A message to all WRD employees Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 18:07:53 -0500 To: "E - All WRD Employees" From: "Robert M. Hirsch, Chief Hydrologist, USGS" Subject: A message to all WRD employees Cc: "Bonnie Mcgregor Reston, VA" , "Barbara J Ryan Reston, VA" , "Robert M Hirsch, Chief Hydrologist, Reston, VA" , "P. Patrick Leahy, Chief Geologist, Reston, VA" , "Richard E Witmer Reston, VA" , "Dennis B Fenn, Chief Biologist, Reston, VA" , "William F Gossman Jr. Reston, VA" , mschaefer@ios.doi.gov, "Katherine F Lins, Regional Director, Eastern Region, Reston, VA" , "Douglas R Posson Denver, CO" , "Thomas J Casadevall Menlo Park, CA" , "Timothy J West Reston, VA" , "Michael P McDermott Reston, VA" , "Martin Eckes Reston, VA" , "Malam, Pamela R" , "Devine, James F" , "Gary W Hill Reston, VA" , "Linda D Stanley Reston, VA" I'd like to take this opportunity, at the start of the new year, to reflect on where we have been over the past year and where we are heading. The year 1997 was a year of extraordinary floods and, as usual, a year of extraordinary responses from the Water Resources Division! Many of you worked long hours under adverse conditions to keep the information flowing to the public, the National Weather Service, and many other agencies. We continue to find new and better ways to use modern technology to get information into the hands of those who need it. An example of our success came in an e-mail from a citizen in Idaho during the floods last spring. He said: "It is 4 a.m. in the morning. I am right in the middle of the flood on the Snake River . . . The water is now 3 inches from the top of my foundation. . . . I just wanted to let you know that the information I can get off this web page has been invaluable. Thank you so much. No other source of information I can get has been as current or accurate as you wonderful people." One of the great successes of this year's flood season comes from the use of acoustic doppler technology. In April, Dave Mueller, of the Kentucky District, and WRD's bridge scour coordinator, used his remote controlled boat and doppler system to make measurements in areas of extreme flooding in Minnesota and North Dakota. In one instance, less than an hour after Dave identified scour under the abutment of a highway bridge near Granite Falls, Minnesota, its approach span collapsed. Just before the span collapsed, the Minnesota Department of Transportation had denied a request to bring one last truck across the bridge based on Dave's information. This shows the pay-off that can come from the right combination of technological innovation, hard work, and good communication with decisionmakers. It is clear that we are providing new services to the public and public agencies - not only to help them cope with floods, but to help them make a wide range of decisions relating to resources, hazards, and the environment. It also is clear that we must not fail them. Our new ability to share information rapidly requires that we provide data with a very high degree of reliability. We have a big job ahead of us to critically examine every aspect of the instrument-communications-computer-human system that produces and delivers the data. We need to consider ways we can improve and modify our systems to better provide our users with cost-effective, timely and accurate data on stage, discharge, and water quality. The year 1997 will be remembered as a year of significant progress in better integration of the USGS. Our former Director, Gordon Eaton, did a lot to help us act more as a single bureau and less as a set of three, or now four, independent divisions. A major change has been taking place in our organizational culture. Our leadership, at several levels, has gotten to know their colleagues better and is looking for ways to bring the full talent of the organization to bear on difficult scientific problems. A good example of such collaborations is the publication last year of a national study of pesticides in water and sediment and their relationship to the hormonal status of fish. This report was written by Steve Goodbred of BRD, Bob Gilliom of WRD and others. It shows what we can achieve by working together. It is available on-line at http://water.wr.usgs.gov/pnsp/rep/carp2/. My goal is that we all develop new habits that lead toward collaboration wherever and whenever it may help us produce a better product. We need to continue and increase our collaborations at all levels: District-to-District, District-to-National Research Program, Division-to-Division, USGS-to-universities, USGS-to-other agencies and USGS-to-private sector. In this era of tight budgets and staffing constraints, we cannot expect to accomplish every task by hiring all the right talent into our ranks. Scarcity demands sharing and collaboration. As is typical across the Federal Government, WRD continues to become a somewhat smaller organization. Our permanent workforce today is currently 4209 people. This is a decrease of 14 percent from our peak 4 years ago at the end of 1993. However, we are still about 30 percent larger than we were as recently as 1984. We remain a very vibrant and creative organization, able to accomplish great things for the Nation. The decreases in the size of our staff has not been uniform throughout the Division. Over the last 4 years our headquarters staff has decreased by more than 33 percent, and divisionwide, the number of supervisors and managers at the GS-14, 15, SES, and SL levels have decreased by 21 percent. We have sought to keep as much of the muscle of the organization in the field as possible, while cutting back on centralized oversight functions. The belt-tightening of the last few years has been necessary, but we are also aware that we must provide for quality assurance, technical assistance, and long-term investments in our capabilities (data bases, instruments, models, and training). One of the best things about our organization is that we recognize that our staff is our greatest asset. This makes it difficult