WRCA welcomes monetary donations to its Gift Fund. These private contributions help the library to preserve and develop its archival collection, to upgrade and purchase new equipment, and to provide funds for students at southern University of California campuses to travel to Berkeley to use the library. Contributions also may establish special-purpose funds such as the Robert L. Wiegel Fund, which is soley used to acquire materials relating to coastal engineering issues.

WRCA welcomes contributions from institutional and individual donors. All donations are tax-deductible. Please contact Linda Vida to discuss giving opportunities.

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Profile of a Donor: Barry Hecht

Barry Hecht, a principal at Balance Hydrologics, has been visiting the Water Resources Center Archives since he was a doctoral student in geography at UC-Berkeley. Today, he and his colleagues at Balance are regular users of the Archives and annual contributors to its Gift Fund.

"Our staff visit the Archives regularly, and I don’t think there is a working day that we aren’t on line to its web site," he declares. Hecht notes that what makes WRCA special is its role as a repository of water knowledge both current and historical. "Both parts of that continuum are important in hydrologic work, and we couldn’t do what we do nearly as well without the professionals at the Archives."

Balance focuses on analysis of watershed, channel, ground-water, and wetland dynamics in California and Alaska, usually in support of habitat restoration. Examples of its Bay Area projects include development of a sediment management program for Lagunitas Creek, now in its monitoring phase. In Southern California, Balance has modeled the hydrologic history of the Santa Ynez watershed. For these and other projects, WRCA has been an invaluable resource. In fact, when Balance was established 17 years ago, WRCA’s location was a factor in selecting the firm’s locale: "We’re in Berkeley in part because of the Archives", Hecht said. In recent years, Balance has expanded to include offices in Santa Cruz, San Rafael, and Auburn, each of which contributes to WRCA copies of its reports which may be of statewide or regional interest.