MARCH 2021
In 1948, the industrial and urban development driven by World War II had resulted in air and water pollution on a scale never seen before. The environmental destruction spurred Congress to take action and the U.S. introduced the groundbreaking new law called, “The Federal Water Pollution Control Act” (FWPCA). In the decades leading up to this, legislators in Congress had made numerous, unsuccessful attempts to pass similar bills addressing the issues of water pollution in the U.S. 

FWPCA authorized the Surgeon General, in cooperation with federal, state, and local entities, to establish programs for eliminating or reducing the pollution of interstate waters and tributaries. It was also used to help improve sanitary conditions of surface and ground waters. Additionally, the Act authorized the Federal Works Administration to support states, municipalities and interstate agencies in constructing water treatment plants that adequately treated discharge water and other wastes into interstate waters or... >>Read the rest of the article
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Water Quality Today: Continuously Working Towards Clean Water
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act (CWA) in the United States and while it has had a tremendous impact on our environmental work, it’s important to understand the other factors that define what clean water and water quality means for us today. Under the CWA, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) develops and sets national water quality criteria for pollutants and also implements pollution control programs—including wastewater—standards for industry. However, new laws, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA), have been passed and implemented over recent decades that provide us with additional clean water regulatory requirements... >>Read the rest of the article
WOMEN IN HISTORY
Paving the Way for the Next Generations of Women in Environmental Science
March is Women’s History Month, and we are taking this moment to honor women pioneers in the field of environmental science. The list of women who have supported, innovated, and driven environmental science is long and impressive, but two stood out to us representing decades of advancements in the field. 

Rachel Carson, an avid environmentalist who intertwined her love of nature with a passion for writing and poetry, was most notably known for her bestseller, Silent Spring. Originally featured as a series in The New Yorker in 1962, Silent Spring alarmed and educated readers on the dangers of DDT and played a significant role in the environmental movement, including the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Although Silent Spring is her most recognizable work, Carson was also a marine biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Throughout her career, she was able to deftly apply poetic prose to describe complex ecological food webs and systems. 

Mollie Beattie was the first woman to serve as the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Under her leadership, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added 15 additional national wildlife refuges, 100 habitat conservation... >>Read the rest of the article
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Email From Spinach – a New Frontier for Monitoring Data?
From the dryads of Greek Mythology to the messages of the trees in the 2019 Pulitzer Prize fiction winner, The Overstory, mankind has explored the idea of nature speaking to humans. Perhaps it comes from a primal desire to communicate with the world we live in? And while a forester’s claims (name?) in Smithsonian Magazine’s March 2018 issue that, “trees also communicate through the air, using pheromones and other scent signals,” were considered controversial, these rather literal ideas of listening to nature may, in some cases, actually have a factual basis. Strano Research Group and others have recently developed a system for Spinach—yes Spinach!—to send email.

Bizarre as emailing spinach may sound, these studies have been successful. Plants in general are innate experts at monitoring and responding to changing conditions around them. Spinach, in particular, has a strong capacity to be a “nanobionic” sensor: able to detect water stress, disease, and dangerous levels of metals of compounds. For example, carbon nanotubes in the spinach leaves will emit a signal in response to the plant roots detecting a specific compound in the groundwater. The cellular signal emitted in the leaves can be picked up by an infrared camera set to send an email for notification of a detection... >>Read the rest of the article
PHOTOS FROM THE VAULT Waterborne Scientists Over the Years
After close to 30 years in business, we've collected quite an assortment of team field photos. Take a peek at our history in our photo vault, here.
Approximately 25 years ago, Amy Ritter (Waterborne Principal Engineer) and Marty Williams (Waterborne Co-Founder) stay dry from a boat while collaborating on a sampling event.
Waterborne Environmental is a renowned consulting firm that has provided innovative solutions to the world’s most complex environmental problems since 1993. Our experienced, unbiased scientists and engineers work across industries to evaluate environmental, ecological, and human risks. Our work spans across industry and regulatory agencies to support the balance in the needs of a growing population with the environmental impact on our valuable natural resources.

Our The Current Newsletter is published monthly. Visit us online to find more articles, videos, and information about our work. Click here to contact us.