WRRA Facilitates 60 Years of Water Research

The year 2024 marked the 60^th anniversary of US President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Water Resources Research Act (WRRA). The establishment of this law led to the creation of the National Institutes for Water Resources (NIWR), a network of 54 water research centers and institutes, as well as the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR), which represents the over 60 water research institutions of higher learning in North America. 

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In celebration of the momentous occasion, UCOWR released a special issue earlier this year (April 2025) of the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education (JCWRE), which was dedicated to the rich history and wide-ranging impacts of the work of NIWR centers and institutes. The WRRA began what Gerald Joseph McAdams Kauffman, Jr.—the current director of Delaware Water Resources Center, Institute for Public Administration, and an associate professor for the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware—refers to in his article as “The Golden Age of Water.” The special issue surveys six decades of water research and policy in the US locally, regionally, and nationally and covers the periods of the Great Society of the 1960s, the Clean Water Act years of the 1970s and 1980s, and the watershed movement of the 1990s into the 21^st century, among other topics.

According to Kauffman, the WRRA invests in water resources and river basins that support a trillion dollars of economic activity in the US, including outdoor recreation, agriculture, drinking water, and water-related jobs. However, he warns that modern challenges such as climate change, aging infrastructure, and institutional constraints must be addressed to continue the momentum that the WRRA sparked over six decades ago. 

Read the Special Issue 

WRRA Program