2026 Water Wonks Hour Lecture Series #2: Building a Grassroots Movement to Protect Urban Waterways in San Antonio
2026-02-25 15:30 - 16:30 UTC | zoom
Brendan Gibbons will discuss River Aid San Antonio’s (RASA’s) efforts to raise an army of volunteer stewards to help keep the San Antonio River and its tributaries clean and thriving. RASA hosts multiple watershed cleanup events per month where volunteers remove thousands of pounds of litter from streams. Since the group’s founding, RASA volunteers have removed more than 600,000 pounds of waste from the San Antonio River and its tributaries. RASA has also accepted the leadership baton for Basura Bash, the largest single-day trash cleanup event in Texas, an event that drew 2,130 volunteers in 2025, its 30th year. Gibbons will also discuss RASA’s small but growing network of water quality monitoring sites via Texas Stream Team, which trains citizen scientists to conduct monthly water quality monitoring of local waterways. Gibbons will also detail RASA’s partnership with GEAA on a water quality retrofit on HOA property at Lorence Creek, which helps improve the quality of stormwater flowing into the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone.

Water Wonks Hour Lecture Series #3: How water utilities can protect the water supply
2026-03-25 15:30 - 16:30
Some of the tools Municipal and Private Water Utilities use to protect the water supply are very similar while other methodologies seem very different. Suzanne will talk about what Texas Water Company, a private water utility company, has done to protect the water supply and how various tools can be modified and utilized throughout the public and private water systems.
