Tata & Howard Is Awarded the Highest Number of DWINSA Contracts in Massachusetts
Marlborough, MA engineering consulting firm selected by 16 public water systems to conduct their surveys
Tata & Howard’s corporate office in Marlborough, MA
May 6, 2015 — Tata & Howard, Inc., a leading innovator in water, wastewater, stormwater, and environmental services engineering solutions, has been awarded 16 Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey Assessments (DWINSA) by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — Clean Water Trust and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). According to the MassDEP, the contracts represent the highest number awarded to any engineering consultant in the Commonwealth. DWINSA work is intended to identify capital asset needs for community water systems in the state through a DEP grant program.
“Our niche market has always been water,” said Patrick S. O’Neale, Vice President of Tata & Howard, Inc., and Project Manager for the DWINSA contracts. “Our targeted expertise, decades of experience, and exceptional service in the water environment have all contributed to our reputation as the area’s water expert, and these DWINSA contract awards solidify our standing as the leader in drinking water engineering solutions in Massachusetts.”
The following 16 public water systems selected Tata & Howard to conduct their 2015 DWINSA: Aquarion Water Company Millbury, Avon Water Department, Dighton Water District, Dudley Water Department, Edgartown Water Department, Falmouth Water Department, Halifax Water Department, Hingham/Hull Aquarion Water Company, Newton Water Department, Northampton Water Department, Pepperell DPW-Water Division, Sandwich Water District, Uxbridge DPW, Water Division, Westfield Water Department, Worcester DPW-Water Supply Division, and North Brookfield. All of the surveys require a 75% completion date by June 30, 2015.
A water main break is a common occurrence with our nation’s failing infrastructure
As water and wastewater utilities nationwide face an increasing number of challenges, including rising costs and population, aging infrastructure, drought, increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, and a rapidly changing workforce, creative and innovative methodologies for treatment and distribution along with efficient and effective utility management have become paramount. In order to ensure a strong and viable utility for future generations, utilities must find ways to improve their products and services while increasing community support. Effective water and wastewater utility management helps utilities improve performance in critical areas while responding to current and future challenges, all with limited infrastructure dollars.
In May of 2007, six major water and wastewater associations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed an historic agreement pledging to support effective utility management collectively and individually throughout the water sector and to develop a joint strategy to identify, encourage, and recognize excellence in water and wastewater utility management. Participating organizations included the following:
Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)
American Public Works Association (APWA)
American Water Works Association (AWWA)
National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA)
National Association of Water Companies (NAWC)
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Water Environment Federation (WEF)
The result of this powerhouse collaboration was the Effective Utility Management Primer, issued in June of 2008. The Primer, designed specifically to assist water and wastewater managers in identifying and addressing their most urgent needs through a customized, incremental approach, outlines ten attributes of effectively managed utilities along with five keys to management success:
Ten Attributes of Effectively Managed Water Sector Utilities
Product Quality produces potable water, treated effluent, and process residuals in full compliance with regulatory and reliability requirements and consistent with customer, public health, and ecological needs.
Customer Satisfaction provides reliable, responsive, and affordable services in line with explicit, customer- accepted service levels. Receives timely customer feedback to maintain responsiveness to customer needs and emergencies.
Employee and Leadership Development recruits and retains a workforce that is competent, motivated, adaptive, and safe-working. Establishes a participatory, collaborative organization dedicated to continual learning and improvement. Ensures employee institutional knowledge is retained and improved upon over time. Provides a focus on and emphasizes opportunities for professional and leadership development and strives to create an integrated and well-coordinated senior leadership team.
Operational Optimization ensures ongoing, timely, cost-effective, reliable, and sustainable performance improvements in all facets of its operations. Minimizes resource use, loss, and impacts from day-to-day operations. Maintains awareness of information and operational technology developments to anticipate and support timely adoption of improvements.
Financial Viability understands the full life-cycle cost of the utility and establishes and maintains an effective balance between long-term debt, asset values, operations and maintenance expenditures, and operating revenues. Establishes predictable rates—consistent with community expectations and acceptability—adequate to recover costs, provide for reserves, maintain support from bond rating agencies, and plan and invest for future needs.
Infrastructure Stability understands the condition of and costs associated with critical infrastructure assets. Maintains and enhances the condition of all assets over the long-term at the lowest possible life-cycle cost and acceptable risk consistent with customer, community, and regulator-supported service levels, and consistent with anticipated growth and system reliability goals. Assures asset repair, rehabilitation, and replacement efforts are coordinated within the community to minimize disruptions and other negative consequences.
