** 1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA CASE NO. 88-1886-CIV-HOEVELER UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al, ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) vs. ) ) SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT ) DISTRICT; JOHN R. WODRASKA, ) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTH FLORIDA ) WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT; FLORIDA ) DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGU- ) LATION; AND DALE TWACHTMANN, ) SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ) ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION, et al, ) ) Defendants. ) ___________________________________) - - - - - - - - DEPOSITION OF JOEL VanARMAN, THE WITNESS, TAKEN ON BEHALF OF THE PLAINTIFFS - - - - - - - - DATE: August 24, 1990 PROFESSIONAL REPORTING SERVICE Suite 303, 324 Datura Street West Palm Beach, Florida 33401 (407) 659-4046 ** 2 I N D E X August 24, 1990 DIRECT JOEL VanARMAN By Ms. Nash 5 ** 3 The deposition of JOEL VanARMAN, the witness, in the above-entitled and numbered cause, was taken before me, DONNA McCALLEY, Registered Professional Reporter, and Notary Public for the State of Florida at Large, at Suite 110, 324 Datura Street, in the City of West Palm Beach, County of Palm Beach, in the State of Florida, beginning at the hour of 3:47 p.m., on Friday, the 24th of August, 1990, pursuant to the Notice in said cause for the taking of said deposition, which is annexed to the court file herein, on behalf of the Plaintiffs in the above-entitled action pending in the above-named court. The appearances at said time and place were as follows: UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Room 868, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20044-0663 Attorneys for the Plaintiffs, U.S.A. By BEVERLY SHERMAN NASH, ESQ. PEEPLES, EARL & BLANK, P.A. Suite 3636, Two South Biscayne Boulevard Miami, Florida 33131 Attorneys for the Cities of Belle Glade and Clewiston By JOSEPH RICHARDS, ESQ. SKADDEN, ARPS, SLATE, MEAGHER & FLOM 1440 New York Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005-2107 Attorneys for the South Florida Water Management District By KATHARINE STOLLMAN, ESQ. ALLISON BURDETTE, ESQ. ** 4 APPEARANCES CONTINUED: ALSO PRESENT: Toni Lafuente Ray Roberts Robert Johnson David Buker Frank Draughn ** 5 THEREUPON: JOEL VanARMAN, having been first duly sworn, as hereinafter certified, testified as follows: DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. NASH: Q. Would you state your name. A. My name is--is Joel VanArman. Q. Mr. VanArman, I'm Beverly Nash. I'm counsel for the United States in this litigation, and we're here to understand how the water management district computer systems are set up, how they operate, how data is stored on computers, kinds of data, how that data's formatted, and you're submitted here today as a representative of the district having knowledge of one or more areas of inquiry that we're interested in. Have you been shown the list of categories? A. Yes. Q. And do you know which categories you've been submitted for today? A. Not offhand, no. Q. I will show you the list of categories and ask you to tell me which ones you believe you have knowledge in. ** 6 MS. STOLLMAN: You can take your time reading it over. THE WITNESS: Okay. (Witness reviews document.) Okay, could you repeat the question, please, or was there a question? MS. NASH: Yes. Would you read back the question. (Thereupon, the question at Page 5, Line 23 through 25 was read by the Reporter as recorded above.) A. Okay, I think I probably have some information concerning the first category as far as an overview of some of the--some of the equipment the district has, the second category there as it concerns Xerox work stations, and I think probably that's it. BY MS. NASH: Q. Thank you. What is your present title or position? A. Presently I'm a supervising professional in the Environmental Planning Division of the Planning Department. Q. And what is your job description? A. Basically I'm responsible for supervising professionals and other staff that do a wide range of ** 7 activities within the division, so I provide some technicians and some professionals. Q. Would you describe this range of activities within the division that these employees perform? A. The technicians I supervise provide technical support for any of the projects or programs that are going on within the division. They primarily do word processing and graphics work. The professionals I supervise, one is a professional scientist that does technical writing in program coordination, and the other person is a--is a technical editor that edits reports and publications and so forth. Q. What is the name of the scientist you mentioned? A. That's Sarah Allman. Q. And what is the name of the technical editor? A. John Mulligan. Q. How long have you been supervising professional in the Environmental Planning Division? A. Well, the Environmental Planning Division has been--I guess in existence for almost one year. Q. Have you had a prior position with the ** 8 water management district? A. I was a supervising professional in the Water Quality Division of the Resource Planning Department. Q. Have your responsibilities changed from the time you were a supervising professional in the Water Quality Division of Resource Planning to the position you now have? A. I don't think so. Q. And how long were you a supervisinging professional in the Water Quality Division? A. I think it was about one year. Q. Have you had any prior positions to that with the water management district? A. Yes. Q. What position was that? A. Prior to being the