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Wastewater Prize A Creative Bent  

Wastewater Prize

The Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences’ Christine Dube, Brenna Mannion, Ryan O’Larey, and Christopher Schlax — participants of Assistant Professor Robert Nerenberg’s Wastewater Design course — walked away with a first place trophy from Metcalf & Eddy’s (M&E) Wastewater Design Competition.

For the past three years M&E, an international engineering consulting firm known for its water and wastewater treatment work, has sponsored the Wastewater Design Competition. Every year a number of design topics are offered, each reflecting real-world needs. The Notre Dame team tackled the problem of adapting common treatment technologies for both developed and undeveloped cities. It proposed a decentralized method of treatment — sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) — that would work both in large commercial buildings, such as those found in New York, as well as in residential and underdeveloped areas such as those found around Mexico City. SBRs are a treatment technology pioneered at Notre Dame that carries out functions such as equalization, preliminary treatment, aeration, and settling. SBRs minimize the size, complexity, and cost of the treatment process, while allowing greater operational flexibility.

Based on their 45-page design report and poster, the Notre Dame team was chosen as a finalist and invited to the company’s New York City offices for a 15-minute presentation and interview. The judges, which included three M&E employees, a senior environmental engineer, and a managing editor for Engineering News Record, commended the team on its professionalism and thoroughness. According to Nerenberg, taking top honors was even sweeter since another Notre Dame team (Manuel Caldera, Margaret Martin, Maryanne McElwee, Derek Ray, and Nick Shultz) placed a very close second in the previous year’s competition.



From left to right, Christine Dube, Brenna Mannion, Assistant Professor Robert Nerenberg, Ryan O’Leary, and Christopher Schalx display the award for first place in the 2005-06 Metcalf & Eddy Wastewater Design Competition. Leon Downing, Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant for the Wastewater Design course, is not pictured.