💧 Where does your water come from?

Here in California, lots of people live where it hardly ever rains. So where does their water come from? A lot of it rides on the California Aqueduct, a giant river that people built, like a super long slide made of cement. Let's follow one snowflake. All winter, it sits way up high in the Sierra Nevada, the big snowy mountains. In spring, the sun warms it, and it melts into a tiny drop of water. The drop trickles into a stream, then a river, then into the start of the aqueduct.

Now it begins a trip longer than 400 miles! It floats south through canals, dark tunnels and big pipes. But then comes a problem. A whole row of mountains stands in the way. Make a guess: can water flow uphill? Nope! Water only goes downhill, like your ball rolling down a slide.

So people built giant pumps, like enormous straws, that push the water way up and over the mountains. That little drop gets the biggest piggyback ride in the world! On the other side, the aqueduct splits into branches. Our drop splashes into a big lake in Southern California, like Castaic Lake or Silverwood Lake. So snow from far-away mountains ends up way down south. All because people built a river that can climb a mountain.

On this drive through California, here's a puzzle: most of the state's snow and rain falls up north, but millions of people live down south. So how does the water get there? The answer is the California Aqueduct, a river built by people, a chain of canals, tunnels and pipes more than four hundred miles long. Let's follow one drop of water on the trip. It starts as a snowflake high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In spring it melts and tumbles down rivers to the Delta, the marshy place where big rivers meet.

There, the aqueduct pulls it in, and our drop begins its long ride south. More than sixty years ago, Governor Pat Brown pushed hard to build all this, and the aqueduct is named after him. Imagine having a river named after you. Hope it doesn't run off without you! Our drop slides down a long concrete canal through the San Joaquin Valley, mile after mile. Then comes the problem: the Tehachapi Mountains stand right in the way, and water can't flow uphill.

So engineers built a pumping plant with enormous pumps that shove the water almost two thousand feet straight up, higher than the Empire State Building, then send it through tunnels in the mountains. Guess how many basketball courts stacked on end that would be? Hundreds! Over the top, our drop rushes down the other side into lakes near Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. And today, every single day, water from faraway Sierra snow keeps making that same long climb south.