George Barley Water Prize Receives National Platform
On April 9, 2019, Dr. Steve Davis, The Everglades Foundation’s Senior Ecologist and Acting Director of Communications, presented on the “Building Confidence in Communities: Stemming the nutrient tide” panel at the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) meeting in Washington, D.C. ECOS is an exclusive gathering of environmental heads of each state and is attended by environmental leaders from a cross section of agencies and branches of government. The charge of this “nutrient pollution” panel was to address the scale, complexities and cost of nutrient runoff in each state as well as strategies being implemented to prevent further environmental and economic harm.
Dr. Davis was invited to participate in ECOS by Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) Secretary Noah Valenstein as a reflection of Florida’s commitment to clean water and the state’s partnership with The Everglades Foundation on the final phase of the $10 million George Barley Water Prize. The George Barley Water Prize is a foundation-led initiative to identify scalable technologies and incentivize breakthroughs in lowering the cost of phosphorus pollution removal from freshwater.
In Florida, and especially in the greater Everglades ecosystem, phosphorus pollution is a social and environmental problem:
degrading the health of our water bodies (lakes, rivers, estuaries and wetlands) and water supplies,
fueling the overgrowth of toxic algae that impacts fish, wildlife and human health,
impacting our tourism and real estate-based economy in Florida.
Cost-effective solutions to this problem will not only benefit Florida but also many major water bodies (e.g., Lake Erie) across the continent and plant.
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