north texas section —e-newsletter · pdf file06/07/2014 · date: july 17,...

Date: July 17, 2008 Place: City Place, Dallas Texas Topic: Trinity River Internet Mapping Systems (TRIMS) Social Hour: 5:30 pm Dinner: 6:30 pm

Dinner Tickets: $20 Members $10 Spouses & Guests

Some of the meeting costs have been

offset by the following meeting sponsors:

Brown & Gay Engineers Jaster-Quintanilla

Kimley-Horn and Associates Malcolm Pirnie

Please call our voice mail reservations number to make your reservations:

(214) 890-6878 Dallas

(817) 740-5759 Fort Worth

Or mail: [email protected] for RSVPs.

EDITOR: Holly Ingram ([email protected])

NORTH TEXAS SECTIONNORTH TEXAS SECTIONNORTH TEXAS SECTION———eee---NEWSLETTERNEWSLETTERNEWSLETTER July 2008 Volume 20, Number 4

Webster Mangham Webster has a Master Degree in Geography from the University of North Texas. He has worked for TRA's Environmental Planning and Management Division for 3 years. The Trinity River, the 512-mile-long river that stretches from north of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex to Galveston Bay, and its natural re-sources are important assets to Texas. Providing drinking water for more than 8.9 million resi-dents, the river and its 1,983 miles of major tribu-taries drain an area of more than 11.5 million acres. In September 2006, Governor Rick Perry an-nounced the Trinity River Basin Environmental Restoration Initiative. As part of that initiative, A&M's Institute of Renewable Natural Resources (IRNR) worked with the Trinity River Authority (TRA), the Trinity Basin Conservation Founda-tion, and other agencies to develop a user-friendly Trinity River Internet Mapping System (TRIMS). The work was funded by a Clean Rivers Program grant from TCEQ. TRIMS gives users access to mapping data, re-mote sensing data, low-elevation aerial photo-graphs, and other information that helps in the planning of the Trinity restoration. It pulls to-gether multiple databases with detailed informa-tion on water quality, hydrology, floodplain man-agement,wetland restoration, bottomland hard-wood establishment, and wildlife habitat man-agement. The presentation will describe the development and capabilities of TRIMS and demonstrate its application to environmental issues.

Page—2 WEAT North Texas Section E-Newsletter

Dinner Meeting—July 17th, 2008, City Place, Dallas, Texas

Well, summer is here! And boy are we starting it off with a bang, already five days of 100+ degree weather and it’s only the first of July. The start of summer usually means the start a new year for the WEAT North Texas Section. I cannot tell you how excited I am about the upcoming events to take place this year and having the opportunity to work with some wonderful people within this organization. Many thanks to our sponsors that help make the dinner meetings, seminars and other events affordable. This organization would not be able to function without your support. We greatly appreciate it and look forward to your continued support so we can continue to provide members with fun activities and interesting topics this year. Special thanks to all the officers, committee chairs, and volunteers. Without these people the North Texas Section wouldn’t be one of the leading sections in the state and one of the best member associations in the country. I want to continue this rapport and believe with this year’s officers, committee chairs, and volunteers we can bring this year to a whole new level. For those of you who were unable to attend the May meeting at Texas Motor Speedway, we have a new team of officers who were elected for this year. Randy McIntyre moves into the Past-President position, John Bennett moves up to President-elect, Darryl Corbin will be our Vice-President, Erin Flanagan stays one more year as Secretary, Dawn Anderson moves into the Past Section Representative position and is the new Treasurer, and Becky Guthrie has become our Section Representative. Chamindra Dassanayake (CD) has graciously given his time organizing the February Seminar for the past four years and has passed the torch onto Gilbert Trejo as the Seminar Chairperson. CD will be moving on to volunteer his time at the State level. Thanks for all your help CD! Meera Victor will be replacing Gilbert as the Young Professionals Committee Chairperson. Welcome Meera! Thanks to all of you for volunteering your time and I look forward to working with you this year as President. For those WEAT members I have not been fortunate to meet, I would like to introduce myself. I am a Red Raider who graduated from Texas Tech University in 1996 with a BSCE and then from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2002 with an MECE. I have worked for CDM for over 11 years in their Fort Worth office working on a variety of civil and environmental projects but eventually specializing in wastewater process and facility design. My husband, Robert, and I reside in Lakeside with our daughter, Jade, who is 2 ½

