James Wasley Named 2024-25 Water Policy Scholar
The Center for Water Policy is pleased to announce James Wasley as the 2024-25 Water Policy Scholar. Wasley is a professor of architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Water Policy Scholars program brings policy researchers across the Universities of Wisconsin together with freshwater scientists to frame policy questions and adapt tools to address water resource issues. The program is intended to increase the Center for Water Policy’s capacity to develop interdisciplinary and sustainable solutions to freshwater problems.
As a Water Policy Scholar, Professor Wasley’s research project Possible Future Uses of the Port of Milwaukee’s Dredged Material Disposal Facilities – a Test Case for the Great Lakes Green/ Blue Infrastructure Design Research + Practice Network will explore the question: “What possible ecologically progressive futures can we imagine for Milwaukee’s Dredged Material Disposal Facilities (DMDFs) at Jones Island?” These two facilities, one nearing capacity and one newly created, are representative of the network of dredge-spoil facilities associated with Great Lakes ports. The collective scale and pivotal locations of these created lands places their future squarely within one of ten Grand Water Challenges identified by the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin: Great Lakes Management and Restoration. This question also serves as a test case for a second question that Professor Wasley has been engaged with since his 2017-18 Water Policy Fellowship: “Is it possible to create a viable network of academic researchers, design related professionals, government officials and other interested parties to promote innovation in nature-based design solutions addressing problems of Great Lakes Cities?”
Building on the 2019 National Sciences Foundation Sustainable Urban Systems Workshop “Reimagining Water: Linking Sustainable Urban Water Systems in the Great Lakes Basin,” held at UWM, and the 2022 Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium Workshop “Reimagining Water II: The Future of Blue-Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes Basin” held at the University of Toronto, the work of this fellowship will be to convene a meeting of experts on issues associated with the DMDFs and representing the steering committee of the nascent Great Lakes Green/ Blue Infrastructure Design Research + Practice Network. The immediate deliverable will be a paper placing the Milwaukee DMDF in a basin-wide context, inventorying existing examples of closure and conversion, and speculating on additional possibilities. The larger goal is to identify possible funding sources for “Reimagining Water III.”
James Wasley is a Professor in the UWM Architecture Department and is a Director of the Institute for Ecological Design. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences. His research focuses on designing and implementing ecological urban waterscapes. Grounded in the Great Lakes, this research has recently expanded to include a comparative focus on the restoration of the Emscher River in the Ruhr region of Germany and on green/blue infrastructure in German urban design.
