Combined Meeting of the
National Water Quality Monitoring Council
and the Methods and Data Comparability Board

June 3-8, 2001
Madison, WI

MINUTES

Presentations and work group minutes referred to in these minutes can be found at URL: http://wi.water.usgs.gov/methods/

Attachments (other than work group minutes) referred to in these minutes were distributed at meeting.

Note: See list of attendees of end of document.

Joint Council and Methods Board Meeting

There was a round-table introduction of members of the Council and Methods Board members and meeting guests. Announcements were made and a review of the agenda was given.

Fred Banach gave an update on status of Fact Sheets and progress made. Fact sheets are a formal publication for people outside the Council to learn more about the Council and for support.

Linda Green gave an update on the progress of the Conference Planning Committee for the Third National Monitoring Conference. Linda stated that the six tracks are basically the same as the last conference but with revised and updated titles. The Conference will be dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Fellows.

Herb Brass suggested that a session take place on Friday where we strategize on getting funds for the Council. We should take this up in the work group sessions with a plan for discussion on Friday.

Cliff Annis gave an update on the COD pilot. It was sent to the Methods Board for peer review. Comments will be incorporated into the final version. An executive summary will be prepared and sent to the Council for peer review. Cliff stated that they want to get this on the web site by August 2001. We will be publishing it in a peer review journal "Science and Technology." Eight laboratories participated in the pilot including U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Merck provided some waste water samples. We came up with some very interesting results. ACTION ITEM: Please be on the lookout for the pilot results and give us a careful review of the pilot with your comments.

Chuck Spooner discussed nutrient criteria-the Methods Board selected a small group to impose new criteria for nutrients to be adopted by State water quality management, water quality standards by the state for EPA reports. Waters not meeting those standards would be subject to TDML's. The Methods Board and Council see the utility of these standards in nutrients. There are major problems associated with lakes. Chuck proposed that the Council accept letter of Methods Board and send to EPA with changes. Two letters on USEPA nutrient criteria went out to Council and distributed at meeting. (Attachment 1 - Revised nutrient letter dated August 16 and Revised White Paper on the Need to Evaluate USEPA's Nutrient Criteria)

Tim Kubiak discussed Water Quality Data Elements (WQDE) recommendations on biology parameters. Tim stated that this needs to get included in the current WQDE list. It is about real designated uses, listed species at State and National levels. You have to deal with the listed species. You could go into a number of different aspects. It was suggested that Tim's paper could be attached to the White Paper. Don Dycus said the issues raised are basically the same as the ones coming from the Southeastern Region. It would be appropriate for work groups to take a look at these documents for markup and proposals on Friday morning stated Chuck.

Gail Mallard discussed her recommendations for review process to ACWI for lab accreditation and other issues that are presented to the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) for approval. Gail stated that perhaps we need to do more work with ACWI so they are prepared to approve recommendations. When the recommendations were presented there were a number of concerns from ACWI. Lack of familiarity with the material was one concern-Mary Barber, ACWI member, who represents the Ecology Society, asked if an organization like ACWI should be endorsing any accreditation. Finally what we agreed to do is to prepare a transmittal letter to ACWI summarizing the details of the lab accreditation proposal. The executive summary along with the transmittal letter will go to ACWI; give them about a month to get comments back to Council. Council should then respond to comments in writing; have a conference call with ACWI. AWWA made a comment about looking at materials and asked members to circulate the material to their organizations and then have the conference call. After a reasonable time, request a vote via email from ACWI. Rodney DeHan stated that the agency who approves should be the parent committee of the Council. NELAC is a crediting organization that has operated for 25 years or more. EPA regional organizations go out and accredit States, and States accredit the laboratories. There is precedence for this process. This is based on a long-standing program. It was stated that the accrediting organization should be a separate organization from the laboratories involving independent organizations (auditors).

Chuck Job gave his presentation on WQDE work group activities. At the May 15, ACWI meeting, approval was received. The Colorado Water Quality Monitoring Council represents 20 different states and agencies. There was wide support of the WQDE's. This is critical to our communications across organizations on a technical level-we need this framework on future water quality results. We have a draft outreach plan that was modified by the Methods Board but not ready to present to Council. We developed some pilot projects and participated in meetings of other organizations to get the word out. We will be preparing guidance to get the WQDE's implemented. It has taken two years to get this developed. Chuck said he appreciated the assistance of Glenn Patterson, USGS, on this project. The WQDE's are divided into seven categories. We are asking for Council's approval to make these changes to the WQDE's so we can get these to the groups that will want to implement the WQDE's in their organizations. We will want to coordinate our activities with what is being planned by Council outreach. We need the pilot project back to us within the next 2 weeks. Adopt the update process. Level 1 for new data elements-public process. Level 2 for edits - Council review. Review outreach activities for implementation. Agree on pilot demonstration process. If we can agree on process and changes, we can move ahead. (Attachment 3 - Minutes of the WQDE Work Group)

Welcome and WI monitoring coordination

Warren Gebert, District Chief of the Wisconsin USGS Office, welcomed the group. Warren gave a presentation on Wisconsin's endangered water monitoring network-a plan for the future.

