An unlikely advocate seems to be around every bend of the Colorado River these days: the Walton Family Foundation. The $3.65 billion organization launched by Walmart founder Sam Walton has become ubiquitous in the seven-state basin that provides water to 40 million people, dishing out $100 million in grants in the last five years alone. “It is unprecedented—the scale and duration of investment,” said Dustin Garrick, a former Walton grantee and Oxford University professor who has studied the role of philanthropy in river basins around the world. The foundation’s reach is dizzying and, outside the basin, has received scant attention.
It has funded environmental groups (Environmental Defense Fund: $5.55 million since 2017, National Audubon Society: $2.6 million, Trout Unlimited: $2.7 million), university research (Yale University: $60,000, Stanford University: $98,000, Utah State University: $150,000), even journalists (KUNC, a community radio station for northern Colorado: $155,000). Earlier this month, the University of Colorado, Boulder, announced a journalism “water desk.” Its funder: Walton ($700,000).
The Walton money has fueled symposiums, conferences and pilot projects up and down the river to establish “proof points” for conservation programs. And the foundation helped shepherd the recent multi-state Drought Contingency Plan for the river across the finish line. A foundation representative sat on a steering committee in Arizona, and when the state faced a funding gap for its conservation program, the foundation stepped up with other philanthropies and said it would chip in $8 million. “The Walton Family Foundation recognizes how critical a healthy Colorado River is to the entire Southwest and to the benefit of the environment,” Ted Kowalski, the foundation’s Colorado River leader, told E&E News. To view the full article visit Inside Philanthropy.