Texas Water Monitoring Council

Texas Water Monitoring Council Meeting
June 3, 1999

Minutes

View the Minutes from other TWMC meetings:

• August 12, 1999
• April 1, 1999
• February 4, 1999

The third bi-monthly meeting of the Texas Water Monitoring Council was held at the US Geological Survey in Austin.

Attendees:

The 3rd quarterly meeting of the Texas Water Monitoring Council began with introductions and the announcement that Tom Conry with the Brazos River Authority will be stepping down as the chair of the Quality Assurance/Quality Control Committee. Eric Mendelman agreed to assume the chair position. Texas Water Foundation has agreed to become a member. The minutes from the April 1st meeting were approved.

David Thorkildsen, TWDB, gave an update of the TWMC website. Ultimate bulletin board is scheduled to be incorporated into the site to allow members to interact online. Everyone needs to provide input to David to "populate" the website.

David also discussed the National Water Quality Monitoring for the Millennium conference to be held in Austin April 25-27, 2000. The deadline to submit abstracts for the conference is September 1, 1999. The group discussed submitting an abstract for the paper co-authored by Harry McWreath, David and Cindy that was submitted to AWRA.

There was general discussion about changes as a result of the recent legislative session. The request was made to have a legislative update presentation at the next meeting. Cindy volunteered to contact Dean Robbins with TWCA to provide an update at the next meeting.

In light of the new legislation to create 13 additional groundwater districts, a suggestion was made to invite representation from the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts to join the Council. In addition, since the Texas Department of Agriculture is now involved in Senate Bill Regional Water Planning, it would be appropriate to include TDA. Cindy will send letters to appropriate contacts at TDA and TAGD.

Committee Reports:

Miles Hall, chair of the Data Network Committee, gave an update on his committee's activities. The Data Network committee met June 2. The committee is working to identify contacts with monitoring agencies and will be preparing a basic survey to determine "who is collecting what and why". Miles would like input on to whom the survey should be sent. Data Network Committee needed a website. Now they have it. The TWMC website will be populated with this information when it is available The Data Network Committee is also discussing holding an annual meeting "in-between" Congresses. The tentative date set for this year's meeting is September 23. The stated long term goal of the Data Network Committee is to expand data collection networks.

Dianne Spinney asked why there were two separate committees, Data Networks and Data Management, and suggested the two be combined to form one committee. The discussion that followed emphasized that although there is a lot of overlap between the two, they really are two separate issues and justify two separate committees. Reasons cited to support this position included the fact that in most organizations different people collect, manage, and QA water data. If the two committees were combined, there would be too many people to be productive as one large group. Since there are two committees, coordination of committee activities and accomplishments is critical. Both Miles and Denis Qualls, chair of the Data Management Committee, agreed to post future meeting dates and location on the TWMC website. Cindy reminded the group that the Council was testing an idea proposed by Denis at the last Council meeting to hold the committee meetings immediately prior to the Council meeting so that committee members could also participate in the Council meeting to hear what other committees were up to. The Data Networks Committee did meet, but the Data Management Committee is meeting immediately after today's Council meeting (all are welcome!).

Denis Quals distributed agendas and gave a brief overview of the Data Management Committee meeting planned to begin after the Council meeting at Tres Amigos. David Thorkildsen is scheduled to give an update of the Network Optimization Program.

Eric Mendelman, chair of the Quality Assurance/Quality Control Committee (as of today!) gave an update for the Committee. Although QA/QC has not met as a group, agency activities such as the Clean Rivers Program QAPP shell development are ongoing and will be ready to use later this summer. The draft QAPP, which follows the EPA QAR-5 format, is expected to be posted to the CRP webpage this summer. TNRCC staff is currently working out issues with USGS and acquired data. Eric emphasized that everybody did QC (quality control) everyday. The QAPP addresses QA (quality assurance). In response to the metadata issue, TNRCC is working on the migration to STORET 1.1, the new Oracle-based EPA protocol. EPA's absence from the Council was noted. Cindy volunteered to recruit someone from EPA to the Council.

Dee Lurry, chair of the Public Outreach Committee was not able to attend the Council meeting due to illness.

Meeting adjourned at noon. Next meeting is scheduled for August 12th at 10am at USGS.

Texas Water Monitoring Council

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