Operational Resiliency ensures utility leadership and staff work together to anticipate and avoid problems. Proactively identifies, assesses, establishes tolerance levels for, and effectively manages a full range of business risks (including legal, regulatory, financial, environmental, safety, security, and natural disaster-related) in a proactive way consistent with industry trends and system reliability goals.
Community Sustainability is explicitly cognizant of and attentive to the impacts its decisions have on current and long-term future community and watershed health and welfare. Manages operations, infrastructure, and investments to protect, restore, and enhance the natural environment; efficiently uses water and energy resources; promotes economic vitality; and engenders overall community improvement. Explicitly considers a variety of pollution prevention, watershed, and source water protection approaches as part of an overall strategy to maintain and enhance ecological and community sustainability.
Water Resource Adequacy ensures water availability consistent with current and future customer needs through long-term resource supply and demand analysis, conservation, and public education. Explicitly considers its role in water availability and manages operations to provide for long-term aquifer and surface water sustainability and replenishment.
Stakeholder Understanding and Support engenders understanding and support from oversight bodies, community and watershed interests, and regulatory bodies for service levels, rate structures, operating budgets, capital improvement programs, and risk management decisions. Actively involves stakeholders in the decisions that will affect them.
Five Keys to Management Success
Leadership Leadership is critical to effective utility management, particularly in the context of driving and inspiring change within an organization. Leadership refers both to individuals who can be effective champions for improvement, and to teams that provide resilient, day-to-day management continuity and direction. Effective leadership ensures that the utility’s direction is understood, embraced, and followed on an ongoing basis throughout the management cycle.
Strategic Business Planning Strategic business planning is an important tool for achieving balance and cohesion across the Attributes. A strategic plan provides a framework for decision making by assessing current conditions, strengths and weaknesses; assessing underlying causes and effects; and establishing vision, objectives, and strategies. It establishes specific implementation steps that will move a utility from its current level of performance to achieving its vision.
Organizational Approaches There are a variety of organizational approaches that contribute to overall effective utility management and that are critical to the success of management improvement efforts, including actively engaging employees in improvement efforts; deploying an explicit change management process that anticipates and plans for change and encourages staff at all levels to embrace change; and utilizing implementation strategies that seek, identify, and celebrate victories.
Measurement Measurement is critical to management improvement efforts and is the backbone of successful continual improvement management and strategic business planning. A measurement system serves many vital purposes, including focusing attention on key issues, clarifying expectations, facilitating decision making, and, most importantly, learning and improving.
Continual Improvement Management Framework A continual improvement management framework can help utilities understand improvement opportunities and establish explicit service levels, guide investment and operational decisions, form the basis for ongoing measurement, and provide the ability to communicate clearly with customers and key stakeholders. This framework plays a central role in effective utility management and is critical to making progress.
OK – Now What?
So how does a utility assess, address, and implement these changes? The primer further recommended an assessment tool with five steps, for which the instructions comprise the latter 35 pages of the Effective Utility Management Primer. Admittedly, the entire process requires dedicated time and personnel commitment from the utility. While some utility managers have had success in applying the assessment to their utility, many have found the process to require resources simply unavailable to them. Tata & Howard has developed two proprietary innovations that assist water and wastewater utilities in the identification of their most urgent needs as well as effective and efficient utility management.
Business Practice Evaluations
Business Practice Evaluations (BPEs) assess the health of a utility’s work practices by implementing a framework for a structured approach to managing, operating, and maintaining in a more business-like manner. This assessment provides the information and planning required by the Primer, specifically in the Five Keys to Management Success. A BPE’s primary focus is on effective management.
The overall goal of the assessment process is more efficient and effective work practices, and the assessment process and tools developed enable utility managers to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the utility in comparison to generally accepted industry standards. The assessment includes documentation of current business practices, identification of opportunities for improvement, conducting interviews including a diagonal slice of the organization, and observation of work practices in the field. From this assessment we make recommendations to improve system performance, and the structured approach is fully customized and includes all functions of the utility — from administration and technical to operations and maintenance. The assessment process allows utility executives to proactively develop system specific plans, programs, and timelines to optimize the overall utility system programs.
