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Reese receives national hydrology engineer award

Lotwick Reese, whose tenure with ITD dates back more than half a century, recently was recognized for his outstanding contributions to transportation and the environment by the National Hydraulic Engineering Conference.

The professional organization chose Reese as the 2012 Mark D. Miles distinguished hydraulic engineer award, which is presented for outstanding achievement in the field of highway and transportation hydraulic engineering.

Its conference theme this year was ”Flow Near, Under, and Over Roads: Optimizing Highway Hydraulics,” an emphasis that matches Reese’s ITD career.

The award is presented in memory of Miles, a member of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Task Force on hydrology and hydraulics. He worked for the Alaska Department of Transportation and passed away at the 2004 National Hydraulic Engineering Conference.

Reese began his career with the Idaho Department of Highways (now ITD) a month before graduating from high school, serving on a Montpelier Residency survey crew. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1969 and took a position with the Federal Highway Administration.

He became the Idaho’s first hydraulics engineer in 1974, a position he held for five years until accepting positions with cities and a county in Utah. Reese returned to ITD to work in the local roads section in the spring of 1992 and has been with the department the past 20 years.

He received the AASHTO Region 4 Design Award last year.