Some people in California and across the West struggle to access
safe, reliable and affordable water to meet their everyday needs
for drinking, cooking and sanitation.
Join the Water Education Foundation, an impartial
nonprofit, in its mission to create a better understanding
of water issues and help resolve water problems through
educational programs.
Apply by Dec. 7 for our 2022
Water Leaders class and be part of the cohort that will mark the
25th anniversary of California’s pre-eminent water leadership
program.
The Water Leaders class, which started in 1997, is aimed at
providing a deeper understanding of California water issues
and building leadership skills by working with a mentor, studying
a water-related topic in-depth and crafting policy
recommendations on that topic with your cohort.
The deadline to apply for the 2022 class is Dec.
7 at 5 p.m. Find the online application form and other
required items for your application
package here.
Our water tours are lauded because
they are both fun and educational, so don’t miss your chance to
experience our last online tour event of the year. Register now
for our Tuesday, Nov. 9, Headwaters Tour
and we’ll take you on an engaging virtual journey across the
upper watershed of a major Sierra-fed river to learn the
important role forests play in California’s water supply.
The virtual Headwaters Tour travels through portions of the
American River watershed, beginning at the crest of the Sierra
Nevada mountains and heading down into the foothills and
eventually ending at Folsom Lake near Sacramento.
There’s no rain in sight for the San Francisco Bay Area in the
next 10 days, a concerning dry weather spell for a region
plagued by drought. While there are hints of a shift to
wetter and cooler conditions toward mid-December, some
experts say the forecast for rain doesn’t look
convincing.
In fields on the Arizona-California border, farmers draw water
from the nearby Colorado River to grow alfalfa, irrigating
crops as they have for decades. That could change soon. An
investment company has purchased nearly 500 acres of farmland
and wants to strip it of its
water and send it 200 miles across the
desert to a Phoenix suburb, where developers plan to build
thousands of new houses. Similar deals could follow as the
demand for water in the growing Southwest outpaces the
dwindling supply.
A coordinated effort between the Biden and Newsom
administrations to drop two-year-old environmental rules
governing water deliveries to the Central Valley and Southern
California reached a new benchmark two days before
Thanksgiving. In a flurry of pre-holiday filings, Federal
officials, in consultation with Newsom administration
officials, requested that a Fresno-based Federal judge adopt a
hastily-arranged plan to govern water pumping in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
This year’s mega-fires may be contained, the fire fronts
extinguished and late flareups tamed by early season rain. But
a secondary disaster has only just begun among the acres and
acres of dead trees left behind. While the giant firestorms of
2017 and 2018 destroyed more homes and killed more people, the
wildfires in 2020 and 2021 killed more trees. And those losses
pose an existential threat to 32 million acres of territory
blanketed by forests and the people who live and work there.
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.
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.
