Thank you for your interest in the Great Lakes Beach Association 2009 Board Elections. Voting has closed for the four positions available on the Great Lakes Beach Association Elected Board. There is hope that these positions will be filled by persons with knowledge in four categories: Academia and Research; Local, State, Federal or Tribal Government; Beach Regulation/Management; and Public Health. The votes are being tallied and the winners will be announced soon.  

Below you will find a list of the candidates standing for these positions followed by brief biographies and statements of interest in serving on the GLBA board submitted by the candidates prior to the election.

Brief Bio: Greg Kleinheinz has a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Northern Michigan University, a Ph.D. in Environmental Microbiology from Michigan Tech University and has over 12 years of experience working on water and wastewater issues. Dr. Kleinheinz has a background in microbiology, analytical chemistry, and environmental engineering. Dr. Kleinheinz, and the beach group, currently conducts beach monitoring and/or research in 11 Wisconsin counties and 3 in Michigan, with a summer research group of over 20 students working at over 100 beaches. Their research interests include investigations into novel sampling techniques, sanitary survey tool development, rainfall effects on E.coli, pathogens and viruses in recreational water, and a variety of molecular source-tracking methods to aid in fecal input mitigation and beach management practices. Two particular projects include researching the impact of Cladophora on nearshore water quality and beach closures, as well as determining how the US EPA Sanitary Survey tool can be applied to a wide variety of users and locations.

Why Greg Kleinheinz is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: The Great Lakes Beach Association (GLBA) is a rare group that provides an invaluable interface between academics, local health officials, state and federal regulatory officials, and citizens. During the past 4-5 years my interactions with the GLBA has allowed me to have the opportunity to meet and interact with some excellent scientists, beach managers, elected officials, and members of the public. The make-up of the GLBA allows for the rapid dissemination of great ideas and work throughout the Great Lakes region. I have found the group to be invaluable as a tool to help us all move forward as we all work to understand a variety of recreational water issues with the overarching goal of protecting public health. I believe my experiences, communication skills, and enthusiasm could be an asset to the group as we move forward with the GLBA's mission. It would be an honor to serve the many great members of this group.

Brief Bio: Angela D. Coulliette is an Office of the Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife with the Joan Rose laboratory. Angela has been involved with research on partitioning sources, modeling transport, and detecting microorganisms from fecal pollution in association with rainfall and wide-ranges of environmental conditions in various water bodies for the past five years and general water quality issues for the past ten years. Her present research is also focusing on international water quality issues and implementation of ‘point-of-use’ devices for household drinking water treatment in developing countries. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and a M.S. in Marine Science at the University of South Florida, College of Marine Science.

Why Angela Coulliette is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: I look forward to offering the knowledge I gained through my experiences in Florida and North Carolina, while approaching the issues of beach water quality in Michigan. I also believe communication between scientists and people of all disciplines is vital for success in moving forward with respect to water quality improvement. Being a GLBA board member would provide such means to aid in the pursuit of healthy beach water.

Brief Bio:. Dr. Szarleta-Yancy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Northwest. She earned a Ph.D. in agricultural and natural resource economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a J.D. from the University of Iowa. She currently teaches classes in environmental law and policy as well as in the area of public management economics. The research and service includes work in the areas of public participation in environmental decision-making processes, effective public notification of water quality impairments, and watershed planning for sustainable development. She is actively involved in a number of local environmental organizations that work on issues related to the quality of life of Northwest Indiana residents and those living in the Great Lakes Basin.

Why Ellen Szarleta-Yancy is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: Recreational water quality issues are a strong professional and personal interest of mine. In the past I assisted in the development of a public notification plan and conducted studies evaluating their effectiveness. I would like to expand my responsibilities and serve the community by actively participating on the GLBA. I believe I can provide a valuable contribution based on my professional skills and experiences and I also look forward to learning from the other members of this diverse board. Effective policy administration requires a concerted effort of many, and I wish to be part of the effort to move recreational beach water quality issues to the forefront of environmental policy discussions at the state and national levels.

Brief Bio: As a lifelong resident of Northwest Indiana, I may be new to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), but not to the concerns of our environment. Having worked 13 years in the Hazardous Waste and Recycling industries, I started out as an analytical chemist, treatment chemist, field chemist, and then transitioned to account manager/customer service rep where I assisted and advised a variety of clients to safely and economically dispose, reuse and recycle their hazardous and special wastes. As a member of IDEM, I serve as the Lake Michigan Beaches Program manager as well as backup coordinator to the Grand Calumet River AOC Remedial Action plan and the Lake Michigan Lakewide Management plan. In 1993, I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the Honors Core Biology Program at Indiana University - Bloomington with minors in Chemistry and German.

