Conference Agenda

Water quality monitoring is used to maintain compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act; however, sampling can be limited in both location and frequency, and samples in premise plumbing are often flushed prior to collection. These limitations result in a dataset that may not be representative of water quality in homes and buildings and at the point closest to exposure - the tap. We developed a community-centered approach with mixed methods to measure drinking water quality in premise plumbing in 24 homes in Detroit, MI, coupling novel online water quality sensors to achieve real-time monitoring over four weeks per house using select parameters with surveys about trust and risk perceptions. We spent six months building trust in the community through attendance at local neighborhood events prior to hiring two community members to serve as liaisons. Both liaisons proved critical to building a trusting relationship with participants and creating an open dialogue about their drinking water. We created water quality reports for each participant to share data and investigate how increased access to water quality data influences trust and risk perception around water quality. We will present emerging themes from the sensor and survey data and lessons learned from our community-engaged approach. The desired outcome is improved decision-making for utility managers and water users. For example, we found that distribution system free chlorine residual is consistently low in the study area and may benefit from chlorine boosting, and that access to water quality data shifts perceptions of water quality safety.

Nitrogen pollution in watersheds and potable water is a costly problem that affects the health and livelihoods of communities around the country. Sources of nitrogen pollution include agriculture runoff, atmospheric deposition of fossil fuel emissions, and wastewater systems. However, little has been done to bridge upstream and downstream communities who are dealing with the causes and impacts of nitrogen pollution to discuss and collaboratively develop solutions. Therefore, an interdisciplinary team from the University of South Florida, University of Iowa, Tampa Bay Estuary Program, and Black in Marine Science, have developed the Blue Green Action Platform, BlueGAP, a knowledge management and communication platform that humanizes nitrogen pollution by coupling data-driven solutions with storytelling to build trust that drives action.

Workshops, field visits, and interviews highlighted the needs of end-users and stakeholders across three different watersheds: Mississippi River (Iowa), Tampa Bay (Florida), and Salt River Bay (US Virgin Islands). Therein, “nitrogen champions” were identified and integrated into the research team. These partners built systems thinking skills to identify and inform leverage points that maximize nitrogen reduction, local economic outcomes, and social benefits. Now, nitrogen champions are identifying ways to implement systems thinking and modeling within their own context to catalyze locally-relevant actions to reduce nitrogen pollution. This presentation will highlight Walter Smith’s use of systems modeling to engage community partners during his Environmental Justice Policy Think Tank and Seth Watkins’ use of the Tragedy of the Commons systems archetype for understanding and communicating impacts of extractive farming practices.

Numerous studies have shown that Black people on the fringes of Southern towns and cities have been systematically denied access to critical infrastructure such as public water and sewer services. This research investigates the relationship between race and access to these services within the six extraterritorial jurisdictions (ETJs) of Halifax County, North Carolina.

Utilizing publicly available tax records and 2020 census data, we identified which residential tax parcels have access to public water and/or sewer service. We then conducted multivariate logistic regressions for each ETJ to estimate the relationship between the proportion of Black people living in a census block and the odds of a residence in that block having public water or sewer access.

We found a significant negative relationship between the proportion of Black people per census block and odds of access to public water in the ETJs of Roanoke Rapids (OR=0.24, p=0.0237) and Littleton (OR=0.025, p=0.0162), and the odds of access to sewer service in the ETJs of Roanoke Rapids (OR=0.04, p<0.001), Littleton (OR=0.027, p=0.0162), and Scotland Neck (OR=0.259, p=0.032).

These results suggest that Black communities in these ETJs have been historically denied access to public water and sewer services. These services are critical for public health, as numerous studies have established a relationship between various environmental exposures and the use of septic systems and private wells. Additionally, these results suggest a need for further research to explore the full historical and social context for this exclusion and to understand the resulting potential negative health outcomes.

Many of Pennsylvania's waterways are unfit for recreation due to bacterial pollution. In collaboration with a local organization, the Buffalo Creek Watershed Alliance (BCWA), we have shown that high levels of fecal bacteria make Union County’s waterways unsafe for recreation. The main goal of our work is to conduct microbial source tracking (MST) to determine the animal source(s) of bacteria in local waterways while involving undergraduate students in community engaged work. Last summer we monitored 14 sites for total fecal coliforms and specifically E.coli. Results show that all sites sampled were unsafe or impaired for recreational use, based on levels of E. coli and PA-DEP recommendations. Forty students from an environmental engineering course participated in monitoring, laboratory analyses, and communicated results to local stakeholders. Preliminary MST is underway and potentially will reveal the animal source(s) of the fecal coliform contamination. These results will aid in BCWA’s efforts to limit the entrance of these pollutants into Union County waterways. In addition, as part community engagement, we are thinking about ways to work with a local underserved population that lives and farms along Buffalo Creek: members of Mennonite community. Local Mennonite farmers often distrust the government which poses challenges for working with local County Conservation District officers on best management practices to limit manure runoff. An additional goal for the coming summer is create a plan to engage with the Mennonite community as they may also be impacted by bacterial pollution in waterways.

After members of our team helped expose the Flint Water Crisis, our experiences became fodder for engineering ethics courses, books and peer-reviewed publications. At one extreme our efforts are portrayed as exemplary and heroic, while at another extreme we have been characterized as unethical opportunists taking advantage of vulnerable communities Recently, some are considering whether engineering ethics should be recast, to be more akin to that for social workers, in which social justice is the foremost goal. In this presentation, we review five ethical dilemmas encountered during the Flint Water Crisis and its aftermath, and consider how they could have been resolved differently with social justice goals. We illustrate how well-intentioned advocacy for social justice and vulnerable communities as a primary objective, can also create unintended consequences and real (health) harm. Examples include false statements made by Flint water activists on social media, a discovery of lead sinkers put into home plumbing in conjunction with a Gofundme campaign seeking funds for alleged health harm, and exaggerating the level of childhood lead exposure to garner more relief funding. In each case we will demonstrate how pursuit of social justice as the foremost objective for engineers, can create conflicts with our professional obligations to always speak truthfully and protect the public welfare. We argue that making social justice a foremost goal will can sometimes do more harm than good.