Three teams of civil engineering students in USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering met with Assemblywoman Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge) and Metropolitan Water District officials Feb. 3 to discuss novel technologies for water conservation in Southern California and communities throughout the world.

Left to right: Christopher Harick, USC civil engineering graduate student and grant winner, meets with Timothy Brick, Metropolitan Water District board member representing Pasadena, and Assemblywoman Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge).

The USC teams were among 12 Southland college and university teams to receive World Water Forum grants totaling $120,000 to research local water supply solutions that may result in global benefits.  Assemblywoman Liu is honorary chair of the Southern California World Water Forum, which is currently celebrating the United Nations’ “International Decade of Fresh Water.”

USC projects receiving funding included a study of catch basin insert devices to determine the types that are most cost-effective in residential, commercial and industrial areas; development of a new touch-activated showerhead to turn water on and off easily during showers and significantly reduce water usage; and a water well cleanup project to test a variety of techniques for cleaning out ground wells.

Liu met with USC Viterbi School civil engineering faculty, including Carter Wellford, chair of the department, J. J. Lee, and Dennis Williams, as well as water officials including Timothy J. Brick, Metropolitan Water District (MWD) board member representing the city of Pasadena, and Nancy Sutley, MWD board member and City of Los Angeles deputy mayor.  She called the projects “wonderful,” offering people “some very practical solutions to a very difficult issue about how to handle our water efficiently and economically.”

“We have a lot of work to do,” Liu added, “but I thought the projects were very stimulating and very practical.”

United Nations Water Conservation Program
The water conservation grant program is part of a yearlong competition sponsored by the United Nations to mobilize students at dozens of universities and community colleges throughout Southern California to address global water issues. Agencies supporting the grant program included many water organizations, such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Family of Southern California Water Agencies.  

Grant competitors in addition to USC included student teams from the California State University campuses of Long Beach, Fullerton, San Bernardino and the Channel Islands; the University of California at Irvine and Riverside; Cal Poly Pomona; and community colleges including Cerritos College, Los Angeles Valley College, Pasadena City College, and Santa Ana College.

“Clean, reliable water is a vitally important resource in Southern California as it is for billions of people the world over,” said MWD Chairman Phillip J. Pace in announcing the yearlong grant competition last year. “Through the Southern California World Water Forum program, we’re counting on students to develop innovative ideas for bringing good, clean water to the billions of people all over the world who need it.”  

Catch Basin Insert Devices
Suraj Kumar Shankar, a civil engineering graduate student, is working with fellow graduate student Zhiqing Kou to study catch basin insert devices, which are found in drainage systems throughout the city, and propose the most economically viable products for use in residential, commercial and industrial areas.

Suraj Kumar Shankar

 

“Catch basin insert devices are designed to prevent trash and pollutants from flowing into the ocean, but they don’t stop all of the pollution from entering the storm drains,” Shankar said.  “There are about 90,000 catch basins in Los Angeles County alone and 30,000 in the City of Los Angeles.  We could achieve a 20 percent reduction in the cost of treating storm water runoff if we had more efficient insert devices.”  

Shankar’s project, supervised by civil engineering professor J. J. Lee, will compare the costs of insert devices with hydraulic performance and pollution removal efficiency. His team will deliver a cost-benefit analysis to help decision-makers reduce the costs of implementing and managing new catch basin systems.

Touch-Activated Showerheads
Hyoung-Jin Kim, a graduate student and team leader of a project to design a touch-activated on/off showerhead switch, was another of the USC grant winners.  He said water use through showering accounts for about 17 percent of all indoor water use.  

“Many older showerheads and even the low-flow showerheads do not prevent waste while showering,” Kim said.  “My idea was simple. Let’s turn off the water while soaping or shampooing.  That way, we will save considerable amounts of water.”  

Hyoung-Jin Kim

The project will investigate switches that adjust for height and maximize water-use efficiency. Kim’s faculty adviser is Carter Wellford, professor and chairman of the Viterbi School Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Water Well Cleanup Techniques
Civil engineering graduate student and team leader Christopher Harich won a grant for his project to test water well cleanup techniques and propose the best and most efficient methods for increasing well efficiency.

“In national expenditures, 56 percent of the large public utilities obtain their water from the ground,” Harich said. “If we could just go in there and clean our wells, and gain 10 percent efficiency, we would be saving about $350 million a year. That has significant implications for a large water supplier like the Metropolitan Water District.”    

Under the supervision of Dennis Williams, research professor of civil engineering, Harich and his team will use USC’s full-scale well/aquifer model to determine those well cleanup methods that are most efficient.  The team will test samples obtained from specific sites to identify cleanup methods with the greatest increase in well efficiency.    

“All of these projects demonstrate the tremendous benefits that are coming out of this grant program,” concluded Timothy J. Brick, MWD board member for the city of Pasadena.

Camera crew captures Assemblywoman Liu chatting with Metropolitan Water District representative Benita Horn.

 

“USC is the only school that got three grants,” he said. “You’ve done a tremendous job and I’m very excited about taking this information back to Metropolitan and telling everyone how successful it has been….and maybe with Assemblywoman Liu we can turn this into a program that can be effective all throughout the state of California.”