PHOENIX, AZ, Aug. 1, 2014 -- The national Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA) recently announced that it has appointed Water Quality Division Director Mike Fulton as president for the next year.
Fulton had previously served as vice president, secretary and member of the board of the association -- a nonpartisan organization of state and interstate officials who implement surface water programs throughout the country. Members are generally those individuals who have day-to-day responsibility for protecting and maintaining the quality of our nation's waters. The organization works in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to meet Clean Water Act (CWA) objectives.
Fulton succeeds Shellie Chard-McClary, water quality division director at the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, as president. The association has 56 members, who represent each of the states and some interstate water groups. The ACWA board has 15 members, comprising one state representative of each of the 10 EPA regions, one interstate representative, and the current treasurer, vice president, president, and most recent past president of the association.
In addition to navigable waters issues, Fulton said ACWA will be dealing with a host of other challenges during the next year, including nutrient levels in the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and other waterbodies; finding solutions to close the gap between current EPA initiatives and budget realities and the gap between infrastructure needs for wastewater treatment plants and funding levels; and developing a national standard for e-reporting of monitoring data.
Fulton has a bachelor of science degree in forest/watershed management from the University of Arizona. He has been with ADEQ since 1990 and, in addition to WQD director, he has served as director of the former tank programs division, deputy director of the waste programs division and director of ADEQ's southern regional office in Tucson.
During his ADEQ career, he has focused on the cleanup of groundwater and soils at hazardous waste sites throughout Arizona, the management of solid and hazardous waste inspection and compliance programs, and administration of brownfields, pollution prevention, underground storage tank, and voluntary remediation programs.
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