Capital Efficiency Plans™
Where BPEs focus on management, Capital Efficiency Plans™ (CEPs) address the utility itself, combining the concepts of hydraulic modeling, system criticality, and asset management into a single comprehensive report. Each report is customized to the individual utility system and provides utilities with a database and Geographic Information System (GIS) representation for each pipe segment within their underground piping system. The CEP report also prioritizes system piping improvements and provides estimated costs for replacement and rehabilitation.
Each water and wastewater system has unique characteristics and challenges that are discussed at our CEP workshop held with knowledgeable field staff and managers for each project. The workshops provide significant value by filling in data gaps, correcting incorrect records, and identifying specific issues and critical components that are custom to the system. Our completed studies have been well received by many utilities who have found our methodology not only practical and understandable, but also defendable when justifying projects and procuring funding.
In Conclusion
Water and wastewater utilities today are finding themselves increasingly burdened with decreased revenue, excessive demand, and crumbling infrastrucure. Strict new regulations and a changing workforce have also added to the challenge, and it is imperative that water and wastewater utilities find ways to efficiently and effectively improve systems while implementing successful management strategies. Targeted assessments, strategic planning, and identification and implementation of best practices will be the foundation of all successful utilities in the future.
Today is Earth Day 2015, and a good time to reflect on our consumption and waste. While it’s important to modify our personal habits, it is equally important to revise habits in the workplace. In our work as an environmental engineering firm, Tata & Howard constantly aims to incorporate sustainable initiatives and green technology into our design and services. And, because we believe that the long-term success of environmental activism will require small but significant changes from the majority of people, we also incorporate green initiatives in our day-to-day office activities.
In years past, we have instituted paper, battery, and toner recycling programs, and we have eliminated disposable water bottles by installing plumbed water coolers that utilize public water. This year, we elected to eliminate disposable cutlery and drinkware from our offices in an effort to reduce our collective carbon footprint. In addition, all employees are encouraged to swap out disposable coffee-to-go cups for reusable tumblers when visiting our beloved Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts.
First, let’s look at some fast facts on disposable coffee cups:
Hot paper and Styrofoam cups used at places like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts are not recyclable.
We throw away 58 billion cups per year.
It takes 20 million trees and 12 billion gallons of water to produce the materials for the cups.
*Infographic data taken from a 2006 study. In 2010, 23 billion paper coffee cups were used.
And that’s just cups. Add to that the billions of plastic utensils and, well…you get the point. In fact, Americans toss out enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times. So, in celebration of Earth Day 2015, we whisked away all disposable drinkware and utensils, and asked employees to bring in their own reusable drink glass, coffee mug, and personal set of silverware for in-office use. Don’t worry: employees who forget their cutlery or drinkware on a given day won’t be out of luck — but they will be out $1.00, which is what it will cost them to “buy” a disposable fork or cup. All monies collected in this way will be donated to Trees, Water & People, whose mission is to improve people’s lives by helping communities protect, conserve, and manage the natural resources upon which their long-term well-being depends. Believe it or not, $1.00 is enough to plant ten trees! To encourage full participation, Tata & Howard is offering a prize for the most creative mug or glass, and the winner will be announced on Friday afternoon, April 24.
Engineer Brooke Cotta, Marlborough’s Green Ambassador, stands by the water cooler with her reusable dinnerware
Tata & Howard has also formed a company-wide Green Committee as well as appointed Green Ambassadors, who are green representatives at each office. These individuals are hard at work coming up with additional ways to “green up” our offices. Some ideas have included implementing formal single stream recycling programs, generating less paper waste by going paperless when possible and always printing double-sided, participating in Ride-Your-Bike-to-Work-Weeks and carpooling, and recycling or replacing K-Cups. The committee will be meeting on an ongoing basis and will be implementing new green initiatives throughout the year. For some inspiration, we looked through some fast facts, and were surprised by what we found:
Waste:
The garbage in a landfill stays for about 30 years.
84 percent of all household waste can be recycled.
By reducing our waste 1% per year and recycling and composting 90% of our discards by 2030, we could save 406 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. This is the equivalent to shutting down 21% of our nation’s coal-fired power plants.
Aluminum Cans:
Five billion aluminum cans are used each year.
In America, 1,500 aluminum cans are recycled every second.
Recycling an aluminum soda can saves 96% of the energy used to make a can from ore, and produces 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution.
Throwing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as if that can were 1/2 full of gasoline.
Paper:
Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7,000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution.
