Friday April 24, 2026
Delta Stewardship Council —
Inspired by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the resulting surge in environmental awareness, Earth Day has become synonymous with clean air, clean water, safe communities, and living in balance with the precious flora and fauna that share our planet. Many of the environmental protections we rely on today were created decades ago and were driven by science. To continue to protect what matters, we need more than good intentions – we need good information.
That commitment to scientific advancement brought together four public entities in 2025, including the Delta Stewardship Council. The Wetlands Regional Monitoring Program (WRMP), co-managed by the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) and San Francisco Estuary Partnership, proposed a major upgrade to the Bay-Delta’s mapping system and partnered with the Council and the Department of Water Resources (DWR) to scope and fund this unique and jointly-recognized opportunity. Together, we commissioned a comprehensive Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) survey of the Bay-Delta estuary by pooling resources and expertise to give the region something it has never had before: a single consistent, high-quality elevation map of the entire system. This shared data will facilitate collective problem-solving.