Cortney Brand, an NGWA member in Castle Pines, Colorado, passed away on November 13. He was 54.
Brand was the director of growth and M&A at Spheros Environmental in Denver, Colorado, and worked at LRE Water in Denver for nearly 10 years prior to that, the last six as president and CEO. He held professional geologist licenses in Arizona and Wyoming.
Throughout his 33-year career in Colorado, Arizona, and California, Brand focused on the application of geochemistry, geophysics, and related techniques to support water supply development and management.
Brand was instrumental in pushing the water industry forward through his work on storing safe and reliable drinking water supplies in subsurface aquifers to protect communities during droughts and helped municipalities build sustainable water resource portfolios across the western United States.
He co-authored the book, Standard Guidelines for Managed Aquifer Recharge in 2020 and published the 2022 paper, “Evaluating the Economics of Managed Aquifer Recharge Systems” in Groundwater.
In 2022, Brand was part of the LRE Water team that was honored with a NGWA Outstanding Groundwater Supply Project Award in recognition of the Terry Ranch Project located in Greeley, Colorado.