Fall 2004, Volume 10, No. 4
CTE Assists Louisiana DOTD with Process Improvement Initiative
CTE Senior Research Associate Janet D'Ignazio is
working under subcontract to Dye Management, Inc., on a new process
and communication improvement study for the Louisiana Department
of Transportation and Development.
Louisiana DOTD recently contracted with Dye Management Group,
Inc., to identify significant opportunities and to make recommendations
to streamline processes and improve the overall efficiency of the
department. As a sub-contractor to Dye Management, CTE will be completing
the work for all of the department’s environmental processes.
This will include review of current processes, policies and
practices, identification of expected customer service levels, identification
of applicable national best practices and development of an implementation
plan for recommended actions.
D'Ignazio is also assisting the North Carolina Department of Transportation
with conducting a series of process analysis workshops to document
and improve current long-range planning and project development
processes. Based on data flows, roles and responsibilities, legal
barriers and process opportunities, linkages are being identified,
evaluated, and recommended to NCDOT.
For more information, contact Janet D'Ignazio, senior research
associate, (919) 515-8587; jdignaz@unity.ncsu.edu.
CTE Distinguished Lecture Addresses Transportation and Public
Health
On October 15, CTE welcomed to Raleigh, NC, Dr. Howard Frumkin,
FACP, FACOEM, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental
and Occupational Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory
University, who provided the 2004 CTE Distinguished Lecture, "Traveling
Toward Health: The Marriage of Transportation and Public Health."
Frumkin, a medical doctor, college professor, and public health
expert, framed his lecture by asking the audience to consider the
fates of the children being born every hour in the state of North
Carolina, indeed those 16 children born within the course of the
lecture event itself, and how their healthy development may be influenced
by the communities, transportation systems, and other forms of infrastructure
designed for them.
Places to explore and grow; places to dream and have reveries;
regular physical activity; protection from injuries; clean air and
clean water; strong communities; the promise of a sustainable future
– all of these were identified by Frumkin as important needs
for the healthy development and welfare of those 16 children. Throughout
his hour-long lecture, Frumkin assessed the problems and proposed
solutions related to the complex interactions between transportation
and urban sprawl that affect a community's ability to provide for
these needs.
Frumkin stressed that solutions need to celebrate the concept
of synergy. The broad range of transportation and public health
concerns require a diverse cadre of professionals who must work
cooperatively to achieve solutions that result in good public health.
Conducted at NC State University's Stewart Theater, the lecture
drew faculty, students, and local practitioners from the Research
Triangle Park region. The lecture was sponsored and hosted by CTE
in cooperation with:
- NC State University's Department of Civil, Construction, and
Environmental Engineering; and Institute for Transportation Research
and Education
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Urban
and Regional Studies; Active Living By Design Program; and Carolina
Environmental Program
- Duke University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering;
and Nicholas School of the Environment
- Transportation Research Board's Joint Subcommittee on School
Transportation
Frumkin also participated in a book signing to promote Urban
Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for
Healthy Communities. Frumkin is the principal author for the new
book, published this past summer by Island Press.
A video archive and written transcripts of the lecture are available
at CTE's Web
archives.
For more information, please contact Katie McDermott, CTE technology
transfer director, (919) 515-8034, kpm@unity.ncsu.edu.
Transportation and Public Health Broadcast Scheduled for December
On December 16 (1-4 p.m., EST), CTE will present the national
satellite broadcast and Web simulcast of Transportation and Public
Health: The State of the Science.
Dr. David Belluck, senior transportation toxicologist for the
Federal Highway Administration, will moderate the three-hour program,
which will include transportation and public health experts from
FHWA and the Centers for Disease Control, as well as universities
and transportation agencies.
The purpose of the program is to review the broad range of public
health concerns tied to surface transportation development; to examine
how the current scientific knowledge base is influencing policy
development, transportation planning, and project delivery; and
to explore future research needs.
Downlink site registration is currently underway. For more information,
please contact Katie McDermott, CTE technology transfer director,
(919) 515-8034, kpm@unity.ncsu.edu;
or visit CTE's Web site.
CTE to Participate in Environmental Excellence Awards Program
CTE Technology Transfer Director Katie McDermott has been invited
to serve as a judge for the Federal Highway Administration’s
2005 Environmental Excellence Awards Program. The biennial awards
program recognizes outstanding transportation projects, processes,
and people who incorporate environmental stewardship into planning
and project development processes.
