Dancer Allison Orr is behind an effort to help celebrate the people who make sure trash gets picked up in our communities. She is working with the employees of the Austin Department of Solid Waste Services to produce a film and dance performance. The effort is being promoted through Kickstarter, a funding platform for creative projects. A link to a short documentary about the project is below, and if you are interested in supporting the project, you can do so at the site or by visiting http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/189615064/trash-dance-the-movie
Due to budget cuts I was only able to attend the APWA Congress for one day since I was speaking on a panel at the show. Normally, I try to attend the entire event because I always come away with many valuable insights and opportunities to reconnect with fellow professionals. This year, in the short time I was able to spend there, I was able to find a contractor who performed sawcutting of sidewalk trip hazards. My division was already familiar with Precision Concrete Cutting and have used their services to eliminate trip hazards. But in order to expand the project, we needed to have more than one proposal for the work. Fortunately Sidewalks Plus was at the show, and I was able to speak with a representative about their process and get their contact information. This allowed us to investigate two bidders and move our project forward. I also was able to discuss a few other pressing issues with representatives from a few other companies. So in addition to speaking, networking, and researching products, I was able to also conduct some business related to existing projects.
While checking out the products on the floor show, I was also able to video tape a few interviews with vendors. Willie Urish with Tower Sign and Signal had contacted me prior to the show to discuss his product. So we made some time to meet so I could see his product in person. He also allowed me to video tape his product demonstration. His company, based in Illinois, manufactures and sells portable traffic signals for construction jobs.
Most of us working for government at one time or another have watched our organizations respond to someone calling a politician to demand some type of law. Fortunately most elected officials realize that passing a law just because someone told you to is not always a good idea. So instead committees are created or meetings are held to discuss the proposed piece of legislation. This allows everyone – citizens, staff, elected officials, and other agencies and businesses – to offer comments on the pros and cons and costs of what was proposed. This is important because usually someone is going to think of something that might be important to know before that law is passed.
Unfortunately in Illinois our state legislators no longer seem to be operating under this method. Instead we are learning of laws passed with no discussion or input from those affected. And most of the laws creating huge impacts and crippling operations for business, government, and our economy are those suggested by special interest groups. In early August, while we were still trying to figure out the confusing and cumbersome FOIA law recently passed, we found out a new law was passed to regulate dumping of clean fill like dirt, concrete, and asphalt. And again, instead of asking how to best administer this and what impact it will have on operations and costs, legislators seem to have just passed it only because some special interest group told them too.
My first inkling of something being up came from a call by our contractor asking me to sign a document as a professional engineer certifying that each load off our jobsite was free of any contamination. My initial reaction, along with a coworker's, was how can we sign something like that and why would we have to? Later that night I learned about the law, Public Act 96-1416. You can go read it, but like most laws, it is difficult to determine exactly what this means – there is no Common Man's Guide to a Law.
The person who told me about the law explained, as our contractor suggested, that starting August 1, 2010, a landfill in Illinois can no longer take clean fill unless each load has a certification signed by a professional engineer that it is free of contaminants. But as a professional engineer, I certainly do not feel comfortable signing something like this. Questions arise such as what testing is required to determine this, what liability do I take on signing this, don't I have to follow each load to the landfill to ensure nothing else is thrown in, and so on.
So like any other person working in public works who depends on having to dump dirt on a daily basis, I need to know just what is this law and what does it mean to our department and to me as a professional engineer. Since the legislators named professional engineers as the certifying profession, you would have thought they would have asked us about the terms of the law. But no professional engineer I know had heard this law was in the works. So for a few weeks, all of us wondered what was going on.
