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There’s Still Time to Support Your Favorite Water Nonprofit on Big Day of Giving!
You have until midnight to donate!

Big Day of Giving is ending soon but you still have until midnight to support the Water Education Foundation’s tours, workshops, publications and other programs with a donation to help us reach our $10,000 fundraising goal - we are only $2,502 away!

At the Foundation, we believe that education is as precious as water. Your donations help us every day to teach K-12 educators how to bring water science into the classroom and to empower future decision-makers through our professional development programs.

Final chance to donate today!

Our portfolio of programs reach many people and in many different ways:

Announcement

Big Day of Giving is Here! Make a BIG Splash for Water Education with a Donation Today!
And join us today from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. for our open house

Today is Big Day of Giving! Your donation will help the Water Education Foundation continue its work to enhance public understanding of our most precious natural resource in California and across the West – water.

Big Day of Giving is a 24-hour regional fundraising event that has profound benefits for our educational programs and publications on drought, floods, groundwater, and the importance of headwaters in California and the Colorado River Basin.

Your tax-deductible donation of any size helps support our tours, scholarships, teacher training workshops, free access to our daily water newsfeed and more. You have until midnight to help us reach our $10,000 fundraising goal!

Donate here by midnight!

Water News You Need to Know

Aquafornia news FOX13 (Salt Lake City, Utah)

Friday Top of the Scroll: Trump proposes budget cut to Utah water project, potentially impacting millions

The Trump administration is proposing a jaw-dropping $609 million cut to the massive Central Utah Project, which supplies water to millions of people in northern Utah. … “The Budget provides $1.2 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation and the Central Utah Project. The Budget reduces funding for programs that have nothing to do with building and maintaining water infrastructure, such as habitat restoration. Instead, the Budget focuses Reclamation and the Central Utah Project on their core missions of maintaining assets that provide safe, reliable, and efficient management of water resources throughout the western United States,” the reduction item says.

Other Colorado River Basin news:

Aquafornia news The Washington Post

NOAA will stop tracking billion-dollar weather disasters

Federal scientists will no longer update a list of weather disasters that cause billions of dollars in damage, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday. The list had been growing dramatically in recent years, a sign of both extreme weather and increasing development across the country. It is on a growing list of scientific datasets that NOAA says scientists will no longer update or that the administration will decommission entirely. The agency said the existing disaster records, stretching from 1980 through 2024, will remain accessible. Without updates to the database, it could become harder for the country to assess the ways climate change, building patterns and population trends are exposing Americans to weather hazards. 

Related articles:

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

California weather whiplash: Hottest days of the year so far could give way to rain

Friday and Saturday are shaping up to be the hottest days so far this year across much of Northern California. Just two days later, valley and coastal rain and Sierra Nevada snow could be back in the forecast. It’s part of an unsettled spring weather pattern that continues across the West Coast. … Rainfall totals will depend on the trajectory of the storm. If it moves inland quickly, little to no precipitation will fall in the Bay Area. If the storm remains over the ocean, it will pick up more moisture and could deposit a tenth to a half-inch of rain in parts of the Bay Area. This wet scenario may also yield a half-foot of snow in the northern Sierra.

Other California water supply news:

Aquafornia news KMJ-AF1 (Fresno, Calif.)

Newsom announces upgrades to 21 state fish hatcheries to boost salmon populations

Governor Newsom today announced that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is upgrading 21 fish hatcheries to boost the state’s salmon and trout populations and protect hatcheries from the impacts of climate change. The project helps build the California salmon and trout supply, which are central to the health of California’s biodiversity but also indigenous peoples, communities, and the state’s multimillion-dollar fishing industry. … The “Climate Induced Hatcheries Upgrade Project” launched today was first funded with $15 million in emergency drought funding in 2021. Since that funding was allocated, CDFW has been working with leading hatchery and hydrology consultants to identify specific concerns with regard to water quality and quantity, fish rearing and water supply infrastructure and operational inefficiencies at the hatcheries.

Other salmon news:

Online Water Encyclopedia

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 oxygen levels, 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.

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

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.