The Irrigation Association has named Colorado water conservation specialist and longtime irrigation instructor Brent Mecham as their industry development director.
Mecham will lead the Irrigation Association Education Foundation and guide the effort to streamline curriculum development.
“Mecham has tremendous respect in the irrigation industry and beyond. By all accounts, he is a great instructor, an authority on irrigation’s best practices and a passionate advocate of irrigation efficiency,” says Deborah Hamlin, IA executive director.
Mecham, who has a bachelor’s degree in landscape horticulture from Colorado State University, helped develop two IA classes, Advanced Irrigation Design for Water Conservation and Smart Technology for Irrigation Management. He has also been a major contributor and author for many of the manuals used in the current IA curriculum, and is qualified to teach most IA turf and landscape irrigation classes.
As a member of the IA Water Management Committee, Mecham played a prominent role in creating the ET Connection state-by-state database of sources of evapotranspiration data for scheduling irrigation. Mecham also served on the American Society of Civil Engineers committee that developed the Standardized Penman-Monteith Reference Evapotranspiration Equation.
He was also a principal author of the IA’s Turf and Landscape Irrigation Best Management Practices and helped write its companion Landscape Irrigation Scheduling and Water Management document.
