The Cumberland County-based water monitors of Pennsylvania Senior Environment Corps -- Capital Region were awarded the Watershed Protection Award by the Cumberland County Conservation District.

Bill Apgar received the award on behalf of the monitors. Also in attendance were Dianne Martin, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program of the Capital Region’s West Shore Area Coordinator, and Carol Oman, RSVP’s Executive Director.

As one of the original PaSECs founded in 1998 as a joint project of the Departments of Environmental Protection and Aging along with the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement, the volunteers continue to excel in working with the results of their “study design” to determine where their water monitoring effectors will produce the greatest results in protecting their watershed.

A study design is a monitoring program plan that guides volunteers in determining why they are monitoring, who they want to use their data, what monitoring protocols they will use and what quality assurance measures they will need to employ to produce data that is credible to their intended data users.

DEP’s Citizens’ Volunteer Monitoring Program provides technical assistance to PaSECs and all other volunteer monitoring groups on the study design process.

11/4/2005