The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District’s governing board recently elected Dallas Mayor Boyd Austin as its new chairman. Austin will serve a three-year term.

Austin succeeds Kit Dunlap, president of the Greater Hall County Chamber of Commerce, who completed two terms as the district chair. Austin joined the Metro Water District governing board in 2003 and was elected vice-chairman in 2010. He also chaired its legislative affairs committee. Prior to that, he was appointed by then-Speaker Tom Murphy to serve on the state’s first Statewide Water Study Committee in 2001-2002, and chaired its Inter-Basin Transfer Study Committee.

A lifelong resident of Dallas, Austin is the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history. He is active in the Georgia Municipal Association, serving as a member of the executive board, the legislative policy committee and the property development committee. He is a member of the board of the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission and serves on that region’s Regional Transportation Roundtable. He holds seats on the boards of the Paulding County Airport Authority, the Paulding County Industrial Building Authority, and the Paulding County Board of Health. In 2010, Governor Sonny Perdue appointed Austin to serve as a municipal representative on the board of directors of the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority.

The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District is a planning entity dedicated to developing comprehensive watershed, wastewater and water supply and water conservation plans to be implemented by local governments in the 15-county metro Atlanta region, which includes Bartow, Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Hall, Henry, Paulding and Rockdale counties.