University at Albany’s Biochar/Soil Study Gets USDA Grant Funding The Department of Environmental & Sustainable Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Albany (State University of New York) has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  The Principal Investigator is Dr. Rixiang Huang, a member of NEBRA’s new Carbon & Nutrient Trading Committee.  Back in June, NEBRA had written him a letter of support for his project titled “Elucidating and Modeling Microbe-Mediated Organic Matter Cycling for Predictive Soil Health Management Using Biochar”.  NEBRA has committed to being a partner on this project to represent the organic waste management profession. Specifically, NEBRA will help the researchers by connecting them to organic waste industries with biochar production and land application programs, enhancing coordination between this important research and field practices, and communicating the research findings and tools to the waste management profession.

EPA Continues CWA Technical Assistance Webinars
On November 18th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hosted “Troubleshooting Sludge Problems in Wastewater Lagoon Systems”, as part of its technical assistance webinar series on improving Clean Water Act, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) compliance.  This webinar on lagoon systems, which was scheduled for 90 minutes, went over by almost 20 minutes due to the level of interest and questions from the audience.  The presenter was Steve Harris with H & S Environmental and he had lots of good, practical advice for operators managing lagoon solids.  Copies of his trouble shooting guide are available from USA Bluebook (https://www.usabluebook.com/p-286936-wastewater-lagoon-troubleshooting.aspx) and a recording of the webinar will be available soon on EPA's training webpage (Technical Assistance Webinar Series: Improving CWA-NPDES Permit Compliance | US EPA).  You can also get information about future webinars in this technical assistance series as well as recordings of past sessions which include sessions on facultative and aerated wastewater lagoon systems from 2020.  There was also a “Biosolids Part 1” session from April 2021 which implies there will be another sessions focused on biosolids.

EPA Awards Research Grants to Support Water Reuse
In late October, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research & Development awarded five grants to study existing and new technologies for detecting and monitoring viruses in water intended for reuse. The grants total almost $6.2 million.  One of the grants will go to the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection where the funding will be used to identify wastewater technologies and treatment processes (both centralized and decentralized) that are capable of removing viruses to meet water reuse criteria.  Barnstable County will be evaluating the use of five viral surrogates as possible indicators of the presence of human viruses.  The EPA also awarded funds to researchers at Tulane Universiry, the University of California at Irvine, the University of Michigan, and the Water Research Foundation.  For a description of all the grant projects, go to Viral Pathogen and Surrogate Approaches for Assessing Treatment Performance in Water Reuse (2021) | Research Project Database | Grantee Research Project | ORD | US EPA

The Sanitation Economy
November 19th was World Toilet Day and one organization that thinks a lot about the same issues (lack of sanitation) is The Toilet Board (Home - Toilet Board Coalition), a business-led partnership out of Geneva, Switzerland, with the goal to accelerate the “Sanitation Economy” and address the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal #6 (universal access to water and sanitation).  It is a Triple Bottom Line approach to ensuring basic sanitation in countries where the coalition members operate.  The Coalition envisions an evolution from The Toilet Economy (designing for circularity, having diverse toilet options) to the Circular Sanitation Economy (focused on resource recovery) to the Smart Sanitation Economy (data, digitization, tweaking outputs of energy/nutrients/water, and gathering information on community health). In the Smart Sanitation Economy, human waste is called “Toilet Resources”. From this interesting short read, “Sanitation can create new economic value and becomes a solution provider for urgent business and societal issues that address many of the Sustainable Development Goals - from water security, to climate change, food security and human rights.”