The Water Center is excited to announce that Steve Tambini has joined the Water Center at Penn as a Senior Advisor.
Prior to joining the Water Center, Steve served as Executive Director at the Delaware River Basin Commission since 2014 before retiring on December 1, 2024.
Tambini was the Commission's fourth Executive Director appointed since its founding in 1961. During his tenure, the Commission advanced significant water resource policy and management measures for the benefit of over 14 million people, including:
- Providing coordinated regulatory efficiency "One Process One Permit" programs with multiple state environmental protection agencies.
- Executing collaborative measures to manage significant, basinwide drought conditions in 2016.
- Supporting the adaptive flow management programs under the 1954 Supreme Court Decree to balance the water supply needs of the four basin states, NYC, and multiple water use stakeholders.
- Implementing regulations that prohibit high volume hydraulic fracturing and disposal of related wastewater in the Delaware River Basin.
- Advancing the next chapter in water quality improvement in the urban reaches of the Delaware River Estuary through DRBC modeling, monitoring, technical science and engineering analyses that support the attainability of revised and improved aquatic life water quality standards to meet the "fishable" waters goals of the Clean Water Act.
- Initiating several plans and programs to evaluate and address the impacts of climate change on the water resources of the Basin and launching DRBC’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change.
- Implementing foundational water use and surface water and groundwater supply studies to address future water availability and sustainability at the basin wide and sub basin scale.
- Working to provide more resilient water supplies by initiating studies to examine the development of additional freshwater storage in the Basin.
Tambini serves in advisory roles for the Delaware Estuary Program, Pennsylvania State Water Plan, Delaware River Watershed Conservation Collaborative, the Schuylkill Action Network and other multi-stakeholder planning efforts. Prior to joining the DRBC, Tambini held leadership roles with Pennsylvania American Water and New Jersey American Water.