Steering committee
regina hirsch
Regina Hirsch is dedicated to bringing appropriate best management solutions for healthy, resilient communities, starting with common ground solutions in neighborhoods as well as at a watershed scale. After getting the watershed monitoring bug at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board and the Morro Bay National Estuary Program, she moved to the Sierra Nevada for a different approach to reaching people and assessing effectiveness of non-point source pollution treatments. Regina founded Watershed Progressive, a consulting/contracting firm which focuses on onsite water best management practices aimed at rehydrating watersheds for healthy, resilient communities. Since 2009, Watershed Progressive has helped incubate, model, design and install projects throughout California and the arid West, restoring habitat and aiming to increase watershed hydrologic recharge functionality through water conservation, infiltration, and reuse. Living up near Yosemite, Regina is an avid kayaker, backpacker, and in her spare time, an executive board member of various organizations, such as The Telele Foundation, California Onsite Water Association and founder of Localizing California Waters. Knowing that what people can do on their own land is what can make the difference, Regina spends most her time getting the good word on creative, easy to implement, collaborative water solutions.
laura allen
Laura Allen is a founding member of Greywater Action and has spent the past 15 years exploring low-tech, urban, sustainable water solutions. She is the lead author of the San Francisco Graywater Design Guidelines for Outdoor Irrigation, and authored The Water-Wise Home: How to Conserve and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape (Storey Press, 2015) and Greywater, Green Landscape (2017). She has a BA in environmental science, a teaching credential, and a master’s degree in education. Laura leads classes and workshops on rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse, and composting toilets. Laura has presented widely on greywater reuse, including at the Water Smart Innovations Conference, Bioneers, California Environmental Health Association conference, and California Landscape Contractors Association conference. She’s participated in state greywater code developments in California and Washington State and is on the technical advisory committee for IAPMO’s Water Efficiency Standard (We-Stand). Laura was featured in an Ask This Old House episode on greywater and was the 2014 recipient of the Silicon Valley Water Conservation Award of Water Champion.
Julie Tumamait- Stenslie,
Native Chumash Elder
Commissioner Julie Tumamait-Stenslie is the chairperson of the Barbareno / Ventureno Band of Mission Indians. Commissioner Tumamait-Stenslie is a respected elder, singer, storyteller, and Cultural Resource Consultant/Advisor. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Ojai Valley Historical Society and Museum, the Board of Trustees and California Indian Advisory Committee for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Committee on the “Repatriation” of Native American ceremonial artifacts. Commissioner Tumamait-Stenslie currently serves on the Ojai Valley Museum Board of Trustees as well as the Oakbrook Chumash Interpretative Center Board. She has served as a consultant for Chumash Cultural Services since 1985. Commissioner Tumamait-Stenslie is an artist that uses native materials to create her jewelry, musical instruments, and basketry. She continues to practice and teach her native language.
Nick Weigel
Nick has over twenty years of engineering problem solving, project management, education experience as a Professional Engineer (PE) licensed in California. In his role as a civil engineer, Nick has specialized in the design of decentralized wastewater collection, treatment, and dispersal systems across the State of California. These projects range in size and complexity from single family residential systems to advanced treatment and dispersal systems for remote restaurants, resorts, and Caltrans rest areas.
As is a certified National Association of Wastewater Technicians (NAWT) instructor for the California Onsite Water Association (COWA), Nick has taught the principles of design, inspection, operations, and maintenance of decentralized wastewater systems throughout the United States to designers, regulators, installers, owners, and operators highlighting the importance of these roles.
Lindsay Mattos
Lindsay is the District Manager for the Tuolumne County Resource Conservation District (TCRCD) and the Administrator for the Tuolumne-Stanislaus Integrated Regional Water Management Authority (TSIRWMA.) Lindsay joined TCRCD in 2010 after graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in Agriculture Business. TCRCD provides education, technical and financial assistance to residents within Tuolumne County to facilitate conservation and sustainable agriculture and is home to the Landowner Resiliency Program. In 2013, after helping to form the TSIRWMA Joint Powers Authority, Lindsay became the Administrator and continues to support the region in that role.
