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.
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 critical year is ahead for the nation’s two largest
reservoirs, with no relief after a record-low snowpack
and a continuing drought. A comment posted on
the Colorado River Basin’s Facebook page Wednesday
morning might have said it best: “Not enough water in the
Monsoons to help. There’s only 2 things that can save Mead and
Powell right now: 150 percent Colorado Rockies snow pack for 5
consecutive years, or God himself.” Projections released
Wednesday show Lake Mead dropping to the lowest
levels seen since Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s,
falling to 1,035.86 feet in November. That’s about 6½ feet
lower than Lake Mead’s level today at noon — 1,042.52 feet.
Lake Mead is the nation’s largest reservoir,
butit’s currently at 27% capacity.
A court ruling is prompting San Diego to propose new water
rates that eliminate discounts for conservation — requiring
rate hikes for low-volume users and cheaper water for
high-volume users. But the rate hikes for low-volume users are
smaller than previously estimated, because plaintiffs in the
court case agreed to a $40 million settlement — despite the
courts awarding them $118 million. Another factor allowing
the city to soften the proposed hikes: Costs for wholesale
water are shrinking, thanks to the County Water Authority
securing deals to sell excess supply to water agencies in
Riverside County. The court ruling against the city is
having a major impact across California by
casting doubt on the rate structures of all water agencies that
reward conservation — nearly every water agency in the
state.
A ballot measure that would overhaul one of
California’s most powerful and controversial environmental
laws has a commanding lead less than three months
before voters begin casting ballots in the statewide November
election. Proposition 45, which would make substantial changes
to the California Environmental Quality Act, has the support
73% of likely voters, with 24% opposed and 4% undecided,
according to a poll released Wednesday evening by the Public
Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group in
San Francisco. If approved by a majority of voters, the measure
would set a 365-day limit on environmental reviews for a range
of projects, including new reservoirs, desalination
plants, forest thinning to reduce wildfire risk,
apartments, housing subdivisions, roads, bridges, public
transit, hospitals, solar farms, wind farms and battery storage
facilities.
The state program that helps bring solutions for Californians
with contaminated drinking water is facing a major drop in
funding. At a meeting in Sacramento last week, state officials
presented estimates that grant money to help communities get
clean drinking water, including by drilling new wells or
connecting to nearby water systems, could fall from
$941 million in the current fiscal year to about $103 million
in 2027-28. Both state and federal funds are going
away. Some at the meeting called it a looming “fiscal cliff.”
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.
