 Dr. Ihab Farag was surprised to learn that residents of Phnon Penh eat fish taken from the Cheng Ek wastewater lagoon. UNH Leading Team for ASEAN Clean Water Project Effort will bring officials from Vietnam and Cambodia to local water facilities By Robert Emro, CEPS The University of New Hampshire is leading an environmental team working to help cities in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) clean their water. UNH Chemical Engineering Professor Ihab Farag recently returned from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he led a team of state government experts as part of ASEAN’s Environmentally Sustainable Cities Initiative. The team met with top government officials, including the minister of the environment, the vice governor of Phnom Penh and the director of the drinking water authority. “All the officials that I met were very supportive of our joint efforts,” said Farag, Hamel Professor of Innovation and Technology and director of UNH’s Pollution Prevention Internship Program. “They feel that this project is very important and timely for their progress both environmentally and economically. They are anxious to learn from our experience and success in New Hampshire.” To get a better understanding of the city’s current system for cleaning wastewater, Farag inspected the Cheng Ek Lagoon in Phnom Penh, where sun and air—but not chemicals—partially break down pollutants before sewage is discharged into the Bassac River. “I was surprised to see a fisherman catch fish that live in this lagoon,” said Farag. “We should help Cambodia so that their people would not have to eat this type of fish.” On Oct. 8, Farag and officials from the N.H. Department of Environmental Services will travel to Viet Nam where they will again share their expertise and best practices with government officials. The activities are being implemented by the Council of State Governments, supported by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. State Department. Similar teams from Maryland and Oregon are working on land and air issues, respectively. In the spring of 2006, officials from Cambodia and Viet Nam will come to New England to tour advanced water facilities in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They will be able to observe techniques related to clean water, pollution prevention, biogas generation, water supply, discharges and wastewater treatment. These tours will be organized at facilities that are of a comparable scale to facilities in the Asian officials’ home countries. The 10-member countries of ASEAN have a combined population of over 500 million and include some of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the world. |
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