Minutes of the Meeting of the Operating Guidelines Committee October 26, 2000

1. Meeting convened at 1:40 PM at the Corps of Engineers office.

In attendance: Sam Drake - USFWS Bill Grabill - USFWS Hope Moorer - GPA Chris Schuberth - AASU Bill Bailey - Corps Bill Farmer - Tybee Island Larry Keegan - Lockwood Greene (GPA) Morgan Rees - GPA Teri Leffek - Stevens Shipping

2. Mr. Rees announced his resignation as chair of the committee at the end of the meeting and nominated Ms. Leffek to be the new chair. There being no objection from the members present and the committee confirming that Ms. Leffek is willing to accept the assignment, the committee accepted Ms. Leffek as the new chair effective at the end of the meeting.

3. Following discussion of the change in chairmanship, the committee began discussion of updating the Matrix. Other members arrived early in this discussion.

Patty McIntosh

Ben Brewton

Results of discussion of the Matrix:

  1. The Aquifer Committee will be added to the Matrix.
  2. Mr. Brewton and Mr. Farmer will draft language to be placed on the Matrix to indicate its function and purpose.
  3. Mr. Keegan will check to see if the Matrix is on the web site. If it is not posted, he will put the Matrix on the web site. After revisions of the Matrix to reflect the actions agreed to in the meeting, the revised Matrix will be posted.
  4. Prof. Schuberth will provide information on which issues in the Matrix are of interest to the Aquifer Committee.
  5. The committee will recommend that the SEG establish a mitigation committee to begin conceptual level consideration of various mitigation opportunities.
  6. Discussion about cross-referencing the studies on the Matrix with a list of actual studies underway. Following provision of the revised Matrix and posting, the document will again be revised to include a column for linking the issues on the Matrix to task statements being used in the study to respond to the issues. This will be posted on the HD website for OGC member review prior to making it available to everyone by providing a URL to link directly to the draft page.
  7. The hurricane surge issue will also be included in both Appendix B of the Operating Guidelines and the Matrix.

Trip Tollison arrived.

4. Discussion of peer review. Members had been previously provided a copy of the EPA Peer Review Handbook. Discussion centered on peer review concepts in the handbook and how they relate to the procedure employed by federal project studies. It was thought that most issues under consideration have a built-in peer review mechanism by virtue of the interagency coordination and public involvement required in developing a federal project and by the recommendations of the SEG. Since it was not certain that all issues would have such a complete review mechanism, the consensus was reached that additional peer review could be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The GPA team will review the study scopes and determine which are reporting data only and which are drawing conclusions. Further, they will look to see what degree of peer review exists in each. A summary report of the results will be provided to the committee.

5. Final report or work product of the SEG. One member raised an objection to discussing this subject because of an understanding that at the last SEG meeting, the SEG specifically chose not to refer the subject to the committee. Others wanted to discuss the subject. Much discussion ensued about whether the Operating Guidelines Committee should be considering this question. The following draft recommendation to the SEG was developed:

  1. Operating Guidelines calls for a consensus report.
  2. The OGC discussed the need for an outline of a final report or work product.

The OGC intends to discuss this at our next meeting unless the SEG directs otherwise. The OGC will make a recommendation in due course.

This is not recommended to the SEG at this time in accordance with the provisions of the Operating Guidelines as a result of one member not being able to live with the recommendation.

The meeting was turned over to the new chair, Ms. Leffek. It was agreed not to schedule any further meetings until the full SEG is informed of the discussion in item 5 above.

Respectfully submitted, Morgan Rees Chair Emeritus