The Clean Water Act was a piece of ground-breaking legislation when it was signed into law on Oct. 18, 1972. Forty years later, many of America’s waterways have been preserved and its drinking water protected due to the provisions and prohibitions of the CWA.

On the anniversary of its signing, Dr. Franco Montalto, an assistant professor of environmental engineering on Drexel’s College of Engineering, is available to comment on its lasting effects on individuals, the environment and industry and what needs to be done for it to continue to protect clean water in the future.

Montalto is the director of the Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Laboratory. His research focuses on the effects of infrastructure on societal water needs, ecological restoration and green design. He has worked closely with water utilities in Philadelphia and New York to develop green infrastructure that helps to mitigate water run-off and minimizes the urban heat footprints of the cities.

Montalto can address the following topics:

• New challenges and opportunities for protecting clean water and waterways
• Strengthening the CWA to target non-point source pollution
• Green infrastructure plans that allow for overlap between water management and ecosystem/land use decisions.
• Urban green infrastructure planning and design

Montalto holds a doctorate degree in environmental engineering and is a licensed civil engineering with a background in theoretical approaches to solving environmental problems. His research projects center around developing ecologically, economically and socially feasible solutions to urban environmental problems with a focus on sustainable water resource engineering.