Todd H. Votteler, Ph.D. is Principal of Water Opinions. Votteler is the Editor-in-Chief as well as a co-founder of both the Texas Water Journal and Texas+Water, and hosts the Talk+Water podcast. He is a Fellow of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, and a Mentor at the Austin Technology Incubator at The University of Texas. Votteler has a Udall Certificate in Environmental Collaboration from the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution.
Votteler was a co-trainer for the 2018 Fellows Program at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law’s Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution. In 2018, he was a faculty member for the National Judicial College’s Dividing the Waters program for judges in Reno, Nevada, and a co-trainer for the Water Conflict and Transformation Workshop at the AWRA Annual Conference in Baltimore. Votteler has lectured in China on transboundary water conflicts, and he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on water conflict at Texas State University.
Previously, Votteler was Executive Manager of Science, Intergovernmental Relations, and Policy at the Guadalupe–Blanco River Authority. He also served as the Chairman of the Guadalupe Basin Coalition. In addition, he was a Research Scientist in Washington, D.C. for the Battelle – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Executive Director of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Trust, and Chairman of the Texas Land Trust Council.
In 1996, after serving as the Assistant to the Federal Court Monitor during the Sierra Club v. Babbitt, he was appointed by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Lucius Bunton as the Federal Special Master for the Edwards Aquifer Endangered Species Act litigation, Sierra Club v. San Antonio. In 2013, he was part of group awarded the Partners for Conservation Award by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell for work that resolved a water dispute over the Edwards Aquifer. In 2016, Votteler negotiated an agreement between The Aransas Project and the GBRA to resolve a dispute over surface water and the endangered whooping crane during The Aransas Project v. Shaw.
Votteler has a B.S. in Natural Resources from The University of the South, an M.S. in Natural Resources from The University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Geography from Texas State University