FOCUS

Ecological Engineering for Integrated Water Management
Designing Urban and Industrial Watersheds

Conference held Oct.30-Nov.2 at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

By Anja Bruell, IEES board, Germany

The conference "Ecological Engineering for Integrated Water Management: Designing Urban and Industrial Watersheds" broke new ground. About 250 participants with various backgrounds joined us at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Industry representatives, policy makers, architects and landscape architects, scientists, philosophers, engineers and Ecological Engineering professionals came together to present, learn about and discuss better ways to manage urban and industrial use of watersheds.

The conference focused on practical implementation, with success stories of well-investigated and applied Ecological Engineering practices to a broad audience of designers and decision makers. This goal was greatly achieved. "During the conference my way of thinking changed," said Eric Rosenblum, Division Manager of South Bay Water Recycling, San Jose.

Ecological engineering was introduced as an excellent toolbox with which to redesign society's water and wastewater flows within watershed boundaries cohering with regenerative processes of natural systems. While most of the audience was familiar with the concept of watershed management the field of ecological engineering was new to many participants.

Presented success stories were for example:

• Green roof and wetland swales for stormwater management of the Rouge River Factory of Ford Motor Company (by Rodger Schickedantz, McDonough Architects & Fred Payne, ARCADIS,)
• Recirculating Wastewater and Washwater Gardens, Zero-Discharge and Solar Aquatic Systems i.e. in Canada, France, Fiji (by David Del Porto, Ecological Engineering Group)
• Living Machines and constructed wetlands for i.e. British Petroleum and others (by David Austin, Living Technologies)
• Large-scale constructed wetlands for Florida's Everglades and in Venice, Italy (by Jim Bays, CH2M-Hill)
• Floating Restorer Gardens in open wastewater channels in China (by Erica Gaddis, Ocean Arcs International, see article by E.Gaddis)
• Stormwater management, micro-gardens in the Los Angeles river basin (by Kathleen Bullard, Los Angeles River Center and Gardens)

A highlight was Michael Braungart's presentation on "Cradle-to-Cradle Design in Water Management and Nutrient Recycling" (see article by Carl Etnier). In addition to a wastewater-recycling project in Brazil, he showed one of the most forward-thinking examples of how intelligent product design can result in an industrial manufacturing process that cleans water instead of polluting it. The water coming out of Rohner Textile factory in Switzerland after serving in a production process of high-quality cloth is actually cleaner than the water taken in.

"The conference provided me with many new concepts and confirmed concepts I had been exposed to before. It also provided me with an expanded network of people in this field" said Jane Didona, Landscape Architect from New York. "I feel that the "marketing" of these techniques is an opportunity for Landscape Architects. For the techniques to be truly successful, they must be integrated into the human environment with the result being the reintegration of humans with the natural environment. In other words, we must have art and science."

"As for the speakers and mix of areas, the conference was great to link policy, applied sciences and business with the academic rigor of research," said Bill Roley, permaculture designer. "This was a diverse group and Harvard made it more inviting."

David Austin from Living Machines. Inc stated: "I was greatly pleased to be at a conference of practitioners - both in private industry and government - of the art and science of ecological design. Ecological engineering conferences tend to be heavily academic. They are informative, often fascinating, but typically not directly useful to advancing projects. People directly involved in ecological design projects bring a much-needed perspective to this field. Let's make sure we keep up this conference track!"

With such kind of positive feedback in mind the plan is to continue with conferences of a similar topic, next one possibly in San Diego, California.