Victoria “Vickie” Ortiz is a Fairmead community advocate and member of Fairmead Community and Friends, a local organization dedicated to supporting health justice, safer environments, and community resource development. Written in collaboration with Vickie Ortiz, Angela Islas and Sonia Sanchez from Self-Help Enterprises. While most Californians enjoy the convenience of having water to drink, cook and…

Vicky Espinoza is a Ph.D. Candidate advised by Dr. Joshua Viers in the Environmental Systems Graduate Group at the University of California Merced. As a Latina in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), she has been actively involved in making science and mathematics accessible to underrepresented, Spanish-speaking communities throughout her educational career. Can you share…

Published: December 19, 2019  How did you get involved with sustainable groundwater management issues? I have been a volunteer activist in the county for 20 years. As irrigated agriculture came in and started planting in the region it started to become obvious that we needed to pay attention to how much groundwater there was. In 2005,…

Angelina Cook is an environmental activist based in Siskiyou county. She advocates for including the City of Weed in the Shasta Valley Groundwater Sustainability Plan and working to protect the city’s groundwater from expanded pumping by private bottling companies. What basin/basins are you currently working in/involved with? Shasta Valley Groundwater Basin What has been your experience…

Imagine over 600,000 acres of wilderness.  You are surrounded by blue sky, mountains, rock formations and a cornucopia of plants including creosote, palo verde, cacti, and ocotillo. As you walk around, you have the opportunity to see bighorn sheep, mountain lions, kit foxes, mule deer, coyotes, greater roadrunners, golden eagles, black-tailed jackrabbits, ground squirrels, kangaroo…

In some California basins, sustainable groundwater management can mean the difference between whether a species goes extinct or a community’s drinking water becomes contaminated. The stakes are high. Felice Pace, an activist who works for the North Coast Stream Flow Coalition, talks to Clean Water Action about salmon, surface flows, and the importance of community involvement…

Candice Meneghin serves on the board of the Fillmore and Piru Basins (FPB) Groundwater Sustainability Agency as an environmental representative for the Santa Clara River Environmental Groundwater Committee. She also serves on the board of a local nonprofit, Friends of the Santa Clara River, which both fills the Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) seat as the…

Published: November 12, 2019 How did you get involved with sustainable groundwater management issues? I have been following water issues in San Joaquin County for a long time because I used to work with Restore the Delta, which focuses on protecting fisheries and farming in the San Francisco Bay-Delta and estuary. While working on these…

Overview of your organization’s  involvement with sustainable groundwater management issues? The Freshwater Trust is most well-known for its work on protecting freshwater river ecosystems.  In California, a significant amount of surface water bodies are regulated and diverted through dams and other surface water infrastructure.  Surface water bodies also lose flow when the groundwater is depleted….

Adam Livingston is the Director of Planning and Policy at the Sequoia Riverlands Trust (SRT) How would you describe the reasons a land trust would get involved in sustainable groundwater management/ the intersection of what people think of as land conservation and doing sustainable groundwater work?  Sequoia Riverlands Trust (SRT) is a regional, accredited land…