The Water Education Foundation has won a national award for its innovative partnership with the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to train schoolteachers across the state on climate science and how they can bring hands-on activities into their classrooms connected to local examples of climate change impacts.

The award was presented today by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and The Climate Registry during their virtual Climate Leadership Series and Awards Showcase, Oct. 13-15. The Climate Leadership Awards is a national program that recognizes exemplary corporate, organizational and individual leadership in response to climate change. In all, 24 organizations nationwide were honored this year.

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 2019 and supported our mission.

As we turn the page to 2020, we’re looking ahead to a few changes. 

When I first wrote a column about women in water in the Spring 2017 issue of Western Water, I noted that the water world had its own stable of leaders recognized by their first names alone, just like Cher, Madonna, Beyoncé and Rihanna.

These names, as I noted then, were Lois (Krieger), Pat (Mulroy), Maureen (Stapleton) and Felicia (Marcus). A little more than a year later, and I’m happy to say I can add so many more names now: Brenda (Burman), Karla (Nemeth), Gloria (Gray) and Jennifer (Pierre), among them. You can read about the influx of women leaders in the water world in the most recent Western Water article. We also note a recent survey by Texas A&M University that found there are “subtle but consistent” gender disparities in attitudes toward water. You can read the article here.

As we continue forging ahead in 2018 with our online version of Western Water after 40 years as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.

State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that marijuana was legal.

About this time last month I was on the other side of the world, leading an international journalism workshop on how to cover water issues. I didn’t think I’d ever go to Tehran, but when UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) called, I didn’t hesitate.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I and the staff at the Water Education Foundation want to extend our deep gratitude to everyone who came on a tour with us this year, attended one of our conference or Project WET workshops, and read Western Water magazine or any of our other publications on key water topics.