The West Virginia University Research Corp. has announced the award of $225,000 to help create the Environmental Research Center at WVU .

Under the direction of Ronald Fortney, research professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the WVU College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, the centers first goal will be to investigate water issues.

ERC will tap the expertise of researchers in the West Virginia Water Research Institute, Natural Resource Analysis Center, National Mine Land Reclamation Center, Appalachian Hardwood Center, as well as faculty in several WVU colleges.

The award was made under the Research Corp.s Program to Stimulate Interdisciplinary Research.

“Federal agencies that fund research look for teams of experts who can attack complex problems from multiple angles,”said John Weete, president of the Research Corp. and vice president for research and economic development at WVU .”This is especially true in water and land management, where ecology, biology, hydrology, soil science, geology, civil and environmental engineering, and numerous other disciplines are involved.”

“Instead of looking at an individual tract of land or an individual stream, federal agencies are focusing their efforts at the watershed level,”Fortney explained.”WVU has made inroads in research at the watershed level. By building on our experience and diverse expertise, WVU is the key player in West Virginia and through the work of this center can become a key player nationally in addressing water and land management issues.”

Water availability and quality has long been a problem for people west of the Mississippi River, Fortney said. East of the Mississippi, people are becoming more aware of water quality and availability because of increasing pressures from larger population centers in the Easts expanding metropolitan areas, he noted.

Fortney cites the fact that West Virginia provides the headwaters for the Potomac River, which serves the Washington, D.C., area , and for the Ohio River, which serves cities such as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

“What we do in West Virginia affects millions of people downstream,”Fortney said.”And those millions will likely have an impact on whether and how we are left to manage our water resource,”he noted, emphasizing the relevance of water research to the state.

“Our hope is that through the Environmental Research Center, we can present scientific research upon which lawmakers and regulators can form sound policy and practices and that we can then educate stakeholders to ensure that our future generations will have the clean, abundant water to which they are entitled,”Fortey added.