Why Michelle Caldwell is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: My interests to serve on the Elected Board of the GLBA are many. I want to be a participating factor in helping further the GLBA's mission to preserve and protect the Great Lakes and their beaches. To help facilitate communication among the Great Lakes states regarding the issues that we face and work towards finding solutions. To also bring awareness to and share the many new monitoring research projects, technologies and methods being developed that will improve public notification on current recreational water conditions. Finally, to foster and help create new public outreach activities that will serve to improve the education and experience of every beach goer that visits a Great Lakes beach.

Brief Bio: Ellen has been with the Chicago Park District for eight years and currently focuses her efforts on the development and promotion of the Chicago Park District’s greening and sustainability initiatives. Ellen has implemented many important new initiatives that have helped the Park District become a strong ally to the environment with economic efficiency; including administration of the water testing procedures, notification and management practices associated with beach management in Chicago. Her background in Historical Preservation and many years of project management have provided a base skill set to efficiently understand program goals and to then implement actions that will achieve the end objective, even when the end objective proves to be a moving target.

Why Ellen Sargent is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: The Chicago Park District manages 24-miles of Lake Michigan shoreline on Chicago’s lakefront, which includes over 20 designated swimming beaches and the largest public harbor system in the county. Over the past three years, the Park District has implemented a proactive beach management program to study and effectively decrease the number of swim actions (advisories and bans) at public swimming beaches in Chicago.

In 2006, I began working on Chicago’s beach management and through collaboration with other Great Lakes beach managers and professionals, I learned a great deal of knowledge and developed skills needed to maintain and preserve Chicago’s beaches. The Park District began implementing best management practices and programs that had been researched by other Great Lakes communities and developed an overall beach management program. In the last three years, the Park District has modified our water testing and notification program so that it is in compliance with the USEPA guidelines, received BEACH Act funding, utilized tools such as Beach Sanitary Surveys to further understand our beach topography, implemented progressive nuisance species mitigation programs to reduce avian sourced E.coli on the beaches and piloted a rapid testing method at our most challenging beach. The Chicago Park District acknowledges that these successes were attained through the support and expertise of Great Lakes beach managers and future successes will also be strongly influenced by this community. We feel that Chicago’s participation in the Great Lakes Beach Association (GLBA) could help inform other Great Lakes beach managers with lessons learned from the various programs and practices that the Park District has implemented on the 20 + designated swimming beaches and adjacent lakefront. Chicago looks forward to remaining on the forefront of new testing protocols and management programs that are currently in development and feel that the GLBA board will be integral in helping us and the entire region move forward.

Brief Bio: Donna Francy is a hydrologist with the USGS Ohio Water Science Center in Columbus, Ohio. She received a bachelor's degree in Biology from Indiana University and a Master's degree in Environmental Science from Rice University, Houston, Tx. She has 20 years experience in environmental microbiology with prior experience as a clinical microbiologist. At the USGS, Ms. Francy has been serving as chief on projects that involve methods and processes affecting microbiological indicators and pathogens in the environment. These include studies that address recreational water quality in rivers and lakes, virus contamination in drinking-water supplies, and bacterial and viral removal through wastewater treatment processes. Recently, her main research focus has been on developing and implementing predictive models for nowcasting recreational water-quality advisories and identifying sources of fecal contamination at coastal beaches.

Why Donna Francy is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: I am interested in serving on the GLBA Elected Board because I would like to continue to improve communication and the transfer of technologies among researchers and agencies that work on beach water-quality issues.

Brief Bio: David Rockwell has been actively involved in many aspects of beach issues. He initiated the first USEPA collection of beach pollution impact data in 1980 with the goal to inform the public about swimming at Great Lake beaches. He supported the development of regional forecast models that showed the feasibility of such an approach. In 2005, during his employment with the Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO), David was GLNPO's lead to work on the Coastal Health Strategy (CHS) of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration. The CHS provided milestones to improve swimming at Great Lakes' beaches. He was part of the EPA team that developed the Great Lakes standardized Sanitary Survey and applied the standardized Sanitary Survey in nine pilot projects during 2007. The 2010 milestone of the Coastal Health Strategy is to have regional predictive models available using local data and forecasts of water mass movements derived from the Great Lakes Observation System.

His current employment with NOAA's Center of Excellence for Great Lakes and Human Health is to help achieve this milestone by developing a generalized process for beach water quality forecasting using the skills, capabilities and products of NOAA, USGS, and USEPA.

Why David Rockwell is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: From its inception, The Great Lakes Beach Association has sought to advance the science of assessing recreational water quality and provide beach managers and the public with reliable science based information that permit well-informed beach swimmability decisions. The Association has improved Great Lake Beach Health by working with appropriate state agencies and local health departments. It is an honor to be nominated along with so many worthy candidates to serve on the board. If elected to the GLBA board, I would work to further the Association's goals.

