Research Projects 2005

• An Economic Impact Analysis of DC Drinking Water Quality
• An Analytical Study of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers
• Air-Deposited Pollutants in the Anacostia River Watershed
• Effects of Pelletized Poultry Manure and Vegetable Production on Vadose Zone Water Quality
• Integrated Data Acquisition and Sensor Design for Biomonitoring Systems

An Economic Impact Analysis of DC Drinking Water Quality

Principal Investigator:       Sharron L. Terrell, Ph.D.

In January 2004, District of Columbia Residents learned the drinking water supplied by the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) was contaminated with lead (Swartz 2004 and Cohn 2005). The DC government immediately responded by forming the Interagency Task Force on Lead in Drinking Water (The Task Force) to investigate the problem and propose corrective action (Press Release, April 22, 2004). As a short-term solution to the lead leaching problem, The Task Force distributed water filters and test kits to some DC residents (Press Release, April 22, 2004) and informed households by mail and other media how to purify drinking water and water used for sanitation purposes (Williams and Swartz, C., April 22, 2004). Congress responded to the DC lead leaching problem by establishing the Lead-Free Drinking Water Act of 2004 (The ACT). The Act revised regulations regarding the acceptable level of lead in drinking water as well as legally established DC residents’ rights to “a safe, lead free supply of drinking water,” (Lead-Free Drinking Water Act of 2004). In testimony presented to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Government Reform, Paul Swartz testified about negative health consequences to DC residents exposed to lead contaminated drinking water (Swartz, P., 2004). This study will assess household and commercial economic impacts implicit in the discussion of DC’s drinking water problem.

An Analytical Study of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers

The Anacostia and Potomac Rivers run through Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. This study will focus exclusively on the segments of the rivers that run through the District of Columbia. Both rivers are important tributaries of the Chesapeake basin. In recent years, there has been the increased demand for the restoration of urban rivers. This demand has been sparked by increased pollution levels of rivers; thus culminating to environmental degradation and other and other adverse effects. Over the years there has been an increasing focus on cleaning river in the United States. Urban rivers that have undergone restoration include the Bronx River in New York and the Charleston River in South Carolina. Heavy polluted rivers such the Anacostia, have not received greater attention until recently. This reluctance in action and attitudes by planners and policy makers raised serious concerns. There are those who question the efficacy of existing policies vis-à-vis the restoration of urban rivers and those who attribute slow governmental efforts to environmental inequity. Whatever the case; the central issue is how to arrest the pollution levels in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and restore a sustainable life for these rivers. River pollution occurs because industrial and agricultural chemicals and waste are poorly managed and disposed as well as increased urbanization. Pollution levels adversely affect the environment and cause serious health problems. To mitigate these problems, policy makers, researchers and planners must understand the gravity, nature and scope of the problem. This study will use content analysis to investigate the problem. The researcher will peruse through the body of literature to understand the character and nature of the pollution levels in these river. An analysis will be carried out and some recommendations will be provided. This study will address the following areas:

• Present state of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers.
• Sources of Pollution and its effect on the life of the rivers.
• Government action
• Recommendations

These issues raised provide a compelling justification for a critical examination to be conducted.

In the early 1970s, at the inception of the Clean Air and Water Act the issues of air and water pollution were considered two distinct, separate and unrelated problems. Research in metrology and geophysical fluid mechanisms have revealed over the years that there is a constant exchange of mass, energy, and momentum between air and sea brought about by hurricane activities. Furthermore, more recent research on the health of the major waterways in the area, such as, the Chesapeake Bay have yielded a better understanding of the link between air pollutants and land-based and water-based pollution resulting from atmospheric induced contaminant deposit in the major water ways.

Two major sources of water pollution emanating from atmospheric dynamics are nitrogen and phosphorus. This present investigation aims to focus on the contribution of aviation jets efflux to the adverse environmental poisoning of the Anacostia watershed. The combustion of aviation fuel, especially at take-off and landing, leads to the build-up of nitrogen oxide (NOx) or airborne nitrogen. In addition to the aviation-generated environmental pollution, household equipments, boats, trains and cars are also additional sources of environmental pollution of the major watersheds. This type of air pollution does not fall directly into the waterways; rather they get washed out of the air as rain, snow or fog – commonly known as wet deposition or as gases and tiny particles (aerosol) – dry deposition. Some of the land precipitation gets transported to rivers by storm water runoff or through groundwater flow.

Since the late 1980s computer models have shown that approximately 25% of nitrogen entering the Bay, for example, results from air pollution. The environmental quality of the Anacostia River continues to be the most urgent long-term water resources problems in the District of Columbia. Whereas dramatic improvement has been noted in the health of the Chesapeake Bay over the past years, studies continue to show stagnation or worsening in the health of the Anacostia River. The health of the Anacostia River has great influence on the overall ecosystem, including the vegetation, marine life, and the quality of life of the communities that depend on the Anacostia River. It is widely accepted that cleanup of the Anacostia River will lead to economic resurgence in the region, restoration of marine life and their habitats, improvement in water quality and clarity, and the overall health of the surrounding population.

At present, assessing the proportion of pollution induced locally by aircraft is a challenging task.

