Nutter’s career has focused on forest hydrology and its many benefits The national forests along the Appalachian Mountains weren’t established to protect wildlife or trees—they exist to protect water sources. When retired Warnell professor Wade Nutter slips this fact into a conversation, it’s a reminder of the subtle yet important role that hydrology plays on the larger landscape. For 30 years as professor—and then another 25 years as expert consultant—Nutter has seen soils and hydrology gain importance while playing a role in developing new solutions to water quality issues. Take the issue of wastewater and the costs to clean it. For generations, one popular solution was to discharge it into streams. But as a master’s student at the Pennsylvania State University in the early 1960s, Nutter was involved with a project that took a different approach: Researchers there irrigated the university’s wastewater onto cropland and forests. Years later, after earning his doctorate at Michigan State University and finding his way to Warnell, Nutter teamed up with the UGA landscape architecture faculty working to revamp Unicoi State Park. It became an opportunity for hydrology to shine. “They wanted to do things that were unique and protect natural resources, so we worked out a plan to irrigate all the wastewater from the park onto a steep forested slope. That’s still going on today,” says Nutter. “That started a whole new chapter of water history. The state didn’t have any guidance for doing this, so we worked with the state to create some guidelines. Georgia became a leader in spray irrigating wastewater. Through our research, Georgia is home to two of the three largest forested land treatment systems in the country.” Nutter discovered the field of hydrology as an undergraduate at Penn State at a time when the state implemented new regulations for reclaiming strip mines. This meant understanding how forests mitigated erosion and eventually to a Society of American Foresters conference while getting his Ph.D. That fateful trip connected Nutter with Warnell’s dean at the time, Allyn Herrick, who invited him to Athens. After visiting in 1967, Nutter received a phone call. “(Herrick) said, ‘Well, are you going to accept the job or not?’” recalls Nutter. “I said I didn’t know I was offered a job!” He hadn’t planned on staying in the South, but the collegiality of the faculty and Athens in general kept him at Warnell. Over the decades he taught classes in soils, hydrology and watershed management. Nutter also was instrumental in a reforestation and watershed management project for Sri Lanka, which was dealing with issues stemming from erosion on former tea plantations. Through that project, Nutter helped establish a school of forestry in Sri Lanka, establish community forests that supported fuelwood for cooking, and training professionals to continue the country’s reforestation efforts. While the country’s civil war eventually closed the school, the program had a positive effect on the country’s water quality and forest management. After retiring from Warnell in 1997, Nutter continued to consult on hydrology and environmental issues. This part-time work evolved into a full-time business, and Nutter eventually founded Nutter & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in integrative approaches to protect the environment. Today, the company has 27 employees, including five Warnell graduates and many others who are graduates of the University of Georgia. Now 84, Nutter says he’s retired—again. He’s dialed back his work with the company, today focusing on expert testimony for the U.S. Department of Justice involving violations of the Clean Water Act. But while his daily work with water is decreasing, his work on water is increasing—as in, sailing. Nutter learned how to sail from his father, and over the years he has worked his way up from a 12-foot vessel to a 48-foot sailboat. Every two years he joins friends to sail to the Bahamas, although COVID-19 sidetracked those plans two years ago and they headed to the Florida Keys instead. This past spring, Nutter and his son, an astrophysicist who teaches at Northern Kentucky University, made another attempt at the Bahamas. While the winds weren’t in their favor, spending six weeks on a boat made for some good father-son time. It’s a change from teaching and consulting, but it does provide an interesting link to Nutter’s early days as an undergraduate at Penn State, when conversations swirled about reforestation. “That’s how I got interested in the water aspect, and it grew from there.”
