Water IGEP at AWWA ACE ’14 in Boston, MA

Students from the Water IGEP joined Dr. Pruden at this year’s Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE) – AWWA’s biggest water conference in the heart of Massachusetts in Boston.

Dr. Pruden gave two talks to packed audiences on 6/10 and 6/12:

• Limiting Occurrence of Opportunistic Pathogens in Premise Plumbing Through Engineering Controls (co-authors: Dr. Marc Edwards, PhD Student William Rhoads, and Caitlin Proctor)
• Opportunistic Pathogen Regrowth Factors in Premise Plumbing: GAC, AOC, Copper and Temperature (which is Caitlin Proctor’s work for her MS)

Pan gave a talk on 6/12 her current research concerning premise plumbing carrying drinking water and associated microbial communities titled “Effect of Pipe Materials, Water Flow and Chemistry on the Building Plumbing Microbiome” (Pan is co-advised by Dr. Pruden and Dr. Edwards). She also presented research findings of Dr. Hong Wang (from Dr. Pruden’s group) at a poster session on “Effect of Chlorine Burn and Water Flushing on Nitrifiers and Microbial Communities in a Chloraminated Distribution System”.

Sid presented findings from his ongoing research concerning failures of copper pipes in hot water systems due to erosion corrosion: “Erosion Corrosion of Copper As a Function of Temperature, Flow Rates, and Water Hardness” on 6/11 (Dr. Edwards is Sid’s PhD advisor).

In addition, we attended several cutting edge presentations and discussion sessions including pathogens in premise plumbing (pipes carrying drinking water in buildings), challenges with direct potable reuse (using waste water as drinking water sources after treatment – also called reclaimed water), scientific findings and public affairs lessons from the West Virginia chemical spill in January 2014, different aspects of drinking water treatment issues and latest research, global challenges faced in international water projects, among several others.

New York City’s Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the Keynote speaker on Day One. He stressed on the imminent problems the American population faces with aging water infrastructure and how building new infrastructure as well as adopting novel solutions to water scarcity concerns the entire water community. And how this requires transforming ourselves into leaders of the field – recognizing the needs of the public as central to our work.

The full conference event line-up including the above mentioned talks is available here: http://www.awwa.org/conferences-education/conferences/annual-conference/program/ace14-online-program.aspx