 All right, everybody, let's go ahead and begin our panel discussion. It's my pleasure to introduce our moderator this morning, Andy Weldon. Andy is an associate professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering. He leads a team that looks at many aspects, microbiological engineering, data science, policy and understanding, better understanding how to make our waters safer and cleaner for drinking and other applications, an important topic as we've heard already this morning. With that, please help me welcoming Dr. Weldon. Thank you very much. We're all here today to kind of celebrate Dr. Rose here from Michigan State University and these amazing individuals as well from Purdue. I'm going to introduce them in a second, but I did want to mention that a lot of the students had to go to their next class, but they plan to watch online, so this is live streamed right now and it will be recorded. So thank you all for coming today and for those of you listening in. The College of Engineering has assembled this amazing cast of individuals here we're going to hear from who are experts in water and they're going to share their experiences. In solutions associated with the title of this discussion which is protecting drinking water. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce some folks. If you're just tuning in now, to my right here is Dr. Joan Rose and it is my honor to be here with you sharing the stage. Dr. Rose is a Michigan State University Homer Nolan chair in water research and she's in the College of Agriculture in natural resources and departments of fisheries, wildlife, crops and soil sciences. Thank you for coming. Dr. Rose is one of the world's foremost experts on water microbial risk assessment. Her recognitions are simply downright impressive. If you were here earlier when the Dean of Engineering mentioned some of her awards and accomplishments, one person would be honored just to have one of those and she is even an honorary citizen of Singapore and I don't know if we have determined if she's paying taxes there. But anyways, I just wanted to list a few of them. In 2016 she was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, World Water Prize, which is the world's most prestigious water award for her successful translation of science to policy. And for her leadership in developing the tools and guidelines required to give policy and regulatory life to science. In 2011 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and has a number of procedures service on national academy boards, scientific advisory boards in different countries. We are lucky to have the opportunity to be here with us today and she is also collaborating on a Purdue University, Michigan State University, Tulane University and University of Memphis research study. So next I'd like to introduce you to some of our Purdue University experts. You can find more information about them at www.purdue.edu. The first individual I'd like to introduce you to is Dr. Sara McMillan. Thank you for joining us. You're welcome. She is a licensed professional engineer and associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering. The next individual I'd like to introduce you to is Dr. Ellen Wells. Dr. Wells is an assistant professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences here at Purdue. Dr. George Joe, I'd like to introduce you to him. To him he is a licensed professional engineer as well as an assistant professor in the Laos School of Civil Engineering and Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering. And finally, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Ron Turco. Dr. Turco is a professor and department head of agronomy and in the College of Agriculture. So with that, let's just get to the questions. These questions have been compiled from social media. We sent out a blast asking people to ask questions. So some of the questions that are going to be asked of these individuals came from social media. And the first question will be for Dr. Rose. So Dr. Rose. With what seems to be constant headlines about unsafe drinking water in the U.S., what can anyone do now to better protect their families and friends? Well, I think the first thing is that each individual should know something about their watershed that they live in. I think they should know where their source water is, where it comes from, know something about how it's treated, if it is treated, and where their wastewater goes when they flush their toilet. And surprisingly, individuals that are on their own wells and septic tanks have some understanding of this. But about 60% of those surveyed in the general population actually don't know where their water comes when they turn on their tap. So I think we need to be knowledgeable about our waters and our water systems. We're going to be asked in our community to support funding, or we can be a voice to get federal funding for infrastructure and improvements and more testing. And so the more we know, so we have to be informed. So that's the first thing. I am a big supporter of water testing and trying to use that information. So I support the local ordinances that say that point of sale testing or in Canada they have once a year testing of some of their groundwater. And then using good IT, you know, we should be using information technology to better compile this data, understand the data and be able to do something about it. We do have opportunities for point of use devices or point of entry devices at our homes, at our household. But often people get the wrong one. They want to take care of lead and they get carbon filters or they are worried about bacteria and they don't have a bacterial filter. And they don't maintain it. So as an individual, if you are going to get point of entry or point of use then you need to really know which system you want to buy for which contaminant and then to look at the maintenance. So those are the things I think we can do as individuals. Thank you. The next question is from