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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 UPI

Thursday Top of the Scroll: Interior Department renews agreements in hope of strengthening Colorado River conservation efforts

The U.S. Department of Interior said Wednesday it extended more than a dozen contracts with water-rights holders in California and Arizona that aim to boost water funding and conservation efforts in the Colorado River system for its seven western states. Interior officials say it marked “major progress” with the Bureau of Reclamation in securing a continuation of 18 short-term agreements with tribal, municipal and agricultural water users in the lower Colorado River basin that will, they said, “result in additional water savings” through 2026 and, likewise, secure its short-term health as the region looks to its post-2026 water-use guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead. … Scott Cameron, a senior adviser to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, said the Trump administration was focused on strengthening the Colorado River system’s drought response and “safeguarding the interests of western communities” for more than 40 million citizens and hydropower fuel resources in its seven states.

Other Colorado River Basin news:

Aquafornia news Los Angeles Times

Company wins court case over bottled water from California forest

The company that sells Arrowhead brand bottled water has won a court ruling overturning a decision by California water regulators, who in 2023 ordered it to stop piping millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest. Fresno County Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen Jr. said in his ruling that the State Water Resources Control Board’s order went “beyond the limits of its delegated authority.” The board had ordered the company BlueTriton Brands to stop taking much of the water it has been piping from water tunnels and boreholes in the mountains near San Bernardino. … The judge … said the legal question was “not about water rights,” and he cited a provision stating the board does not have the authority to regulate groundwater.

Other groundwater news:

Aquafornia news San Francisco Chronicle

California snowpack is reaching peak melt. Here’s why

A prolonged spell of relatively warm and dry conditions across California is rapidly melting the state’s snowpack into creeks, streams and rivers. Hot weather this week will accelerate the melt. Several rivers fed by snowmelt, mainly in central and southern Sierra Nevada, are expected to hit their spring peak flows in the coming days. The Merced River at Pohono Bridge and the Tuolumne River at Hetch Hetchy, both in Yosemite National Park, are forecast to reach maximum flow on Sunday. It’s not just above-average temperatures driving the melt, but that in tandem with direct, strong sunlight warms up the snowpack said David Rizzardo, hydrology section manager at the California Department of Water Resources. … Snowpack is critical for water resources because it remains frozen away until the dry late spring and summer months.

Other snowmelt news:

Aquafornia news Bloomberg

AI is draining water from areas that need it most

Each time you ask an AI chatbot to summarize a lengthy legal document or conjure up a cartoon squirrel wearing glasses, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water. The data centers that power artificial intelligence consume immense amounts of water to cool hot servers and, indirectly, from the electricity needed to run these facilities. … More than 160 new AI data centers have sprung up across the US in the past three years in places with high competition for scarce water resources, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of data from World Resources Institute, a nonprofit research organization, and market intelligence firm DC Byte. That’s a 70% increase from the prior three-year period.

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.