A total of 240 entries were received in the categories of air
quality, cultural and historical resources, ecosystems and wildlife,
environmental leadership, environmental research, environmental
streamlining, livable communities, non-motorized transportation,
recycling, roadside resource management, scenic byways, and wetlands
and water quality. The judges panel will convene January 6-7, 2005,
in Washington, DC. The awards ceremony will be conducted April 22,
2005, in coordination with Earth Day.
More information can be found on the FHWA
Environmental Excellence Awards Web site.
Context Sensitive Solutions Broadcast Available on DVD
On October 27, CTE conducted the nationally televised satellite
broadcast and Web simulcast of Context Sensitive Solutions in Transportation:
A Better Way.
CTE Senior Research Associate Leigh Lane moderated the three-hour
program, which featured an expert panel of CSS practitioners from
across the country. The purpose of the program was to discuss how
CSS core principles (i.e., meet a transportation need, be an asset
to the community, preserve the integrity of the natural and human
environment) are being aplied at all functional areas of transportation
– from planning and programming, to project development and
design, into construction, operations, and maintenance. In addition
to panel discussions, the program included 40 minutes of active
Q&A between the panel and national audience.
The broadcast archive is available on the Web and DVD copies will
soon be ready for distribution.
For more information, please visit the CTE's Web
site or contact Katie McDermott, CTE technology transfer director,
(919) 515-8034, kpm@unity.ncsu.edu.
Defenders Second Nature Publication Receives NRCA Award
The Natural Resources Council of America (NRCA) has chosen Defenders
of Wildlife's publication Second Nature: Improving Transportation
Without Putting Nature Second to receive the 2004 NRCA Award
of Achievement in Publications. This award recognizes the best natural
resources conservation-oriented periodical, newsletter, book or
special publication issued by an organization.
Defenders of Wildlife is a co-sponsor of the International Conference
on Ecology and Transportation, for which CTE is lead organizer,
and has been actively engaged in finding constructive solutions
to transportation and wildlife issues through its Habitat and Highways
Campaign. NRCA is an association for the leaders of a growing movement
of nonprofit organizations dedication to the conservation and sustainable
management of the Earth's natural resources.
For more information, please visit the Defenders of Wildlife Web
site or contact Trisha White, director, Habitat and Highways
Campaign, TWhite@defenders.org.
ICOET 2005 Call for Abstracts Coming Soon
The program committee of the 2005 International Conference on
Ecology and Transportation, scheduled August 29 to September 2 in
San Diego, CA, plans to issue the call for abstracts in concert
with the January 2005 Transportation Research Board 84th Annual
Meeting.
The theme of ICOET 2005 is "On the Road to Stewardship." The biennial
conference is being co-hosted by the California Department of Transportation
in partnership with the Road Ecology Center at the University of
California at Davis.
The call for abstracts will seek to generate technical papers
and poster presentations that build upon the subject tracks featured
at the 2003 conference in New York State, as well as to address
a select number of new topic areas, such as bioacoustics and noise
impacts, that deserve special emphasis due to current research needs.
In addition, 2005 abstract submissions will be handled electronically
for the first time. Each year the program committee receives more
submissions than the year before. As a result, CTE as the lead conference
organizer is developing an online document submission tool to make
the submission process more efficient and to accommodate the increasing
number of potential authors and presenters.
For more information on ICOET 2005, please visit the conference
Web site, or contact
Katie McDermott, CTE technology transfer director, (919) 515-8034,
kpm@unity.ncsu.edu.
CTE/NCDOT Research-in-Progress Profile:
Evaluation and Implementation of BMPs for NCDOT's Highway
and Industrial Facilities
Performing Organization:
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Project Period:
July 1, 2002 - June 30, 2005
Project Team:
Dr. Jy Wu, P.E., jwu@uncc.edu
UNCC Department of Civil Engineering
Dr. Craig J. Allan, cjallan@email.uncc.edu
UNCC Department of Geography and Earth Science
Overview
Under the provisions of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System (NPDES), NCDOT is required to perform the evaluation of best
management practices (BMPs) effectiveness on industrial facilities
and highway sites owned by NCDOT. These consist of installing new
and/or retrofitting existing BMPs for all fourteen divisions and
at numerous industrial facility sites.