• Measuring techniques cannot be used to differentiate between pollutants emitted by road traffic and airport activities as a whole, and those discharged by aircraft on the ground [2].
• Pollution knows no frontiers. The airport is surrounded by other sources of pollution (roads, other companies, etc.) [2].
• Complexity of Domain. Once pollutants are released into the air they may breakdown or combine with other chemicals in the air and be transported short or long distances. Some of the factors that determine how far pollutants can travel through the air include, the makeup of the pollutant, weather conditions (wind, temperature, humidity), type and height of emission source (smokestack, automobile tail pipe), and the presence of other chemicals in the air. If the wind carries the plume of pollution high enough in the air, it may travel for hundreds of miles before being brought to earth. This is known as long-range or long-distance transport. Airborne pollutants fall to the earth's surface by wet deposition, or dry deposition. Airborne pollutants that deposit on the landscape can be transported into streams, rivers, and the Bay by runoff or through groundwater flow [1].
• Uncertainty of Data and model [3]. High overall persistence and long-range transport potential have been recognized as hazardous characteristics for chemicals that might be released to the environment and used in various contexts for the assessment of the hazard posed to the environment by chemicals. However, it is difficult to directly measure these two descriptors of chemical fate in the environment. Multimedia models have been found to be appropriate tools for calculating numerical values for these two characteristics. The results of these calculations are subject to two main types of uncertainties. First, they are influenced by parameter uncertainty that is due to uncertainty in the measurement methods for chemical substance properties as well as due to natural variability of the environmental parameters within the large areas represented by the multimedia models. The second major uncertainty is due to differences between the various multimedia models available for the calculation.

Effect of Pelletized Poultry Manure and Vegetable Production on Vadose Zone Water Quality

The Chesapeake Bay Agreement signed by leaders of Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, and Virginia promises a 40% reduction in the Bay’s nitrogen and phosphorus level by the year 2010. This reduction campaign was initiated particularly because of a pfeisteria scare induced by the Bay’s excess phosphorus level from over application of chemical fertilizer and poultry manure in crop production areas. Eutrophication, caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus, has also reduced the Bay’s sub-aquatic vegetation significantly. The most recent Chesapeake Bay report, July 2002, indicates no improvement in the Bay’s water quality. On a scale of 100, the Bay’s environmental quality was graded as 27, which is extremely low. In fact, this grade did not change from the previous year regardless of clean up efforts.

Poultry manure produced from the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (DELMARVA) poultry industries is applied on farmland along with chemical fertilizer for crop production. However, a significant amount of unused manure is stored for future usage or remains to be disposed of. Perdue AgriRecycle, Inc. has cleaned, sterilized, and pelletized poultry manure for easy handling and movement in crop and vegetable production. This material has been analyzed for nutrient content; however, not much data is available to demonstrate it’s effectiveness in crop and vegetable production as well as its effect on ground water quality or pfeisteria proliferation. Residents of Washington, DC grow vegetable in their backyard and could potentially use this material as a soil amendment. Therefore, this experiment is designed to determine the effectiveness of pelletized poultry manure as a soil amendment in vegetable production and its potential effect on DC water resources. Information generated will be used for extension and outreach to benefit the residents of Washington DC.

Integrated Data Acquisition and Sensor Design for Biomonitoring Systems

Principal Investigator:       Dr. Esther T. Ososanya
Co-principal Investigator:  Dr. Wagdy Mahmoud

Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of the District of Columbia
Washington DC 20008
Telephone: 202 274-5837

The main theme for this research, education and training proposal is environmental stress assessment for watershed management, ecological quality, and drinking water security. Today, more than ever before, maintaining of our Nations water quality mandates careful and exact assessment that require thorough understanding of contaminant and stressor characteristics, basic ecological processes and principles, transport rates and fate of substances within ecosystems, and health and ecological effects.

Contaminants become a risk to living systems as a result of the dose or concentration they are exposed to and the duration of exposure. Because a large number of factors can contribute to this problem in an ecological system, continuously monitoring for potentially dangerous elements using analytical chemical methods alone is expensive, time consuming, and is not practical. An innovative approach to resolving the periodicity of the analytical sampling problem in a cost effective manner would be to develop a continuously operable, remote, automated biological system; a coordinated monitoring system incorporating both physical/chemical and biological methods that could be networked into a coordinated surveillance plan for risk assessment and ecological quality control.

This research proposes the design and implementation of an integrated wireless, low-power embedded biosensor monitoring system for the acquisition and transmission of biological functions from aquatic animals. These signals can be used to measure the stress induced in aquatic animals due to water pollution. Over the past decade, research has been active in developing methods pf measuring the levels of stress in aquatic animals for the purpose of monitoring water pollution [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The minimization of power consumption is a critical issue in the design of electronic systems for portable battery-operated applications or remotely powered applications as employed in biomonitoring systems.

In the proposed study a MEMS-based biosensor will be integrated with a mixed-mode ASIC chip comprising of preamplifier, band-pass filter, analog amplifier, D/A module, modulator, transmitter, and a digital controller. The design will integrate MEMS, wireless communication, VLSI, and system-on-chip (BioSilico) technologies in the design of a low power environmental monitoring device. The system will be designed as a battery-powered device. Techniques for analyzing the acquired data will also be developed. The embedded integrated sensors are to be used in the on-line acquisition of myoneural signals from aquatic animals such as bivalve molluscs, blue gill fish, and other fish species. This design is expected to miniaturize several discrete modules and eliminate coaxial cables used in existing biomonitoring setups, and in a significant reduction in the overall system power consumption. A receiver system will be used to receive the signal transmitted from the sensor device. The receiver system will be designed and built using off-the-shelf components. When completed the design will automate the process of in situ environmental data gathering needed to monitor the safety of the drinking water resources. Details of the design will be made available through conference and journal papers.

The proposed research is in collaboration between the Electrical Engineering Department, Biology, and the Environmental Science Department. Students from Electrical Engineering, Biology, and Environmental Science will work in a multidisciplinary research environment to design the biomonitoring system. The project will produce highly qualified graduates with multidisciplinary research experience.