Happy New Year to all the friends, supporters, readers and tour and workshop participants of the Water Education Foundation! We’re grateful to each and every person who interacted with us in 2022.

As we turn the page to 2023, flood-swamping atmospheric rivers have put a dent in our drought in California and across the West. Time will tell just how much. Ideally we want storms more spaced out through the winter. However they come, you can always keep up with the latest drought/flood/snowpack developments of our “feast or famine” water world with our weekday news aggregate known as Aquafornia.

At the Foundation, our array of 2023 programming begins later this month as we welcome our incoming Water Leaders class. We’ll be sure to introduce them to you and let you know what thorny California water policy topic they’ll be attempting to solve.

By the way, our Water Leaders program celebrated its 25th anniversary last year and you can check out a video we made during an alumni reunion that demonstrates the impact and growth of the program into the Colorado River Basin.

In February, we will be hosting our popular Water 101 Workshop in Sacramento. This annual event offers a great chance to gain a statewide perspective on the historical, legal and always interesting facets of California water. It’s also a good opportunity for veteran water wonks to get a refresher. We will also host an optional one-day “watershed” tour that will include talks on “super-shedding” against climate change impacts.

We return to the Southwest’s iconic river in March with our Lower Colorado River Tour (registration is now open), followed by a journey deep into the San Joaquin Valley on our Central Valley Tour in April, and through California’s water hub in May with our signature tour through the Bay-Delta.

New this year will likely be a tour in the fall of the Eastern Sierras, in part to mark the 40th anniversary of the California Supreme Court’s Mono Lake decision involving the all-important Public Trust doctrine. Stay tuned! 

Meanwhile, our Project WET (Water Education Today) program will continue to pepper California with workshops to help K-12 educators bring lessons on our most vital resource into the classroom. Last year, 763 educators attended workshops and reported they plan to use Project WET activities with approximately 95,172 California K-12 students in the current school year.

Our journalism team just published a new Layperson’s Guide to Water Conservation, complete with a fresh new color and design. This year, we’ll be updating our guides to two iconic rivers – the Colorado River and the Klamath River, a timely task as plans are closing in on removing four dams from the Klamath watershed that straddles California and Oregon. 

And we will soon be unveiling our first interactive story map that explores the Delta, and producing more video projects this year to take viewers into key waterways. 

Don’t forget: You can stay up to date with the latest water news by signing up for Aquafornia or our own Western Water articles produced by the Foundation journalism team.

You can also connect with us on social media via Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

And, if you have any questions along the way, sending an email is the best way to communicate with us as the Foundation team continues to work in a hybrid mode.

Wishing everyone a safe and fantastic 2023!

Cheers,