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The May 2010 President’s Message Dear WEAT Members, It is incredible how quickly time flies. Here we are again, at the end of another WEAT Season, and a great one it was indeed! We had the fortune of having wonderful speakers, great topics, and a record setting amount of sponsors. We could not have done all of this without your support. We started out with Mr. Jace Houston with the San Jacinto River Authority who talked to us about groundwater regulation and the surface water conversion in September. In November Mr. Ravi Kaleyatodi with the City of Houston gave an overview on the City of Houston’s Wastewater System. We then kicked off 2010 with Ms. SuEllen Staggs with the City of Sugar Land who presented the topic "Using Risk Based Criteria for Rehabilitation Decisions". Last month we earned a credit hour of ethics with Mr. Clint Walker of Malcolm Pirnie. Thanks to Mr. Walker not only did we earn that professional development hour, but we refreshed our memory on the Texas Board of Professional Engineers policy and regulations. We appreciate you taking the time to come speak at the luncheon. Typically, the May meeting is carried out as a social event without a speaker. This month, we are excited to announce that Ms. Rachel Powers with the Houston-Galveston Area Council will be presenting. Ms. Powers will be talking to us about something “BIG” that HGAC is currently working on; A Bacteria Implementation Group (BIG) whose purpose is to reduce bacterial pollution in our water. The project area impacted by BIG will require participation of over 60 cities, 10 counties, 600 MUDs, 650 WWTP, and much more. This is an interesting topic which we are happy to be able to present to our members. Please join us for this luncheon on Wednesday May 19, 2010 at HESS. To RSVP please contact any of the officers or via website www.weat.org/southeast. Officer elections for the WEAT 2010-2011 season will be carried out during the May meeting. The current officers will move up a position and we will accept nominations for open positions and vote on these. Don’t forget the ongoing FROG (Fats, Roots, Oils and Grease) Workshop in Houston. More information is included in this newsletter. On other exciting news, scholarships are back! Thanks to the significant amount of sponsors this year we were able to reinstate the award of two scholarships to a student from the University of Houston and Rice University. We are currently finalizing the selections and will share the news on the next newsletter. Thanks to all of our sponsors throughout the season. We hope to count on your support again in the future. As always, if you are interested in sponsoring a meeting, placing an ad in our newsletters, for any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or the officers. We look forward to seeing all of you again next season. Enjoy the summer! Evelyn Zapata |