Remembering Bruce Wolfe

People



19
Mar

Remembering Bruce Wolfe

Bruce H. Wolfe, for 15 years the Executive Officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, suffered a fatal heart attack on February 25 while out on a run at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Doing what he loved, one inevitably notes; but family, friends, and long-time colleagues in the water world would have preferred to have him around much longer. Wolfe was an aficionado of the sport of orienteering, a kind of racing with map and compass that requires both speed and accurate navigation. Maintaining precision under time pressure: that could be a pretty good metaphor also for the professional life of this gifted man. Raised in Piedmont, Wolfe attended Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, where he ran,...
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19
Mar

Time Travel on the Bay

By Aleta George “In day-to-day life we look at the world in a three-dimensional view,” Liam O’Donoghue, host and producer of the award-winning podcast East Bay Yesterday, says, “but when you know history, you can look at it through four dimensions because you can see into the past using your imagination.” On a recent boat tour of the East Bay shoreline led by O’Donoghue, Captain Andy threaded his vessel Pacific Pearl through the Berkeley pier as if it were a time portal. “History makes me feel more emotionally connected to myself and where I live,” says Jozefina Logu, one of the women at the bow. At one point the tour stopped at the Brothers Islands to view the lighthouse-turned-bed-and-breakfast and...
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05
Mar

Dennis McEwan finished work on the 430-acre Yolo Flyway Farms Tidal Habitat Restoration Project in September 2018. A month later, he retired.

The timing was no accident; he’d delayed his departure from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to see the project through after helping to launch it ten years earlier. But even from the very beginning of his career, McEwan had been committed to doing all he could for declining species in and around the Delta. That “calling,” as he put it, began with 25 years at the California Department of Fish and Game (now Fish and Wildlife) supporting Pacific salmon and steelhead trout—including protecting valuable freshwater habitat upstream of the Delta and helping to get the coho salmon listed under the California Endangered Species Act. In 2007, McEwan jumped to DWR and was soon leading an effort to restore...
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05
Mar

A career spent monitoring imperiled fish has given Randy Baxter a strong sense of the vulnerability of aquatic ecosystems.

“We’ve overtaxed the system,” he says. Baxter officially retired from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife last August, but still works two or three days a week as a “reemployed annuitant”—a big change from supervising a staff of 14 studying the threatened longfin smelt and other native fish. The reduced schedule gives him more time to fish, in California and on British Columbia’s Skeena River, and tend his orchids and carnivorous plants. Chicago-born Baxter grew up in Pacifica with San Pedro Creek in his back yard; watching fish from the creek bank sparked a lifelong interest that led him to a bachelor’s degree from Humboldt State University’s fisheries program and a master’s thesis on salmon spawning behavior. An early...
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05
Mar

Jan Thompson has always been most interested in what happens down at the bottom of the Bay.

The zone of interaction between the critters in the oozes and the water column above—where specks of sediment, nutrients, and fish food cycle through clam siphons into the Estuary—is the particular specialty of this US Geological Survey scientist. “I’m most proud of the research I’ve done establishing a solid connection between bivalve grazing and phytoplankton growth,” she says. When USGS first hired Thompson, who retired in October 2019, most women in the Menlo Park office were secretaries. She’s since trained dozens of female and minority scientists, and also received the Survey’s first ever diversity award. “I learned a lot from hiring a bunch of kids who weren’t like me,” says Thompson, who describes herself as “middleclass white bread.” As a...
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05
Mar

After nearly 30 years in refuge management on public lands, Anne Morkill is leaving government, but not wildlife, behind.

Following her February 2020 retirement from managing the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which she led for nearly a decade, Morkill is taking the helm at the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, a nonprofit that stewards one of the largest freshwater wetlands complexes on the northern California coast. Morkill believes that San Francisco Bay provides unusual potential for restoring habitat for wildlife in a highly urban environment. “That’s what makes it so special,” she says, citing the Bay Area’s history of environmental activism, the broad coalition of groups that support wetland restoration for both its ecological and economic benefits, and a citizenry that recognizes the value of a healthy ecosystem and is willing to provide funding to achieve...
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05
Mar

Bob Fujimura spent his entire career with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Bob Fujimura spent his entire career with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. From 1987 until his retirement in late 2018, Fujimura served in a variety of roles at the department—but he is likely best known for heading up its long-term monitoring of native fishes in the Bay and Delta. Beginning in the mid-2000s, he oversaw annual smelt surveys with far-reaching implications for management and conservation, including the Spring Kodiak Trawl, which determines the relative abundance and distribution of spawning Delta smelt; the Smelt Larva Survey, which provides near real-time distribution data for longfin smelt larvae; and the 20mm Survey, which tracks post-larval juvenile Delta smelt throughout their historical spring range. “My goal was to provide good science throughout...
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05
Mar

“The Bay is a jewel ― can you imagine if it stunk like it did in the ’50s or if it was green with algae?” asks retiring Executive Director of the Bay Area Clean Water Agencies (BACWA) David Williams, reflecting on his work over much of the last decade to address nutrient pollution.

