About The Center

     Dear Colleagues, Friends, and Supporters of CIWR: this space provides me an opportunity to reflect on WaterLab, UCSC's Water Teaching and Research Laboratory, which was returned to the Watsonville Water Resources Center earlier this year.  During its several years of operation, WaterLab provided an exciting location for student research and learning, spanning Pajaro Valley elementary students through graduate students, as well as community members.  Students from UCSC and Hartnell studied water reuse from multiple perspectives using WaterLab's unique resource of being directly plumbed with potable, secondary, and tertiary flows, all of which were available for further treatment experiments at a pilot-scale facility.  Students built, operated, and tested slow-sand filtration systems and learned the challenges of protecting next-users or urban wastewater.

Watsonville's partnership with UCSC was very special to me.  I am especially grateful to Kevin Silviera, recently retired and visionary manager of the Watsonville Water Resources Center.  His optimism, leadership, and openness to ideas helped make WaterLab a possibility.

WaterLab provided opportunities and inspiration for many students, some of whom have gone on to careers in water.

Our Center is refocusing as the USAID-funded Center of Excellence-Water gets established in Alexandria, Egypt, and UCSC takes on its important role as a supporting institution.  We will be hosting Egyptian students and helping implement a National Water Research Roadmap for Egypt.

With very best wishes,

Brent M. Haddad, MBA, PhD