A Cal Poly professor is headed to Washington D.C. on Tuesday to help shape national policy on water issues.
Ryan Alaniz will attend the White House Water Summit with other state and local leaders. He was invited to the event after submitting a policy brief to the National Security Council.
"I think it is very important, if we just think about national security, our food source and therefore our water in the west is something that we need to be really strategizing and thinking about," said Alaniz.
Alaniz organized the Disaster by Drought summit last fall on the Cal Poly campus, a forum for looking at ways to better address water accessibility and climate change. That's what first caught the eye of the White House administration.