Community

Griffen: Dedicated to Serving the Valley’s Hungry Through the Imperial Valley Food Bank

Posted on by

Sara Griffen, executive director of the Imperial Valley Food Bank, is pictured in her office at the Food Bank’s headquarters and warehouse in rural El Centro

When your job is to feed the hungry in a rural county with limited resources where so many are living at or below poverty level, leaving thousands as “food insecure,” you know the work will not be easy.

It is the kind of work that can bring you face to face with hardship, especially when seeing children without enough food, but it also allows you to see the best in the community as people provide their time and resources to help.

This is the job that Sara Griffen has.

She is the executive director of the Imperial Valley Food Bank, an agency serving 20,000 people monthly throughout Imperial County.

It’s an agency that fights hunger by securing the financial resources and food needed month after month, year

Read More

  • How To Nominate

    To nominate a deserving community member, fill out the attached form, which will be sent electronically to Water Authority staff member Darren Simon.


    The Water Authority looks forward to featuring the person you have suggested for the Community Feature page. Should there be a backlog of nominations, it may take time to for your nomination to be highlighted, but we will strive to have a story done in a timely manner.

Leon Lesicka’s Calling: An Effort To Preserve Wildlife, Protect the Desert and Cleanse Waterways

Posted on by

Brawley resident and Imperial Valley native Leon Lesicka is pictured with the book, Leon’s Desert, which was penned by former Congressman Duncan L. Hunter about Lesicka’s work as a conservationist in the Imperial Valley desert.

For more than 30 years the name Leon Lesicka has been associated with conservationism in the Imperial Valley desert from providing water holes that have allowed wildlife to thrive to maintaining a healthy environment and clean waterways.

And at age 84, the man former Congressman Duncan L. Hunter dubbed “America’s Greatest Conservationist” is not ready to slow down.

His current undertaking: the building of a ten-acre wetlands on the Alamo River in Holtville, a project funded through a recent $3 million federal grant administered by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, that will clean the water flowing through the river and ultimately improve the quality of drainage flows to the Salton Sea.

It is the latest wetlands project

Read More

  • How To Nominate

    To nominate a deserving community member, fill out the attached form, which will be sent electronically to Water Authority staff member Darren Simon.


    The Water Authority looks forward to featuring the person you have suggested for the Community Feature page. Should there be a backlog of nominations, it may take time to for your nomination to be highlighted, but we will strive to have a story done in a timely manner.

  • How To Nominate

    To nominate a deserving community member, fill out the attached form, which will be sent electronically to Water Authority staff member Darren Simon.


    The Water Authority looks forward to featuring the person you have suggested for the Community Feature page. Should there be a backlog of nominations, it may take time to for your nomination to be highlighted, but we will strive to have a story done in a timely manner.