Facing the challenges of sustainably managing and sharing water,
our most precious natural resource, requires collaboration,
education and outreach. Since 1977, the Water Education
Foundation has put water resource issues in California and the
West in context to inspire a deep understanding of and
appreciation for water.
Taking a steady pulse of the water world, the Foundation offers
educational materials, tours of key watersheds, water news, water
leadership training and conferences that bring together diverse
voices. By providing tools and platforms for engagement with wide
audiences, we aim to help build sound and collective solutions to
water issues.
What We Do
We support and execute a wide variety of programming to build a
better understanding of water resources across the West,
including:
Mission: The mission of the Water Education
Foundation, an impartial nonprofit, is to inspire understanding
of water and catalyze critical conversations to build bridges and
inform collaborative decision-making
Vision: A society that has the ability to
resolve its water challenges to benefit all
Where We Work
Our office is located in Sacramento, CA.
Connect with Us!
Sign up here to get email announcements
about upcoming workshops, tours and new publications.
You can learn more about the daily comings and goings of the
Foundation by following @WaterEdFdn on Twitter,
liking us on Facebook or
following us on
LinkedIn.
The California coast is known for
its scenic landscape, but the beauty belies a region chronically
prone to drought, mudslides and wildfire.
On our August Edge of
Drought Tour, we’re venturing into the Santa Barbara
area to learn about the water challenges and the steps being
taken to boost supplies.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
Get a firsthand view of California’s
diverse water resource issues with two of our summer tours — to
the Sierra Nevada headwaters that were blessed this winter with a
plentiful snowpack, and a Southern California coastal region
chronically prone to drought.
On tap this June is a new route for our Headwaters Tour as we
head into the Sierra Nevada mountains, where 60% of California’s
developed water supply originates. With the health of our Sierra
forests suffering from ecosystem degradation, drought, wildfires
and widespread tree mortality, we’ll examine water issues that
happen upstream but have dramatic impacts downstream and
throughout the state. Among our stops is a pilot project for
thinning the forest in the Yuba River watershed.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,
the largest estuary on the West Coast, is a vital hub in
California’s complex water delivery system as well as a rich
farming region, an important wetlands area – and often, a source
of conflict.
On our annual Bay-Delta Tour
June 5-7, participants will hear from a diverse group of
experts including water managers, environmentalists, farmers,
engineers and scientists who will offer various perspectives on
the latest news in the region.
Join us May 2 for an open house and
reception at our midtown Sacramento office to meet our staff
and learn more about what we do to educate and foster
understanding of California’s most precious natural resource —
water.
At the open house, you can enjoy refreshments and chat with our
staff about our tours, conferences, maps, publications and
training programs for teachers and up-and-coming water industry
professionals. You’ll also be able to learn more about how you
can support our work.
The Water Education Foundation is
your trusted go-to source for impartial news, information and
background on water resources in California and the Southwest.
Our flagship publication, Western Water, has
been written and edited by Foundation journalists for more than
40 years.
In one of our latest articles, we looked at how water
managers in Kern County, with its $7 billion a year farm economy,
were striving to devise a plan that manages and protects
groundwater for the long term yet ensures the county’s economy
can continue to thrive, even with less water. We also recently
reported on a talk by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
in which he urged creation of a Bay-Delta Compact as a way to end
a “culture of conflict” in California’s key water hub, the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is
the West Coast’s largest estuary and a vital hub in California’s
complex water delivery system. It’s also a rich farming area, an
important wetland and an ecologically troubled region.
On our Bay-Delta Tour June
5-7, participants will hear from a diverse group of experts
including water managers, environmentalists, farmers, engineers
and scientists who will offer various perspectives on a proposed
tunnel project that would carry water beneath the Delta, efforts
to revitalize the Delta and risks that threaten its delicate
ecological balance.
Sign up today to attend next week’s Santa Ana River Watershed
Conference in Orange County, where engaging and informative
discussions on the region’s most pressing water issues will take
place.
Officials from the California Department of Water Resources, the
Public Policy Institute of California and the Water Education
Foundation will join regional water managers and federal agency
representatives at the daylong event,
“Moving
Forward Together: From Planning to Action Across the
Watershed“ at Cal State Fullerton.
Time may be running short to
register for our Central Valley Tour April 3-5, but get ahead
on your summer plans now by signing up for a Foundation
water tour to learn about key water resource issues in
California.
On tap this June is our Bay-Delta Tour that traverses the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a 720,000-acre network of islands
and canals that supports the state’s water system and is
California’s most crucial water and ecological resource.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
Recent rains have left the San
Joaquin Valley’s reservoirs in better shape, but groundwater
depletion and the resulting ground subsidence continue to beset
farmers and water managers. What will this year hold? How are
regional stakeholders meeting the requirements of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act? And will there be enough water this
year to satisfy the competing needs of farms, people and the
environment?
Your best opportunity to understand the challenges and
opportunities of this vital resource in the nation’s breadbasket
is to join us on our Central Valley Tour April
3-5.
Former Interior Secretary and
Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt will be the distinguished speaker
at the
2019 Anne J. Schneider Lecture on April 3 at the Crocker Art
Museum in downtown Sacramento.
Babbitt’s talk is titled “Parting the Waters — Will It Take a
Miracle?”
The event begins at 4 p.m. in the Crocker Art Museum’s Setzer
Auditorium. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with
Ellen Hanak, director of the Public Policy Institute of
California’s Water Policy Center, and a reception. Here
is where to sign up for the event, which is free.
The San Joaquin Valley, known as the
nation’s breadbasket, grows a cornucopia of fruits, nuts and
other agricultural products.
During our three-day Central Valley Tour April
3-5, you will meet farmers who will explain how they prepare
the fields, irrigate their crops and harvest the produce that
helps feed the nation and beyond. We also will drive through
hundreds of miles of farmland and visit the rivers, dams,
reservoirs and groundwater wells that provide the water.
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
We’re on the road this week with our
three-day tour of the Lower Colorado
River to explore water infrastructure, farms and habitat
restoration efforts (you can follow along on Twitter!), but there is
still time to join one of our other 2019 tours to learn about key
water resource issues in California.
We’ll post updates on our Twitter account @WaterEdFdn about people,
issues and places as we travel along the Lower Colorado River
from Hoover Dam to the Coachella Valley Feb. 27 through March 1.
In the meantime, a water utility that serves the Imperial Valley,
where the Salton Sea is located in southeastern California, wants
$200 million from the federal government for the lake’s
restoration efforts before signing the Drought Contingency Plan
for the Colorado River.
You can see this sea up close during our Lower Colorado River
Tour, Feb. 27-March 1, when we will visit the fragile
ecosystem and hear from several stakeholders working to address
challenges facing the sea.
The Water Education Foundation’s tours offer participants a
first-hand look at the water facilities, rivers and regions
critical in the debate about the future of water resources.
From recent news articles to publications, maps and tours, Water
Education Foundation has everything you need, including the
award-winning Layperson’s Guide to the Delta.
