President’s Letter

by Tony Runkel, MGWA President

Hello everyone! I am honored, excited, and a bit nervous about stepping into the role of MGWA president. Excited and honored because it is such a great organization. Nervous because the previous presidents have done such a great job, and I don’t want to mess that up! Our immediate past president, Julia Steenberg, pulled off an excellent fall conference under trying circumstances, and as one MGWA member commented afterward, “Tony has some big shoes to fill” for the Spring 2021 conference. I’ll get to the Spring conference a bit later in this message.

First I thought it’d be a good idea introduce myself. MGWA membership is large and even after 20+ years in the groundwater business I don’t know every member. I am a Minnesota native, having left the state only for a few years of college. Originally hired at the Minnesota Geological Survey (MGS) in 1989 as a bedrock mapper and sedimentologist, with virtually no hydrogeologic background, there was no thought of ultimately becoming immersed (pun intended) in groundwater. But it wasn’t long before it became evident that what we do at MGS plays a key role in understanding the groundwater system across the state. Moreover, the passion and dedication of the many people outside of MGS involved in managing Minnesota’s groundwater was impressive. As a result, the past 20 years of my 30 year career have been largely devoted to working with others at MGS to improve our characterization of the “containers” in the aquifer systems, so that you more purely “water” folks can more efficiently do your jobs. It can be very frustrating at times, as progress always seems too slow, but also very satisfying in knowing that the advancements we’ve made have helped address pressing societal issues.

One of the biggest changes at MGS over the past 30 years is the turnover of staff in recent times. (Trust me, I am going somewhere relevant to MGWA with this). In just the past 5 years or so we have lost to retirement a slew of excellent geologists and administrative staff. Some with over 40 years of tenure! Losing these people and their irreplaceable institutional knowledge adds a bit of stress as we try to maintain our productivity, but we have been delighted to discover that our new staff are rapidly developing to become equally as capable as those who retired. It seems as if there is similarly rapid turnover outside of MGS in both the public and private groundwater sector. What does this mean for MGWA? It means we need to ensure that those just now starting their careers are aware of our great organization. Long time members, please let your younger colleagues know about MGWA and encourage them to join. The membership fee is modest, and they will become part of an organization that provides scholarships for students through the Foundation, outreach through the Education and White Paper Committees, and, of course, organizes the well-attended fall and spring conferences each year.

What about the 2021 MGWA Spring Conference? If you have not already heard, it will be held virtually on April 27, and registration is now open. Our theme is “Groundwater Research: What’s New and Useful?” The content will cover a number of widely ranging subdisciplines in the field of groundwater science. Maybe reflecting in part the current president’s longstanding inability to adequately focus on any one thing! The upside is that we hope this diverse suite of topics will include something of interest for every member. They include emerging methods, new ideas about old problems, and improved ways to monitor, manage, and remediate. All with clear applied value. We are also taking advantage of “virtual circumstances” by including several speakers from outside of Minnesota who are grappling with many of the same groundwater issues we have here in our state.

As for the Fall 2021 conference, we are still giving that some thought, but leaning towards heading to the “Driftless Area” of Minnesota and adjacent states to provide an update on ongoing efforts to protect the highly sensitive groundwater of that region. Regardless of the chosen topic, let’s all cross our fingers that our fall meeting will not be virtual so that we can see one another in reality once again!

This photo appeared in an earlier MGWA newsletter, and perhaps warrants a bit of explanation. A number of MGS scientists have been part of a multiorganizational effort, initiated years ago by the MPCA, to better understand nitrate transport in southeastern Minnesota. Here we were sampling shallow piezometers in a cold-water trout stream. Previous surface water sampling for nitrate in streams such as this yielded nitrate concentrations not entirely consistent with what would be expected based on local land use practices. Piezometer samples are telling us that baseflow to these streams can include a significant component of upwelling, decades old, largely unimpacted groundwater. This makes it challenging to tie current land use practices to the chemistry of surface water. A great example of the important, but often underappreciated phenomenon of groundwater-surface water interaction.

---

---

MGWA is committed to developing a just, equitable, and inclusive groundwater community. Click on the button below to read MGWA’s full diversity statement.