Position paper.

Partial Technical Completion Report, Office of Water Resources Research, Project A-020-ARIZ / Grant Agreement No. 14-31-0001-3203 / Period of Investigation: 7/69-6/71 / Potential uses or reuses of salvageable waters in the Tucson region were examined, and costs and benefits related to such uses were evaluated. The quality of salvageable waters as determined in exploratory sampling was compared with water quality standards and criteria appropriate for agricultural, recreational and selected industrial uses. A tableau was then constructed which showed the type and estimated cost of conventional water treatment that would be required for each source-to-use combination. Finally, an estimate was made of unit net benefits to be anticipated from salvageable water input to these uses, and the net benefits were applied in several test calculations to illustrate mixed allocations of the various salvaged waters to the selected uses.

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / Across the world, populations continue to grow while water supplies stay fixed. In the American Southwest, water supplies are at an all time low, yet warm, favorable conditions continue to lure residents to the area. With some of the country’s lowest fresh water reserves, it is imperative that changes are made to water usage trends and associated energy inefficiencies. An analysis of water usage in Tucson was conducted to evaluate potential solutions for reducing consumption and to correspondingly shrink energy usage. Case studies were investigated, census numbers were used to roughly calculate statistics, existing knowledge on water conservation techniques were researched, and alternative water filtration as well as distribution systems were scrutinized for their viability amongst current infrastructure. The potential to reduce water usage is greatest with the largest user of water in Tucson, the single-family residence. On average the single-family residence is capable of effectively saving nearly 25,000 gallons of water per year with efficient fixtures, another 25,000 gallons per year by reducing outdoor water use by half, and another 10,625 gallons by utilizing rainwater harvesting. Combine those savings and multiply them by the 225,000-240,000 single-family residents estimated to be in Tucson and the savings reach more than five billion gallons a year, effectively almost cutting water consumption in Tucson by a fifth. Further, to keep remaining usage impacts negligible, implementation of an indirect or direct potable water reuse system could satisfy populations for decades by reusing water that would normally be discarded as effluent. Water consumption must be curved so that it can satisfy a growing population’s needs. Amongst residents of Tucson, single-family residences have the greatest potential to reduce water and associated energy needs. Through conservation techniques, water harvesting, reducing outdoor water usage, and potable reuse, limited water supplies can satisfy future generations to come.

Newark, New Jersey has endured large scale depopulation from 1930 through to 2000. Today the urban core of this city suffers from great social and cultural segregation between residents and daytime visiting populations who work in the city. To be reclaimed as a residential zone, the downtown core needs spaces that foster community interaction and growth. An opportunely sited, mixed-use community centre that encourages spontaneous encounters by cross-programming spaces and events could provide a safe place for residents to start reasserting neighbourhood ownership. By reclaiming the historically important, yet long empty, Hahne and Co. department store, the centre would acknowledge the homegrown success and decline of Newark’s past while turning the building into a supporting structure for the community to use in building a new future together. This thesis explores issues of adaptive re-use, programmatic diversity, community centre design and urban renewal.

Currently very few retired venues are reused and most are torn down to make room for new development. Of the venues that are reused, they are either converted into housing projects or mixed use commercial buildings. My goal of reusing Rexall Place, in Edmonton, Canada, is to help prove that the reuse of this building type is a viable option, one that can save many retired venues from demolition. The adaptive reuse of Rexall Place proposes the conversion of the large scale, sole purpose venue of the Edmonton Oilers hockey club into a multi-use facility that will continue to maintain the spirit of the building, while regenerating the urban fabric of the Northlands area. This project looks to give life back to Rexall Place, and spark urban regeneration in the communities surrounding Rexall Place by creating an accessible central hub for these communities through the inclusion of quality housing, shopping and recreational facilities.

Traditional church buildings negotiate thresholds in a way that supports a program of cyclical and elevating rituals. Each threshold is marked by an architectural image, one that comes to be associated with a particular practice or event. This thesis begins with an analysis of the experience of sacred spaces, then considers ways to emphasize qualities of existing elements. The design inhabits the liminal spaces across thresholds and promotes the contemporary ritual practices of art. The chosen test site for the design methodology is Central Presbyterian Church on the bank of the Grand River in Cambridge, Ontario. A recent resurgence of the local creative community has drawn interest to the area and provides the basis of the user-based program for this project.

Infill development, including the reuse of vacant and derelict industrial buildings, is a desirable form of development as municipalities face the pressure of continuous growth. There have been numerous industrial sites in Toronto that have already been redeveloped through adaptive reuse, but there are still sites that remain underutilized, and additional sites continue to become vacant across the city. As the prior use can no longer be supported, these buildings are demolished in order to construct new buildings, or they undergo adaptive reuse. The purpose of this report is to explain how the environmental, locational, legislative, market and financial characteristics of industrial buildings located in Toronto affect whether they are chosen for adaptive reuse. Additionally the similarities and differences between public and private sector adaptive reuse projects will be studied. This report will complement existing research completed by others on the characteristics of adaptive reuse projects in Ontario, and provide more specific information regarding the industrial adaptive reuse market in Toronto. The case study approach used in this report consists of eight industrial adaptive reuse projects in the City of Toronto. Interviews with the developers were completed to gain valuable insight into the factors that were present and affected the selection of the building. The analysis involved reviewing the data from the interviews to identify the similarities and differences between the characteristics of the developers’ projects. Based on the analysis of the interviews, four recommendations were made. These recommendations are provided with the goal of assisting developers during the selection of industrial buildings in Toronto to undergo adaptive reuse. Each recommendation considers the characteristic that a building and site should or should not possess. Recommendation 1: The site should not contain ground water contamination Recommendation 2: Use concrete buildings if planning an addition Recommendation 3: Select a building with interior demising walls removed Recommendation 4: Select a building that has financial or development incentives promoting reuse / Thesis (Master, Urban & Regional Planning) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-16 17:16:07.105

