InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.
WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.
Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.
For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, e-mail Constance Griffith cbgriffith@utk.edu.
Table of Contents
Information,
People, and Biosphere: The Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere program moves to UT
and pursues an expanded mission. By Elise LeQuire State's Top
Environmental Officials Visit UT. By Laurie Varma From Sticks to Carrots:
WMREI-funded research explores the benefits of manufacturers' voluntary efforts to
preserve the environment. By Ned O'Gorman Something in the Water:
Hormonal compounds present in waste-water treatment plants may be compromising human and
environmental health. By Elise LeQuire Mission Accomplished. By Elise LeQuire Bringing Science to Life in a Living
Classroom. Knox County teachers and students pursue educational field trips that boost
watershed awareness and promote preservation. By Laurie Varma Tribute
The Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere program moves to UT and pursues an expanded mission.
By Elise LeQuire
The Southern Appalachian region harbors the most biologically diverse flora and fauna in North America, along with remnants of old-growth forest, and a rich cultural heritage. But air and water quality are degraded, exotic species threaten its native ecology, and economic growth promises many changes for the region-for better or worse, depending on your outlook.
While extensive global, regional, and local databases offer a world of information about our environment and the pressures it faces, information technology alone can't solve environmental problems. Robert S. Turner wants to put this knowledge into the hands of local stakeholders, who face these issues in their day-to-day decisions. In January, Turner was named executive director of the Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) program. The new SAMAB office is located at the University of Tennessee (UT).
Established in 1988, SAMAB is a consortium of 11 federal agencies; six Biosphere Reserve Units; public and private partners at the state and local levels; and the natural resources departments of the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. In 1996, the SAMAB cooperative released the Southern Appalachian Assessment (SAA), a comprehensive technical report on the aquatic; atmospheric; social, cultural, and economic; and terrestrial health of the region. This five-volume hard-copy publication represents state-of-the art computer information and geographic information systems (GIS) and is also available on CD ROM and on the Internet through Web sites maintained by SAMAB and its various partners.
Data, Data Everywhere
The SAA database, however, is a static document. As information continues to be gathered at a rapid pace, data need to be updated and made accessible to stakeholders at every level. "We will provide Web links where anyone can go in real time for the latest information," Turner says. "We'll also work with the various federal, state, and local agencies to help prioritize updates to their data and information bases."
The SAA is used by both development and conservation interests. "Our goal in this initiative is to help folks consider their interests concurrently in their decision making," Turner says. In addition, SAMAB is creating a process to ensure that anyone-from researchers to resource managers, county commissioners, and private citizens-can access useful data and information.
Turner brings to the directorship his experience as director of the National Center for Environmental Decision-making Research, also based at UT, and 15 years in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"Turner has the proven ability to work with different groups and the ability to identify a project and find the funds to carry it out," says Jack Barkenbus, executive director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC) at UT. Because the new SAMAB office is located on the UT campus, it can easily call on the multidisciplinary expertise of EERC's researchers, if desired.
Turner also has a solid grounding in the economic aspects of sustainability and will be particularly valuable for his ability to communicate with science and resource managers at UT, says Karen Wade, superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "The Park Service looks forward to working with Turner and continuing our active involvement in SAMAB initiatives."
Education Is Key
Turner will tackle three major initiatives in the next phase of SAMAB's work: native and exotic species, watershed protection, and sustainable development. A key component to all three is education. For example, there's a wealth of information about native and exotic species. "We know which 'invasive' plants-such as purple loosestrife, multiflora rosa, oriental bittersweet, and many others-may 'escape' from where they're planted and outcompete with native species," Turner says. "Now we need to get government agencies and private entities such as landscapers and homeowners aware of what should and should not be planted."
In the watershed initiative, SAMAB provides a clearinghouse for information and Internet links between the agencies and citizen groups to help in local watershed organizations. "SAMAB has provided assistance to individuals working in the Hiwassee, Conasauga, and Little Tennessee basins in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee," Turner says.
But the sustainability initiative is by far the widest ranging project. Of particular concern in the region is the impact of gateway communities, Barkenbus says. Points of entry to Great Smoky Mountains National Park have a major impact on the economy of the region but also add adverse environmental pressures on an area already severely affected by air- and water-quality problems.
People Power
Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for example, is a popular gateway to the Smokies, but its streets are often congested with traffic, and its water resources are stretched to the limit. "SAMAB and private interests in Gatlinburg have co-funded a study of Gatlinburg as a gateway community," Turner says. The citizens of Gatlinburg are now setting up a Gatlinburg Gateway Foundation, a nonprofit organization to facilitate citizen interests in implementing the recommendations of the report.