Dr. Joe. This was submitted through Twitter. The individual indicated that pitcher style charcoal filters are popular at homes and they can remove organic chemicals, not lead or coliform as the Twitter user indicated. How do you treat your water at your home or are you on a private well? For a lot of us at the city of Lafayette, we rely on our type of water and they treated very high quality. So we have seen a lot of these bottle waters. I don't know if you realize that some of these are not regulated. So their quality are maybe not as high as our type of water. But we have a lot of concerns about this malide or other heavy metals emerging contaminants in our water. So the pitcher style filter which could be about 30 to 40 dollars. It's kind of like a quick and dirty approach and mostly they are, we have the active carbon inside to filter it and solve those contaminants. So I would say it's working. But the thing is you have to regularly maintain it, replace the cartridge frequently. And as far as I know, we have only a few pitcher style pitchers, the filters that has been certified by some industry organizations such as NSF International. And if you're really concerned about viruses and bacteria and other emerging contaminants that are not regulated, you may consider to put some, like Dr. Rose just mentioned, part of entry or part of use devices to use some reverse osmosis devices. So those are relatively effective to get rid of 99% of the contaminants. But still, as a professor working in the water industry, it would be great if you have more resources to fund our utilities, fund our water treatment plan, this water treatment plan, and to help us to get clean water through the type or else, you know, it's, you have to rely on, you know, our general public may not know all the tricks and the efficiencies. So we are going to fall into some pitfalls. Thank you. The next question is for Dr. McMillan. She has done some amazing work associated with watershed scale, stormwater, and the relationship between that and drinking water. Dr. McMillan, is there a link between stormwater when it rains and drinking water? Amazing. Thank you for that compliment. So yes, we're actually just talking about this a bit at breakfast this morning. So any of the panel can certainly dump in on that conversation. There is a fair number of review papers that have talked about correlations between precipitation events and outbreaks of disease and things like that. And that makes a lot of sense because as it rains and we run pollutants off of our landscape, they enter our rivers. And those rivers then join up in with our reservoirs and a lot of those reservoirs are drinking water supply, right? So there is a process-based and obvious link there that makes a lot of sense. And a lot of times those sources of pollutants could be coming from illicit connections that are kind of things like CSOs or septic tanks that are in the groundwater or other kinds of connections that blend into the surface waters when it rains. Or there could be things that are kind of dormant in our river system, so in our stream networks or in our stormwater management practices that become re-suspended when these peak flows happen. So you can have a rain event that then triggers kind of re-export, I guess, if you will, of these different kinds of bacterial and viral loads that then make it into drinking water supplies. So to kind of second what Dr. Rose said about know your watershed, also know your water source. So this might be more or less important depending on where your water supply is coming from and understanding kind of how that connection is made and those rain events really certainly contribute. So anyone on the panel want to? Alright, great. Dr. Wells is in the public health field. She is our resident public health expert up here. She helps Purdue University's Masters of Public Health program. So this next question is for you and it will represent all of what the public health field in the world thinks. Kidding. What have you seen as the relationship between public health professionals and local or state level drinking water and then where do you think we need to go? Thank you for the introduction and for that very broad question that you just gave me. Public health is a very, very broad field so I'm going to focus this on environmental public health workers who would be more likely to work in the area of water quality and water control. So at the state level there's actually a lot of people working to help promote clean drinking water and at the state level they're the ones who do a lot of the testing and enforcement of things like the Safe Drinking Water Act that the EPA has in place which the Safe Drinking Water Act is what has designated the regulatory levels for numerous contaminants in the water supply including microbes and viruses, bacteria as well as chemical contaminants. So from the public health perspective at the state level they go and test water supplies from the drinking water sources often and they'll also do monitoring of groundwater to try and make sure that the whole system as we were talking about before groundwater or rain water going into the drinking water supply to make sure that those systems are safe. However I would point out that there's a big loophole at least as far as the regulations go to protect our drinking water as far as well water goes. In this state in Indiana we have a lot of big rural community and a lot of them are also on well water but the regulations that protect our drinking water quality don't apply to people with private wells. So if you have a private well it's up to you to be responsible to make sure that your water gets tested and that it is to standard. And the state health department will help with that in Indiana. The Indiana Department of Health has a good website and lots of information and advice for homeowners who have their own wells on what kind of things to look for and how to do the testing and they will assist with the testing. But at the