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By Erin Loury
The recipe: gather an assortment of graduate students from a variety of institutions and mix them up by study area. Infuse them with knowledge, then turn them loose with some flip charts and colored markers, and let them simmer for 48 hours. Yields: a slew of creative ideas to help the City of Pacific Grove, Calif. improve the water quality of storm runoff.
Such was the mission for a weekend course in interdisciplinary problem solving I participated in with 17 other graduate students through the Monterey Area Research Institutions’ Network for Education (MARINE) in December 2010. MARINE helps the Center for Ocean Solutions create future ocean leaders by enhancing graduate education in the Monterey, Calif. region, and this course was just one of many in its diverse lineup of skill-building programs for graduate students. Our challenge was to don the hat of a scientific consultant, synthesize relevant information and make a recommendation to a client about an issue at the land-sea interface. Specifically, we were asked to identify one concrete opportunity that Pacific Grove could pursue to improve the quality of stormwater runoff into Monterey Bay.
Creating the course was a multi-month process, thanks to the hard work of Stanford faculty lead Nicole Ardoin, curriculum intern Julie Stewart who is also a student at Hopkins Marine Station, and MARINE Program Manager, Margaret Krebs. Reflecting the strength of the MARINE network, the course drew participants from institutions around Monterey Bay, including University of California, Santa Cruz; Moss Landing Marine Laboratories; Cal State Monterey Bay; the Monterey Institute for International Studies and Stanford University. As a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the MARINE representative for my campus, I was excited to attend the course to gain some valuable and applicable skills.
We converged at Hopkins Marine Station on a Friday morning, a fitting location given that Hopkins is a member of the MARINE network and is located in Pacific Grove. We quickly learned that our assignment was more than just a school exercise. Sarah Hardgrave, the senior planner for Pacific Grove and Bridget Hoover of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary were our real clients who looked to us for ideas to improve the quality of water that flowed from the city into Monterey Bay. The winning proposal could be funded by a grant from California. As we introduced ourselves around the room, the interdisciplinary nature of the course became clear; we were a diverse group of biologists, chemists, oceanographers, policy students and engineers.
Given that we had a mere 48 hours to become “experts” on stormwater management, what followed was a crash course in the regulations of stormwater, the Clean Water Act, Areas of Biological Significance, and “who’s who” in the local government and nonprofit world. Many of us usually give little thought to where water goes when it rains and the potential problems caused when it cannot soak into the ground. Impermeable surfaces like parking lots, streets and rooftops act like giant waterproof tarps that force the rain to flow to stormwater drains, collecting contaminants as it goes. Metals from car brake pads, fertilizers from lawns and organic material from pet feces are just some of the pollutants that get swept out into the bay.
Since the workshop emphasized teamwork to tackle our challenge, we were assigned to four smaller groups, each a mix of science and policy backgrounds. Right from the start, we had a discussion of how our backgrounds shaped our perspectives, which proved helpful in understanding how a policy student and an engineer would approach the same problem in different ways. We consulted with our teams throughout the first day, taking turns in various roles such as facilitating discussions and mediating when team members disagreed. As the first day drew to a close, I felt stuffed with information – and an absolutely delicious dinner – but couldn’t ignore the knot in my stomach. The pressure of our impending deadline was palpable, and I worried how we would bring everything together into a tangible product.
My fears were allayed when we returned to our meeting room after dinner to see the tables covered with white butcher paper, like a family restaurant. Elin Kelsey, a writer and science communication specialist, guided us in an exercise in creativity called a "conversation café." Armed with colored markers and the paper in front of us, Elin asked us to contemplate who were the most essential people and groups to engage in our issue, and what were the best ways to unleash their passionate involvement?
Loosened up after a packed day, the ideas started to fly and colorful words and doodles bloomed across the butcher paper. We talked about kids and schools, business certification, garden competitions, financial incentives, tourism and even celebrity endorsements. At the end of the evening, it seemed our challenge wouldn’t be a shortage of ideas but picking one to recommend.
The second day of the workshop featured inspiring talks that helped us turn our ideas into something concrete. Robert Ketley, self-proclaimed “stormwater king” of Watsonville, Calif., discussed the model programs he implemented to reduce and clean up his city’s runoff, from street sweeping to vegetative filtration. Raphael Garcia, a design consultant at Rana Creek, an ecological design firm, discussed many innovative projects including the iconic green roof of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. As luck would have it, it began to rain so we were able walk around the neighborhood observing the flow of stormwater in action. Raphael pointed out stormwater outfalls, invasive plants and the opportunities for green landscaping. We scoped out opportunities to implement solutions, envisioning rain barrels and rain gardens in the houses around us.
With final presentations scheduled for the next morning, our groups adjourned to separate rooms to craft recommendations, with Margaret and Nicole helping us structure our approach and tackle the project in manageable sections. A few simple pointers revolutionized our brainstorming: don’t censor your own ideas, don’t evaluate or discuss others’ ideas, simply jot everything down – listen to everyone first, then start the discussion. With flip pads and blackboards at our disposal, we used our experiences from the conversation café to guide us toward a finished product.
As my group batted around ideas, I kept pondering if could we rise to the challenge set for us. Our clients asked us to be completely open and creative in our suggestions, yet we also wanted to provide a meaningful solution that the city could actually use. Our discussion eventually narrowed in on a single idea that we distilled into a one-page summary. Near midnight, finally exhausted, we finished our recommendation.
The next morning revealed a rather remarkable fact. Despite working in isolation and brainstorming numerous options, three out of four groups had converged on essentially the same recommendation: bioswales. Two days prior, most of us had never heard of the term, but now we were its biggest proponents. Bioswales are landscape elements that use vegetation and rocks to filter stormwater runoff, and create pervious areas to soak up water amid asphalt and concrete. Robert Ketley had installed them with great success in Watsonville. Bioswales were inexpensive, could be easily implemented within Pacific Grove’s development constraints, and they had worked elsewhere. As consultants, we could all see they made sense.
Sun poured in the windows as each group presented to our clients Sara and Bridget, as well as an audience that included Pacific Grove Mayor Carmelita Garcia, Councilman Bill Kampe, City Manager Tom Frutchey, other local and regional managers and a reporter from the Pacific Grove’s Cedar Street Times. It was gratifying to see that people cared about this issue and were interested in our recommendations. Each group contributed ideas that Pacific Grove could pull together into a larger but tangible plan. My group suggested providing residents with a “bioswale in a bag” kit, while another proposed using geospatial modeling to find the best places for bioswales, and another encouraged an adopt-a-bioswale project that would involve local schools. The fourth group suggested creating a green business corridor, which included replacing the central parking area with more permeable paving, creating a “green business” certification program and, of course, implementing bioswales. One group revealed that Wikipedia’s entry for “Stormwater Runoff as a Source of Pollution” features a photo of an outflow pipe at Lover’s Point in Pacific Grove. There was a collective gasp from the audience; we knew they were sitting up to take notice.
Once we finished our presentations, the workshop facilitators and participants took some time to reflect on our intensive and rewarding experience. We were excited to have met students from around Monterey Bay, and we made plans with Julie and Margaret to track our project in a six month follow-up with the city. We emerged from our collective experience at Hopkins with some new connections, new skills and a new perspective on the rain.
