Highlights from
FY 2025: Annual Report
Water Policy
The Nicholas Institute’s Water Policy Program is an interdisciplinary effort focused on utilizing data to inform effective policy changes in how water is understood and managed.
Highlight
Addressing Water Innovation in the Age of Decarbonization
As the U.S. economy pivots toward decarbonization, water utilities find themselves managing long-standing challenges while facing intensifying new pressures and emerging opportunities. The 2024 Aspen-Nicholas Water Forum identified innovative technologies, policy frameworks, business models, and institutional structures to enable decarbonization and adaptation within the water sector and examined the sector’s role in decarbonizing the broader economy. Diverse stakeholders explored topics such as how innovation is disrupting the water sector, water’s role in broader decarbonization efforts, and whether data is an opportunity or challenge for water in decarbonization.
In FY 2025, Nicholas Institute experts initiated conversations to address a critical gap in American governance: the lack of coordinated, strategic thinking about nationwide water challenges. Expect to learn more about a national water strategy in FY 2026.
Elevating Internet of Water Coalition Expertise
During their 2025 legislative session, Oregon lawmakers took up a bill to establish an interagency team that would improve communication and data sharing among agencies that manage the state’s water resources. Nicholas Institute policy associate Lilli Watson testified on behalf of the Internet of Water (IoW) Coalition to an Oregon House of Representatives committee considering the bill.
Watson explained the role of the IoW Technology Adoption Program in facilitating technological and organizational modernization in Texas and New Mexico to help those states establish successful water data hubs. She also highlighted the progress of the Oregon Water Data Portal—developed with support from Duke’s IoW team—and discussed key takeaways from other states that could be applied to Oregon’s water data efforts.
The committee advanced the bill, but it did not receive a vote from the full House. It may be reconsidered during next year’s session.
Education Spotlight
Student Profile: Fiona Price MEM ’26
For Fiona Price, a hydrology class in her first semester at the Nicholas School of the Environment brought her a mentor in Martin Doyle.
Price, a master of environmental management (MEM) student who is now president of the student-run Duke Water Network, appreciated the way Doyle pushed her to think critically and challenged her beliefs about how to properly govern. Outside the classroom, Price helped Doyle with workshops for the Water Innovation Leadership Development Program, an executive education program for rising water services management leaders.
“Professor Doyle is a unique asset to the MEM program in that he both teaches and has real world, direct industry experience in high-level policy,” Price said. “His knowledge of this practical financial world greatly enhances his classes, which incorporate his experiences and allow us to see the applicability of the class to bond markets as well as federal agencies. I have learned far more from his classes, which combine academic theory with public and private sector practice.”