Kevin Wolf & Associates Internet Strategic Planning Facilitation Metadata

Cooperation is Key to Basin's Water Future August 4, 1995 ACWA newsletter By: Grace Burgess and Kevin Wolf      Managing a groundwater aquifer is complicated enough without adding to it a superfund designation and over 50 agencies with a stake in its utilization. The San Gabriel Valley Groundwater Basin (SGVGB) in Southern California is near the top of the list of difficult and historically contentious water problems. Yet, out of this morass is arising a spirit of cooperation that promises hope for groundwater management everywhere.      After extensive contamination was detected in 1979, the USEPA placed the entire 195 square mile basin on the National Priorities List, thereby creating one of the largest Superfund sites in the country. With close to 1 (?) million people receiving water from the Basin's historically rich groundwater resource, a great deal is at stake in its cleanup and management. Now, with numerous plumes of contamination threatening the resource, there is a growing agreement that information and cooperation is essential to developing effective and efficient solutions to the Basin's problems.      One example has been the creation of the Baldwin Park Operable Unit (the Basin's largest designated USEPA sub-area) Groundwater Renewal and Supply project. This project, which will intensively manage the sub-area to maximize its usable water supply (?), was the culmination of a consensus effort committed to achieving the common goals of all the stakeholders. With this success as a model, the Basin's other sub-areas are pursuing similar approaches.      This cooperative spirit has spilled over (pun intended) into other areas such as the "San Gabriel Valley Water" Internet project. Inspired by the statewide Water On-line project, the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority committed its resources to organizing the Basin's stakeholders to "advance the use of the Internet to further communication and information sharing." With consensus facilitation at the heart of the process, the project took off with a highly successful meeting in early July.      The participants easily identified common goals and reasons to make use of the power of the Internet's World Wide Web (WWW). There was a clear and mutual need to share many different datasets including: GIS overlays of contamination sites, historic well locations and more, well quality and quantity information, surface water supplies, agency staff information, background reports, etc. Just finding which agency has what information would be a huge time saver.      The Regional Water Quality Control Board, the southern district of the Dept. of Water Resources, the Metropolitan Water District, the LA County Dept. of Public Works, the Valley's Watermaster and many of the local water agencies attended. They determined the initial steps to include: developing e-mail mailing lists, training in how to design and create WWW homepages, organizing a strategy of what datasets to put on-line first and how to do this, learning about metadata, and scheduling future meetings of the project Steering Committee.      A great deal of science and information is needed to resolve complicated groundwater problems and to manage the resource in a sustainable and productive manner. Cooperation among different stakeholders and collaborative use of the powerful tools on the Internet to improve communication and information sharing will help all groundwater interest groups make rapid advances and real improvement. Short bio of Grace Burgess. Grace Burgess conceived and implemented the SGV Water Internet project. She is the Director of Administration for the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority. Short bio of Kevin Wolf (Kevin Wolf runs his own Internet consulting and training company, Kevin Wolf and Associates. He has been facilitating the SGV Water Internet project meetings. If you would like more information about learning to be a facilitator or you just want to hire an unbiased outsider to facilitate your meetings, please contact Kevin Wolf & Associates. Kevin Wolf & Associates 724 N Street, Davis, CA 95616 Phone (530) 758-4211      Fax (530) 758-2338 kjwolf@dcn.davis.ca.us     http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/kjwolf/