Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Jack Barkenbus, Executive Director

Center For Clean Products and Clean Technologies

Gary A. Davis, Director

Office of Communications and Publications

David Brill, Director

Center for Geography and Environmental Education

Rosalyn McKeown-Ice, Director

Oak Ridge Technology Research and Development Program

Sheila Webster, Director

Systems Development Institute

Donald Alvic, Director

Pro-Dialogue

Mary R. English and David L. Feldman, Directors

Water Resources Research Center

Tim Gangaware, Associate Director

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Highlights and Initiatives is written and edited by Constance Griffith <cbgriffith@utk.edu>.

For more information call Gail Farris at 865-974-4251 or write to EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134.

Visit our Web site at: http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/

Projects.  EERC’s Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT) has completed its assessment and final report on flat-panel and cathode-ray-tube technologies for desktop computer displays. CCPCT Associate Director Lori Kincaid, Research Scientist Maria Socolof, and Research Associates Jonathan Overly, Rajive Dhingra, and Jack Geibig undertook the investigation for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment Program (Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics: Economics, Exposure, and Technology Division). The researchers performed life-cycle assessments to identify environmental impacts associated with the extraction and processing of product materials, as well as manufacturing, use, and final disposition of computer displays. While the electronics industry can interpret and use the results of the study to help develop product-improvement assessments, consumers can use the information to help them make environmentally informed purchasing decisions.

Senior Research Associate Kim Davis recently completed an update to HAZDATA, a database compiled from EPA Superfund Records of Decision (RODs). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded this latest leg of the project, which brings the final version of the database to 1,236 RODs. Davis, also assistant director of EERC’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute, has worked on HAZDATA since its inception. The first report (1991), Estimate of Resource Requirements for NPL Sites, analyzed 229 RODs. Researchers later updated HAZDATA to include 718 RODs for Resource Requirements for NPL Sites: 1996, which was cited in President Clinton’s February 1996 economic report to Congress. Other researchers involved in the last update include Milton Russell of the Joint Institute for Energy and Environment (UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL], Tennessee Valley Authority) and several past and present UT students, including Amanda Tullos, B.S., Biology; Erik Clayton, Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Penny Beasley, a Ph.D. candidate in Economics.

Publications.  CCPCT Director Gary Davis serves on the National Research Council’s Committee on Coal Waste Impoundments, one of several groups that joined forces to conduct a study commissioned by The National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. The findings have been published in Coal Waste Impoundments: Risks, Responses, and Alternatives (NAS, January 2002).

Rajive Dhingra, Jonathan Overly, Research Scientist Jean Peretz, Research Associate Susan Schexnayder, and Gary Davis, along with Associate Professor Bruce Tonn and Graduate Student Greg Waidley (Department of Urban and Regional Planning) and Sujit Das (ORNL), prepared an “Environmental Evaluation of Materials in New Generation Vehicles,” a report for ORNL and the Office of Advanced Automotive Technologies (a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Transportation Technologies).

Each Highlights and Initiatives presents an in-depth look at one of EERC’s projects or activities. This edition focuses on Aqueous Solutions, which explores the role of UT’s Southeast Water Policy Initiative in avoiding and resolving the region’s water disputes.

Aqueous Solutions

A UT initiative musters a multidisciplinary research team to help anticipate, avert, and resolve disputes over the management and distribution of water.
By Lisa Byerley Gary

PULL QUOTE: ...emerging conflicts across the nation dictate the need for careful and thoughtful research into the many facets of water use.

The same abundant water resources that attract fishers, rafters, water skiers, and boaters to Tennessee and the Southeast, serve as the region’s economic vascular system for farming, shipping, manufacturing, and power-generation operations as well. While other parts of the country have suffered water disputes for decades and consider water a scarce commodity, the Southeast—for the most part—has never had to think in those terms.

But it should, says David Feldman, a senior research scientist with the Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC) at the University of Tennessee (UT). Feldman, who has led state and regional efforts to plan for water resource management, also directs UT’s Southeast Water Policy Initiative.

Increasing population, changing land-use patterns, and escalating manufacturing and irrigation needs put more pressure than ever on water resources. When a town or region needs more water, it naturally looks to surrounding areas for new resources.

“Before these issues grow in magnitude, and before dialogue among users and suppliers becomes contentious, we should reflect on options available to proactively prevent intractable conflict,” Feldman says.

To that end, Feldman led and UT sponsored the Southeast Water Resources Management and Supply symposium in Chattanooga in 1998 to assess the region’s water supply challenges and a follow-up meeting the next year to develop policy recommendations. Next, Feldman assisted the state in drafting Tennessee’s Interbasin Water Transfer Act of 2000, which gives the state power to regulate diversions of surface and groundwater from one basin to another.

Feldman and colleagues at UT built on those activities to create the Southeast Water Policy Initiative, an interdisciplinary research and education partnership that includes scientists and research assistants from five disciplines who will pool resources. The team will develop practical strategies for protecting water resources while shaping innovative policies that will anticipate, avert, and resolve disputes over the management and distribution of water.

The group is also developing a virtual library on water policy issues, integrating a searchable database and Geographic Information System tools on its Web site (http://www.Waterpolicy.org).

Along with Feldman, a political scientist, four other UT scholars comprise the Initiative’s core staff: Robert Freeland, associate professor in Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Sciences (Institute of Agriculture); Professor Carol Harden, Department of Geography; Robert Jones, associate professor, Environment and Society Program (Sociology); and Forbes Walker, assistant professor, Agricultural Extension Service.

As the state’s and the region’s economy, quality of life, environmental beauty, and recreational opportunities depend on sound water management, so emerging conflicts across the nation dictate the need for careful and thoughtful research into the many facets of water use.

“Tennessee currently has a unique opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other states,” says G. Dodd Galbreath, director of policy for the state’s Department of Environment and Conservation. “We need to shape our own future before circumstances and inaction shape it for us.”•