The 17 trees saved above can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50-80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
The amount of wood and paper we throw away is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
Approximately one billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
Almost 90% of cardboard is recycled but only about 50% of printing and writing paper is recycled.
The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about two billion trees per year.
Plastic:
We throw away more than 60 million plastic bottles a day.
Most families throw away about 88 pounds of plastic every year.
Every year in the U.S. nearly 200 billion beverage containers are sold, two-thirds of which are landfilled, incinerated, or littered
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Mindfulness of our personal and corporate waste needs to become of a priority, and while it isn’t feasible to completely change our habits overnight, it is entirely possible to improve our carbon footprint by implementing small, sustainable changes over time. Every small step helps, and if we all work together on taking those small steps, we will soon find we’ve collectively run a marathon towards improving the health of our world. Won’t you join us?
Only 1% of our world’s water is usable by humanity. The drought conditions in the United States have brought water conservation to the forefront of people’s minds, and conservation is certainly necessary. But we also need to invest in infrastructure and implement efficient practices including reclamation if we are to protect our world’s most precious resource now and in the future.
A second opinion on your environmental remediation plan can save you time and money
Thoroughly understanding site assessments and environmental remediation plans is always a challenge. Since most people aren’t familiar with hazardous waste laws, science, and jargon, it is difficult to know if your environmental consultants are making recommendations that are in your best interest. And while their plans may be sound, it is often a good idea to get a second opinion.
What is environmental remediation?
Environmental remediation services involve providing solutions to contamination issues, and include removing contaminants from groundwater, surface water, sediment, or soil, including cleaning up after an oil spill. Remediation is very often a governmental requirement or regulation that has the intent to protect people and the environment from exposure to contamination and its potential harmful effects. Limiting exposure can also involve institutional controls such as a deed restriction where remediation is not feasible or cost-effective.
What is an environmental remediation second opinion?
A second opinion includes an independent assessment of an environmental project to evaluate if the proposed remedial action plan is appropriate and that once it is implemented, is progressing satisfactorily and helps to ensure that potential receptors are being protected. These services typically include review of the proposed work plan, laboratory analyses of duplicate samples, observation of field activities performed by cleanup contractors or other consultants, review of documents for technical completeness, and invoice review to evaluate if charges are customary and reasonable.
To illustrate the importance of a second opinion, consider the following: Tata & Howard provided a second opinion to a client who had made a non-refundable $4,000,000 down payment on a property in an industrial area of Boston, MA. Initial assessment by a prior consultant identified petroleum related compounds and styrene in indoor air, the source of which was, according to them, an underground storage tank (UST) located outside the building. Tata & Howard’s assessment indicated that the styrene was actually from an unrelated source inside the building and that a level of No Significant Risk existed for presence of the petroleum related compounds. Remedial action was not necessary to achieve a condition of No Significant Risk and the clients did not lose their $4,000,000 deposit. Read the complete case study here.
The previous example saved the buyers on a number of levels. First, they did not lose their deposit. Second, they didn’t have to invest in a costly remedial action plan. And third, their ability to move quickly forward with the closing saved on time — and we all know that time is money.
Conclusion
Getting a second opinion will not only better help you to understand your options, but will often help save you money. Tests and analyses may provide a second set of findings, and a fresh set of eyes can often develop an alternate course of action that requires less time and fewer resources. Every site is unique, and every consulting firm has its own methodology. However, not everyone realizes that in today’s competitive economy, it is imperative to identify solutions that are both cost-effective and that can be applied with minimal disturbance to your business activities.
Drinking water from a perfectly clean toilet at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California proves difficult for most visitors.
Would you drink water that was once used in the toilet? Chances are you just gave an emphatic “no”. But what if that water is actually so highly treated and processed that it is actually cleaner than the water currently coming out of most people’s taps? For the overwhelming majority of people, their answer is still that same emphatic “no”. Commonly referred to as the “yuck factor”, the idea of drinking recycled wastewater is simply too much for the human mind to overcome. However, climate change, population growth, and overuse have strained freshwater resources, and people may just need to change their way of thinking.
A Limited and Precious Resource
In the developed world, fresh water is taken for granted, when it is in fact a limited resource. About 97% of the Earth’s water is saltwater. More than two-thirds of the remaining fresh water is frozen in glaciers, which leaves less than 1% of the Earth’s water as fresh and available. In addition, the global population is growing astronomically at the same time that historic droughts plague Australia and the United States, two of the world’s largest water consumers. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix are three of the driest cities in America, and they are also experiencing some of the highest rates of population growth. Conservation isn’t working, water supplies are running dry, and the most drought-stricken areas are looking, albeit reluctantly, to reclaimed wastewater.