The SAMAB cooperative grew out of the 1971 Man and Biosphere program of the United Nations Scientific, Educational, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which recognized that global economic and ecological problems require local solutions.
"SAMAB is totally voluntary, from the bottom up, and that's what makes it work," Turner says. "The challenge now is to bring state and local governments and private stakeholders into the partnership. We can help by providing decision makers with information and techniques for incorporating environmental, cultural, and business-development factors into their day-to-day decisions."
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Contact Robert S. Turner, SAMAB, 314 Conference Center Building, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4583.
State's Top Environmental Officials Visit UT
By Laurie Varma
This past December, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) Commissioner Milton Hamilton and Deputy of Policy Justin Wilson visited the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT), to encourage the university's academic community to get involved in improving and preserving the state's environment.
Wilson said UT researchers can strengthen the environment by applying scientific methods and objectivity to current issues. "UT can support community groups so that good decisions can be made-ones based on sound technical data and grounded in state and federal law," he said.
To assist state efforts, UT researchers can also conduct policy analysis, monitor and assess long-term issues, and fill gaps in knowledge. Their work benefits the state, the university, and all Tennessee residents and provides hands-on learning for tomorrow's scientists, Wilson said.
Recently, TDEC has worked to identify and address Tennessee's most pressing issues-air and water quality, economic development, and restoration and protection of native plants and animals. Commissioner Hamilton reported progress is being made to improve the state's natural resources through efforts to protect air quality, control runoff, promote water-use efficiency, and preserve wetlands. The state has increased park land and greenways and has reduced municipal and hazardous waste going to landfills.
From Sticks to Carrots
WMREI-funded research explores the benefits of manufacturers' voluntary efforts to preserve the environment.
By Ned O'Gorman
American businesses currently face over 80,000 printed pages of environmental regulations, and they will invest as much as a trillion dollars over the next 15 years as they work toward compliance. Industry's traditional response to environmental laws has been described as a "fight, flight, or comply" response, meaning that businesses often complied only after putting up a good fight or finding a legal loophole through which they could avoid regulations altogether.
By the beginning of the 1990s, environmental regulations had taken hold, innovative management systems were just being introduced, and the public expected industry to act responsibly. In response, some American companies voluntarily implemented programs aimed at improving environmental performance while keeping compliance costs down. For example, by 1990, Dow Chemical's Waste Reduction Always Pays program was achieving significant reductions in emissions and solid waste.
In July 1998, University of Tennessee (UT) assistant professor Iain Clelland and his research partner, University of Evansville (Indiana) assistant professor Tom Douglas, began a project funded by the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) to survey hundreds of companies and gather data and company opinions on the cost-efficiency and environmental benefits of voluntary environmental initiatives.
Clelland is affiliated with UT's Tennessee Institute for Management and the Environment. Douglas is a member of the University of Evansville School of Business Management.
Toward Total Quality
"We've got two main objectives," Clelland explains. "Using hard data, we want to examine how effective voluntary efforts initiated by companies are compared with government-initiated programs. Qualitatively, we also want to get companies' opinions about voluntary initiatives in general. For example, how effective do they feel their efforts have been? What keeps companies looking for ways to improve their environmental performance? Do they see voluntary initiatives like Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) as a compliment to or substitute for existing governmental regulations?"
TQEM is among the most touted voluntary environmental initiatives in industry, and it is based on the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM), a tool developed during and after World War II and widely implemented in post-War Japan and later in the United States. TQEM is marked by the following:
TQEM has gained popularity in the business world because the process can be tailored to meet companies' unique needs and because the tool focuses on all parts of a company's manufacturing process, involves employees as well as senior management, and requires ongoing feedback.
"TQEM is unique in that it influences the total life cycle of a product," Clelland says. "Most voluntary initiatives focus only on one aspect of the manufacturing process."
Tool Time
TQEM's flexibility and comprehensiveness have made it one of the most attractive environmental management tools in industry-and one of the most publicized. TQEM and other voluntary environmental initiatives have prompted researchers like Clelland and Douglas to investigate how useful these programs are in helping companies become more environmentally sound while maintaining their competitive edge in the marketplace.
For their study, Clelland and Douglas sent surveys to senior managers at the corporate offices, environmental departments, and manufacturing facilities of nearly 300 publicly owned U.S. companies.
