We have a new resource person in the department who has been hired to be the coordinator of the Michigan Onsite Wastewater Training and Education Center "MOWTEC" at the Tollgate facility at Novi. Patricia Miller comes to us from a water quality regulatory position in the Virginia Department of Conservation. Prior to her employment there she spent 2 ½ years working for the Virginia Department of Health as an onsite wastewater regulator. She also has 5 years experience in small scale wastewater systems at the USEPA National Small Flows Clearing House, a national center for information and technical assistance located at West Virginia University.

Patricia has a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas in Environmental Sciences and B.S. and M.S. in Geological Sciences from Tulane and Ohio State, respectively. She is very well connected with water quality experts around the country, having worked with people from almost every state while at the Small Flows Clearing House. Prior to her work with onsite wastewater, she spent 7 years in private sector and 8 years in academia as a hydrologist / geologist.

Patricia is funded by grants to develop curriculum for the MOWTEC and will be coordinating and doing much of the training at that facility. Her first project is to develop a curriculum to train people to do effective evaluations of onsite wastewater systems that may be called for at the time of property transactions or, in the future, routinely with the frequency depending upon the type of technology at a given site. This curriculum is being developed in cooperation with the Rouge River Watershed but will be offered to others around the state as soon as it is developed.

Ted Loudon