CHAMPAIGN, Ill., 1/22/20: Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) groundwater hydrologist Steve Wilson has received an Association of Boards of Certification’s award for advancing the water and wastewater operating profession. The Kenneth D. Kerri Excellence in Workforce Development Award was presented to Wilson for going beyond the call of duty as an educator.
Wilson has spent more than 30 years at the ISWS conducting applied research and providing technical assistance to small communities and private well owners. As a technical assistance provider, Wilson has assisted small communities in evaluating their water supply options and in understanding their drinking water compliance and sustainability issues.
Wilson has also created tools to help small communities and well owners in managing their systems. He manages the free Private Well Class program, which uses a combination of online and in-person methods to boost knowledge and competency of the individual well owner as well as the thousands of environmental health, Cooperative Extension, and water well professionals that serve well owners day to day.
Since the program’s inception in 2013, Wilson and his team have educated more than 15,000 well owners, realtors, and sanitarians via online courses and webinars and trained over 500 environmental health professionals, state regulators, and drillers on well vulnerability assessment and best practices in well owner outreach in over 30 states.
Wilson also manages the WaterOperator.org, a free online resource collection site for small system operators. With 11,000+ training events indexed annually and links to over 15,000+ free resources, ISWS staff maintain updated information from more than 800 state and national drinking water and wastewater-related organizations.
The Association of Boards of Certification offers a voluntary certification program to water treatment, distribution, collection, wastewater treatment, and industrial waste operators, water and wastewater laboratory analysts, plant maintenance technologists, and biosolids land appliers.
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Media contact: Steve Wilson, 217-333-0956, sdwilson@illinois.edu
Tricia Barker, Associate Director for Strategic Communications, 217-300-2327, tlbarker@illinois.edu