The surveys focused on topics such as companies' TQM practices; integration of TQM principles into the environmental management function; steps taken to improve environmental performance and the effectiveness of companies' voluntary initiatives; and aspects of companies' environmental, financial, and operational performance.
To assess companies' environmental performance, Clelland and Douglas have gathered information on the number of notices of environmental violations, waste and product-use impact reduction, and frequency of environmental accidents. Indicators such as growth in profits and market share have helped the researchers assess financial performance; operational performance is assessed using indicators such as speed of delivery, reject rates, and product reliability.
Just Say Yes
Once their project is complete, the researchers will publish a report for WMREI, which they hope will help decision makers in the private and public sectors better understand the nature and level of effectiveness of voluntary environmental management initiatives. They also hope their research will help shed light on the traditional tension between regulators and businesses, leading to more harmonious relationships.
Early survey feedback suggests that while most firms see voluntary initiatives as generally cost-efficient and environmentally beneficial, they believe that compelling incentives-whether financial, reputational, or regulatory-for these initiatives is lacking.
Says Clelland, "If companies do not get significant cost benefits, if they are not getting much publicity outside of their own public relations efforts, and if they are questioning whether they get any benefits from regulatory oversight, then there are few incentives to implement voluntary initiatives."
Clelland also points out that companies would like to see regulations lifted in exchange for successful voluntary initiatives.
"Their feeling is that nearly all of their interactions with regulators are negative," Clelland says. "Companies want to start getting rewards for doing things that are above and beyond what is required."
Clelland believes that a system that rewards companies for successes through programs like TQEM could lead to dramatic changes in the relationship among industry, regulators, and the environment.
"TQEM captures the upstream and downstream ecological problems of the entire manufacturing system and opportunities for improvement," he says. "Large companies could exercise their eco-leverage so that smaller firms would have to improve their environmental performance. The whole system as we know it could be changed."
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Contact Iain Clelland, Department of Management, The University of Tennessee, 418 Stokely Management Center, Knoxville, TN 37996-0545, or call 865-974-1672.
Something in the Water
Hormonal compounds present in waste-water treatment plants may be compromising human and environmental health.
By Elise LeQuire
In the early 1990s, researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom began finding hermaphrodite fish downstream from wastewater treatment plants. Since fish are a classic ecological monitor, the presence of these reproductive abnormalities in fish raised significant concerns for human health.
"Feminization of fish is an ecological indicator of what we're being exposed to," says Terry Schultz, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tennessee (UT). Schultz is part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Mississippi and UT's Center for Environmental Biology and the College of Veterinary Medicine. The team is assessing the presence, composition, and fate of estrogenic compounds in industrial and municipal wastewater plant effluents in Mississippi and Tennessee to determine whether treated water is safe for fish and humans.
Laboratory studies have shown that certain synthetic compounds present in the environment can mimic the effects of the endogenous hormone estrogen and cause developmental and reproductive problems. But until recently, research on environmental estrogens has focused on industrial sources: hydrocarbon pesticides, surfactants found in products such as detergents and paints, byproducts of pulp and papermill processes such as dioxin, and industrial hazardous waste such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
Today, the research team is on the trail of a different suspect: synthetic estrogenic compounds commonly used as oral contraceptives and in hormone replacement treatment, as well as natural estrogens found in sewage.
Sludge in Action
At the University of Mississippi, researchers are monitoring the reproductive fate of male channel catfish caged downstream from wastewater treatment plants in Mississippi; meanwhile, UT researchers are investigating the microbial transformation in activated sludge of the compound C-17-§-estradiol-an endogenous, or natural, hormone found in the cholesterol of mammals. Activated sludge mineralizes organic carbon compounds into carbon dioxide and water. The question for researchers is whether activated sludge is also efficient in degrading estrogenic compounds and how long the process may take in different types of wastewater treatment plants.
Xenoestrogens-synthetic estrogens found in oral contraceptives and hormone replacement treatments-are compounds of concern, but endogenous hormones produced naturally in humans or used in oral contraceptives and hormone replacement treatments may be an even more important potential hazard. It takes a lot more of the environmental estrogens to elicit the same effect," says Alice C. Layton, a co-investigator and senior research associate at UT's Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB), an affiliate of UT's Waste
Management Research and Education Institute. Endogenous steroidal estrogens are actually four to five times more potent than xenoestrogens, and enter the waste stream through incomplete metabolism of natural hormones.