Brief Bio: Ms. Bauman is currently the Lake Superior Beach Program Manager for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in Duluth Minnesota. She earned her B.A. in Earth Science and Geography from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Ms. Bauman has been with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for 18 years and worked in a number of program areas related to non-point and point source pollution in northern Minnesota. These programs included local water planning, lake and stream monitoring, individual sewage treatment systems, feedlots, GIS project lead for basin planning, and NPDES minor wastewater facility permit writing. Prior to joining the MPCA, Ms. Bauman was an environmental and transportation planner for the Northwest Regional Development Commission in Thief River Falls Minnesota and a planner for the Natural Resources Division of the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission in Duluth.

Why Heidi Bauman is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: I would like to serve on the GLBA Board because I believe that by collaborating and maximizing our resources we can continue to improve recreational beach water quality and our understanding of the processes that have an effect on beach water quality. The GLBA has been a wonderful source of information and support to me over the past 7 years. I feel it is time for me to support the GLBA by becoming a board member.

Brief Bio: Tom Edge is a Study Leader at Environment Canada’s National Water Research Institute in Burlington, Ontario. He is conducting research on Great Lakes beach issues pertaining to the occurrence of waterborne pathogens, and the testing and application of microbial source tracking methods to determine the source of fecal pollution responsible for beach postings. He is also collaborating with several researchers in the Great Lakes area to better understand the significance and implications of high numbers of fecal indicator bacteria found in foreshore beach sand. Tom has conducted research at beaches on Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, and several rivers in the Great Lakes area. He serves as scientific advisor on the Health Canada federal/provincial committee that is currently renewing the 1992 Guidelines for Canadian Recreational Water Quality.

Why Tom Edge is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: Tom would like to contribute to expanding Canada-United States communications and collaborations on the Great Lakes beach research and management issues our two countries are addressing.

Brief Bio: Jeff Reicherts works for the Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services Department as the Surface Water Specialist. He has been employed by this southwest Michigan local health department since January 2001. Specifically, Jeff works in the Environmental Health Bureau where he manages and administers the surface monitoring program. Besides monitoring creeks, streams, and lakes, Jeff conducts water quality monitoring at nine inland lake bathing beaches. Jeff has assisted and provided guidance to other local health departments in the region who wish to sample bathing beaches. He has also been available to answer general water quality inquiries from other governmental agencies, organizations, and the general public. Since 2001, Jeff has applied for three beach monitoring grants available through the Clean Michigan Initiative, Clean Water Fund. The first grant, awarded in 2002, was a collaborative effort between Allegan, Kalamazoo, and Van Buren Counties; a total of 21 bathing beaches (9 on Lake Michigan) were monitored weekly. The second grant, awarded in 2006, considered predictive models at several inland lake bathing beaches in Kalamazoo County. And the third grant is being submitted this year (2009) in partnership with Western Michigan University and will focus on bacteria source tracking in Kalamazoo County surface water resources.

Jeff holds a Master of Arts degree (2008) from Western Michigan University (Department of Geography) with an emphasis in Geographic Information Science and Environmental and Resources Analysis. His thesis, titled "Using composite sampling techniques to monitor bathing beach water quality in Kalamazoo County, Michigan," compared traditional and composite sampling techniques. He has a Bachelor of Science degree (1995) from Grand Valley State University with an emphasis in Natural Resources Management.

Why Jeff Reicherts is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: Following his first week of employment with Kalamazoo County, Jeff was aboard Amtrak to attend the Beach Public Health, Protection, and Management Forum (Great Lakes Beach Association Conference – 2001) in Chicago, Illinois (February 6-8, 2001). He brought information back and implemented a bathing beach monitoring program for the Kalamazoo community. The Great Lakes Beach Association serves the Great Lakes community by collaborating with neighbors, protecting bathing beach resources, and solving water quality issues. From a local public health perspective, Jeff has a vested interest in collaborating with others, assuring bathing beach water quality, and finding answers to water quality degradation. For these reasons, he is most interested in serving as an Elected Board Member for the Great Lakes Beach Association.

Brief Bio: I am a Canadian Certified Public Health Inspector and joined the Huron County Health Unit in September 2001. Prior to that, I was employed by Toronto Public Health for 27 years.

I am very passionate about water protection and sit on a number of committees dealing with water protection such as the Huron County Water Protection Steering Committee; The Lake Huron South East Shore Working Group; The Great Lakes Public Health Network; The Canada-Ontario Agreement Municipal Great Lakes Working Group; and The Huron County "It All Ends Up In The Lake" Annual Conference Planning Committee.

Huron County Health Unit was one of nine EPA grantees in 2007 that piloted the sanitary survey tools for beaches. Pamela has been actively advocating to her public health colleagues in Canada to attend various U.S. and Canadian beach water conferences and to expand their beach monitoring programs by using a detailed sanitary survey tool; investigate predictive modelling; and to seek out or enhance partnerships to address the sources of beach water pollution.

Why Pamela Scharfe is interested in serving on the GLBA Board: I am interested in serving on the GLBA Elected Board to further promote common approaches between Canada and the U.S. beach managers with respect to investigation, modeling, methodology and information systems in an effort to strive for healthy beach water.