same time there's a responsibility of education as it's pointed out by Dr. Rose on behalf of the well owners to know that they have to go out and seek this information themselves. Great. What I'd like to do is pass it to Dr. Turco because it was an extensive experience in Indiana water policy and research but I'd like to kind of piggyback on top of that question in Dr. Wells' perspective. What has been your experience in Indiana with regards to well testing, private well testing? My experience in Indiana is everyone wants their well tested nobody wants to pay for it. That's been mostly my most of my experience. As in do you test water and we'll say yes or something we used to say yes and could you come and test my well and I would say it depends if you're in their study area. So there was a lot of interest in it but just not a lot of desire to pay for the process. And then my favorite question is, and this has gone on for years and you guys have all heard this, what's in my water? Can you test what's in my water and I will say how much money do you have? Well, we can then expand the scope of what we're going to look at in your water depending on how much money you're willing to give us. No one ever actually paid for anything like that but they just don't have a concept of what that statement actually means in terms of the necessary work you would go into that. I think Indiana, like she said, is exactly right. We have a lot of well water in the state. We also have a lot of wastewater in the state that's unregulated. That's been some of the work we did a long time ago was looking at distribution of sewer septic systems and poorly maintained septic systems. Again, it's a cost issue, right? So you don't have a problem until you have a problem or someone tells you you have a problem and septic systems will work forever because they just turn the ground and magically everything goes away. So that's always been another issue we've dealt with over the years is looking at distribution of waste materials from septic systems. Mostly bacteria. I'm glad I worked on bacteria and have viruses but that's just side to point. We looked at a lot of it. We looked at a lot of indicator, did a lot of indicator work on septic systems and things just to get some vision of what people were impacting them. And again, it comes down to are they willing to spend money to repair the situation? Are there regulations in place? There typically aren't. So it's just a cost. It always comes down to, not surprisingly, it always comes down to the money side of this, right? So are you willing to pay for that situation to get fixed? It's always the case. And again, we have some good well water services in the state like you were saying. The Indiana Department of Health will actually help you on your well water testing. They'll do a lot of it. It's nothing fancy. It's your basic nutrients and bacteria. But still, it's a good set of indicators to use to see what's going on. So in terms of policy in the state, there's willingness to do things. There's just not, again, a lot of drive or push to have things happen in Indiana as a hodgepodge of water sources. I mean, we have a lot of groundwater use. We have a lot of surface water. We have some surface water use for drinking. So that makes it uneven, depending on where you're on the state. Supplies are different. So there's different issues all over the state. There's like a striping pattern across the state in terms of coming up from the south to the north in terms of supply issues, where the water is coming from, who's using it, and those kind of questions. So it's not the same through the whole state. That's really where it gets to be difficult. And you get a lot of what I've witnessed and what I've been in Indianapolis working on these things is where you are on the state, your issues are way different. So the local part drives a lot of what goes on. A personal perspective, while our family was looking at buying a house, we came across this house with a well. And the realtor wanted us to pass papers on it, and we wanted to do testing. We did testing, and we found out that their septic system was in failure and pumping ammonia into their drinking water well, which was untreated. And they had been drinking that water for eight years. So we don't know when that happened, but certainly testing your wells is important. And right now, it may seem like people are on their own, but they're really not. There's public health officials at state levels. There's universities across the country we can go to and ask these questions. So there's opportunities for help. The other thing I've found working with the State of Indiana is the Department of Natural Resources has a very extensive collection of information on wells in the state. They have a very nice web site where they do well records in the State of Indiana. And they're very helpful when you have well issues and well problems in terms of supply or contamination or loss of pumping capacity. And they'll come out and they'll help you there as well. So I think there's a lot of capacity in the state around water and water supplies and quality. So you need to ask. Jump in real quick for something. It just occurred to me that part of this is like what Joan said at the beginning of this educational component, and so many of our rural families have a well for drinking and have a septic system and the shallow drinking water wells there that groundwater is very connected and that might not be something that everybody thinks about or even really kind of recognizes or is intuitive to them. So and I'm not trying to say that this is something that shouldn't be known but it's just something that I think is a really important component to the water story is the social components of how do we do a better job of supporting folks to get water testing, of supporting kind of the technology at the point of use. I think we all have similar stories of ourselves or our family members or friends who have had water contaminated