Sustain-ablility

Sustainable development of wastewater infrastructure, GT Daigger, D Burack, V Rubino

Wastewater management and sustainability, GT Daigger, D Burack, V Rubino

Pollution prevention applies to wastewater treatment, KN Irvine, TR Hersey Jr, MC Rossi, J Caruso, JE Jordan

Educating for sustainability, A Ahmadi

Energize with state-of-the-art technologies, BR Klett, RJ Wilson

Sustainability for New York's drinking water, TA Endreny

The “greening” of the building industry, MA Stallone

Water conservation in a water-intensive industry, G. Wainwright

Sustainable design at NYCDEP, P Zimmerman, J Tyler, VJ DeSantis,N Ramanan

People and places

Fall 2001 — Vol. 31, No. 3

by Glen T. Daigger, Dave Burack, and Vincent Rubino

Sustainable development is an emerging mechanism for considering the broad environmental and social effects of population growth, economic and technical development, and resource depletion. While embraced by several government agencies and progressive businesses, application of the sustainable development approach is slower for the water and wastewater sectors. Professionals in these fields should be introduced to the objectives of sustainable development and to why the objectives are useful in their daily activities.

Definition and the four system conditions

Sustainable development is an approach to decision making and actions in response to the documented trends caused by overpopulation, improved technology, and resultant overuse of natural resources. These documented trends show that the natural world—particularly living systems—is becoming increasingly impaired everywhere on the planet. The earth's capacity to provide humans with the vital services needed for quality of life is in jeopardy. Yet this trend need not continue.

“The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems that cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.” ——Albert Einstein

Sustainable development is an avenue for creating new thinking processes and approaches to meeting our needs without conflict among environmental health, human well-being, and the economic bottom line. Much depends, however, on what is included in the management framework of an organization. Traditional management theory emphasizes political, economic, social, and technological aspects to the virtual exclusion of the natural environment. With the exponential increase in human population and its technology, human society has become an evolutionary force on this planet. The challenge is to integrate the natural environment into the organizational framework.

It may appear that the wastewater sector integrates the environment in its practices more so than most sectors, yet a sustainable development approach reveals that there is more work to be done and more benefits to be attained.

Sustainable development is a concept that has many definitions based on context, but the intent of the definition is consistent. Sustainable development promotes development or practices that accommodate social, environmental, and economic needs using a balanced approach that strives to achieve vitality in all three.

Sustainable development is largely viewed as building on the four systems principles introduced by Karl-Henrik Robert, a Swedish physician, together with ninety scientists, economists, business leaders, and other stakeholders in society. The premise is that system limits constrain the natural world; ultimately, humans must comply with these limits if we are to provide—or preserve—thriving human life with dignity and pleasure. The four system conditions (Table 1) state that for a society to be sustainable, nature's functions and diversity are not systematically (1):

• Subject to increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust
• Subject to increasing concentrations of substances produced by society, or
• Impoverished by overharvesting or other forms of ecosystem manipulation.

Additionally, resources are to be used fairly and efficiently in order to meet basic human needs worldwide.  Click here for Table 1. Summary of rationale behind “The Natural Step” system conditions (Nattrass and Altomare 1999). Opens new browser window.

While the four system conditions provide first order principles, the vision of how an organization will operate in this context remains to be discovered by each organization. Operating parameters are most effective when the system conditions are used together with other tools and methods, such as sustainable development policies and guiding principles, environmental management systems, life-cycle analysis, and green building guides.

Policy and institutional framework

The Natural Step framework includes two elements beyond the system principles:

• Understanding of the “resource funnel”
• Backcasting.

The resource funnel is a visual concept of resource consumption—on the one hand—and resource availability—on the other. Resource consumption is expressed as the product of population growth, affluence, and technology achievements. This product has an inversely proportional effect on resource availability and ecosystem ability to provide vital services (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Resource funnel

Many ecosystem services are at risk with overconsumption including clean water, clean air, and healthy soil. As the funnel has narrowed over time, limits emerge in many different ways, such as loss of firewood coupled with increasing landslides from deforestation in the Himalayans, widespread loss of top soil and concurrent increase of sediment loads in surface water, banning of abalone fishing in California, limits on fresh water withdrawals from fish spawning areas, increasing costs to supply water to growing cities, increasing costs to treat wastewater, and the list goes on.

