Carol A. Couch is the Director of the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.  Appointed by Governor Perdue and the Board of Natural Resources in October 2003, Dr. Couch is the first woman to lead EPD in its 35-year history.  As Director, she is responsible for an 850-person agency that implements and enforces 26 state and four federal laws designed to protect, conserve and restore Georgia’s environmental resources.

Dr. Couch chairs the Water Council, a coordinating committee charged with overseeing the development of a comprehensive statewide water plan.  She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Clean Air Campaign and is on the Board of Trustees of the Livable Communities Coalition.

Before joining EPD, Dr. Couch was a member of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), leading nationally distributed, multi-disciplinary teams of engineers, hydrologists, chemists and biologists in the design, conduct and reporting of water resource investigations.  She also served as Southeastern Regional Biologist in the Southeastern Region, and as Hydrologist in the Georgia District of the USGS Water Resources Division.

Dr. Couch has her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Georgia, as well as Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from the University of South Carolina and the Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively.  Her graduate studies focused on the ecology of coastal rivers and estuaries.

She was born in Nuremberg, Germany and settled in Columbus, Georgia upon her father’s retirement from the U.S. Army.  Her love of nature grew from fishing and hunting with her father in Georgia’s beautiful and diverse outdoors.  Dr. Couch is an avid hiker, landscape painter, sometime golfer and is currently writing a series of travel essays.