Mercury Studies

Dave Krabbenhoft's presentation described the mercury studies which started in the Wisconsin District. Mercury poses the greatest concern to public health in the United States-as announced by Carol Browner, USEPA, on December 14, 2000. Dave said that this is a national problem. There is more density and more emissions in the eastern U.S. It is a very costly proposal to remove mercury.

AWWARF SLOH Endocrine Disruption Project - Miel Barman and Jon Standridge

Miel Barman, State Laboratory of Hygiene, Wisconsin, gave a presentation on AWWARF SLOH Endocrine Disruption Project. This is an issue that is becoming most important. The public became aware of the issue after publication of the book "Our Stolen Future."

Temporal Sampling Strategies for Load Estimation

Dale Robertson, USGS, Wisconsin District Office, gave a presentation on Temporal Sampling Strategies for Load Estimation.

Urban TMDL Goal Setting - Roger Bannerman

Roger Bannerman, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, gave a presentation on Urban TMDL Goal Setting. He outlined the TMDL standards that was developed for the State of Wisconsin. These laws could not have been implemented unless organizations had been doing studies. Roger presented some stormwater management questions. Many urban streams reflect that things were changing in the state--habitat changes, dirty water, certain species of fish no longer in some streams. The urban streams study shows a dramatic loss in fish diversity. The state is trying to reach the fishable/swimmable goal. Kids play in water that does not meet quality standards. Impacts on urban streams are loss of recreational fishery, reduced swimming, and unattractive sites. Studies examined streams in different types of watersheds. Roger presented some of the results of the studies.

Alternate Stratification Scheme for Defining Nutrient Criteria for Rivers and Streams

Dale Robertson, USGS Wisconsin District, gave a presentation on Alternate Stratification Scheme for Defining Nutrient Criteria for Rivers and Streams.

Conference Planning Committee

Linda Green gave an update on the National Conference that will take place in Madison, Wisconsin, May 20-23, 2002. The theme of the conference is titled "Water Quality Monitoring 2002: Building a Framework for the Future". The conference is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Jester Fellows. There were 424 attendees at the Second Conference that was held in Austin, Texas, April 2000. We are designing the third conference styled basically the same as the last conference. Linda gave a rundown of the agenda for the Third Conference that is still in the planning stages. Overarching themes for the conference are collaboration, new and emerging technologies, new expectations of monitoring, monitoring results, and monitoring successes.

Linda told the group to think of all of the steps in a monitoring framework-all of the tracks will follow this theme. We are expecting 600-800 attendees at the Third Conference. The Conference Planning Committee toured conference facilities at Monona Terrace for the National Conference. The conference facility is stunning. Linda encouraged all who did not get over to the facility at lunchtime today, to take time to visit while here in Madison. Our conference will be on the 4th floor. Workshops may include capacity building for State/Regional Councils; Managing Monitoring Programs; Design of Monitoring Networks.

More conference sponsors are needed. We had 13 vendors at Austin; we are planning on having 40 vendors in 2002. We will plan to have all of our breaks in the exhibit area. We would like to have a committee formed to recruit sponsors. Organizations could sponsor an opening reception for example. There will not be an overlapping volunteer monitoring conference as there was at the Austin conference. We could have one or two sessions on volunteer monitoring. Ellen McCarron would like to see a session on biological monitoring. We need to designate a track leader for each of the tracks. We need to think about how to market this conference to get vendors and participants. Focus on solutions to problems and successes. Charlie Peters and Chuck Spooner are chairs as well as Linda for this conference. Thanks went to David Denig-Chakroff. David has done a tremendous amount of work in getting the conference facility and putting down the funds for reserving the conference facility. There was a discussion of proceedings for the conference. Jim Cox suggested that Proceedings be on a CD and, perhaps,sell paper copies. Ben Grunewald, Ground Water Protection Council, said that he will be asking everyone for their best mailing list to send out announcements of the conference. Ben would like a volunteer group for securing exhibitors. Tim Kubiak volunteered. It would be fantastic to get an international workshop stated John Klein. Many States could learn from the European countries regarding cooperation among international boundaries. John volunteered to work on this. Toni Johnson suggested that members encourage their organization to be a sponsor of this national conference-sponsor a session, give $500; this is the kind of responsibility we should take as Council members to each of our organizations. Toni stated that Linda has a good presentation on the National Conference that can be provided to your agency. It will make a difference as to who comes and the prestige of the conference. We need to encourage young people, who are just getting involved in monitoring, to participate. Sponsor a young person to attend. Toni will take this to ACWI. Merck will probably do something to sponsor a student to attend the conference

