Dan Opdyke has a Ph.D. in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and more than 20 years of experience studying issues and solving problems related to water in Texas. As a consultant for Anchor QEA, he has built several state-of-the-science water quality models to help address a wide variety of management issues, including eutrophication, zebra mussels, contaminants, and water diversions. While at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, he was closely involved in the hydrologic aspects of setting environmental flow standards and represented TPWD in water rights negotiations.

Cindy Loeffler received a B.S. in Engineering from Colorado State University in 1984. After working with the USFWS Instream Flow Group for several years, Ms. Loeffler joined the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Resource Protection Division as a coastal hydrologist in 1987. From 1987 to 2001 she worked as part of an interagency team tasked with developing and applying methods to identify freshwater inflow needs for Texas estuaries. In 2001, Ms. Loeffler was named the Water Resources Branch Chief at TPWD. Her duties included managing the Water Quality and Water Quantity Programs and the coordination of Department response to water resource issues affecting fish and wildlife. Ms. Loeffler represented TPWD on the the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan Stakeholder Committee and the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan Advisory Committee. Ms. Loeffler retired from TPWD in 2020 and now resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and San Marcos, Texas.

Web Mangham is the Environmental Services and Water Resources Planning Manager for the Trinity River Authority of Texas and has worked at the Authority for 17 years. Mr. Mangham holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Central Oklahoma and M.S. in Applied Geography, Water Resources Management from the University of North Texas. Mr. Mangham specializes in water resources planning, hydrology, water quality, biological, watershed, endangered species, and environmental flow studies throughout the 18,000-square-mile Trinity basin.

Ryan Smith, Director of Water and Science, The Nature Conservancy of Texas
Ryan Smith has over twenty years of professional experience in freshwater conservation. His areas of expertise include environmental flows, freshwater ecology, groundwater/surface water science, conservation planning, ecological monitoring, and geospatial analysis. Ryan leads The Nature Conservancy of Texas’ water program and science team. The water program implements statewide freshwater conservation strategies in the areas of market-based approaches to flow restoration, water management and policy, sustainable agriculture, and watershed conservation. Ryan is also TNC’s Texas lead on the Sustainable Rivers Program, a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers modifying dam operations to improve downstream ecosystems. He has directed placed-based applied freshwater conservation science work at TNC preserves and watershed projects in west Texas, the Devils River, the Hill Country and east Texas. Other recent projects include a hydrology study of the San Saba River, flow restoration target definition in support of the Texas Environmental Flow Information Toolkit, development of the Texas Water Explorer website, implementation of a freshwater monitoring framework for TNC projects, and evaluation of the benefits of source water protection programs. Ryan is a member of the Bay and Basin Expert Science teams for the Upper Rio Grande Basin and Nueces River and Corpus Christi and Baffin Bays. Before his time in Texas, Ryan worked for TNC’s global water and regional science teams where he supported freshwater projects across the U.S. and in Mexico and Central America. He has a M.S. in fisheries and wildlife sciences from Virginia Tech and a B.S. in fishery and wildlife biology from Colorado State University.