BOSTON, Ma. — The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) awarded Geosyntec Consultants a project to create the Coastal Zone Management Digital Water Quality Tool Pack: User Guide Development, Training Workshops, and Database Population, which will be a major enhancement to the existing statewide water quality database. Under this project, Geosyntec will assist CZM, a unit of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, in the development of training resources related to the use of CZM's digital water quality tools, which are used to assist volunteer monitoring organizations in managing and analyzing water quality data collected in coastal watersheds.

The project will create an expanded online database allowing groups, such as volunteers with local watershed associations or state grant recipients, to post their periodic water quality sampling and testing results. These sampling results data will come from any river or stream in Massachusetts that ultimately flows into a coastal watershed, making it virtually statewide in scope.

Geosyntec's tasks for his project include development of enhancements to the existing database system; developing a help tutorial; conducting training workshops for new users; and populating the database with existing data. In addition, the enhanced database will permit all sampling locations to be georeferenced, allowing them to be plotted on accurate maps or used for future sampling events.

The database enhancement project begins this month and ends in late November 2007. Geosyntec will apply its GIS and database management experience to develop relational environmental databases. Geosyntec has previously developed multiple web-based interfaces for client and user groups in order to share and disseminate georeferenced environmental, recreational, and facilities information.

Geosyntec, founded in 1983, provides consulting engineering and science services throughout the United States and internationally. With 34 offices in the U.S. and select international locations, Geosyntec engineers and scientists are known for their technology leadership and practice innovation in the areas of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, contaminated site assessment and remediation, groundwater assessment and remediation, risk assessment and toxicology, urban stormwater management, water and natural resources management, solid waste disposal facility permitting and design, and environmental biotechnology.