When Texas A&M Professor Sam Brody had the chance to snag a “superstar” to join an academic team producing the first national study of urban flooding scope and consequences, he knew just who to ask: Gerry Galloway. “It’s not just his passion, it’s what he lives and breathes,” says Brody, who considers Galloway a mentor and a friend.
Galloway—at 83, with an engineering teaching position at the University of Maryland and consulting jobs in Florence, Italy and China—could have easily said no, but he couldn’t resist yet another chance to chip away at America’s water management problems. “Water is the fabric that holds society together, and we have to figure out how we collectively solve” problems in managing it, he says.
Galloway was a leader of the presidential task force studying the 1993 Mississippi River flood. The report from the 1993 task force, known as the “Galloway Report,” encouraged governments and citizens at all levels to take responsibility for floodplain management. Story.