Vivian Underhill
Biographic Data
| ID | 1676649 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vivian Underhill |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vivian |
| FAMILY NAME | Underhill |
| SIGNATURE | UNDERHILL V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Colorado School of Mines |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3155-2652 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Flows and frictions in translocating water stories
This article reflects on Water Stories, a two year translocal, community-engaged project integrating water storytelling, textile arts and environmental education in two agriculturally intensive California communities: Arvin in the southern San Joaquin Valley and Las Lomas along the Central Coast. Despite their geographic distance, both communities experience severe water injustice rooted in colonial legacies, groundwater extraction, and the commo…
What Do We Mean When We Say Carbon Capture and Storage? STS and the Open Questions of a Technology in Emergence
Carbon sequestration is a relatively recent phrase that refers to a broad suite of technologies meant to minimize the amount of carbon emitted to the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientific organizations have recently emphasized that carbon capture is a necessary part of attaining net-zero or negative carbon budgets. It has also become a particularly controversial set of technologies, funding streams, …
Deregulatory Disclosure Regimes and Masked Absences in Fracking Chemical Data
Vocal opposition to fracking (the practice of fracturing the subsurface to increase oil and gas production), from shale deposits in Pennsylvania to oil fields in California, has led to increased disclosure about chemicals in fracking fluid. This paper questions the conflation of data abundance with meaningful action or response, drawing on the authors’ collective years of experience working with FracFocus, the most comprehensive publicly availabl…
Against settler sustainability
California has been heralded as a beacon of agricultural production and productivity, yet its groundwater crisis is a warning of its impending collapse. In this paper, we argue that policies like California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act reinscribe the settler state, even as they aim toward environmental sustainability. Drawing from Indigenous feminist scholarship on water and frontier processes, our methodology traces settler coloniali…
What work does ‘contamination’ do? An agential realist account of oil wastewater and radium in groundwater
Oil wastewater often contains high levels of radium, a carcinogenic and radioactive element. This article closely engages with two investigations of radium in groundwater downstream from oil wastewater storage pits. While one investigation found that radium did not travel beyond the storage pits, the other found evidence of elevated radium some two kilometers downstream. With an agential realist analysis, we resolve these differences, showing tha…
From Kern Island to the Streets of Bakersfield
California’s arid San Joaquin Valley was once inundated by lakes and wetlands. Through settler colonial discourses of contamination, a network of canals and aqueducts drained these lakes and wetlands in the late nineteenth century. Now, the Valley’s air and water are contaminated by pesticides, nitrates, and hydrocarbons from oil extraction and large-scale agriculture. Building from archival research and participant observation with environmental…
Wildflowers and Water
Building from ethnographic and archival research, this article describes the role of desire, relationship building, and creativity in Kern County's environmental justice organizing. Located in California's Central Valley, Kern County is dominated by oil extraction and large-scale agriculture, which impact the region's air and water quality and create environmental injustice for the predominantly Latinx communities who live near agricultural and o…
The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration
We explore and contextualize changes at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the first 6 months of the Trump administration, arguing that its pro-business direction is enabling a form of regulatory capture. We draw on news articles, public documents, and a rapid response, multisited interview study of current and retired EPA employees to (1) document changes associated with the new administration, (2) contextualize and compare the curre…
Environmental Data Justice and the Trump Administration
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) was formed after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2016 to respond to the threat posed by the Trump administration to environmental data and policy, and to federal environmental agencies. During his campaign, Trump was openly hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to the science of climate change. Since taking office, Trump's administration has taken steps to radi…
The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration
We explore and contextualize changes at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the first 6 months of the Trump administration, arguing that its pro-business direction is enabling a form of regulatory capture. We draw on news articles, public documents, and a rapid response, multisited interview study of current and retired EPA employees to (1) document changes associated with the new administration, (2) contextualize and compare the curre…
Against settler sustainability
California has been heralded as a beacon of agricultural production and productivity, yet its groundwater crisis is a warning of its impending collapse. In this paper, we argue that policies like California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act reinscribe the settler state, even as they aim toward environmental sustainability. Drawing from Indigenous feminist scholarship on water and frontier processes, our methodology traces settler coloniali…
Environmental Data Justice and the Trump Administration
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) was formed after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2016 to respond to the threat posed by the Trump administration to environmental data and policy, and to federal environmental agencies. During his campaign, Trump was openly hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to the science of climate change. Since taking office, Trump's administration has taken steps to radi…
The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration
We explore and contextualize changes at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the first 6 months of the Trump administration, arguing that its pro-business direction is enabling a form of regulatory capture. We draw on news articles, public documents, and a rapid response, multisited interview study of current and retired EPA employees to (1) document changes associated with the new administration, (2) contextualize and compare the curre…
Wildflowers and Water
Building from ethnographic and archival research, this article describes the role of desire, relationship building, and creativity in Kern County's environmental justice organizing. Located in California's Central Valley, Kern County is dominated by oil extraction and large-scale agriculture, which impact the region's air and water quality and create environmental injustice for the predominantly Latinx communities who live near agricultural and o…
From Kern Island to the Streets of Bakersfield
California’s arid San Joaquin Valley was once inundated by lakes and wetlands. Through settler colonial discourses of contamination, a network of canals and aqueducts drained these lakes and wetlands in the late nineteenth century. Now, the Valley’s air and water are contaminated by pesticides, nitrates, and hydrocarbons from oil extraction and large-scale agriculture. Building from archival research and participant observation with environmental…
What work does ‘contamination’ do? An agential realist account of oil wastewater and radium in groundwater
Oil wastewater often contains high levels of radium, a carcinogenic and radioactive element. This article closely engages with two investigations of radium in groundwater downstream from oil wastewater storage pits. While one investigation found that radium did not travel beyond the storage pits, the other found evidence of elevated radium some two kilometers downstream. With an agential realist analysis, we resolve these differences, showing tha…
What Do We Mean When We Say Carbon Capture and Storage? STS and the Open Questions of a Technology in Emergence
Carbon sequestration is a relatively recent phrase that refers to a broad suite of technologies meant to minimize the amount of carbon emitted to the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientific organizations have recently emphasized that carbon capture is a necessary part of attaining net-zero or negative carbon budgets. It has also become a particularly controversial set of technologies, funding streams, …
Deregulatory Disclosure Regimes and Masked Absences in Fracking Chemical Data
Vocal opposition to fracking (the practice of fracturing the subsurface to increase oil and gas production), from shale deposits in Pennsylvania to oil fields in California, has led to increased disclosure about chemicals in fracking fluid. This paper questions the conflation of data abundance with meaningful action or response, drawing on the authors’ collective years of experience working with FracFocus, the most comprehensive publicly availabl…
Against settler sustainability
California has been heralded as a beacon of agricultural production and productivity, yet its groundwater crisis is a warning of its impending collapse. In this paper, we argue that policies like California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act reinscribe the settler state, even as they aim toward environmental sustainability. Drawing from Indigenous feminist scholarship on water and frontier processes, our methodology traces settler coloniali…
Flows and frictions in translocating water stories
This article reflects on Water Stories, a two year translocal, community-engaged project integrating water storytelling, textile arts and environmental education in two agriculturally intensive California communities: Arvin in the southern San Joaquin Valley and Las Lomas along the Central Coast. Despite their geographic distance, both communities experience severe water injustice rooted in colonial legacies, groundwater extraction, and the commo…
Environmental Justice and Health Disparities (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Ecology (3 works) · Environmental ethics (3 works) · Environmental justice (3 works) · Geography (3 works) · Risk Perception and Management (3 works) · Business (2 works)