wells, things like that. So I think it's important to bring that education piece to light and finding resources for that is another challenge as well. On the piggyback on top of education, Dr. Rose, when you are at a social gathering and people find out that you work in water, what is the one question you always get asked? One question I always get asked. I think they often they'll ask, you know, what do I do with my own water? I am on a well now. I grew up on groundwater in Victorville, California, which at that time wasn't chlorinated but is not far from the aquifer that was famous in the Aaron Brockovich study. And so this whole idea of you're in a desert, you grow up in a desert and there's no water to be seen anywhere hardly, but you do have a nice pristine supply of groundwater that can just be destroyed very quickly, you know, with your neighbor. And so, you know, in thinking about that, when I was in Tucson, I was also in groundwater. They were trying to bring surface water in and when they put the surface water into the pipes, they had all this dissolution of iron and everything else. The utility manager got, you know, fired and they now pumped that surface water into the ground and they don't use the water plant that they built necessarily for treating water. And when I got to Florida, you know, I'm on a municipal system, a surface water system. And Florida was interesting because it was like, yeah, our water is robust. It's got a lot of good tastes and odors in Florida. So you either had groundwater or make sure of surface waters and there was always just tastes and odors and high organics even in the groundwater. Florida was an outlier. And I think that was the first time we had a carbon POU put on our system. And I remember my physician finding out that, you know, I worked in water and he goes, I have one of those treatment systems and it's in my sink. And he goes, it's working really well. They told me to change it, you know, two years ago, but it's been working fine for like four years. And I'm like, what? So it's that whole thing, you know, about, you know, so it's your own, you know, bringing like my own water story, I guess, talking about that, the different places I've lived and drinking untreated water, surface water in Wyoming, before they filtered up there. Nice pristine water that had Giardia in it from the mountains. But great water, you know. And now I'm on my own well in Michigan. And this is the first time I've been on my own system and I use my water for some of the experiments. Take well water and so they test my water a lot. Now I'm always like paranoid about what they're going to find and I'm going to have to go back and do something to my well. But so I test my water a lot, actually, my own groundwater. So I think that's the question I get. What about, do you, you know, do I drink bottled water? Am I against bottled water and that type of thing too? They ask me about the bottled water issue as well. So, yeah. Great. Let's just go down the row. Anybody want to add something about what questions they get when people find out about what you're doing or if you're a professor? I get a very similar question. I've had it a number of times from people who live in West Lafayette who are desperately afraid of the water supply here. And they want to know if we've tested it and what's in the water here in West Lafayette. And I have to go through an explanation process of how it's handled and what's done with it. And they're convinced that we're not telling them the truth that there's something wrong with the water here. And they need to buy large quantities, I see them in the grocery store, large quantities of bottled water and then I'm trying to tell them that it's just West Lafayette water sold to you differently. But it's, I don't tell them that, for more money. But it just, that always surprises me is the non-acceptance of a supply, of a regulated supply like West Lafayette or wherever you are in Indianapolis. And the fact that it is tested regularly is a very solid supply of water. But it just kind of bothers me they don't trust the process in that regard. But the stories around Flint, now the things increase the distance? No, it's a little bit, but not really. It's been, there's been this subgroup that's always been concerned that they're being lied to. And they ask me the same question. What kind of treatment do I use? And I say I don't use anything. I just take it out of the tap and I'm like, really? I have a water softener, but I don't drink that anyway. Well, there is, yeah, right. So in Indiana, we have water softeners or personal experience. If you don't have a water softener, your appliance will stop working in about six months and you have to buy all new ones. So as you move from place to place, you know, while the water may be safe, there's different conditioning practices that happen to it. And you want to find friends in the area quickly to tell you you need a water softener before all your appliances break? Just saying. There's just a trouble there. Anyways, so any other thoughts about what people ask you from, you know, if you visited other countries and they ask you what the water's like there or any perspectives? Again, as a side note, we just replaced the water softener in my house a few months ago, so I'm very sympathetic to that comment you just made. In terms of questions I get asked about water, because I come from a public health specialty, I often get asked, is there a risk to my health from drinking the water from my house? And the truth is, it's a very complicated question to answer because every individual is different. We have different genetic makeups. We have different nutritional habits and other habits, and all of this will affect our health. So while we can say that, you know, if the water, we can test the water for a virus or a chemical contaminant, but the question of whether that level will directly relate to a response for an individual person is a lot harder to answer because each person