Fresh Water

When Dan DeLisi moved to Florida, his academic adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology jokingly instructed him to save the Everglades.

Years later, DeLisi, a principal in the engineering firm DeLisi Fitzgerald in Fort Myers, will now have a hand in that effort. In May, Gov. Rick Scott appointed him to the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District.

DeLisi, at age 38 the youngest member of the board, is jumping into one of the most contentious regional disputes. To wit: What to do about the discharges of water from Lake Okeechobee down the Caloosahatchee River to Fort Myers. “The complexity of this dispute is enormous,” DeLisi says.