The Center for Water Policy hosted an Earth Day webinar featuring James Wasley, Professor at UW-Milwaukee and 2024-2025 Water Policy Scholar. He presented his research on the possible future uses of the Dredged Material Disposal Facility at the Port of Milwaukee.

This facility is part of a broader network of dredge-spoil sites across the Great Lakes. He also discussed these newly created lakefront lands in a basin-wide context and included examples of closure and conversion to future public uses in other parts of the Great Lakes.

Building on prior workshops, including the 2019 National Science Foundation Sustainable Urban Systems Workshop and the 2022 Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium Workshop, Prof. Wasley’s research serves as a test case for collaboration among academic researchers, design professionals, and policymakers to develop innovative, nature-based design solutions for Great Lakes cities.

In August of 2024, he convened a meeting of experts on issues associated with the dredged material disposal facilities and the future of this research aligns with the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin’s Grand Water Challenge on Great Lakes Management and Restoration.

Prof. Wasley is the Director of the Institute for Ecological Design and the former chair of the Department of Architecture. He is the past president of the Society of Building Science Educators and the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance: An Affiliate of the United States Green Building Council. He was a founding member of WGBA in 1997.

This event is co-hosted by the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin and is part of a quarterly online water symposium series in partnership with the Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium, an initiative of the Council of the Great Lakes Region. These events seek to encourage and advance collaborations, share science across borders, encourage students in research and career opportunities and present research that is solving real-world problems.