Getting Stewardship Started in Massachusetts Brian R. Brodeur PhD GIS Program Director Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection

Background Geographer by training Got into GIS because it was the logical place to do hydrologic and water quality modeling on a watershed scale Joined the DEP in the Watershed Management Program, Became a GIS Programmer, and been the Program Director for the last 12 years

MassDEP Agency of 825 people – Down from years ago The GIS Program has 9 people – Down from 16 9 years ago

Massachusetts 45 th Largest State in the Union 14 th In Population 3 rd In Population Density That puts serious pressure on our water resources!!

Peter Raabe, American Rivers, Kerry Mackin, Ipswich River Watershed Association

Mass DEP Responsible for Public Water Supply Water Withdrawals and Transfers Water Quality Standards Integrated List of Waters 303d 305b Wetlands Protection – Rivers Protection Act NPDES Enforcement Discharges to Groundwater

On the one hand.. NHD offers a structure to unify all of our regulated, assessed and or protected waters regardless of program And manage characteristics as events A network for routing / modeling water. What utopic vision

On the other hand.. We have to be able to edit NHD and improve its scale in order for it to work for our Programs. There are conflicts between NHD and WBD that will need to be resolved IF WBD is going to represent our protected watersheds. We will need new working relationships with many programs now working independently.

Why become Stewards of NHD? MassDEP is the state agency with the greatest vested interest in hydrography. We are keeping up several versions of Hydro anyway. Without the ability to fix issues, NHD will not be used by our water programs. We want our standards, and protections on the national map.

Issues Estuaries Scale Staff / Resource Scarcity