Roger E. Bütow
Executive Director

I was born in Long Beach CA on October 3, 1946. As a child, my family moved several times and I basically grew up in the general LA Harbor area. I started high school at Phineas Banning (Wilmington) but eventually graduated with honors from Woodrow Wilson (Long Beach) in 1964.

After a mid-60s tour in the US Marine Corps (Honorably Discharged), I graduated with honors from Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, matriculated to and graduated with honors from (then) California State College Long Beach. I majored in Asian philosophies, minor in anthropology.

I moved to Laguna Beach in late 1972 after a 6 month extended tour of Europe. I then began my career in new construction and every phase of remodeling for both residential and commercial projects throughout South Orange County with my client base primarily here in Laguna Beach.

I co-founded the Clean Water Now! Coalition (defunct as of January, 2013) and served as its only chairman for nearly 15 years. CWN!C was a South Orange County based, grass roots, eco-watchdog association. Unprecedented, it was the first enviro-alliance of its kind, composed of numerous NGOs concerned about the increasing contamination and degradation of streams, riparian and aquatic habitats. In 1998, over-development and increasing urbanization had inflicted severe adverse impacts upon coastal ecosystems inhabited by humans and fauna alike.

In 1998, I began a professional environmental consultant business. Initially I specialized in hydrology and water quality impairments. Eventually I branched out into general watershed and coastal impairment dynamics, including ecological preservation, restoration and protection issues.

Through diligent attendance at innumerable workshops, conferences, plus private study and field work, I have worked in collaboration with the US Forest Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Cal and USEPA, California Fish & Game (now Fish & Wildlife), California Coastal Commission, NOAA, et al, and become an acknowledged general land use and critical habitat expert.
I have great proficiency in California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) issues, including the expansion of my professional portfolio and client base into other regional, ecological protection advocacy NGOs.
I’ve served uncompensated on numerous environmental ad hoc committees at municipal as well as county, state and federal levels.

I am presently employed by public agencies, private parties and corporations as a peer review analyst specializing in assisting clients negotiate and then achieve compliance with regulatory agency demands.

I’m now part of this new challenging venture, an NGO committed primarily to enhancing supply side water to insure our mutual future: Clean Water Now .

Résumé/CV and additional info @ https://www.linkedin.com
Email: roger@clean-water-now.org

Scott Woodard
Director

Scott was born in Pasadena CA. in 1959. His family moved to La Jolla CA, and moved quite a bit subsequently. His family was a veritable migratory species. At the age of 3 they moved to Scarsdale, NY for 2 years, then relocated to Baltimore and progressed on to Geneva, Switzerland by the time he was 10.
The family then returned to Southern California and eventually he landed in Corona del Mar, CA. where he attended grade school, high school and Orange Coast College for 1 year. He matriculated to Los Angeles CA. where he attended the University of Southern California to earn a BA degree in Urban & Regional Planning (1986).
During and after college, Scott worked for Urban West Development, Whitehawk Development Corp. and eventually Barrett American Properties. Initially hired as an intern, he worked his way up to project manager by supervising individual residential development projects. This included entitlement and planning of raw land sales to other real estate developers, as well as development and construction of residential projects for the build out of finished homes for prospective homeowners.
After a downturn in the real estate market in the early 1990’s, a close personal friend who was starting a medical equipment company approached Scott for employment. The company leased and sold rehabilitation devices for orthopedic surgery patients.
His career in the medical equipment sales has now spanned 25 years and he has worked for companies such as; Spectrum Med. X-Ray, BCI International, Datascope Corp, Siemens, Lumenis, and Ellex Lasers and Imaging.
As a lifelong waterman, Scott has surfed, dived, sailed, fished, windsurfed, water-skied, and bodysurfed many locations all around the world.
At the beginning of his medical career, he met Jeff Pantukhoff, founder of The Whaleman Foundation (TWF): www.whaleman.org
TWF is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit public research, education, conservation, and wildlife film production organization dedicated to preserving and protecting our world’s oceans.
TWF’s primary mission is to educate key decision makers, while raising public awareness, regarding the issues that affect cetaceans (dolphins, whales & porpoises) and their critical habitats through video, technical research, collaborative scientific campaigns and media outreach.
For several years Scott had wanted to be more “hands on” in his quest for clean water and the preservation of sea mammals so he became Director of TWF’s California Water Quality Division.
This also led to a chance fortuitous meeting with Roger E. Bütow, the founder and Executive Director of Clean Water Now. Roger and Scott started working on distressing water quality impairment issues immediately. Through the media and open education of public officials at hearings, they helped cities formulate Best Management Practices (BMPs) for contaminated surface water mitigations directly abating urban runoff and proactive pollution prevention.
CWN is also responsible for successfully encouraging South Orange County cities to create water departments where none existed before 2000. They were a significant factor in the formation of both a Marine Protection Officer and Environmental Compliance Officer positions in their hometown of Laguna Beach.
CWN’s efforts created nationally recognized water quality improvement outcomes and help the development of real property in a mindful and respecting manner. This has led to better relations between cities, developers and protectionist NGOs throughout the region.
Education:
University of Southern California, BA Urban and Regional Planning 1986.
Contact info: scott@clean-water-now.org

Mike Hazard
Board Member

The photo of Mike tells you a lot about him. He fell in love with all living things great and small as a boy, especially those related to water. That’s the aircraft carrier USS Midway in the background. Docked in downtown San Diego, Mike donates his few spare personal hours on weekends as a volunteer docent. He was a 3rd Class Petty Officer aboard the USS Lexington CVT 16 back in the mid-70s.

