CEE 200 Sec 2 Seminar: Esther Feldman

Speaker: Esther Feldman
Affiliation: Community Conservation Solutions

This seminar has been rescheduled to Feb. 22.

UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

 

C&EE 200 Section 2 Seminar

Environmental and Water Resources Engineering

Green Solutions: Transforming Stormwater into Water Supplies and Reducing Greenhouse Gases with Nature-Based Solutions

Esther Feldman

President, Community Conservation Solutions

 

Community Conservation Solutions’ (CCS) innovative Green Solutions integrates data into an interactive web tool to help decision-makers:

  • Prioritize stormwater/dry weather runoff capture projects on public lands
  • Convert public lands to “smart” parks, habitat and open space
  • Naturally capture, clean and store runoff for re-use
  • Create new green open space in disadvantaged communities
  • Restore native habitat
  • Transform runoff into usable water
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions

CCS’ metrics-driven Green Solutions tool provides a strategic decision-making tool showing where to implement runoff capture projects to maximize water supply, water quality, habitat, greenhouse gas reduction and community benefits. CCS’ Green Solutions provides a quantified, science-based digital tool that shows how to use lands already in public ownership to build green networks of “smart” parks, habitat and open space to naturally capture, clean and store stormwater and dry weather runoff, transforming it into usable water while creating green open space in disadvantaged communities.

In the Upper L.A. River Watershed, the Green Solutions tool prioritized 453 potential stormwater and dry weather runoff projects on existing public lands for implementation, focusing on diverting and re-use runoff from nearby stormdrains. All project sites are within 500’ to 1,500’ of a large stormdrain or channel, ensuring a continuous supply of runoff.

The Green Solutions overturns long-held, conventional assumptions about the perceived limitations on the use of soils and plants in capturing and cleaning runoff, and demonstrates a practical way to address runoff on a watershed scale.  Green Solutions demonstrates a practical, replicable way to transform stormwater and dry weather runoff into sustainable local water supplies, recharging groundwater, creating new natural habitat and green open space in under-served and disadvantaged communities, sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) created by importing water supplies over long distances.

The Green Solutions tool can help public agencies meet requirements of the State’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards and the U.S. Clean Water Act, and addresses urgent water supply, climate change, habitat loss, public health and community quality of life concerns.

CCS created the Green Solutions Project technical tool to help solve a bundle of serious problems facing most communities in California: disconnected water management systems and increasing pressure on limited water supplies; untreated stormwater and dry weather runoff that pollutes our rivers, lakes, bays and ocean waters; climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions; habitat fragmentation; and lack of natural open space in disadvantaged communities. CCS’ Green Solutions methodology is applicable and replicable throughout California, and can be implemented in any area which needs to address stormwater and which wishes to make best use of limited public funding.

Where:   4275 Boelter Hall

When:     11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Thursday, February 22, 2018

 

Esther Feldman has helped create over $3 billion in new public funds throughout California and the U.S. to acquire new parks and to improve beaches, rivers, and natural lands. She is the President of Community Conservation Solutions (CCS), which develops practical solutions to conservation problems by integrating science, people and nature. Her successes include creation of the two-square mile Baldwin Hills Park in the heart of urban Los Angeles and purchase of the L.A. Conservation Corps’  Clean and Green center for at-risk youth. In the 1990s, she led the first land acquisitions along the L.A. River in Elysian Valley, helping launch today’s LA River revitalization. She leads the innovative, metrics-driven Green Solutions project to help strategically implement stormwater capture projects to create new water supplies using nature-based solutions. She directed the L.A. River Greenway Trail and Habitat Restoration project in the San Fernando Valley, which created a continuous 3-mile river trail walking loop and set a new precedent for restoring natural ecosystems along the L.A. River.

 

She has served on the L.A. County Planning Commission, has a B.S. in Soil and Water Science from UC Davis, and is an avid outdoorswoman.

 

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Feb 22, 2018
12:00 am

Location:
Boelter Hall 4275
4275 Boelter Hall Los Angeles CA 90095