As Executive Project Manager of the South Bay Salt Ponds Restoration Project, Dave Halsing brings more than 11 years of experience in environmental consulting to the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. At firms including Environmental Science Associates, AECOM, and URS, he has worked on or managed environmental and infrastructure management, restoration, and enhancement projects in and around San Francisco Bay. In seven of those years, he worked on various aspects of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, including its Phase 2 alternatives development, design, environmental analysis documents, and permitting. In the last two years, he worked as a deputy to his predecessor, John Bourgeois, helping to keep all the Project’s pieces in motion while collaborating with the Project Management Team and project partners. Other project work relevant to the Restoration Project involved San Francisco Bay habitat restoration or enhancement, public infrastructure, regulatory processes, alternatives development, and stakeholder or public engagement.
Prior to his consulting career, Dave was a research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park. His work focused on integrating economics, spatial data, and decision sciences into the natural and physical sciences that were the USGS’ primary focus. Dave has a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from Stanford University and a Master of Science in Natural Resource Policy from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. He brings a strong project management background and a multidisciplinary approach to this challenging, multi-objective, multi-stakeholder project.
One of my goals in 2022 (only partially satisfied) has been to remember to notice and appreciate the things that are mundane and common but that are impressive, important, beautiful, or just cool to think about.
In that latter category is the concept of a watershed.
Remember craigslist?
Seems like a million years ago, and it was definitely pre-social media, but craigslist was a virtually free online, geographically oriented marketplace for housing, vehicles, furniture, recreation equipment, dates, and whatever else. Back in the day, I found one apartment, multiple housemates, and a bicycle using craigslist, and it didn’t cost me a thing.
If you’ve been reading this blog at all – and I know that you have Mom, so don’t try to deny it – you know that we feel strongly about the importance of partnerships to the success of our Project.
If you work in the environmental field long enough, it becomes easy to forget that not everyone starts with the same understandings or intuitions that we do. For example, when I talk with members of the public or the media, I sometimes skip right over the “why” of what we are doing so I can get right to the “what,” the “when,” and the ”how” of it.
Coastal communities around the world are facing increased coastal flooding and shoreline erosion from factors such as sea-level rise and unsustainable development practices.
If you’ve been out to the City of Menlo Park’s Bedwell Bayfront Park recently, you have probably noticed that there is quite a bit going on there.
If you were one of the intrepid few who ventured over to Salty Dave’s Wetland Weblog a few weeks ago and read the piece about our Phase 2 project at the Island Ponds, you know how excited we are to be underway there.
But now, I have a question for you:
What’s better than having a project site in construction?
Did you ever have one of those sneezes that takes a long time to happen?
There has been a lot of talk lately in the Bay Area’s restoration community about including gravel beaches in restoration projects.
I noticed the other day that the planning for Phase 2 of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project began in 2012. Putting that in context:
Barack Obama was in his first term as President, the San Francisco Giants had only won one World Series, Kim Kardashian was married to Kris Humphries, and the hottest social media platform was Snapchat.
So…yeah, it’s been a while.
Hi and welcome back!
One goal of this blog was listing the Top Ten Questions I get about this Restoration Project. You can check out previous entries on that list here. Here’s a question from the rest of the Top 10.
Are salt ponds good or bad?
Where can I bring my dog? My drone? My bike? My…self?
These are common – and important – questions. The explanations and reasoning behind the answers are at least as important as the answers themselves. I’m trying to tighten up these entries, so let’s dive right in…
In our last entry here at Salty Dave’s Wetland Weblog (still hoping for some better name suggestions…), I wrote about sea level rise and related aspects of coastal flood management and adaptation.
After covering a few other topics in my blog entries, I thought this would be a good time to revisit another in the list of common questions I get from students, media, and other interested people. This one is such a meaty topic that there’s enough content for two blog entries on it…LUCKY YOU!
Here’s the first one; we’ll run Part 2 in a few weeks.
I’m a native of San Francisco, and I lived in various spots on the Peninsula until I was almost 40 years old. Over most of that time, the Bay was just a thing I had to drive across on a bridge or cross under in a BART train to get where I was going.
In my job as Executive Project Manager of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, I do a lot of media interviews, public appearances, presentations to elected officials, and site tours with groups of students and other interested groups. I also meet a lot of people socially. In those settings, the “what do you do?” question comes up a lot.
Hello – and welcome back to Salty Dave’s Wetland Weblog, where we ironically embrace a lot of alliterative archaisms!
I am psyched to have gotten our first Reader Suggestion for a blog entry topic: Brian Coyne asked about what we are planning to do at the Eden
