Water Resources

Fellow Story

Vorster quoted on EPA finding that Bay Area waterways more polluted than previously thought

Hydrogeographers such as Peter Vorster of the Bay Institute are on one side. KTVU met him along the last stretch of the wild San Joaquin River, arguably the most desiccated -- and desecrated -- major river in California. "This has a lot of salts in it from the agricultural runoff, Vorster remarked. "The water that would have been in here, a lot of it has been diverted to make these fields grow these amazing crops. The San Joaquin Valley is the most productive agricultural region, arguably, in the world."
June 26, 2012
Fellow Story

Balazs's work with contamination of minorities' drinking water featured

“We were in Seville last week doing survey work and heard about people getting boil notices when there’s bacteria,” said Balazs, who joined the Community Water Center as a staff scientist after completing her Ph.D at UC Berkeley. “But one of the worst things you can do is boil water when there are nitrates. It just concentrates them.” Read the full story
June 20, 2012
Fellow

Priya Ganguli

2012 Fellow
Priya Ganguli is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in the Department of Geological Sciences and the new CSUN Water Science Program. She studies the transport and fate of contaminants in aquatic...
Fellow

Lindsey Stuvick

2012 Fellow
Lindsey manages the Water Efficiency Department at Moulton Niguel Water District and serves on the Board of Directors for the California Water Efficiency Partnership and as the Chair of the Data Action Team for the California Data...
Fellow

Miriam Torres

2012 Fellow
Miriam Torres is an environmental justice advocate, urban planner, collaborator, and mother. Currently, Miriam is a Principal Environmental Planner in the Planning and Climate Protection Division of the Bay Area Air Quality Management...
Fellow

Esther Conrad

2012 Fellow
A 2012 Switzer Fellow, Esther is deeply invested in policy-relevant research and partnerships to address critical sustainability challenges, especially in the context of water and climate change, and environmental justice. Currently, she works at Stanford University's Bill Lane Center for the American West, where she manages research projects in collaboration with government entities focused on groundwater governance, California's transition to zero emission vehicles, and policies to reduce wildfire risk.
Fellow Story

Mountjoy on conflict between food production and nature in Salinas Valley

We'd probably like to think that clean, safe food goes hand in hand with pristine nature, with lots of wildlife and clean water. But in the part of California that grows a lot of the country's lettuce and spinach, these two goals have come into conflict. Environmental advocates say a single-minded focus on food safety has forced growers of salad greens to strip vegetation from around their fields, harming wildlife and polluting streams and rivers.
May 23, 2012
Fellow Story

Newberry wrote about the Blue Ledge Mine's facelift

Joe Creek has been a biological desert for decades. This small and unassuming stream flows north out of the Red Buttes Wilderness in Siskiyou County, California, and passes below the abandoned Blue Ledge Mine, after which its otherwise pristine water turns into a toxic brine as acidic as vinegar where only algae survives.
May 22, 2012
Fellow Story

Moir quoted in Boston Globe on low rivers and danger of summer drought in MA

“Given how low the rivers already are in Massachusetts, it would be harmful to permit municipalities to withdraw significantly more water from the ground than they currently are, because the rivers could run dry and fish would die,’’ said Rob Moir, director of the Ocean River Institute, an environmental advocacy group in Cambridge. Read the full story
May 16, 2012
Fellow Story

Hare harvesting methane from the Santa Rosa regional sewer plant's wastewater treatment process

At Santa Rosa's Regional sewer plant, ponds covered with fast-growing aquatic plants are being used to help clean toxics and pollutants out of the water as part of the wastewater treatment process. But there's another, very different benefit those plants can offer as well. While showing off the FAB project at the treatment plant, Caden Hare explained that the effort to develop on site energy generation was driven in part by the needs of the facility itself. Read the story and hear audio clips
April 10, 2012