For thirty years, the WATER Institute has modeled a radical practice of participatory watershed advocacy, and our seminal text, Basins of Relations: A Citizen’s Guide to Restoring Our Watersheds, best demonstrates this transformative ethos. Today, we’re excited to release the timely fourth edition—available now—and to announce the accompanying film slated to bring our most popular publication to life in 2027.
As the effects of climate change, runaway industry, and misguided water policy continue to imperil our precious water resources, this new edition and the forthcoming film by the ColdWater Collective are timely companions. Both offer inspiring pathways for participatory watershed repair and community organizing amid an accelerating water crisis. We can’t wait to share these new resources with you!
Our newest Basins of Relations publication expands upon its 20-year legacy as a guide to “hydrological literacy.” Within the course of 25-pages, readers will uncover the systemic conditions that lead to degraded hydrologies while learning practical steps we can all take to effect change at varied scales: at home, in our local communities, and through policy.
This expanded fourth edition also includes a new section on the importance of “keystone processes,” such as the interconnected water and fire cycles, and timely information on how community-led, process-based restoration plays a crucial part in collaborating with these elemental forces. One timely example is our latest campaign, Fuels to Flows. This campaign offers climate-smart, nature-based solutions at the nexus of fire, water, carbon, life, and labor by incorporating Beneficial Biomass from statewide fuel load reduction efforts into watershed restoration.
After reading the booklet with this winter’s El Niño rains, stay tuned for the film release as we return to spring. Basins of Relations, the film, is the creative vision of filmmakers from the ColdWater Collective, featuring WATER Institute Co-Directors Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman.
The forthcoming film will illuminate core WATER Institute contributions that have shaped hydrological literacy over the past three decades, from the practices of Conservation Hydrology to the culture-shifting mantra Slow It, Spread It, Sink It.
By chronicling Kate and Brock’s own stories of relational watershed recovery, audiences will glimpse into an inspiring world of possibilities such as easy, low-tech stormwater capture; decades of intersectional community organizing on behalf of coho salmon, worker justice, and watershed resilience in West Sonoma County’s Russian River basin; and the landmark 30-year Bring Back the Beaver campaign which successfully changed the narrative and policy around beaver restoration in California. The film also highlights community-led implementation of Fuels to Flows techniques that brought fire mitigation, holistic watershed restoration, and worker justice to the Camp Meeker Community Forest.
Whether you’re a neighbor in our Russian River watershed, an elected official or restoration professional working on water conservation issues, or simply an inhabitant of “Planet Water,” thirsty for hydrological literacy, we can’t wait to celebrate our shared basins of relations with you.