Martha Davis
Martha Davis retired in late 2017 from her position as Assistant General Manager/Executive Manager for Policy Development at the Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA). Since 2000, Ms. Davis led many of the Agency’s award-winning planning and green programs including initiatives promoting water efficiency, renewable energy, storm water capture, recycled water and climate resiliency. Ms. Davis continues to serve on the board of directors of the California Section of the WateReuse Association, and on the boards of the Mono Lake Committee, Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, the Community Water Center, the Rose Foundation Northern California Grassroots Fund, and the recently established Water Efficiency Trust. Previously, Ms. Davis served as the Executive Director for Californians and the Land (1998-2000) and for the Mono Lake Committee (1984-1996). Under her leadership, the Mono Lake campaign culminated in a unanimous landmark public trust decision by the State Water Resources Control Board to protect Mono Lake. Ms. Davis graduated from Stanford University cum laude with a degree in human biology and received her master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She is the recipient of an honorary PhD in Public Policy from the Kennedy College in Oakland, California.
Robert Wilkinson
Dr. Robert C. Wilkinson is Adjunct Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, and Senior Lecturer Emeritus in the Environmental Studies Program, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The focus of Dr. Wilkinson’s teaching, research, and consulting is on water, energy, and climate policy. Dr. Wilkinson is a Senior Fellow with the California Council for Science and Technology. He co-chairs the U.S. Sustainable and Resilient Resources Roundtable, advises government agencies, NGOs, and businesses in the US and abroad, and he serves on a number of advisory boards. Dr. Wilkinson served as coordinator for the California Region for the US Global Change Research Program and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for the first US climate assessment. In 1990, Dr. Wilkinson established and directed the Graduate Program in Environmental Science and Policy at the Central European University based in Budapest, Hungary.
Trathen Heckman
Trathen Heckman is the founder and Director of Daily Acts Organization. He serves on the Board of California Water Efficiency Partnership, co-founded Climate Action Petaluma and is engaged in a range of sustainability and resilience-focused networks and alliances. Trathen helps people and groups reclaim the power of their actions to regenerate self, nature and community. He lives in the Petaluma River Watershed where he grows food, medicine and wonder while working to compost apathy and lack.
Jann dorman
Jann Dorman is Friends of the River’s (FOR) Executive Director and Board Chair. She has been a member of the FOR board since 2012. Jann worked for over 23 years for a large national non-profit healthcare organization, holding various roles as vice president leading large operations, improvement and innovation efforts. Jann has always been drawn to the power of wilderness, water and rivers. She spent most of the 1970’s as a river rafting guide on the Stanislaus, American, Tuolumne, and many other great western whitewater rivers. Jann now lives across the street from the American river in Coloma with her husband Don.
Jann holds bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree in Physical Therapy from Stanford University School of Medicine, and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.
lonnie coplen
Lonnie Coplen, ENV SP, CPHB is Founder and President of ARC Alternative and Renewable Construction LLC, a Construction Management Company, which is focused exclusively on high performance/low impact project development at the community scale. ARC projects include mobility and transportation system improvements, ultra-efficient building projects and affordable energy efficiency demonstrations for the growing zero-waste/circular economy market.
deborah bloome
Deborah is Senior Policy Director for Accelerate Resilience LA (ARLA). She has 25+ years’ experience in creating international, national, and local environmental and natural resource policies. Deborah utilizes a watershed approach to address multiple environmental and social issues in a region, and her deep experience in, and commitment to, facilitating multi-agency and multi-sector collaborations has been a recurring theme throughout her career. She has worked at the U.S. Department of the Interior as well as the City of LA, and spent over 14 years leading policy and research at TreePeople. Deborah also holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from UCLA.
LCW ADVISOR’S CIRCLE
Michael Ableman
Fairview Gardens Farm, Author of Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it.
Cora Snyder
Senior Researcher, Pacific Institute
Elena Rios
(Tribal, TBA)
Dennis O'Connor
California Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water, retired
Mike Antos
Senior Integrated Water Management Specialist, Stantec
Newsha Ajami
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Tara Moran
CEO, California Water Data Consortium