To monitor the mineralization process, researchers can trace the presence of a commercially available form of C-17-§-estradiol that has been radioactively labeled. They will measure the amount of estrogenic activity with a yeast estrogenic reporter assay. This test uses a recombinant yeast formed by cloning human estrogen receptors into a genome of the yeast. With this recombinant yeast, Schultz says, researchers can assess estrogenic activity through a colormetric test that turns the sample red in the presence of estrogenic compounds.
Test Results
Preliminary results show that sludge samples obtained from Knoxville's Kuwahee plant, which treats both domestic and industrial waste, are more than 90 percent efficient at degrading estrogenic compounds within 24 hours into harmless components. "That's extremely efficient," Schultz says, and it indicates that effluent from state-of-the art wastewater treatment plants such as the Third Creek station at the Kuwahee plant poses no threat to fish or people.
Across eastern Tennessee and the southern United States, many older wastewater treatment plants are still in service. So the research team is also analyzing the environmental fate of C-17-§-estradiol in three different activated sludges from plants of varying sizes and different waste streams. For example, suburban municipal plants that process primarily domestic waste may expect to find compounds from both kitchen wastes, which may contain detergents with estrogenic potential, and natural and synthetic estrogens from human excreta. Urban and suburban plants may also process industrial waste as well as effluent of domestic origin. Layton says all five plants under investigation are effectively removing hormonal compounds, and there is no evidence of reproductive anomalies in the local fish population.
Identifying the Culprits
Researchers are also developing a method of chemically screening wastewater using a gas chromatography test to determine what compounds of concern are present. This will allow them to tell what estrogenic compounds occur in the sludge, whether of natural or synthetic origin.
The three-year study is supported in part by funding from the U.S. Geological Survey through the Water Resources Research Center at UT's Energy, Environment and Resources Center. This integrated research project capitalizes on UT's diverse resources and brings research quickly into practical technical applications, Schultz says. The multidisciplinary research team draws on the expertise of investigators Schultz, Layton, and Gary Sayler, CEB's director. CEB's laboratory is well equipped for microbiological, biological, and engineering research and has a full array of molecular biology equipment. In addition, Schultz's laboratory at UT's York Veterinary Teaching Hospital has access to all the essential equipment to perform the yeast estrogenic reporter assay and the colormetric assessments.
For managers of wastewater treatment plants, the results of this study are important. While some older, less efficient plants may not be capable of rapidly mineralizing these compounds, Schultz says it's possible to modify the treatment process. For example, prolonging retention of the sludge will allow it to more completely degrade these compounds into harmless components.
Early results of this multi-phased project indicates good news for eastern Tennessee, says Layton, since activated sludge is largely effective at degrading estrogenic compounds. And in Mississippi, the results will have vital implications, since reproductive failure in fish populations could prove catastrophic to the fish farm industry, a mainstay of that state's economy.
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Contact Terry Schultz, College of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Tennessee, P.O. Box 1071, Knoxville, TN 37901-1071. E-mail: tschultz@utkux.utcc.utk.edu.
Mission Accomplished
By Elise LeQuire
Although Larry Jones retired at the end of 1997 from his position as associate director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC), his legacy lives on through his 11-year oversight of more than 280 trainees deployed to manage waste-minimization programs at U.S. military installations across the nation.
In 1986, Jones was director of a Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) contract with the Environmental Division of the Hazardous Waste Remedial Actions Program (HAZWRAP). The U.S. Department of Energy created HAZWRAP in 1984 to address environmental remediation efforts at hazardous sites around the nation. "At that time, there was a dearth of trained environmental people, and we had many excellent graduates who couldn't get a reasonable job because they had no experience," Jones says.
Jones created the Environmental Training Program (ETP) to bridge that gap. "The program succeeded because we paid a good wage, included liberal travel and training funds, and gave the trainees real responsibilities at the bases," Jones says.
While military budget constraints and a growing supply of qualified environmental personnel have led to a phaseout of the program, one of its trainees continues her innovative work at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage Alaska, one of 27 bases that ETP contracted with.
Cheryl Paige, the pollution prevention coordinator in the Civil Engineering Squadron, Environmental Flight, participated in the training program that provided recent graduates on-the-job training.
From October 1992 until April 1994, Paige conducted research on how communities across the nation were dealing with recycling issues. Benefits accrued both to Paige and the Air Force base, located just north of Anchorage."The Air Force got qualified people who ramped up quickly on environmental issues, and I got the training to apply the research," Paige says.
