As we head into summer, be sure to mark your calendars for our popular fall programs which will all be opening for registration soon!

Importantly, we will launch our first-ever Klamath River Tour to visit the watershed and, among other things, see how the river has responded to the dismantling of four obsolete dams. It will not be an annual tour, so don’t miss this opportunity!

Check out the event dates and registration details:

• Klamath River Tour | September 8-12: Join us on this special journey as we examine water issues along the 263-mile Klamath River, from its spring-fed headwaters in south-central Oregon to its redwood-lined estuary on the Pacific Ocean in California. In anticipation of high demand, the Foundation will be allocating tickets via a lottery method. Please carefully review the tour details here before submitting the provided entry form at the top of the tour page. Those selected via the ticket lottery will be contacted beginning on June 12.
• Water Summit | October 1: Attend the Water Education Foundation’s premier annual event hosted in Sacramento with leading policymakers and experts addressing critical water issues in California and across the West. Registration opens June18!
• Northern California Tour | October 22-24: Explore the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply. Registration opens May 28!

Foundation’s Journalism Team Brings You the Day’s Top Water News

As our programs team at the Water Education Foundation organizes upcoming tours & events, our journalism team raises water awareness daily through Aquafornia, our water newsfeed that helps you stay current.

Our journalists – Matt Jenkins, Vik Jolly, Jennifer Ferguson and Jenn Bowles – have covered water-related news for years, making them ideal curators of the most important and interesting water stories from around California and the West.  

As a team, they extract the essence of each story in a single paragraph, package related stories together and select stories worthy of top billing on the scroll.

Aquafornia prioritizes stories that tell you not only what happened yesterday, but also why it’s important and what’s expected next. We focus mostly on California and the Colorado River Basin, but include stories from across the West, the nation and the world.

Best of all, Aquafornia is free! Sign up here to get the top daily stories from Aquafornia delivered directly to your inbox each weekday at about 9 a.m.

2024 Annual Report is Now Available in a Digital Format!

The Water Education Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report is now available in a new interactive, digital format and recaps how we zeroed in on a big anniversary in California: The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) turning 10.

We paired a one-day groundwater tour with our Water 101 Workshop, co-hosted an international groundwater conference in San Francisco with some 250 people from 20 different countries, and wrote an in-depth Western Water article focused on SGMA’s anniversary and ongoing implementation of the landmark law.

The Colorado River Basin, meanwhile, had its own challenges in 2024 as the region struggled with devising new guidelines to manage the iconic river beyond 2026. Our three-day Colorado River Symposium in Santa Fe explored what projects are benefiting the basin and how the seven states that rely on the river remain at odds on managing its future. We dedicated the Symposium to former Reclamation Commissioner Bob Johnson, who had recently passed away and had served as the Foundation’s Board President from 2017 to 2019.

Other 2024 highlights include:

• Coordinating 44 Project WET workshops across California for K-12 educators to bring lessons on water into the classroom. In all, 703 educators participated and planned to use the activities to engage more than 100,000 students.
• Hosting four events, gathering more than 700 people to collaborate, learn and engage with today’s most pressing water issues.
• Conducting six tours to key watersheds across the West, bringing 301 participants across 2,752 miles.
• Shepherding two leadership programs for rising stars in California and across the Colorado River Basin.

​​Learn more about our accomplishments by checking out our 2024 Annual Report and find out which journalist received the Rita Schmidt Sudman Award for Excellence in Water Journalism.