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.
Once uncountably numerous, the
native Delta smelt since 2016 has largely vanished from most
annual sampling surveys in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. But in December, state and federal biologists began
for the first time ever releasing captively bred adult Delta
smelt into the Delta’s waterways in a three-year effort to draw
the species away from the brink of extinction.
Register today for the return
of our most popular in-person tour, the Bay-Delta Tour May
18-20, and join us as we venture into the most
critical and controversial water region in California, the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The 720,000-acre network of islands and channels supports
the state’s two large water systems – the State Water Project and
the federal Central Valley Project – and together with the San
Francisco Bay is an important ecological resource. You’ll learn
firsthand how the drought is affecting water quality and supply
that serves local farms, cities and habitat. Much of
the water also heads south via canals and aqueducts to provide
drinking water for more than 27 million Californians and
irrigation to about 3 million acres of farmland that helps feed
the nation.
With California diving deeper into a
drought, take advantage of this once-a-year opportunity to attend
our Water
101 Workshop on April 8 and gain a
deeper understanding of the history, hydrology and law
behind California’s most precious natural resource.
And go beyond the headlines to learn more about the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, disadvantaged communities and the
latest on efforts to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act.
In the vast labyrinth of the West
Coast’s largest freshwater tidal estuary, one native fish species
has never been so rare. Once uncountably numerous, the Delta
smelt was placed on state and federal endangered species lists in
1993, stopped appearing in most annual sampling surveys in 2016,
and is now, for all practical purposes, extinct in the wild. At
least, it was.
One of our most popular events,
Water
101 offers a once-a-year opportunity for anyone new
to California water issues or newly elected to a water district
board — and really anyone who wants a refresher — to
gain a deeper understanding of the state’s most precious
natural resource.
Water 101, to be held April 8 at McGeorge School of Law in
Sacramento, details the history, geography, legal and political
facets of water in California, as well as hot topics currently
facing the state. The workshop is taught by some of California’s
leading policy and legal experts.
As COVID-19 restrictions start to loosen up for most indoor
settings, we are cautiously moving toward a return
of our popular in-person programming this spring starting
with our Lower Colorado River Tour in March, our
Water 101 Workshop and Central Valley
Tour in April and our Bay-Delta Tour in
May.
Four new members bringing a wide
range of water resource experiences and perspectives have joined
the Water Education Foundation Board. They include
representatives from a Native American Tribe and the Nature
Conservancy, a lawyer specializing in water resources and a
communications and outreach manager for a Southern California
water agency.
They join a board led by Mike Chrisman, who served as California
natural resources secretary for seven years under former Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Participants on our
in-person Lower Colorado
River Tour March 16-18 will enjoy a scenic
journey on the iconic river aboard an open-air vessel traveling
through the natural wonders of Topock Gorge and the Havasu
Wilderness Area.
Itineraries for this year’s slate
of water tours have been adjusted to
maximize the use of outdoor/open-air venues when possible, in
addition to other precautions, including enhanced sanitation
protocols and a mask requirement aboard the motorcoach and within
indoor spaces until further notice by health officials. Find more
details here.
Seating is limited, so register
here to reserve your spot today!
Twenty early to mid-career
water professionals from across California have been chosen for
the 2022 William R. Gianelli Water Leaders Class, the Water
Education Foundation’s highly competitive and respected career
development program.
This Water Leaders class, which marks the program’s 25th
anniversary, includes engineers, lawyers, resource
specialists, scientists and others from a range of public and
private entities and nongovernmental organizations from
throughout the state. The roster for the
2022 class can be foundhere.
We’re looking for a special kind of
writer to join our team who is eager to produce the kinds of
insightful and challenging stories we pursue, such as
our latest Western Water article on how
drought and climate change are threatening to upend collaboration
in the Colorado River Basin.
Are you a journalist enthralled by the history, policy and
science behind Western water issues? Then you might be just the
right person to join our team. We’re looking for a full-time
writer who is deeply knowledgeable about the West’s most precious
natural resource in California and the Colorado River Basin,
enjoys a fast-paced environment and possesses strong multimedia
skills. Learn more about the job here.
In the centennial year of the 1922 Colorado River
Compact that established a framework for management of the
river, the tour will take participants from Hoover Dam downstream
to the Mexican border and through the Imperial and Coachella
valleys to learn firsthand about the challenges and opportunities
now facing the “Lifeline of the Southwest” a hundred years later.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
Our Layperson’s
Guide to California Water has been completely
redesigned and updated throughout for 2021, providing an
excellent overview of the history of water development and its
use in California today.
The 10th Edition of our popular guide to California water
includes the latest information on the state’s changing
hydrology, recent water conservation legislation, and a new
section on the human right to and need for water, highlighting
issues of water access and affordability that have drawn
increasing attention in California.
Here’s a sweet deal for the holidays
that won’t last long: Get our paperback “Water & the
Shaping of California,” a treasure trove of gorgeous
color photos, historic maps, water literature and famous sayings
about water for just $22.75 – a 35% discount.
“Water & the Shaping of California” is a beautifully designed
book that discusses the engineering feats, political decisions
and popular opinions that reshaped nature and society, leading to
the water projects that created the California we know today. The
book includes a foreword by the late Kevin Starr, the Golden
State’s premier historian.
Our 2021 Water Leaders class
completed its year with a report outlining policy recommendations
for achieving water equity in California.
The class of 23 up-and-coming
leaders from various water-related fields – engineers,
attorneys, planners, environmentalists and scientists – had full
editorial control to choose recommendations.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Apply by Dec. 7 for our 2022
Water Leaders class and be part of the cohort that will mark the
25th anniversary of California’s pre-eminent water leadership
program.
The Water Leaders class, which started in 1997, is aimed at
providing a deeper understanding of California water issues
and building leadership skills by working with a mentor, studying
a water-related topic in-depth and crafting policy
recommendations on that topic with your cohort.
The deadline to apply for the 2022 class is Dec.
7 at 5 p.m. Find the online application form and other
required items for your application
package here.
You can more easily support the
important work done by the Water Education Foundation in
California and across the West by making a tax-deductible gift
via a one-time payroll deduction through your employer or a set
amount per pay period.
The contributions through Workplace Giving programs support our
nonprofit’s mission to inspire understanding of water and
catalyze critical conversations to build bridges and inform
collaborative decision-making.
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.
