Monday, April 25, 2022
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Saddened to hear about Marvin's death. The more mature members of the UK Irrigation Association recall Marvin, together with Jack Keller, two heavy weights in irrigation engineering and prolific thinkers and writers on all aspects of modern irrigation development, coming to UK to launch our Association at its inaugural conference at Silsoe College, (now Cranfield University in the UK) in 1980 (see rather blurred picture. Marvin is 6th from left). We have often been in touch since then but I well recall Marvin’s frustration some years ago about the ‘silo’ approach to managing water in the USA. At the time, energy companies in California were encouraging people to grow trees around their homes to take advantage of evaporative cooling. Sounds sensible enough but this largely ignored the impact this would have on local limited groundwater availability. A small but treasured memory that I often repeat when teaching students from many different countries about the interconnections of managing limited water resources.
Best wishes
Melvyn Kay
Exec Secretary
UK Irrigation Association (www.ukia.org)
