Cal Poly Receives Federal Water Conservation Award

SAN LUIS OBISPO -- Cal Poly’s Irrigation Training and Research Center has been recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for helping to improve and promote water conservation and reclamation throughout the bureau’s mid-Pacific region.

Professor and ITRC Director Stuart Styles received the Commissioner’s Water Conservation Award at the bureau’s Mid-Pacific Region Water User’s Conference in January. The award recognizes the ITRC for providing technical assistance and formal training classes to the bureau and the region for the past 10 years. The ITRC has provided training classes and consulting services to more than 100 water districts and contract water providers over the past decade throughout the Western United States.

Cal Poly’s ITRC was founded in 1989 by professor and current ITRC Chairman Charles M. Burt and is part of the College of Agriculture’s BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department. The ITRC is currently working on irrigation district modernization projects throughout California, as well as in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho and Oklahoma. Most research projects involve some aspect of energy conservation or environmental improvement while simultaneously modernizing irrigation districts.

The center has also provided consulting on international irrigation modernization to agencies in China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, India, Pakistan, and Mexico.

For more information on Cal Poly’s Irrigation Training and Research Center, visit its Web site at: http://www.itrc.org/.

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