Announcements

In 2017, it is likely that no other water story grabbed as many headlines in California and across the country as the flood incident at Oroville Dam, the centerpiece of the State Water Project and its largest water storage facility.

On our upcoming Northern California Tour, we will spend time at the Oroville Dam visitor’s center and meet with California Department of Water Resources staff. You’ll see drone footage from February’s flood incident, learn the engineering background on what led to it, and hear about plans to stabilize the spillway before the next winter storms and to finalize repairs by 2018.

The Water Education Foundation is the California coordinator of Project WET (Water Education for Teachers), an international, award-winning nonprofit water education program and publisher.

California Project WET works with water agencies, water research scientists, professors of teacher education and after-school program directors to provide high-quality professional development trainings for K-12 educators working in and out of the classroom.

Sixty percent of California’s developed water supply originates high in the Sierra Nevada. Thus, the state’s water supply is largely dependent on the health of Sierra forests, which are suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires and widespread tree mortality.

Join us as we head into the Sierra foothills and the mountains to examine water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and throughout California.

The Summer 2017 California Project WET Gazette is “live” on the Water Education Foundation website. 

Water is flowing forth from the Sierra Nevada, as a record setting snowpack begins to melt into a record setting flow of liquid propelled downhill by gravity. How to better capture, store and release more of this water from abundant storm years has been a big topic of discussion among California water managers and water user groups over our past decade of multi-year droughts, punctuated by a great deluge of precipitation in a single water year. 

Speakers from the California Department of Water Resources, NASA/JPL, and the U.S. Geological Survey will be on tap at a free briefing Aug. 16 in Fresno, Land Subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley.

Land subsidence caused by groundwater pumping has been a problem for decades in the San Joaquin Valley, but an increased reliance on aquifers during the last decade has resulted in subsidence rates in excess of 1 foot per year in some parts of the region.

One of the most frequently discussed animals in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is fish. From the anadromous life cycle of the salmon to the controversial and little-understood Delta smelt to invasive species such as the largemouth bass, few animals have a larger impact on water policy and infrastructure in the Delta than the dozens of native and introduced fish found there, especially those species considered endangered.

In the Spring 2017 issue of the Water Education Foundation’s Western Water, Writer Gary Pitzer delves into the challenges and opportunities for new water storage around the state.

Times are changing in the water world with a finite supply of water, climate change producing more drought conditions and constant water demands for agricultural, residential and environmental needs. Data – statistics collected for reference or analysis – is one way to make water management more efficient through better information for agencies and stakeholders who can, in turn, facilitate the transformation.