Goals:

Interface with public and private stakeholders including other NGOs, market vendors, planners and project managers to facilitate innovative technological improvements.

Analyze and evaluate the potential value of the various water protection, pollution abatement and improvement technologies under consideration by the entity.

Assess the merits of key, critical practices that integrate and implement these prevention and protection technologies into project logistics during demolition and grading, including build-out and most importantly post-construction impact phases respectively.

Best Management Practices (BMPs): Pollution control measures that include the human operators as well as infrastructure, i.e., engineered protection programs that insure Clean Water Act compliance at Points of Discharge (POD).

Best Conventional Technologies (BCTs): These are the time-honored, safe ones, used in some cases for thousands of years. Simple, low-tech choices like sand (permeable and semi-permeable filtration), or the emerging nano-filtration membranes to remove/reduce unwanted pollutant particulates before the POD.

Best Available Technologies (BATs): These are the 2nd tier or level of treatment, the ones presently approved and already in use by water-related industries. Many have advanced, multiple BCT and BAT elements working conjunctively as treatment trains. The most commonly used are Reverse Osmosis (RO), Ultraviolet (UV), etc. that sterilize and cleanse water to EPA standards.

Best Emerging Technologies (BETs): These are the cutting edge ones like the newest desalination strategies. They use nanotechnology and at times advanced telemetry systems, that is, materials, and in some cases almost space age devices and structures. Many are going through in situ pilot and demonstration project phases. Some are privately funded (capitalist venture technologies), some are funded via grants, and some a combination of both.

Contact our subcommittee if you’re interested in an assessment of your existing or proposed project. Often, less expensive or complicated retrofitting of your facility or project to do your fair share for the environment can accomplish more than you’d imagine.

Contacts:

Roger E. Bütow roger@clean-water-now.org