James Beckley, Friend of the CMC, Steps Down as VA DEQ Citizen Monitoring Coordinator

The CMC Team was very sad to say goodbye to our long time friend and supporter, James Beckley, in April, as he left his position at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for a position at the water treatment lab in Chesterfield County.  James worked at VA DEQ as the citizen monitoring coordinator for 16 years, and was integral in helping Virginia become one of the national leaders in integrating community and other diverse data to assess the health of the Commonwealth waters. James helped to position Virginia as a leader in the use of community-collected water quality data in the nation. He continually shared lessons learned at conferences and through webinars, in addition he was always willing to have a conversation to help other coordinators across the country set their program up for success. As a result of his amazing leadership he was the co-chair of the National Water Quality Monitoring Council’s Volunteer Monitoring workgroup and the Chair of the Virginia Water Monitoring Council.

James, we wish you well and know you won’t be a stranger to the citizen monitoring community! To stay in touch with James, you can follow his YouTube channel, you may even catch some of the CMC team in these videos! You can also join his FaceBook Page, where he is open to continuing to help answer monitoring questions and troubleshoot problems.

Thank you for being a wonderful colleague, James! We will miss you!

Featured image from Liz Chudoba for CMC 2020