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.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s two largest
reservoirs, have fallen to their lowest combined levels on
record, a grim marker in the deepening water crisis across
seven states that depend on the Colorado River. The two
reservoirs are now lower than the previous record in
2023. … U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met with
governors of the seven states virtually Tuesday and said his
agency will release a plan to deal with water shortages
next week. … After the meeting Tuesday, Burgum
said he was grateful to the governors for their “leadership and
commitment to finding solutions to address drought conditions
in the Colorado River Basin.” The Trump administration is
focused on “establishing a new operating framework and
continues to work with the states and 30 tribes to get closer
to consensus,” he said.
El Niño is coming. Of that, scientists seem sure as ocean
temperatures continue to heat up. Warmer ocean water fills the
atmosphere with moisture, which can ride the jet stream into
California as massive storms. Or not. Weather is such a tricky
beast. Regardless of whether this pattern becomes a “monster,”
“Godzilla,” “Jurassic,” or just plain vanilla “super” El Niño,
Fresno Engineer John Ennis has found an historic quirk thathe
believes can result in a very specific outcome in the
San Joaquin Valley. There is a nearly
100% correlation between a Relative Oceanic Niño Index
of level 2 and flooding on the old Tulare Lake
bed, according to a paper Ennis wrote.
Other weather and water forecast news around the West:
This year’s devastating snow drought in the Upper Colorado
River Basin was made 14 times more likely by years of
global climate change, according to a new study by
Colorado School of Mines researchers, who are increasingly
linking short-term weather disasters to decades of
warming. … Warmer temperatures in the West have
also intensified the impacts of the worst drought winters such
as 2025-26, according to the research published in the
“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The
currentsnowpack drought, coming amid climate change,
robbed 25% more moisture from snowpack than a
similar-scale drought occurring before the Industrial
Age advent of heavy fossil fuel use and global warming.
The statewide drought is prompting water restrictions across
Colorado. La Veta, a Southern Colorado town of less than 1,000
residents at the base of the Spanish Peaks, is among
the most severely affected areas in the state. …
Residents are not allowed to use outdoor watering tools
including hoses and sprinklers. La Veta diverts its water
from the Cucharas River into two reservoirs on the edge of
town. “The lake water at this point could, without any further
moisture, cover the town for 150 days (from
July 13),” said [Town Clerk Heather] Hillis. “It needs to start
snowing like September 1.” … The latest U.S. Drought
Monitor shows the area in some of the worst conditions in the
state.
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.