years old. I started my journey with WEAT NTS as a member attending meetings periodically. I attended the February Seminar a few years back and happened to sit at a table with past committee members and chairpersons. As conversations developed they starting discussing the upcoming change in command for the Executive Committee. They kept looking around the room trying to finger point who could take Becky’s place as Treasurer. Somehow the finger got pointed to me and I wouldn’t have asked for anything better to happen that day. Although I realized what a commitment it would be to volunteer my time as Treasurer for this organization, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. This journey has been an open door full of opportunities to grow within the organization and develop relationships I wouldn’t have otherwise. I look forward to serving as President this year and welcome your suggestions or ideas on how we can improve this section. The first item on the agenda is addressing dinner meeting costs. Typically the February Seminar brings in the most money for our scholarship funds. Dinner meetings on the other hand have their ups and downs depending on the number of attendees and sponsors. We may break even or sometimes we even lose money. This past year we struggled to break even at dinner meetings. One change you will notice this year is the dinner meeting cost increasing to $20.00. Although we try to keep costs down to be affordable, we believe this change will help our financial stability considering ongoing inflation of consumer products. This change became effective at the May Dinner Meeting. We’ve got a lot to look forward to this year with Operations Challenge, Dinner Meeting and Seminar Program, Scholarship Program, Community Outreach, and Young Professional Events. We’re kicking off the year with our July dinner meeting at CityPlace where Webster Mamgham with TRA’s Clean Rivers Program will be speaking about TRA’s TRIMS program. Our 2nd Annual Ops Challenge Cook-Off will be in September. Keep reading on to find more details about the cook-off and how you can participate by cooking, judging, volunteering or just coming out to enjoy the fun.

Amy Robinson President 2008-2009

WEAT-NTS (817) 332-8727

WEAT North Texas Section E-Newsletter Page—3


WEAT-NTS Annual Picnic Operations Challenge Cook-Off

September 19, 2008

Location: Lake Arlington Activity Room (Richard Simpson Park) 6300 West Arkansas Lane Arlington, TX 76016 Get your teams together, and let the games begin! Go for the gold and join us in this year’s “Olympic” inspired BBQ cook off! Proceeds will go to support our Texas Operations Challenge teams! Good luck to the TRA CReWSers, Dallas Aqua Techs, and Power SAWS at this year’s event!!

Entering a team in this cook off is free. Each team will be reimbursed up to $100 for an entrée entry and $25 for a dessert entry. Cook-off Team Registration is due by Monday, September 8. Please contact John Bennett at 817-822-5673 or [email protected] to register your team. Teams can cook any type of entrée (BBQ, Steaks, Hot dogs, Chicken, etc.) and are encouraged to be creative with those secret recipes and unique side items! Medal Winners will be chosen by a panel of judges and fabulous prizes will be awarded! Dinner reservations are due by Friday, September 12, 2008. Please

call the voice mail reservation number at 214-890-6878 (Dallas) or 817-740-5759 (Ft. Worth).

Drinks are BYOB (cans and plastic bottles only). Alcohol is allowed only inside the building.

Traditional side items, water and soft drinks will be provided. Time: 5:30 PM Meet and Greet 6:30 PM Dinner Buffet 6:30 PM Judging Begins Dinner Tickets: $20 Members $10 Spouses/Guests $ 5 Children ages 5 to 12

$ 30 Family Maximum Children under 5 are Free Cook off team members Free!

Bounce House

For Kids!(Bounce House Sponsored by

Joe Etchegaray with FloTec)


Did someone say Scholarship?

North Texas Section WEAT is currently accepting scholarship applications for the 2008 fall semester. Applications are due August 15, 2008. We are looking forward to re-ceiving several strong candidates for the school year, so please help encourage NTS WEAT members to participate this year. A copy of the application form can be found on the NTS WEAT website at www.WEAT-NTS.org or by contacting David Jackson, Scholarship Committee Chairman, at 214-217-2257.

Please be on the lookout for additional informa-tion on the upcoming Daryl Hall Scholarship in our revised bylaws. The Daryl Hall Scholarship Fund is making excellent progress and we believe we are less than a year away from having ade-quate funding to support new applicants for this scholarship! Special kudos to Lynn Hall and John Bennett for their continued strong support of this program. It will pay great dividends for the working men and women of WEAT who help op-erate and maintain our wastewater facilities and infrastructure in North Texas.



Please check our website “http://www.weat-nts.org” for more information on seminars or other upcoming events.

Carollo Engineers

Announces New Employees

Carollo is please to announce the addition of three new employees in the Fort Worth and Dallas offices.

Chris Brooks - Fort Worth office. Chris Brooks, P.E. has joined Carollo Engineers as a Senior Project

Manager in the Fort Worth office. Chris is a Civil Engineering graduate of Texas A&M with twenty-three

years of broad engineering experience in the public and private sectors in the DFW area. He has managed

a variety of municipal and regional engineering infrastructure design projects for water, wastewater, and storm sewer systems. Chris also has an extensive

background in water distribution and wastewater collection systems studies and master plans; flood

plain studies; and storm-water management programs.

