The 16h annual J.W. Fanning Lecture will be Nov. 14 in the Mahler
Auditorium of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education on the
University of Georgia campus in Athens.
This year’s speaker, Virgil Norton, is manager of the Upper
Republican River Natural Resource District in Imperial, Neb. He
will speak on “Water Resource Management: A Critical Issue for
Farmers and Rural Communities in the 21st Century.”
Norton to Address Water
Issues
Norton is responsible for initiating and enforcing policies,
rules and regulations set by elected directors for groundwater
management in an area with 3,300 irrigation wells and declining
aquifer levels. He develops and oversees public policy research
and prepares testimony for presentation to the Nebraska
legislature.
The board has instituted a moratorium on new wells, water-use
allocations and a water-banking rule that adopts water marketing
as a management tool. The district is participating as a “Friend
of the Court” in a U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit by Kansas against
Nebraska and Colorado over water use in the Republican River
Basin.
Reheis to Deliver Response
Harold F. Reheis, director of the Environmental Protection
Division (EPD) in the Georgia Department of Natural Resources,
will deliver a response to the lecture, “Georgia’s Groundwater
Management Issues.”
Reheis manages the Georgia Geologic Survey and all Georgia
environmental programs covering air and water quality, safe
drinking water, water resource allocation, groundwater
protection, solid and hazardous waste.
The J.W. Fanning Lecture is sponsored by the Agricultural
Economics Association of Georgia and the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Department of
Agricultural and Applied Economics.
The lecture is named for the late J.W. Fanning, who was
instrumental in developing public service and outreach at the
University of Georgia.
Registration begins at 10:30 a.m. The lecture begins at 11 a.m.
The lecture is free, but there’s a $25 registration fee for the
luncheon following the lecture. Preregister by Nov. 3. Make
checks payable to Agricultural Economics Association of Georgia
and mail to: 301 Conner Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
30602-7509.