But it takes more than book learning to change the habits of nearly 10,000 Air Force personnel and another 10,000 civilian visitors and workers who come to the base each day. Paige's approach emphasizes planning, responsibility, and people.
Whether it's turning paper and table waste-and even horse manure from the base's riding stable-into fertilizer for the base's grounds or grinding bottles into surface material for roads, the job requires a certain amount of science and technology. But a key component in the success of this program is getting people to take ownership. Paige also has the support of the Air Force leadership.
"Leadership understands the bottom line. It costs money to dispose of waste, but it costs less to recycle," she says. "We've saved $235,000 per year over the baseline year; that's a reduction in waste of almost 30 percent." The base has also reduced hazardous waste disposal by 82 percent and has reduced by more than 50 percent the use of 17 chemicals targeted for reductions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Moreover, solutions devised to serve the special needs of Elmendorf Air Force base don't stop at the base's gates. Paige also attends round-table workshops, sponsored by the Air Force, in which she shares ideas on recycling with rural communities and native Alaskan groups. She is active in the Alaska chapter of the Solid Waste Association of North America.
WMREI's investment in its trainees continues to pay dividends in environmental remediation efforts at U.S. military installations. Jones says that about half of the trainees were hired to work permanently at their bases, including Paige, who continues her work as a pollution prevention coordinator and recycling program manager. "Because of their experience inside the system, the ETP trainees were prized candidates for the contractors working at the bases," Jones says.
Bringing Science to Life in a Living Classroom
Knox County teachers and students pursue educational field trips that boost watershed awareness and promote preservation.
By Laurie Varma
The Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) at the University of Tennessee (UT) encourages teachers to venture outside the confines of their classroom laboratories to a much more expansive and relevant one-their local watersheds.
Through the local implementation of a national environmental education program-Adopt-A-Watershed-middle and high school science teachers from seven Knox County schools are trained to use their adopted watersheds as living laboratories. In the process, they learn how to engage students in hands-on activities that make science concepts relevant and meaningful. They also learn how to involve students in service-learning projects that show the students how they can make a difference in their communities.
Nature as Teacher
For example, a geology teacher may tailor class lessons to focus on soil composition and rock types within the school's watershed. A biology teacher may use the watershed habitat to teach students about plant, macroinvertebrate, and amphibian species. Both teachers might then encourage their students to take what they've learned and use it to plan a joint local environmental improvement project.
Adopt-A-Watershed is a national nonprofit program, supported in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It seeks to infuse K-12 science education with hands-on watershed activities and environmental service. The program teaches kids to apply science concepts to their watersheds, to monitor and restore watershed health, and to appreciate the importance of all elements of the watershed ecosystem. Tennessee is one of 18 states that host local programs; Knoxville and the Quad Cities-Kingsport, Bristol, Johnson City, and Elizabethton-are Tennessee's only sites.
The national program provides a range of curriculum units that teachers use to introduce students to watershed-related concepts. Through classroom and outdoor activities, the students learn about the plants and animals living in their watershed and how they might be used as indicators of environmental health. They also learn about the environmental impacts of urban growth and the meaning of a "sustainable society."
Learning through Service
The curriculum units also guide the students through creative activities that ultimately lead them to a more in-depth understanding of the interconnectedness between themselves and plants, wildlife, fish, ecosystems, soils, geology, and cultures. The curriculum units also recommend conducting community action projects that help students influence the health of their watershed while increasing their fellow community members' awareness and knowledge about their watersheds.
WRRC manages the Knox County program with its Water Quality Forum partners, including Ijams Nature Center, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
Productive Partnerships
The Knox County school system purchases equipment for each school and helps fund the training workshops. CAC AmeriCorps Water Quality team members help teachers implement the Adopt-A-Watershed program by helping them select and conduct curriculum-related activities. They also assist teachers and students by helping them collect social, biological, and physical data on their watersheds and by helping them conduct environmental sampling and data analyses. Based on the results of these analyses, AmeriCorps members then assist students in identifying problems in their watersheds and conducting service learning projects aimed at solving them.
"Service-learning projects are one of the most important aspects of participation in the Adopt-A-Watershed program," says Tim Gangaware, WRRC's associate director. "By getting out and improving watersheds, students learn about their place in the community and become empowered by seeing that they can actually take part in positive change."
