Best Management Practices and Standards, Training, and Tools to Increase Resilience of the Edwards Aquifer Water Supply During Emergency Fire Control

In 2019 the Institute for Water Resources Science and Technology at Texas A&M University-San Antonio began work funded by the Proposition 1 Edwards Aquifer Protection Venue Project to develop Best Management Practices (BMPs) for protecting Edwards Aquifer water supplies from inadvertent contamination by HAZMAT in water runoff during emergency response-related firefighting. Results of this work are now available for your use. Technical information is available for use in developing and updating emergency response planning documents (i.e., City of San Antonio Hazard Mitigation Action Plan and the Bexar County Emergency Management Plan), educational curricula can be used for training and public outreach, and BMPs along with associated tools are now available for on-site and post-event management and hazard mitigation. These have been developed for use in Bexar County and other areas where the aquifer is susceptible to contamination from disaster response on the land’s surface.https://digitalcommons.tamusa.edu/water_books/1008/thumbnail.jp

The future development and acceptance of light water reactors in the U.S.

This report summarizes a two-year effort by the M.I.T. Light Water Reactor Study Group to assess the institutional, regulatory, technical, and economic factors influencing the development and deployment of LWR technology. The nuclear industry is confronted by a mix of problems which, if not addressed, may soon eliminate LWRs as a practical source of electric energy. The Study Group found that technical developments could improve nuclear plant capacity factors by 10 percent; furthermore, substantial economic benefits are possible through better use of existing technology, further technological improvements, and various financing schemes. However, the most pronounced problems are institutional and social, not technical and economic. Regulatory and institutional problems in licensing, constructing, and operating nuclear plants have created such uncertainty in the electric utility sector that the economic and environmental advantages of LWRs are seriously jeopardized. Regulatory constraints, unpredictability of government policy, unnecessary construction delays, and the resultant difficulty in obtaining the large-scale financing needed for new plant construction all discourage the electric utility sector from making long-term commitments to nuclear power. In the absence of a concerted government attempt to resolve these and other problems, public mistrust and legal intervention in the nuclear industry grow increasingly serious. Thus, the technical and economic improvements that could benefit the industry will be negated unless the government, the industrial sector, the electric utilities, and the public address the regulatory and institutional problems that are threatening to cripple the industry."This work was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government.

Drought Planning for Small Community Water Systems

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Biorefinery sustainability assessment

This article presents a comparative sustainability assessment of three biorefineries that produce liquid fuels used in current infrastructure. The three options considered are biochemical production of ethanol from grain and from cellulosic feedstocks and thermochemical production of Fischer‐Tropsch diesel from biomass‐derived syngas. These biorefineries were compared using numerous environmental, economic, and social metrics, with numerical values derived from a thorough review of recent literature. For each of the three biorefinery options, the metrics were not determined from a specific process design, but from a variety of different designs reported in literature. Where necessary, corn was selected as the feedstock for grain ethanol and switchgrass was selected for cellulosic ethanol and Fischer‐Tropsch diesel. These sustainability metrics were used in an Analytic Hierarchy Process decision analysis to compare the sustainability of the different biorefineries. Thus, a new decision‐making tool has been created in which the user can assign different weights to each category and its metrics. This tool was used to explore the influence of different weights, different market conditions, and uncertainties in the values of the metrics on the relative sustainability of the different options. Based on the results of this assessment, cellulosic ethanol biorefineries are modestly more sustainable than grain ethanol and Fischer‐Tropsch diesel. Grain ethanol was favorable economically whereas Fischer‐Tropsch diesel had the highest score on the societal metrics. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2010Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88001/1/10516_ftp.pd

Optimal design of water treatment processes

Predicted water shortages assign water treatment a leading role in improving water resources management. One of the main challenges associated with the processes remains early stage design of techno-economically optimised purification. This work addresses the current gap by undertaking a whole-system approach of flowsheet synthesis for the production of water at desired purity at minimum overall cost. The optimisation problem was formulated as a mixed-integer non-linear programming model. Two case studies were presented which incorporated the most common commercial technologies and the major pollution indicators, such as chemical oxygen demand, dissolved organic carbon, total suspended solids and total dissolved solids. The results were analysed and compared to existing guidelines in order to examine the applicability of the proposed approach

A critical review of the formation of mono- and dicarboxylated metabolic intermediates of alkylphenol polyethoxylates during wastewater treatment and their environmental significance

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 Taylor & Francis.Alkylphenoxyacetic acids, the metabolic biodegradation products of alkylphenol ethoxylates, are commonly found in wastewaters and sewage effluents. These persistent hydrophilic derivatives possess intrinsic estrogenic activity, which can mimic natural hormones. Their concentrations increase through the sewage treatment works as a result of biodegradation and biotransformation, and when discharged can disrupt endocrine function in fish. These acidic metabolites represent the dominant alkylphenolic compounds found in wastewater effluent and their presence is cause for concern as, potentially, through further biotransformation and biodegradation, they can act as sources of nonylphenol, which is toxic and estrogenic. The authors aim to assess the mechanisms of formation as well as elimination of alkylphenoxyacetic acids within conventional sewage treatment works with the emphasis on the activated sludge process. In addition, they evaluate the various factors influencing their degradation and formation in laboratory scale and full-scale systems. The environmental implications of these compounds are considered, as is the need for tertiary treatment processes for their removal

Effectiveness of waste minimisation projects in reducing water demand by UK industry

There is growing interest in managing water demand in the UK. A series of waste minimization clubs have been set up within the country and this paper identifies the effectiveness of these clubs in reducing the demand for water within industry. Membership of these clubs is voluntary and the only incentive for industry to reduce water consumption, and consequently the production of effluent, is the almost immediate financial saving made by the company, often achieved by accounting for the water consumption and loss within site from the point of input from the water supplier to output in the form of effluent. On average, companies are able to reduce water consumption by up to 30 percent. If the entire industrial sector within the UK were to achieve this degree of savings, it is possible that approximately 1300Ml/d could be saved