May CreekSpeak: Regional Watershed Planning to Advance the Human Right to Water in California

Thu, May 20th 2021, 7:00pm
Online Zoom

Every year more than a million Californians are impacted by unsafe water running from their taps. Many more can’t  afford their water bills and increasingly, some Californians have no water coming from their taps at all. Together these conditions constitute a drinking water crisis, the impact of which falls disproportionately on low-income people of color. Because water is a shared resource that does not abide by political boundaries, regional watershed planning programs like the state’s Integrated Regional Watershed Management (IRWM) program and the 2015 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) have an important role to play in addressing and preventing these inequities. Yet integrating social, environmental, and economic goals in these programs has been challenging and many opportunities for advancing co-benefits have yet to be fully explored. This talk will cover drinking water injustice in California and relate it to ongoing watershed planning efforts including opportunities and challenges for leveraging regional planning for building a more just and sustainable future.

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Kristin Dobbins (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology. Her dissertation research focuses on the challenges and opportunities associated with California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) for Environmental Justice and the Human Right to Water.