Water is one of the most precious resources in the world. Our very lives depend on it. We can live for around 3 weeks without food, but after 3 days without water, we’re on the brink of death. And as the population of the earth has grown to over 8 billion people, the amount of water has not increased. Of all the water in the world, including all the ice in glaciers and at the north and south poles, only one percent is fresh (potable) water that we can drink.
Compared to much of the world, California is blessed with an abundance of water. Sacramento, in the heart of the central valley, has many rivers flowing through it, as well as nearby. The delta just south of us is a web of waterways that funnel the water of all rivers in the valley into San Francisco Bay, from which it flows under the Golden Gate bridge into the ocean. But as cities have grown, such as Los Angeles, which grew up in a semi-desert area, the struggle over the control of water has increased. Today the dryer lands to the south of us want more and more of our water, and a political battle is raging over it.
In the north, we’re celebrating the return of fish populations that were decimated by low river flows. In the Klamath River, where ecological activists and Indian tribes demanded the removal of dams, the number of salmon returning to lay their eggs has dramatically increased. For the first time in 3 years, there may even be a salmon fishing season! In other rivers as well, increased flows in rainy seasons, have increased the numbers of fish in those streams. Experts agree that the survival of fish populations depend on the flow conditions in the rivers.
But at the same time, political pressure from corporate agriculture and water agencies in the south is forcing Governor Newsom to support a proposed Delta Tunnel that would take even more water from the Delta. Dan Bacher, a member of our Peace Action Board of Directors, and an avid fisherman and water activist, noted in a recent article the we’re already sending around 6 million acre-feet of water to the south.
My mind struggled to grasp exactly how much water that really is, so I turned to the Deep Seek AI program to help me visualize it. It couldn’t give me a good visual image, but it gave me a great mental one: If we could somehow form 6 million acre-feet of water into a column that covered our state capitol and the grounds of the park behind it, it would be 30 miles high! That’s almost to the top of the stratosphere, almost 20 miles higher than our best spy planes can go, and just below where meteors burn up as they fall to earth. The cost of all that water we’re sending south, according to the basic rates of the Sacramento Suburban Water district, is around $3.2 trillion.
Even as we struggle to address global issues like nuclear weapons and economic warfare, we also feel it’s important to look at the struggles going in locally, not just the “water war,” but also poverty, homelessness, and our racist prison system. These affect us all, even if only indirectly, and will all require a broad social justice movement to make the changes we need.
If you’d like to read more about our river flows, here’s a link to one of Dan Bacher’s articles: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/2/20/2369486/community/fall-chinook-salmon-numbers-in-sacramento-river-rise-after-3-years-of-higher-flows/