UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

This course will familiarize students with the complex infrastructure used to meet human water demands; competing uses and demands; water and wastewater infrastructure; technologies to enable recovery of water, energy, and other resources from wastewater; supply planning; trends and forecasting; costs, pricing and financing; environmental justice; methods to assess sustainability; regulatory, policy and institutional challenges; and water’s contribution to other sectors (e.g., energy, food, buildings). Innovation, both barriers and opportunities, will be highlighted. California and the U.S. will be emphasized but global challenges will be discussed. Students will study, critique, and recommend improvements for a real-world system.

The course provides a framework to address contemporary water-resources problems, and to achieve water security for local areas and broader regions. Students will become aware of critical water-resources issues at local, national and global scales, and learn to formulate solutions for water-resources problems using engineering, natural-science and social-science tools. The main focus is on California and the Western United States, with comparative analysis for other regions.

Examines the subject of water in California, drawing upon scholarly articles, essays, memoir, film, photographs, legislation. In collaboration with the Teaching Library, 50 explores techniques for conducting online archival research and using primary sources. Cosiders a variety of players in the story of water rights in California, including federal and state representatives, conservationists, Native Americans, and Japanese Americans.

The story of water development in California provides compelling examples of water politics, the social and environmental consequences of redistributing water, and the relationships between water uses, energy, and climate.This course provides the historical, scientific, legal, institutional, and economic background needed to understand the social and ecological challenges of providing water for California’s growing population, agricultural economy, and other uses – all of which are made more complex by climate change.

This course will explore the many manifestations of water and sanitation justice and injustice on interlocking scales (i.e. local, national, transnational) while illustrating analytical ideas connecting to a range of social processes including claims for human rights, deprivation and exclusion, urbanization and infrastructure development, and privatization of land and water. We will look at various case studies in high-income and low-income countries and use key technical and social concepts to examine rights, equity, and justice with respect to water and sanitation. This course partially satisfies requirements for the ERG Summer Minor/Certificate in Sustainability.

This course engages students at the intersection of environmental justice, social justice, and engineering to explore how problems that are commonly defined in technical terms are at their roots deeply socially embedded. Through partnerships with community-based organizations, students are trained to recognize the socio-political nature of technical problems so that they may approach solutions in ways that prioritize social justice. Topics covered include environmental engineering as it relates to air, water, and soil contamination; race, class, and privilege; expertise; ethics; and engaged citizenship. This course cannot be used to complete any engineering technical unit requirements.

Wastewater, Water Reuse, Water Systems, Drinking Water, Sanitation, Pollution, Rural, South Asia, Asia, China, India, North America, California, Water Security, Technology, Nutrient Management, Civil Society, Government, Economy, Development, Resource Distribution

Kristina Hill focuses on urban ecology and hydrology in relationship to physical design and social justice issues, adapting urban districts and shore zones to the new challenges associated with climate change, adaptation and coastal design.

Her projects include:
1) Urban water system design that supports salmon health
2) Potential for designs to help protect coastal communities as sea levels rise internationally
3) Adaptation and coastal design in the San Francisco Bay Area

Charisma Acey focuses on access to drinking water and sanitation, environmental justice, poverty reduction, food security, collaborative governance and participatory research methods.

Her projects include:
1) The human rights to water paradigm in urban and peri-urban governance
2) Water utility customers in Kenya and their willingness to pay more to improve sanitation in low-income communities
3) Infrastructure imaginaries, informal urbanism, creativity and ecology in Lagos, Nigeria

Justin Remais focuses on advancing methods for estimating the dynamics and spread of infectious diseases in changing environments, such as those associated with rapid urbanization, industrialization, changes in water resources, and an increasingly variable climate. His Interests lie in: Environmental dynamics of infectious diseases, Global environmental change and health, Methodological issues in the projection of infectious disease risks in response to environmental change, Optimizing infectious disease surveillance in low- and middle-income countries, Mathematical and statistical modeling of infectious disease transmission, and Dynamics of waterborne and vector-borne infections in rapidly changing environments

His current projects include:
1) Hydroclimatic determinants of waterborne diseases in tropical settings
2) Influence of drought and extreme rainfall on dust-borne infections in California
3) Hydroclimatology’s role in determining the epidemiology and ecology of vector-borne diseases in urban areas.

Michael Mascarenhas focuses on water access and environmental justice, water charity and affordability, Indigenous water rights, and human right to water.

His projects include:
1) Thirsty for Environmental Justice. Flint, Detroit, and the War over Michigan’s Water.
2) Previous Projects:
a. Where the Waters Divide. Neoliberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada (Lexington Books, 2015)
b. New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity: Good Intentions on the Road to Help (Indiana University Press, 2017)

Holly Doremus focuses on environmental law, natural resource law, and law and science. Eight of Doremus’s articles in the legal literature have been selected for reprinting in the Land Use and Environment Law Review, an annual compilation of the year’s leading works. Her recent publications include Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics (Island Press, 2008) (with A. Dan Tarlock); “Scientific and Political Integrity in Environmental Policy,” Texas Law Review (2008); “Data Gaps in Natural Resource Management: Sniffing for Leaks Along the Information Pipeline,” Indiana Law Journal (2008); and “Precaution, Science, and Learning While Doing in Natural Resource Management,” Washington Law Review (2007).

One of her projects includes:
1) Hydropower relicensing in California

Charlotte Smith focuses on impact assessment and evaluation of water systems and public health in urban and rural Mexican and Central American communities. She studies microbial ecology of waterborne pathogens and bacterial endosymbionts of free-living protozoa with a focus on microbial and chemical contamination of water.

Her projects include:
1) A joint Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara (ITESO)/UCB project exploring the environmental, occupational, and behavioral factors that are associated with diarrheal and kidney diseases in rural communities on the bank of Lake Chapala. Three UCB MPH students fulfilled their MPH practicum requirement and launched the project with interdisciplinary ITESO collaborators and local NGOs.
2) A joint project with REACH in Tanzania working on improved water quality and assessing public health relations.

CSSC is a broad network of student sustainability organizations throughout the UC, CSU, and CCC systems. Managed and coordinated by students and recent alumni, CSSC strives to implement policies and programs at various institutional levels that enhance the three key components of sustainability: ecology, economy, and equity. It offers student activists a community of support and ways to get involved with the larger statewide sustainability movement.

The Berkeley Food Institute addresses many of the impediments to systemic change in food systems by creating productive connections between members of the scholarly community, farmers and other producers, non-governmental organizations, governments, and civil society. Facilitating such connections brings about social movements and civic initiatives that protest and resist the predominance of the industrialized food system, catalyzing alternative, localized, regional, or global “agri-food networks” that can improve food sovereignty, environmental conditions, and human health and justice. These movements and initiatives represent exciting potential for progressive change. BFI builds links and overcomes gaps or silos that have commonly impeded progress in this field. It has many projects including one that combines research and outreach to foster innovative, sustainable urban farming methods to improve ecological resilience and meet urgent food needs. Lead investigators and community collaborators will help develop transformative solutions to improve the ecological sustainability of urban farming systems by building soil health, conserving water, and promoting beneficial insects. The project will also foster economic viability by improving distribution of urban-produced nutritious food to make it more accessible and affordable for urban populations and to minimize on-farm food waste. This project will benefit farmers, low-income consumers, and the educators, advocates and lawmakers who serve them. Research is taking place in the Bay Area, and lessons will be valuable for other urban communities throughout the state and country.