In this series, WeWork’s director of digital community selects a WeWork member to get to know better, sharing her fun findings with the rest of the community.
When WeWork Custom House member Cathy Kellon shared a video on the Member Network about “healthy watersheds for people and nature,” I couldn’t wait to pick her brain. Kellon is the Working Waters Program Director at the Geos Institute, which recently celebrated the reopening of over 1,200 miles of fish habitat in Oregon’s Rogue River basin. Below, we talk all about water management, combating climate change, and working with communities.
So tell me more about the Geos Institute. How did you join the organization?
We are a nonprofit headquartered in Ashland, Oregon (Southern Oregon), but I’m in Portland. We have three different program areas, all geared towards creating more resilient communities and ecosystems in the face of climate change.
I was with another nonprofit for 11 years and had been collaborating with the Geos Institute on restoration projects. I became more and more interested in working on drinking water protection and restoration, and it just so happened Geos was looking at restoration’s benefits to drinking water systems, and they had a position open, so I made the transition last year.
What’s something that people might not know about water and the work you do?
Probably a lot of folks don’t realize how much we rely upon surface water—like rivers or streams—for our drinking water (as opposed to ground water). In Oregon, about one-half of our population relies on rivers or streams for our drinking water, and in Washington State, it’s about one-third. (My work is primarily in the Pacific Northwest.) Most people aren’t aware of everything that happens behind the scenes, before your water comes out of your tap. They don’t know where the water came from, and, most importantly, that what happens in the watershed, where it originates, can affect the quality and cost of the water you use each and every day.
The Geos Institute has three programs: Climatewise, Forest Legacies, and Working Waters. What should we take away about each program?
Working Waters (my program) is really about making it easier for water managers to turn to nature whenever possible to meet our water quality and supply goals, instead of relying exclusively on concrete and chemicals. Nature is the original engineer; it’s very good at being able to produce reliable supplies of clean water. And when we are looking at the challenges of water management today, especially with climate change, our first instinct should not be to pour more concrete and add more chemicals to get the water clean and store it, but instead, work with our watersheds. There are lots of opportunities to restore streams and upland habitat, which can be a cost-effective way to reduce drinking water treatment costs. Plus we get a lot of other benefits when we restore watersheds, like improved fish runs and wildlife habitat. We get more for our money when we invest in nature.
Forest Legacies’ message is our public forests are our first line of defense in preparing for climate change. Our public lands, especially federal forests—they have some of the best habitat, and those ecosystems sequester a lot of carbon, helping slow down the rate of global warming. They are our insurance against the ravages of climate change. Unfortunately, federal and state policies are not always sufficient to protect our public lands, so while it’s important that we think about ways to reduce emissions, we also need to ensure that we, as a society, are protecting those natural, forest assets which are already absorbing carbon.
Our Climatewise program helps communities plan for and adapt to climate change. Their big takeaway is that there’s a lot that can be done at the local level, and the time to start planning and preparing for changes—from extreme storm events to emergency response services—is now, and it’s important to have everyone at the table. The best solutions and strategies come from including everyone’s voice in the conversation from the get-go.
Photos: Tom Bender