(Posted April 19, 2010)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Jonathan Bartsch, CEO and senior program manager for CDR Associates and an expert on water conservation issues in the western United States, will give a talk at Juniata College at 4 p.m., Friday, April 16 in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Bartsch's lecture, "Water Conflicts: Collaborative Problem Solving and the Tenacious 'No'," will focus on some of the water conservation work he has done on the Snake River Aquifer in Idaho. His company served as a consultant to mediate disputes between several parties eager to use water from the Snake River aquifer. The parties that Bartsch mediated between included farmers, spring water users and irrigators, all of whom had some claim to water rights dating back to the 19th century.

Bartsch has ties to Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1991 from Penn State University, He then went on to earn a master's degree in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.

He has extensive experience in mediating water issues across the country. Among his most recent accomplishments was the creating of a water quality task force in 2002 for the state of Nebraska. He also is working on a water-use plan for Nebraska's Platte River Basin.

He also worked on relicensing the Niagara Power Project in Niagara Falls, N.Y. with a variety of stakeholders, including the New York Power Authority. He has also done a series of workshops on environmental negotiations for the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and on collaborative decision-making for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Bartsch has worked internationally, working on a controversial highway project in Tokyo, Japan.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.