In this Issue:
- School kids to Breathe Easier
- Oakley's Wastewater Technology
- Solid & Hazardous Waste Board
- Drinking Water Database Unveiled
- Calendar of Events
Newsletter Links:
Sponsored by the
Utah Department of
Environmental Quality
In this Issue:
Newsletter Links:
Sponsored by the
Utah Department of
Environmental Quality
Team Works to Revamp Old DMAC System
After a two and half year effort, a team of technology experts, engineers, and scientists recently completed a project to revamp the Division of the Drinking Water’s database – a monumental task that required moving 1.5 million rows of data from the old database to the new one.
The new program, called the State Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS), which contains information to help regulate public water systems, was officially unveiled on June 30, 2006.
Project Manager Bob Shipman, IT manager assigned to the Department of Environmental Quality, worked with a team consisting of: Ken Bousfield, Brett Shakespear, and Mark Jensen in the Division of Drinking Water; Tad Wimmer and Brent Pathakis in the Information Technology Office.
“We are pleased the work is completed,” said Kevin Brown, director of the Division of Drinking Water. “This new system will prove to be more efficient in our day-to-day operations. The team, however, really deserves the kudos for their hard work.”
Tackling the project wasn’t easy but it had to be done. The 26-year-old DMAC system had become very difficult to program because of old software technology and recently adopted federal regulations.
“We knew we had a good chance of success,” said IT Director Ryan Walker. “We concluded that if 30 other states were successfully using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SDWIS program, it was a proven system to use.”
Because of its complexity, the team was assigned a project manager. Shipman, a 25-year veteran of DEQ, was just the person. “I’d say it was one of the five biggest challenges I have had to deal with in my career.”
For one thing, it wasn’t a simple task of just switching out an old database with a new one. The system had to be customized to fit Utah’s unique Division of Drinking Water (DDW) business practices. “It added a huge amount of complexity and anxiety,” explained Shipman. “There is always the tendency to make a new application look like the old one.”
SDWIS contains information about public water systems and their violations of EPA’s drinking water regulations, as reported to EPA by the states. These regulations establish maximum contaminant levels, treatment techniques, and monitoring and reporting requirements to ensure that water systems provide safe water to their customers.
Shipman says it was teamwork that made for the successful transition.
“I did a lot of the project management,” he said. “There’s a lot of success that isn’t necessarily attributable to me. The team members are the ones who did the ‘real’ work.”