Water Utility Resilience Program Intern - Unpaid

Who We Are:

The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) seeks to protect, preserve, and enhance Massachusetts' environmental resources and create a clean energy future for all residents. Through the stewardship of open spaces, the protection of environmental resources, and the advancement of clean energy, EEA works tirelessly to make Massachusetts a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family.

  Our commitment to environmental justice ensures that every resident, regardless of background or location, can live in a safe, clean environment and shares equally in the benefits of the clean energy transition.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) is the state agency responsible for ensuring clean air, land, and water. Our work impacts every aspect of people's lives and is critical to the health and wellbeing of our residents and visitors. MassDEP is the lead agency for safe management of toxics and hazardous materials, promotion of waste reduction and recycling, preservation of the state's wetlands and coastal resources, air quality monitoring and pollution reduction, and so much more.

Who We Are as an

Employer:

At EEA, we create meaningful, inclusive opportunities that empower our employees to make a real difference in shaping the environmental future of Massachusetts. We foster a workplace culture where diversity is valued, innovation is encouraged, and collaboration thrives. Our employees play a vital role in advancing sustainability, environmental justice, and clean energy solutions, ensuring a positive and lasting impact on Massachusetts and its residents.

Job Description:

The Water Utility Resiliency Program (WURP) supports local drinking water and wastewater utilities in their efforts to prepare for climate change. As part of this effort, WURP develops and maintains statewide service area maps to depict the geographic area served by publicly or privately owned drinking water or sanitary sewer utilities.

This practicum opportunity would allow a student to develop an analysis plan, work directly with spatial data using GIS software, and assist MassDEP with improving publicly available data. Service area boundary data are important for understanding the potential for environmental exposure to lead and other emerging contaminants, including PFAS, in the residential and school setting from water provided by a public water system.

Deliverables include an evaluation of methods used to develop the Service Area boundaries and an analysis between the published service area boundaries and service line inventory data, and recommendations for improving the data. With this analysis, MassDEP will update and improve the Estimated Public Drinking Water System Service Area Boundaries data. Importantly, the service area boundaries dataset serves as the data source for evaluating potential exposure from well water.

An overall improvement to the data's reliability would also enhance evaluations and public health notifications on potential exposures to nitrates, heavy metals (e.g. arsenic, lead), organic chemicals, or radionuclides from well water sources.

Job Duties:

* Develop an analysis plan to evaluate drinking water and wastewater service area data.

* Work with spatial datasets using GIS software to map and analyze utility service areas.

* Assist in maintaining and improving statewide service area boundary data.

* Evaluate existing methods used to develop service area boundaries and identify areas for improvement.

* Conduct comparative analysis between published service area boundaries and service line inventory data.

* Generate findings and provide recommendations to enhance data accuracy, reliability, and usability.

* Support updates to the Estimated Public Drinking Water System Service Area Boundaries dataset.

* Analyze data to help assess potential environmental and public health exposures (e.g., lead, PFAS, nitrates, heavy metals).

* Contribute to improving publicly available datasets used for environmental and public health decision-making.

* Prepare documentation and summaries of analysis results for internal and stakeholder use.

Preferred Qualifications:

* GIS…