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Forecasters are usually on the mark
when predicting what tomorrow’s weather will bring. But can we
ever get accurate precipitation forecasts — critical for
managing water supplies — weeks to months in advance?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine, a one-day workshop Dec. 5 in Irvine,
scientists from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, the Western Regional Climate Center
and the California Department of Water Resources will offer
insights into the latest research on improving long-range weather
forecasting and what it means for water management.
Our slate of water tours for 2019
will include a new tour along the Central Coast to view a river
where a dam was removed, check out efforts to desalt ocean water,
recycle wastewater and manage groundwater and seawater intrusion.
We’ll also take a new route for our Headwaters Tour to check out
a pilot project for thinning the forest in the Yuba River
Watershed.
Our yearlong Water Leaders program is aimed at
providing a deeper understanding of California water
issues by attending water tours, studying a topic in-depth
and working with a mentor.
You can apply for the 2019 class today; the deadline is Dec. 4.
Download an application
here. Make sure to read tips on
applying first.
Tomorrow’s weather forecast may be
spot on, but can we ever get accurate precipitation forecasts
weeks to months in advance?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine, a one-day workshop Dec. 5 in Irvine,
scientists from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, the Western Regional Climate Center
and the California Department of Water Resources will offer
insights into the latest research on improving long-range weather
forecasting and what it means for water management.
Registration is now open for one of
our most popular events – Water
101, which for the first time will include an optional
daylong tour examining one of California’s most critical
resources, groundwater.
Water 101, to be held Feb. 7 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. Taught by some of California’s
leading policy and legal experts, the workshop
gives attendees a deeper understanding of the state’s most
precious natural resource.
Our one-year Water Leaders program gets you out of the
office and into the field – whether it’s on one of our water
tours to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta or the lower
Colorado River, or meeting with your assigned mentor.
Mentors play an important role in the program as they conduct a
shadow day with class members and help to shape ideas for the
class project on a key water
topic. The project is turned into a report with policy
recommendations that is presented to the Water Education
Foundation’s Board of Directors toward the end of the year.
Just because El Niño may be lurking
off in the tropical Pacific, does that really offer much of a
clue about what kind of rainy season California can expect in
Water Year 2019?
Will a river of storms pound the state, swelling streams and
packing the mountains with deep layers of heavy snow much like
the exceptionally wet 2017 Water Year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30,
2017)? Or will this winter sputter along like last winter,
leaving California with a second dry year and the possibility of
another potential drought? What can reliably be said about the
prospects for Water Year 2019?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine?, a one-day event on Dec. 5 in Irvine,
water managers and anyone else interested in this topic will
learn about what is and isn’t known about forecasting
California’s winter precipitation weeks to months ahead, the
skill of present forecasts and ongoing research to develop
predictive ability.
A few tickets are still available
for our Nov. 7-8 San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour, a rare opportunity to see firsthand the
progress toward restoring populations of spawning salmon to the
river.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history related to
providing in-stream flows for fish, leading to the creation of
the San Joaquin River Restoration Program.
In 1983, a landmark California
Supreme Court ruling forced Los Angeles to reduce its take of
water from Eastern Sierra creeks that fed Mono Lake. It marked a
dramatic shift in California water law by extending the public
trust doctrine to tributary creeks that fed Mono Lake, which is a
navigable water body even though the creeks themselves are
not.
Some 35 years later, an appellate court in Sacramento
for the first time has concluded that the same public trust
doctrine used in the Mono Lake decision also applies to
groundwater feeding the navigable Scott River in a picturesque
corner of far Northern California.
Join the team at the Water Education
Foundation, a highly respected and impartial nonprofit
that has been a trusted source of water news and educational
programs in California and across the West for more than 40
years.
“Dry, hot and on fire” is how
the California Department of Water Resources described Water Year
2018 in a
recent report.
The 2018 Water Year (Oct. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2018)
marked a return to dry conditions statewide — and with much of
Southern California receiving half or less of its average annual
precipitation — following an exceptionally wet 2017.
Was 2018 simply a single dry year or does it signal the
start of another drought? And what can reliably be said about the
prospects for Water Year 2019? Does El Niño really mean anything
for California, or is it all washed up as a predictor?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine?, a one-day event on Dec.
5 in Irvine, water managers and anyone else interested in this
topic will learn about what is and isn’t known about forecasting
California’s winter precipitation weeks to months ahead, the
skill of present forecasts and ongoing research to develop
predictive ability.
The San Joaquin River was the focus
of one of the most contentious legal battles in California water
history related to providing in-stream flows for fish, leading to
the creation of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program.
On our San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour, Nov. 7-8, we will visit all five reaches of
the project – from Friant Dam in the Sierra foothills near Fresno
downstream to Hills Ferry. We will meet with restoration
specialists, water managers, environmentalists, farmers and fish
biologists to gain a deeper understanding of this complex issue
and see the program’s progress firsthand.
As we near the end of 2018 with a
few more events, our 2019 calendar is starting to fill up.
So save the dates for the following tours, workshops and
conferences.
2018
Nov. 7-8: San Joaquin River Restoration Tour:
Participants of this tour snake along the San Joaquin River
to learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects. More info
here.
People in California and the
Southwest are getting stingier with water, a story that’s told by
the acre-foot.
In the latest Western Water news, writer Gary Pitzer
takes a look at how a
long-time rule of thumb describing water use—that one
acre-foot of water could supply two urban households for a year
—is getting a rewrite as household habits and improved technology
help people make the most of the water they have.
Here’s a special holiday gift offer
for the water wonk in your life: The California Water Bundle –
our beautiful California water map and Layperson’s Guide to
California water.
The California
water bundle features our redesigned California Water
Map and the most recent version of the Layperson’s Guide to
California Water.
Regularly priced at $20 for the map and $15 for the
guide, this bundle allows you to purchase both of these
high-quality products for $30. Please note they ship separately.
Applications for one of our most
popular programs,
Water Leaders, are now available for the 2019 class.
Alums of our one-year program say they gained invaluable
contacts, exposure to different viewpoints, core knowledge and a
big-picture view of California water.
Alums include Newsha Ajami,
director of Urban Water Policy at Stanford University’s Water in
the West; Jessica Pearson,
executive officer of the Delta Stewardship Council; Martha Guzman
Aceves, a member of the California Public Utilities
Commission; Chris Scheuring,
managing counsel for natural resources at the California Farm
Bureau Federation; and
Dave Eggerton, ACWA’s new executive director designate.
Explore more than 100 miles of
Central California’s longest river, subject of one of the
nation’s largest and costliest river restorations. Our San Joaquin River
Restoration Tour on Nov. 7-8 will feature speakers from key
governmental agencies and stakeholder groups who will explain the
restoration program’s goals and progress.
The Colorado River is likely headed
to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could force water supply
cuts to some states, but work is “furiously” underway to reduce
the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner
Brenda Burman
told an audience at the Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in
Sacramento.
Only a few tickets are left for our
annual Northern
California Tour, Oct. 10-12, when we will venture deep
inside Shasta Dam and tour wildlife refuges and rice
fields as we learn about water use and salmon restoration
efforts in the farm-heavy region.
In addition to Shasta Dam, we will see newly accessible views of
the Oroville Dam spillway and get an on-site update of
repairs to the cornerstone of the State Water Project,
including live camera feeds from the ongoing construction site.
