Professor Jae-Young Ko (1st in pic from left) gave a presentation on the Clean Water Act compliance for the communities in Mississippi (title: ‘Potentials of wetlands assimilation for the communities lacking the NPDES compliance) for the COCO kickoff meeting of Mississippi Conference of Black Mayors (President: Mayor Johnny Dupress of Hattiesburg; Executive Director: Ms. Silbrina Wright), at the JSU Downtown campus, April 13, 2016.
Currently about half of statewide communities have been experiencing difficulties in complying with their permits of municipal wastewater treatment, mainly due to lack of financial resources (Ko and Day, 2016). Professor Ko’s presentation is about adoption of ecosystem services as a policy tool for the environmental regulatory compliance. Using natural wetlands’ biogeochemical functions of nutriment uptakes as a component of municipal wastewater treatment system, communities could make significant financial savings in complying with the NPDES regulation, compared with other traditional civil engineering methods such as sand filtration. The wetlands method has been popular in the neighboring State, Louisiana, in which about ten communities have adopted the wetlands method as a component of their wastewater treatment system (Ko et al 2012). Attending mayors, and officials at local, state, and federal agents showed great interests in the new way of wastewater treatment. Professor Ko and Ms. Wright will continue to work on disseminating the idea of wetlands assimilation to the local communities in Mississippi.
In addition, Professor Ko, and Mr. John Proctor (PhD; 2nd in pic), and Ms. Sheryl Bacon (PhD; 3rd in pic) attended Green Infrastructure and Stormwater Management Workshop. The two-day event was held at Butler & Snow, in Ridgeland, MS, from April 14 – April 15, 2016. The event was a quite informative event, sponsored by EPA region 4, MDEQ, Allen Engineering & Science and Butler & Snow. The workshop covered important topics including current local situation, current policy, legal and financial ways of supporting green infrastructure, and case studies from other states and from other communities in Mississippi (See Agenda ). Professor Ko also attended the 2016 Mississippi Water Resources Conference, in Jackson, MS, April 5-6, 2016.