“When we talk about reclaimed wastewater, we’re not talking about something that’s simply at the level of convenience,” says David Feldman, a political scientist at the University of California at Irvine. “We’re really dealing with an issue that is going to be affecting every country, every society.” Avoiding future clashes over water, he says, will mean having to drink treated wastewater.
There is no doubt that we all drink water that has passed through a human or animal at some point. The Earth’s water is a finite resource that constantly cycles, and treated wastewater is frequently discharged into lakes and rivers that supply drinking water. But while most people have no problem drinking water from sources that have been augmented with treated wastewater, the thought of taking water flushed down the toilet and directly repurposing it into drinking water is a bit tough to, well…swallow.
Reclaimed Water Infographic – From Toilet to Tap. Feel free to share, with attribution.
Reclaimed Water Usage Today
Singapore is arguably the world’s most well-known and successful wastewater recycler. Their reclaimed water, branded as NEWater, supplies 15 percent of the population’s water, and is considered cleaner and purer than any tap water. In Australia, the city of Perth will receive up to 20% of its drinking water from reclaimed sources in coming decades. And, through public education and marketing efforts, the Perth project has a reported 76% public support.
Similar efforts are also in progress in the U.S. In San Diego, a 2004 survey indicated that 63 percent of county residents opposed adding treated wastewater to the drinking water supply. But as the drought has worsened and the population has grown, the city is running out of options. Therefore, the San Diego County Water Authority turned to community and environmental groups to help educate the public about the safety of recycled water, and in November, 2014, the San Diego City Council voted unanimously to advance a $2.5 billion plan to recycle wastewater. What’s more, recent polls show that opposition to reclaimed water has fallen to only 25 percent.
The Orange County Water District, which serves 2.4 million people in California, plans to boost production of recycled water next year from 70 million to 100 million gallons per day. And, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves 1.8 million people in the San Francisco Bay area, has decided to pursue construction of facilities to turn wastewater into drinking water for Sunnyvale and western Santa Clara County.
In Texas, the drought-stricken city of Wichita Falls has built a 13-mile pipeline that connects its wastewater plant directly to the plant where water is purified for drinking. In addition, the Colorado River Municipal Water District has been piping treated effluent from a wastewater treatment plant in Big Spring, Texas to a drinking-water plant that serves Big Spring, Snyder, Midland and Odessa for more than a year.
Explaining the Treatment Process
Education is the key to making recycled wastewater — or reclaimed water — more palatable, and explaining the process of water treatment is the most critical step in changing public opinion. When a person flushes a toilet, wastewater is carried through sewers to a municipal wastewater treatment plant. There, large solid material is separated from liquid with grates or bar screens. Next, the wastewater enters a settling tank where smaller solids fall out of solution and oils rise to the surface where they are skimmed off. The wastewater next moves to an aeration tank, where microbes feed on the waste and break it down. The water is then disinfected with chemicals such as bleach and chlorine. After an additional settling step, the treated water undergoes reverse osmosis where it passes through filters that remove even the tiniest of contaminants, like viruses or pharmaceuticals. Finally, the water is treated with ultraviolet light to fully disinfect the water by scrambling the DNA of anything that might still be living in it. This highly treated water is actually cleaner and more pure than most water currently pouring from our taps.
Getting Past the “Yuck Factor”
Technologies being developed today will make wastewater recycling more efficient and less expensive, but changing people’s opinion of drinking “toilet to tap” is the bigger challenge, experts say. Studies show that human beings naturally possess a strong aversion to consuming any food or drink that could possibly contain pathogens. However, there are some steps that can be taken to change public opinion. Adding an extra step in the treatment process, like discharging treated wastewater to a river that then carries it from one city to a drinking water treatment plant in another city, can eliminate the mental stigma. Discharging wastewater into rivers and aquifers instead of water pipes is more expensive but may be useful for gaining public acceptance. Public information campaigns that emphasize economic benefits, protection of U.S. water supplies, and personal safety can also increase public support. In addition, endorsement by a trusted group, like the Surfrider Foundation who helped raise support for wastewater reuse in San Diego, can also reduce stigma.
