September 2023 STAC Quarterly Meeting

September 12, 2023 - September 13, 2023


The September 2023 STAC meeting was held in-person on Tuesday, September 12th and Wednesday, September 13th at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park in Baltimore, MD.

Field Trip: On the morning of Day 2, STAC member toured the Masonville Education Center and the Masonville Dredged Material Containment Facility (DMCF) operated by the Maryland Environmental Service (MES). MES operates the Masonville DMCF on a daily basis, providing inspection and oversight of inflowed dredged material and permit required water quality monitoring. Engineering and construction oversite on a multitude of projects including dike raising and stormwater management.

Final Meeting Agenda: Final September STAC 2023 QM Agenda

Meeting Materials:

Day 2 focused on exploring the roles of socioeconomic and biophysical sciences and their linkages in water resource management programs. Rationale and targeted outcomes for this structured discussion below.

  • Rationale: It is increasingly evident that programmatic watershed management requires a foundation of science-based stakeholder engagement and commitment to co-learning (i.e., social sciences) used to align objectives and increase the likelihood of successful policymaking. Such commitment to capturing and utilizing diverse perspectives describing system dynamics also has a more substantial potential than conventional model development to improve management forecasts and science-based guidance. However, these linkages/tenets/opportunities remain primarily overlooked and underutilized. One challenge to exploring these linkages is that management programs similar in scope to the Chesapeake Bay Program typically include large inter-jurisdictional regions that leaders consider unique to parallel efforts across the country or worldwide. However, the principles used to frame hydro-social systems likely have commonalities that could be used to improve water governance essential to ensuring adequate, healthy water supplies to meet environmental flow requirements, food production, and domestic demands. Exploring these commonalities could provide pivotal insights to the Chesapeake Bay Program as we begin the process of envisioning “Beyond 2025.”

Targeted Outcomes:

  • Investigate the successes and challenges of implementing hydro-social frameworks used to guide interregional water management programs across the country.
  • Reflect on tractable opportunities to improve governance and management of Chesapeake Bay Program’s adaptive watershed management program.
  • Reflect on research needs to support science-based decision-making.

Presentations:

Recordings:

  • Briefing on Findings from the FY22 STAC Workshop “Using Local Monitoring Results to Inform the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Watershed Model”
    Presented by KC Filippino (HRPDC)

Meeting Theme: Institutional Learning: Informing watershed management through an inter-regional program comparison

  • Provocateur Panel: Exploring the Successes and Challenges of Water Resource Management Programs that Compare in Scale to the Chesapeake Bay Program
    • Edwin Martinez, USDA NRCS, Virginia State Conservationist (Great Lakes Restoration Initiative overview)
    • Ellen Gilinsky (STAC) – MS Basin management
    • Jason Farnsworth, Executive Director of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program
    • Michael Beezhold (Dept. of Health and Environment, Kansas)
    • Arthur Wardle, (UC Berkeley – California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)
  • Response Panel & Group Discussion: How can advance CBP science-based resource
    management?

Final Meeting Minutes: FINAL_September 2023 Quarterly Meeting Minutes