Heal the Bay
Honors Felicia Marcus with The Dorothy Green Award
SUSAN CLOKE
Columnist
Felicia Marcus received the prestigious Dorothy Green Award at the Heal the Bay Awards Ceremony held on the beach in Santa Monica on June 9th.
Marcus first knew of Dorothy Green when working
for then U.S. Congressman Tony
Beilenson. Green and Marcus didn’t
meet in person until they were both at a Regional Water Quality
Control Board meeting in Los Angeles in 1985. “Within 5 minutes of meeting Dorothy I had agreed to be her
lawyer,” said Marcus.
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| Felicia Marcus |
Felicia Marcus is now the Chair of the State Water Board.
“Right now we are in water crisis but there is
plenty of water to meet our real needs in California if we understand how to
use it,” said Marcus.
“Water is wondrous, precious. We need to be grateful and respect it. To start, we need to understand it and
not take it for granted.
“Urban Californians spend half of our urban water outdoors on ornamental landscapes and lawns – trying to trick our lawns into thinking we’re really in Scotland.
“In the 80’s and 90’s we focused water saving
efforts indoor use, on toilets and dishwashers and showers. In our current drought cycle we are
focusing on water use outdoors.
“More importantly we are in a decade of
experimentation as we figure out what we could do differently.”
Marcus is an Angelino, born in West Hollywood,
going to Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. When she was in high school sports were still mainly for
boys. “There were special teams
for smaller boys to compete, called the ‘B’ and ‘C’ teams. “The Coaches were working to eliminate
those teams so they could have more money for the Varsity teams,” said Marcus.
Marcus learned about the issue from her High
School teacher and Marcus thought it was wrong. With the support of her teachers, Marcus went to the Board
of Education to express her support for the ‘B’ and ‘C’ teams.
“I won,” said Marcus, “and I got the very naïve
sense that it was pretty easy to win.”
“I didn’t know about East Coast schools and I
only knew about Harvard from the movie ‘Love Story’ but I applied. When the letter came from Harvard I was
at camp. My Aunt Charlotte called
and asked if she should open it. “Yes,”
I said. She did and we both burst
out laughing in a combination of relief and happiness.”
“I was a CA girl going from the newness of LA to
a school where everything was old.
I loved it. For me it was a
fascinating exposure to all the ways to be and think.”
The Root Tilden Fellowship at NYU attracted
Marcus to the law school at NYU. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root-Tilden_Scholarship) “I was interested in issues of
environmental health and public health – issues which affected everyone. I wanted to become an environmental
lawyer.”
Marcus had clerked for Judge Harry Pregerson and
then, later, when working at Munger Tolles and Olson, she represented Heal the
Bay on the Clean Water Act case requiring LA City to meet water quality
standards for treatment plants discharging into Santa Monica Bay.
“Judge Pregerson heard the case and he made us
all sit together. It meant we got
to ask our questions of the people and the agencies we saw as the
polluters. It also meant we had to
listen to their answers. There
were a myriad of “aha” moments as we began to understand each others’ skills,
problems and the potential solutions to protect water quality.”
Marcus has a distinguished resume as an
environmental attorney:
working at the firm of
Munger Tolles and Olson where she did pro bono work for both Heal the Bay and Planned
Parenthood;
working as the
Director of Litigation at Public Counsel
and leveraging volunteer lawyers in public
service work;
serving the City of
Los Angeles as a Public Works Board Chair with a focus on water quality and
recycling;
serving as the EPA Regional
Administrator in San Francisco for the EPA during the Clinton Administration
serving as the chief
Operating Officer at the Trust for Public Land. “In communities across the country TPL connects people to
land by creating parks of all kinds;”
working at NRDC as the
Western Director.
As Chair of the CA State Water Board Marcus
talks about the seriousness of her responsibilities. “Water is part of
everything. It’s essential to
life. We can’t take water for granted.
We must use water intelligently so we can meet all our needs.
“Drought has accelerated the conversation about
water use.
Climate change accelerates it more. With even a few degrees rise in temperature
we get more rain than snow and that’s a disaster because our snow is about 1/3
of our water storage in a typical year.
“The only way we can approximate that storage
capacity is to use our aquifer.
Even in agriculture one farmer’s flood irrigations can be another’s
ground water recharge. It’s a
geologically complex issue.
“To deal with the freight train of Climate Change
means there can’t be just one solution.
We have to do everything.
Conservation is first. We
also must capture storm water, recharge our aquifers, manage our ground water
basins. We have to make ourselves water
resilient.
Felicia Marcus says, “I learned from Heal the
Bay and from Dorothy Green that our greatest strength, our power, comes from
not just caring about the ocean and the environment but honoring and caring for
people.”
Contact Susan Cloke
