Texas Water Monitoring Council

Texas Water Monitoring Council Meeting
June 1, 2000

Minutes

View the Minutes from other TWMC meetings:

• June 1, 2000
• May 5,2000
• April 6,2000
• March 9, 2000
• February 3, 2000
• January 6, 2000
• November 5, 1999
• August 12, 1999
• June 3, 1999
• April 1, 1999
• February 4, 1999

The Meeting was held at the U.S. Geological Survey offices in northeast Austin on June 1, 2000.

Patrick Roques opened the meeting at 10:15 with a summary of the last meeting in May.

It was announced that Darrel Peckham was resigning from the TWDB effective end of July. Who the new secretary for the TWMC will be remains to be seen.

Sending out the mailing of announcement/ reservation was discussed next. As Cindy Loeffler stated, we want to be 100% sure that the reservation for the JJ Pickle Center is complete with no hanging questions before the mailout goes forward.

Robert Bradley and TxWIN's summer Intern, Tom Neville, have been mining a large email list for more addresses. Robert is also working on an article for the TWDB's quarterly publication - Water for Texas scheduled for mailing in July. The large circulation of the publication will be a great advertisement for getting out the word for this fall's congress.

The pictures that have been placed on the website are nice and do add to the effect of the site. It was suggested that a picture gallery be developed of various water monitoring activities and added to the site. This would be useful in enhancing the message of the council and congress.

2000 Congress Planning

Carole Baker from the Harris County Subsidence District did agree to talk about Regional Water Planning - scheduled for the 8:10 am slot on Tuesday.

Roddy Seekins is on for the 1:40 time on Monday talking on Private vs. Public Data management relationships.

Robert Mace has said yes to discussing Ground-water availability models at the 2:30 time slot Monday.

Bill Hopkins with TNRIS will speak on Stratmap and hydrology basemap issues at 4:10 on Monday.

Raymond Slade with USGS agreed to talk about Field Operations and Standard Techniques at the 5:00 PM slot on Monday.

Roger Miranda with TNRCC will discuss Surface Water Quality Models at 4:35 pm Monday.

Bill Hoffman, City of Austin, agreed to talk at 9:00 Tuesday on Bringing it All Together

The Vendor Challenge breakout is still under development. We need a mechanism to establish "challenges" for the vendors. One method would be to put a "fill-in-the-blank" section in the website with a description for the Vendor Challenge. "Challenges" could then be emailed to the webmaster. The rules of the challenge would also be displayed. This would include one vendor not being able to say derogatory remarks about another vendor. Example challenges could be:

• How to best collect DO over 24 hours and how your products would facilitate this?
• What training would be involved?
• Do you have a disposable kit that requires little training?

On the website we should put a catchy phrase next to a button leading to the Vendor Challenge site.

The questions will be submitted to the vendors ahead of time. They will need to be technically and fiscally reasonable.

Dee Lurry discussed the outreach group. The Council clarified and revised a preliminary outreach title of "Liabilities and posting internet data" to Ramifications/Implications of posting water resources data on the Internet. Patrick contributed several worthy topics for consideration for the Outreach Subcommittee. Liabilities of posting data on the web is a large concern.

A summary statement that Robert Bradley had prepared from the mail out brochure to post on the website was reviewed by the council. A couple of editorial changes were made. Ronn Brock will email the corrected copy back to Robert Bradley for inclusion on the website as a summary of the purpose of the Texas Water Monitoring Congress.

The special souvenir has not yet been decided on for the congress. The mug is always a hot collector item. An insulated commuter mug with a lid was also a strong possibility. The costs of obtaining these and other logistic considerations will be reported at the next meeting.

The emphasis of the next meeting will be the breakout groups. Group chairs should come prepared to discuss the purpose, structure, topics, etc. of their group.

The next meeting will be July 6. The meeting will be held at the same location, USGS office in Austin, at the same time - 10:15 am

Texas Water Monitoring Council

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