Urban Rivers: Don’t Miss the Boat to a Sustainable Future for Our Cities!

By Paul Freedman, 2009-2010 President of WEF

There was a time when large urban cities, like Boston, saw their waterfront locations as assets in transporting wastes away from the city and supporting navigation, commerce, and manufacturing. These urban cities still see the waterfront asset today, but in a different light. Today’s cities want to integrate their waters into urban life as part of building greener, cleaner places for living, recreation, and supporting business and commerce. I mentioned Boston because it’s the site of WEF’s Cities of the Future and Urban River Restoration 2010 conferences. There practitioners and visionaries will take a comprehensive look at revitalizing urban rivers and waterfronts and explore the exciting possibilities for sustainable urban environments, our cities of the future.

For successful and sustainable cities and urban river restoration, integrated planning is essential. Multiple stakeholders with different agendas, problems, and budgets must get together and develop one vision to leverage rivers as a source of water supply, social and commercial enhancement, even spiritual renewal. This event will bring major players together, including city planners and administrators, transportation and landscape engineers and architects, public works directors and other officials, to focus on urban river restoration, and they’ll be sharing ideas in the context of sustainability and a population shift back into cities. Collaborative input from different types of professionals is needed to create sustainable urban infrastructure and the interdependent engineered and natural systems that will characterize our future cities. That is why WEF for the first time has simultaneously co-located two specialty conferences, Cities of the Future and Urban River Restoration.

Revitalizing cities and especially major urban industrial areas that are abandoned or scarred can be realized with the right kind of vision and integrated planning. The outcome can be vibrant sustainable cities with triple bottom line benefits including a cleaner environment, enhanced lifestyles, and stronger economies. With the right stakeholders and an eye toward sustainability, water quality leaders can start planning today or certainly in Boston next month. Be sure to plan to attend this exciting event!

Putting the 'Special' in 2010 Specialty Conferences

By Jeanette Brown, 2009-2010 President-Elect of WEF

Welcome to 2010 at the Water Environment Federation, where this year’s Specialty Conference series looks to be better than ever before. As a participant in the 2009 Nutrient Conference, I gained so much both professionally and personally because of the technical content and the ability to network with experts in the field. I have participated in and attended other specialty conferences this past year where the experience was just as rewarding. These conferences are exclusive and wonderful ways to learn about select areas from leaders in the field. As you can see from the list below in 2010, we plan an even greater variety of conferences which offer something for all professionals employed in the water sector.

• The Utility Management Conference™ 2010
  San Francisco, California
  February 21-24
  
• Cities of the Future 2010
  Boston, Massachusetts
  March 7-10
  
• Urban River Restoration 2010
  Boston, Massachusetts
  March 7-10
  
• 2010 AWWA/WEF Information Management & Technology Conference
  Portland, Oregon
  March 21-24
  
• WEF/A&WMA Odors and Air Pollutants 2010
  Charlotte, North Carolina
  March 21-24
  
• Residuals and Biosolids 2010
  Savannah, Georgia
  May 23-26
  
• Membrane Applications 2010
  Anaheim, California
  June 6-9
  
• Collection Systems 2010
  Phoenix, Arizona
  June 13–16
  
• Biofilm Reactor Technology Conference 2010
  Portland, Oregon
  August 15-16
  

If any of these topics applies to your job or appeals to your interest, please consider joining the thousands of water quality professionals who participate in these unique events every year. For technical excellence, superior meeting arrangements, and unmatched networking opportunities, you’ll find WEF truly puts the ‘special’ in specialty conferences. See you in Savannah for Residuals and Biosolids!