Bayou City Waterkeeper
We View Water As A Catalyst For Change
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Bayou City Waterkeeper utilizes science, the law, and community empowerment to protect and restore our natural systems, achieve equitable policy solutions, and advance systematic change to benefit all who live within the Lower Galveston Bay watershed. At our core, our efforts center around ensuring equal protection from environmental hazards, promoting nature-based solutions for climate adaptation, and providing opportunities for meaningful citizen involvement in decisions that affect environmental health.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Protecting Wetlands
Bayou City Waterkeeper aims to preserve and protect our wetlands by reviewing requests for wetland destruction permits, as well as monitoring new and ongoing development projects that occur in our interior wetlands. Through our Wetland Watch Program, we share our policy expertise with people and communities who want to stop these damaging projects. We help locals fight wetland destruction in their communities - demanding that applicants avoid wetland destruction with reasonable, alternative plans.
Clean Water
Through the Clean Water Act, Bayou City Waterkeeper is able to hold polluters accountable and protect the waters that flow through our rivers and bayous into the Gulf of Mexico. As a part of our Waterkeeper monitoring efforts, we conduct water quality testing to determine pollution levels and its impacts within our watershed. With the help of our members and supporters, we strive to make sure that Texas and our local governments are following the law to protect the people and wildlife that depend on these waters.
Resilient Communities
Rising seas and stronger storms increasingly threaten the Texas Gulf Coast. Over the last several years, regional storms and hurricanes have exceeded annual rain records and affected communities living throughout the Greater Houston-Galveston area. With record-setting storms on the rise, stakeholders in the region have united around a common understanding: Dramatic action is needed to ensure our long-term resilience. Local, state, and federal governments plan to invest billions of dollars to help our region adapt and recover. Through strategic collaborations and advocacy in communities across the Galveston Bay watershed, Bayou City Waterkeeper is pushing for this money be spent wisely on science-based, future-oriented, equitable solutions that work with – not against – nature. All our communities, whether in Houston’s urban core or along our beautiful stretch of the Gulf Coast, deserve the promise of a resilient and healthy environment for generations to come.
Where we work
Affiliations & memberships
Waterkeeper Alliance Member 2001
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Through our programmatic work, we advocate for dramatic action that works with, not against, nature to ensure our region's long-term resilience. Water quality standards should be safe and consistent for every person and every community. Systemic change and coordination between governments and the public are necessary to ensure all our communities thrive. Through strategic collaborations and advocacy in communities across the Lower Galveston Bay watershed, Bayou City Waterkeeper is pushing for federal, regional, and local dollars to be spent wisely on future-oriented, science and nature-based, equitable solutions.
Strategic use of science, law and policy allows us to hold polluters accountable and protect the waters that flow from our bayous and rivers into the Gulf of Mexico. With the help of our members and supporters, we strive to ensure that Texans and our local governments are following the law to enhance water quality, and protect the people and wildlife dependent on these waters.
Inequitable and unjust policies have exposed communities to repeated flooding, degraded water quality across the region, and undervalued the natural benefits provided by the waterways, prairies, and wetlands in the Lower Galveston Bay watershed.
The following themes inform our programmatic work: Clean Water, Resilient Communities, and Protecting Wetlands. We aim to empower residents living in the Greater Houston area to address water-related issues in their own community, hold polluters and those in power accountable, and ensure our leaders have the tools to restore and conserve our natural systems.
With record-setting storms on the rise, communities and decision-makers recognize that long-term resilience requires dramatic action - and that action must be felt equitably across the region. Our work targets risks and stressors within our watershed, such as harmful land use, pollution from municipalities and hazardous facilities, lack of transparency in government policy and budgetary decision-making, and inequitable access to opportunity within marginalized communities. At the state level, efforts to hamstring local control and lax environmental regulation have translated into little accountability at multiple levels of government.
By prioritizing underserved communities and utilizing law and science to bolster our efforts, we have reduced pollution in our bayous, encouraged nature-based solutions for climate adaptation, and furthered equitable policies and practices in our decision-making bodies.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Storms, and other climate impacts, over the last decade have served as a reminder that the Lower Galveston Bay watershed remains vulnerable to shocks and stresses that will undermine efforts to thrive and adapt to change. Bayou City Waterkeeper's participation and influence in local and regional policy and planning efforts create opportunities to strengthen political will for public-led processes that advance equitable outcomes.
Our ability to use litigation as an agent of change is unique in our region. Our current work focuses on the creation of wetlands protection ordinances and the implementation of nature-based solutions in infrastructure projects, as well as litigation designed to maximize mitigation of wetland losses and strengthen water quality protection.
The size of our watershed requires a multi-faceted approach. Within the city, our work benefits those living within floodplains surrounding our network of bayous and communities overcoming decades of underinvestment. Outside the urban core, our approach benefits rural communities living in wetland-dense areas on the verge of development, as well as coastal communities dealing with storm surges and land loss, who depend on Galveston Bay’s natural resources for their livelihood. The lax environmental regulation and movement to strip local control are two challenges that will be addressed by the proposed activities, including policy analyses, power mapping, and advocacy campaign strategy development to achieve wins at the local and state level. Our efforts will help to yield policy solutions and targets at both the local and state level to achieve systems change.
