Here are the SWG deadlines for completing the complete draft: draft documents due 4/7; discuss draft documents 4/14;
all chapters to Karen 4/19; compiled documents to work group 4/21; fatal flaw review of both documents 4/28.

 

The Stormwater Work Group has completed its discussions of the comments from stakeholders and peer reviewers on the Draft Stormwater Monitoring and Assessment Strategy for Puget Sound Volume 1: Scientific Framework. SWG members summarized the comments and prepared proposals for editing and modifying the document based on the comments. The proposals were presented to SWG members during meetings in January and February where the group discussed and voted on >50 specific proposals for changes to the Scientific Framework.  Detailed summaries of issues, proposed changes and decisions can be found on the page entitled: Tee up major issues.

 

 

 

There is much still missing from the draft document: in particular, a combined, broad status and trends program for the region.  The work group acknowledged the difficulty for the authors to complete this document, and the challenge they face in striking the correct balance between inclusivity and specificity.

• Ensure that we don’t lose the regional context, the group’s charge to create a program for broad assessment of stormwater problems and management practices.  Show how each component of the initial experimental design fits into the big picture. 
• We are providing an organizational structure as well as an initial starting point.  Perhaps an umbrella with components underneath.  Explain how we might ramp up, flesh out, add to this strategy in the future to tell a broader picture.
• Start from scientific foundation and what’s known from past or ongoing efforts.  Recommend acknowledging, mining, and/or emphasizing how we are informed by existing data, or providing an explicit placeholder for doing so.  
• Connect the stormwater status and trends strategy to Ecology’s S&T program for creeks, and define the regional stormwater S&T approach for other water bodies.  This is the broad-based regional strategy.
• Describe the nested nature of the strategic approach and design.  We will learn different things at different scales, and can use the information differently.  Site-specific hypotheses provide specific management drivers for permitting projects.  We need enough upstream changes to see downstream signals.
• Articulate how what we learn at one site will transfer to other locations.  Describe how the same efficacy study conducted at multiple sites will improve this power and tell a broader story.
• Many jurisdictions are faced with managing surface runoff from agricultural and forest lands.  How will the strategy address, or connect to other efforts to address these issues?
• Continue the subgroup’s efforts to identify priority efficacy hypotheses for each land use.
• Need to provide approach for local studies to tie into big picture, i.e. at minimum SOP’s and data management, other consistencies.
• Suggest provide less detail for testing each hypothesis and leave for implementation plan.
• Clarify the line between the strategy and the implementation plan.
• Describe how this effort connects to other efforts, send message to other parties that we want to work with/alongside them in monitoring stormwater in Puget Sound.  How is this a new way of doing business that will help recover Puget Sound?  How will it succeed?
• Consider moving some sections to appendices and slimming down the document.

Monitoring and Assessment Strategy Document, Interim Drafts and Related Documents

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