This dissertation investigated the questions of sustainable development, in the context of water and sanitation provision, for the eThekwini Municipality. The Durban Water Recycling (DWR) plant, run by Veolia Water, was initially the focus of this investigation. The use of recycled water in Durban has freed potable water supplies for a potential 200 000 new consumers. Industry also benefits as the recycled water is supplied at a lower cost. In order to create a holistic picture of the effect of water recycling, a network incorporating the abstraction, use, re-use and disposal of water in the South Durban Region was investigated. This water supply network was identified consisting of the following units: Inanda Dam, Wiggins Waterworks, the pumping and reticulation network, Durban Southern Wastewater Treatment Works, Durban Water Recycling and the Durban Southern Deep Sea Outfall. For the environmental analysis the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool was chosen. Life cycle assessment is a systematic way to evaluate the environmental impacts of products or processes by following a scientific methodology in which the impacts are quantified. LCA provides objective answers to environmental questions while suggesting more sustainable forms of production and consumption. It is the only tool which has a cradle-to-grave approach and by this it avoids positive ratings for measurements which only consist in the shifting of burdens. The objective of this LCA was twofold. The first was to quantify and evaluate the environmental performance of relevant processes and so help decision makers choose amongst options. The second objective was to provide a basis for assessing potential improvements in the environmental performance of the system. Once these areas and the contributors to the high burdens were identified, improvement options were investigated. One of the key outcomes of this analysis was the development of an electricity index as an indicator of environmental performance for water and wastewater systems. The GaBi 3 software package, which uses the CML (Centre for Environmental Science, University of Leiden, The Netherlands) LCA methodology, was used to compile environmental impact scores for each impact category. For the non standard systems such as Inanda Dam and the Durban Southern Deep Sea Outfall a new way of assessing the impacts was developed. There is an emerging trend to combine the LCA methodology with social issues so as to improve the decision making capability. The social analysis was carried out using an LCA type methodology. The impact categories selected were; job creation and health and health risks. During the course of the study the issue of land displacement arose when investigating the social issues surrounding the construction of a dam. This was then incorporated into the entire study. The system was broken up into sub-systems which were studied separately and then combined to create a holistic picture. Each sub-system was further divided into three stages for analysis; the construction, operation and decommissioning. This method of analysing the system allows for the detailed description of individual process units with the highest social and environmental burden. For example it was identified that the operation of the activated sludge systems at the wastewater treatment works had an environmental burden due to the electricity consumption during this stage. For the impact category of global warming it was discovered that 40% of the total environmental impact of the system could be attributed to the secondary treatment stage at the wastewater works. The construction of the dam had the largest social burden due to the displacement of the communities living in the dam area. The final part of the study was a scenario analysis. The aim of this analysis was to develop a sustainability framework for municipalities seeking to expand their provision of water and sanitation services. Different scenarios for increasing the water supply of a municipality were considered. The environmental impact of each scenario was also investigated. In this stage various options were considered to see how changes in the system affected the environmental profile. Improvements using new, modified or alternate technologies were suggested and their effects calculated. An operating procedure, for the current system, with the lowest environmental impact was also suggested. The results of this research will prove valuable to designers and planners looking to expand existing water supply networks in a sustainable manner. A sustainability framework was developed to complement the existing DWAF framework for municipalities expanding their provision of water and sanitation services. The key findings of this study were: • The quantification of the environmental burdens for the supply of water and sanitation in the eThekwini Municipality first for the individual units then for the system. • An improvement analysis which suggested ways of reducing the environmental burdens of the existing system. • The development of a sustainability framework for a municipality to increase its water and sanitation service levels. • The incorporation of social indicators into the LCA methodology. • The development of a technique that could be incorporated into the LCA methodology, for assessing the toxicity of complex effluents. • The development of a method of evaluating the environmental performance of a water and sanitation system using an electricity index. The thesis provides a holistic view of the abstraction, use, re-use and disposal of water in the eThekwini Municipality and provides a guideline for decision makers when assessing options for expansion or improvement in water supply networks. / Thesis (Ph.D. Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. 2006.

No description available.

The present project aimed at measuring plant heavy metal uptake as a function of transpiration rates and dissolved heavy metal level in the soil solution. Two experiment was conducted separately in two season (Spring and Fall 2000). In these two experiments, young wheat plants ( Triticum aestivum) were irrigated with nine different solutions containing Cd and Zn. The study was conducted in two chambers where relative humidity was controlled to obtain two different levels of transpiration rates. Each control chambers contained 27 pots filled with sand and seeded with wheat plants, each nine triplicated pots receiving a different treatment: three Cd treatments with levels of 0.01, 0.10, and 0.50 mg/L; one Zn treatment with level of 25mg/L and four treatment combinations of Cd/Zn with levels of 0.01 Cd/25Zn, 0.10Cd/25ZN, 0.50Cd/25Zn and 0.50Cd/50Zn mg/L. The transpiration rate of the plants was monitored over a period of 30 days, measured from the emergence of the plants by weighing the pots daily. On day 15 and 30, three plants were removed from each pot, to weigh their dry matter production and to analyze their heavy metal uptake. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)