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.
In December 2012, dam operators at Northern California’s Lake Mendocino watched as a series of intense winter storms bore down on them. The dam there is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ San Francisco District, whose primary responsibility in the Russian River watershed is flood control. To make room in the reservoir for the expected deluge, the Army Corps released some 25,000 acre-feet of water downstream — enough to supply nearly 90,000 families for a year.
Registration is now open for
the Water Education Foundation’s 41ˢᵗ annual
Water Summitfeaturing leading
policymakers and experts in conversation about the latest
information and insights on water in California and the West.
The deadly flash flood along Texas’ Guadalupe River showed the
devastating toll such a disaster can take, and California could
face similar dangers when extreme weather strikes. Low-lying
areas along rivers and creeks can be hazardous when downpours
and torrents come, as shown by past floods in parts of the
state including the Los Angeles area, the Central Valley and
the Central Coast. When a series of extreme winter storms hit
California in 2023, about two dozen people died statewide,
including some who were swept away by floodwaters and others
who were killed by a rock slide, falling trees or car crashes.
… In a 2022 study, researchers, including UC Irvine’s [Brett]
Sanders, estimated that up to 874,000 people and $108 billion
in property could be affected by a 100-year flood in the Los
Angeles Basin, revealing larger risks than previously estimated
by federal emergency management officials.
A newly signed bill giving developers the ability to buy and
retire farmland in favor of subdivisions has been hailed by
supporters as the single biggest improvement in state water law
since the landmark Arizona Groundwater Management Act passed 45
years ago. It’s been promoted as a ticket to water savings,
since homes typically use significantly less water than cotton
fields. It’s also seen as a path to more affordable housing in
the Phoenix area and Pinal County, where the law would have an
impact. … But what’s called the Ag to Urban law comes with a
big question mark that centers on the often downplayed concept
of groundwater replenishment. The law will significantly
increase the amount of water that must be recharged into the
aquifer to compensate for groundwater pumped by new homes that
are built on retired farmland. As of now, it’s not clear
where that extra water will come from.
After months of stalemate, glimmers of hope have emerged for
consensus on a new plan to manage the shrinking Colorado River.
Negotiators from the seven river basin states said in a series
of meetings in recent weeks that they were discussing a plan
rooted in a concept that breaks from decades of management
practice. Rather than basing water releases on reservoir
levels, it would base the amount released from the system’s two
major reservoirs on the amount of water flowing in the river.
The new concept would be more responsive as river flows become
more variable. The comments signal a break in months of
stalemate between the Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New
Mexico and Wyoming — and the three Lower Basin states:
California, Nevada and Arizona. … The new concept for
managing the river reflects an attempt to account for the
reality of the shrinking river and will, if adopted, adjust
releases from the reservoirs based on the amount of water in
the river.
The Trump administration wants to ax about $2.2 billion in NOAA
research endeavors, grant programs and other initiatives under
its proposed 2026 budget, dramatically reshaping one of the
government’s core science agencies. In a recently released
“budget justification” document laying out the full details of
NOAA’s proposed budget, the administration takes aim at the
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which it wants to
dissolve, shifting much of its work to the National Weather
Service and National Ocean Service. Among the largest OAR
programs the budget would terminate are 16 NOAA cooperative
institutes that include 80 universities performing high-level
research on an array of NOAA priorities, from earth systems
modeling to ocean health to advanced weather radar. The
administration would also eliminate the 50-year-old national
Sea Grant program, which is widely supported by both
Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Other weather forecasting and climate science news:
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.
