BY NICOLE VILLACRES '18

Clean Water Action, a national environmental group, has awarded the Environmental Ground-Breaker Award to professor Kate Ballantine for her work with the Restoration Ecology Program. The program was created in 2012, when Ballantine and her environmental studies students noticed that Upper Lake had a severe problem with algae blooms caused by excessive nutrient pollution. One facet of the program is the Project Stream restoration site, which is focused on restoring the wetland and stream that feeds into Upper Lake, so that the nutrients would be naturally filtered out.