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Announcement

Registration Now Open for Water 101 Workshop & Central Valley Tour
Grab a Coveted Sponsorship Opportunity for 2025 Foundation Programs

Registration is now open for our next slate of spring programs, part of a year packed with engaging tours, workshops and conferences on key water topics in California and across the West.

Seating is always limited for our events and tickets for our first water tour of 2025 – along the Lower Colorado River in March – have been going fast!

Current Foundation member organizations receive access to coveted sponsorship opportunities for our tours and events, all of which are prime networking opportunities for the water professionals in attendance! Contact Nick Gray for more information.

Announcement

Klamath or Bust! Learn What’s on Tap at the Water Education Foundation in 2025

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.

Klamath River in Humboldt County. Credit: Western Rivers ConservancyIn 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.  

Water News You Need to Know

Aquafornia news The Associated Press

Thursday Top of the Scroll: Cracks emerge in House GOP after speaker’s threat to saddle California wildfire aid with conditions

… In an interview aired Wednesday night, Trump said he may withhold aid to California until the state adjusts how it manages its scarce water resources. He falsely claimed that California’s fish conservation efforts in the northern part of the state are responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas. … Several California representatives agreed that the federal government must guard against the misuse of funds but argued that the money should not be held up or saddled with restrictions not placed on other states after tornadoes and hurricanes. The dilemma played out in social media posts by Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who narrowly prevailed in November in his swing district east of Los Angeles. “Californians are entitled to receive federal disaster assistance in the same manner as all Americans,” he wrote on X. But, he quickly added, “Some federal policy changes may be needed to expedite rebuilding as well as improve future wildfire prevention. Those kind of policies are not conditions.”

Related articles:

Aquafornia news The Colorado Sun

17 Colorado environmental projects are in limbo after Trump halts funding

On Friday, in the last hours of the Biden administration, the Bureau of Reclamation announced it would spend $388.3 million for environmental projects in Colorado and three other Colorado River Basin states. Now that funding is in limbo. The money was set to come from a Biden-era law, the Inflation Reduction Act. On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to halt spending money under the act. Lawmakers were still trying to understand whether the freeze applied to the entire Inflation Reduction Act or portions of it as of Wednesday afternoon.  The new executive order focused on energy spending but also raised questions about funding for environmental projects in the Colorado River Basin, including $40 million for western Colorado’s effort to buy powerful water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant on the Colorado River and 16 other projects in Colorado.

Other Colorado River articles:

Aquafornia news California Department of Water Resources

News release: DWR submits petition to extend water rights permit

The Department of Water Resources yesterday filed a petition with the State Water Resources Control Board to extend the timeframe to maximize its existing water rights. This is an important component of meeting the State’s climate change preparedness goals and the potential to develop additional storage of water and would help support virtually every major water initiative underway. These include California’s Water Supply Strategy: Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future, the Department’s Climate Adaptation Plan, the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program, the state’s water quality control plan, and all efforts for water reliability in and through the Delta.

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

This reservoir was built to save Pacific Palisades. It was empty when the flames came

… To accommodate growth in Pacific Palisades, they built a reservoir in Santa Ynez Canyon, as well as a pumping station “to increase fire protection,” as the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s then-chief water engineer, Gerald W. Jones, told The Times in 1972. Some Palisades residents had initially fought having a reservoir so close, fearing a repeat of the 1963 Baldwin Hills disaster when a reservoir failed, killing five people and destroying about 280 homes. In the decades since, the Santa Ynez Reservoir became a source of comfort. … But on Jan. 7, the reservoir that had long been a lifeline was empty when Palisades residents needed it most, as a wildfire spread rapidly amid dangerously high winds. … The episode has drawn an urgent question from residents and city leaders: Why was the reservoir empty for nearly a year?

Other wildfire and water 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.

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.