Virginia Water Resources Research Center celebrates 60 years
The Virginia Water Center celebrates 60 years of advancing water research, education, and policy, with statewide partnerships shaping the future.
The Virginia Water Resources Research Center is celebrating a milestone year in 2025. Known as the Water Center, this year marks 60 years since its founding at Virginia Tech and 20 years of being housed within the College of Natural Resources and Environment.
Under Kevin McGuire, the center director since 2024, the center continues to provide research, outreach, and education across the commonwealth.
“The Water Center is dedicated to enhancing the understanding and sustainable management of water resources in Virginia and beyond,” McGuire said. “The water centers were established in response to significant national challenges in water resources in the 1950s and ’60s. Today, we continue to face challenges in providing for clean and adequate water for people and ecosystems. We do this by fostering a robust research community in water resources, providing transformative educational opportunities, building collaborative partnerships, and disseminating science-based knowledge about water resources and water use.”
The center was founded a year after the 1964 Water Resources Research Act, which called on each state to establish a water center. This predated the Clean Water Act by eight years and underscored the growing need to study and protect water availability and quality. There are now 54 water centers — one in each state, mostly affiliated with land-grant universities — along with centers in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“The original language in the 1964 Water Resources Research Act has remained largely unchanged,” McGuire said. “It’s like the land-grant mission but for water. The act calls for centers to plan and conduct research on water resources, promote dissemination and application of results, train scientists and engineers, and cooperate with other colleges and universities to resolve state and regional water and land problems.”
Researcher Kylie Campbell checks water monitoring equipment in the Duckpond as part of her work for the Water Resources Research Center.
McGuire said most of the training is at the graduate level, funded through grant programs coordinated by the center.
“We’ve also been involved in undergraduate training,” McGuire said. “In 2014, we established an undergraduate bachelor’s degree in water resources that has produced about 100 graduates to date.”
The water resources, policy, and management major is housed in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. CNRE is the only college in Virginia to offer an undergraduate degree in water resources.
The center funds and supports water-related research across the state, not just at Virginia Tech. It also addresses emerging issues. In 2023, harmful algal blooms at Smith Mountain Lake prompted recreational advisories. Understanding their cause and how to prevent future outbreaks is one example of the center’s recent projects.
As the center marks its 60th anniversary, faculty and staff continue advancing research and programs to protect water resources in Virginia and nationwide.
