About The Buzz
We all know that man is not an island. Most of us don’t work inside a bubble, and so our professional responsibilities often bleed into places that are not officially “in our job description.” With that in mind, we’re introducing a new feature-The Buzz. As you may or may not know, Forester Media Inc. (our parent company) publishes six national publications that focus on everything from stormwater management to municipal solid waste to energy efficiency. Because of the overlap that occurs between many of the industries served by our magazines, we often find that the insight provided by the editor or contributors of one publication is relevant to a wide swathe of our national audience. From time to time, we will highlight some of these crossover pieces in the pages of our magazine, and we hope that this industry “buzz” will give you some new outlooks, different perspectives, and an even more access to the tools and information you need.
By John Trotti
From the MSW Management Editor’s Blog
On February 89 of this year, I attended an Energy and Facilities Management Workshop put on by the Society of American Military Engineers and the International Facilities Management Association. If you’re not familiar with either, or both, allow me to suggest that you Google the two and consider establishing contact with them, as it may be to your advantage.
Here’s the deal in a nutshell. The DoD is under the gun to reduce the energy needs of itself and its offspring. To put things in perspective, the federal government consumes 1% of US energy (or 1,096 trillion Btu), of which 80% (819 trillion Btu) is consumed by the DoD. In order to achieve a more sustainable posture, it intends to accomplish the
following:
- Produce or procure renewable energy equal to 25% of electrical energy consumed by FY2025
- Purchase renewable electricity: 3% in FY2007FY2009; 5% in FY2010FY2012; and 7.5% in FY2013 and thereafter
- At least 50% of statutory (EPAct) goals come from “new” renewable sources placed into service after January 1, 1999.
Bound by the same requirements, the services have their own individual programs to achieve them:
Air Force the “Big 3″ goals
- Energy intensity (Btu used per square foot of facility space): reduce intensity 3% per year; baseline in 2003
- Water intensity (gallons used per square foot of facility space): reduce intensity 2% per year; baseline in 2007
- Renewable energy (renewable energy used compared with total electrical energy used): escalating scale; 5% goal in 2011
Navy
- By 2020, 50% of total department energy consumption will come from alternative sources.
- By 2020, at least 50% of shore-based energy requirements will be met by alternative sources, and 50% of department installations will be net zero.
- By 2015, department will reduce petroleum use by 50%.
- Evaluation of energy factors will be mandatory in awarding contracts for systems and buildings.
Army
- At least 50% of statutory (EPAct) goals come from “new” renewable sources placed into service after January 1, 1999.
- Net zero energy installation produces as much energy as it uses over the course of a year.
- Net zero waste installation reduces, reuses, and recovers wastestreams, converting them to resource values with zero solid waste to landfills.
- Net zero water installation limits the consumption of freshwater resources and returns water back to the same watershed so as not to deplete the groundwater and surface water resources of the region in both quantity and quality.
- A net zero installation applies an integrated approach to the management of energy, water, and waste to capture and commercialize the resource value and/or enhance the ecological productivity of land, water, and air.
The question before us is whether there’s a role for us to play in these initiatives, and I feel the answer is yes.
In this regard, let me offer one potential scenario and ask that you build on it or shoot it full of holes, but regardless of your tack, I’d like you to consider the situation and give me your feedback.
Scenario
Contract with a military facility in your area to provide it with feedstock for energy production based on waste delivered to your publicly owned and operated facility whose reliability is achieved through flow control. In turn, the military facility contracts with an energy provider to produce energy from this feedstock. By contracting to purchase both the feedstock and energy, the military facility provides both entities with the basis for funding their facilities and operations.
John Trotti is the editor of MSW Management and Grading and Excavation Contractor.
Water Management and Energy Efficiency
By Carol Brzozowski, as a special assignment for Water Efficiency
Bradley Udall is the director of the University of Colorado-NOAA Western Water Assessment, where he studies the impacts of climate change on the western US. Udall says he believes the most important issues, going forward, center on climate and water, nitrogen and other biochemical cycles, water and water quality, and the water-energy nexus.
In fact, many experts believe that when it comes to scarcity issues and resource management, significant focus needs to be placed on the water-energy nexus. “It takes a huge amount of water to produce the energy this country requires, not only for cooling, but for other things such as production and fracking,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. (At the time of this writing, and after his appearance on the panel discussion, Gleick had taken a short-term leave of absence from his position as president after admitting to a lapse in judgment in the way in which he obtained information from the Heartland Institute about its climate program). “It’s a big story, and it’s going to be a bigger story for the next year or two.”
And while it may seem unrelated to energy efficiency, the truth is that because many municipalities throughout the United States, such as Toledo, OH, struggle with an aging infrastructure against the backdrop of an increasing number of people slipping below the middle class into the poverty line, all areas related to water resource management-including the water needed for generation and the energy needed for water collection, treatment, and delivery-are affected. “We built a system with centralized cities, massive generation, and concentrations of human and industrial waste,” says Gleick.
He continues: “We need to replace the old centralized plants not with entirely decentralized systems, but sometimes with new centralized plants that are smaller, more energy-efficient, and remove the pharmaceuticals we now find in our water systems that we didn’t know were there before. I’m looking for a mix that builds on the systems we already have, but takes advantage of the new, broader thinking.