Board and Council Outreach Meeting
Abby Markowitz to develop framework for both Methods Board and Council Outreach committees. We need to give some guidance to Abby on our objectives for the framework. Products are becoming available; the first place to look is the web page. Journals can advertise the web site and also newsletters of organizations of ACWI. Send text to newsletter editors with graphics and Council logo. We can send the same to our members with a request for names of people in their organizations who do newsletters. The Council brochure needs to be updated ACTION ITEM: Toni Johnson should contact Greg Allord, USGS Cartography and Publishing Program (CAPP), to see if Council brochure update can be done at CAPP and the cost. Toni should also talk to Bob Hirsch re money for Fact Sheets.Approximate cost for printing of Fact Sheet is $2500 to $3000. There probably will be no year-end money. Greg Allord may have some funded student who could do the Fact Sheet design. There are six Fact Sheets-the approximate cost would be $18,000 for design, layout, text editing, and photos. Second planned Council publication is position paper.

There was a discussion regarding the web page and getting people to use it. Council's web page should be active with products. We need to identify a few websites as a model for the Council website.

Monitoring Coordination in the Lake Michigan Basin

Ric Lawson, Great Lakes Commission, gave a presentation on Monitoring Coordination in the Lake Michigan Basin. EPA Region 5 provides funding for the Lake Michigan Monitoring Coordination Council (LMMCC). The LMMCC's preliminary meeting was held in April 1999. Membership includes State and Federal representatives with Co-Chairs from State and Federal agencies. Charlie Peters is the Federal Co-Chair. Meetings are open to all. Council meets twice a year. Key concerns are funding, member recruitment, development of useful products, and balancing broad vision. The National Council could help the LMMCC by showing what works and what doesn't. Level of funding of the secretariat and development was $30,000 for each of the first two years; funding for next year is $25,000. The future is unknown for following years.

Council Business Meeting
Toni Johnson announced plans for the fall Council meeting that are being discussed for the Denver area. See ACWI Action Items of interest to Council, particularly ground-water/surface-water interactions symposium being led by Rodney DeHan. (Attachment 4 - ACWI Meeting Action Items and Results) Toni discussed a member profile for ACWI. We also may do this for Council. Robert Goldstein, EPRI, is working on development of new ACWI work group on TMDLs. Chuck Spooner will work with Robert on this. . Gail Mallard announced the review of the National Academy of Science on the water use program of the USGS. We will want to watch for updates.

3rd National Conference The leaders for the six tracks for the 3rd National Monitoring Conference are Peter Tennant, Design Collaboration; Charlie Peters, Field Monitoring; Herb Brass, Lab Analysis; Chuck Spooner, Data Management; Tim Kubiak, Data Interpretation; and Greg Gross, Data to Information to Action. Council members should work with these groups. We need at least three members as group workers on the tracks. Linda Green, Abby Markowitz, Tetratech, and Ben Grunewald, GWPC, will develop Workshops for the Conference. Linda Green is contact for Workshop ideas. ACTION ITEM: Send suggestions for vendors to Tim Kubiak. We want at least 40 vendors to participate at the National Conference. Because of meeting space, an area needs to be designated for impromtu meetings. Sign up for on-the-spot meetings. Several meeting rooms will be available. There will be no luncheon speakers. When the Call for Papers is issued, sign up for posters. Charlie Peters will pursue ideas for plenary session based on suggestions from Track Leaders. David Denig-Chakroff indicated that the Grand Terrace area might be a good place for posters. This would be a place where people would likely congregate rather than a separate ballroom. Breaks should be integrated with poster sessions.

Accreditation Review Process.

Gail Mallard said that we need to review accreditation process-whether Federal agencies should accredit themselves. Tim Kubiak said the key concern was the self regulation and how to manage to accredit their individual laboratories. Inside that program there is separate interagency committee for validating alternative methods. It was suggested that Recommendation No. 4 be deleted from accreditation package to ACWI. There are no Federal crediting authorities in NELAC. The crediting authorities are State groups. NELAP is recommended. Recognizing that NELAP needs to continue its efforts to obtain more State participation and reciprocity; address standards for ambient monitoring, field sample collection, and field measurements; promote the development of PBMS implementation.