Jon Newberry - Fort Worth office. Jon has over

eighteen years experience in computer aided design of water and sewer mains and other civil works

infrastructure projects. He has also provided extensive technical support to numerous sanitary sewer system

studies conducted in Texas.

Mario Esquivel - Dallas office. Mario is a graphics designer with fourteen years of experience in graphic

design and illustration. Mario strengthens the production capabilities of the Dallas office.

WEAT North Texas

Section Constitution and Bylaws

The WEAT North Texas Section Constitution and Bylaws are currently being revised and will be posted on the website at www.weat-nts.org from July 17 to August 14. Please review and send all comments and/or questions to Becky Guthrie, [email protected] or call 940-349-8910.

E&IC Committee Technical Seminar The E&I Committee of WEAT will be sponsoring its second technical seminar of 2008 later this month. This presenta-tion will be on “LEED / Green Power”. Additional details re-garding presenters and specific topics will be forwarded shortly. The meeting details are: Date: Wednesday, 16 July 2008 TCEQ Presentation 09:00AM – 12:00AM (Lunch provided by Reynolds Electric) Location: Reynolds Electric 2680 Sylvania Cross Fort Worth, Texas 76137 Please put this on your calendar. For more information about this seminar, or about other activities of the WEAT E&I Committee, please contact any of those on the committee (contact information at the bottom of this note). Please RSVP to George Luke if you will be able to attend this seminar.


continued

RJN Group, Inc. Announces New Hires

RJN Group, Inc. is pleased to announce that Stephen Jeffus, P.E. has joined the company as a Business Developer in the Dal-las Office. Mr. Jeffus holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering and is a Registered Professional Engineer in

Arkansas. Mr. Jeffus has over 17 years of experience in the water and wastewater field.

In addition, we are pleased to announce the addition of two key project team staff in our Dallas office. Steven Linhardt, P.E. has joined the company as a Senior Project Engineer and Joseph Cotton, P.E. has joined the company as a Pro-ject Manager / Project Engineer. Mr. Linhardt will be responsible for the coordination and supervision of the municipal design teams in the Dallas Office. Mr. Cotton will be working within the Sewer System Evaluation Survey (SSES) de-

partment to develop recommendations for clients.

We, at the University of North Texas, through fund-ing from the National Sci-ence Foundation, have been afforded the opportu-

nity to host a one-day hands-on mini-course dealing with utilizing wireless sensor networks to improve education opportunities and decision-making processes. This seminar is specifically aligned with the needs of community decision-makers and education professionals and thus we would like to extend an invitation to you as someone who works in this rapidly changing field.

In this minicourse, you will have the opportunity to learn about the types of data being collected from wireless sensor networks, techniques to model information and predict out-comes based on this data, and how these technologies can be used to compliment public education and decision-making efforts. You will also participate in hands-on demon-strations where you will interact with wireless sensors and work with models for the types of information that are most applicable to your situation.

We are offering two dates for this workshop, so that you will be able to work one into your schedule. The wireless sensors mini-courses will be held on Wednesday, July 9th and Saturday, July 26th 2008, from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm at the University of North Texas Research Park (3940 N. Elm Street, Denton, TX 76207). Please pick one of these dates and let us know when you can attend- you need not attend both since they will be identical.

The mini-course is sponsored by the Cyberinfrastructure

Training, Education, Advancement and Mentoring (CI-TEAM) program of the National Science Foundation and thus comes at no charge to you. However, we are limited to only 30 participants for this particular course and thus en-courage you to R.S.V.P. to the email address provided be-low at your earliest convenience if you would like to be in-cluded in this very unique and innovative program. Both lunch and snacks will be provided and each participant will be presented with a minimum of $50.00 worth of books and/or materials to take with them at the end of the course.

The mini-course will provide a great opportunity of net-working among colleagues in the DFW area. If you are re-sponsible for education and decision-making within your organization, then this is the cutting-edge professional de-velopment mini-course for you! If you know of a colleague who would benefit from this workshop, please forward it on to them as well.

We look forward to hearing from you very soon and to working with you in July! Please call or email me directly with any questions.

Sincerely, Jeremy M. Delost

UNT Environmental Sciences [email protected]

940-231-0870 For more information on Cyber-Infrastructure: http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=OCI, For more information on CI-TEAM http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/ci-team/



Association Members Who Make a Difference: 2008 Regional Science Fair Coordinators

The WEAT Public Education Committee and the TAWWA Education Division joined forces to

judge thirteen regional science fairs across the State of Texas in March and April of this

year. There was a total of $3,425 in prize money awarded to the students at these fairs.

The judges were all volunteers from the TAWWA and WEAT organizations who took the time to at-

tend the regional fairs and judge all the water and wastewater related projects. They awarded cash

prizes to the top three projects in the senior age division and top three projects in the junior age division. The

prizes were $75 for first place, $50 for second place, and $25 for third place.

