Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(e.5) Furnish copies of selected IC textbooks/manuals, which, despite their IC
origins, nevertheless can be very useful to DC practitioners (who with rare excep-
tions cannot afford to buy them), translated into the local DC language
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.One
example is the American text, “Standard Methods for Analysis of Water and
Wastewaters”
2
, which is a virtual “bible” on this subject, which is useful per se in
both ICs and DCs. If done this simple stop alone should greatly improve water and
wastewater management technology in the DCs, hence remarkably high benefits at
low cost.
(e.6) Send DC staff for training, not “observing,” with U.S./IC organizations. Most
MDB-sponsored projects of this type amount to what may be called “observation
junkets.” What is needed (and the author has used this approach repeatedly) is to
assign the DC individual to be an additional working team member in an organiza-
tion doing what he wants to learn to do. For example, if the DC-er wants to learn
about regulatory permit systems for WPC (water pollution control), assign him to
be a temporary extra member of the WPC permit section staff of one of the Califor-
nia State Regional Water Quality Control Boards. This not only achieves real world
training but doesn't require the organization to whom the individual is assigned to
make any special preparations. The best agencies for this purpose in my view in the
environmental engineering field are the California Regional Boards for regulation
procedures, and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts for management of
liquid and solid wastes.
(e.7) Plan Technology Transfer projects, not in the usual way as a single event
operation, but spread this over a period of training series with enough time between
to permit the student to absorb the lessons from each session
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. The IAAs like
the single-event approach because it “saves” travel costs, without realizing that
their approach is not effective. Might as well cancel the project and save all of
its cost.
(e.8) Use retired expat experts to give hands-on training, where a single expert, say
in community water supply systems, visits each of say 10 systems every month. The
big advantage of this approach is that the expert catches the DC-er at the moments
when he has a serious problem, hence listens carefully to the expert's advice. This
is far superior to use of academic classroom textures.
Make much more effective use of the Private Sector, both by means of turnkey
projects and by use of contracts limited to O&M, especially for projects in water
supply and sanitation. This subject is discussed in some detail in the section on
Urban Water Supply Systems (UWSSs).
Purpose of This Chapter
This chapter is devoted to Item e.2, namely the furnishing of design guidelines,
with matching environmental standards, which are appropriate for design of DC
environmental engineering systems. Experience over the past several decades
on many DC projects has shown
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that the lack of such guidelines is often
the major reason for failure of investments in DC environmental engineering
systems. This experience shows that if the project is designed so that it is
not suitable for DC/O&M, it is doomed to failure at the outset — and a large
