| 
|
By John Trotti
Over the last half-century we have undergone a transition
from a rural to an urban society, a trend that is accelerating,
taxing our ability to provide new water delivery and discharge
systems and overwhelming those already in existence. I've
listened to estimates for the repair, replacement, and upgrade
of our existing water infrastructure between now and mid-century
range from $15 trillion to $30 trillion…figures, mind
you, predicated on fighting a rear-guard action. Road repairs,
right-of-way demands, and new highway construction could add
another 50% to the total. It's one thing to screw up your
courage enough to ask where such amounts of money might come
from, but quite another to question our society's ability
to actually mobilize itself to utilize such an investment.
In short, even if we could find the funds, could we actually
deploy them in a meaningful way? I think not.
Now before you immerse yourself in figuring out how we deal
with these issues, consider what it might take to ensure the
security and reliability of our nation's infrastructure
if we continue on as we have in the past. While it's
not the solution, decentralized wastewater treatment is certainly
a strong part of it.
It still seems like only yesterday our nation reeled in
the wake of well-planned, organized, and coordinated terrorist
attacks designed to inflict the maximum number of human casualties
and capture the undivided attention of the entire world. While
we were indeed fortunate that the casualty figures from the
strikes fell short of their potential, there is no doubt that
the terrorists achieved their overall political aims. Moreover,
these attacks laid bare the vulnerability of much of our critical
infrastructure … water conveyance and electrical power
systems at the leading edge.
Now after four-and-a-half years of digesting the lessons
of those attacks, and devoting an enormous amount of our national
treasure to ensure our ability to respond to disasters of
all sorts under the banner of "Homeland Security,"
we watched in impotent amazement the colossal disconnect between
the planners and those responsible for putting the plans into
action. Without discounting the superb actions of some in
response to last year's succession of natural disasters,
it's a mistake to feel that we are much closer to coming
to grips with many of the risks than we were on September
11, 2001.
To me this vision as a prescription for action is the strongest
argument for the development and implementation of decentralized
systems—and one we intend to promote in the magazine,
but please don't take this as a call for dismantling
centralized wastewater treatment activities, rather a reminder
that we can't afford to limit our options. It is Onsite
Water Treatment's mission to promote this vision,
and with your help and support we're going to accomplish
it.
Putting the Pieces Together
Along with Onsite Water Treatment, we publish five
other infrastructure-related publications—MSW Management,
Erosion Control, Grading & Excavation Contractor,
Stormwater, and Distributed Energy—for
professional audiences, a situation that makes us acutely
aware of the common denominators and barriers that exist among
their subjects. You may find it a stretch to believe that
such disparate areas as water handling, transportation infrastructure,
waste handling, and energy resource management have much in
common, but I'd like to suggest that the factors affecting
them at the deepest level are strikingly similar. The areas
of command and control, once in the hands of predominantly
local interests, have gravitated inexorably to higher and
more remote levels of centralization, a situation not well
suited to the demands and changes taking place in our society.
Several weeks ago I was halfway watching an episode of Carl
Sagan's Cosmos series—recently remastered
with modern and incredibly spectacular graphics—when
I found myself stunned into full attention by something I
had missed when the series was first aired two decades ago.
Sagan posed the seemingly innocuous question, "Why the Greeks?"
Why had it fallen to a cluster of disjointed tribes, peripheral
to the major civilizations of the time, to develop and raise
to unprecedented heights essential features of governance,
science, and the arts that we revere today? Why not the mighty
and exalted Persians, Egyptians, Mayans, or Chinese? Why?
Because their centralized authority with its "institutionalized
thinking" was able to resist new ideas. And even the Greeks,
Sagan noted with sadness, fell victim to institutionalization
of thought.
I remember clearly the moment it came to me that the difference
between the old world and the new lay in the focus of our
primary institutions…theirs sought stability while ours
placed value in change. This difference, I believed (and still
do), gave us an enormous advantage in allowing us to tap the
energy and creativity of a very large part of our citizens
and in so doing ride the crest of change rather than flounder
in its backwaters. But it seems we've allowed this vision
to dim over the past several decades to the point that we
have yielded to the comfort of Maginot Line security rather
than pushing forward into the future on the basis of goals.
This kind of thinking is as bankrupt to us today as it was
to the French 55 years ago.
Options: How Many Are Enough?
I'm an options zealot, a character anomaly that was
pounded into the depths of my soul by some rather hairy experiences
during my fighter pilot career. The issue there is that the
minute you walk out on the flightline, you're seeing
that fine list of options you gave yourself in the briefing
room begin to go down in flames. By the time you've
made allowance for the thin stream of hydraulic fluid oozing
from beneath the engine bay and the fact that the last pilot
noted in his signoff that he had problems with the stability
augmentation system, you're already inventing work-arounds
for things that have yet to happen.
Then once you're airborne, incredible things begin
to happen for which no training manual or flight instructor,
or gee-whiz Hollywood extravaganza could begin to prepare
you. As even a totally routine flight progresses, you watch
your dwindling options tick away with the same inexorable
certainty as digits on a down-timer, or more to the case in
point, the fuel-remaining digitizer. You play constant games
of, "What do I do if, " and even when things go
to absolute worms—when you sense that you've entered
the cavernous maw of certain death, you keep on coming up
with options. "Try this….push that…hmmm,
how about flipping this switch?" until you're
back in charge…or not.
So what does that have to do with Onsite Water Treatment?
Quite a lot if you look beyond the obvious and focus on the
situation in which our nation, with its centralized, fragile,
and terribly vulnerable transportation, energy, and water
conveyance infrastructures, finds itself today.
Is the Sky Falling?
No … but can we
survive the severe disruption of any of these vital systems?
I guess it depends on what you mean by survive, but to me
the answer is no. Moreover, I think most of our citizens,
brought to the realization of how at risk these systems are,
would come to the same conclusion…only what can they
do about it? How about those in positions of authority and
control of these systems? Is it any different for them? It
is, only if you think they're relevant to the solutions, and
it's my opinion that they are hog-tied by their institutionalization.
We need now to step back and take a long-range look at the
challenges we're facing, just what it is we want, and perhaps
even more compellingly what we're willing to accept 10, 20,
50 years down the line. We may not like some of the casualties
that this will bring, but only then will we be able to take
actions necessary to the survival of our most important values.
What might these actions be? Darned if I know, but I'll bet
they won't include increased centralization.
As I agonized through the situation and its possibilities,
I saw as chief among our most pressing vulnerabilities our
reliance on centralized systems that could be brought to their
knees in any number of ways. Even more ominous is the strength
of our complacency in the face of incontrovertible evidence
that much of our water conveyance infrastructure is antiquated
and no longer relevant to the purposes for which it was initially
designed. We may "see" it, but we have yet to
"get" it.
Because of our marvelous technologies, we have been able
to distance ourselves from what for many others in the world
are the realities of day-to-day existence and in doing so
we have constructed for ourselves in many respects a house
of cards through which we run the danger of becoming not a
second- or third-world country, but something far worse—a
nation whose basic coping skills have atrophied through lack
of use.
We are not likely to voluntarily renounce the technologies
implicit in our present lifestyle and return to a more bucolic
existence, but we may find ourselves without a choice if we
don't recognize the pressing need for reform in how we meet
the demands of a future far different from those of the past.
Onsite water treatment is not just about meeting isolated
events, but part of a broader approach to a national crisis
sorely in need of options—as many as we can get.
OW
- January/February 2006
|
