Additionally, the University recently purchased a sophisticated chemical inventory system for its laboratories. Now they each have a label with a bar code, and it's all tied into a computer software system that is easily linked to material safety data sheets. Such a system, he says, allows EHS more effectively to monitor and manage chemicals at the University, watch for chemical sharing opportunities between labs that could reduce unnecessary inventory, and make critical information readily available to hazardous materials experts in emergencies. Earlier this month, BU joined four other area academic institutions and several businesses in the Clean Charles Coalition, which with awareness and cleanup efforts will support a fishable and swimmable Charles River by 2005. Its constituents have already endorsed a conference on storm water management as one of its first major undertakings.
Storm water is inherently a pollution problem, and urban storm water is especially bad.
Boston's storm water, however, is distinctly troublesome because in many places it competes with sanitary waste for space in the city's antiquated sewer system, and the resulting spillover ends up in the Charles. BU connected with CRWA, a private, nonprofit environmental group that has been campaigning for a cleaner river since 1965, to seek ways of reducing both the amount of sewer-bound storm water on and around campus and the levels of sediment in that water. The partnership intends to employ several control techniques, which might include increased street sweeping, installation of filters, and channeling runoff into open space with highly permeable soil and hardy vegetation. We're going to gather significant new data on storm water control in a northern urban environment. If even one of these control techniques is shown to be successful, it can be applied all over the place.