supervising professional in the Water Quality Division, I was a senior environmentalist in the Water Quality Division. Q. How long were you a senior environmentalist? A. I think I was one year in that job. Q. And what were your job responsibilities? A. At that point, I was primarily responsible for putting--putting together the information necessary ** 9 to write SWIM plans. Q. Did you have a position prior to that in the water management district? A. I think prior to that I was a technical program coordinator in the Water Use Management Planning Division, of the Resource Planning Department. Q. And how long were you a technical coordinator? A. I would--I would have to guess at that, but I'd say it was about four or five years or so. Q. And what were your your job responsibilities as a technical coordinator? A. What I was doing there was working with developing local government assistance data books for the various--various counties. Q. What is your educational background? A. I've got a Bachelors degree in biology from Florida Atlantic University and a Master's degree in marine biology from Florida Atlantic University. Q. Who's your supervisor? A. Tony Federico. Q. You've mentioned a scientist and a technical editor that works for you. Are there other people that work for you? A. There's two technicians. ** 10 Q. What are their names and job functions? A. Sandra Formante and Debbie--Debbie Burns. I'm sorry, there's three technicians. There's also Lynn Gullick. Q. What are their job responsibilities? A. They provide technical support for the division doing word possessing, compiling data and doing graphics work for reports. Q. What computers are being used in the Environmental Planning Division? A. I certainly don't know all of them. I think the majority of people probably use IBM PC's, and there's a number of Xerox work stations. There are some GIS work stations that I think are Suns, Sun micro system, and I think we have at least two DEC work stations. Q. Do you know what work is done on the DEC work stations? A. I don't think presently there's any work being done on them. Q. And you mentioned, I believe, Sun micro systems? A. (Witness nods.) Q. What work is being done on the Sun micro systems? ** 11 A. I think those are being used primarily for the geographic information system. Q. Do you personally do any work on the sun micro system? A. No. Q. What work is being done on the Xerox work stations? A. The Xerox work stations are used primarily for word--word processing and preparation of graphics materials for reports. Q. Do you know what software packages are utilized on the Xerox work stations? A. Basically we've got three kinds. There's Viewpoint software, which is the word processing environment. And at various times, the district has also tested the XTE software, the Xerox development environment and also the Xerox Artificial Intelligence software. Q. What use is made of the Xerox Artificial Intelligence software? A. We did some evaluation of that back in 1986, and at that point, it was being looked at as a possibility for writing some expert systems applications, but that--that apparently didn't--didn't work out and we let our license lapse on that software, ** 12 so it's not currently being used. Q. What about the XTE software? A. XTE is used for writing applications software for the Xerox computer if we were going to write the special programs and that sort of stuff, and it also has some monitoring tools for keeping track of traffic on the Xerox network. Q. And you indicated that the Viewpoint software is used as the word processing tool? A. That's right. Q. Any other use made of Viewpoint? A. It does word processing and graphics. It has capabilities for mailing information back and forth from one work station to another, has calendars, clocks, calculators. It's a desktop environment. Q. Are there any other software that you're aware of that your division uses on the Xerox? A. No. Q. What use is made of the IBM PC's? A. My understanding, from what I've seen, is that people are using them for word--word processing and running statistical packages and so forth. Q. Do you know what software is utilized on the IBM PC's? A. Word Perfect for word processing. And ** 13 most people are using Symphony as a spread sheet. I think the statistical work, they're using either SAS or Sat Graphics. Q. Are you aware of anyone in the Environmental Planning Division that utilizes their own software packages other than these you've mentioned? A. There's a number of other specialized software packages that are being used probably on the computers. I think each person probably uses something a little bit different for their own purposes, but I am not aware of any specific. Q. Do you utilize any software packages other than those you've mentioned? A. My computer basically has the Viewpoint software on it, and that's all I--I use. Q. And that's on the Xerox work station? A. That's right. Q. Do you transfer files to your Xerox work station from other computers in the water management district? A. Yes. Q. From which computers? A. Basically the--the transfer that's most commonly used is using a floppy disk so we can take a floppy disk from a IBM PC and then transfer it over to ** 14 the Xerox. They also have a transfer arranged through using the VAX--VAX computer that places a file into a file drawer on the Xerox network, and we can access that from the work stations. Q. Does that Xerox network have a name? A. It's the Xerox network. Does it have a internal name, is that what you're-- Q. Yes. A. It does, yeah. Q. What is that name? A. I'm not sure. Q. Are you aware of any documentation or manuals that exist to train