The Watershed Approach - Urban Watersheds: Geology, Contamination, and Sustainable Development - page 14

The business community has implemented pollution prevention initiatives through
what has been termed environmental management systems (Fletcher and Paleogos 2000)
and environmental risk management systems (Telego 1998). Environmental management
and risk systems are a series of standards that are used to develop a business model for
an integrated management system to identify, control, and monitor environmental risks
(Voorhees and Woellner 1998). Both initiatives focus efforts on what has essentially been
identified as life-cycle analysis. Life-cycle analysis involves the evaluation of the raw mate-
rials, by-products, wastes, and the final product using a decision matrix to reduce costs
and environmental liabilities (Curran 1996). The purpose of conducting such a life-cycle
analysis on environmental matters is to reduce risk and liabilities predominantly through
awareness (USEPA 1996).
The effectiveness of these approaches is limited. As we will demonstrate, an aggres-
sive pollution prevention program is required to eliminate the use of those contaminants
that are especially expensive to remediate. There is also the need to develop stronger and
more effective engineering controls at facilities located in sensitive ecological areas. These
environmental management and risk reduction methods need to be more efficient and cost
effective, and, most importantly, company-specific. Developing company-specific objec-
tives based on past quantified experience has been a critical factor in obtaining company
cooperation and commitment at all levels of the organization.

1.4.5 Theme #5: Science-Based Landscape Planning

It took nature millions of years to develop the most efficient ways to evolve species, cre-
ate landscapes and erode rocks, transport sediment and water, and form soil. Any time
humans alter a landscape and fail to mimic the processes nature used to form that land-
scape, we create an imbalance, primarily in the flows of energy and materials. Ecosystems
are nature's organizers of energy and material transport, and this is why human activity—
especially the large inputs of energy involved with large-scale earth moving for new sub-
divisions or mining—causes negative environmental impacts.
Organisms within ecosystems take in energy from an outside source (usually the sun),
convert and use that energy to produce more biomass (growth), and then release some of
the energy back into the environment through respiration. At this basic level, and without
going into more complex ecosystem dynamics such as trophic levels or speciation , an
analogy between ecosystems and urban areas can be constructed (Figure 1.6).
Referring to Figure 1.6, please note that the primary processes—input, energy conver-
sion/use, production, and energy/material release—are similar. The differences occur in

Ecosystem

Energy input
(solar)

Energy conversion
and use

Biomass production Energy and

material release
(heat and recyclable
dead biomass)

Urban areas

Energy input
( mostly fossil fuels )

Energy conversion
and use

Production of
infrastructure

Energy and
material release
(heat and non-
recyclable pollution )

FIGURE 1.6
Urban areas as ecosystems (differences are italicized).