Federal agencies should consider seeking to become an accrediting authority for their own laboratories under NELAP. Gail suggested we keep Recommendation No. 4 and let ACWI give us their opinion. See procedure Toni set out in ACWI actions (Attachment 4) and Gail's process for review. (Attachment 5 -Lab Accreditation Review Process with ACWI.)

Council Business Meeting

Membership

Chuck Spooner led discussion on membership. Chuck noted the work of the outgoing members. The following people will rotate off Council after the fall meeting. They are Rodney DeHan, Region 4, (Florida), Fred Van Alstyne, Region 2 (New York); Gary Ingman, Region 8 (Montana); and Jon Craig, Region 6 (Oklahoma). Gail Mallard mentioned that she has recruited Craig Cox, Soil and Water Conservation Society, who will represent Agriculture. He will join the Council starting with the fall meeting.

Fred Banach has a candidate as Alternate for Region 1. Chuck Spooner said that he has some concerns with keeping Alternates as backup. Charlie suggested that Alternates get involved in work groups; this will make them more dedicated to participate in Council when member is not available. This will come up for discussion at next Steering Committee Meeting on Membership.

Discussion of Nutrient Letter

Discussion of nutrient letter was reviewed by Council members, and several comments were noted. This guidance is to regulate only streams-- not wetlands. Tim Kubiak suggested that we modify the white paper or do a separate transmittal to ACWI. We do not want to use the term guidance but would be comfortable with "screening tool" stated Fred Banach. The Nutrients Work Group felt it could be interpreted a number of ways. Group decided to modify letter using the words, "preliminary screening tool." Watershed or site specific criteria should be considered.(Attachment 6 - Revised White Paper on the Need to Critically Evaluate US EPA's Nutrient Criteria). Nutrient Work Group will make these changes, and Chuck Spooner will deliver the letter to EPA on behalf of the Council.

Work Group Reports

Collaboration and Outreach Work Group

The group discussed State and Regional Council Assessment. Linda Green's presentation to ACWI will be on the Council (Methods Board) web site for other members to look at and to use for possible presentations to other groups. Responses to our assessment has not been very good; all of the ones we know about did not respond. We will send the assessment form and request to all of those groups that did not respond. We want to get more information of how their Council started and some examples of collaborative monitoring. We will see if ASWIPCA will mail their address list to Council for the assessment. USGS will mail assessment form to the Tribal environmental managers. We talked about our Fact Sheet series; we previously agreed on a list of fact sheets and have assigned authors. Fred Banach asked if Chuck could work with John Klein to get the Council Fact Sheet published based on their report in the Impact publication.

See following assignments for completion of Fact Sheets:

Outstanding Examples of Collaborative Monitoring (Fred Banach and Linda Green) Abby may get some information from people that she talks to on State/Regional Councils. Council Fact Sheet - John Klein/Gail Mallard Methods Board - done State and Regional Monitoring Councils (Fred Banach and Linda Green) Abby will ask some questions of State/Regional Councils. Five Reasons for Monitoring-Robert Ward Water Information Cycle-Linda Green

We need to provide organizational format for Fact Sheets and other publications. Linda, Toni, and Judy, will work with Abby Markowitz, TetraTech, on specifications for these Fact Sheets. Other work groups will take their work plan and convert into a Fact Sheet based on the specifications on format that will be provided to them from Abby. Rodney asked if Geologic Framework could be added as a Fact Sheet and if there is funding to cover that. Toni said this was reviewed by USGS and EPA and said that the draft was not sufficient to be published. Fred VanAlstyne reported that there is a fact sheet or publication on ground water component into the water cycle. ACTION: Gail Mallard will check to see if Fact Sheet on Ground Water Component into the Water Cycle has been done. Fred mentioned that the water cycle poster will be updated and possibly be used as graphics for T-shirt to sell at the National Monitoring Conference. ACTION: Council was asked to send ideas for revision to the water-cycle graphic or alternatives to this graphic to Linda Green or Toni Johnson. Discussed C&O framework and have come up with framework similar to MB fact sheet. See the following

We believe it will be an excellent idea for the frameworks to go back to Abby to weave together as part of the overall framework for Council. Discussed a longer version of powerpoint presentation on the Council. There is a concern about inconsistent response of volunteers who had originally volunteered to work. There was a discussion of whether we should do anything more with this group since it has been 1 ½ years since the 2nd National Conference. Chuck thought contacting those people who attended the 2nd Conference would be a wonderful way to let them know about the upcoming Third Conference. Toni suggested another mailing list for the National Conference to include volunteers from the 2nd Conference.