or assist in your work on the Xerox work station? A. Yes. Q. What is this documentation or manuals? A. There is Xerox Systems Administrator's Library, Xerox Technical Reference Library, there's Xerox Users's Library. Q. Are you aware of any manuals that are internal to the water management district to assist in utilizing the Xerox work stations? A. Not manuals, no. Q. Are there any guidelines or other directives that are internal to the water management ** 15 district for utilizing the Xerox work station? A. I think the network, on the network, there's a file drawer that contains information on district standards. Q. Do you know whether that file drawer has a name? A. It's either "how to" or "standards," something like that. Q. How would you go about creating a document utilizing the Xerox work station? A. Basically the Xerox work station has a desktop environment to it that blank document is part of that. You just open up the directory Icon and go into the basic work station documents, and the blank document is one of those. You copy that onto the desktop and open that up and start typing, and that's your file. You want to give it a name, you close it up and it's stored on the work station. Q. How would you then--how would you store that document that you've created? A. Well, it's automatically stored on the work station itself. You could copy it onto a floppy disk or you can open up the directory and access the centralized filing system and file it. Q. And how would you retrieve a document ** 16 previously created? A. If you created it on your work station, it's present right on your desktop, so you just open it up. If it's on a floppy disk, then you take it back off the floppy. Q. If you wanted to utilize raw data, how would you access the raw data? A. The data would have to be provided in a file format that's compatible. Q. And what file format would that have to be? A. We can either read dos files, dos-formatted files, or Xerox formatted files, which are in file format I think is called copilot. It's pilot or copilot, I forget. Q. Do you know whether the computers in the Environmental Planning Division, whether the data on the computers is backed up? A. Basically each person that's running the computer is responsible for maintaining their own data, so people back up their data onto floppy drives or--or whatever they have available for their work station. Q. Are there any guidelines for backing up the data? A. I--I don't know of any that exists as ** 17 formal guidelines, no. Q. Do you know what data files you have stored on your Xerox work station? A. Yes. Q. What are those files? A. I don't--I don't know them by name. Basically you open up your directory Icon on the work station and it identifies all the files thereon. There's probably in excess of probably a thousand files on any given work station. Most of those are internal to the operation of the work station itself. Q. You indicated that among your responsibilities, you were responsible for putting together information necessary to write the SWIM plans? A. That's right. Q. Where did you pull the information from to do that writing? A. Most-- MS. STOLLMAN: You're--sorry, are you referring to what computer did he pull that information from? MS. NASH: Yes. A. Most of the information, most of the computer information, that we use came from files that were provided to us by other agencies. ** 18 BY MS. NASH: Q. What would those agencies be? A. I think DER was a--was the source of the majority of those files, then the county, Dade County, Department of Environmental Regulation Management. I think we obtained files from Broward County and Palm Beach County. Plus, there was other data provided to us by consultants. Q. And who are those consultants? A. It was CH--CH2M Hill, Continental Shelf Associates, I think, Greenhorn and O'Meara. Q. In what form was the data provided to you from DER? A. Let's see. I didn't directly handle that data myself. Lynn did. And I believe it came to us on magnetic tapes. Q. What about the data from Dade county, was that-- A. I think that was primarily on floppy disks. Q. Do you know the nature of the data from DER? A. What we'd asked them for was a listing of their permits that they had within our area. Q. And what was the nature of the data from ** 19 Dade County? A. Once again, we were asking for records of what types of permanent permits they issued. Q. And what was the form of the data you received from Broward County? A. We had asked them for their permit data, and whether--I don't recall if we received that on magnetic tapes or floppy disks or how that's received. Q. What was the nature of the data from Palm Beach County? A. That was--that, I think, was on floppy disks. Once again, we were asking for the data concerning their permits. Q. And what was the nature of the data from CH2M Hill? A. They provided information that went directly into our GIS system concerning map files, and they also provided us with information in a text format that they compiled that was in IBM. I think those were the two primary types. Q. And what was the nature of the data in the IBM text format received? A. Let's see. That was the information concerning the study area, a description of the study area. See, what else was in there? ** 20 Some review of historical data, study area, what data they had been able to obtain from various sources. Q. What was the nature of the data from Continental Shelf Associates? A. They had prepared maps for us in a GIS format, and they gave us those data on tapes, and they had also prepared some reports for us, so they gave us the text information on IBM compatible diskettes. Q. What was the types