“All of us pay less money for water than we pay for the Internet, cell phones, landlines, cable TV and energy separately,” declares Gleick. “Water is the cheapest of our bills, and yet, arguably, a smart municipality would be able to explain that they don’t want the roof falling in on the treatment plant, or bad water coming out of our taps, or the flushed toilet water ending up in Lake Erie untreated. If we’re willing to pay for the services we want, then it’s easier to do those things.”
In the 20th century, the water management focus was on supply, Gleick points out. But there are physical limits on how much available water can be used.
“Economically, it’s about how much money we have and are willing to spend on certain things,” he explains. “What we care about is how to build traditional water infrastructure because we weren’t paying attention to the environment. So what do you do?”
Director of Water Alliance Valerie Nelson’s experiences with the Australian Institutes inform her perspective on the issue, and she notes that “still acting out of an old approach” proves ineffective in addressing challenges. “There are challenges at desalination plants with the same old, very large industrial scale, and are expensive and have the side effects of the brine,” she says. “There’s a huge groundswell about green infrastructure and new subdivisions, including water efficiency in the home, reuse of rainwater, recycling of wastewater, and energy recovery.”
Gleick-who promotes “soft path, non-traditional technology” but adds that he doesn’t advocate getting rid of existing infrastructure-believes there is enough money for water funding. “I know there are money problems, but I think it’s a priority policy question, not an absolute shortage of money,” he says.
Nelson sees the problem of degraded infrastructure as an opportunity for change. “China is building cities with whole new ideas. They won’t build those water and sewer systems in the way cities like Toledo did,” she says. “Why should America throw all this money at rebuilding the way it used to be done when other countries are recognizing that’s not the way to do it? Maybe Toledo and other cities should think about new and better ways to get much more value for the community.”
Another issue that arises in communities is one community pumping water from another, which some may criticize as taking from future demands.
Nelson says it speaks to the idea of getting away from the use of large pipes and reservoirs and moving toward natural-based systems, of which there are examples nationwide.
“The Charles River Watershed Association believes in a lot of recycling and reuse,” she says. “Littleton, Colorado is looking at managing water locally with a lot more reuse of greywater, blackwater, and energy recovery. Can you capture rainwater locally? Shouldn’t you be infiltrating locally? Instead of building “these big concrete systems that break down”, the community gets cooling benefits, cleansing benefits, nutrient recovery, and energy recovery.
Nelson argues that to deal with water scarcity and climate change, “we need an entirely different approach than the one we relied on in the 20th century. The way we manage water is not working.”
She cites Philadelphia as an example of using a natural systems-based approach to deal with stormwater. “That delivers huge benefits of air quality, recreation space, and kids learn more,” she says. “Green infrastructure is a great bonanza of community benefits. There are profit centers in wastewater. We’re throwing away the organic energy and the value of nutrients in wastewater.
“One of the biggest stories in the profession is the connection of water and energy. It’s not just how much use there is, but the capacity of resource recovery. In the water and wastewater field, there is huge potential for changing the economics completely and those are being installed in the United States.”
Carol Brzozowski writes on topics of technology and resource management.
Too Easy Being Green
By Janice Kaspersen
From the Stormwater Editor’s Blog
For all of us who’ve ever felt a little smug (and even trendy) about doing the right things for the environment, the article “It’s Too Easy Being Green,” by David Owen, is a gentle poke in the ribs. Its premise is that many middle-class or affluent people feel better about themselves for such acts as buying a new fuel-efficient car or for becoming “locavores”-eating only food that’s produced within a short distance of where it’s consumed, thereby saving energy costs to transport it. But the author cautions against false savings and hidden costs to the environment: “Locavorism is appealing, because it feels enlightened but entails no actual sacrifice. A colleague of mine produces her own eggs by raising chickens in her backyard. But she also drives individual hens to the veterinarian, giving her breakfasts an impressively huge carbon footprint.”
Consumption itself, he argues, is the problem. He cites a flight he recently took from Melbourne to New York; each passenger’s share of the fuel consumed on that single flight was “greater than the total amount of energy that the average resident of the Earth uses, for all purposes, in a year.” The solution, he says, isn’t to make planes more fuel efficient but to travel less. And this applies to everything from vehicles (forget the Prius and use public transportation instead, he advises) to more-efficient lighting.
How does this view apply to our own field? Take the problem of combined sewer overflows (CSOs), for example. It’s now common practice in many places to use green infrastructure to reduce CSOs and avoid or delay the building of new treatment plants. This is a welcome trend, economically and environmentally. If the pace of development continues, though, eventually all the bioswales and permeable pavements and other infiltration measures won’t be enough to offset the increased runoff. What’s the solution? We can’t cause it to rain less. Two possible remedies-either using less water for household, commercial, industrial, and irrigation needs, and therefore sending less of it to the sanitary sewer system, or else limiting the amount or type of development that’s allowed-are beyond the scope of the stormwater manager.
Janice Kaspersen is the editor of Stormwater and Erosion Control.