A couple weeks after the law went into effect, we received a flyer from the Illinois EPA advertising seminars to explain what had just happened. The only problem was so many of us have been wondering what the hell is going on that they were inundated with registrations. I received an answer to my registration telling me:
"Thank you for your RSVP regarding CCDD training. Due to an overwhelming response, we are not able to accommodate your request. However, four more sessions have been scheduled (see attached flyer). Please e-mail reply which session you would like to attend. A single company or agency is limited to 2 people per session." [the bold is their emphasis - a copy of the flyer is below]
Based on all that, I have to believe the EPA was also not consulted based on this. They are normally very good at getting out information and being responsive. And there is nothing about it in their list of news releases on their main website page. They have, however, now created a page on their Website that helps explain the new law: http://www.epa.state.il.us/land/ccdd/index.html
So it seems, we have legislation that had no input from the profession designated to certify compliance and no input from the regulating agency and no input from the contractors or landfill operators hauling the material, and no input from the governments whose operations are affected, and no input from the majority of the citizens who have to pay for the cost to comply. No one dealing with it understands it, the regulatory agency is still trying to figure out how to administer it, and we have yet to see what this is going to cost the public. Unfortunately, as the rest of the world's governments embrace the Gov 2.0 culture and encourage stakeholder input, Illinois appears to be careening out of control in the opposite direction. And as usual the taxpayers pay the cost.
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Yesterday I attended the annual APWA International Public Works Congress & Exposition & WASTECON2010 in Boston. As usual I met great people and learned about new products, ideas, and information. This year, one of the highlights for me was meeting Jo-Anne Perkins and listening to her story. After losing her mother to breast cancer, Jo-Anne became determined to do something to help in the fight against breast cancer. Last year, she realized garbage cans could help her in this quest by using them to do something more than just hold garbage. Her idea was to change the color of the receptacle to pink and place the breast cancer awareness logo on the outside. Each week, garbage cans sitting at the curb would remind people of the fight against breast cancer. Information cast into the lid would remind women pushing the cart to the curb to check themselves regularly and schedule regular breast exams.
Jo-Anne worked with Cascade Cart Solutions to create the carts and with waste haulers to start offering them to residents. The pink carts now come in 35-gallon, 64-gallon, and 96-gallon sizes and can be ordered through several different options depending on their availability:
The company donates $5 to the American Cancer Society for each cart purchased. So far the carts have been a big hit – one customer ordered several to be used during a Breast Cancer event in New York. But Jo-Anne has not stopped with just selling the carts. The Pink Cart Website not only offers information about the carts, but also hosts the Trash Talk Blog where people can share stories of their experience with breast cancer. And people are encouraged to upload photos of their pink carts at the The Pink Cart Flickr Group, like the Pink Cart on Facebook, and follow the Pink Cart on Twitter.
Most of my exploration of virtual worlds for engineering has been in Second Life and OpenSim. However, this year I have been looking more at Unity3D. Engineers are conservative and seem to dismiss virtual worlds like Second Life and OpenSim. Even though these programs are 3D modeling tools, they don't resemble nor do they use the typical CAD tools engineers are used to working with. Because Unity3D works well with these CAD tools and better resembles modeling programs, I suspect it will find greater acceptance by AEC groups.
As an example of what can be done with Unity3D, I show below a crude example of importing DEM files into Unity3D. While the process is fairly easy, I still have some issues with the elevations looking too exaggerated, and there is an area that does not have contours. I also need to figure out how to apply the aerial images to the ground. So I still have a lot of work to do to refine this, but I thought it was pretty cool to be able to import contours and see the flat land transform immediately to reflect the topology of my city. I put some water in the model to indicate the river which helps to highlight the dam and islands. But I have yet to add any buildings, trees, or other features.
Fox River Valley in Geneva, Ill.
Another cool aspect of Unity3D is it can be embedded in a browser. Below is the static representation of what I created showing a view looking north through the river valley. Eventually I can add the capability for someone to travel through this model of my city with an avatar.
Seems like everyone is launching their own TV channel. This week I discovered the Concrete Answers TV Channel on YouTube. The show also has their own website at http://concreteanswers.tv where you can find all their episodes, a concrete forum, and links to industry resources. Below is a sample of one of their shows in which the host talks about what happens to concrete brought back to the yard (I always wondered what they did with those rejected loads).
You can also keep up with Concrete Answers TV by following them on Twitter or Facebook.
Another resource I stumbled upon this week is CIP-26 – Jobsite Addition of Water, a pdf handout from the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association. All of you who have inspected concrete projects or placed concrete yourself are familiar with this issue of adding water to the concrete at the site. What I particularly liked about this handout is the graph showing the relationship between slump and strength. As someone suggested on the American Concrete Institute LInkedIn group, this might be a good handout to pass out on the jobsite. I was even thinking it would be a good handout for a pre-con.
September 1st, 2010 
Pam Broviak 