Ruth Anne Hanahan agrees. Hanahan, a WRRC research assistant, coordinates Adopt-A-Watershed activities among other forum members and the county school science coordinator and co-manages the program with Gangaware.
"A key goal of the Adopt-A-Watershed program is to help kids develop a sense of stewardship toward their communities and the environment that will stay with them all their lives," she says. "Participation throughout their middle and high school years can help students understand that water and other natural resources are assets to be cared for."
Initiated by WRRC in response to TVA's efforts to establish a community-driven, watershed-based stewardship program, the Knox County Adopt-A-Watershed program has grown from participation of six Knox County schools and six teachers in the 1997-98 school year to 13 teachers from seven schools in the current school year. Teachers and students from Powell, South Doyle, and Halls middle schools and Farragut, Fulton, South Doyle, and West high schools are currently participating in the program.
Day on the Creek
At yearly workshops, participating teachers obtain updated and relevant scientific information, gain access to new teaching techniques, and acquire skills for planning community action projects. At a four-day training workshop conducted this past summer by WRRC and its Water Quality Forum partners, Forum members taught teachers how to map a watershed; introduced them to the connection between land use and water pollution, wind shield surveys, and such new resources as watershed-related Internet sites; and showed them how to analyze test data. During a field day in a Knoxville park, teachers were introduced to the aquatic insect population, learned how to take water samples to test for contaminants and oxygen levels, and practiced methods for measuring stream flow.
WRRC recruited additional teachers this year to form teams of two to three teachers at each participating school to work together on Adopt-A-Watershed activities.
"We're also supporting Ijams Nature Center's recycling and reuse Earthflag program for kindergarten and elementary students, and we're hoping to add math and English teachers to our current group of science teachers," says Gangaware. "The range of teachers we're training and students we're able to reach is growing rapidly. We're very encouraged."
In the future, WRRC would like to see the program expand beyond Knox County to serve as one source of data for the Tennessee watershed monitoring program. Students all over Tennessee could use their knowledge of local watersheds to create a network of stream-monitoring and community-improvement activities.
WRRC also wants to increase community involvement by introducing activities into community-based programs. Adopt-A-Watershed students could serve as leaders at afterschool programs, and program coordinators could be trained along with school teachers.
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Contact Tim Gangaware, WRRC, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4777.
Mriganka M. Ghosh (1935-1999)
Attracting researchers of national renown to the University of Tennessee (UT) is key to assuring excellence in achievement. Mriganka M. Ghosh, who died suddenly on February 10, was such a scholar.
Professor and Goodrich Chair of Excellence in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at UT since 1990, Ghosh, 63, brought to the university a strong background in drinking-water treatment, wastewater treatment, and environmental remediation. But he took on a dramatic, late-life challenge at UT as he tackled research on contaminated soils and forged new interdisciplinary bonds between the CEE and the Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB), says CEB Director Gary Sayler.
Most recently, Ghosh was working on a joint CEB-CEE project, funded by the Department of Energy, to evaluate the contaminant reduction in concentration and toxicity in soils following bioremediation. "Ghosh was adept at understanding the relationship between pollution and bioremediation of the soil environment," Sayler says. "He embodied the expertise in basic science and engineering necessary for a university striving for a national reputation. He conducted true, vigorous, high-quality research and understood what it takes to be a competitive research institution."
Ghosh was also a respected professor who developed new courses in environmental remediation and fostered the scientific and intellectual development of students. Chris D. Cox, an associate professor with the CEE and a former master's and doctoral student of Ghosh, says his mentor inspired him with a commitment and dedication to the profession.
"He set high standards for his students and was a role model for young professionals," says Zhou Shi, a doctoral student from China who recently completed his Ph.D. at UT in civil and environmental engineering. Ghosh and Zhou were working together on a paper-which will be published, in memory of Ghosh's contribution to the field, in the Journal of Water Research-on the photodegradation of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).
Moreover, Ghosh put UT on the map internationally through his leadership in professional organizations. For example, as a member of the International Association of Water Quality, he formed the Environmental Restoration Specialist Group and the First International Conference on Environmental Restoration, says Gregory Reed, professor and head of CEE.
"Many of us were fortunate to know Mriganka as a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. We came to know him as demanding in his expectations, lavish in his praise, wise in his counsel, far-sighted in his vision, scholarly in his thought, and dedicated to his profession," Ghosh's colleagues wrote in a tribute to him.
Ghosh is survived by his wife Rajyasree, daughter Rupa, son-in-law Gordon, and grandson Nicholas.
