Science-based Adaptive Management: The Path for Cape Cod's Wastewater
• Friday, October 1, 2010, 9am-3pm with lunch included
• Sponsored by Rep. Matt Patrick, Clean Water Action, Coalition for Alternative Wastewater Treatment, Sierra Club's Cape Cod and Islands Chapter
• Cape Cod Community College, Lorusso Applied Technology Building, 2nd Floor
o 2240 Iyannough Road (Route 132)
West Barnstable, MA 02668
The US EPA Administrator has announced the Agency's support for Science and Adaptive Management as the approach needed to protect America's waters, saying recently "Stronger protections are going to have to be met with new ideas and cost-effective strategies. If we want our waters to work harder, we have to work smarter."

At a June 25, 2010 Massachusetts DEP Hearing, CWA and allied environmental and engineering organizations provided written comments and oral testimony. Efforts by CWA and allies were to raise the score on ratings assigned to Green Reserve projects by the MA DEP State Revolving Fund (SRF) staff, which in turn determines which infrastructure projects receive State Revolving Funds in the next fiscal year.

Additionally, state delegates from the Cape Cod area submitted comments that the state should do more to encourage innovative wastewater technologies than is currently the practice.

I'm pleased to introduce the Massachusetts Smart, Clean, Green Water Infrastructure Network site. The site is a work-in-progress, intended to grow with your input. Please let us hear from you.

SmartCleanGreen.org hosts a multi-sector network dedicated to researching, designing, advancing, and funding a 21st century restorative approach to water system planning, design, and management. We strive to provide for infrastructure and services in a way that maximizes benefits for our environment, economy, and society. We are architects, engineers, academics, advocates, planners, regulators, legislators, contractors, consultants, clean tech manufacturers, and more. We hope that YOU are part of it, too.

Traditional large-scale systems for supplying drinking water, treating wastewater, and handling storm water for cities and towns -- conventional centralized "big pipe" systems and infrastructure -- use and waste too much energy and too much water. They are causing long-term ecosystem disruption such as "de-watering" even relatively water-rich regions such as the Northeast.

The genius of science and design in the 21st Century is the discovery of Smart, Clean, and Green ways to capture the value of resources. Smart because they unlock the complex designs of nature and use information and signaling to achieve efficiencies. Clean because they capture and use resources and methods that don't involve significant externalities in extraction or disposal. And, Green because they rely to a much higher degree on vegetation and in the process begin to restore the natural ecosystem and its wide and deep benefits.

We know that Massachusetts has a great innovative spirit and capable brainpower, and looks forward to setting the pace for innovations in the direction of truly sustainable water approaches.

Becky Smith
Water Organizer
Clean Water Action
Clean Water Fund

Brent is the Public Health Director for the Town of Concord, Massachusetts.

In addition to his work with the Town of Concord, Brent is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association, and the Massachusetts Health Officers Association, and is Vice-Chair of the Onsite Wastewater Section for the National
Environmental Health Association.

He represents all 351 local health departments in Massachusetts on a variety of water resources and wastewater-related committees at the State level, including those responsible for the drafting of revisions to Groundwater Discharge Regulations, Wastewater Reuse Regulations, and Title 5 (onsite wastewater system regulations).

Becky is the Massachusetts Water Program Coordinator for Clean Water Action and Clean Water Fund, Inc.

She has worked with CWF since 2001. Recent projects include assembling a multi-sector network in Massachusetts to support innovative and alternative approaches to integrated water and energy resource management to protect both water and human ecosystems.

Her work at the local, state, and federal level includes presentations on sustainable options for next generations of infrastructure; support for initiatives such as the Clean Water Restoration Act; and pursuing Clean Water Act protections for waters here in Massachusetts. Ms. Smith is an advisor to DEP's Safe Drinking Water Advisory Committee, the Water Management Act Advisory Committee, and also serves as a Commissioner on the Governor's Water Infrastructure Finance Commission.