will react differently to the same amount of quantity of contamination in their water. So although we can't answer the question, I think an approach to be would be a precocious one and to try and make sure that your water meets all the guidelines and criteria that have been set out. Thank you. I'll tell one little small story. Since I work more in land and water as opposed to in drinking water, I work on floodplains and stormwater and all these things, and one of my sites is on the Wabash where you actually go near the Wabash. They think it's the cesspool. I think they get this perception as they see during storm events that it turns this beautiful chocolate milk color, and that must indeed mean that it's heavily polluted. I'm not saying that it's something you should drink, but like any surface water, it gets turbid when it rains, and we have those issues, but you can go kayaking and you can be in the rivers around Indiana and around other places in the West. Maybe wash your hands before you eat your lunch. Great. Thank you. So actually, the next question is for Dr. McMillan because of some of the discussion we had earlier about the relationship between agriculture, such as farming and drinking water, and are there any major issues that happened recently or in the last five years that may have had national significance? Such a leading question. So I'll start, and I'm sure Ron might actually bring in some additional details. So I'm originally from Iowa, and so this was very salient in my going back to Iowa over the past five years or so, but if anyone is familiar, there was a recent lawsuit brought by the City of Des Moines Water Treatment Plant, basically against some of the counties that drain into the Raccoon River, alleging that drainage districts are within these counties. So drainage districts are operating in Iowa and Illinois and Indiana, allowing our formerly wetlandy swampy soils to be drained for productive agriculture. And these drainage districts are given pretty great latitude to be able to maintain the drainage system, dredge channels, install drain pipes, et cetera. But what was happening was there was so much nitrates entering into the Raccoon River such that the concentrations within the drinking water treatment plant were in the tens, sometimes even greater of milligrams per liter of nitrate. And as a point of reference, 10 milligrams per liter is the drinking water standard, which is also really, really high in and of itself for ecological reasons. And so the city was paying lots and lots of money to remove this nitrate, and they basically sued the counties upstream saying that they were in violation of the Marine Water Act because they were essentially not regulating as a point source, and they should be because they have tile drains that are coming into the river. It went through the state legislature and to the state supreme court, not all the way up to the federal supreme court, but basically the court sided with the counties, and not with the city treatment plant for some, I would say, procedural kinds of reasons, but in short, it was very difficult to kind of point fingers at individuals, and those counties did not have, the counties might have jurisdiction, but the drainage districts did not have ability to regulate and treat. So it set an interesting precedent because now we're thinking about water treatment plants and agriculture and how they're integrated and together and who's responsible ultimately for bearing the costs of keeping our water safe and clean. That was a couple years ago when it was dismissed and now it's in kind of the legislature's hands and there's a lot of work going on in Iowa. So Dr. Frankenberger works a lot with some faculty there as well on different agricultural practices and there's a lot of research going on to try to understand how to better keep the fertilizers and all the things we do in agriculture on the land rather than in the water. So Ron, anything to add? Well Indiana is very similar. Again, like I said earlier, we have a hodgepodge of water sources drinking, there's a lot of groundwater users, some surface water where there's surface water used, they also tend to blend groundwater to reduce the level of nitrate. So there's sort of that process. Indianapolis is probably the most illustrative example of that where they have surface water coming in that does contain nitrate, they treat it, they do some things to it, but they end up blending it with groundwater to reduce the overall nitrate levels to go out in the system. And they are in a fairly progressive upstream of those supplies to do some things on land management to reduce the nitrate coming in. So it's a preventative model here, they're trying to work on some right away river way treatment systems, some wetlands, some two-stage ditches, all those kind of things in order to reduce the nitrate load leading to the Indianapolis. And everyone's really sensitive to what goes on in Iowa because that's sort of a bell-weather in terms of where the legislation is and those kind of issues. The other thing that's interesting about Indiana and Sarah and I and a number of faculty here at Purdue working on this project is up in northeast Indiana there's a series of rivers that loop into the state and then loop back out of the state from Ohio and they end up in Lake Erie. And as you know, Lake Erie's got phosphorus issues. So we're working on a project up there to look at the phosphorus and where the phosphorus is moving through. And it's a very, phosphorus turns into the next, it will be the next issue already, sort of has become that. But it's a very interesting element because it's not so dynamic like nitrate, it just hangs around. You get what's referred to as legacy phosphorus and you get all these other things going on in the systems. It's a very difficult situation in terms of trying to understand where all the phosphorus is moving so that's an issue that's out there as a concern point for a lot of people. Great, thank you. Dr. Rose, something