Hello everyone! 

First, let me introduce myself.  I am Becky Zeckoski, a research associate in Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech.  I am a member of the Center for TMDL and Watershed Studies here.  I will be leading the development of the bacteria TMDL for Indian Creek.

The first technical advisory committee (TAC) meeting for Indian Creek will be held on February 22nd at 3 pm at the Cedar Bluff Town Hall (115 Central Ave, Cedar Bluff, Virginia). At the TAC meeting we will be discussing the methodology for data collection and analysis in detail.  For example, I will discuss how we go about estimating animal numbers for the TMDL.  Even if you don’t consider yourself a ‘technical’ person, if you have good knowledge of human and/or animal populations and activities in the watershed, please plan to attend this meeting to help us develop better estimates for the watershed!  We also look to the TAC to give us good people to contact to get more information on various topics.  So if you know about people who know a lot about the watershed, we will appreciate it if you can share their names. 

The first public meeting will be held on the same day (Feb. 22nd) at 7 pm, also at the Cedar Bluff Town Hall. The public meeting is more of an information-sharing event.  We’ll present whatever estimates we have ready at the time and a very broad overview of our methodology for the TMDL (much less detailed than the TAC meeting).  We welcome feedback on anything and everything related to the TMDL at the public meeting.

Both of these meetings are open to anyone who is interested in attending.  As the meetings draw closer and I have more information available, I’ll be posting the handouts for the meetings up here on the forum, so check back closer to the 22nd!

-Becky

Hi again!

At long last we have the handouts ready that will be covered at the meeting on the 22nd.  I’ve attached them to this post.  Feel free to take a look ahead of time .  We will have copies of these materials to hand out at the meetings.  We’ll discuss IDI_FirstTACMeeting.pdf at the TAC meeting at 3, and IDIFirstPublicMeeting.pdf at the public meeting at 7.

Hope to see you there!

-Becky Zeckoski

Thanks to everyone who came out to one or both of the meetings yesterday!  We had two great meetings yesterday, I received lots of excellent information from the attendees.

I’ve attached the revised meeting presentation that was given last night to this post.  This presentation is much the same as the one I posted earlier, but has information from the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) added.

I hope to have a summary of the TAC comments available to post later today or early next week, so check back soon for those!

I’ve summarized the notes I took at the TAC & Public Meetings.  I left out some of the very person-specific information I received, as I figured the individuals involved would rather not have their information broadcast all over the internet!  Let me know if you have any comments/additions/modifications.