HowTo – Long term site reporting

Priority: high
Updating: mature after creating 2023 reports

This is about report contents for the owners of long term sites. These reports are confidential.

Change log:

|When|Who|Comments| |2023 06 16|Sp17|First skeleton.| |2023 07 30|Sp17|Adapted to Markdown and Quarto.| |2023 09 28|Sp17|Minor edits.| |2023 12 19|Sp17|Minor updates about the Quarto framework for report building. This will remain rough until we create reports.| |2024 07 10|Sp17|Major updates after creating all reports for 2023 data. Bumped to fully completed. | |2024 09 17|Sp17|Minor edits. |

Related HowTos:

1. Objectives

  • Provide understandable reports of promised full detail analytical data to the cooperators.
  • Encourage feedback from owners about understandability and completeness, and if they have questions.
  • Encourage interest in the entire project, beyond owners’ own property.
  • Increase literacy about pesticides in groundwater.

2. Content of reports

Reports to long term owners are identical in structure to categorical reports. They contain:

  1. Header with the project title and date.
  2. Cover letter to the owner highlighting pesticide and metabolite detections in the last year or two. Assurance of confidentiality.
  3. Aerial photo map of the owner property and vicinity. There is a mark on the map based on address geo-coding in most cases; ideally this should mark the location of the well.
  4. Table of analytical results this year. Non-detects are omitted to shorten the table.
  5. Table of analytical results in previous year (if any). Non-detects are omitted. This will begin to be included in the 2024 reports to be prepared in 2025.
  6. Table of laboratory detection limits for past two years.
  7. If the owner was involved in earlier projects, prior pesticide or metabolite detections.
  8. If the owner was involved in earlier projects, table of analytical detection limits in earlier projects.
  9. Project summary for all groundwater sites, cumulative.
  10. Closing page: atmosphere photos from the project that do not disclose any cooperator’s location or identity. Thanks statement. Confidentiality statement. Contact info for at least one project staff member who is the primary contact for this cooperator. Link to website for the project.

Software and database aspects of production of the reports are identical to the process covered in the page HowTo: Reporting to categorical owners.

A notable difference from the categorical reports is that many long term wells are drinking water wells. Thus a drinking water perspective is critical. The reports make sure to cite any applicable drinking water standards. Only atrazine among the analytes through 2023 has a specific standard. New York’s generic 50 ug/l probably applies to the others.

As with the categorical individual reports, there can be multiple sites or sampling points owned by the same owner, thus their report will cover all of their sites and sampling points.

3. Timing of reports

There will be one sample per site per year, thus reporting frequency will be one report per year. Timing will depend on when the pesticide lab returns data. We intend to have the reports done for the previous year when scheduling the next sampling visit. A report is important to keep the cooperator’s interest for multiple years. At least one cooperator has not returned scheduling phone messages without receiving the report beforehand, suggesting that it is preferable to send out reports by snail mail or email before attempting to schedule.

There could be off-cycle reports if we have an interesting analytical result.

4. Medium and transmittal

We expect to snail-mail or hand printed reports to nearly all cooperators. In a few cases we email a PDF.