NCDOT has already performed industrial monitoring programs for
a stormwater wetland in Wilson County; dry detention basin at Alexander
County's maintenance yard; and an inlet control, erosion control
and housekeeping, and gravel pad in Orange County. Numerous highway
retrofit options are being reviewed, including: water quality swale,
bioretention, pocket wetland, stormwater wetland, extended dry detention
basin, grade control structure with grass swale, water quality hazard
spill basin, level spreader with forested/vegetated filter strip,
and grass swale with curb cut. The overall effort for BMP assessments
requires an enormous undertaking and collaboration of engineering
design, installation, field monitoring, synthesis of literature
information, analysis of monitoring data, and assessment of BMP
performance and effectiveness. Permit requirements for BMP monitoring
can be satisfied by collecting precipitation and hydrologic data,
and composite water samples from the influent and effluent of a
treatment device.
The purpose of this project is to provide additional research
to examine the in-process treatment in order to help understand
the optimal size of a treatment device and the predominant mechanisms
affecting pollutant removal performance, as well as to conduct research
and investigate treatment methods for the effluent discharging from
stilling basins that are used to treat borrow pit wastewater, and
pollution prevention options for equipment wash/maintenance facilities.
Project Activities to Date:
For the highway BMP research, in-process monitoring of three BMP sites
included a level spreader/filter strip, a dry water quality channel,
and a roadside vegetative filter. It also included reviews of BMP
selection methodology, BMP performance from national studies, and
organization of data reporting to be compatible with the National
Stormwater Database requirements. Monitoring of the level spreader/filter
strip site included the addition of several surface water collectors
in the longitudinal direction of the strip, in addition to utilizing
automatic samplers for influent and effluent water sample collection.
Paired tension lysimeters were installed to monitor soil solution
chemistry of the infiltrating stormwater at the beginning, middle
and end of the filter strip. Soil cores were also collected to characterize
the substrate physical and chemical characteristics and to quantify
pollutant retention within the soil matrix.
For the stilling basin research, a treatment matrix was formulated
as potential BMP tools for guiding contractors when dealing with
borrow pit wastewater treatment to meet regulatory requirements
for turbidity reduction. Treatment technology options in the treatment
matrix included stilling basins, silt bags, alum coagulation, polymer
injection, well point pumping, land application, cell mining, sand
filtration, and wet mining. The research provided technical assessment
of each treatment option and evaluation of monitoring data for stilling
basins for developing pump capacity curves relating inflow and effluent
turbidity at a given pumping rate.
For the equipment wash/maintenance facility research, the project
team identified pollution prevention options for managing truck
wash water through literature review and personal contacts. NCDOT
has more than 127 facilities that require some type of on-site equipment
wash operations. The need for vehicle/equipment washing was important
from both safety and equipment maintenance perspectives. Part of
NCDOT's second phase NPDES requirements included the evaluation
of pollution prevention (PP) alternatives and BMP pilot study at
its industrial facilities. NCDOT needed to address this issue and
a systematic evaluation of the types, methods, and solutions was
needed to formulate an effective pollution prevent plan/policy for
equipment washing. An interim technical report was submitted to
NCDOT and provided a critical review of PP activities undertaken
by state and federal agencies. It included EPA's regulatory perspectives;
sample stormwater pollution prevention plans; approaches taken by
California, Tennessee, and Washington states; and commercial services,
including environmental power washing.
A study of highway runoff characterization was completed (Sampling
and Testing of Stormwater Runoff from North Carolina Highways by
J.S. Wu and C.J. Allan, 2001.). Per permit requirement, BMP monitoring
typically involves the collection of precipitation and hydrologic
data, and composite water samples from the influent and effluent
of a treatment device.
For More Information:
This project is expected to have a completion date of the middle
of 2005. The final report should be available shortly thereafter.
Please contact the project team members for more information or
refer to the project Web
site.
Mark Your Calendar
November 17, 2004
Seminar on Transportation & Environment: Promoting Green Logistics
(Washington, DC)
November 30 - December 2, 2004
Succeeding with a Dam Removal Project
(Raleigh, NC)
December 16, 2004
Transportation and Public Health: The State of the Science
(CTE National Broadcast)
January 9-13, 2005
TRB 84th Annual Meeting
(Washington, DC)
January 27-29, 2005
Building Safe, Healthy, Livable Communities Conference
(Miami, FL)
March 2005
FHWA National Pilot Course on Community Impact Assessment
(Location TBD)
February 13-15, 2005
EPA National Air Quality Conference
(San Francisco, CA)
For more information, please visit CTE's CONVERGE
Web site.
For more information about CTE News and
Notes, contact Katie McDermott,
Editor
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