Running Out of Options
Population growth, depleted resources, climate change, and severe drought have all impacted our water supply. Reports have stated that California will run out of water by 2016. In Las Vegas, Lake Mead has shrunk to 60% of the size it was two decades ago. Wichita Falls, Texas is under a Stage 5 Drought Catastrophe. Conservation efforts have failed, our water supplies are drying up, and municipalities do not have the resources to supply enough water to the public. While the thought of drinking treated wastewater may be repugnant, it is only a matter of time before we run out of options. Notes Feldman, “I think between climate change, increased urbanization, and growing demands for food and energy, there’s really no way around reusing wastewater.” And unless something drastically changes, repurposing wastewater will not only be accepted in the future, but commonplace.
Since 2007, the American Heart Association has been celebrating National Walking Day on the first Wednesday in April. This year, it falls on April Fool’s Day, and while some pranksters will be affixing rubber bands to the kitchen faucet spray nozzle or staging fake spilled coffee in the break room, many individuals and corporations will be getting their smiles in a different way: walking.
Tata & Howard team members will be participating in National Walking Day for a myriad of reasons. A sedentary lifestyle has been shown to be as detrimental to one’s health as smoking, so finding ways to sneak in bouts of movement or exercise during the day has become a goal for many corporations. Corporate wellness programs very often include walking due to its ease of implementation and host of benefits. Walking is gentle, free, easy, and enjoyable, and people of all ages and abilities are able to participate. Walking just 30 minutes a day strengthens the heart, lowers the risk of diseases such as osteporosis, asthma, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some cancers, and it helps people lose or maintain weight. Another lesser-known benefit is that it boosts mood, and has been proven to be as effective in treating mild to moderate depression as anti-depressants.
At Tata & Howard, corporate wellness is a priority. In addition to issuing corporate walking challenges like the Massachusetts to California virtual walk, employees are supported and encouraged to also make small daily changes to improve health. Rather than emailing or calling, Tata & Howard team members usually walk to their co-workers and managers with questions. Standing desks are sprinkled throughout the office, and many employees can be seen checking their company-subsidized FitBit walker trackers throughout the day. In addition, Tata & Howard has participated in the Special Olympics spring, summer, and fall lunchtime 5Ks as well as the 20-mile Walk for Hunger in Boston, Massachusetts.
This year, on Sunday, May 3, 2015, Tata & Howard will once again be participating in the Walk for Hunger. The event, which starts and ends on Boston Common, includes a scenic route that winds through Boston, Brookline, Newton, Watertown, and Cambridge, past Boston College and Harvard University, and includes entertainment, food stations, and rest areas along the way. Started in 1969, it is the country’s oldest continual pledge walk and the largest one-day fundraiser focused on alleviating hunger. All monies raised go to Project Bread, an organization that provides healthy, nutritious food to those in need in the Commonwealth.
Participants in the 2014 Walk for Hunger
For National Walking Day, Tata & Howard is kicking off a month-long countdown to the Walk for Hunger. All offices will be lacing up their sneakers and taking some time from their day for a walk. Due to this past winter’s record-breaking snowfall in New England, many of us will be doing laps in our office buildings or marching about the parking lot, but we will all have one thing in common: we will be walking — for National Walking Day and to support the hungry. And that’s something we can all smile about.
Why Stormwater Runoff is a Serious Concern for Everyone
Winter if finally over, and spring is in the air. The snow has melted, flowers are blooming, and warmer, sunny days are upon us. But while we are all enjoying the balmier days, we also have to worry about a serious environmental concern: stormwater runoff.
Stormwater starts as precipitation – snow, sleet, and rain. When this precipitation lands on natural ground cover such as forests, grass, or gardens, it soaks into the ground and is filtered by layers of dirt and rock. This clean, filtered water finds its way to our groundwater and drinking water supply. The problem manifests when stormwater does not land on forests or gardens but instead washes off parking lots, roads, driveways, rooftops, and other hard surfaces, also known as impervious cover. Stormwater that picks up pollution, such as chemicals, oil, road salt, bacteria, sediment, sewage, and trash, then washes these pollutants into ditches and storm drains — and in turn into streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes — is referred to as stormwater runoff. And this spring we should expect an inordinate amount of stormwater runoff resulting from this past winter’s record snowfall.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has instituted stormwater regulations under its Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act aims to protect our nation’s water so that it is clean, drinkable, fishable, swimmable, and healthy. Three specific contaminants of concern are bacteria, phosphorus, and nitrogen, and they must be kept out of the water. Unfortunately, many of our nation’s rivers, streams, and lakes are already widely contaminated by these three pollutants.
