmon
fishing in 2023, 2024 and 2025 due to low ocean forecasts of
returning fish. … Salmon stocks have
weathered sharp declines amid waves of drought,
shifting ocean conditions and longstanding effects from dams,
river diversions and other development that have decimated
their spawning runs.
The San Diego County Water Authority Monday proposed a 3% rate
increase for 2027, with similar adjustments tentatively planned
through 2032. SDCWA leaders said while the rate hike was
painful, it was actuallybelow the national rate of
inflation and a significant decrease from earlier projections
— at least partly due to two water-sharing agreements
with other agencies signed this spring. … The
water authority inked a deal in April to supply an annual
quantity of 10,000 acre-feet to the Eastern Municipal Water
District of Southern California for 21 years at a rate in year
one of around $1,350 per acre-foot. Additionally, Eastern will
pre-purchase an additional 30,000 acre-feet for $19 million.
All told, in the first five years of the agreement, the water
authority would generate $74 million in new revenue.
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.
