Water Resources Discipline
ITAC Activities
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Water Resources Discipline |
From: |
Stephen F Blanchard 06/27/2003 01:56 PM |
To: |
Charles F Merk/WRD/USGS/DOI@USGS |
cc: | Kathleen M Flynn/WRD/USGS/DOI@USGS |
Subject: |
ITAC Meeting Minutes, PA District, June 10-12, 2003 |
Charlie/Sandy:
I just read through the ITAC minutes. Looks like a productive meeting.
I have a couple corrections/changes to suggest.
Sandy,
You picked a tough one to answer.
HASS has been abolished. The draft policy on hydro software support is out to the field for districts to comment. It essentially says that it is up to the developer to support the hydro software or not.
HSPF was developed by the EPA and the USGS. The lead USGS person, Alan Lumb is retired, so there is currently no ownership for HSPF from HQ. EPA still supports HSPF through some contracts. Right now there are no plans to support HSPF.
In general, the OSW model support situation is not very good right now. We use to have two modelers on staff (Harvey Jobson and Janice Fulford), both are now not in OSW and are not supporting models anymore. So with HASS abolished and OSW with no modelers on staff, we can't provide much of any support. We had as a very high priority for this year, the need for a modeler on staff but with the loss of Wotsc, we decided we couldn't afford it this year.
Kate Flynn, who was part of HASS, is now on OSW staff. Kate will be putting out a survey in the near future to the field listing all the SW related software that is provided for use through the old HASS web page. The survey is to determine which software tools are the most important so that we can target out limited support to those software tools. It is my hope that in the next year of so, we can hire a modeler to be on OSW staff to support districts in the use of SW models.
I need to clarify the part of my response that is highlighted "Right now there are no plans to support HSPF." I was mainly focusing on the future and our lack of resources to be able to fill the 2 modeler vacancies we have. We do, in fact, provide support for HSPF.
OSW provides support for HSPF through Kate Flynn. She is very knowledgeable of HSPF and is available for advice and assistance and teaches a watershed modeling workshop at the NTC that includes HSPF. In addition, support is available to Districts through the contract with Aqua Terra. Districts will have to pay for this support. This year (FY03), 5 Districts will have used the Aqua Terra contract for this purpose. A little over 3 years remains on the contract.
At the town meeting, the issue was raised regarding the documentation for HSPF. Kate Flynn offers the following comment.
"With respect to the statement that the documentation is incomplete, I have to disagree. With a user manual consisting of nearly 800 pages of printed documentation, I think the model is much better documented than most. In addition to the paper copy, the entire manual is also available as a Windows Help document with hot links all over the place, making it very easy to bounce around the manual looking for information on specific items."It may be useful to add this info to the minutes to make my response correct.
Thanks
Steve
From: |
Stephen F Blanchard 06/16/2003 06:30 AM |
To: |
Sandy K Williamson/WRD/USGS/DOI@USGS |
cc: |
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Subject: |
Re: ITAC town meeting question about HSPF |
Sandy,
You picked a tough one to answer.
HASS has been abolished. The draft policy on hydro software support is out to the field for districts to comment. It essentially says that it is up to the developer to support the hydro software or not.
HSPF was developed by the EPA and the USGS. The lead USGS person, Alan Lumb is retired, so there is currently no ownership for HSPF from HQ. EPA still supports HSPF through some contracts. Right now there are no plans to support HSPF.
In general, the OSW model support situation is not very good right now. We use to have two modelers on staff (Harvey Jobson and Janice Fulford), both are now not in OSW and are not supporting models anymore. So with HASS abolished and OSW with no modelers on staff, we can't provide much of any support. We had as a very high priority for this year, the need for a modeler on staff but with the loss of Wotsc, we decided we couldn't afford it this year.
Kate Flynn, who was part of HASS, is now on OSW staff. Kate will be putting out a survey in the near future to the field listing all the SW related software that is provided for use through the old HASS web page. The survey is to determine which software tools are the most important so that we can target out limited support to those software tools.
It is my hope that in the next year of so, we can hire a modeler to be on OSW staff to support districts in the use of SW models.
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