James Markham, J.D., M.S.C.E.

SW EFC Research Engineer
jmarkham@unm.edu

James joined the Southwest EFC in 2015. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Haverford College, a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and is completing an M.S.C.E. with a concentration in Environmental Engineering at the University of New Mexico where his research focus is real water loss in water distribution systems with an emphasis on evaluating water audit performance metrics such as the UARL and ILI.  James has been a member of the California Bar since 1996 and spent over a decade in business operations management before making the switch to engineering.

James is heavily involved in the SWEFC’s curriculum design and development activities and has designed or co-designed workshops, and in-person and online trainings in the area of water loss reduction in general, and water loss auditing using the AWWA Water Audit Software and M36 Manual in specific. Trainings cover the entire water audit process, from data acquisition through results interpretation, and focus on helping small systems: understand the value of water auditing; develop policies, procedures and data collection expertise necessary to produce good audit results; and make data-driven decisions when developing and implementing water loss controls. Water line break data is an area of particular interest, and James’ trainings emphasize the collection, storage and interpretation of main and service line break data using both open source and proprietary GPS/GIS data collection tools, as well as the roll that mapping and data analysis play in the water audit process.

Working under the EPA’s WaterCARE and Small Systems managerial and financial capacity assistance programs, James has provided in-person training and direct technical assistance to a variety of small water systems in the US and American Samoa. He has also provided training and direct technical assistance to systems of all sizes in New Mexico under the contracts from the New Mexico Environment Department.

James has experience preparing and interpreting AWWA M36 compliant Water Audits for small water systems and built a software tool to help systems determine data validity grades for each of their Water Audit data inputs. He also assists water and wastewater systems with financial and O&M analysis, asset management, inventories and geolocation, as well as developing maps and performing risk and lifecycle analysis using GIS and other tools.