when people leave us. We lose their capability and knowledge. One of those losses that we will feel sharply is the retirement of Jack Fischer. Jack has served the whole USGS superbly for two decades: as a hydrologist in the Florida District, as staff assistant to the Director, in several headquarters positions in WRD, and as Associate Chief Hydrologist for nearly a decade, including a stint as Acting Associate Director of the USGS, and the last 20 months as Acting Associate Division Chief of the National Mapping Division. Jack has always reminded us that the job of leadership is to set the direction and then support the people in the organization as they accomplish the mission. We will miss his outspoken support for the field. I personally owe him a great deal in helping me understand the values and strengths of the USGS. We all wish him the very best. Let me turn to a few special accomplishments of the last year. One of these has been the conversion of the National Water Information System from the Prime Computers to the Data Generals. The NWIS team did a superb job making this a smooth transition. They are now working on a number of additional improvements to the software that will be released over the coming months. We have a big job ahead of us. We still must make significant modifications in our data-base systems, so that they will be 1) portable across changing computing environments, 2) more efficient for the technicians, chemists, and hydrologists who produce and quality assure the data, and 3) more readily accessible to the public and the agencies that we serve. Synthesis of our data is a major priority for the Division. There are several synthesis projects under way now and nearing completion. One excellent example from the past year was the publication of a "Rapid-Estimation Method for Assessing Scour at Highway Bridges Based on Limited Site Data" WRIR 96-4310 by Stephen Holnbeck and Charles Parrett of the Montana District. This report (and accompanying fact sheet FS-244-96) draws on the bridge scour work done by 11 Districts to develop and test a cost-effective method that can be applied by State highway departments nationwide to help them assess scour risk, a major public safety issue. I mentioned the need to invest in our models. We are making significant progress with our ground-water models -- increasing capabilities, making them easier to use, improving interfaces to GIS, and making them work in common computing environments. The recent enhancements of MODFLOW, release of the MOC3D solute transport model, and improved access to these models via the Internet, are described in Fact Sheet FS-121-97 (/public/pubs/FS/FS-121-97/). These efforts show just what we can accomplish through the coordinated efforts of diverse units. In this case it involved the Office of Ground Water, the National Research Program, scientists in several Districts, and the Hydrologic Applications Support Section. Enhanced modeling capabilities help us carry out our own work and significantly contributes to the entire hydrologic community. This year has seen us embark on a new approach to working with the other bureaus of the Department of the Interior. For 102 years, we have had a Federal-State Cooperative Program in which we cost share our work with 1200 different State and local agencies. This year we have begun, in a small way, another cooperative approach: the "Water Resources Investigations Cost-Share Program with Department of the Interior Bureaus." The USGS is now the only science bureau in the Department, and the leadership of the Department under Secretary Babbitt has made it clear that the scientific capabilities of the USGS should be brought to bear on the many difficult resource management decisions that the Department faces. Through this new cost-share program we have made a strategic choice to adjust our way of doing business to adapt to this new reality. This program will help us better respond to the need for water science in the Department, never losing sight of the fact that we are not only the hydrologists for DOI, but for the Nation as a whole. I see a significant increase in the recognition of the central role that we play in water quality. A letter sent to me by Bob Perciasepe, Assistant Administrator for Water, EPA, provides an excellent example. He wrote: ". . .we at EPA write the regulations to protect the nation's drinking water. Good sense and the Safe Drinking Water Act require that the regulations be based on sound science. USGS provides much of the monitoring data we need through the information gathered from your long-term nationwide data collection programs. USGS programs such as the National Stream Quality Accounting Network, the National Water Quality Assessment Program, and the Drinking Water Initiative are helping us in our task[s]." The actions that have led to this statement have taken more than a decade to develop. They include excellent program design and execution, as well as, proactive communication with decisionmakers at EPA. It is gratifying to me, and should be to you, to see this kind of recognition coming from others. I think that there is a general lesson that we can take from the EPA example. Accomplishing our mission well requires a combination of: 1) doing important work on relevant problems, 2) doing the work with great care and accuracy, 3) completing the work in a timely manner, and 4) actively communicating the results to those that need it. I have every confidence that all of you can, and will, continue to rise to the challenge and do important work, do it with excellence, and then get the results of our work "off the loading dock" and into the hands of people who can use it to make a better world. I wish you all a productive and satisfying year in 1998. *************************************************************** * Robert M. Hirsch rhirsch@usgs.gov * * 409 National Center 703-648-5215 * * U.S. Geological Survey fax 703-648-5002 * * Reston, VA 20192 * ***************************************************************