of information and the reports that Continental Shelf Associates prepared for you? A. They were similar to the information we had received from CH2M Hill. It was a description of the study area and compilation of some of the data they had--that they had collected, and that was it. Q. You mentioned another consultant. A. Greenhorn and O'Meara. Q. What was the nature of the data? A. They did some geographic information system work for us. They--we had some problems with their maps, and that information wasn't very useful. They also compiled information in report format, similar to what we had gotten from the other two consultants. ** 21 Q. Do you know whether the tapes that were received from DER are still maintained? A. I would think they are. I--but I don't know specifically, no. Q. Do you know who might know? A. I would think Lynn probably knows. Q. Do you know whether the floppy disks from Dade County are still maintained? A. Once again, I would assume that they are, and Lynn would be the person I would ask about that. Q. What about the data from Broward County? A. I'm a little bit hesitant about Broward County because I don't remember specifically seeing that data and I'm--I'm assuming that we--that we obtained that. But I have to honestly say that I can't remember looking at that information. But if it did exist, Lynn would be the one that would have it. Q. What about the data from Palm Beach County? A. That's basically the same situation as with Broward County. I don't remember specifically looking at that information, but Lynn would be the person that would have that. Q. That was Lynn Gullick? A. That's right. ** 22 Q. What about the data that was received from CH2M Hill, that still maintained? A. As--I don't--I don't personally know where it is. The GIS system data was turned over to either Bob Brown or Brent Moll. Q. That was turned over-- A. Pardon? Q. --to who? A. It was turned over to either Bob Brown or Brent Moll. And I'm assuming that they would be the ones that have that information. The text data, I think Sarah has that in computer format. Q. And what about the data from Continental Shelf Associates? A. Once again, the GIS data was turned over to our GIS people, and I think Sarah's keeping the electronic copy of that information. Q. And the data from Greenhorn? A. We--the computer data, the GIS computer data from Greenhorn and O'Meara, I'm not sure if that was in a usable format or not. We had some problems with it, and I don't know if those were ever completely worked out. We received a large amount of paper material from them, and I think that's still being kept. I think David Swift has that. ** 23 The computer files, I--I think probably Dave has those, those, letters. Q. Did you receive any information from within the water management district that you utilized in putting together the SWIM plans? A. In computer format? Q. Yes. A. I think there was water quality data and hydrologic data that were used for some of the analyses for the SWIM plan. I wasn't part of that process. I was involved with the documentation end of it, not the analysis of data. I don't really know what data were obtained or how the analysis was conducted. Q. Do you know who was--who did the analyses part? A. I think we relied on the other people in the water quality division at that time. I think it was Dave Soballe and Brad Jones. And I think Guy Germain was responsible for part of that, that analysis. Q. What did you say your part of the process was? A. Writing up--writing up the report itself, doing the documentation, word processing. Q. And you wrote up that documentation using ** 24 the information that you've already described from outside sources; is that correct? A. That's right, yes. Q. Did you utilize any information in writing up the report that you received from within the water management district? A. Well, we used quite a number of different reports and publications. But there was nothing else that was--that was in electronic format that I can think of. I can't remember reading anything. Q. Do you recall what those reports and publications were? A. The--no, they're listed in volumes two and three of the everglades plan. There's probably several hundred of them. (Discussion off the record.) BY MS. NASH: Q. So you said there were probably several hundred-- A. --hundred references and reports. Q. Did you do your writing on the Xerox work station? A. Yes. Q. Do you maintain copies of what you've written? ** 25 A. There's a copy of it that's maintained on the work station. Q. What did you do with what you wrote once you finished it? MS. STOLLMAN: Could you clarify that? MS. NASH: On the work on the SWIM plan that he was doing. A. Once the--once the file is created on the work station, we just send to it the lazer printer and it prints out, and we--any further copies of it that we make, we usually send to the print shop and have them duplicate that. BY MS. NASH: Q. When were you doing this writing of the SWIM plan documentation? A. I think we started in about April, probably March or April of 1988, and we've been writing ever since. Q. You worked on the subsequent drafts? A. Yes. MS. NASH: Get off the record here for a moment. (Discussion off the record.) MS. NASH: We're gonna break and resume at-- ** 26 MS. STOLLMAN: What time is convenient for you on Monday morning? THE WITNESS: I don't care. MS. STOLLMAN: We've been starting at ten. If you prefer to start earlier than that, we could do that. THE WITNESS: Well, I prefer to start earlier, if we could do that, yeah. MS. NASH: 9:30? THE WITNESS: 9:30, okay. MR. RICHARDS: That's fine with me. (Whereupon, the deposition was concluded at 4:19 p.m.)