We forecast events based on past trends. The procedure is restricted because it extrapolates the future from current conditions, many of which are not ecologically sustainable.

Sudden or unanticipated change may cast the organization against the closing walls of the funnel. In contrast, backcasting is a planning method that allows an organization's leaders to attain new goals and define truly new conditions. For backcasting to be effective, management must proactively be willing to understand the larger environmental and social context and strategically to assess the organization's current reality within this whole-system perspective.

Using the four system conditions, creating a vision, through backcasting, from a desirable future can help to identify strategic steps to move the organization from its current reality to the desired goals. In terms of the resource funnel, the objective of this process is to find a path through the small end of the funnel and even to find ways to widen the funnel in the future (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Proactive sustainability.

A wastewater agency can hardly affect population growth, and it is unlikely to desire a reduction in affluence, yet the organization has many options for technology choice, environmental management, and resource consumption. Before these options are defined, however, policy and principles are needed.

Policies for sustainability

A sustainable development policy, or even an environmental management policy, is the outcome of leadership actions to move the organization toward sustainability. Such a policy signals endorsement from the top decision-makers. The policy shares a new mental model with the whole organization and, combined with staff and customer education, helps to move ideas into action.

The actual move toward sustainability is a step-by-step process. With each step, financial sustainability must be safeguarded as increasing social and environmental sustainability occurs. Three examples follow. These examples illustrate the types of commitments that organizations have made, based on their individual charters in response to the sustainability challenge.

Federal department

The following sustainability policy was developed by a federal defense agency.(2)

It is the policy of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) to incorporate sustainability principles and concepts in the design of all facilities and infrastructure projects to the fullest extent possible, consistent with budget constraints and customer requirements. It is further the policy of NAVFAC to seek to do this with no increase in first cost. In the case of larger projects, the application of integrated design concepts is the key to this accomplishment. This policy, which will lead to substantial improvements in life-cycle operations and reduce life-cycle costs, applies to renovation and alteration projects as well as new construction . . . .

This policy implements the design portion of NAVFAC's comprehensive Sustainable Development Program which was established to meet the Navy's facilities infrastructure needs for improved performance, economy, and productivity, while maximizing efficiency in resource utilization. In an integrated manner, this program addresses planning, programming, design, construction, and facilities management practices, and accommodates significant changes in NAVFAC's philosophy and procedures for meeting facilities and infrastructure needs . . . .

This policy statement recognizes the fact that increases in first costs could lead to improved life-cycle costs and higher degrees of sustainability implementation, and that this can be in the best interest of the customer and the Unites States as a whole. In this regard, the policy . . . in no way diminishes the importance and value of continuing to establish these concepts and seek increases in budgets for projects such that life-cycle cost and sustainability concepts can be implemented to a greater extent . . . . Traditional approaches to the planning, design, and construction of facilities have not typically included a coordinated look at the environmental consequences of decisions, although areas such as reduced energy use have received attention over the years. This coordinated or holistic approach, of necessity, affects most areas of NAVFAC business. To that end, NAVFAC's Sustainable Development Program reaches far beyond the design process, design policies, and criteria that are central to successful implementation.

Water and wastewater consultant

CH2M Hill recently developed an environmental sustainability policy (3):

• Provide the best counsel available on the application of sustainable practices to help our clients meet their objectives.
• Commit ourselves to the pursuit of continuous learning and mastery of new technologies and methods to make sustainable solutions feasible and practical.
• Partner with clients wherever possible to share with others the learning gained from new sustainable solutions to the difficult challenges they face.

In the operation of our firm we will:

• Seek economically feasible opportunities to apply sustainable development concepts to do more with less, reduce the use of toxic materials, conserve natural resources and minimize waste and emissions.
• Periodically seek out the views of experts and others outside the company to gain additional perspectives in our quest to conduct business sustainability.
• Develop, adopt, and continuously improve metrics to measure and monitor our progress . . . .

Water agency

Some organizations are taking the first steps toward sustainability, wittingly or not, by adopting environmental policies. The Metropolitan Wastewater Department Operation and Maintenance Division (MWWD O&M) of San Diego adopted an environmental policy in 1999. The policy commits to the following (4):

• Establish and maintain an environmental management system that provides a framework for setting and periodically reviewing the O&M Division's environmental objectives and targets for each of its major facilities.
• Improve continually the Division's environmental practices.
• Comply with O&M Division's regulatory requirements, legal, and other industry standards to which we subscribe.
• Prevent environmental pollution that may be attributable to the O&M Division's operations and otherwise seek to minimize waste.

