Last week, we lost a giant in the California water world. 

Bill Gianelli wasn’t just a director of the state’s Department of Water Resources, he was a key founding figure of the Water Education Foundation.

In the 1990s he left an endowment to help launch our Water Leaders program. Today there are more than 400 graduates across California and beyond.

Every other year we hold an invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.

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.

Nowhere is the domino effect in Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River, and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan. Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying voice between its major water players, an effort you can read more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.

Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within California.

Welcome to the reinvented version of our Western Water magazine! After more than 40 years of churning out a printed magazine, which was a quarterly publication in its last iteration, we turned to the internet this month to launch Western Water in an online format.

While it’s not easy for veteran journalists like me and others at the Water Education Foundation to give up the familiar printed newspaper or magazine, we’ve known for some time that people are changing the way they get information. In the last few years, we ramped up our social media efforts, especially on Twitter and Facebook, to reach people interested in water resource issues.

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.