Our work intersects the environment and social justice, particularly breaking down the false dichotomy of nature versus people. We aim to embody a bottom-up approach that seeks to transform systems and societies. This includes approaching the issues of pollution, access, the extraction of nature, and the extraction of people and communities in a different way. Bayou City Waterkeeper’s main assets are our people: our staff and their expertise, communities living on the frontlines of climate change, our partners working on environmental equity and fair housing, and supportive decision-makers across the watershed.
The policies and public-led processes that will result from our shared work can successfully address flooding, disaster preparedness, and further community resilience. Through our efforts, we aim to institutionalize a different approach for disaster recovery and response for our cities and counties leadership – one that incorporates equity, and addresses a legacy of environmental racism. With the City of Houston and Harris County serving as our region’s epicenter, the frameworks we institutionalize across the Lower Galveston Bay watershed now can serve as a premier climate and community-based resiliency model for the nation as we move into the 22nd century.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Given the size and diversity of our watershed, we must be nimble and collaborate. By effectively leveraging existing partnerships with local organizations, communities and decision-makers, and continuing efforts to reach outlying regional communities, Bayou City Waterkeeper is in a special position to make real, lasting change.
We are focusing on programs that already have respect within the community, and are familiar with donors and members alike. Through our advocacy, legal and education efforts, we further the narrative that clean water is a fundamental right – and should be accessible to all.
The climate impacts on our region have created new and important opportunities to engage with stakeholders and decision-makers, as well as new funding streams to enhance the recovery and resiliency of the region. By assessing our strengths, and developing clear, identifiable goals and outcomes that align with Bayou City Waterkeeper’s mission and vision, the staff and board members can be held accountable to ensuring the organization’s success.
In house skills include over 20 years of collected experience on identifying clear, winnable campaigns that result in meaningful change for people, place and the environment. From creating policy initiatives to implementing best available science to strategic litigation - the Bayou City Waterkeeper team and board of directors is committed to maintain an effective and sustainable organization focused on making the Galveston Bay watershed a more productive and healthier ecosystem that serves our communities’ natural, economic and recreational needs for generations to come.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In September 2018, BCWK filed suit against the City of Houston for over 9,300 documented pollution violations under the Clean Water Act (CWA). According to its own self-reported data, the City has failed to comply with its permits by allowing untreated sewage to be discharged from its wastewater facilities into our public waterways throughout the Houston area. With the City of Houston's Consent Decree nearly finalized, our goal is to ensure that our region's municipalities correct their wastewater overflows and future-proofs its aging wastewater treatment system so that large amounts of sewage will no longer unnecessarily impact our public waterways.
Bayou City Waterkeeper provides technical, policy, and legal assistance to communities and organizations throughout the Lower Galveston Bay Watershed. Our approach centers around advocacy-based, community-centered programs that further holistic and meaningful change. This provides us with the opportunity to partner with non-traditional partners (such as affordable housing and just-transportation advocates) and community-based organizations to ensure that the implemented policies and programs mitigate future climate-related tragedies in our region. To this end, we provide leadership on issues related to nature-based solutions, such as natural infrastructure and floodplain management, and water quality and pollution.
In response to the US Army Corps of Engineer's (Army Corps) proposed Coastal Barrier System, BCWK leads a coalition of organizations focused on advancing nature-based alternatives to project and raising awareness throughout the Galveston Bay community. Our goal is to advance a vision for an environmentally-preferable solutions for flood and storm surge protection along Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. In Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula, BCWK continues to work with local residents to address inequities within the proposed plan and provide community-drive solutions.
BCWK is working to protect our coastal prairie wetlands throughout the Lower Galveston Bay Watershed. We have provided significant comments opposing the weakening of protections for streams and wetlands, and holding the Army Corps and developers accountable for development in our fragile wetland systems. We focus our wetland work on providing detailed comments on Army Corps 404 Wetland Permits to raise concerns about environmental impacts, and partner with communities who've experienced unlawful development in their backyard wetlands and bayous.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Bayou City Waterkeeper
Board of directorsas of 01/09/2024
Mr. David Popken
Cascade Enterprise
Term: 2021 - 2023
Mr. Jorge Bustamante
Harris County Precinct 2
Term: 2021 - 2023
Libby Bland
Asakura Robinson
Lindsay Dofelmier
Hogan Lovells Law Firm
David Popken
Cascade Enterprise
Rachel Powers
Citizens' Environmental Coalition
Hugo Colon
Asakura Robinson
Tanweer Kaleemullah
Episcopal Health Foundation
Jolea Payne
KIPP Texas Public Schools
Ken Teague
Retired Hyrdologist
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 02/11/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.