Water has definitely caught the attention of Californians this past year, with the continuing drought, mandatory urban conservation, fallowed farm fields and endangered fish.

There’s a lot to contemplate about water and its relationship to people and the surrounding environment.

One way to keep up on the many forms of water and our interaction with it is the State Water Resources Control Board’s Clean Water Team calendar. It’s a free, online, interactive document that lists all the major water-related events through the year, and a lot more. It can be downloaded as a pdf for reference throughout the year.

Some examples of events listed: March 14 is the International Day of Action for Rivers; May 22 kicks off Safe Boating Week; June is Great Outdoors Month; and July 2 and September 3 are Free Fishing Days – no license required.

Many of the commemorative dates and events have interactive links – click on them and find out a lot more about the date or event, including several opportunities to volunteer or participate. The calendar also includes many non-water events or dates.

But water is the focus, and the calendar also features photographs of volunteers monitoring water quality, as well as a couple of stunning pictures of leaping salmon. It’s all free and a finger click away, here: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/swamp/docs/cwt/volunteer/cwt2016calendar.pdf .

The calendar includes contributions from a variety of local environmental and volunteer water monitoring groups, and was put together by the State Water Board’s Clean Water Team.

The Clean Water Team is the citizen monitoring program of the State Water Board. Clean Water Team coordinators work statewide to provide technical assistance and guidance documents, training, quality assurance and quality control support, and temporary loans of equipment to citizen monitoring programs and watershed stewardship organizations.

Citizen monitoring is monitoring of the environment by community volunteers interested in watershed protection.  Citizen monitoring activities include collecting water quality data, evaluating fish habitat, counting birds, or making visual observations of stream health.  Community and resource managers use monitoring information to better protect California's waters.

To learn more about the Clean Water Team and how to volunteer or join a citizen monitoring group, visit here: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/swamp/cwt_general_mon.shtml .