The Regional Fair Coordinators were:

Austin Area Science Festival – Judy Musgrove, City of Austin Dallas Morning News-Toyota Reg. Science and Engineering Fair –Rene Aguilar,

Carollo Eng. Ft. Worth Regional Science Fair – Rene Aguilar, Carollo Engineers Science Engineering Fair of Houston – Lindsay J. Pierce, P.E., Brown & Gay East Texas Regional Science Fair – Sal Pisano, City of Longview South Plains Regional Science and Engineering Fair – Cande Hurn, City of Lub-

bock Permian Basin Regional Science Fair – Naomi Azulai and Lance Ward Alamo Regional Science and Engineering Fair – Dennis Laskowski, SAWS Texas Mid-Coast Regional Science and Engineering Fair – Sara Vazquez,

GBRA Central Texas Science and Engineering Fair –Anthony Betters, City of Waco Rio Grande Valley Science and Engineering Fair – Mr. Vicente Guerrero,

Brownville Public Utilities Board Sun Country Science Fair – Robert Riley, El Paso Water Utilities

This year eight of our regional winners went on to compete for the Texas State Stock-holm Junior Water Prize.

Each year the projects are more interesting and challenging... and judging is just plain fun! When next year’s fairs begin, please consider volunteering to help judge the com-petitions. You won’t regret it. Also, we still need judges for the regional science fairs in Wichita Falls, Laredo and San Angelo for 2009. If you know anyone who might be avail-able to judge these fairs next year, please contact Judy Musgrove at 512-972-0157 or Cathy Sieger at 972-331-4312.


SUPPORTERS OF WEAT NORTH TEXAS SECTION

DON’T SEE YOUR COMPANY IN THE NEWSLETTER?? Contact editor [email protected]

for information on advertising in our newsletter.

2777 North Stemmons Freeway, Suite 1102 Dallas, Texas 75207

Phone: (214) 951-0807 Fax: (214) 951-0906



SUPPORTERS OF WEAT NORTH TEXAS SECTION

OFFICERS NAME DAY PHONE FAX NO. E-MAIL President Amy Robinson (817) 332-8727 (817) 332-6870 [email protected]

President-Elect John Bennett (817) 430-4657 (817) 491-4173 [email protected]

Vice President Darryl Corbin (972) 239-9949 (972) 239-9117 [email protected]

Secretary Erin Flanagan (214) 217-2261 (214) 217-2275 [email protected]

Treasurer Dawn Anderson (214) 638-0500 (214) 638-3723 [email protected]

Past President Randy McIntyre (972) 934-3711 (972) 934-3662 [email protected]

Section Rep Becky Guthrie (940) 349-8938 (940) 349-8951 [email protected]

Past Section Rep Dawn Anderson (214) 638-0500 (214) 638-3723 [email protected]

COMMITTEE CHAIR DAY PHONE FAX NO. E-MAIL

Audit John Bennett (817) 430-4657 (817) 491-4173 [email protected]

Constitution/Bylaws Becky Guthrie (940) 349-8938 (940) 349-8951 [email protected]

Electronic Communications Holly Ingram (214) 640-1730 (214) 638-3723 [email protected]

Finance Amy Robinson (817) 332-8727 (817) 332-6870 [email protected]

Nominations Becky Guthrie (940) 349-8938 (940) 349-8951 [email protected]

PWO Mike Young (972) 262-5186 (972) 264-1382 [email protected]

Photography Malcolm Cowdin (972) 262-5186 (972) 331-4412 [email protected]

Program Darryl Corbin (972) 239-9949 (972) 239-9117 [email protected]

Public Education/Science Fair Rene Aguilar (972) 239-9949 (972) 239-9117 [email protected]

Scholarship Fund David Jackson (214) 217-2257 (214) 920-2565 [email protected]

Seminar Gilbert Trejo (817) 877-9978 (817) 885-8676 [email protected]

Young Professionals Meera Victor (972) 239-9949 (972) 239-9117 [email protected]

WEAT—NTS CONTACTS


WEAT-NTS Calendar of Events

July 16, 2008 Reynolds Electric Green Power/ LEED WEAT E&IC Committee Technical Seminar

July 17, 2008 City Place Dallas WEAT-NTS Trinity River Internet Mapping System (TRIMS)

September 19, 2008 Lake Arlington Activity Room

(Richard Simpson Park) WEAT-NTS Annual Picnic

October 18-22, 2008 McCormick Place Chicago, Illinois WEF/WEAT WEFTEC.08

November, 2008 TBD WEAT-NTS Dinner Meeting

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THANKS

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north texas section —e-newsletter · pdf file06/07/2014 · date: july 17,...

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