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Foundation’s Journalism Team Brings You the Day’s Top Water News
Free Resources Like Aquafornia Keep You Current on Water across California and the West

Removal of Copco 2 dam on Klamath River, 2023As our programs team at the Water Education Foundation organizes annual events like next week’s Water 101 Workshop, our journalism team raises water awareness daily through Aquafornia, our water newsfeed that helps you stay current.

Our journalists – Nick Cahill, Chris Bowman, Alastair Bland and Jenn Bowles – have covered water-related news for years, making them ideal curators of the most important and interesting water stories from around California and the West.

Announcement

Last Call for Water 101 Workshop; Upcoming Tours of Key Water Regions Nearly Sold Out
Meet our Team at an Open House; Program Posted for International Groundwater Conference

Spring is a busy time at the Water Education Foundation! Don’t miss these upcoming opportunities to visit important regions in the state’s water story firsthand and engage directly with water experts in California and across the world. Plus, you can meet our team in person at our annual open house to learn more about how we educate and foster understanding of California’s most precious natural resource — water!

Water 101 Workshop: April 5

Last call to register for our Water 101 Workshop, an annual daylong course on California water hosted at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento! View an agenda here for our popular workshop that details the history, geography and the legal and political facets of water in California. Plus, workshop participants are invited to grab one of the few remaining seats on the optional groundwater tour April 4. Find more details and register here by this Friday, March 29!

Water News You Need to Know

Aquafornia news SJV Water

Thursday Top of the Scroll: Court ruling against bond financing for controversial delta tunnel won’t impede project, state says

A recent court ruling may have thrown a wrench in the state’s funding plans for the controversial and expensive Delta Conveyance Project – a tunnel to move Sacramento River water 45 miles beneath the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In January, the Sacramento Superior Court denied the state Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) request to finance the project through bonds. Tunnel opponents hailed the ruling as a blow to the project. But state staff say the ruling will not impede funding. DWR has appealed the case and is still planning on using bonds to pay for the project if it comes to fruition.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news The New York Times

Just how wet has California’s rainy season been?

On Sunday, California’s rainy season officially comes to an end. … So, how did this wet season stack up? As of Tuesday, California had received slightly more rain than usual this winter — 104 percent of the average, according to state data. The state’s snowpack, which accumulates in the Sierra Nevada and typically provides 30 percent of the state’s water supply for the year, is at 101 percent of normal for this time of year. The state’s reservoirs are at an even higher 116 percent of their normal levels, in part because they are still benefiting from the back-to-back “atmospheric rivers” that slammed California last winter.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news SJV Water

Kings County farmers suffer sticker shock over proposed fees even as state takeover looms

Kings County growers are organizing to stop a set of groundwater and land fees they say will wipe out small farmers, even as the drumbeat of a looming state takeover grows louder. Managers of the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA), which covers the northern tip of Kings County, have been holding a flurry of meetings asking farmers to approve the fees – a combination of $95-per-acre-foot of water pumped and $25-per-acre of land  – at its April 23 meeting. That is after April 16, when the state Water Resources Control Board will hold a hearing to decide whether to put all of Kings County, known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, into probation for failing to come up with an adequate plan to stop over pumping.

Related articles: 

Aquafornia news Colorado Sun

Colorado River tribes take harder stance on basin negotiations

If federal officials want tribal support for Colorado River deals, they need to pay tribes to conserve, protect their future water use and include them in negotiations, tribal leaders said Wednesday at a conference in southwestern Colorado. Basin states and the federal government are negotiating a new set of operating rules to replace existing drought-response agreements that expire in 2026. Tribes weren’t included when the agreements were originally negotiated in 2007. Basin officials should not make the same mistake again, tribes say. … Compensating tribes for not using their water, and for choosing to cut back on the water they do use, is another key point [for the tribes.]

Related articles: 

Online Water Encyclopedia

Aquapedia background Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Map

Wetlands

Sacramento National Wildlife RefugeWetlands are among the world’s most important and hardest-working ecosystems, rivaling rainforests and coral reefs in productivity. 

They produce high levels of oxygen, filter water pollutants, sequester carbon, reduce flooding and erosion and recharge groundwater.

Bay-Delta Tour participants viewing the Bay Model

Bay Model

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.

Aquapedia background Colorado River Basin Map

Salton Sea

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.

Lake Oroville shows the effects of drought in 2014.

Drought

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.