Texas Water Monitoring Council

Texas Water Monitoring Council Meeting
April 1, 1999

Minutes

View the Minutes from previous TWMC meetings:

• August 12, 1999
• June 3, 1999
• February 4, 1999

The second quarterly meeting of the Texas Water Monitoring Council was held at the US Geological Survey in Austin on April 1st, 1999 to discuss the Texas Water Foundation and TWDB's Network Optimization Project.

Attendees:

The second quarterly meeting of the Texas Water Monitoring Council began with introductions and the announcement that Gary Mitchell with Houston Galveston Area Council is taking a new position with Wilbur Smith and Associates in Houston and will be stepping down from the Council. His replacement from HGAC will be named in the future.

The minutes from the February 4th meeting were approved pending a spelling correction.

Teri Trevino of the Texas Water Foundation gave the group a brief description of the Foundation. The Texas Water Foundation was started by Senator Buster Brown who recognized that long term planning needs to begin with education. The Texas Water Foundation has several events planned including a statewide water celebration called Texas Water Time in '99 beginning April 15th with a press conference at the Capitol. Texas Water Foundation is also working on a calendar of events for Water Time '99. On May 4th there will be an internet field trip called "Spaceship Earth: the Water Planet" done in conjunction with Texas Parks and Wildlife and NASA. In September 1999 the first Texas Water Summit is scheduled for September 1999 with the theme "Water as a Commodity" and will be featured on the program "Firing Line" hosted by William F. Buckley. There will be a Leadership Award Dinner in December to honor a Texan displaying outstanding leadership in water issues. The first honoree was former Lt. Governor Bob Bullock. The Texas Water Foundation is forming an advisory committee and is asking anyone interested to contact the Foundation office. Council members agreed the Texas Water Foundation could serve as an "umbrella" organization for educational outreach identified in the 1998 Congress recommendations and that the Foundation should be invited to join the Council.

David Thorkildsen, TWDB, gave an update of TWDB's Network Optimization Program. As of April 1 there were three cooperators on board: Hill Country Underground Water District, Evergreen Underground Water District, and Gonzales County Underground Water District. Meetings with the Sabine River Authority and Brazos River Authority are planned for the coming week to discuss their involvement. In exchange for agreeing to be a "node" in the Texas Water Information Network (TWIN), cooperators receive technical assistance and hardware. The ultimate goal of the Network Optimization Program is to have cooperators statewide sharing data to fulfill the clearinghouse function. The Texas Water Monitoring Council website will eventually reside on the Network Optimization's NT server as part of the Texas Water Information Network.

Harry McWreath briefed Council members on a request from Robert Ward, editor of the American Water Resources Association journal "Water Resources Impact". Harry prepared a paper, with input from David Thorkildsen and Cindy Loeffler, discussed the development of the Texas Water Monitoring Council and the challenges for its future for the May issue of "Water Resources Impact" which will showcase the development of water monitoring councils nationwide. Robert Ward issued the challenge for water monitoring councils to devise some kind of indicator the average citizen can reference to track the health of the nation's waterways.

Committee Reports:

The chair of the Public Outreach Committee, Dee Lurry has emailed a list of the committee members to be posted on the TWMC webpage.

Miles Hall, chair of the Data Collection Networks Committee reports that Jim Brown at the Sabine River Authority has been working on the XML project and almost has it ready for other committee members to review, despite a crash of the hard drive.

Denis Quals, chair of the Data Management Committee, has been working with David Thorkildsen on the Network Optimization project and will send summaries to the other attendees to see who wants to serve on the committee. Denis suggested it would be helpful for the Council to identify goals and tasks, focusing on those that we can accomplish.

Eric Mendelmen, filling in for Tom Conry, chair of the Data Quality Assurance Committee, reported that although the committee has not yet been established, efforts were underway that fulfilled the goals of the committee such as the Quality Management Plan and the QAPP shell development.

Denis requested that we invite the committee members to the next council meeting and encourage them to meet prior to the meeting. Council members agreed this was a good idea and set the next council meeting for June 3rd at 10am. It was left to the committee chairs to contact committee members about the meeting.

Harry challenged the committee chairs to think about their mission with regard to agenda items for the 2000 Congress, considering that we don't have budgets or mandates and have to dovetail with other ongoing efforts. Our job is to keep our fingers on the pulse of what is already going on and to facilitate the efforts of other agencies who are working toward the recommendations of the Congress. For example, if the Water Foundation Symposium is an annual event, could we coordinate or integrate the 2000 Congress with the 2000 Symposium so that they don't compete for purpose and attention?

Patrick Roques announced the April 30th - May 2nd Texas Watch Meeting of the Monitors at Aquarena Center in San Marcos. Texas Watch is being contracted out to Southwest Texas State University. The transition will take place over the next 5-6 months. TNRCC's goal is for the database and webpage to be maintained by SWTSU. TNRCC will begin using data collected by the volunteer monitors to decide whether water bodies are meeting their designated uses. TNRCC will accept data that has been collected under a QA plan. Patrick added that the discussion at the 98 Congress helped get Texas Watch back up and running. Patrick also mentioned that the Clean Rivers Program is holding basin coordination meetings. He reported that the data being collected under CRP, which will be used in use attainment studies, is being collected in a manner similar to that discussed prior to the 1996 Congress. Patrick also discussed the proposed legislation (SB1238/HB2668) that would give the Texas Department of Health the authority to give accreditation to environmental testing laboratories.

Meeting adjourned at noon. Next meeting scheduled for June 3rd at 10am at USGS. Harry also reported on a meeting he attended with Dallas-area council of governments discussing strategies for implementing NPDES strategies. The statement was made "entities should work with the Texas Water Monitoring Congress to ensure uniformity of data collection efforts." Another item of interest is that Chip Groat, the new Director of the USGS is scheduled to meet with leadership of EPA to discuss the status of national water monitoring programs.

Texas Water Monitoring Council

http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/twmc/min990401.htm
page updated 6/08/1999
by Russell Pankratz
rpankrat@twdb.state.tx.us