Working with the 37 wastewater treatment plants that discharge into the Bay, as well as with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, Williams helped establish a science-based regional permit for nutrients from the plants. The forward-thinking permit includes nature-based solutions like using wastewater to nurture horizontal levees or create wetlands, buffering the Bay shore from crashing waves as the sea rises. “We have a very enlightened Water Board,” Williams says, “because of that, instead of fighting, the wastewater community is interested in collaborating.” Giving water agencies options lets them choose solutions that work best for them, combining the greatest efficacy with the lowest cost and the fewest unintended consequences. “It’s important to make sure water regulations are...
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05
Mar

Rainer Hoenicke is optimistic about the changes he saw in his five years as the Delta Stewardship Council’s Science Director.

“People are coming to the table and realizing we need to be anticipating and forecasting how to adapt,” he says. Prior to joining the Science Program, Hoenicke served for nearly a decade as deputy and executive director of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, where he managed two Boards of Directors and reorganized the Institute’s program areas. “I felt challenged to do something different,” he says of the move, “since the Delta is much more controversial territory.” In Hoenicke’s eyes, the capstone to his career came in October 2018. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation increased its science allocation for California, and it and the Council were able to use pre-existing proposal submittal and evaluation infrastructure developed by the California Department of...
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05
Dec

Striving for Equitable Outcomes

By Audrey Mei Yi Brown Five people of color, four of whom who were women, took center stage in a full amphitheater for a 2019 State of the Estuary conference panel discussing how to achieve more equitable outcomes in both human and estuary health. Mishal Durrani, an undergraduate researcher at UC Berkeley, observed from the audience. “As a woman of color from an underrepresented community, it was powerful to see a panel with so many women of color represented.” As multi-racial as it was multidisciplinary, the diversity on the stage was striking. From community frontlines to the university to the EPA, each panelist brought expertise in equity work from a different field. Despite the diversity in their fields, it quickly...
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05
Dec

Speakers suggest communities could benefit from more green space, local knowledge, and engagement with homeless.

Green Matrix Erica Spotswood, an applied ecologist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, has spent years studying biodiversity and its importance to ecosystems. “We have lost sight of something that is very simple but is not obvious to us now, which is that we need the same things biodiversity needs,” she said at the conference. She and other SFEI scientists are making the case for increasing biodiversity in cities, and have published a toolkit for how to do so in a recent publication, “Making Nature’s City.” At the same conference, C.N.E. Corbin, a Ph.D. candidate in environmental science at UC Berkeley, said that many cities were built to reflect the idea that cities and nature should not mix. “Historically and...
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19
Sep

New Regional Rainmaker

By Joe Eaton Environmental issues were important to Michael Montgomery as a young man. Montgomery’s career path led to 33 years with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, where he gained a wealth of experience in navigating complex regulatory landscapes to protect water resources, and ultimately to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, where he is now executive officer. “The Bay Area has a strong tradition of coming up with collaborative solutions,” he says. That’s how he intends to address the range of issues the Regional Board handles. As for the evolving roles of federal and state regulators, Montgomery sees a mixed picture. “There’s always going to be a relationship between the state and U.S. EPA,” he...
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16
Aug

California Sun Podcast Interview with ESTUARY’s Editor Dives into All Things Bay & Delta on the Front Burner Today

This August the California Sun’s Jeff Schechtman interviewed ESTUARY magazine’s editor in chief Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, also a long-time Bay Area science writer, about her personal opinions on the resiliency of the largest estuary on the West Coast, the challenges facing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, and the potential impacts of climate change and sea level rise on the San Francisco Bay.  Listen to the 20-minute podcast here. Mentions: Nutrients, Toxics, Giant Marsh, Adaptation Atlas, Resilience, Sea Level Rise impacts, BCDC Art, Oro Loma Horizontal Levee, UC Berkeley, Regional Planning, Franks Tract, Central Delta Corridor, North Delta Arc, State of the Estuary, climate-smart infrastructure and more. Links to Topics Referenced Climate Smart Infrastructure for California- Paying it Forward Report Adapting to...
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17
Jun

