Table of Contents

• Summary

• President's Message

• 2025 State Conference Recap
• • Opening Keynote
  • Session 1
  • Session 2
  • Session 3
  • Session 4
  • Session 5
  • Closing Keynote

• AWRA-WA Basin Sponsors

• AWRA-WA Basin Sponsors

January to April 2026 Edition

President's Message

By Anurag Mishra, AWRA-WA 2026 Board President and Senior Engineer at Annear Water Resources

Greetings fellow Washington WA-AWRA members, and welcome to the Spring of 2026. Thank you for the honor of serving as the President of the WA chapter of the AWRA. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the outgoing President Greg McLaughlin. We have several long-term board members moving on from WA-AWRA in 2026, and I would like to personally thank Steven Thomas, Patrick Vendenberg, Jessica Kuchan, Katherine Taiclet, and Tiffanie Ellis for their years, and in some cases decades, of support for WA-AWRA.

In 2025, we had several great highlights, including five dinner meetings, an annual conference, three student fellowship grants, and exciting new energy from the student chapters at UW and CWU.

• Over 120 people attended the October AWRA-WA state conference, titled  “Rethinking the Water Year: Aligning Supply and Demand in a Changing Water Resource Landscape”. The conference was made possible by the untiring efforts of several volunteer committee members. You can read more about the conference highlights in the rest of this newsletter. 
• The Events committee, led by chair Noah Wentzel, reached over 170 people with virtual meetings on the 2025 drought and the Washington state legislative update, a summer social, and the December Annual Dinner Meeting. 
• AWRA-WA awarded three student fellowships this year, to Kaylyn Stewart from the University of Washington, Abdisa Kebebew from Washington State University, and Maggie Egan of Central Washington University. We also saw fantastic continued work to develop and grow the UW and CWU student chapters.  Special thanks to Jason McCormick, Kory Swabb, and Colin Butler of the AWRA-WA board, plus UW student leader Alessandro Martinez and CWU student Leader Maggie Egan, for making all of this happen!

AWRA-WA remains a strong network of professionals volunteering talents and time to produce excellent professional learning via our events and annual conference. You have also provided terrific support to young water professionals through mentorship, student fellowships, and direct coordination with student chapters at Central Washington University and the University of Washington. These efforts have not gone unnoticed, with AWRA-WA winning the AWRA National State Section award for the second time in four years in 2025.

We have a fantastic slate of new board members for 2026, and you can read about the entire 2026 AWRA-WA Board here. We are also excited to welcome eight new board members:  Lisa Reymann, Soo-Ing Moody, Hannah McDonough, Tom Mathis, Harrison Lee, Jon Erickson, Kensey Daly, and Nathan Cutler.

The board is already busy planning this year’s several activities including the annual conference. We have already received all fellowship applications, and our next dinner meeting is planned for this summer. If you would like to serve and contribute to any of our events, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. This is an exciting time to be a part of AWRA-WA, so tell your friends, and see you all at the upcoming events.