June UNL Water Tour Examines California Bay-Delta
Mike Jess, John Ford and Jeff Buettner on top of Oroville Dam, the tallest earthen dam in the United States. |
A hazy San Francisco Bay skyline. San Francisco is to the right, Alcatraz Island is in the center with the Oakland Bay Bridge behind it and Oakland is to the left. |
Tour boats, like this one, will transport water tour participants from Sausalito to the San Francisco waterfront on the final day of the tour. |
Workers tie grape vines near Courtland, California, in the Bay-Delta. |
Registration Brochure
Tour Map
The 2009 Water & Natural Resources Tour to the Bay-Delta region of north-central California is scheduled for June 15-18. The Bay-Delta is a unique ecosystem formed where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers join one another. California’s on-going drought, its water resources planning activities and water transfer and marketing innovations will be included in the trip itinerary.
Individual site visits will include: several agricultural producers (including a former Nebraska grain producer), the Glenn Colusa Irrigation District and facilities operated as part of the California State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Located in a 4½ acre building used for manufacture of ships during WW II, inspection of a physical model of the San Francisco Bay-Delta region will be included in another site visit.
A full day will be spent in the Delta. Its channels convey fresh water to Los Angeles and other cities and farms in central and southern California. Delta channels also are used for commercial navigation, and they are home to several endangered fish. Complicating the management of water resources is the presence of a deteriorating levee system built to protect highly productive agricultural properties on the Delta’s many islands.
Tour participants will be housed each night at the Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown Sacramento. The $1,290 registration charge will include lodging for five nights (June 14-18), meals and ground & water transportation expenses.
Participants will be responsible for making individual arrangements for travel to and from Sacramento. That city is served by several commercial airlines and by Amtrack (train station is four blocks from Embassy Suites Hotel).
Registration will be handled by Lydia Loewenstein.
Contact Lydia at:
Kearney Area Chamber of Commerce
1007 Second Avenue
P.O. Box 607
Kearney, Nebraska 68848-0607
Phone (308) 237-3168
lloewenstein@kearneycoc.org
Learn More about the 2009 Tour
Mike Jess, UNL Water Center Associate Director and Water Tour Co-leader, talks about some of the highlights of the 2009 tour in this 2-1/2 minute video.
QuickTime 7.0+ is needed.
Lydia Loewenstein at a visitor's center in Lodi, California. |
Craig Kirchhoff, a Nebraska native and former Nebraska grain producer, grows grapes in the Delta for several Southern California vintners. |
Other Tour Related Information
Return to 2009 Water Tour
