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.

In 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.  

On April 10, we will be hosting our popular Water 101 Workshop in Sacramento. This annual event is a great opportunity to gain a statewide perspective on the always interesting historical, legal and policy facets of California water. It’s also a good opportunity for veteran water wonks to get a refresher. Workshop attendees can jump on board the bus the next day for an optional one-day watershed journey along the American River, from the Sierra foothills to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Registration opens Jan. 16 for the Water 101 Workshop and the Central Valley Tour.

On our publications side, our journalism team put the finishing touches on our updated Layperson’s Guide to Water Recycling before the holidays, and it will be available very soon. The guide is timely with the State Water Resources Control Board now allowing highly treated wastewater to be piped directly into drinking water supplies. The board’s direct potable reuse rules took effect in October.

And we will soon start work on transitioning our website to one that is mobile-adaptable to make it easier to access our information and sign up for our events from any device.

Meanwhile, our Project WET (Water Education Today) program will continue to pepper California with workshops in 2025 to help K-12 educators bring lessons on our most vital natural resource into the classroom. Last year, 703 educators attended workshops and reported they plan to use Project WET activities this school year, benefiting an estimated 105,000 California K-12 students. That’s an impressive number!

Don’t forget: You can stay up to date with the latest water news by signing up for Aquafornia, our weekday newsfeed, and our own Western Water articles produced by our in-house journalism team. You can also connect with us on social media via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

If you have any questions along the way, sending an email is the best way to communicate with me and other team members at the Foundation as we continue to work in a hybrid mode.

Wishing everyone a safe and fantastic 2025!

Cheers,

Jenn

Executive Director

Water Education Foundation