2015 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

This panel will provide an array of multi-disciplinary approaches being used to investigate and respond to current challenges occurring at the nexus of environmental and human health. While each individually-applied method provides valuable insight into the causes and potential solutions of the challenges we face as a society, we achieve greater clarity and power by combining a variety of approaches when seeking complex and sustainability-minded resolutions.

Participants include a diversity of backgrounds ranging across the social and natural sciences, and presentations range from projects on new opportunities for access to clean water, to improving water quality by decreasing pharmaceutical contamination, to expanding the applicability of health impact assessments, to lessons learned from the Ebola pandemic. Each presentation asks us to confront disciplinary boundaries in a way that will enhance our methodological tools, as well as the outcomes of our scholarly endeavors. 

Direct Potable Water Reuse: Confronting Scientific Frontiers and Social and Legal Boundaries

Authors: Caroline Scruggs¹, Katie Zemlick², and Bruce Thomson²

Affiliations:

¹University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning, Community and Regional Planning Program (Discussant contact:cscruggs@unm.edu)

²University of New Mexico School of Engineering, Civil Engineering Department

PRESENTATION I:

Abstract: In the face of increasing population, development pressures, and climate change, many regions around the world face freshwater shortages, which threaten human quality of life and erode ecosystem biodiversity. Communities must choose between numerous supply- and demand-side options to create sustainable and reliable water supplies. Direct potable water reuse (DPR) is a supply-side option that holds promise for improving sustainability and reliability of water supplies by generating high-quality drinking water from wastewater. Most DPR research has focused on large coastal communities with relatively high mean household incomes. Significant advances toward DPR implementation have occurred, and San Diego provides one important example; the presentation will discuss the evolution of DPR and progress to date in this community. In addition, there are many candidate communities for DPR scattered throughout the inland portion of the Southwestern US, where far less research has been performed, and where demographics and other important factors look very different from the coastal context. We propose that the case for DPR is very different for larger, wealthier coastal communities as compared to small-to-mid-sized inland ones. The presentation examines the differences between DPR in the inland and coastal contexts in terms of: (1) appropriate treatment technologies and configurations, (2) public perception of water scarcity and attitudes toward potable water reuse, (3) water availability, (4) cost considerations for capital and operations and maintenance, and (5) legal/regulatory issues. We conclude that the challenges associated with DPR in the coastal and inland contexts are very different, and it may be difficult for water managers in inland communities to make informed decisions based on the growing body of DPR literature that is specific to the coastal context. More research is needed on DPR feasibility in inland communities, and we highlight what would be most useful to assist inland communities in assessing their options.

PRESENTATION II

Synthesizing two applied research frameworks to understand urban riverine access to Pacific lamprey: The case of Willamette Falls, Oregon

Authors (alphabetically): Manar Alattar^1,2, Ariana Chiapella^1,2, Daniel Larson^1,3, Anandi van Diepen-Hedayat^{1, 4}

Affiliations:

¹ Portland State University NSF-IGERT: Ecosystem Services Supporting Urbanizing Regions

² Portland State University School of the Environment, Environmental Sciences & Management

³ Portland State University School of the Environment, Geography

⁴ Portland State University Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning (Discussant contact:av5@pdx.edu)

Abstract:This is a project conducted by four doctoral students participating in Portland State University’s NSF-IGERT program, organized around the theme Ecosystem Services Supporting Urbanizing Regions. The project, to which we are devoting a year of work, mobilizes mixed methodologies—qualitative field methods for primary data and quantitative statistical methods for secondary data—to characterize the use of Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) by regional Native Americans, as well as the species’ potential impact to these human consumers. The project is part of a larger governmental/tribal/academic collaboration centered on the impending redevelopment and restoration of Willamette Falls, a multi-use site in a post-industrial landscape in Oregon City, where a large paper mill has just closed.

Scholars and practitioners, including environmental planners, have lately applied the health impact assessment (HIA) analytic to understand relationships between human health and built and natural environments. For our AESS presentation, we will synthesize the HIA approach with the ecosystem services (ES) framework to reconcile a research program consisting of three forms of data: ecological (lamprey conservation), environmental (water pollution), and anthropological (human harvest and consumption of lamprey). We will discuss HIA and ES on their own, recent syntheses thereof, our formulation of research questions and synthetic design and methodology, and finally, our preliminary findings on the mutual constitution of site-specific lamprey ecology and human ecology in the face of change.

PRESENTATION III

Pharmaceutical waste as an environmental contaminant: seeking points of intervention

Authors: Christine Vatovec^1,2,  Patrick Phillips³, Emily Van Wagoner¹, Bret Turner⁴

Affiliations:

¹ Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont

² University of Vermont College of Medicine

³ United States Geological Survey pjphilli@usgs.gov

⁴ Pennsylvania State University, Environmental Resource Management

Abstract: Pharmaceuticals are among the many chemicals of emerging concern that are increasingly found to have negative impacts on natural ecosystems. Sources of pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems include waste disposal practices (e.g. flushing, or municipal waste leachate), along with human excretion. Each of these sources requires different multi-disciplinary approaches to minimize the amounts and variety of pharmaceuticals entering the environment. This presentation will report on a multi-disciplinary approach to identifying points of intervention to minimize the impacts of pharmaceutical waste in aquatic ecosystems. Our mixed-methods approach includes quantifying the types and concentrations of pharmaceuticals entering Lake Champlain via wastewater effluent, spatial analyses to identify areas of concern, a survey of watershed residents about their current medication consumption patterns and disposal practices, and interviewing providers to investigate “upstream” opportunities to minimize drug waste. This approach may serve as a model for investigating the complex social governance of other similar environment and human health challenges in order to develop better policies and practices to aid in their mitigation.