that got me thinking and talking with a lot of people in the audience about after your seminar, was where are we going to be in the next 50 years in terms of will we have the same types of buildings and technologies? Will we be doing the same things? Will we be talking about the same issues or if you were to predict the future in one or two things that you really want to happen, what would that be? Yeah, well, I guess I'm an optimist to a certain extent and I think there's great opportunity and we bring all the smart people that we need into the water profession everything from resource economists to technicians and engineers I think we can solve these issues. I think that we're going to be looking at distributed treatment more distributed treatment as well as centralized treatment and some innovative technologies, maybe even some of these high rate treatment technologies for storm water or even point of use devices on tile drains, problematic tile drains so I think we could jumpstart wastewater infrastructure in Africa to resource recovery facilities where there's energy, nutrients and water being developed for the community and we're going to have to think about animal pollution and how we handle animal waste because we've been thinking about human wastewater but FAO has just come out and said that more pollution is coming from animals now than humans and we haven't really figured out how we're going to handle all that manure and is manure really safe or how long does it have to be digested or whatever we're going to do to make sure that it is safe to apply on the land so I'm hoping that we can address that there's some forward thinking people that think about that 50 years because what we do now, what we invest in now has to we have to be thinking about that lasting 50 years and a system that we can build assets in and then keep up so that 50 and 100 years when my grandchildren have their grandchildren we're going to have cleaner water because right now our water quality is degrading our algal blooms, we're having these problems and we can make a difference, we can reverse that but it's got to be that long term goal Thank you Anybody else like to weigh in on where we're going to be in 50 years they'll play this back 50 years from now to determine if we were right or a little bit off I think the one thing that as a scientist I've come to really appreciate recently and you're sort of alluded to it a lot and we work on it some here a lot is the role of social sciences in this whole process in terms of reaching people and educating people and letting them understand where they are in the process we can tell them a lot of numbers but that doesn't really change their mind, we need to understand what their point of view is and what's driving their decision making process and you would live with this so it's it's a really important aspect that we've kind of ignored I think that's in the future something we need to really in our efforts really embrace much more sort of the human dimension of it where the person or the people in the process are with what you're telling them and how they're processing it so that's a really important aspect here Social and cultural engagement but Annie what about pipes that's going to be the new frontier right so we can turn that question on anybody here is that what this was going so yes so one of the questions that did come in from Facebook was what type of pipe should I install and that's something that I work on but I'll just mention it depends on where you are if you have copper pinhole leaks you know a good idea to reinstall copper in that water under those conditions again so it really depends on where you are in the system and the plumbing that it is so with regards to the 50 or 100 years right so we have two people on record for where we're going to be I would also ask with regards to engaging the public I guess that's going to be really important how can we do that better have we tried to do it or your colleagues have tried to do it are there any good examples of it doesn't have to be you could be somebody else or you could talk in third person so however you want to describe it this is open to everybody I'll jump in for one small thing because I think this is something that Ron brought up is really important often times we put our expert hat on and we say here's the knowledge that you need but really what we should be doing I think is a lot more two way sharing of knowledge there's a lot of knowledge take any issue take any region of the world and local knowledge and understanding of your water system your environment your political system whatever it might be the people who live it every day the people who farm that land every day experience that and have value and that I think two way sharing of knowledge is really really critical to starting things and moving forward in this education component I know that I've personally been on both sides of that where I've gone to a community meeting and said here's what we're doing what do you think that's not gone so well and I've also been on the very much the listening side sitting and just hearing concerns and questions and trying to answer them best I can so I think the two way sharing is something that we all need to do better I think sometimes like the Flint Michigan case does help improve the awareness of the water quality among the lay public so a lot of people may now realize how the water is treated and what are the potential pipes may have a huge public health impact so as teachers at the university I think sometimes if we could integrate some of the case studies maybe even Twitter, Facebook and also among at least among our students in the relative areas so my plan to see is to help them to realize that this is really an issue you need to drink water every day right so this is relevant for everyone so I think we we put some of the materials purposely so slowly while eventually I think more people are going to realize so water is a critical issue and they