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Valdas V. Adamkus
Biography
[EPA press release - October 8, 1981]
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne M. Gorsuch today swore in Valdas V. Adamkus as Regional Administrator for Region 5. He will manage agency matters in six midwest states--Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin--which encompasses all of the Great Lakes.
"Val Adamkus has a wealth of experience and expertise to bring to this position. He has demonstrated his considerable management talents as Deputy Regional Administrator for nine years, serving three regional administrators from both political parties," Mrs. Gorsuch said. "He has represented the United States in many international environmental meetings, and has received the highest honors the agency can bestow for his service."
Adamkus was awarded the agency's highest award, the EPA Gold Medal, in 1978, for distinguished leadership in the management of EPA's Region 5 and for outstanding contributions to international environmental control. Thirty years earlier, he won another Gold Medal. Representing his native Lithuania, Adamkus took first place in the long jump event in the European Olympic Games.
In 1979, Adamkus was chairman of the environmental implementation committee at the International Joint Commission meetings between Canada and the United States.
He was a member of the EPA team which represented the United States in Polan in 1977 in the review of 29 scientific research and development projects which resulted in a five year bilateral agreement.
He also was a member of the United States delegation to the U.S.S.R. in 1976 for a water pollution research conference, was an advisor to the U.N. World health Organization in 1975, was the first U.S. EPA official invited to lecture in the U.S.S.R. at the University of Vilnius in 1974 and was a member of the United States delegation to the U.S.S.R. which negotiated a 1972 bilateral agreement.
Adamkus is fluent in five languages--Russian, Polish, English, German, Lithuanian--and was a U.S. Army language instructor in 1952. He served in the intelligence service of the U.S. Army reserve for nine years. He holds a civil engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology and also studied engineering at the University of Illinois and medicine at the University of Munich. He was a consulting engineer and assistant engineer from 1956 to 1961 with Meissner Consulting Engineers, Inc., in Chicago, with responsibility for projects related to flood control, sewage treatment and pollution control.
In 1974, Adamkus received the Man of the Year Award from the American Lithuanian Republican League of Illinois.
Adamkus, 54, and his wife, Alma, live in Hinsdale, Ill.