The Delaware Center for the Inland Bays (CIB) has appointed Andrew Homsey, associate policy scientist in the School of Public Policy & Administrations Institute for Public Administration (IPA), to a two-year term as a member of its Science and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC). 

STAC is responsible for providing objective scientific and technical advice and guidance to CIBs Board of Directors and other cooperating agencies that have interests in Delawares Inland Bays and their watersheds with regard to developing public understanding, interest, and participation in the implementation of CIBs Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (downloadable PDF).

Homsey manages the geographic information systems (GIS) laboratory based in IPA's Water Resources Agency. Homseys has trained over 150 UD undergraduate and graduate students in this GIS lab, which was established by ESRI during the 1970s as the first automated watershed mapping and data-management system in the United States.

Based in Rehoboth Beach, the CIB was established in 1994 by an act of the Delaware General Assembly to protect and enhance Sussex Countys coastal bays, which are the center of a $1 billion tourism economy.  In 1988 Congress designated the Inlands Bays as an estuary of national significance, as one of just 28 National Estuary Programs in the U.S. authorized by the EPA under the Federal Clean Water Act.

Kauffman reappointed to STAC

Gerald Kauffman, director of IPA's Water Resources Agency, has been re-appointed to the STAC for the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.

The Partnership's STAC includes scientists and resource managers from a variety of backgrounds and organizations whose focus is providing expert, unbiased peer-review of the many activities and research efforts undertaken by the Partnership, which is a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Estuarine Program (NEP).  The STAC ensures that the Partnership adheres to the NEP's broad mission to protect the waters of the nation's estuaries.

Begun in 1996, the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary is a nonprofit organization that is responsible for helping protect the waters of the Delaware Estuary, an area of more than 6,000 square miles, comprising portions of the Delaware River Basin where fresh and salt waters mix.