In her working life, IECA member and Secretary of the Great Rivers Chapter Rebecca Kauten, CPESC-IT, has performed a variety of roles—market research analyst, public relations specialist, farm hand, IECA conference instructor, grant writer, international tour group leader, stormwater management professional, even clairvoyant.
That short-lived gig as a fortune-teller was a decade or so ago when Kauten was preparing marketing forecasts for clients in the software and telecommunications industries. Her research indicated that the rapidly expanding high-tech economic bubble was likely to burst, sooner rather than later.
She saw that dire outlook as an opportunity to shift the direction of her career. “My avocation had always been to work outdoors and to be involved with nature,” says Kauten, who was raised on her family’s farm in northeast Iowa. “I spent much of my free time outdoors and always had a desire to get back to Iowa. When the time came, I figured out a way to do both—and get paid for it.”
So, she returned to the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) in Cedar Falls, where she had earned her Bachelor’s degree in English in 1998. Seeking a more rewarding outlet for her interests, talents, and skills, she delved into the field of public policy, focusing on land use and management of urban and water resources, graduating in 2006 with her master’s in public policy. Her research project involved Phase II of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) and the federal Clean Water Act.
Wading in the Water
As a graduate student, Kauten became familiar with a local watershed project. She helped write grants and was eventually hired as the first coordinator for the project through the local soil and water conservation district. In this role, she also became familiar with a statewide network of more than 3,000 citizen volunteers known as the IOWATER Volunteer Water Monitoring Program in Iowa.
“I had a revelation in graduate school and discovered what I really wanted to do when I grew up,” recalls Kauten, now 34. “The work I was doing in my studies appealed to me more than anything I had done in the previous decade and a half. Now, instead of spending most of my time behind a desk, I’m out in the field wading in creeks, poking into storm drains and under manholes and exploring all kinds of weird places.”
As part of her graduate program, Kauten wrote a grant that provided a local soil and water conservation district $5,000 to construct a demonstration rain garden to improve stormwater management. Buoyed by that success, she wrote another grant that provided the district $550,000 to assess and monitor an urban watershed. That, in turn, led to a turn of events that resulted in her current position as a senior research associate at UNI with a series of water-quality monitoring projects funded by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR).
For the past three years, Kauten has led projects to assess and monitor urban watersheds in the state. Current projects are intended to gather basic performance data from such practices as green roofs, permeable pavements, and other low-impact development practices. Kauten also is exploring ways to incorporate elements of the IOWATER Program with water monitoring in the stormwater industry.
A Fundamental Tool Kit
Drawing on the methods used by the IOWATER volunteers, she’s developing a program to train stormwater management professionals in using simple, inexpensive but effective tools to measure basic water quality. It’s designed to encourage county engineers, city public works departments, and other local agencies to develop programs that may one day meet pending, more stringent federal water quality requirements, including the use of effluent limitation guidelines in measuring water quality. The idea is to make the process of monitoring water-quality more doable and more practical by focusing on the fundamentals and starting with a basic level of understanding. It’s all based on simple economics.
This year, in a pilot program to acquaint field staff with the basic principles of water-quality monitoring, Kauten is teaching stormwater professionals how to use three basic tools to take baseline measurements during active construction of a public right-of-way project. Members of the construction site crew are equipped with a 60-cm (24-in.)-long transparency tube with a Secchi disk at one end to gauge water transparency levels. This same tool is used by the IOWATER volunteers, and the results roughly correlate with more expensive measuring instruments such as turbidity meters.
“There’s definitely beauty in simplicity,” Kauten says. “Everyone’s budget, it seems, has been slashed. Instead of spending $25,000 a year on a water-quality monitoring kit, you could equip yourself with some of the basics in an IOWATER kit and invest about $300. Instead of outfitting every truck in a state highway or county road district with a $1,200 turbidity meter, you could more easily afford a $50 transparency tube for each staff vehicle. Until we know exactly what EPA expects in terms of monitoring and how to go about collecting that data, I’m an advocate for keeping things simple.”
