Speaker: Dr. Ken W. Kramer.  "Meeting Our State's Future Water Needs."

Ken Kramer is the volunteer Water Resources Chair and Legislative Advisor for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.   The Lone Star Chapter is the Texas state arm of the national environmental organization. Dr. Kramer retired in July 2012 after over 23 years as the first Director of the Lone Star Chapter and a previous seven years as a contract lobbyist for the Chapter. Prior to moving to Austin to lobby for the Chapter Dr. Kramer was a volunteer for the Sierra Club, serving on the Chapter Executive Committee and in other capacities. 

Dr. Kramer received a B.A. in History with a minor in Government from Texas Lutheran University in 1969. He was awarded an M.A. in Political Science from Stephen F. Austin State University in 1971 and then served in the United States Army, stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso.  He received his Ph.D. in Political Science in 1979 from Rice University. His dissertation focused on the implementation of federal air and water pollution control policy in Texas.

Dr. Kramer served on the government faculty at Angelo State University in San Angelo from 1977 to 1980 and as Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University from 1980 to 1982.

Dr. Kramer has served on numerous advisory committees to Texas state and local agencies and officials, including the Governor's Task Force on Hazardous Waste Management (1984), the Municipal Solid Waste Management and Resource Recovery Advisory Council (1983-1991), and the Joint Select Committee on Toxic Air Emissions and the Greenhouse Effect (a 1989-1990 interim legislative study committee to which he was appointed by House Speaker Gib Lewis). In the 1990s Dr. Kramer co-chaired Task Force 21, the committee that advised the state’s major environmental protection agency on industrial air quality, water quality, and waste management. He was also the co-chair of that agency’s Waste Reduction Advisory Committee, which helped to guide the agency’s pollution prevention efforts.   Dr. Kramer currently serves on the state’s Water Conservation Advisory Council and the stakeholder committees on environmental flows for both the Brazos River Basin and the Trinity & San Jacinto River Basins & Galveston Bay.  He is also a member of the board of the Texas Water Foundation and a member of the Advisory Council for the Environmental Science Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Kramer was awarded the Texas Lutheran College Distinguished Alumni Award in April 1991 for his environmental work. He was also the 1985 recipient of the Orrin Bonney Award, the highest award presented by the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. In 1993 he received the Sportsmen Conservationists of Texas award as Air & Water Conservationist of the Year, and he also received a Governor's Environmental Excellence Award in 1993 for his work as co-chair of Task Force 21. He received the "Earth Day 1995 Excellence in Environmental Awareness Award" in the individual category from the League of Women Voters of Texas Education Fund. He was the first recipient of that award. In 2005 he received the Virginia Ferguson Award, a national Sierra Club award given to an employee who has demonstrated consistent and exemplary service. Also in 2005 he was honored, along with other leaders in the Texas Living Waters Project, with a Conservation Leadership Award from The Nature Conservancy. Dr. Kramer is the editor of The Living Waters of Texas, published by Texas A&M University Press in 2010.

Dr. Kramer is married to Diane Falk Kramer, who retired in 2008 after 30 years as a counselor at Austin Community College.  He and his wife have one child, Katherine, who graduated from Woodbury University in California in 2012, majoring in fashion marketing, and recently launched her own jewelry collection, Rosedale Jewelry, based in Los Angeles.