Texas Water Monitoring Council

Texas Water Monitoring Council Meeting
November 5, 1999

Minutes

View the Minutes from other TWMC meetings:

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

The 4th quarterly meeting of the Texas Water Monitoring Council was held at the US Geological Survey in Austin on November 5th, 1999.

Attendees:

The 4th quarterly meeting of the Texas Water Monitoring Council began with introductions. The minutes from the August 12th meeting were approved.

Janie Hopkins, Texas Water Development Board announced that she would be replacing Phil Nordstrom at the TWDB contact due to Phil's retirement. Charles Scheffler announced that he and Carl Brown would be replacing Ronn Brock. Dee Lurry announced that she will be the official contact at USGS, replacing Harry McWreath. Thanks go out to Phil, Ronn and Harry for all their efforts. They will be missed! Cindy Loeffler announced that she would be stepping down as chair effective January 6th , as per the TWMC charter. Cindy asked that Council members come to the January 6th meeting prepared to select a new chair.

Erika Boghici with the StratMap Program gave a presentation describing the Strategic Mapping Initiative. StratMap is a multi-year, cost-sharing initiative to develop digital geographic data layers in partnership with other public and private sector entities in the state of Texas. It is designed to minimize individual participant cost, build the most accurate and up-to-date maps feasible and place them in readily accessible formats in the public domain to serve a wide variety of public and private sector needs. When complete, StratMap will include water features data layers such as the National Hydrography database being compiled by USGS and EPA. More information about StratMap can be found at www.StratMap.org.

Plans for the next Texas Water Monitoring Congress were discussed. Tentative dates being considered are September 18-20, 2000 or Sept 25-27, 2000. There was also a proposal to consider holding the Congress in the latter half of October. There was discussion that this congress be focused on the different data collection/dissemination efforts currently ongoing at the agencies. It was also suggested that the keynote speakers selected for the first day be the agency representatives most knowledgeable about data collection/dissemination, similar to the GIS Forum. While the breakout sessions are still important, it was thought that the workgroups should be given more clear direction about the expected outcome. Instead of depending on standing committees to accomplish goals in between Congresses, it would be more effective to produce results at the Congress. Council members also thought it would be useful to include training opportunities. Cindy volunteered to work on a draft agenda for the January 6th meeting and to check with the Pickle Center for available dates.

Meeting adjourned at noon. Next meeting scheduled for January 6th, 2000 at 10am at USGS.

Texas Water Monitoring Council

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