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.
Some people in California and across the West struggle to access
safe, reliable and affordable water to meet their everyday needs
for drinking, cooking and sanitation.
There are many ways to support our nonprofit mission by donating
in someone’s honor or memory, 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.
Happy New Year to all the friends, supporters, readers and participants of the tours, articles and workshops we featured in 2024! We’re grateful to each and every person who engaged with us last year.
As we turn the page to 2025, one of our most exciting projects will be a first-ever Klamath River Basin Tour in September. We’ll visit some of the sites where four dams came down along the river’s mainstem, and talk to tribes and farmers in the region and learn from scientists watching the river’s restoration unfold.
While most of our tours span three days, this one will likely stretch to four or possibly five days to accommodate the time to get to this remote watershed straddling the California/Oregon border. Stay tuned for more details!
Our array of 2025 programming begins later this month when we welcome our incoming California Water Leaders cohort. We’ll be sure to introduce them to you and let you know what thorny California water policy issue they’ll be tackling.
In March, we return to the Southwest’s most important river with our Lower Colorado River Tour, and the bus is quickly filling up! We then journey across the San Joaquin Valley on our Central Valley Tour in April and take a deep dive into California’s water hub in May with our signature Bay-Delta Tour.
In case you missed it, registration for our first water tour of
2025 along the Colorado River opened last week and the bus is
filling up quickly! Seating is limited, so reserve your spot soon
while tickets last.
Lower Colorado River Tour: March 12-14
Don’t miss the return of our annual
Lower
Colorado River Tour as we take you from Hoover
Dam to the U.S.-Mexico border and through the Imperial and
Coachella valleys to learn about the challenges and opportunities
facing the “Lifeline of the Southwest.” Experts discuss river
issues such as water needs, drought management, endangered
species and habitat restoration. Get more tour
details and register here!
Silicon Valley’s largest water agency will vote Tuesday on
whether to support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to spend $20
billion to build a massive, 45-mile long tunnel under the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to make it easier to move water
from Northern California to Southern California. The board of
the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency
based in San Jose, will consider contributing $9.7 million
toward planning and geotechnical studies for the project, which
it says could improve its water supply reliability — but which
is also one of California’s most long-running and controversial
water proposals. Newsom’s idea is to build a 36-foot
diameter concrete tunnel to take water from the Sacramento
River about 15 miles south of Sacramento, near the town of
Courtland, and move it roughly 150 feet deep, for 45 miles
under the marshes and sloughs of the Delta to the massive State
Water Project pumps near Tracy, reducing reliance on them.
At the beginning of the new year, California’s snowpack looked
promising. On Jan. 2, the state’s Department of Water Resources
measured the snowpack at 108% of average, for that
date. The bomb cyclone in November and a push of
winter storms in December had set up California’s mountains
with a better start than last year. On the same day last year,
the state’s snowpack was just 28% of average, to date.
… Weather experts say La Niña typically sets up a
weather pattern that favors Northern California with wetter
conditions, leaving the southern parts of the state drier. Now
that La Niña is officially in play, many say this trend will
likely continue.
… Officials now say the storage tanks that hold water for
high-elevation areas like the Highlands, and the pumping
systems that feed them, could not keep pace with the demand as
the fire raced from one neighborhood to another. That was in
part because those who designed the system did not account for
the stunning speeds at which multiple fires would race through
the Los Angeles area this week. … Municipal water
systems are designed for firefighters to tap into multiple
hydrants at once, allowing them to maintain a steady flow of
water for crews who may be trying to protect a large structure
or a handful of homes. But these systems can buckle when
wildfires, such as those fueled by the dry brush that surrounds
Los Angeles’s hillside communities, rage through entire
neighborhoods.
Preliminary year-end Colorado River numbers are stark. Total
basin-wide storage for the last two years has stabilized,
oscillating between 30 and 27 maf (million acre-feet), where
storage sits at the start of 2025[1]. That is lower than any
sustained period since the River’s reservoirs were built (Fig.
1). Stable is better than declining, but we did not succeed in
rebuilding reservoir storage during 2024’s excellent snowpack
but modest inflow. Although reservoir storage significantly
increased after the gangbuster 2023 snowmelt year, we have not
protected the storage gained in 2024 when inflow to Lake Powell
was ~85% of normal from a 130% of normal snowpack. We can’t
rely on frequent repeats of 2023; we must do better at
increasing storage in modest inflow years like 2024.
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.
