Q&A with Cathy Abene

Cathy Abene, telling campers about
the stormwater catchbasin.

Cathy Abene, Principal Civil Engineer, in Facilities Management at the University of Minnesota is a tour guide for both Water Journey Camps - for Rain and for Drinking Water. She and her crew have got the keys and access to a lot of special places at the U of M and gave campers an inside look at how water flows through campus. I asked her about her work and relationship to water.

Q: What do you do for your job?
A: I work with a team to manage the water, sewer, and stormwater utilities for the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus.


Q: What do you like best about your job?
A: The infrastructure! The campus is old, urban, modern and agricultural all at the same time. From an infrastructure perspective this means that we have at least one of almost everything. But since it's a campus the scale allows me to become very familiar with the systems I manage. For an infrastructure nerd, it doesn't get any cooler than that.

Q: What is your favorite thing about water?
A: It's fundamental.

Q: What is your favorite place on the Mississippi River?
A: The area around the Stone Arch Bridge in downtown Minneapolis.

Q: What do you think people should know about water or that might surprise them about water?
A: There is no new water! Drinking water becomes wastewater becomes surface water and so on. It's a resource we should all be invested in protecting.

Thanks Cathy for all your time and teaching!