At the top of today’s Aquafornia scroll:

• Oroville residents submit petition to ‘hold DWR accountable’ to federal agency, Chico Enterprise-Record
• Assemblyman Todd Gloria holds “inaugural dialogue” with Mexican officials on Tijuana Water Pollution, The San Diego Union-Tribune

Water Word of the Week: Winter and the traditional season of snowfall in California have officially ended. With so much snow in the mountains waiting to melt this year, the importance of capturing  that runoff will again come to the fore. So our Water Word of the Week is Floodplains, a vital and scarce habitat type that is becoming increasingly important — both to capture runoff and prevent flooding, and to recharge groundwater. For more of the vital vocabulary of California water, check out Aquapedia, our free, vetted online water encyclopedia.

What’s on Tap: On Tuesday, water committees in both the California Senate and Assembly hold hearings on a number of water-related bills, including watershed restoration, wildfires and harmful algal blooms. And on Wednesday, the American Water Resources Association offers a webinar featuring Dan Cayan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on how climate change may affect precipitation in California. Our calendar has a more complete list of this month’s water-related events. At the Foundation, here are our upcoming events:

• Bay-Delta Tour — June 5-7, 2019
• Headwaters Tour — June 27-28, 2019
• Living on the Edge of Drought — August 27-29, 2019

Check out our full roster of 2019 water tours here.

Western Water, our flagship publication produced by Foundation journalists, is available online at www.watereducation.org/western-water. Our latest article:

• As Deadline Looms for California’s Badly Overdrafted Groundwater Basins, Kern County Seeks a Balance to Keep Farms Thriving

To get the latest updates on Foundation tours, conferences and publications, including Western Water, sign up here for announcements. 

Aquafornia is a news aggregation compiled each weekday by veteran journalist Matt Weiser and published by the Water Education Foundation.