Meeting, meetings and more meetings

One of the things that has amazed me about my internship is the number of meetings that my employer has on their schedule. Everyday consists of a series of meetings. Some are held to formulate new policy initiatives or changes to existing policy, some are committee meetings held to discuss upcoming events and some are social gatherings held to provide an opportunity for the membership to meet in a relaxed environment. ARPA's membership is made up of representatives from competing companies and often times, depending of the issue, the atmosphere in the room can get a pretty tense. I find many of the meetings interesting, especially those regarding new policy initiatives. Its fascinating to watch the machinations of the stakeholders as they attempt to reach an agreement. Like many of my fellow students who are also working as interns, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement with my employer. This precludes me from getting into some of the specifics of the information discussed in the meetings that I attend. However, I will attempt to make these posts as interesting as possible.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting at the offices of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, or as they refer to it in the office, ADEQ. The meeting was attended by private landowners and representatives from companies whose property is adjacent to a riverbed or a wash, along with officials from ADEQ. This was one of an ongoing series of meetings that are being held to discuss the State's new permitting policy for storm water run-off. Though Arizona does not receive a lot of rainfall over the course of a year, when it does rain it tends to be heavy and generates a significant amount of run-off. The permit and associated fees are issued based on land use. It allows ADEQ to monitor storm water that flows into the river bottom and to ensure that the run-off is as contaminant free as possible. ARPA's membership is comprised of companies that mine aggregates from the riverbeds and the fees for obtaining the run-off permit could potentially cost a member company thousands of dollars a year, making this an important issue with the corporations that ARPA represents. This was the first time that I had attended a meeting of this group and I felt like I sat down in the middle of an ongoing conversation. After two plus hours the meeting adjourned and I left not really sure that anything had gotten accomplished.