SUPPORT THE WATER RESOURCES CENTER ARCHIVES (WRCA)
There are many ways to help WRCA maintain its status as the country’s premier library devoted to water resources. With your support WRCA will continue to provide the historic and current information that contributes to informed decisions about water allocation and use -- just as it has for the past 50 years. Your contributions help us to sustain this work while expanding the library’s collections and outreach. WRCA welcomes tax-deductible monetary gifts, bequests, and donations of materials.

Contributions from our donors have enabled us to continue our popular lecture series, the California Colloquium on Water; to begin collecting electronic-only documents that otherwise may be lost to researchers; to begin compiling a collection of materials related to the City of San Francisco’s water supply, and to start "On Water," a blog featuring news and research on all aspects of water resources in California. And, or course, these funds support the library’s regular services, including reference assistance and access to our collections.

WRCA welcomes contributions from institutional and individual donors. All donations are tax-deductible. Please contact Linda Vida to discuss giving opportunities.

Give to WRCA! - Secure credit card donation online.

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Donor Profile: IRIS PRIESTAF and TODD ENGINEERS
When Iris Priestaf and her colleagues at Todd Engineers begin a new groundwater basin project, "we always include a visit to the Archives. You can go into the stacks and find things that you didn’t even know existed," says Dr. Priestaf, president of Todd Engineers.

That ability to find older reports and hard copy data for the firm’s water balance studies and groundwater basin management projects has led Priestaf individually and Todd as a company to support the Water Resources Center Archives with annual contributions.

The firm was founded 30 years ago by the late Dr. David Keith Todd, a professor of hydrology at UC-Berkeley, who, Priestaf says, "always recognized the value of the Archives" and gave a collection of his papers to the library. When Priestaf began working with David Todd as a graduate student, "I, too, realized what a tremendous resource the Archives is."

Today, she says, the firm "conducts groundwater basin studies to evaluate how we can manage and use this resource." Todd’s projects are sometimes controversial, and "we want to make sure the data are comprehensive. At the Archives we can get our hands on actual historical data. We can get back to the original publications that are not online. It’s information you can’t get anywhere else."

Todd Engineers has supported WRCA in other ways, too. Priestaf was an original member of the Archives’ advisory board; Senior Geologist David Abbott is a current member.

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Donor Profile: METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT
You don’t have to be within shouting distance of the Archives to be a supporter. Because the Archives collections encompass water issues throughout California and the west, WRCA draws support from individuals and agencies well beyond the Bay Area. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) is a long-time friend of the Archives, contributing to the California Colloquium on Water lecture series and funding the conversion of the lecture videos to digital format for posting on the Web.

"We have a very supportive relationship with the Archives," says William Hasencamp, Manager of Colorado River Resources at MWD. "We think the library is an important resource and does a great job of collecting information for future use."

MWD provides drinking water to nearly 18 million people in six Southern California counties, an area of 5,200 square miles. Much of that water comes from the Colorado River, and much of the sometimes contentious history of the river is now housed at the Archives, thanks to a donation from MWD. The donation, Hasencamp says, was a way to remember the late Dennis Underwood, the district’s former general manager.

"Dennis had a passion for the Colorado River," Hasencamp says. "He set up a cooperative relationship among the agencies that draw water from the river and got them to put aside legal disputes and develop agreements." Hasencamp says MWD "went through our files and provided the Archives with many of the original documents Dennis worked on." The district also provided funding for processing the Underwood collection.