Please, No, Not a Water-Related Fact!

Californians Know Next To Nothing About the Gazillions of Gallons Of H2O They Consume. What Single, Unfamiliar Fact Should They Learn?

Where does your water come from? Ask many Californians that question, and the most common answers will be the tap or the bottle. Surveys show we know very little about our major sources of water­­­—the Colorado River, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, and especially, the threatened Bay Delta. In advance of a Zócalo/Occidental College event in San Francisco, “How Can San Francisco’s Bay Delta Be Saved?” we asked experts: What is one thing every Californian should know about water (but probably doesn’t)?

San Francisco City Attorney Therese Stewart

Litigating on Behalf of What Just Might Be the Wackiest City in America

Therese Stewart is chief deputy city attorney for the City of San Francisco; she argued for the city against Proposition 8 in federal court. Before participating in a panel on …

Reporter Patricia Leigh Brown

She Said She’d Always Been a Dancer

Patricia Leigh Brown has been writing for The New York Times since 1986, first in New York and now as a contributor from San Francisco. In addition, she contributes to …

San Francisco Chronicle’s John King

The Critic Who’s Trying Not to Second-Guess Himself

John King is the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic and author of the book Cityscapes: San Francisco and its Buildings. Before moderating a panel on whether architects shape cities, …

Investigative Journalist Carrie Lozano

How Does a Pacifist Fight Zombies?

Bay Area-based journalist Carrie Lozano is a documentary filmmaker, an expert on collaborative reporting, and a project director for the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley. Before participating in a …

Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom

A Man With Fewer Suit Choices Than Barack Obama

When he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 2003, Gavin Newsom, who was 36, was the youngest mayor the city had had in a century. By that time, he …