{"id":4528,"date":"2016-06-28T11:18:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T15:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=4528"},"modified":"2016-06-28T11:18:29","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T15:18:29","slug":"clean-water-maven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2016\/06\/clean-water-maven\/","title":{"rendered":"Clean Water Maven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Debra McCarty \u201979, Philadelphia Water Department commissioner, is the first woman to hold that post in the agency\u2019s 200-year history. For 34 years, the intricacies of supplying clean water to 1.61 million people has been her round-the-clock preoccupation.<\/p>\n<p>A Baltimore native and environmental engineering major at Johns Hopkins, McCarty became a Philadelphia Water Department sanitary engineer in 1982.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the time, there was still federal money from the 1972 Clean Water Act to upgrade our facilities. I watched our largest wastewater treatment plant being upgraded and expanded, and I was responsible for getting the treatment processes to perform as designed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Today, as commissioner, McCarty oversees 2,000 employees, a half-dozen treatment plants, and thousands of miles of water mains and sewers. Challenges include aging infrastructure and keeping storm runoff out of rivers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have some of the best-quality water you are ever going to get, and all of our water and wastewater treatment plants are award-winning facilities. And we pride ourselves on doing it at a very low cost,\u201d she says. \u201cThe people here do such good work, and they do it together. I am just so proud to serve as their commissioner.\u201d<b><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2016\/06\/clean-water-maven\/debra-mccarty_5_final_cmyk-copy\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4746\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4746\" src=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Debra-McCarty_5_Final_CMYK-copy-210x300.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of Debra McCarty\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Debra-McCarty_5_Final_CMYK-copy-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Debra-McCarty_5_Final_CMYK-copy.jpg 717w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Debra McCarty \u201979, Philadelphia Water Department commissioner, is the first woman to hold that post in the agency\u2019s 200-year history. For 34 years, the intricacies of supplying clean water to 1.61 million people has been her round-the-clock preoccupation. A Baltimore native and environmental engineering major at Johns Hopkins, McCarty became a Philadelphia Water Department sanitary&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[360,361,362,363],"class_list":["post-4528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-debra-mccarty","tag-philadelphia-water-department","tag-clean-water","tag-waterwater-treatment","issue-summer-2016"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Clean Water Maven - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2016\/06\/clean-water-maven\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clean Water Maven - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Debra McCarty \u201979, Philadelphia Water Department commissioner, is the first woman to hold that post in the agency\u2019s 200-year history. 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