Felicia Marcus, a member of the State Water Resources Control Board, is scheduled to talk about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta on Monday, March 4, 4:10 pm to 5:30 pm at 1227 Haring Hall. She plans to address the Delta's governance and the critical impending decisions affecting its future as a major ecosystem and heart of the state's water delivery system. The talk is the seventh in the Center's California water policy speaker series, which is open to the public.

Marcus says the five-member board is at a critical juncture in California's water history. "The next four years will see a series of decisions that have the promise of both improving public health protection and of meeting the 'co-equal' goals of water supply reliability and ecosystem protection (in the Delta)," she said last August in a news release on the Senate confirmation of her board appointment, by Gov. Jerry Brown. "The state board will either make or be a critical player in those decisions."

Prior to her appointment, Marcus held a variety of top environmental posts, including member of the Delta Stewardship Council, Western Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Chief Operating Officer at the Trust for Public Land. She served in the President Clinton administration as head of the Environmental Protection Agency's Pacific Southwest region: California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Pacific Islands and Tribal Nations. Marcus began her career as a public interest lawyer and community organizer in Los Angeles, eventually heading the city's Department of Public Works. She also was a founder of Heal the Bay, the organization credited with pressuring Los Angeles to develop a plan to end the dumping of raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay.