Brown Bag Presentation with Peter Drekmeier

Stanford University and its neighboring communities receive the majority of their water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. The Hetch Hetchy System is currently undergoing $4.7 billion worth of seismic upgrades, and to pay for these improvements, water rates have doubled over the past few years. As a result of rising prices, along with population growth and potential water supply reductions due to environmental regulation, droughts and climate change, interest in tapping local groundwater resources is growing.
 
San Francisquito Creek is a major source of groundwater recharge on the Midpeninsula, yet there has been little coordination between water agencies in Santa Clara and in San Mateo Counties.  To address this disconnect, local stakeholders have been meeting for the past year to discuss better groundwater monitoring and management in the San Francisquito Creek area in order to avoid over-pumping that could lead to land subsidence, salt water intrusion, and contaminant migration.
 
Peter will discuss these efforts, along with potential sources of groundwater recharge, including advanced treated recycled water from the Regional Water Quality Control Plant.  A coordinated effort could lead to a more reliable groundwater supply, local stream flow augmentation, and reduced reliance on the Tuolumne River.
 

Peter Drekmeier is the Policy Director for the Tuolumne River Trust, a nonprofit working to protect and restore the river from its headwaters in Yosemite National Park to its confluence with the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley. Peter was raised in Palo Alto, where his parents served on the Stanford faculty. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 1987 with a Political Science degree, and has been an environmental advocate ever since. In 1990 he founded Bay Area Action (now Acterra), and has coordinated two international Earth Day campaigns. Peter served on the Palo Alto City Council from 2006 to 2010, and was mayor in 2009.

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Water in the West is a program of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Bill Lane Center for the American West.