Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Role of the Private Sector
Private Consulting Firms that Design Projects, including EIA
As already
noted, if appropriate manuals were made available to these DC practitioners, their
chances of preparing appropriate designs should be greatly improved.
Industry
This same principle applies to the investments in pollution control
systems by industries. Properly planned, many industry plant managers will
operate the systems instead of practicing evasion. Industry plant managers are
generally not anti-environmentalists, but they can hardly be expected to use funds
for operating systems that cannot be operated with available local skills or that
produce no significant environmental improvement.
Another promising governance role for industry is for several industries to
form their own industry/environment associations that develop practices to be
utilized by all association members
92
. Still another example of industry cooper-
ation utilized in Thailand is the establishment of an effective joint enterprise for
managing oil spills from oil tankers operating in the open seas and in harbors
(See section on “Industrial Wastewater Management.”)
URBAN WATER SUPPLY
Situation in United States/ICs
One of the greatest engineering achievements of the twentieth century, which
is included in the listing of these achievements by the U.S. National Academy
of Engineering (NAE), is the advent of chlorination of community water sup-
plies early in the century, which by mid-century had become the well established
practice of practically all U.S. cities, to chlorinate the water delivered to the
distribution system, plus rechlorination along the way, to ensure that the water
delivered at the household tap had a measurable chlorine residual. This chlori-
nation, together with the provision of superior water supply distribution system
piping to obtain “watertight” piping, plus pressures sufficient to maintain a sig-
nificant positive pressure in the distribution system at all times, served to deliver
water at the taps that was safe to drink at all times. And this, together with
steadily improving management of excreta and other sanitary wastes, resulted in
reduction in enteric disease rates from their high levels at the beginning of the
century, to very low levels by mid-century, representing a great public health
achievement, especially so for infants and preschool children, who are especially
vulnerable to enteric diseases.
Following World War II, urban water supply practice in the United States
and other ICs became increasingly more sophisticated in design and equipment
and materials, particularly in relation to the hazards of other communicable dis-
eases that can be transmitted by water, including those transmitted by cysts of
Cryptosporidium
and
Giardia
, which has resulted in a great deal of attention to
utilization of other methods of disinfection including use of ozone and ultraviolet
