Aguadoc
Posted on | December 9, 2024 | 2 Comments
Like water through rock, the news of Michael Campana’s death traveled slowly from where he died late last August, in his home city of Corvallis, Oregon, to where I now live, in Baltimore, Maryland. Top of the scroll in the December 2nd New Yorker, there was a quip of his that likened an RFK, Jr. scheme to save a river by bottling its water to “a church running a brothel.”
Pure Michael or, to use his water handle, pure “Aquadoc.” Long sober from Twitter, I searched Michael on the newly vibrant platform Bluesky to high five him. Look who’s in The New Yorker! No Aguadoc. Something was wrong. Amplifying good work on social media matters these days. It’s expected that working scientists be out doing “sci comm” on social media explaining their work and promoting their universities. Even before Twitter, Michael was all over it, and not just for himself, but also for his publicity-shy peers. A giant in his field by then, having worked his way up to ever more prestigious posts from the University of Arizona, to the Desert Research Institute in Reno, to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque to his last gig at Oregon State, he desperately wanted the world to understand that each person is 60% water and where that water comes from. And so he became the activist publisher of WaterWired, an early and enduring model of how a blog can lift an entire specialist community. Come and get ’em! New papers, meetings, feuds, jobs, he had ’em, every day.
Among his many enthusiasms (see the content bar from WaterWired, left), Michael had a soft spot for troublemakers, and so found me first, in 2008 or so, calling foul here and offering props there in WaterWired about a series I’d written for the Las Vegas Sun on a grandiose groundwater extraction scheme stretching almost the length of the entire State of Nevada. The next year, we met in person, at some D.C. conference on water and energy, where he lit up with amusement when he spotted Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy and her shadowy fixer-lobbyist Marcus Faust staring daggers at me over a conference table. The four of us were the only ones in the room who understood the stakes over the ancient groundwater feeding Nevada’s White River system. They wanted to take it. We wanted them to leave it alone. Michael and his beloved wife Mary Frances were living in Oregon by that point, but every time Michael and I would talk, it would slip out at some wistful moment that, as much as he loved Corvallis, he left his hydrologic soul in the groundwater systems buoying the desert oases of the intermountain West.
The last time I saw Michael was in Baltimore — I’d moved here and he was in town for a convention. It was his birthday and he was astonished that I’d baked a cake. A cake? The man deserved a parade. Michael not only coined the term “hydrophilanthropy,” he and his wife Mary Frances also practiced it. Following the death of his sister in the 9/11 attacks, they created the Ann Campana Judge Foundation to fund potable water projects in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua.
Michael and I last spoke a year or so ago, musing about what good trouble it would be to run up a project on the stealth vampirization of the surface water flows of the Colorado River by groundwater pumping. He would mull it over, he said, during one of the early morning walks where he did his best thinking. We let it drop and lost touch until, even dead, yesterday morning he bubbled up top of the scroll in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, calling bullshit on RFK, Jr. That was Michael, straight to the point but always with a twinkle.
*Follow this link for Michael’s death notice, which gives cause as injuries sustained in a car accident, in the Corvallis Gazette Times. That reports of his death elsewhere read as if they were written using copy and paste buttons in no way reflects the profound esteem and affection for him from his peers. It does, however, illustrate well what a standout Michael was purely by dint of being a lively and readable hydrologist. From the International Association of Hydrogeologists; from the National Groundwater Association: from Oregon State University
Tags: hydrology > Michael Campana > water blogs > Western water
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December 9th, 2024 @ 3:08 pm
I had not heard. What a terrible loss. I did not know him personally, but Dr. Campana had a big impact on my life and career simply by way of his blog. It was there that I learned about French president Emmanuel Macron’s “Make Our Planet Great Again” initiative. On a whim, I applied to a few PhD programs, and ended up moving my family to Paris while I studied at the Sorbonne. It was an incredible experience, which I might not have known about without his always thoughtful and entertaining blog.
December 9th, 2024 @ 5:29 pm
Michael was one of the most innovative long-time water science communicators that we have been blessed with. And he always had lots of fun and inspiration for students, faculty, professionals, and policy-makers.
We always need more of what he provided. Everyone, step up and make him proud.
He is missed.