Planning

Two aspects of planning are worth noting:

1. Planning the role of wastewater infrastructure for the future through backcasting
2. Defining sustainability criteria on a project-by-project basis.

1. Planning for infrastructure

The American Planning Association (APA) has issued a policy guide on planning for sustainability.(5) The guide includes planning actions based on the four system principles for various elements of planning such as land use, transportation, economic development, and infrastructure. The following points are taken directly from the planning action guide for infrastructure. These points are instructive in that they indicate a trend in perceptions on infrastructure solutions, suggesting what some professionals see as necessary for a sustainable future for wastewater treatment.

Reduced dependence upon fossil fuels, extracted underground metals, minerals by promoting:
- Facilities that employ renewable energy sources, or reduce use of fossil fuel for their operations and transport needs
Reduced dependence upon chemicals and synthetic substances, by promoting:
- Treatment facilities that remove or destroy pathogens without creating chemically contaminated by-products
- Design approaches and regulatory systems that focus on pollution prevention, reuse and recycling.
Reduction of activities that encroach upon nature, through:
- Promotion of innovative sewage and septic treatment that discharges effluent meeting or exceeding federal drinking water standards while minimizing or eliminating the use of chemicals (example: greenhouse sewage treatment facilities)
- Recognition of the "cradle to grave" costs of waste generation and disposal
- Promotion of and removal of regulatory barriers to composting and graywater reuse systems
Meeting human needs fairly and efficiently by:
- Cleaning, conserving, and reusing wastewater at the site, neighborhood or community level, reducing the need for large, expensive collection systems and regional processing facilities.

Note that if these conditions are met, the wastewater system architecture, organization, and management may change substantially from its current state. The institutional separation of water services, public consumption and public health, and wastewater services could radically change.

2. Project-by-project

In planning sustainability on a project-by-project basis, consider the use of guiding principles for sustainability developed as part of or subsequent to a sustainability policy. A holistic set of guiding principles will be most useful if it addresses all aspects of sustainable development that the organization affects such as embedded and operating energy, construction materials, operations materials and chemicals, solid and hazardous waste, air pollution indoors and outdoors, effluent quality, effects on ecosystems, aesthetics, public involvement, transparency of decision-making, and interactions with the community including siting, effluent reuse, and educational opportunities.

The following are brief guiding principles adopted by NAVFAC:

• Increased energy conservation and efficiency
• Increased use of renewable energy resources
• Reduction or elimination of toxic and harmful substances in facilities and their surrounding environments
• Improvements to interior and exterior environments leading to increased productivity and better health
• Efficiency in resource and materials utilization, especially water resources
• Selection of materials and products based on their life-cycle environmental effects
• Increased use of materials and products with recycled content
• Recycling of construction waste and building materials after demolition
• Reduction in harmful waste products produced during construction
• Facility maintenance and operational practices that reduce or eliminate harmful effects on people and the natural environment.

This set of guiding principles is a good example of general intentions without quantifying the actions as would be the case when setting performance indicators.

 

If you accept that the world's resources cannot continue to be used as they have in the past, then it is necessary to envision a sustainable future and plan to reach it. Environmental policies and the means to implement those policies can be implemented by professionals in the water and wastewater sectors. They, just as any manufacturing industry, can advance society toward a sustainable future.
____________
Glen T. Daigger, Dave Burack, and Vincent Rubino (corresponding author) are with CH2M Hill.

Notes

1. Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare, 1999. The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, Ecology, and the Evolutionary Corporation. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada. 1999.

2. NAVFAC, 1998. Naval Facilities Engineering Command Planning and Design Policy Statement-98-01: “Design of Sustainable Facilities and Infrastructure.” June 18, 1998.

3. CH2M HILL, 2000. “CH2M HILL Environmental Sustainability Policy.” March 2000.

4. City of San Diego, 1999. Metropolitan Wastewater Department, O&M Division “Environmental Policy.”

5. American Planning Association. “APA Policy Guide on Planning for Sustainability.” Jan. 8, 1998, revised Jan. 10, 2000.  Click here