Wastewater? Check. Wetlands? Check. Water economics? Check. Water distribution? Check. From poop to people, student interests in the Yale FES student chapter of the American Water Resources Association span several disciplines. The group focuses on increasing the Yale community's awareness and understanding of water resource related issues.

During the fall of 2003, the AWRA chapter brought several speakers to Yale to highlight domestic and international water resource issues. In October 2003, Wil Maheia and Erica Diamond (FES '02) shared their knowledge of Belize' coastal ecosystems with a small group of FES students. At the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE), Mr. Maheia and Ms.Diamond teach residents of Belize how conservation and ecotourism has both economic and environmental benefits. In the process, they train ecotourism guides and promote different way's of thinking about the environment . TIDE's focus on biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction earned them the United Nations' Equator Prize in 1992.

While Mr. Maheia and Ms. Diamond provided a global perspective to the FES community, Jennifer Aiosa provided a distinctly domestic perspective on water resource management. Ms. Aiosa, who currently coordinates a five-state, nine-institution water quality program for the mid-Atlantic region, was formerly Senior Scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. At the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Ms. Aiosa's duties ranged from restoring sub-aquatic vegetation to lobbying members of the Maryland state Congress. She met with students in November 2003 to discuss the practicality of linking science and policy, and addressed the types of skills needed to accomplish restoration goals in the real world.

AWRA activity increased in the spring of 2004, examining topics ranging from water allocation to wetlands protection. The Westies, the Western United States Student Interest Group, and the AWRA co-sponsored a forum examining the allocation of the Klamath River in Californiaand Oregon. The conflict over Klamath River water involves endangered aquatic species, a federal water project, tribal rights, and conflicting scientific reports. The controversy heated up in 2001 when, faced with a drought, federal officials increased water allotments for fish and reduced irrigation deliveries to farmers. In 2002, the Bush Administration increased water deliveries to agriculture, a move that has been partially blamed for the largest pre-spawn fish kill in California's history. The Western Water Forum, which occurred on February 3, brought representatives of three stakeholder groups to Yale. Mr. Dan Keppen, the Executive Director of the Klamath Water Users Association, offered the irrigator's perspective. Mr. Keppen shared his vision of a fair and effective water management and species recovery program for the Klamath River Watershed. Mr. Tim Ramirez, the Senior Advisor to the Director of the California Bay-Delta Authority, provided the state perspective on Klamath water allocation. Mr. Ramirez is responsible for coordinating policy, programs, and the integration of science among the State and federal CALFED agencies. The third panelist, Carl Ullman, is an attorney for the Klamath tribes and represented their perspective. The Klamath tribes have the senior water rights in the Klamath basin, yet their needs are distinct from the others and often ignored. Together, these three panelists provided a unique and sometimes impassioned view of Klamath basin water allocation.

While the next AWRA event was not as large as the Western Water Forum, the turnout and reception from AWRA members was excellent. Laura Wildman (FES '05), Associate Director of Dam Programs for American Rivers, spoke at an AWRA meeting in early March about her experiences working with a nationwide river protection and restoration group. Laura's background as an engineer, depth of experience in stream restoration, and engaging speaking style combined to create an excellent presentation.

After the spring break, events continued to flow from the Yale student chapter of the AWRA. In April, acclaimed researcher and author Sandra Postel participated in a brown bag lunch with a group of students. Ms. Postel, co-author of Rivers for Life (2003) and author of Pillars of Sand (1999), is the director of the Global Water Policy Project and a visiting senior lecturer at Mt. Holyoke College. Her research emphasizes the need to improve irrigation efficiency and shift water allocation worldwide.

A wetlands workshop, which occurred at the end of April, combined both technical and legal aspects of wetlands protection. Donna Downing, an Environmental Protection Specialist and attorney with EPA's Wetlands Division in Washington, DC, spoke about the implications of the SWANCC US Supreme Court Case and associated wetlands regulations. Ms. Downing works on a variety of issues, including the jurisdictional scope of the Clean Water Act (CWA), water quality certification under CWA Section 401, wetlands mitigation banking, water quality trading, and wetlands-related legislation. In combination with her presentation, Ms. Downing and a professional from Milone and MacBroom, Inc. led a wetlands delineation workshop for group of students. The wetlands workshop provided an excellent learning opportunity for students interested in wetlands policy and for students interested in wetlands research.

As restoration efforts once again provide access for anadromous fishes to lakes and ponds along the Atlantic coast, there are growing concerns among local lake associations and land owners that the recovery of anadromous herring, in particular alewife, will cause water quality problems in their lakes. At the same time, EPA restrictions on total daily loads of nutrient pollutants are increasing pressure to limit non-point source nutrient pollution. The addition of anadromous herring as a potential nutrient vector troubles lake managers, and lake residents become resistant to restoration efforts when they see images of algal blooms and fish die-offs that occasionally occur in lakes containing landlocked populations of alewife.

In the watershed of the St Croix River, alewives have been excluded from fish ladders over fears that their recovery could be detrimental to popular sports fishes such as smallmouth bass. Yet, river herring were a natural part of these ecosystems for thousands of years. In watersheds that still support strong anadromous populations, alewives are important prey for fish, birds and mammals. Furthermore, it is not clear that anadromous herring have the same impacts upon water quality as landlocked populations. Young-of-the-year anadromous alewives reside in lakes for just a few months, and adults on spawning runs probably do not feed (although this is not clearly documented). This could reduce the impacts of anadromous alewife on food web structure as compared to landlocked alewife populations. Furthermore, the recovery of anadromous alewives, in some cases, will occur in ecosystems that currently contain landlocked populations. This secondary contact (when two species or populations that have had time to evolve separately come back into contact) has important implications for the reestablishment of anadromous populations. There are both genetic and ecological processes (e.g., strong competition) that could seriously limit the ability of anadromous alewives to become established within ecosystems already dominated by landlocked alewives.

Of particular current interest to the Post Lab are questions about the dual role of alewife in determining inland water quality, the evolutionary origins of the landlocked life history, the potential outcome of complex competition/predation interactions among freshwater predators and alewife, and the outcome of secondary contact between landlocked and anadromous alewife. Future questions will broaden the research to include interactions both within the coastal ocean and between the coastal ocean and freshwater ecosystems, and to explore the social/economic impacts of alewife, particularly those related to their effects on water quality and local fisheries. The removal of dams and addition of fish ladders provides a unique opportunity to study the ecological and evolutionary effects of alewife restoration and to explore links between coastal ocean and inland food webs provided by the migration of these important anadromous fish.