A community GIS program was initiated for northeastern Pennsylvania in 1998 when President Clinton designated the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna (US-L) Watershed as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers (from over 120 national applicants). As part of this program, we are employing a GIS watershed approach to design and evaluate aspects of a community environmental monitoring project, known regionally as RiverNet and funded by EPA EMPACT. The US-L watershed (2000 sq. mi. area) is impacted by abandoned mine lands (AML), acid mine drainage (AMD), and combined sewer overflows --- which total over $2.5 billion in cleanup and reclamation costs. Our GIS watershed analysis allowed us to rank and prioritize 12 impacted watersheds from which we selected a subset of key sites for “near-real-time” environmental monitors to measure water quality trends and patterns. In a paired watershed analysis (AML-AMD vs. reference), conductivity and total dissolved solids were statistically higher and redox potential, pH, and dissolved oxygen were significantly lower in the impacted watershed. In addition, several temporal trends were evident. For example, turbidity correlated with phosphate and total suspended solids for either AMD sites or urban sites, indicating that these variables are responding to hydrologic and ecological watershed conditions where runoff significantly increases turbidity with high suspended loads and high phosphates. The RiverNet project also includes community outreach and environmental education to the public with hands-on demonstrations in the field and educational materials (GIS bulletins and posters) used each year for Earth Day and an annual, regional river festival. Data are made available to the public via a RiverNet Web portal and Web-based GIS.
Dr. Bruns received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University and Idaho State University, respectively. He was an environmental scientist for seven years with EG&G Idaho, Inc., a prime contractor at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. His work at the national laboratory involved research in environmental monitoring and assessment and he served as a network facilitator for seven national labs regarding integration of environmental databases. Since 1991, he has been a Professor in the GeoEnvironmental Sciences and Engineering Department at Wilkes University. Dr. Bruns has taught various graduate and undergraduate courses (at several academic institutions): Aquatic Ecology, Water Pollution Ecology, Water and Wastewater Technology, Air Quality, Hydrology, Environmental Toxicology, Environmental Science, Solid and Hazardous Waste Management, Instrumentation, Environmental Ecology, Environmental Sampling and Analysis, Legal Aspects of Pollution Control, and Introduction to GIS. He has conducted environmental research in Chile and China at Biosphere Reserves, in the Arctic Circle of Alaska, the Wind River Mountains of WY, and the Sawtooth Mountains of ID. In 1999, he helped to start the PA GIS Consortium where he heads up GIS watershed research projects on the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna American Heritage River (one of 14 national designations); his watershed research applications include the integrated use of the global positioning system, geographic information systems, digital photogrammetry, and satellite image processing, along with real-time water quality instrumentation. Dr. Bruns has written over 40 technical publications, has been a member of a National Academy of Sciences subcommittee on data integration, is on the editorial board of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, and has served on review panels for NSF, EPA, and DOE. At present, he is Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Wilkes University.
Robert Krehely has been employed at Wyoming Valley Sanitary (WVSA) since 1997 and presently serves as Director of Administration & Planning. His major responsibilities include Administrative Oversight, Safety, Grant Reporting, Combined Sewer Overflow Control/Stormwater Management, and Community Relations. While at WVSA he has served on various community and professional boards and organizations. He served on the American Heritage River Steering Committee of the Upper Susquehanna/Lackawanna Watershed. The group successfully earned one of fourteen national designations as an American Heritage River. He also acted as Pennsylvania’s Municipal Representative on the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Use Attainability Analysis Work Group. Through his efforts, WVSA received Pennsylvania’s Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence for promoting community education and outreach. He is a National Stormwater Center Certified Inspector and a Committee Member on Pennsylvania Environmental Council’s Wyoming Valley Watershed Coalition. He received his B.S. from the University of Scranton and M.B.A. from Wilkes University.
Mr. Oram is the Manager for the Center for Environmental Quality and its Water Quality and Pathogenic Disease Laboratory at Wilkes University. In addition to a strong background and expertise in laboratory analysis and field sampling, Mr. Oram has been involved in the design and implementation of a number of surface water and groundwater monitoring programs. In addition, Mr. Oram is a licensed professional geologist and licensed sewage enforcement officer for the state of Pennsylvania. He has completed private consulting projects related to water supply development, land-based wastewater disposal, non-point pollution impact, and has provided expert witness testimony in legal proceedings in local courts and before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, PADEP, and the EPA.
Mr. Sweet began serving Local Government in 1976. He became an advocate for GIS in local government in 1982. He has received many awards from agencies, cabinet members, governors and the white house for his application of information technologies that promote cost effectiveness in local government. In 1994 he pioneered the “locally independent yet regionally coordinated implementation” of GIS in a 6,500 square mile target area in Pennsylvania. Utilizing his unique approach to coordination, leveraged partnerships and cost sharing, 50, 100, and 200 scale state of the art GIS deployments were made possible at local government levels. This effort resulted in savings of 68% while increasing the scale from 400, and achieving a leveraging ratio of over 10:1. In 1999 he was invited to testify on spatial technologies in local government before the U.S. House Committee for Government reform. In 2000/2001 he again demonstrated the value of coordinated approaches utilizing Aerial Photography and photogrammetric methodologies to support data acquisition activities in another 3500 square miles in contiguous counties in Pennsylvania. Mr. Sweet provides leveraged partnership based solutions that continue to refine the locally independent regionally coordinated deployment of GIS including coordination, training and educational activities within the public, private and academic sectors. Mr. Sweet created Sweet Solutions in 1999. Sweet Solutions is a partnership based consulting business to pursue and perfect the locally independent deployment of Geographic Information Systems in regionally coordination fashion. These efforts have included providing activities with Environmental Systems Research Institute Incorporated, Aerial Data Reduction Associates Inc, BAE Systems, U.S. Filter/Chester Environmental Engineers, T3 Global Strategies, Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski, DigitalGlobe and various offices of the Army Corps of Engineers. In the springs of 2000 and 2001 these efforts led to utilizing Aerial Photography and photogrammetric methodologies to support data acquisition activities in 21 contiguous counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In particular Mr. Sweet provides services to the Pennsylvania Geographic Information Systems Consortium (PaGIS) serving as their Chief Operations Officer.