ME Quarterly | Summer 2006

Flash flood dooms humanitarian efforts of Engineers Without Borders in Ethiopia.

By Hilary Parker, Princeton Packet Staff Writer
As appeared in the Princeton Packet on July 21, 2006

Things were going relatively according to plan for volunteers with the Princeton University chapter of Engineers Without Borders when they first began to construct a dam in Kumudo, Ethiopia — until the river came.

"What had just been a trickle of water was a huge, gushing mountain-ful," said Margaret Soroka, a member of the Princeton class of 2006, who returned with the group on Monday from five weeks in Ethiopia. "It was deafening."

Depressing, too, she noted, explaining that the flash flood brought on by the rainy season washed away the temporary dam the nine university students had built — assisted by 1969 Princeton graduate and licensed professional engineer H. Clay McEldowney and his wife, Pinky — along with a year's worth of planning.

The dam project in Kumudo was the second project for the Princeton chapter of EWB, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing sustainable engineering projects to communities throughout the world, following a project last year in Peru. The semi-arid nature of the environment around the village of Kumudo makes it difficult for the residents to grow crops, according to Mr. McEldowney, which led to the Princeton chapter's aim to irrigate the fields where crops are grown.

The surge of the river, located in a ravine about 80 feet deep, was entirely unexpected, Ms. Soroka said, even though members of EWB-Princeton surveyed the area in March and gathered information from other organizations and community members about the area. After the fact, villagers told the Princeton volunteers — who had fortunately stopped work to break for lunch on the day "the river came" (a phrase borrowed from the villagers) — the river has been known to carry children away in its wake.

And so, after spending the better part of two weeks laboring to divert the river and install a pump they brought from the States, Princeton's engineers had to reassess.

When it came time to vote, though, no one chose that option, she said. Instead, the group members opted for Plan B — to install a siphon system that would carry the water nearly half a mile from the river's headwaters to the fields. Having lost two weeks already, she said, the group voted to cut back on their weekend trips to hotels in Addis Ababa, where they had planned to sleep in real beds and take showers.

"In three weeks, I worked more with a shovel than I have in over 30 years," said Mr. McEldowney, president of the Clinton-based Studer and McEldowney engineering firm, of the intense physical demands brought on by the change in plans.

Despite the long days of intense labor, the volunteers ultimately ran out of time to make the siphon pump operational — but they remain optimistic that, sooner rather than later, it will be up and running.

Members of the Princeton chapter of EWB will return to Ethiopia next year to continue their work on the project, according to chapter president Andrew Lapetina, a rising senior at Princeton majoring in civil and environmental engineering. While certain supplies needed by the group — like plumbing snakes and hand- or foot-operated priming pumps — are easy to come by in the United States, he said, they're almost impossible to find in Ethiopia, where many people don't even have flush toilets.

Even if the siphon system had worked the first time around, the group would have returned to Ethiopia, Mr. Lapetina said, as all Engineers Without Borders groups follow up on their projects and continue to work with the communities they assist.

In August, another delegation from the Princeton chapter will travel to Peru for three weeks to continue the project started there last summer. Having previously established a sanitary bathroom facility, Mr. Lapetina said, the group members will build a solar energy station next month. The power will be used by community members to charge electric lanterns they can then take back to their homes, he said, and also to provide lighting to a local school.

Art Vitale PE, LS, Achieves Life Membership

The New Jersey Society of Municipal Engineer’s is proud to announce that Past President and current Advisory Board member Arthur Vitale PE, LS, has completed 30 years of continuous and very active service to NJSME. Per the Society’s by-laws, such a member is designated as a “life member” and continues full membership status without dues.

Art is a graduate of Newark College of Engineering were he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering. Not only has Art been a member of NJSME for the past 30 years, he has also provided active leadership for the last 28 of those years having served in all the official “chairs”, executive committees and advisory committees which he still serves today. Art remembers his first committee, the public relations committee, that formulated the idea of a project of the year. The first project of the year award went to Donald Guariello of Roselle Park.