If you are reading this profile, you are already visiting one of her latest projects, the new SmartCleanGreen website, so thanks! If you'd like to be featured here as a member, and display projects of your own, please contact her at bsmith at cleanwater dot org or 617.338.8131 x 210

Since 1972, David Del Porto has been a practitioner and advocate of building integrated water efficiency and pollution prevention using the ecological paradigm as a template. His solar-heated home in Newton, Massachusetts incorporates these principles as it provides space heat, food production, air purification and wastewater treatment all within an attached two-story greenhouse of his design. He developed the patent pending technology for the on-site utilization of wastewater for growing valuable plants in a zero-discharge system now trademarked as the EcocyclET^TM

David is a guest lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Minnesota, Milwaukee School of Engineering and other institutions of higher learning.  He has advised on projects for Ford Motor Company, Greenpeace International, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, and the Department of the Interior, the Republics of Fiji and Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, public agencies, institutions, municipalities, private companies and individual property owners.

In 2002, David founded the Ecological Engineering Group which incorporates
planning, engineering, architecture, construction management and operation services under one corporate roof. Among many on-site systems, EEG has completed the design and construction of a 27,500-gallon-per-day Solar Aquatic System, a greenhouse-based advanced tertiary wastewater treatment for ground water discharge.

He serves on the NSF International Joint Committee on Wastewater Technology Committee of with whom he co-authors performance standards for wastewater treatment technologies. He also serves on the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority's Citizen Advisory Committee.

He has been published in numerous conferences and hearing proceedings, books, professional journals, environmental encyclopedias and government publications, and has written a definitive reference book on ecological sanitation and gray water use. His latest published works are the chapter "Urban and Industrial Watersheds and Ecological Sanitation- Two sustainable strategies for on-site urban water management," Rogers, P., Llamas, R., Martinez-Cortina, L., Ed., Water Crisis - Myth or Reality, Taylor & Francis/Balkema plc, London, UK 2006 and Reusing the Resource - Adventures in ecological wastewater recycling, Steinfeld, C and Del Porto, D, Ecowaters Books, Concord, Massachusetts, 2008.

It has been reported that it takes 1,200 gallons of water per capita per day to operate the
U.S. economy but worldwide, the human population only consumes less then 1 gallon of water per capita per day.

It is clear from this fact that water reuse offers tremendous opportunity to reduce our impacts on water resources because theoretically all but the 1 gallon per capita per day can be readily reused.  Edward Clerico, President of Alliance Environmental, Inc. gave testimony  to the Federal Government Subcommittee on Energy and Environment on Water Re-use.

The Future of Water Re-use in America 

The Current Status of Water Re-use

Water Resource Program: Water Footprinting & Water Wise

Why Water Footprints Make Green Business Sense

Environmental Business Council, New England, Inc.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Emerging Enterprise Center at Foley Hoag
Bay Colony Corporate Center
1000 Winter Street
Suite 4000, North Entrance
Waltham, MA 02451

Businesses are becoming more aware of the need to reduce, reuse and recycle as a mantra for being serious about sustainability and the green economy. This is especially true of energy and water resources where limitations on potable water use and conservation measures are becoming more important to consumers, businesses and industry here in Massachusetts. The need to become more water wise is apparent in several Massachusetts watersheds that have been overstressed due to depletion of groundwater and surface water supplies or have restrictions placed on seasonal water demands. This EBC program will provide information on the development of a water footprint for a business leading to a process to reduce the amount of water consumed. Case studies will provide examples of facilities that have developed a vision for sustainable water resource management and then expanded that vision to include the promotion of green business practices.

Agenda, Speakers and Presentations

The following report highlights a project developed to enhance and strengthen the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in defining and implementing a new water infrastructure paradigm. Sustainable water management will increasingly incorporate new systems that use, treat, store and reuse water efficiently at small scales and that blend designs into restorative water hydrologies.

 NGOs:  Enhancing Their Role in Advancing the New Water Infrastructure Paradigm

The report was prepared as part of the National Decentralized Water Resources Capacity
Development Project (NDWRCDP)  and was funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through a cooperative agreement with the Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF).