Feb
5
January Board Meeting
February 5, 2008 | Posted by Jane Rowan
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Hello to American Water Resources Association (AWRA) esteemed members, friends and colleagues. As the weekend of the first AWRA Board of Directors (BOD)meeting of 2008 wraps up, I want to share with you some of the highlights, and remind you of upcoming events.
January BOD meetings are unique from other meetings in that the board gets a couple of days to step out of the busyness of their regular schedules, and come together from all over the country, to focus in on how we can continue to “adaptively manage” AWRA to maintain our cutting edge as the premiere multi-disciplinary association to our members, and to those in the multi-disciplinary water resources professions.
Here are the highlights:
- We discussed our first policy statement: AWRA’s policy on policy statements. You should see something posted on our website soon!
- We discussed current technical committees and how we can bring them into the 21st century with the technological tools now at our fingertips (like this blog!)
- We were privileged to have Secretary John Paul Woodley, Assistant Secretary of the Army in charge of Civil Works (the top Corps civilian) come to address the board, as we offered him AWRA’s assistance in solving some of the very difficult issues facing the Corps. The passage of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) authorized a very large amount of tax dollars to be spent on water resources infrastructure, and Secretary Woodley and his staff are sorting through the many provisions. In addition, we discussed the recent Supreme Court case (Rapanos case) that has caused the development of new Guidelines by the Corps directing a different way of documenting Jurisdictional Determinations related to “waters of the U.S.”. What a fascinating discussion!
- We discussed the generational changes that have occurred in our culture and how we as a multi-disciplinary organization can use them to our advantage in enhancing knowledge related to water resource science, engineering, policy and education.
- We had a great time, with informational discussions about navigable waters, adaptive management, water policy dialogues, and potential new leaders for AWRA.
We agreed that the weekend’s events would be a great opportunity to send out our first blog entry, and hopefully receive comments from those of you who are interested in, involved in and/or committed to AWRA. Involvement in AWRA will be sure to advance your knowledge and understanding of the broadly practiced water resources professions, in the US and around the world. I look forward to meeting many of you at one of our upcoming 2008 conferences:
GIS and Water Resources, San Mateo—March
Riparian Conference—Virginia Beach—-July
Annual Conference—-NEW ORLEANS!!—November
See our website for details!
Jane O. Rowan
President, American Water Resources Association
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