Born and raised in Kenilworth, New Jersey, Arthur is currently assisting the Kenilworth Historical Society along with his sister, Shirley. When asked about his family, Art responded “my relatives in my childhood days literally surrounded my childhood home, and they were all in the construction business.” In fact it was Art’s father who suggested, when Art was 8 or 9 years old, that he consider becoming an engineer. When asked what an engineer does, his father said, “He would be solving problems with a pencil and paper.” After maintaining and operating heavy equipment in his father’s construction company until he was about 18, he decided that his father’s advice was very wise. Clearly Art’s father was his mentor.

While attending college, Art worked part time for a municipal engineering company, and a highway design company. After two years of service time as a Lieutenant, J.G., in the United States Public Health Service construction facilities branch, he worked for a municipal engineering consulting firm, the Union County Park Commission and as full time Township Engineer for North Brunswick and West Milford townships and currently works for the Morris County Park Commission.

When asked what projects he was most proud of, he named projects that required intricate management challenges, requiring coordination for agencies, permitting, utilities, staff and consultants, and acceptance by owners and residents. One such noteworthy project was the Sabella Park and Bikeway Bridge Project in North Brunswick, which received an award from NJSME. Currently Art is in the final stages of a major restoration and infrastructure upgrade of the Historic Speedwell Village complex, which is a National Historic Site in Morristown. The site is owned by the Morris County Park Commission.

Arthur’s longest “stint” was 22 years as Township Engineer for North Brunswick, which saw its population double from 17,000 to 34,000 in that time. Near the end of his tenure in North Brunswick, a major rainfall (estimated by various agencies to be 50 to 100 year storm) occurred in the Township and the surrounding communities. The then Mayor publicly proclaimed that while the surrounding municipalities suffered heavy flooding, no serious flooding occurred in North Brunswick. Art said “I doubt that the mayor knew he was complimenting the work that occurred on my watch, but his statements made me feel very proud.

Perhaps Art’s most unusual job was when he graduated from NCE in 1967 with 13 job offers including an offer of a commission as a Lieutenant J.G. in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), and a 1-A military draft classification. The Tet offensive in Viet Nam was in full swing. He joined the USPHS and was assigned to the Facilities Construction Branch of the Indian Health Service. Wearing his shiny new silver lieutenant’s bar, and the USPHS uniform, which is a navy uniform with a logo of a crossed anchors and “caduceus,” he was placed in charge of designing and constructing water and sewerage facilities on Indian reservations. In effect he was a “municipal engineer” for Indian reservations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan and Nebraska

Art said his NJSME mentors in the Society were Rich Rorhbach, Berkley Heights; Frank Koczur, Rahway; and “Duke” Beagle, Woodbridge Township. The Municipal Engineering Society has changed in the past 30 years in that the number of full time engineers has been reduced and more municipalities are appointing consulting Municipal engineers according to Art. Regulatory requirements have also significantly increased. Art also remembers the League of Municipalities conference in Atlantic City “before casinos”.

Arthur values his membership in NJSME. He said that the Certified Municipal Engineer and the NJSME Construction Inspection programs have both provided training that is not available elsewhere and “perhaps these programs are the most important thing that we do”. The Society is a great resource for all members who choose to use it. Members will always leave our regular meetings with useful information. If you come to a meeting with a problem you will usually find that many others have had a similar problem and thus solutions can usually be found. And, of course, networking for business is also a benefit.

Considering all of the above, it is no wonder that Art Vitale was previously awarded the Municipal Engineer of the Year Award and is deserving of also being awarded his Life Membership Certificate!

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New Categories added to NJSME Annual Awards

