Hello to all you party attendees and to all of you who helped make The Watershed Project’s 25th Anniversary Celebration on June 30, Rock the Bay, a smashing success! The event was so much fun and we really appreciate everyone that turned out. It was a treat to see so many friends, community members, and supporters after so many dark months of COVID. Thanks for celebrating with us! We’d like to truly thank the fabulous venue, Riggers Loft, who provided us with a superb space and top-notch food, wine, and cider. We’re so glad that we met Barrio Manouche and they were available to …
Ebb & Flow
The Newsletter of The Watershed Project
What’s in Your Watershed? |Gorgeous and Poisonous: The Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly
By Martha Berthelsen This is a What’s in Your Watershed? archive edition, meaning it was originally published back in 2014 and it to this day one of our most popular articles. Photos differ from the original article. The iridescent blue-black pipevine swallowtail butterfly will only lay her eggs on the California Dutchman's-pipe vine, and I was delighted when one of them chose the plant in my backyard this March. The caterpillars that hatched a few weeks later were tiny and seemed fragile, but their vibrant black and orange colors accented with spiny protrusions give a clear warning …
SOS: Building a community of creek stewards
The rains have stopped, so for The Watershed Project that means it’s trash assessment season. Since 2014, The Watershed Project has been conducting “hot spot” trash assessments along several creek sites in Contra Costa County to fulfill the stormwater trash reduction requirements set forth by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. In addition to removing trash along 300 linear feet of the creek channel and along the banks, we collect data on the types of trash found in order to determine the main sources of trash and develop control strategies to achieve the ambitious zero trash goal by …
Ravenous and Deadly | The California Praying Mantis
The following is one of our most popular What’s In Your Watershed articles in the Ebb and Flow archive. It was written by Luis Martinez. It was a hot humid afternoon, just another workday in the Richmond Greenway Bioswale for The Watershed Project's Green Collar Corps. I was tending the trees when something caught my eye in one of the leafs in a maple tree. At first glance this leaf looked unusually slender and kind of beat up-as if it had been chewed on by a pest. But as I got closer, I noticed this "leaf" was not a part of the tree but a Praying Mantis. Stagmomantis californica, …
Rock The Bay 2022
Hi Watershed Lovers! We are excited to invite you to join us for The Watershed Project’s 25th Anniversary Party and benefit concert. We will have a taco bar, beer, wine and great music by Barrio Manouche for a night of rumba and flamenco gypsy jazz. Rock The Bay: Celebrating 25 Years of Watersheds and Communities will be a fun and engaging opportunity to reconnect with our community after we come out of the pandemic years. We will bring our supporters, partners, alumni, and the community at large together to celebrate 25 years of accomplishments and look towards the next 25 …
Blast From the Past – Rainwater Harvesting
TWP’s rainwater harvesting adventures began over a decade ago when we taught our first Watershed Teaching Tools workshop for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in 2010. That’s when The Watershed Project first crossed paths with Kat Sawyer (who is now our Greening Urban Watersheds Manager). Kat had just completed the installation of a rainwater harvesting system at McKinley Elementary, and TWP was looking for a SFUSD school with a rainwater system to host our teacher training featuring rainwater catchment as a teaching tool. It was the first of many collaborations with Kat to offer …
The Watershed Project Welcomes New Community Engagement Manager
The Watershed Project is proud to announce and pleased to share a little bit about our new Community Engagement Manager, Naama Raz-Yaseef. Below, Naama answers a few questions about community, her favorite park, her passions and her experiences that led her to The Watershed Project. What watershed do you live in and why is it special to you? I live in the Wildcat Creek watershed. Now I get to live and work in the same watershed. I think that’s pretty special! I became a TWP staff only three weeks ago, and since, I have already taken part in two of our creek cleanup projects and …
Connecting with Nature: Students’ Reflections
By Cecília F, Clover F, Danica M, and Pranshi B At The Watershed Project, our mission is to inspire San Francisco Bay Area communities to understand, appreciate, and protect our local watersheds. One of the ways we connect bay area communities to their local watersheds is through education. Over the past year, the education team at TWP has had the opportunity to work closely with students from TK-12th grade, discussing a range of topics from the water cycle to climate change to green infrastructure. One of the schools we have had the pleasure of partnering with this year is Olinda …