According to the Massachusetts River Alliance, stormwater runoff is recognized by the EPA as the #1 source of water pollution in Massachusetts and the primary reason why more than half of its waterbodies are considered impaired. In Maine, stormwater runoff is one of the largest contributors to pollution in Casco Bay and other waterways, and only in July of 2022 received protections under Maine’s updated MS4 permit. In the Casco Bay watershed, it applies to twelve municipalities and regulates stormwater pollution in the most densely populated areas: Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, South Portland, Portland, Falmouth, Cumberland, Yarmouth, Freeport, Windham, Westbrook, and Gorham.
In Connecticut, stormwater is also a serious problem, where 70 percent of Connecticut’s fresh water bodies are unfit for swimming for part of the year, compared to a nationwide average of 55 percent — and it’s mostly due to stormwater pollution in Long Island Sound. Increases in extreme weather are also contributing to Connecticut’s ongoing stormwater problems.
Natural vs. Impervious CoverAlgae Bloom Eutrophication
And New England isn’t the only area of the country with problems. In Ohio and Michigan, Lake Erie continues to be heavily contaminated after several decades. Lake Erie gained notoriety after the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, and the Lake is credited as being the inspiration for both the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1974 as well as the creation of Earth Day. And while Lake Erie’s contamination was largely cleaned up in the 1990’s, it encountered even more serious problems in the new millennium. Algal blooms reappeared in the lake, and with this eutrophication came oxygen deprived dead zones, foul smells, and water too toxic to drink. Then in 2011, Lake Erie’s algal blooms hit a new record by growing to 5,000 square kilometers — or three times the previous record. Lake Erie’s algae blooms are now an annual threat to the health and drinking water of more than 11 million people, where each summer, communities and businesses around Lake Erie actively plan for toxic algae blooms.
Clearly, stormwater runoff directly causes a myriad of environmental issues. So how can we handle this serious problem? The fact is that there is no simple or quick solution. Addressing stormwater runoff will require a multi-faceted best practice approach that will involve every facet of the nation’s population. Reducing soil erosion, cleaning up pet waste, maintaining healthy septic systems, replacing deicers, improving agricultural practices, implementing cleaner automotive operations, instituting low impact design methodology, and increasing stormwater funding are just a few of the ways that we can begin to solve the problem. In the end, there is no natural resource more precious than water, and we must do everything in our power to protect it.
“When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.” – Ben Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac 1733
World Water Day is March 22, 2015, and the theme is Sustainable Development. But what exactly IS sustainable development? It was first defined by the Brundtland Commission in 1983:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
More recently, University of Maryland School of Public Policy professor and former Chief Economist for the World Bank Herman E. Daly proposed the following three rules for sustainability:
Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate.
Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable substitutes for them can be put into place.
Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle them, or render them harmless.
While sustainable development always includes the global effort to provide clean water and sanitation to the world’s population, it also requires developed nations to implement efficient technologies and to protect existing resources by addressing threats and incorporating conservation strategies into daily life. Consider these facts:
Less than 1 percent of the world’s fresh water is usable in a renewable fashion
The average person requires 1.3 gallons of water per day just to survive, while the amount of water needed for all daily tasks – like drinking, cooking, bathing, and sanitation – is 13 gallons
The average American uses 65 to 78 gallons of water per day for drinking, cooking, bathing, and watering their yard; the average Dutch uses only 27 gallons per day for the same tasks
The average Gambian uses only 1.17 gallons of water per day
America is one of the world’s largest consumers of water, and to do our part towards sustainable development, we must begin by modifying our domestic water usage.
Efficiency – the Most Effective Method of Conservation
By implementing indoor residential conversation techniques, we could meet the water needs of over five million people by the year 2020, and by incorporating efficient irrigation techniques, we could save enough water to meet the needs of an additional 3.6 million people. In addition, if we were to also invest in our nation’s water infrastructure and supply to incorporate efficient technologies to reduce water loss, we would be able to meet all of our domestic water needs — agricultural, industrial, and residential. This would result in easing the stress on our natural resources as well as saving enough water to guard against another concern: climate change.
