17th GRA Annual Meeting and Conference

"The Nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which
it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

The Groundwater Resources Association of California (GRA) invites you to join us for our 17th Annual Conference and Meeting "GROUNDWATER: Challenges to Meeting Our Future Needs."

GRA has partnered with stakeholders from all segments of the profession and industry to develop an annual conference that covers technical, regulatory, legal, and policy issues affecting groundwater and facilitates networking and the exchange of the latest research and information. Conference speakers will be featured in a plenary assembly and also in concurrent sessions that include the following issues and topics:

Groundwater Challenges: water quantity and quality issues, national groundwater availability, emerging contaminants, water issues in the west, sustainable groundwater management strategies, climate change
Surface Water/Groundwater Interactions: conjunctive management, ecosystem considerations, groundwater banking and transfers, groundwater quality influenced by natural and artificial recharge, surface water/groundwater modeling
Groundwater Storage: challenges/benefits and reducing risks/uncertainties, enhancing water supply availability
Watershed Water Quality Management: salt balance methods, salinity management, water and agricultural-chemical transport
Delta Issues: shift in pressure to groundwater basins; ecologic issues; legislation
Collegiate Groundwater Colloquium: GRA seeks to increase participation by university and college faculty and students in its programming. This new Colloquium will provide an opportunity for students to showcase their research and its application to groundwater challenges in California or elsewhere in the world. Please e-mail Jean Moran, GRA Education Committee Chair, at moran10@llnl.gov for more information.
Recycled Water for Recharge: evolution of recycled water regulations, monitoring wastewater constituents through Soil Aquifer Treatment and Direct Injection (e.g., pharmaceuticals, PCPs, TOC, BDOC, other indicators and surrogates) assessing potential risk to receptors, etc.
Coastal Groundwater Supply and Quality Issues: seawater intrusion; coastal groundwater discharge; brine water discharge estuarine environments; assessing supplies and optimizing groundwater management approaches in coastal environments
Groundwater Protection and Remediation Success Stories: examples of groundwater cleanup success stories, wellhead treatment, desalination, contaminant containment and removal technologies
Demonstrating Groundwater Supply Sufficiency and/or Reliability: deciphering SB 610/221/UWMPs/IRWMPs
Emerging Technologies on the Horizon

Luncheon Keynote: On September 25, Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy at the University of Arizona and author of the book “Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters” (Island Press, 2002), will provide a compelling talk titled “Tales of Bottled Water and French Fries: The Environmental Consequences of Groundwater Pumping.” You’ll hear a striking collection of stories that bring home the actual and potential consequences of our growing national thirst.

Field Trip: An optional field trip on September 24 includes a tour of the world's largest indirect potable reuse facility, Orange County Water District's new Groundwater Replenishment System, as well as OCWD’s artificial recharge facilities in Anaheim.

Short Course: The one-day course, Introduction to Practical Statistics, is being offered on September 24 and instructed by Dennis Helsel, Phd. Dr. Helsel is the lead author of the popular textbook "Statistical Methods in Water Resources" (USGS, 2002) and of "Nondetects And Data Analysis" (Wiley, 2005) as well as many technical articles.

The short course will emphasize basic principles of data analysis, including when to transform data and why, how to handle outliers, what hypothesis tests are good for, and how to build a good regression equation. Advantages of newer nonparametric and permutation tests for scientific applications will be highlighted. Common pitfalls of traditional methods will be discussed. Attending this course will clear up misconceptions, point to further resources, and get you heading in the right direction.

Guidelines for submitting an abstract for a Paper or Poster Presentation are as follows:

Word 9.0 documents are preferred.
Please identify if you are submitting an abstract for a paper or poster presentation.
Abstracts must be one page in length or less, and should be titled and include all contributing authors' names and affiliations.
Please identify the name of the person who will be presenting the paper or poster, and add biographical sketches of the authors as a second page. The biosketches should be 50 words or less in paragraph form, and full mailing and e-mail addresses should be included in addition to other contact information (phone and fax numbers).
Authors are required to indicate the topic for which the abstract is being submitted.
Margins should be 1-inch top, bottom, and right side and 1¼-inch left margin. The text should be single-spaced, 10-point size, Arial font, with no pagination, footers and headers. Paragraphs should be justified.
Major headings should be 12-point bold; minor headings should be 10-point italicized but not bolded. There should be one blank line above and below all headings, except above major headings which should have two blank lines.
Graphics should not be used in abstracts.

Call for Abstracts Deadline May 1, 2008: Abstracts are invited for oral or poster presentations relevant to the session topics highlighted above. By virtue of submitting an abstract, the submitter(s) grants GRA the right to publish any accepted abstract or the right to decline any abstract. You can submit your abstract by e-mail to Mary Megarry (mmegarry@nossaman.com; 916-446-3626) no later than May 1, 2008. A team of volunteers made up of GRA members will review abstracts and make the final selections.

Cooperating Organizations: Association of California Water Agencies, Association of Ground Water Agencies, California Department of Water Resources, California Groundwater Association, International Association of Hydrogeologists, National Ground Water Association, Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas, Water Education Foundation, United States Geological Survey

Exhibitors: Carus Corporation | Gregg Drilling & Testing, Inc. | RSI Drilling | Solinst Canada Ltd.

Sponsors and Exhibitors: GRA is pleased to invite participants to sponsor Conference functions or to exhibit at the Conference, including during the President's Reception. Please contact Mary Megarry at mmegarry@nossaman.com or 916-446-3626 for more information; for Sponsorship & Exhibitor Opportunities see http://www.grac.org/se.doc

Please reserve the Conference dates and join us to hear the latest scientific, management, legal, and policy advances for sustaining our groundwater resources. For more information, contact Kathy Snelson at (916) 446-3626 or executive_director@grac.org.