- Success Stories
- Environmental Resource Assessment & Management
Organizing Teams to Monitor Coastal Contaminants
For nearly 40 years NOAA’s National Mussel Watch Program has been monitoring contaminants in coastal waters in over 400 sites around the U.S. by testing sediment and bivalves, such as oysters and mussels. A CSS employee owner organizes and coordinates the regional missions to collect and test samples. This includes developing a schedule and coordinating several teams to collect samples in different subregions for each region as well as shipping equipment and supplies needed for each of the team to carry out their tasks.
CSS employee owners work alongside federal program staff and local partners to collect samples throughout the regions. In fiscal year 2024 CSS staff deployed to the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean, which includes Alaska, Hawaii, and the West Coast. The team adds data they collect during these missions to the Coastal Pollution Data Explorer, a cloud-based ArcGIS platform that allows users to search by location or type of contaminant, generate a report, and download the data. A CSS employee owner serves as the lead developer for this online platform. Learn more about NOAA’s National Mussel Watch Program.
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1000 Samples of Lake Water Collected and Processed
Congrats to our team supporting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development for completing the processing and initial chemical analyses of 1000 lake water samples! They received lake water samples from across the continental U.S. this past summer and have completed the initial chemical analyses as part of the U.S. EPA 2022 National…
Securing and Modernizing NOAA’s Climate Data Records
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information is currently migrating their monumental archives from physical data centers onto the secure Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, a massive undertaking to ensure these critical records remain secure. NOAA selected a CSS employee owner and program manager for Climate Data Records as a division representative for the high-stakes Data Ingest and Migration team to coordinate directly with technical experts. As part of this role, the CSS representative is also serving…
Supporting National Ocean Service Financial Management Centers
CSS employee-owners bring exceptional dedication and expertise to the National Ocean Service (NOS) Agreements, Grants, and Acquisitions Division, supporting several Financial Management Centers (FMCs) through complex, high‑priority initiatives. CSS has played a key role in helping FMCs navigate the U.S. Department of Treasury’s G‑Invoicing system during a period of transition and heavy workload. CSS staff recognized the challenges many teams were facing and broke down the system’s complex requirements…