should put more attention to this but that's a great great point and I want to open up to everybody in your classes that you have taught what are the the memorable experiences that you had with students or activities where maybe it involved water and you said yes like that's wow this worked really well or they're more excited about this than I am right now you know what types of examples can you share Dr. Rose I like the idea of case studies or you know having group projects we just had a series and one and I said anything in water you just got to choose the problem you know and then describe the problem and potential solutions so the presentation had to look at both and the two that really struck me as quite interesting one was plastics in the water they chose plastics putting the statistics together and all the attention that that's getting everything from macro plastics and BPA and its impact on micro plastics and then potential solutions which a lot of policy a lot of the solutions were policy driven or new material science really right and packaging and things like that and then the other one was this nature and health they did a case study on showing that more exposure to nature improved health blood pressure and all this kind of thing and they talked about different ways like even virtual exposure to nature through our information technology improved health so I love the idea of group projects and case studies and putting these problems to the students because they really put it together in such a nice package with the information and they were enthusiastic and they were learning and I was learning and I really enjoyed that so I think we need to do more of these real world issues where these bright minds and recognizing that guess what these problems don't get solved by an individual they get solved collectively at different levels everything from policy to individual actions that's how these problems get solved and I think that awareness is really important To add to that I love the answers that everybody's given so far and in addition when talking with students about water quality something that I like to encourage them to do is figure out what the water quality is in their own area to working on a project and talking about a case study is one thing you can find the information on the water testing if you're on a municipal water system you can get that information and I think that's very eye opening for a lot of students who haven't thought about the fact that their water might have some issues from time to time in that you can go figure out find that information yourself and I think that also is very empowering and a good a good jump start to lifelong learning encouraging students and others to learn more about the water and other aspects of their environment that they interact with Thank you Any in class examples Okay Another question that I had in anybody can really jump in non-profit organizations volunteer organizations play a big role in the interface between the public and sometimes policy makers and sometimes scientists aren't involved in that at all, but sometimes they are I guess what has been your experiences in good beneficial engagements with those organizations in water policy or awareness One of our current projects our current project is when it's up in St. Barry's area is partially supported by a number of contributors from different folks there's a fair amount of money coming in from different ag groups to help support the project in terms of the work that's going on it's been a very and that part of the project actually turns into an educational part when you go to the meeting and talk about where their money is going they want to know what you're doing and then you have an opportunity to talk about the project and what we're finding that's been a very important aspect before that we worked on a project here with the Wabash River enhancement corporation which is in Lafayette and Jane was involved and a lot of us were involved in that project and that was a very wonderful experience working with those folks because they were very much interested in improving the water quality in the watershed in this region and they were very contributory in terms of projects and their own support and helping us gather up other resources so they had basically a local connection that was very strong because of the way they're structured that they brought us into which was a very nice arrangement for the projects that would go on they were very much driven by questions they had user questions farmer questions, homeowner questions those kind of things but it gave us a way to connect to that in a very nice manner it's a little different than your normal funding stream it's a local source of money but then the questions are very most of the questions are very applied but there's an opportunity to do other things within that stream of information it was a very good experience I like the idea of engaged science with different groups and the nature conservancy has been at least in Michigan has been very involved in water issues and they've been seen as a very good resource and there are other groups that are more activists seen as more activists the Sierra Club got some funding and they were doing testing of E. Coli all around farms and things and even at MSU's campus we were in the news because they said we were violating the E. Coli discharge and but I think they all play a role and I think that and science engagement the more we can do engaged science the better with our new tools we have to follow I think principles of engagement that timeliness better communication you know the costs of doing engaged research they don't have a lot of money many times so you have to think about what you can really do for the resources available so I think there's some principles that we need to be more aware of when we do that it's very important that we do that reach out there and scientists and work with these organizations I would also say for the Nature