The Center for Watershed Protection is pleased to announce the promotion of Amanda H. Pollack, P.E. to the Director of Training. Amanda has worked at CWP since March 2022 as a Senior Water Resources Engineer. 

Her projects at CWP include project management for the Conowingo Dam Watershed Implementation Plan and serving as the Technical Assistance Circuit Rider for the Envision the Choptank Collaborative. Additionally, she is the technical lead for CWP’s annual National Watershed and Stormwater Conference. Amanda has over 28 years of engineering experience.



Prior to joining the Center, she was in consulting engineering at George, Miles & Buhr for 16 years and municipal engineering at the City of Salisbury, Maryland for 10 years. Amanda was the Director of the Infrastructure and Development Department for the City of Salisbury. As the City Engineer, she oversaw the Planning, Engineering, Surveying, CAD, Stormwater Management, Construction Inspection and Building Permitting divisions of the City. She managed the City’s MS4 Stormwater program and implemented the City’s Stormwater Utility. Amanda has experience in water/wastewater/stormwater design, project management, grant writing and administration, and construction administration. Amanda holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Maryland.

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In Aiken, South Carolina, Opti helped the community outsmart the storm, transforming the Sand River watershed from a disaster zone into a thriving ecosystem. By deploying Opti’s adaptive control system, Aiken boosted stormwater capture by 2.6x and cut peak flows by 60%. The result? Millions saved in CAPEX and the revival of Hitchcock Woods for future generations. Read more about Aiken's economic and resilient approach to stormwater management HERE.

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The Center for Watershed Protection is now accepting abstracts from those interested in presenting at the 2025 National Watershed & Stormwater Conference. The Conference includes three full days of technical content from Tuesday, April 8th through Thursday, April 10th, 2025, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This year, the National Conference’s central theme is “Collaboration for Successful Watershed Stewardship”

Learn here!

Achieving water quality in Pennsylvania's waters is now more streamlined with the launch of the PA MS4 Collaboration Toolkit, a resource created by the Center for Watershed Protection to empower Pennsylvania municipalities to work together and tackle water quality challenges more efficiently and cost-effectively

Access it here!

The Center for Watershed Protection (CWP) is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to advance clean water resources and healthy ecosystems through responsible land and water management. Check out the highlights from 2023.

Read it here!

For Envision, you could say the “can opener” is Amanda Pollack, who serves as a “technical assistance circuit rider.” In that role, Pollack and CWP work to identify communities’ needs and match them with available funding opportunities. Originally funded with philanthropic support, the circuit rider position has received five years of U.S. EPA Section 319 funding to build the capacity of local jurisdictions, such as Caroline County, at no cost to their residents.

Read more here!

Lunch and Learn Series (CWPA MEMBERS ONLY):

Sandra Burton from PondHawk: October 3rd, 2024, 1:00PM EST

Rob Woodman from Ferguson: November 14th, 2024, 1:00PM EST

Jennifer Steffens from Opti: December 19th, 2024, 1:00PM EST

Become a Member Here!

Life Hacks over Lunch: A Meet-up Series for Watershed Professionals

October 15th & November 19th, 2024, 12:30 PM EST

Description: This free, virtual meet-up series is a peer learning opportunity for watershed professionals to share ideas and advice for solving real-life challenges of watershed projects. If you work with farmers and communities on watershed-scale projects to improve water quality and have ever found yourself thinking, “I don’t want to recreate the wheel,” this meet-up series is for you. In each meet-up, one person kicks things off by presenting a challenge or issue to the group to “hack.” Conversation, collaboration, and commiseration will ensue. Registration is required.

Register here!

2024 Webcast 8: Agriculture and Watershed Management

October 23rd, 2024, 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST

Description: Connecting Healthy Soils & Healthy Streams: Engaging farmers in restoration efforts: The health of a stream system depends primarily on the management practices within its watershed. In rural agricultural areas, effective engagement with farmers is critical for meeting stream and watershed restoration goals. Critical practices include improving soil health, managing nutrients, and planting riparian forested buffers. This session will explore several strategies used by conservation organizations and which approaches resonate best with farmers.

Establishment of Field Observatories to Investigate the Fluxes of Nitrogen and Phosphorus from Small Agricultural Catchments in Maryland: Losses of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus) from agricultural lands continue to plague efforts to protect and improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. As part of our ongoing projects in Maryland, we have established a network of small agricultural catchments (acres scale) on farmer’s fields to investigate the origin, sources, and mechanisms driving nutrient losses. These small agricultural catchments are instrumented with various instruments to determine rainfall and flow, collect water samples for lab analysis, and determine concentrations using insitu sensors. This presentation will outline our ongoing efforts in Maryland and how the data generated could be useful in developing and fine-tuning best management practices to keep nutrients in farmers’ fields and protect water quality in receiving waters.

Speakers: Lisa Blazure from the Stroud Water Research Center & Pennsylvania Soil Health Coalition and Gurpal S. Toor from the University of Maryland

Register here!

2024 Webcast 9: Green Infrastructure

November 20th, 2024, 1:00 - 2:30 PM EST

Description: This presentation shows how KCMO set about remediation of private Green Infrastructure from unmaintained or undermaintained to functional as designed assets. Utilizing existing laws and enforcement mechanisms. Attendees will see the step-by-step process Kansas City uses for handling deficiencies in regard to the privately owned Green Infrastructure improving Stormwater Quality and Quantity handling. Better minimizing flooding downstream of unmaintained or undermaintained facilities. The presenter found that Kansas City had laws in place to solve flooding and erosion from upstream development post construction that were not being utilized and leveraged for the good of the Citizenry. “I’m from the City and I’m here to help.”

Stormwater design criteria defines standards and requirements for managing stormwater runoff. Our current standards are based on decades old methodologies that have resulted in failing and inefficient infrastructure systems across the region. The Kansas City Metro Region has a vision to define resilient stormwater management practices using a sustainable watershed management approach that manages risk, enhances value, and stewards of natural ecosystems. The Mid-America Regional Council, in partnership with the Kansas City Chapter of the American Public Works Association, is working on a new stormwater manual that is based on the latest data and best practices available. The overarching goal of this modern approach is to provide for more resilient and cost-effective infrastructure. This new manual presents a layered approach to stormwater management in order to conserve our limited natural resources, use rain close to where it falls, improve the function of expensive stormwater storage, and provide multiple paths to move water downstream. When these layers work together, construction and long-term maintenance costs can be reduced. This presentation will discuss the process the Burns & McDonnell team has taken towards developing this regional manual and present the key preliminary stormwater management design criteria that will be updated to achieve more sustainable stormwater management.

Speakers: Michael Radabaugh from KC Water and Lauren Moore from Burns & McDonnell

Register here!

Clean Water Certificate Training Program: Instructor Preparation Program

February 24th – 28th, 2025

Description: Apply to become an Instructor for the Clean Water Certificate Training Program (CWC Program)! The CWC Program for workforce development is an ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) accredited certificate program that promotes job growth in the stormwater industry and delivers hands-on, classroom, and field-based learning on industry-specific skills and knowledge. Successful completion of the Instructor Preparation Program (IPP) will permit qualified candidates to continuously administer the CWC Program, no continued education units required

Learn More!

2025 IECA Annual Conference

February 25th - 28th, 2025

Richmond, VA

Register Here!

2025 National Watershed and Stormwater Conference

April 8th - 10th, 2025

Join us in Puerto Rico

Register Here!

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