Climate Change in the United States – An Imminent Threat
Climate change increases the risk of extreme weather, such as droughts and floods, and alters the timing and location of precipitation. For example, climate change has the potential to alter snowfall and snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, and Pacific Northwest. Any alteration in snowfall or snowmelt will cause changes in timing and volume of runoff, resulting in flooding in the winter and drought in the summer. In addition, coastal aquifers and water supplies in areas such as Cape Cod, Long Island, the coastal Carolinas, and central coastal California are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change. Other products of climate change — such as higher water temperature in lakes and streams, melting permafrost, and reduced water clarity — have the potential to critically threaten fish and water-dwelling animals as well harm wetlands and other water habitats. Climate change has the potential to drastically alter our nation’s weather patterns and geological landscape, and any delays in addressing climate change and in planning effective strategies for the impending changes could severely threaten our nation’s water supplies. Clearly, addressing climate change now is one of the key components to sustainable development.
While the global focus of sustainable development needs to be on providing access to clean water and sanitation for everyone, we also need to look within our own borders and change the way we think about water and our natural resources. Unless we institute positive change and focus on conservation by implementing efficient technologies and practices, we will likely find ourselves facing dire consequences. As Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, stated so eloquently, “The best way to solve emerging threats to the world’s fresh water is by rethinking how we use and manage our scarce resources. We must look at ways to increase our efficiency of use, instead of just building more dams and reservoirs. Improving the efficiency of our water systems, taking real steps to tackle global warming, and opening the policy debate over water to new voices can help turn the tide.”
A “snow farm” located in Boston Harbor. When it all melts where will it go?
If you’re in New England this year, the only thing on people’s minds – apart from the Patriots’ Superbowl win – is the extreme snow fall we’ve faced.
Cities around the region are reaching record-breaking snow accumulation resulting in budget-breaking snow clean up for cities and towns. What’s got most officials worried is that it’s only February. Winter here in New England has a long way to go.
In Boston, a harbor city, with historically narrow and windy streets, crews are running out of places to put the snow. Streets are becoming impassable, sidewalks are nearly non-existent. Traffic is slowing to a halt, trains are freezing on the rails, creating difficult and dangerous traveling conditions for all.
When conditions go beyond salting and plowing, some municipalities use diesel-powered snow melters to dispose of the snow. Massachusetts’ Governor, Charlie Baker announced that the state has bought two of these to help with condition across the state. These machines are costly, but provide a slow, but guarantee of snow removal. But with the amount of snow the entire state has faced in recent weeks, snow melters will take a long time to whittle away at all the piles. Coastal cities, like Boston, are considering another dramatic option – plowing snow into the ocean. While this option is equally successful at getting rid of snow, it could potentially be more expensive in the long run.
While the act of dumping snow into the ocean has long been banned, there is the option for cities and towns to request a waiver from the state in situations where the accumulated snow poses a danger to the public. However this has now become a very difficult debate for officials to maneuver – one of protecting public health no matter what side of the debate you are on.
It’s important to remember that dumping snow into the ocean is nothing like the snow that falls into the ocean during a snow storm. Plowed snow is snow that has been dragged through the streets, always with large amounts of salt, oil, and any other debris left on the roads. That pollutes the ocean, and so can only be done if the snow constitutes a danger to public health — a point, some argue, Boston has approached.
But doesn’t that debris and pollution enter the ocean when the snow melts and drain through the storm drains?
The short answer is, “Yes”. Paul Levy, the first director of the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority, writes that he thinks it’s pretty silly to let Boston build up the snow in giant snow farms right near the water, but not let the city push the snow into the harbor – when it’s going to melt into the water anyway. Forcing the city to create snow mountains only means wasting time that could be better spent getting rid of snow from increasingly clogged streets, he says in a blog post.
In a response to his original call for ocean dumping, Levy commented, “I’m not suggesting we make a habit out of it. I’m suggesting that when you have an emergency situation, with gridlock on the streets, extraordinary measures are called for. It’s just a matter of time before someone dies because an ambulance can’t get there; or a person slips off a snowbank in front of a car or truck, or isn’t seen walking on the street and gets flattened, or whatever. If doing the harbor disposal for a day or two could expedite the street cleaning, it’s worth a bit of environmental degradation. After all, we engage in environmental protection, at least in part, as a public health measure. If we are too pure about that, we can end up causing a different kind of public health problem.”
With more snow expected this week, the debate will continue whether to dump or not to dump. Until it melts, we New Englanders, naturally a hardy group, will just continue to cry “Uncle” to Mother Nature.
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