SPPA's Gerald Kauffman Attends White House Water Summit

UD's Gerald Kauffman invited to White House summit on World Water Day

8:57 a.m., March 28, 2016--Gerald Kauffman, director of the Universitys Delaware Water Resources Center (DWRC), attended the White House Water Summit held March 22 in Washington, D.C. 

In conjunction with the United Nations World Water Day, the White House hosted the Water Summit to shine a spotlight on the importance of crosscutting, creative solutions to solving the water problems of today. 

The administration of President Barack Obama announced nearly $4 billion in private capital committed to investment in a broad range of water-infrastructure projects nationwide, more than $1 billion from the private sector over the next decade to conduct research and development into new technologies, and nearly $35 million this year in federal grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation and Department of Agriculture to support cutting-edge water science. 

At the White House, Kauffman and 200 other attendees heard from the administration and five U.S. congressmen that water resources research at universities such as the University of Delaware is especially pertinent because water is one of America's top domestic public policy challenges right now. The push is on to invest more in this economic and environmental resource to prevent another Flint River, California drought, or coastal flood emergency from occurring.

The announcement from the White House highlighted national initiatives such as the research conducted by the DWRC and Nature Conservancy of Delaware into economic incentives to promote watershed restoration and the Brandywine Christina Healthy Watershed Fund research funded through the $35 million William Penn Foundation Delaware River Watershed Initiative.

Kauffman is the director of the DWRC, one of the 54 National Institutes for Water Resources (NIWR) supported by the U.S. Department of Interior and U.S. Geological Survey at land grant universities in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the three island territories of Guam, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. 

Kauffman holds faculty appointments as assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering. 

The DWRC is a unit of the Institute for Public Administration within the School of Public Policy and Administration.

Article originally published by UDaily.