Bay-Delta Leaders Comment on Climate

Edited by Cariad Hayes Thronson These magazine pages share the opinions of various new leaders in the Estuary management world about climate change. “The biggest challenge is that it is difficult for people, including decision-makers, to plan for uncertain, long-range challenges. We know that in order to make the greatest impact we need to start now,” says BCDC’s Dana Brechwald. Climate change is forcing some regulatory agencies, including the State Water Resources Control Board and BCDC, to fundamentally shift the way they approach their work.  And research-focused groups, such as Point Blue and the Delta Stewardship Council’s Science Program, are finding that climate change is creating ever-more complex, multi-faceted questions that urgently need answers.
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17
Jun

A Tricky Ballet

By Michael Hunter Adamson Malea G., a fourth grader in Mr. Moore’s class at Bayview’s Malcolm X Academy Elementary School, shows me her Tower of Power. It’s a wooden, trapezoidal structure roughly two feet high and decorated with stickers naming personal qualities she’s proud of. I ask her which of these she might turn to when dealing with climate change. “Leadership,” Malea answers after a brief pause. “If there was a flood, someone would need to take charge.” Working in partnership with a program called Y-PLAN, Mr. Moore’s students built towers, made posters, and collaborated on an extensive diorama that offers a vision of a more resilient Bayview and Islais Creek for their families and community.
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Wildlife and Way of Life in the North Delta?

There may not be a way to give everyone what they want from the Delta. But there are ways to restore ecosystems while preserving local communities. This is true even along State Route 160, which traverses the most populated and most intensively farmed part of the region. The highway follows the Sacramento River into the Delta, twisting and turning around leveed islands between Freeport and Rio Vista. This is the North Delta and it's a spectacular drive...
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13
May

Joaquin Esquivel is impatient with the narrative that has dominated California water policy for decades, especially when it comes to the Delta and the eternal tug-of-war between farms, cities and the environment.

“For so long in the water space you’ve had these false dichotomies where you are being told you have to choose one or the other,” says Esquivel, who Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board in February. “These narratives can fuel themselves, they take root in communities, but they don’t really do much to get to the heart of the policy question.” A native of the Coachella Valley, Esquivel served on the State Board for two years prior to his appointment. He cites literature as a particular passion, and had planned on a career in academia before a college internship in former Senator Barbara Boxer’s Washington, D.C. office turned into a full-time job. “What I...
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13
May

Jessica Fain got a crash course in resilience planning when Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012.

Fain, Planning Director for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) since October, was part of a three-person office in the Waterfront and Open Space Division of New York’s Department of City Planning. “We were doing a small study on adaptation options,” she recalls. “In the middle of that, Sandy hit. Suddenly all eyes were on us.” Fain brings that background to a setting unlike New York in many ways. Instead of five boroughs, for example, she’s dealing with a multiplicity of counties, cities, and special districts. But the Bay Area presents new opportunities: “There’s more space for green infrastructure, wetlands, adaptive solutions at a large scale. New York is so constrained; it’s built out to the edge.” She’s involved...
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13
May

Therese McMillan inherits huge challenges as the new Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The Bay Area region is beleaguered by traffic, a crippling housing shortage, and growing inequality. MTC plays a role in all these areas. “We have a master coordinator role in being able to knit the region together through land use and transportation planning, and major dollar investments,” says McMillan of the MTC, which distributes billions of public transportation dollars collected annually by local, state and federal governments, although she notes that the agency doesn’t “have land use authority, or our own transit system—that is vested in the cities and counties, and separate transit agencies.” While land use and transportation are squarely within MTC’s purview, for others issues—housing affordability and growing economic inequities—MTC must partner with myriad other agencies across nine...
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13
May

Susan Tatayon wants to bridge the emerging communication gap between Delta science and policy.

While Tatayon, who was installed as Chair of the Delta Stewardship Council in January, sees good communication efforts on the part of council scientists and staff, not everyone on the receiving end gets their drift. “What I’m learning from some council members and others is that they don’t understand the connection between the science being done and the policies they want to make.” Tatayon assumes her new position after a career that includes stints at The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources. It was at DWR as a young staffer in the Department of Planning that Tatayon discovered her interest in environmental protection: “I was assigned to read impassioned letters about saving Mono...
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