The Water Education Foundation has been enthusiastically publicizing its new Aquapedia.com, “an online, vetted reference tool for all things water.”
An initial examination of this ambitious new resource leaves us less than impressed, although admittedly, we didn’t get beyond “A.” There’s an entry on the List of Topics for “Alex Hildebrand,” a highly respected engineer and Delta farmer who passed away at 99 last year and was well know to those in the Delta. Clicking on his name gave us a 404 “page not found” message.
OK, we thought. They’re just getting started. (And in fact, we later found information on Alex by typing in his name and searching that way.) So we tried a different “A” entry: “Agricultural Drainage in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.”
Aquapedia introduces the Delta in this entry by saying that “This sprawling network of waterways supplies and transports water to more than 22 million users in central and Southern California.” OK, water is certainly transported to users in those areas (many of whom also have other sources of supply), but what about users in the Zone 7 (Pleasanton) area and in Santa Clara County on the peninsula south of San Francisco? No mention of them.
This entry tells the reader that “most Delta islands are below sea level,” thus failing to distinguish between islands in the western Delta and those in the eastern and northern Delta. Aquapedia says that “growers must constantly pump water from their lands so crops can grow.” The pear farmers in the Courtland area and the people growing corn and blueberries on Roberts Island will be surprised to hear this.
The Water Education Foundation is highly respected as an unbiased source of information about water in California, and it is depressing, although not unexpected, to see them perpetuating these kinds of errors. If you have time, check out a few entries and pass along some comments to them.