Regina Hirsch: Executive Director
Contract Administrator, Project Development, Landscape Designer, Restoration Ecologist, Construction Advisor, Lead Instructor, Native Plant Specialist, Training & Community Coordinator, Senior Planner
Regina Hirsch is dedicated to bringing appropriate best management solutions to the public. After getting the watershed monitoring bug at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board and the Morro Bay National Estuary Program, she moved to the Sierra Nevada for a different approach to reaching people and assessing effectiveness of non-point source pollution treatments. With her husband Robb, she opened Mountain Sage in 2003, creating a community based plant nursery and event center in her 20 acre 1867 historic family homestead. There Regina assists Telele Foundation focus on natural resource management integrating live arts and educational programs within a nursery/café that roots the community together.
Regina also founded Watershed Progressive, the consulting/contracting firm which focuses on onsite water best management practices aimed at rehydrating watersheds. Since 2009, Watershed Progressive has helped design and install projects that restore habitat and increase watershed hydrologic recharge through water conservation and re-use. In addition, Regina is an executive board member of various organizations, such as The Telele Foundation and the California Water Reuse Policy Council.
Knowing what people do in their homes and backyards is what can make a difference, Regina Hirsch’s goal is to spread the word on good and appropriate decision making when it comes to water, energy, plants, soils and most of all, community.
On Staff Since: The Beginning Email: regina@h2oprogressive.com
In Their Own Words: Why My Work at WP Matters
If you’ve met me, you know it’s really the people I work with that moves me, and drives me forward. Our team is a network of field craftspersons and minds that will undoubtedly shape how we work within California’s resource management in the years to come. Additionally, every client and partner inspires me with their contribution and commitment to increase solutions for our watersheds by taking steps schools, homes, businesses and promoting feedback to policy makers. WP is the platform for us to work our collaborative science in the field and with partners and see a difference in a positive collaboration, and not just planning or talking about it. WP allows field testing and feedback with change in real time, with real projects, with real people. Here we have the ability to move on and assess solutions now. Getting your hands dirty with construction resource science, this is the most rewarding work around.
Why I Love Water:
First, it’s sticky. It is the very nature of the strong hydrogen bonds that really float my boat, connecting biology to time bending geologic processes and thus folding into our surrounding ecology. The universal solvent, whether swimming, paddling, fishing or sailing, it’s always where I want to be.
What I Obsess On:
Geology, poetry, soils, plants and water combined with good music and friends by the river. What else is there?