EWB-USA NER 2012 Conference

With over 400 attendees, the main sessions of the North East Regional Conference were packed, but we enjoyed speeches from EWB-USA executive director Cathy Leslie, project manager Joshua Knight, and Philadelphia water commissioner Howard Neukrug. Howard Neukrug delivered an entertaining and fascinating view of the challenges of a city commissioner in providing a clean, steady water source for residence in a city with Philly's age.

I believe he said he had 3, 48-inch water mains break in Philly during his tenure. These are failures that shouldn't really be happening but maintenance and replacement of infrastructure is not given much financial priority in most cities. He's also had to deal with multiple extreme weather events. But he did highlight some things that the City is testing to reduce their water treatment demands and keep their water systems clean. Seeing a map of the City back over 200 years ago revealed that many of the old streams have been redirected and paved over- and we wonder why we have such issues with water! We've had a hard time respecting it's power since the dawn of civilization.