Travis Baxter

MS Student
Hydraulics and Water Resources Program and College of Law
Email: travis-baxter@uiowa.edu
Advisor: Dr. Witold Krajewski

I am pursuing joint degrees in Hydraulics and Water Resources and Law.  I am currently researching the legal impacts that implementing a distributed flood storage system for flood mitigation would have.  These impacts include environmental law, property law, and public policy impacts.  The environmental law impacts include impacts to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits (required by the Clean Water Act) and to the Environmental Impact Statements (required by the National Environmental Policy Act).  The property law and closely related public policy impacts include issues with the acquisition of property rights (such as flood easements), or the design of a program that pays farmers for flooded land that was usually farmed. This research is important to understand the potential legal aspects involved with the implementation of a distributed flood storage concept and therefore, it will aid in the development of a legally viable system.