Tristate River Basin Commission To Be Topic of Yale Talk

Steven Leitman, environmental planner with the Apalachicola Basin Project, will be the next speaker in the semester-long series “The Restoration Agenda: Water!” presented by the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His talk, titled “How much change is too much change in a system that is constantly changing?,” will be given on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. in Bowers auditorium of Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. Open discussion with the speaker follows from 1-2:20 p.m. during an informal luncheon. Brown-bag lunches welcome; hot beverages will be provided.

The series is free to all members of the University community and alumni/ae. Community members are welcome: Registration fee information is available from Dr. Aimlee Laderman, 432-3335, or via e-mail at aimlee.laderman@yale.edu.

The Apalachicola watershed, which lies in the southeast United States and drains into the Gulf of Mexico, is the site of the first river basin commission created since the passage of the Clean Water Act. Within the next year, the three states in the basin (Alabama, Florida and Georgia) and the federal government have the task of defining how water in the basin should be allocated.

This lecture will focus on some of the technical tools that will be used in defining an allocation formula for the basin and on means of evaluating whether alternative formulas protect floodplain resources of the watershed, says Leitman, who has a master’s degree in environmental planning from Florida State University. He has worked on water management and environmental conservation issues in the Apalachicola watershed for the past 22 years.