Gail Brion

Gail Montgomery Brion is an inventor and a professor of civil engineering and the Director of the Environmental Research and Training Laboratories (ERTL) at the University of Kentucky. An expert on waterborn illness, She works to introduce and maintain high quality water systems in rural regions. In September 2021, the University of Kentucky University Senate named Gail Brion the 2021 Outstanding Senator.

Career Brion first followed her interests to Duncan, Lagnese, and Associates Incorporated, an industrial waste company, where she acted as the Sewer Studies Field Team Supervisor. From 1979 to 1980, Brion worked as the Sewage Treatment Plant Operator for the Brush Run Municipal in Mckeesport, PA where she analyzed water and waste water. The following year, she moved to another Municipal Sewage Treatment Plant in Rock Springs, Wyoming where she took over as the Chief Lab Analyst. before she began teaching engineering at the University of Kentucky in 1995.

We can treat extraordinarily dirty water... But even if the water treatment plant does a good job of producing clean, quality water, it then goes into a distribution system that is full of holes.|Gail Brion, 2018

Education In 1978, Brion received her Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of California.

Advocacy Brion's interest in waterborn illness began in childhood, inspired by personal experiences with water contamination. Some of her friends became ill after wading in a city park creek. After investigating, she found an unregulated straight pipe dumping untreated hospital wastes into the water. She also saw a migrant family, whose children were too sick to work at a berry field, drinking untreated irrigation water because no other water sources were available. She commented, "a desire to make a difference was kindled."

Selected by students and peers for excellence in the classroom. (Nominee/Recipient) for research in environmental microbiology.