Mike’s “one stop shopping” when it comes to waterworld endeavors, he has professional expertise with advanced training and certifications in:

• Watercourse surveys and aquatic/riparian/terrestrial habitat restoration, including non-native flora and fauna species removal + bio-remediation.
• Water quality sampling and hydrology analyst, BMP (Best Management Practices) field observer, indigenous native aquatic species protection team leader. Benthic micro-invertebrate surveys.
• Industrial and residential BMP erosion control/protection strategies.
• 2 years as Territorial Manager for Kristar Enterprises, Inc. (now Oldcastle Stormwater Solutions). Mike installed, maintained, monitored, submitted compliance field reports to EPA for over 3500 storm BMP water devices of all types, from curb inlets to multi-story interceptors. His territory stretched from the Mexican border to San Luis Obispo out to Phoenix, Az.

Mike’s return to the CWN fold will primarily entail assisting ED Roger Bütow with our in-house Peer Review effort (See PEER REVIEW page). Helping assess and critique emerging or advanced technologies in the field will be important for CWN’s proposed positive approach, its new proactive, collaborative mission after retiring from a robust 15 years of activism in January 2013. Like other CWN family members and like-minded NGOs, responsible independent 3rd party oversight is an integral element in our region’s water future strategies, whether it’s desalination, in-stream protection for riparian and aquatics or safe, sustainable healthy supplies for our particular species. You could add “relentless and persistent like water itself,” he’s proven how profoundly committed to love of watery things he is, uninterrupted these past 20 years. We’re pleased to announce that he’s returned in a key role to this, the NGO successor to the Clean Water Now! Coalition (CWN!C). Mike, along with Scott (Woody) Woodard of The Whaleman Foundation, was a co-founding Board member back in 1998.

Born in South Gate CA in 1957, Mike grew up in Bakersfield as the son of a banker. He spent a lot of time fishing in the Sierras, stomping up and down what were then healthy watersheds teeming with life. After his tour in the Navy, he moved to Orange County where he worked as a carpet cleaner until he contracted a multi-symptom illness in 1995 after diving into a recycled irrigation reservoir during a community cleanup day---as a volunteer, naturally. He still attributes his ensuing complex gamut of life-threatening and other related illnesses to the rampant contamination in the basin he was trying to remove debris from. The reservoir he helped clean of junk was located near his (then) Mission Viejo residence. As part of his rehab, he started hiking up and down South OC creeks and their tributaries -- and what he saw crystallized his new concerns about water quality impairments and their adverse impacts upon the type of ecosystems he enjoyed growing up. Through the years Mike has worn different hats, advised, worked for and served in the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited of California, CWN!C, and OC Watershed Alliance to name a few. He is also chairman of the State Water Resources Control Board's Citizen Watershed Monitoring Program for South Orange County. Mike’s been critical in the Orange and San Diego Counties restoration efforts for the anadromous (fresh-to-salt-back-to-fresh water life cycle) endangered Southern Steelhead Trout (SST), bringing them home to their former historical South OC residency. This federally listed (1997) endangered species once ran up all of the coastal creeks and rivers from Central California right down into Baja Mexico. Beginning in 2000, Mike worked diligently with CWN!C in our effort to get Aliso Creek rightfully added to the Distinct Population Segment List by NOAA (National Marine Fisheries Service). Somehow this lone creek had been left off the official list but after 10 years of constant pressure, the obvious “no brainer” oversight was corrected in 2010. CWN!C went it alone and eventually prevailed. In the late 90s and early 2000s, high-profile and respected investigative journalists like Matt Coker of OC WEEKLY, Dan Weikel, David Reyes and Seema Mehta of the LA Times, plus Pat Brennan of the OC Register were personally escorted on tours of the South OC watersheds that Mike and Roger knew to be in severe distress and degrading rapidly due to gross, systemic water pollution. Google® the reporter’s names and CWN!C or Mike’s name, the stories are fascinating tales for those unfamiliar with this species.

The SST became a lightning rod of controversy, a focal point and acknowledged canary-in-the-coal mine indicator or biomarker species that had already been confirmed in residence along San Diego County's San Mateo Creek, at the San Diego/OC Counties line near Camp Pendleton. More than 40 of them were reported back in 1998. Those “discoveries” were behind the scenes “deal breakers” that halted the proposed extension of the 241 Foothill Corridor toll road down to San Onofre/Trestles. Disregard all of that boasting and hyperbolic bragging: It was that darned pesky, opportunistic fish that was the nail in the toll road coffin. Even more dramatic change occurred when in the spring of 2008 a 35” SST whopper, the largest ever found in Orange County, was detained and netted for its own safety in lower San Juan Creek. At the time when Mike’s team found it, he was the #1 stream team coordinator for the 501 c 3 non-profit Trout Unlimited in Orange County. He worked as their top field specialist for a decade. Once released at Doheny State Beach (Dana Point), it swam off to a hearty round of applause by all as we at CWN now applaud Mike’s lifetime of unselfish commitments. Welcome back aboard CWN, Petty Officer Hazzard!