Major technological and agricultural enterprises and significant population centers call California’s Sacramento Valley home. The Valley, and its water resources, plays a key role in sustaining Microsoft operations, supports the most productive agricultural area in the nation, and it ultimately conveys water to more than half of California's population. The surface and groundwater resources of the Sacramento Valley support interdependently-connected farmlands, refuges, managed wetlands, and rivers that sustain fisheries and wildlife. These same freshwater resources also supply cities and rural communities with drinking water. Yet, land and water management decisions have contributed to declines in water quantity and quality of surface and groundwater in this region.

Corporate sustainability initiatives frequently lack the region-specific detail and actionable information needed to implement external environmental programs that both meet company goals and have a long-term, positive impact on the region’s resources. This opportunity combines the technological and on-the-ground resources of its California Water Action (CWAC) members in Northern California, and a toolset that helps address those critical questions.

The Freshwater Trust (TFT) and partners, Microsoft, the Pacific Institute and Bonneville Environmental Foundation, seek to provide corporations, resource agencies and agricultural producers the insight needed to drive the coordinated investment that recovers and sustains water quality and quantity conditions, upon which the resiliency of our communities and ecosystems rely. To recover and sustain water resources, this project provides both an assessment of existing water use and management, and a system for targeting and prioritizing opportunities for field-scale conservation actions that improve quality and quantity for groundwater dependent ecosystems, and rural and otherwise underserved communities. This project supports a technology platform that coordinates cross-jurisdictional actions and facilitates collaboration toward impact investment.

Project lead: The Freshwater Trust
Participating CWAC members: Microsoft | Pacific Institute | Bonneville Environmental Foundation
Additional partners: Davis Ranches
To learn more: Contact Erik Ringelberg, California Director, The Freshwater Trust – [erik@thefreshwatertrust.org]