Director’s Message

 

 

This Annual Report bridges the millennium and follows SCCWRP’s 30th anniversary celebration.  Not bad for an organization that was started as an experiment with a three year life span! 

 

            As we celebrate thirty years, it is important to recognize the vision of those individuals who started the organization and have contributed to its growth over time.  One of the featured articles in this year’s annual report is an attempt to capture that history.  Now is the time to do so, as the people who helped found the organization are nearing (or accomplishing) retirement and it is only through the experiences of those individuals that we can accurately record our history.  The article is authored by three scientists who have been involved with the organization almost since its inception.  The authors were given editorial freedom to express their views about the organization. 

 

 

·        The first person to represent two organizations on the SCCWRP Commission (Dr. Robert Ghirelli who was a former chair of the Commission in his role as Executive Officer for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and is now a Commissioner in his role as Director of Technical Services at the Orange County Sanitation District).

 

·        The first former employee to return as a Commissioner (Mike Moore, who is the Alternate Commissioner from the Orange County Sanitation District). 

 

The first two employees to leave SCCWRP, obtain advanced degrees, gain additional work experience, and return to SCCWRP as department heads (Jim Allen and Ken Schiff). 

 

            The challenge now is to live up to the legacy created in the first 30 years.  As I read through the history and talk with the organization’s founders, it is clear that their vision was an organization that can provide a proper, independent scientific foundation to support important management decisions.  SCCWRP has met this challenge by evolving from an organization that not only conducts high quality, unbiased science, but also serves as a center for dialog among disparate parties about the ways that scientific advances should affect management actions.  

 

            Achieving this goal in the future means becoming even more inclusive, as the present SCCWRP member organizations encompass only a fraction of the community that must participate in such discussions.  We are trying to address this need in a number of ways.  Our regional monitoring surveys have allowed us to expand our scientific discussions to include universities, county Health Departments, industrial dischargers and non-profit environmental organizations (NEOs).   Additionally, we have increased our collaboration with NEOs on a number of projects and the result is two articles in this annual report which are jointly authored with NEOs; we are presently working on an article with a third NEO for our next annual report.  We recently signed a memorandum of agreement with southern California’s largest stormwater management agencies to develop a cooperative research agenda for stormwater issues, which we hope will lead to more dialog fueled by our research results.  It is my hope that this kind of continued growth will ensure that we uphold the founder’s original vision of improving the quality of southern California’s coastal waters through focus on the proper scientific issues.  

 

 

 

 

Stephen B. Weisberg

Executive Director

 

 

Editor’s Note:  It is with sadness that we note the passing of Willard Bascom, Executive Director of SCCWRP from 1973-1984.   I would like to dedicate this annual report to Willard and the memory of all that he contributed to this organization.