Category Archives: Sanitation History

World Environmental Health Day – 6 session seminar September 26, 2014

wehday

Every Body Deserves A Decent Throne:
Crossing the Sanitation Divide – Past, Present and Future.

Six session seminar series provided at no charge through Google Hangouts On Air.

Session 1. 10- 10.45 am ET
https://plus.google.com/events/c5a8pagbtudisb61rk20uf4523k

Dendra Best will look at the history of sanitation in the US and how that has shaped the technology of infrastructure ever since.

Session 2. 11 – 11.45 am ET https://plus.google.com/events/c2j07kdvnstis05ijsmkidjhip0

Patrick Lucey – why traditional infrastructure is now unsustainable. His bio can be found at the aqua-tex.ca web site.
See: http://aqua-tex.ca/index.php?id=2&press=1&draw_column=1:1:2

Session 3. 11.50 am ET – 12.40 pm ET
https://plus.google.com/events/cbp6bl8rf77e3kmgbufender4ak

Patrick Lucey – successful case studies of sustainable integrated water systems from Canada and the US.

Break for Lunch

Session 4. 1.30 – 2.30 pm ET
https://plus.google.com/events/cpb2ea4j9o2cqn3500jirsqukso

The reality of Sierra Leone and Guinea – Derek Reinhard and the work of DeeperMissions.org

The theme for Environmental Health Day 2014 is inequality of access. Not only does DeeperMissions work in one of the poorest regions in west Africa, it now has to deal with the massive Ebola epidemic

Session 5. 2.40pm ET – 3.20pm ET
https://plus.google.com/events/c1s6h0ajh5obbe4kgsom5oq70i8

Patrick Lucey. A better future: how to export 21st. century knowledge not 19th century thinking.

If the problem is massive, is this the time to rethink how we provide basic sanitation and clean drinking water systems both here in the West and in developing countries? The environmental, weather and financial climate is a whole new ball game from when most of these technologies were the norm. What kind of legacy are we creating for our children or grandchildren if we keep on doing the same thing?

Session 6. 3.45pm ET – 4.30pm ET
https://plus.google.com/events/c9al5e9p3j3n5mmabovd78diksg

CollaborativeWaterSolutions.com Team – relevance to both small rural communities in CA and the US as well as Haiti, Africa and S. America.

Culture, demographics, access to support structures and expertise – all play a vital role in ensuring whatever is proposed as the ‘ideal’ solution will actually be feasible AND workable in the long run. So often planning is something that is done TO a community not WITH it.

Collaborative Water Solutions was created to build on the stellar work done by Water Environment Research Foundation where a team developed the Small Community Decision Making Tool to help local leaders determine their own best options for wastewater service.

December 17 | This Day in Water History

December 17 | This Day in Water History.

via December 17 | This Day in Water History.

December 17

1217 Imhoff TankDecember 17, 1914:  Municipal Journal article—Small Sewage Treatment Plant. “The Home for the Indigent of Delaware County, Pa., is located in Middletown Township, near the village of Lima, and on the main highway leading from Media to West Chester, Pa. There are usually about 125 inmates the home, although during the winter months the number runs higher.

December 3 | This Day in Water History

December 3 | This Day in Water History.

via December 3 | This Day in Water History.

 

Ellen Swallow RichardsDecember 3, 1842Ellen Swallow Richards was born. “Ellen Swallow Richards is perhaps best known as MIT’s first female graduate and instructor, but launching coeducation at the Institute is merely the first in a long list of her pioneering feats. The breadth and depth of her career are astounding; a 1910 tribute in La Follette’s Weekly Magazine professed that ‘when one attempts to tell of the enterprises, apart from her formal teaching, of which Mrs. Richards has been a part or the whole, he is lost in a bewildering maze.’ Authors and scholars have called her the founder of ecology, the first female environmental engineer, and the founder of home economics. Richards opened the first laboratory for women, created the world’s first water purity tables, developed the world standard for evaporation tests on volatile oils, conducted the first consumer-product tests, and discovered a new method to determine the amount of nickel in ore. And that’s just the short list of her accomplishments. In a nod to Richards’s remarkable knowledge and interests, her sister-in-law called her ‘Ellencyclopedia….’