Walter Clay Lowdermilk

Walter Clay Lowdermilk (July 1, 1888 – May 6, 1974) was a soil conservationist who worked in countries throughout the world to help protect and reclaim lands in order to better feed their population. Lowdermilk worked with the Belgian Relief Effort (B.R.E., active 2914-16 in Belgium and France) after World War I, in China in the 1920s to help avert famine, with the Soil Conservation Service, in fascist Italy in the 1930s, in the United States, and in Mandatory Palestine planning land and water use.

In the latter he was impressed by the advanced techniques that the Zionist settlers, and later the State of Israel, took to develop water efficient agriculture and land use. A 1944 outline of local water development became known as the “Lowdermilk plan" and was of importance for the later National Water Carrier of Israel.

Walter Clay Lowdermilk was named a Rhodes Scholar in 1911, attending Oxford after his undergraduate education at the University of Arizona. He married Inez Marks in August 1922. They had two children: Winifred Esther Lowdermilk (married Wilmot N. Hess) and William Francis Lowdermilk (deceased). Lowdermilk received his PhD from the University of California in 1929. He served in World War I as an engineer and in the Belgian Relief Commission (1917 - 1918). He has been active as Flood control engineer and scientist in China and was Assistant Chief of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, US Department of Agriculture. He served as a President of the American Geophysical Union (1941-1944).

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