Watershed Coordinator’s Report – Deb Simko

Growing Greener Grant – 2007 and 2008 Statewide AMR Conference

The last two conferences were administered by EPCAMR using Growing Greener funds. The next two years will be administered by WPCAMR. We are seeking roughly $30,000 for each conference – total of $60,000. It will be more technical in nature than the last few years with an emphasis on New Technologies. We also plan to combine the Resource Recovery conference component again since it is working out quite well this year.

Growing Greener Grant – So Sandy Watershed Association

The So. Sandy Watershed Association has asked WPCAMR to be their fiscal sponsor on a Growing Greener grant for start-up of their organization. They will be asking for approx. $4,000 toward this endeavor.

Passing Go Workshops – as a follow-up to the Passing Go Workshops the Southwest and Northwest regions are each offering a workshop this year tailored to the specific requests taken from evaluation forms. The Southwest is conducting a workshop on Board Development, Legal Issues and Insurance on Saturday, March 5 at the U. of Pittsburgh Greensburg campus. The Northwest is offering a grant writing and fundraising plan development workshop on Saturday, April 9 at the DEP’s Meadville office.

W. Branch Susquehanna Symposium – there will be a W. Branch Symposium to be held May 6 and 7, 2005 at the Penn Stater Conference Center. Speakers will be from local watershed groups or Agency personnel working in the W. Branch with a focus on a W. Branch Restoration Plan – specific to AMR. Sixty percent of the water quality impairment in the W. Branch is from AMD.

ACT 220 – State Water Plan

You will find the following items on the WPCAMR website:

1. Summary of the State Water Plan Committee activities from 2004
2. DRAFT of the Critical Water Planning Area Criteria – for comments. Comments are being taken by the Regional Committees
3. List of upcoming Regional Committee meeting dates

Also, we will be holding Public Hearings sometime in May or June in each region. For example, the Ohio Basin will probably have 3 (I am pushing for 4). WPCAMR has a link to the ACT 220 homepage.

C-SAW Partnership

WPCAMR has been invited to become a partner in the C-SAW partnership. There is money available for this year 2005 to provide services specifically to the Ohio River. They have asked us to put together a list of our services and then these will be the ones we will provide to the groups requesting. C-SAW will also be putting in for this round of GG to continue this TAG and would like us to partner with them with this.