Submissions Deadline September 15th

	A	Municipal Construction Projects Full-time or Part-time Engineer (project planning/design by an individual who is on the municipality’s payroll as the Municipal Engineer of record)
NEW!	B	Municipal Construction Projects • Consultant Municipality population under 20,000 (project planning/design by an individual not a firm who is the officially appointed Municipal Engineer of record. Re-stated: Municipal projects designed by consulting firms do NOT qualify UNLESS the principle in charge was the officially appointed Municipal Engineer of record at the time the project was completed. The annual League of Municipalities Directory is generally a good source for identifying officially appointed Municipal Engineers.)
NEW!	C	Municipal Construction Projects • Consultant Municipality population 20,000 and above (unusual project funding or development ordinances, paving/street programs, stormwater management plans, land-use conservation, etc.)• Full-time Engineer, Part-time Engineer, or Consultant (see “Engineer” and “Consultant” descriptions under categories A and B above. )
NEW!	D	Municipal Parks/Recreation Projects • Full-time Engineer, Part-time Engineer, or Consultant (see “Engineer” and “Consultant” descriptions under categories A and B above.)
	E	Municipal Management Projects • (unusual project funding or development ordinances, paving/street programs, stormwater management plans, land-use conservation, etc.) Full-time Engineer, Part-time Engineer, or Consultant (see “Engineer” and “Consultant” descriptions under categories A and B above. )

If you have any questions or need more information please contact the Awards Program Chair, Robert Kiser, at rkiser@princeton-township.nj.us.

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GIS and Privacy

Are GIS systems privacy intruders, or do they merely expose unrealistic privacy expectations? I think it is more of the latter. Just like a GIS exposes slivers and overlaps in property maps, but does not create them (as many tend to think), it sometimes exposes privacy issues where they existed previously. And just like the value of a stock goes up or down because of how well a company performs relative to the stock analysts' expectations, the "privacy quotient" of a GIS is often measured against the users' perceptions of privacy.

Last June a U.S. monthly magazine delivered a unique copy to each of its 40,000 subscribers. Each copy had a different cover. On each cover was an aerial photo of the subscriber's neighborhood, with a circle around the subscriber's house. The magazine wanted to make a point, and it did. A lot of people were stunned, although the ones I spoke with couldn't explain why. They just didn't think it would be that easy to get an aerial photo of their house.

Last March Google released a Beta version of its interactive online mapping system. It is more than slick and appealing. Google Maps links the map you generate with Google's vast index of Internet searches. The results can be unexpected. When I searched for my name, Google maps came up with the location of my previous place of employment, where I worked more than two years ago.

To a lot of people these would be examples of how GIS is a privacy intruder. To me, these are examples of the public's unrealistic expectations of privacy. Was I surprised that a Google search turned up the name of my ex-employer? I wasn't. But Google made a connection that I no longer make. And when Google put that dot on the map, the information took on a different meaning.

When designing and implementing a GIS, we are required to take into account a whole host of non-technical concerns, weighted based on national or local legislation, community customs, business practices, etc. Increasingly, privacy is among the top issues concerning GIS implementers. But the concern seems to be more about perceived privacy.

An example: A typical municipal GIS implementation includes a link to property assessment data. A typical dilemma a municipal official has is: "Should we make this available to the public?" It just feels like there is too much information available at the fingertips. But it is all public information anyway, isn't it? In my many years of experience with municipal GISs, the most common instance of municipal GIS "abuse" is looking up how much one's neighbor paid in taxes - clearly a non-evil, non-malicious query, one that can be easily accomplished in a trip to the tax assessor's office. Nevertheless, "privacy concerns," often left to the discretion of the local official, all too often dictate what will go into the GIS and what to be left out.

Seminars dealing with privacy issues in GIS include examples of how a clever burglar can use the New Jersey Open Public Review Act (OPRA) to gain access to information, and then use GIS to analyze that information, in order to determine where to strike next. A typical example is that of the person requesting information about houses with dog licenses, then about houses where senior citizens live, and then about houses with alarm systems. At which point the municipal official becomes suspicious, denies the information request, and prevents the perpetrator-to-be from firing up his GIS application, executing a Boolean logic SQL query, and plotting out a map of his targets. An unlikely scenario, in my opinion.

I am not taking an anti-privacy stance. I am convinced that everyone can benefit from a common, better understanding of the real issues of privacy in GIS, and from having common, realistic privacy expectations. Let us not cripple the GIS system to meet some vague privacy perceptions. Let's deal with real privacy issues, and work to correct privacy misconceptions where they exist. GIS is not the bad guy. Stop shooting the messenger.Atanas E. Entchev is the principal of EntchevDotCom, a GIS/GPS Database integration company based in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He can be reached at atanas@entchev.com.