The Western States Water Council (WSWC) is looking for an intern with an interest and experience in the field of hydroinformatics and application development to work part-time (15 to 30 hours per week) for approximately 12 weeks (June through August and potentially into Fall 2023).  The WSWC office is located in Murray, Utah, in the Salt Lake City area.  Remote work is a possibility.

Compensation: Based on skills, abilities, experience and qualifications.

Overview of the WSWC:  The WSWC is a non-partisan government entity that serves as a resource and advisor to 18 western state governors on water policy issues.  The WSWC’s members are appointed by their respective governors.  For more information about the WSWC, please visit www.westernstateswater.org.

The successful applicant will work as an independent contractor assisting WSWC staff and members in sharing states’ data through the Water Data Exchange (WaDE) Program and its Western States Water Data Access and Analysis Tool (WestDAAT). The WaDE architecture and platform are designed to provide streamlined access to water rights and water use data that are provided by state water agencies.  As needed, the intern will assist the WaDE Program Manager and the Data Analyst and receive training in the development of WaDE 2.0.

Applicants must be eligible and available to work in the U.S. and international students studying within the U.S. will need to arrange for CPT or OPT with their schools.

Skills & Abilities

• Familiarity with Microsoft Office, Python, R, Microsoft SQL Server, and Visual Studio Code.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Familiarity with and desire to learn more about western water law and policy issues.
• Ability to work with others and accommodate multiple viewpoints.

Preferred Qualifications

Enrollment in or graduation from an accredited college/university in a computer science, hydrology, environmental science, water resources or environmental/civil engineering program.

• Experience with programming languages such as Python or R.
• Experience or knowledge with relational databases and SQL.
• Experience with ArcGIS or QGIS.
• Experience with or knowledge of GitHub is a plus.

Duties

• Adapt and write code in Python to scrape water data from member states’ online portals into WaDE 2.0 using data templates in CSV formats and then use software tools to load them into the WaDE SQL Server database.
• Retrieve, document, maintain, and organize water data (including maps and GIS data).
• Write Python scripts that create a hierarchical order of beneficial uses for each state to determine which use is considered the primary beneficial use when many are provided for a water right.
• Track apparent outliers in water rights permitted flow and volume amounts in the WaDE database and identify the range for those values per state.
• Create ArcGIS workflows for a clearinghouse that merges common attributes of disparate shapefiles for annual land use parcels into a common GIS layer.
• Survey WSWC member states about how they track the changes in water rights in their databases.
• Help WSWC member states with tasks to improve their water use data reporting and management.
• Work with a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation team on classifying water rights in the WaDE database for landowners or districts that receive water from Reclamation’s projects.
• Improve RShiny Prototype Applications for water data
• Present work findings to audiences

To Apply:  Send a resume and cover letter describing your interest, skills, abilities, and qualifications for this position (all in one PDF) by June 15th, 2023, to: Adel Abdallah, WaDE Program Manager, Western States Water Council @ adelabdallah@wswc.utah.gov