January to May 2025 Edition
President's Message By Greg McLaughlin, AWRA-WA Section President
Welcome to 2025, members and friends of the American Water Resources Association - Washington Section (AWRA-WA). For those of you new to AWRA-WA, we are an all-volunteer non-profit organization of Washington State-based water resources professionals. We provide forums and informational exchange for advancing water resources management throughout the Pacific Northwest region, connect university students and young professionals to fellowship and mentorship opportunities, and recognize excellence in water resource education, management, and research. As I write this, I am watching the wrap-up of the Pacific Northwest Groundwater Conference, held March 18-19 in Spokane, organized by American Groundwater Trust (AGWT) with marketing support from AWRA-WA. The conference has done a fantastic job of diving into the most current water quantity and water quality challenges of regional aquifers. This included presentations on how to optimize conjunctive management for agriculture, municipalities, and ecological flows, and additional presentations on monitoring and tracking Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in regional aquifers. The AGWT conference is a deeper dive into AWRA-WA’s October 2024 conference, also related to water quality: “Drinkable, Fishable, Swimmable – Protecting Washington’s Waters” – linked here from our Fall 2024 Newsletter if you want to learn more. Speaking of newsletters, a huge kudos goes out to Anurag Mishra and Colin Butler for launching the digital format in 2024, improving the readability and ability to disseminate information to a much wider audience, as seen in our Fall 2024 Newsletter. A big thanks also goes to Tiffanie A. Ellis and Patrick Vandenberg for taking on the important work of producing the newsletter and communications efforts in 2025! 2025 Goals & Activities As we start 2025, we have an ambitious and growing set of goals, especially related to special networking events, lunch and dinner meetings, engagement of campus chapters, student fellowships and—of course—our annual conference scheduled for October 14, 2025, titled “Rethinking the Water Year: Aligning Supply and Demand in a Changing Water Resources Landscape”. The Events Committee, led by Colin Butler and new 2025 Board member Noah Wetzel, already has initiated planning more and diverse events, with additional support from Jason McCormick and the AWRA-WA Student Chapter at Central Washington University for eastern Washington events. You can always go to AWRA-WA's events page to sign up for upcoming events. Student Chapters & Fellowships AWRA-WA’s student chapters are historically some of the most active and engaged in the nation, including fantastic work by CWU to organize events in 2024 and 2025 and volunteering at the 2024 state conference. We also have exciting news that the UW student chapter, which has been dormant for a few years, has new leadership and new energy for organization. Thanks to Colin Butler and Kori Swabb for their efforts behind the scenes, and we are looking forward to meeting our new UW-AWRA student chapter friends at upcoming meetings and events. Speaking of students, we are currently reviewing 2025 AWRA-WA Student Fellowship applications, which will include $2,500 in direct support of student research and financial support for successful applicants to attend the 2025 state conference to present their research. 2025 Conference Planning The 2025 conference committee is currently organizing initial meetings for the October 14, 2025 conference. We are still looking to find volunteers to help lead and organize this committee, which is probably our most pressing need at the moment!! Please contact me (Greg@washingtonwatertrust.org) if you are interested in this or have any other questions about AWRA-WA. See you all around the AWRA-WA water cooler! Greg McLaughlin |
