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Happy New Year! Learn What’s on Tap at the Water Education Foundation for 2026

Happy New Year to all the friends, supporters, readers of articles and participants of the tours and workshops we featured in 2025! We are deeply grateful to each and every person who engaged with us last year.

We have much to look forward to in 2026, especially as we gear up to mark and celebrate the Foundation’s 50th anniversary in 2027

One of our most exciting projects this year will be replacing our 12-year-old website with a beautifully streamlined version that is mobile-adaptable. It will allow for a more intuitive experience as users conduct research, read our weekday newsfeed or water encyclopedia, and sign up for tours and events.

Along with our new website, we’ll be launching a new and improved Aquafornia newsfeed to better align with our reach across California and the Colorado River Basin. Stay tuned!

New Water Map & Spanish Version of California Water Guide

By summer, we’ll publish an update to our Layperson’s Guide to California Water in English and, for the first time, in Spanish. We will also publish a new Klamath River map to illustrate the nation’s largest dam removal project in the watershed straddling Oregon and California.

Right before the holidays, we published our updated Layperson’s Guide to the Delta, which you can now order.

With social media, we’ll continue focusing on LinkedIn as our primary go-to channel as we ease off Facebook and X/Twitter where engagement has dropped. But not to fear; we’ll continue posting on Instagram.

Our array of 2026 programming begins later this month when we welcome our incoming California Water Leaders cohort. We’ll be sure to introduce them to you and let you know what thorny California water policy issue they’ll be tackling.

We’ll also be welcoming our third cohort of Colorado River Water Leaders in March. Applications are due Jan. 26 so be sure to get them in soon!

Announcement

Get Tips on Applying for 2026 Colorado River Water Leader Cohort; Layperson’s Guide to the Delta Hot Off the Press; Calif. Water Leaders Release Water Rights Modernization Recommendations

Are you an emerging water leader in the Colorado River Basin? Consider applying for our 2026 Colorado River Water Leaders cohort.

The biennial program, which will run from March to September next year, selects about a dozen rising stars from the seven states that rely on the river – California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – Mexico and tribal nations.

The seven-month program is designed for working professionals who explore issues surrounding the iconic Southwest river, deepen their water knowledge, and build leadership and collaborative skills.

Listen to a recording of our virtual Q&A session where executive director Jenn Bowles and other Foundation staff provided an overview on the program and tips on applying. 

Water News You Need to Know

Aquafornia news CNN

Wednesday Top of the Scroll: The world has entered a new era of ‘water bankruptcy’ with irreversible consequences

The world has entered “an era of global water bankruptcy” with irreversible consequences, according to a new United Nations report. Regions across the world are afflicted by severe water problems: Kabul may be on course to be the first modern city to run out of water. Mexico City is sinking at a rate of around 20 inches a year as the vast aquifer beneath its streets is over-pumped. In the US Southwest, states are locked in a continual battle over the how to share the shrinking water of the drought-stricken Colorado River. The global situation is so severe that terms like “water crisis” or “water stressed” fail to capture its magnitude, according to the report published Tuesday by the United Nations University and based on a study in the journal Water Resources.

Related articles:

Aquafornia news Utah News Dispatch

Colorado River talks: States are still at odds but working toward a 5-year plan

With just weeks to decide how to share the Colorado River’s shrinking water supply, negotiators from seven states hunkered down in a Salt Lake City conference room. … The states moved forward on a deal for two-and-a-half days, then went back by almost as far as they’d come, [Utah chief negotiator Gene] Shawcroft said. … Shawcroft reiterated Tuesday what he and his counterparts from the other Colorado River states have said in recent months: They don’t have a deal, but they do have a commitment to keep talking and meet their upcoming February deadline. 

Other Colorado River negotiations news:

Aquafornia news The Colorado Sun (Denver)

Big storms needed to make up for Colorado’s record low snowpack

Colorado’s snowpack is at a record low, and the longer that continues, the harder it will be to make up the deficit before the end of winter, water managers say. … This year, the state has about 58% of its normal snowpack — the lowest on record for this time of year. … The northwestern combined basin is part of the larger Colorado River Basin, which spans the Western Slope and extends across six other states and into northern Mexico. If critically dry conditions continue, one of the basin’s massive reservoirs, Lake Powell, could drop so low that it would not be able to generate hydroelectric power by December, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. 

Other snowpack and water supply news around the West:

Aquafornia news SJV Water (Bakersfield, Calif.)

Water first destroyed, and will now rebuild, the historic town of Allensworth

Starting nearly 118 years ago, arsenic-laced groundwater and dry wells all but killed the hopes of California’s only town founded and governed by African Americans, many of them formerly enslaved. On Tuesday, residents of Allensworth celebrated a new well that will finally bring clean, abundant water to the town that was beset by water troubles soon after it was founded 1908 by Col. Allen Allensworth. … The new well, along with an arsenic treatment system and 500,000-gallon storage tank, are being paid for through a $3.8 million grant from the Water Resources Control Board’s Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) program. 

Other water quality news:

Online Water Encyclopedia

Wetlands

Sacramento National Wildlife RefugeWetlands are among the world’s most important and hardest-working ecosystems, rivaling rainforests and coral reefs in productivity. 

They produce high oxygen levels, filter water pollutants, sequester carbon, reduce flooding and erosion and recharge groundwater.

Bay-Delta Tour participants viewing the Bay Model

Bay Model

Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bay Model is a giant hydraulic replica of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It is housed in a converted World II-era warehouse in Sausalito near San Francisco.

Hundreds of gallons of water are pumped through the three-dimensional, 1.5-acre model to simulate a tidal ebb and flow lasting 14 minutes.

Aquapedia background Colorado River Basin Map

Salton Sea

As part of the historic Colorado River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below sea level.

The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years, creating California’s largest inland body of water. The Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130 miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe

Lake Oroville shows the effects of drought in 2014.

Drought

Drought—an extended period of limited or no precipitation—is a fact of life in California and the West, with water resources following boom-and-bust patterns. During California’s 2012–2016 drought, much of the state experienced severe drought conditions: significantly less precipitation and snowpack, reduced streamflow and higher temperatures. Those same conditions reappeared early in 2021 prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom in May to declare drought emergencies in watersheds across 41 counties in California.