Conservancy who has been a good partner for us as well but it's an interesting point that you make about trust with the community and the particular perception of that NGO or whomever it might be I think in our case working with folks at the Nature Conservancy is that trust and the community the farmers and the local communities really do engage with those folks but sometimes it can be the opposite effect and so those are challenging like you said some folks more in an activist kind of role so I think it's important as we go to seek these partnerships and figure out the best kind of way to communicate our science and share what we know and help to improve environment lives etc that we find good partners that really kind of do that interface and it's been a great collaboration really well great we're near in the end of this session but I did want to get your perspectives on some critical things that some people in the audience are listening to where they're themselves faculty and supervisors how does an undergraduate that's a freshman at a university or college or maybe a community college drinking water is there a cookie cutter pathway that they should follow or how do they how do they do something they want to help but they maybe don't know how how would they do that and I'm going to let our guest of honor Dr. Rose stew on that for a second as I see her thinking deeply and I'll ask one of our Purdue University faculty to maybe chime in what would you recommend to somebody who wants to help as an undergraduate well it's a very difficult question I would say sometimes the students may not realize how helpful or how feeling the professors would like to help the students so I have really seen students just go to my office and ask okay what kind of research are doing is there any research opportunities that I could somehow participate you know even at Purdue we do have this independent study modules you can earn three credits you're working the lab with a graduate student working on some water related projects so if you are undergraduate students next try to talk with your lecturers or professors and to see you will be surprised what kind of research projects they have been working on for now or previously and their perspective on water issues probably going to create some of those this hard moment maybe I should just try this so hopefully they are going to help this may increase the chances for them to get involved thank you anybody from Purdue yeah so getting involved with research is a great way to get started in working with water protection and I would say that there's definitely not one path to to actions that help protect the water and that's really up here from a lot of different academic disciplines and viewpoints but we all would say that we our work helps to promote clean drinking water so getting back to the question about what freshmen can do to get involved one thing would be to one option is to take more classes that would give you more background in this area so that you could learn more about yourself but another good resource would be that a lot of community organizations do need help sometimes from student interns to work on projects like this I know that are a lot of public health organizations in the community and across the state do hire undergraduates to work as interns over the summer and you can get a lot of really good experience with protecting water and protecting health even from experiences like that thank you I was just going to add being involved in extracurricular things, clubs on campus there's lots of really great options for that and so many of my students are involved in various kinds of these activities where they're working on active projects in the community or there may be even just going and doing education and outreach to the great schools in the local area so there's a lot of range of things that you can do outside of your classes that can help you kind of build a repertoire. Is that everything? I was thinking about that they have that river cleanup day and that kind of thing but ultimately I think water is very fragmented so if somebody goes to the internet and says what can I do you get so this over on the river side these are lake people this is the so on and so forth and we fragmented it in our education too I'd like to see more networking like the water national network that connected people in different disciplines different schools that had opportunities for students in variety so I think we need more of a networking like a portal that connects us to each other and for students to enter is they enter through the internet now they start to explore what these options are through these media and I would just love to see more in networks maybe we need a big ten water network I think that's a great idea we can promote it at basketball games and get on the jumbo truck yeah absolutely so with that what I'd like to say is I appreciate all of your time and the call of engineering for proposing this panel Dr. Rose we appreciate you for being here thank you for making the trip stay as long as you want and with that I'd like to thank also the people behind the scenes that aren't with their backs to you right now but they're actually doing all the work so thank you very much for putting this together thanks to the dean and the president's office as well for supporting this activity and the distinguished lecture series the faculty in the audience the division of environmental engineering law school of civil engineering agricultural and biological engineering in agricultural and economics as well as some other groups here thank you all for participating in coming to listen today and if you would like to download this check it out on facebook you can also send an email to the dean and he and his staff will reply to you with how you can get that information so in 50 years from today if you are listening to this send us all an email and let us know how we did alright so thank you very much and thank you Dr. Rose my pleasure