The Quentin Martin Award

A new Society Award has been proposed to honor the memory of the late Dr. Quentin Martin, an innovative and successful water resource planner, previous editor of this journal, and a frequent contributor to ASCE water resource planning and management committees, conferences, and publications. Upon approval, the Quentin Martin Award will be presented annually to the authors of the outstanding practice-oriented paper in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management (JWRPM). The publication may cover any relevant topic in the field of water resource planning, management, or operations, but it must clearly demonstrate the application of advanced or advancing methods to the solution of a real-world water resource problem.

Naming the award for the best practice-oriented paper after Quentin is particularly appropriate, we think, because it will remind us of the importance of Quentin’s work as a gap bridger. He sought and delighted in finding ways to bridge gaps—not only those between theory and practice but also those between stakeholders who disagreed about how best to manage too much, too little, or poor-quality water. Naming the award after Quentin is also appropriate because he won this award for his paper, “Drought Management Plan for Lower Colorado River in Texas,” which was published in 1991. He later served as associate editor and then editor of JWPRM. In 2001, he received the ASCE Julian Hinds Award for his distinguished service and contributions advancing the field of planning, development, and management of water resources.

At his death on May 11, 2003, Quentin was chief water resources planner of the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in Texas. Quentin had joined LCRA $18\text{years}$ previously as manager of water policy and programs. At LCRA, he led the development of the first water management plan in Texas in 1989, followed by the first drought management plan in 1991. In the late 1990s, Quentin was instrumental in developing a regional long-term water plan under a statewide water resource planning process required by the Texas legislature. In this work, he guided and supported a planning group whose members represented water supply interests throughout the Colorado River basin. With Martin’s gap-bridging assistance, the group proposed an innovative and widely praised interregional water resource plan that increased water supplies for both the lower Colorado basin and the San Antonio area to the south.

And if this work at LCRA wasn’t enough, Quentin served as a consultant, working on United Nations water resource projects in Brazil, Spain, and India. He also shared his knowledge of systems analysis applications with the Army Corps of Engineers, through a special arrangement with LCRA that permitted the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) of the Corps to share his expertise and experience. Before joining the LCRA staff, Martin was employed for $13\text{years}$ by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) and its predecessor, the Texas Department of Water Resources. There, he held key management positions, directed research studies, and developed and applied new systems analysis techniques. (We systems wonks know well his work with network-flow programming algorithms for modeling water systems, which came from his gap-bridging research at the TWDB.)

Dr. Martin was an avid sailor, scuba diver, jogger, history buff, and fossil collector. And he was a traveler—his recreational journeys took him to the Cayman Islands, Cozumel, Honduras, Belize, Greece, Israel, Central Europe, and across the United States.

Quentin is survived by his wife Patricia—a recently retired elementary school teacher and active university art lecturer; his son Shannon—a certified accountant who lives in Houston; parents Robert and Virginia Martin; and brother and sister-in-law Neil and Linda Martin. They all knew about Quentin’s work, realized its importance and urgency, supported and encouraged him, and were proud of him, as are we. We owe them a debt of gratitude for sharing Quentin’s life with us. Our intent is to acknowledge that in some small way by naming the award for the best practice-oriented paper in the JWPRM after Dr. Quentin Martin.