Chuck said he has drafted a progress report for new members to go along with invitational letter. This may be something we will want to provide to ACWI at the next meeting. This progress report will be something members may want to use with their organizations to provide justification for participation. David Denig Chakroff suggested doing a video for the upcoming conference and could also be put on the web. We should find out what the cost estimates would be to produce the video. (Attachment 6 - C&O Work Group Minutes)

Water Information Strategies Work Group

Peter Tennant reported and chaired the meeting for Robert Ward. Several new folks joined the group, Abigail Cantor, Ellen McCarron, Alan Cherepon, and Geoff Dates. Gregg Gross will draft Fact Sheet on the work group. Robert Ward is working on other products for the work group. Chuck Spooner is going to work on redraft of White Paper no. 3. White Paper No. 2 is an appraisal of groups supporting monitoring. There will be some type of checklist on the internet about designing a monitoring system. Nutrient paper was discussed and upcoming national conference. Discussed aspects of data monitoring but have not reached conclusions on how we go about this. Chapter 12 of CALM monitoring guidance will be reviewed. (Attachment 7 -WIS Work Group Minutes)

Methods Board Work Group

See presentation made by Herb Brass on MB website.

MDCB PBMS Work Group Report

Cliff Annis gave report. Sent out COD pilot; will make minor editorial changes. Cliff will give Executive Summary and full report to Council and participating labs for peer review; and will ask for response by July. Plan to put full report on Council's website.

Watershed Components Interactions Work Group

Discussed revised work plan that was done in Dallas. Several people who worked on the revision were not at this meeting. Reviewed Forest Service document and PA monitoring guidance along with Conceptual Approaches to Monitoring Ground Water published by USGS. We felt that the review of the Forest Service and the PA monitoring guidance should go on the web for those entities who want to develop ground water monitoring. Some specific addresses needed for these documents. We developed ideas for conference sessions that were passed on to Linda Green, one of the co-chairs of the 3rd National Monitoring Conference. Ground Water Protection Council and the Council, if funded and approved, will publish Ground Water Compendium. Discussed funding for approved symposium by ACWI as part of the National Conference. It will be up to ACWI ad hoc committee regarding this symposium as to whom will sponsor. Discussed framework and recommendations that we stick to general framework as described in water cycle poster. Discussed budget and provided estimates (some are provided by volunteers). Relating to the compendium, there is an estimate of $30,000. We still haven't decided on the nature of the publication. Discussed yellow pages contacts; not much success. Some who signed up as interested were contacted both by email and phone, but we did not get anything back. We plan to try to contact these people again.

Establishment of Awards Committee

David Denig-Chakroff reported that he has two volunteers for the team, Linda Green and Cliff Annis. Send notice to David if you would like to work on this committee. There are no decisions on how we are going to select an awardee for the Elizabeth Fellows Award which would be presented at the Third National Conference. We will do a conference call and issue invitation to other members of Council who are not here.

October Meeting

The next Council meeting is scheduled for October 29-November 2, Denver, Colorado

Attendees:
Katherine T. Alben
Cliff Annis
Harold Ardourel, USGS, NWQL
Richard Ayers
Fred Banach
Roger Bannerman, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Miel Barman, State Laboratory of Hygiene, WI
Sherwin M. Beck, Tetra Tech, Inc.
Herb Brass
Abigail Cantor, Process Research, Madison, WI
Alan J. Cherepon, Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission
Jim Cox
Geoff Dates
Rodney DeHan
David Dening-Chakroff
Jerry Diamond, Tetra Tech, Inc.
Don Dycus
Warren Gebert, USGS, Madison, WI
Linda Green
Judy Griffin
Greg Gross
Ben Grunewald, Ground Water Protection Council, Inc.
Bill Ingersoll
Chuck Job, EPA
Toni Johnson
Larry Keith
John Klein
Dave Krabbenhoft, USGS, Sacramento, CA
Tim Kubiak
Ric Lawson, Great Lakes Commission
Gail Mallard, USGS
Abby Markowitz, Tetra Tech, Inc.
Ellen McCarron
Charlie Peters
Andrew Robertson
Dale Robertson, USGS, Madison, WI
Ed Santoro
Chuck Spooner
Jon Standridge, State Laboratory of Hygiene, WI
Peter Tennant
David Tucker
Fred Van Alstyne
Mary C. Verwolf

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
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