Heinz honors environmental pioneers

Bernard Amadei and Susan Seacrest are winners of this year's Heinz Award for the environment.

The civil engineer who founded Engineers Without Borders USA and a concerned mother who established the Groundwater Foundation are co-winners of the 13th annual Heinz Foundation environmental award.

Bernard Amadei of the University of Colorado Boulder created Engineers Without Borders in 2000. Since then, thousands of undergraduate students and professional engineers have worked on projects that bring clean water, solar power, and other technologies to countries such as Rwanda, Haiti, and Brazil. Susan Seacrest, an environmental activist who was inspired by research linking groundwater contamination to the elevated levels of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in her own backyard, started the Groundwater Foundation in 1985 in Lincoln, Neb. The nonprofit foundation educates the public and supports programs that protect groundwater.

Amadei and Seacrest will share the $250,000 award, which was announced by the Heinz Foundation September 12.