Katie Banister is a second year master’s student of Urban Planning with a specialization in Environmental and Regional Planning. She is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Water Policy and working as a graduate assistant for the WRRC’s Environmental Program.
Katie received a Bachelor of Science in Soil Science from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. Upon completing her undergraduate degree, she worked for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) on the Soil Survey of Yosemite National Park. As a member of a small team, she described and sampled soils in the backcountry of the park for four years, producing data that is now used by the National Park Service to inform their management activities.
After her time with the NRCS, Katie’s career took a scenic detour. To have more time with her young daughters, she envisioned, planned and opened a small children’s retail store in Monterey, California. She successfully operated the business for seven years, wearing many hats including mother, buyer, accountant, supervisor, marketing coordinator, data manager and customer service representative.
While doing this, Katie sat on a Land Use Advisory Committee (LUAC) for Southern Monterey County to learn more about local land use decisions. Members of each of the 13 LUACs in Monterey County are appointed by the Planning Commission to review land use changes and development issues affecting the county. The planning commission then uses comments from LUAC members as local input on potentially contentious issues.
In 2009, a project of large scale and consequence came before the LUAC. An oil and gas company was seeking approval to use hydraulic fracturing technology to explore the Monterey shale formation, which underlies most of the area. As she learned how significant a change this type of oil development would be from older technologies used in the region, Katie joined with other local citizens to petition the county to reconsider the issue and deny the necessary permits for exploration. The group’s largest concerns were the amount of water to be withdrawn from the relatively small local aquifer, the possibility of groundwater contamination, and the admission from the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources that they were not monitoring “fracking” technology in any significant way.
These events influenced Katie’s decision to return to the university and pursue a career that would allow her to make a positive impact in her local community. She sees urban planning as a way to pair her interests in both the built and natural environment.
At the WRRC, Katie works on the Participatory Watershed Assessment for the Upper Gila River and the Conserve to Enhance projects. She assists with stakeholder engagement and the production of information about the projects. In the past year she most enjoyed creating an interactive timeline of the history of the Upper Gila River based on the memories of local historians, land managers and long-time residents who gathered at a special meeting of the Gila Watershed Partnership.
This past summer Katie interned with Watershed Management Group, a non-profit organization in Tucson that promotes community based solutions for natural resource sustainability. She researched urban forestry initiatives from around the United States, looking for ideas that can be applied to the desert southwest to address stormwater problems, the urban heat island effect, and overall community livability.
Katie’s experience at the WRRC bridges her background in natural resources and environmental science with her future in urban planning. Through her work she is learning about the ways water can affect how communities develop and she feels more knowledgeable about the tools communities and individuals can use to improve the management of their water supply. In the future, she would like to work to promote municipal development that uses natural resources, including water, more efficiently. She is interested in designing cities for healthy lifestyles via green infrastructure, urban forestry, alternative forms of transportation, and local food production. She believes more trees and bicycles (and the infrastructure to support them), and better use of water resources are the keys to a happy, healthy city.