"Services Balancing Growth with Optimization"
The 52nd Annual Conference of the Western Canada Water and Wastewater Association, the 22nd Annual Conference of the Canadian Public Works Association, Manitoba Chapter, and the Annual SWANA Conference, will be jointly held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, November 5-8, 2000.
This conference includes the participation of the Western Canada Section - AWWA, the Western Canada Water Environment Federation, and the Municipal Service and Suppliers Association.
The conference will include over fifty papers being presented over the three days. The pre-conference workshops offer experts in their respected fields that will both challenge and educate the conference delegates. The Trade Show promises to be the biggest ever, with over 100 displays. Something new has been added this year, as the trade show participants will be holding classroom information sessions throughout the conference.
For more information, contact: WCWWA, #203 - 301, 14th Street N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T2N 2A1. Toll free: 1-877-283-2003, E-mail: member@wcwwa.ca, Web site: www.wcwwa.ca.
Eaglebrook, Inc. has entered into a strategic alliance with Applied Biosciences Corp. of Ogden, Utah. The alliance will present solutions for the treatment of wastewater, derived from a technology combining chemical and biological products. Clients using iron and aluminum based coagulants supplied by Eaglebrook now have access to cutting-edge bioprocess and bioremediation technologies.
Applied Biosciences is an environmental biotechnology company providing microbial and enzyme-based solutions for removal of metals, and other inorganics in water and solids. Applied Biosciences currently markets bioprocesses for selenium removal, arsenic stabilization/removal, and cyanide and nitrate degradation.
You can tell a lot about a person's socio-economic status and political beliefs by how they maintain their lawn, says Allan Greenbaum in his Sociology Ph.D. dissertation, The Lawn as a Site for Environmental Conflict. He says the recent stir over a Toronto resident, who was fined because of his unkept lawn, exemplifies the polarization between those who advocate natural, pesticide-free, untamed lawns and gardens, and those who strive for the perfect "golf course", weed-free lawn.
Greenbaum's research shows that people engaged in creative occupations such as writers, teachers, and artists, most often prefer natural lawns, and lean toward social democratic principles associated with the political left. Business and Bay Street professionals, on the other hand, prefer the uniformity of the perfectly manicured lawn, and lean toward the fiscal conservatism of the right.
The National Biosolids Partnership (NBP), a not-for-profit consortium of the Water Environment Federation (WEF), Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), launched its Web site: www.biosolids.org on July 26, 2000. The NBP goal is to advance environmentally sound and accepted management practices for biosolids.
Smog will cause 1,900 deaths across Ontario, draining the health care system and economy of more than $1-billion says the Ontario Medical Association. That yellow halo surrounding large cities such as Toronto - commonly known as smog - contains harmful sulphur and nitrogen oxide, according to York University Environmental Studies Professor Grant Sheng. He says increased vehicle use and coal-fired electric generation plants are among the root causes of our air pollution problems. "If this chemical soup can peel paint and erode concrete, think of what it is doing to our lungs," he says.
The federal Minister of the Environment, David Anderson, presented environmental certificates to five companies for their successful completion of Canada's Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program. The ETV Program verifies specific technologies and provides vendors and buyers with the assurance that a technology performs as originally proposed. Recipients of Canada's ETV certificates are: Stormceptor (Ontario), Eco Waste Solutions, (Ontario), Clean Cam Technology Systems (California), Regenesis (Illinois), and Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (China).
Established by Environment Canada and Industry Canada in 1997, the ETV Program accelerates the introduction and application of innovative technologies to address Canada's environmental priorities. At present, 26 companies have received Canadian ETV certificates; 22 of these are Canadian, three from the United States, and one from China.
The Ministry of the Environment has issued 72 orders to water treatment plants, requiring them to take corrective action to meet provincial requirements. Further orders are pending. As of July 21, the Ministry had completed inspections of 241 of the province's 630 water treatment plants, and found deficiencies at 131 of them. The remaining plants will be inspected by the end of the year.
The four most common reasons water treatment plants were found deficient by ministry inspectors were:
In his plenary address, presented at the Vent 2000 Conference in Helsinki entitled Milestones in Industrial Ventilation Research, Howard D. Goodfellow, Ph.D., P.Eng., gave his audience a surprising flashback to ancient ventilation systems.
He said that ventilation systems for contaminant control have been in operation for centuries, and quoted the Americana Reference Book of 1904-1908.
"In the matter of ventilation, we may learn wisdom from the practice of the ancients. We pump air from the cellar, the depositorium of noxious gases. They admitted it through the roof, the highest point of atmospheric purity. From time immemorial in Egypt, the air was allowed to blow in at the topic of the house through large funnels. This method is continually employed on ships at sea, our first record thereof having been proposed by Desaquliers, in 1734 A.D. - the forcing of fresh air in to force foul air out."
Dr. Goodfellow is VP, Stantec Global Technologies Ltd., and a member of ES&E's Editorial Advisory Board.