The speaker for the Technical Society of Knoxville meeting on May 7, 2012 will be Alec D. Van Ryan; ARCADIS US.
The presentation title will be “US EPA Redefines & Expands Environmental Justice Regulatory Measures” (PDH)
US EPA’s has redefined Environmental Justice and as a result
has made compliance now quantifiable. The new banner is now called Community Engagement and that banner flies over a much larger and clearly defined tent than the old EJ concept. Community Engagement is not just a repackaging of the old ways of public involvement; the key and significant difference is active and aggressive outreach and inclusion. EPA’s guidance now openly challenges agency staff to incorporate environmental justice into the agency’s entire rulemaking process. Under this new initiative, EPA is looking for proof that the community engagement process provided all publics involved with an opportunity to influence the regulatory agency’s decision process. No longer are many past outreach strategies safe harbors.
Alec D. Van Ryan is with ARCADIS and specializes in strategic issues management and litigation support. He has more than 30 years experience in the planning and execution of strategic initiatives for high-profile environmental actions and cases. Although he lives south of Birmingham Alabama, his clients range from California to Washington DC. His background includes a tour as a war correspondent in Vietnam, a CBS news producer, press secretary to the Mayor of Louisville KY, spokesperson for the chemical corporations on Superfund sites, and serves on environmental justice panels for the American Bar Association. He also has extensive issues management experience in the power industry ranging from nuclear siting issues research in Tennessee to assistance to TVA in the ESA process for the development of the Red Hills Ecoplex in Mississippi.
May14 meeting the speaker will be Greg Cole, Principal Investigator, GLORIAD.
He will speak about the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (GLORIAD).
GLORIAD is built on a fiber-optic ring of networks around the northern hemisphere of the earth, providing scientists, educators and students with advanced networking tools that improve communications and data exchange, enabling active, daily collaboration on common problems. With GLORIAD, the scientific community can move unprecedented volumes of valuable data effortlessly, stream video and communicate through quality audio- and video-conferencing.
May 21 Steve Levy will talk on battery energy storage.
As Technical Director of the Tennessee Solar Energy Association, Mr. Levy is a technical consultant. Mr Levy is past Technical Director and Government Liaison for the Electrical Power Research Institute
(EPRI) in Knoxville, TN. He also served as Chief of the Army Pulse Power Center and is one of the founders of the Electrical Power program used in the Strategic Defense Initiative, “Star Wars” program.
Mr. Levy’s expertise is Megawatt Electronics. He is the inventor of the “All-Electric Tank” concept for the U.S. Army and has consulted on all aspects of advanced technologies from idea creations to product acceptance; created teams to collaborate on joint projects; managed large programs that go beyond the limits of conventional technology;
and submitted winning competitive bids. He is able to “see the big picture,” to know the direction in which technology needs to move.
May 28 no meeting.