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.
As your summer adventures wrap up, be sure to reserve your spot
for our popular fall programs. Seating is limited and will fill
up quickly!
Water Summit | October 29
Our 42ⁿᵈ
annual Water Summit is the Foundation’s
premier event of the year and returns to Sacramento October 29
with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water
issues in California and across the West.
Just one year after the signing of Senate Bill 72, the Summit will
feature a panel discussion of California’s 2028 Water
Plan Update as it undergoes a legislatively
mandated shift from being just a guidance document to a blueprint
providing a framework for implementation of actions.
Start making arrangements now to attend our first-ever
Kern River Tour and annual Water
Summit so you don’t miss out. These popular fall
programs have limited seating and will fill up quickly!
Kern River Tour | November 4-6
Join us on this special journey as
we examine water issues along the Kern
River, from its mountain-fed headwaters in the
southern Sierra Nevada to its terminus in the Central Valley west
of Bakersfield. Among the planned stops are both upper forks of
the Kern River, Lake Isabella, lower Kern River canyon, the
Friant-Kern Canal, irrigated agriculture in the valley, the Kern
Water Bank and more. Click here for more
details.
After weeks of intense negotiation, state lawmakers on Friday
reached a compromise on legislation to regulate energy use by
California’s growing data center industry, action triggered by
community anger over the facilities and fears of high utility
bills in some communities. The goal, according to legislators
and advocates, is to protect consumers from growing electricity
costs driven upward by the sprawling facilities and to
track the centers’ immense energy and water
consumption. … Separate bills that would
require the centers to disclose their energy and water
use were recently approved by state lawmakers.
The U.S. government needs to launch a massive federal public
works program to build more infrastructure to help Arizona and
other Southwestern states cope with impending Colorado River
water cutbacks, said U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego and Tucson Mayor
Regina Romero. “We’re going to have to have a massive
government works program like what created the CAP, to help
towns update their water systems … to create and conserve
water, to make up for the loss we are going to end up
taking,” Gallego said Friday at a “Water Summit” panel
discussion in Tucson. He was talking about the
construction of the 330-mile-long Central Arizona Project canal
system that delivers drinking and irrigation water to the
Tucson and Phoenix areas.
Kern County has collected $4,076,000 from oil permits issued
since the start of the year as part of its strategy to
help disadvantaged communities with failing water
systems. But it can only actually spend $9,592 of
that, so far. That’s because, until oil companies begin the
drilling process– known as spudding in – the $9,732 water fee
charged as part of county permits doesn’t technically belong to
the county, explained Planning Director Craig
Murphy. “It’s held in trust while the oil company works to
get its permits from CalGEM (California Geologic Energy
Management), and then get all its equipment, financing and
people in place,” Murphy said. “Once they notify the county
that they’re activating the permit, that triggers the
money to be transferred into the Disadvantaged Communities
Water Relief Fund.”
Farmers have relied on plastic since the 1960s, when the mass
production of affordable agricultural tools derived from
petrochemicals made them widely accessible. Plastic
mulch quickly became a cornerstone of crop production.
… [S]cientists and policymakers are struggling to preserve
the benefits of farmers’ dependence on plastic—dubbed
“plasticulture”—while mitigating a growing litany of
environmental costs. “How do you balance the use of this
technology that has completely revolutionized agriculture with
the environmental concerns that arise from that?” asked Jazmine
Mejia-Muñoz, a water quality program manager at the nonprofit
California Marine Sanctuary Foundation, at a recent briefing on
plasticulture. … The marine sanctuary foundation works with
agricultural stakeholders to prevent plastic materials
from draining into the bay and ocean.
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.
