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.
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.
Big Day of Giving may be ending soon but
you have until midnight to support the Water Education
Foundation’s tours, workshops, publications and other programs
aimed at building water literacy across California and the West!
Donate
now to help us reach our $10,000
fundraising goal by midnight - we are only
$4,120 away!
At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious as
water. Your donations help us empower next-generation
leaders from all sectors of the water world to broaden their
knowledge and build their collaborative skills through our
popular Water Leader programs in
California and the Colorado River Basin.
In a neighborhood flanked by grapevines and orange groves on
the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, people cannot drink
the water from their faucets because it’s contaminated.
Residents in the area north of Porterville, many of them
farmworkers, have been discussing a solution, which they expect
will require running pipes to connect to the nearby city
system. But the clean water program that has been one of Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s major initiatives, bringing solutions like
these, is significantly cut in his latest proposed budget.
… Newsom’s latest proposed budget estimates that the
state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will provide
about half of what it provided last year for the Safe and
Affordable Drinking Water Fund — $68 million compared
with $130 million.
For the second time in two months, a Superior Court judge has
blocked separate efforts by the Arizona Department of Water
Resources to limit groundwater pumping in the rapidly
growing Phoenix area. On Tuesday, Judge Scott Blaney
of Maricopa County tossed out a rule that established an ADWR
program allowing cities and other water providers to approve
new development in areas the state believes are short of
groundwater if they replace 25% of the groundwater they use
with an alternative water supply. This follows Blaney’s April
ruling that overturned ADWR’s 2023 decision to stop allowing
new homes to be built in much of the Phoenix area that rely on
groundwater. In both cases, Blaney ruled that the state
agency exceeded its legal authority, as spelled out in the 1980
Groundwater Management Act and subsequent regulations.
President Donald Trump is poised to nominate a Western
water and agriculture expert with deep ties to California’s
Central Valley farm industry to lead the Bureau of
Reclamation. The administration intends to nominate Aubrey
Bettencourt to the post overseeing the Interior Department’s
Western water programs, a White House official confirmed. It’s
a move that sidesteps the seven-state brawl over the
drought-withered Colorado River that has given the Trump
administration a litany of political headaches and led to the
withdrawal of the administration’s first nominee for
Reclamation, a long-time Arizona water hand who had drawn
opposition from powerful Republican officials in Utah and
Wyoming.
The Socorro County Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted a
yearlong moratorium on data centers and related infrastructure
projects Tuesday evening after residents for months opposed a
Canadian tech CEO’s proposal to build a data center and solar
array on 10,000 acres of nearby land. … [Green Data CEO
Jason] Bak proposed a massive solar array to power the
data center and said it would rely on technology called
atmospheric water generation to pull moisture out of the air
and convert it into usable water, rather than draining local
aquifers. … In the months since Bak first
unveiled his proposal, residents have packed the room at City
Council and New Mexico Tech town hall meetings to oppose the
project, often contending that the solar array could harm the
surrounding desert environment and that the water technology
was not a proven solution.
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.
