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Patricia Welch, Emergency Response
Coordinator for the Illinois Department of
Public Health, has been selected to receive
the Edith Stevens Groundwater Educator
Award for 2003. Ms. Welch was presented
this award on November 13, 2003, at the
Groundwater Foundation's Annual
Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ms.
Welch chaired the education subcommittee
on the Central Regional Groundwater
Protection Committee from 1991 to 2003.
One of Illinois EPA’s highest priorities is to make environmental information available
electronically to a variety of stakeholders. Since the 911 tragedies and concern about
securing information regarding the location of public water supply wells and intakes, the
Illinois EPA and the USGS developed a secure website. The secure website is accessible
to state, local and federal government staff. In addition, the site is accessible to
consultants that have received security clearance through Illinois EPA's Freedom of
Information Act process. This site includes detailed source water assessment fact sheets
and an interactive Internet Geographic Information System (GIS). The Illinois EPA’s
SWP GIS system has won praise by being nominated for Urban and Regional
Information Systems Association, Exemplary Systems in Government Award. Illinois
EPA has also developed an additional website for other public stakeholders that contains
a summary of the source water assessments without the security sensitive locational
information. Summaries have also been provided to community water supply officials to
include in their drinking water Consumer Confidence Reports distributed to the public.
The Groundwater Foundation continues to
nationally recognize the Illinois EPA as a
groundwater protection leader. This continued
national recognition is based in the implementation
of results oriented services for protecting
groundwater. Illinois’ Groundwater Affiliate team
is led by Illinois EPA, and promotes the
Groundwater Guardian Program within the four
priority Groundwater Protection Planning Regions
in the state. In addition, our team promotes this
program, as necessary, with other communities throughout the state, as well as with
general statewide committees and organizations (e.g., USGS, DNR, Illinois Rural Water
Association (IRWA), U.S.EPA-Region V, others). Moreover, the Groundwater
Foundation has honored Illinois citizens for the past three years with national award
recognition, as follows:
• Pat Welch 2003 Edith Stevens Groundwater
Educator;
• Bob Williams 2002 Edith Stevens
Groundwater Educator; and
• Bill Compton 2001 Vern Haversack Award.
This is a tribute to the types of persons that we are
blessed to work with in Illinois. The Illinois EPA
continues to work with 567 CWS implementing
SWP programs that are implementing protection
measures under the conditions of a Special
Exception Permit (SEP) issued by Illinois EPA.
The Illinois EPA has developed an interim
database system to report new source water
protection measures and progress to the U.S. EPA
electronically.
The Illinois EPA has developed a program to
reduce the cost and burden of required
monitoring for supplies that are implementing
SWP programs. This Illinois EPA program not
only has the economic benefit of protecting
source water, and thereby avoiding the
expense of remediation, liability costs or
seeking alternative water sources, but it also
directly saves Illinois communities the
following:
• $363,144 per year and $3,268,300 over a
nine-year period in analytical costs for
synthetic organic chemical; and
• $21,150 a year and $126,900 over a 6-year
period for volatile organic compound
sampling and analysis costs.
