HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

On the Harvard Law School campus, Robert France, associate professor of landscape ecology at the Design School, looks at ways that rainwater can be used in a more efficient way through building and landscape design. (Staff photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)

Designing solutions to fresh water shortage

Design School conference looks at sustainable methods for saving water supply

But as the water swirls down the drain, it changes its identity and becomes wastewater. It then gurgles along underground, often for great distances, to a sewage treatment plant that processes the water and releases it into an ocean or river.

Robert France finds this cycle problematic.

"Here in Boston, we're living outside of our watershed. We're importing our drinking water from the western part of the state, and then we're sending our wastewater away to be treated at the Deer Island plant. We should be keeping our water within the watershed."

France is an associate professor of landscape ecology at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), a scientist who has studied the effect of environmental degradation of various plants and animals. He is also something of an evangelist for more environmentally friendly and sustainable methods for managing our water supply.

Recently, he helped organize a conference at the GSD, "Ecological Engineering for Integrated Water Management," Oct. 30-Nov. 2. The conference brought together scientists, engineers, landscape architects, government officials, industry representatives, and activists to share views and information about this precious and threatened resource.

Few if any of the participants disagreed with the basic premise that the supply of fresh water, an essential element for millions of species including humans, is running dangerously low. Many areas of the world have inadequate water supplies, and many, like the Southwestern United States, are on the verge of catastrophic water shortages.

Even in the relatively wet Northeast, there are signs that all is not well. Frequent droughts cause many communities to limit water use during the summer months. And this summer in the upstream reaches of the Charles River, France found the water too shallow for kayaking or canoeing. "The boats were scraping bottom," he said.

Still, the general tone of the conference was not pessimistic. Many of the presenters described innovative systems that had proved their effectiveness on a small scale and might serve to reverse the downward trend if adopted more widely.

Typical of these water visionaries was David Del Porto, senior designer for the locally based Ecological Engineering Group. Del Porto's slogan is "It isn't wastewater unless you waste it." His firm has pioneered the use of natural systems to purify wastewater and return it to the environment so that it can filter back into the watershed.

He showed slides of a solar aquatic system his firm built in the town of Weston that has been operating successfully for seven years. The system incorporates a specially designed greenhouse that duplicates the processes of a pond or river and, in Del Porto's words, "grows clean water."

Another exciting concept that Del Porto's firm is developing is "hyperaccumulation," using living plants to remove pollutants from the environment. Experiments have shown that sunflowers can be used to remove radioactivity, mustard greens can remove lead, and tamarisk trees can filter out salt. In some cases, the polluting minerals can then be harvested and sold for industrial use.

The conference was a sort of water summit, bringing together for the first time innovators like Del Porto who work on ways of utilizing wastewater, water conservation specialists who work chiefly in areas like the Southwest where water is scarce, and experts in the recycling of stormwater, the runoff from precipitation, which can be particularly problematic in urban areas.

Urban runoff is one of France's areas of expertise. His knowledge gives him a very different view of the rainwater that flows down our sewers and into our waterways than that of the general public.

"The irony is that people are more scared of wastewater than they are of stormwater. In point of fact, the stuff that comes off the streets is worse than what comes from toilets. It's a cocktail of all sorts of nasties."

Among the most dangerous pollutants, France mentions the toxic particles shed by car tires and brake drums, along with the bacteria contained in dog waste.

"All of this makes its way into Alewife Brook, the Mystic River, the Charles."

As one of only two scientists on the GSD faculty, France is critical of the ecological obtuseness of many designers and engineers.

"Engineers are still trapped in a pipe mentality. Their focus is getting rid of the stormwater efficiently. What a lot of people at the conference were saying was that by the time it gets into the pipes, it's too late."

Instead of the conventional methods of dealing with stormwater - directing it into sewers and drywells - France would like to see it channeled into specially designed rain gardens where the water is purified while it nurtures vegetation. Another beneficial innovation is the use of porous pavements for driveways and parking lots instead of concrete or asphalt, allowing rainwater to infiltrate the surface layer and filter down to the water table.

"We need to find ways to collect, harvest, and reuse water, to treat it as a resource rather than a hazard."

Architects too frequently ignore the ecological dimension when they design buildings, France said.

"Often the buildings that architects design exist in a kind of hy-per-space with little or no attention to environmental realities."

France finds many Harvard buildings deficient in this regard, although one sign of a rising ecological consciousness is the retrofitting of a "green roof" on top of 29 Garden St., formerly Harvard Police headquarters, now a housing complex for graduate students. Green roofs, now mandated in many parts of Europe, use plantings to absorb the rainwater that falls on them instead of letting it run off into the sewer.

France hopes that when the University designs new buildings for its Allston campus, it will learn from past mistakes and make integrated water management one of its primary concerns. France believes that if Harvard and other institutions lead the way in this area, water's murky future may once again run clear.

"It's the nature of water to integrate abuses, but it can also integrate beneficial changes across the landscape."

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