While this approach might not be the end-all to monitoring stormwater quality, it’s a place to start, Kauten says. “At the end of this season, we may find that we need more sophisticated tools,” she says. “I’m just thankful we have folks who are willing to try it. We’ll see where it goes.”
An Inquiring Mind
This is just one example of the challenges she and other stormwater management professionals face in their work.
“On the grand scale, you’re dealing with so many unknowns in the world of stormwater regulation,” Kauten says. “When it comes to implementing practices for monitoring or data collection, you don’t want to commit to too much at the moment, because a regulatory agency could overturn what you’re doing. For now, we wait and see but also do what we can to at least strive for knowing the basics.”
Then, there are the trials posed by the current tough economic times. “There’s nothing like starting a career right at the beginning of a downturn in the economy,” she observes. “It’s taught me to be creative and to leverage resources I didn’t realize I had to get other people involved and to accomplish things that I couldn’t have done by myself. I’ve learned that the work doesn’t all have to be done today. You can share the burden with others to complete the job. Even when resources are limited, exchanging ideas with others in your field can help you find a solution.”
The variety of problems she tackles in her work appeals to Kauten. “I’m a curious person by nature,” she says. “When I find the answer to a particular problem, it creates a whole new set of questions that I want to answer. This inquiry drives my work.”
So does the pace at which the erosion control and stormwater management industries are advancing. “We’ve seen a lot of changes in just a few years,” she says. “You have to pay attention and be nimble to keep up. That’s frustrating to some people. But, it keeps things fresh for me and drives my inquiry to determine what we really want to do and how we go about doing it.”
Learning From the Ages
She also has been able to gain new perspectives on soil and water quality by leading two small, diverse groups of UNI students on separate trips to southern India. The purpose of the most recent trip to Tamil Nadu was to study how developing communities are combining indigenous knowledge with modern technology as a way to adjust to life in the 21st century. As an example, the concepts and practices of polyculture farming, organic agriculture, and biodynamic farming were practices implemented in southern India thousands of years ago.
“Today, modern farmers and plantation owners have been able to learn from their ancestors to reap financial gain from ancient technology,” Kauten says. “Growing coffee, spices, and fruits together in a single plantation reduces erosion as well as the financial risk for the farmer should one crop fail to produce. In addition, rainwater harvesting, groundwater infiltration systems, and sophisticated water treatment facilities are becoming critical sources of drinking water for south Indians. Population density and land use are taking a toll on the local natural resources, and people are taking notice.” In 2010, the group also visited Bangalore in the southern state of Karnataka.
On this last trip, the students observed the impacts on ecosystems as the Vagai River flowed from its headwaters in the western Ghats mountains to the city of Madurai and how that river is being managed to meet the demands for healthy drinking water, irrigation, and electricity.
“The people in the various villages have been sustained by thousands of years of knowledge in managing their resources,” she says. “When others come in with ‘better tools,’ it may or may not work better. Conversely, those practices that have been in place for thousands of years may do us some good in the Western world too. We can learn as much, if not more, from them, than they can from us.”
Serving the Industry
Kauten joined IECA in 2007 as she began her new career. “I was a sponge for knowledge, and IECA offered the resources and the people who could help me learn about the industry,” she says. Her experience attending an online IECA webinar convinced her to become a member. Before long, she was serving in her present position with the organization as secretary of the Great Rivers Chapter (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska). One of her roles is to manage the chapter’s participation in IECA’s chapter achievement program, Partners for Excellence.
The chapter presents a one-day workshop each spring and a two-day conference each fall. These events, as well as the various meetings and teleconferences with board members and attendance at the annual IECA conference, keep her current on the latest industry developments and technology. In fact, she’s helped advance that technology by presenting a case study and by teaching a course at this international gathering of erosion control professionals.
Such involvement also helps drive her enthusiasm for her work. “It’s nice to be able to connect with folks from other states and other regions of the country and the world and to get feedback on what you’re doing,” she says. “That’s been fun, and it’s important to stay current with the industry today in order to know where we should be tomorrow.”
