Innovative Solutions for Restoring Water Quality

Joe Whitworth is president of The Freshwater Trust where he and his team focus on cooperative, market-based solutions that benefit rivers, working lands and local communities. This work is especially important as traditional conservation methods used over the last quarter century are proving inadequate to the environmental challenges of today. A native Midwesterner, Whitworth has dedicated the last two decades of his career working to restore freshwater quality through innovative solutions. The Trust has developed strategies for water quality credit trading programs as well as an innovative, patented online platform to manage the funding, permitting, and implementation of restoration projects. The organization's goal is a new kind of conservation that properly integrates the economy and the environment to achieve measurable benefit and workable solutions. Part of the National Affairs Series on Innovation