Brent Mecham, a Colorado water conservation specialist and longtime irrigation instructor, has been named Irrigation Association industry development director.
Mecham will lead the Irrigation Association Education Foundation and guide the effort to streamline curriculum development.
“Brent has tremendous respect in the irrigation industry and beyond,” said IA Executive Director Deborah Hamlin. “By all accounts, he is a great instructor, an authority on irrigation best practices and a passionate advocate of irrigation efficiency. He is a distinguished addition to the IA staff.”
Mecham, CID, CIC, CLIA, CGIA, has a bachelor’s degree in landscape horticulture from Colorado State University. Mecham is an IA supervising regional authorized instructor and is qualified to teach most IA turf and landscape irrigation classes.
He has been a major contributor and author for many of the manuals used in the current IA curriculum and helped develop two classes, Advanced Irrigation Design for Water Conservation and Smart Technology for Irrigation Management.
As a member of the IA Water Management Committee, Mecham was instrumental 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.
Mecham comes to the IA from the Colorado Water Conservancy district where he is the landscape water management and conservation specialist. He will relocate to IA headquarters in Virginia and begin work Oct. 1.